Mr. Haxa Does The Blogs

Wisdoms from Special Library Conference 2008 (SLib 2008)

Great people talk about ideas,

Average people talk about things,

Little people talk about other people.

 

- Puan Siti Zakiah Aman, Ex-Director General of National Library (Malaysia)

October 2003; Prospects & Outlook

This is the third day of the October 2003; the Northern Hemisphere of the world is into the fall season, which soon come the daylight saving and winter. Here in the Equator, particularly in Malaysia, we are certainly not looking forward for the monsoon season, but it would be nice though to have a wet afternoon in Ramadhan late in this month. May all the peace, tranquility, and blessings are bestowed upon us this year’s Ramadhan.

Already the outlook for this month is brighter than what I have considered a gloomy and sluggish development in most parts of life earlier. Though there were problems in life just like everyone else, I’d like those matters to remain as they are, and for me to take of it all. After all, I believe all the problems were indirectly or directly self-inflicted, no matter how hard you try to blame others, try to look at it as if you are the source of it, then there are zillion of means and possibilities to solve the problem, and ultimately improving your self-being. In the end, you are a much better person. Using scapegoat will only worsen the situation. You hurt other, and lemme tell you this, it is ugly, and it is costly.

One interesting development is in the handheld business. As Palm now is officially PalmOne (Read: The Tale of American Tech Company); with the OS 6 that is soon to be released in December, the news that Palm (and the PalmOS version) is moving into the ultra-thin notebook market, release of three new fall 2003 handheld (T|3, T|E, and Zire 91); the competition and outlook for the Palm camp look all rosy and heating up.

Sony for its high-end market segment just introduced the UX 50, which most considered a ‘freaking’ resemblance to that ultra-thin laptop, and introduction of a couple of SJ mid range models, price cut on some models; we could all expect for much for competitive pricing, and thus some astonishingly great new features. Nevertheless, as PalmOS adopters moved into the new chip architecture and introduction of myriads of powerful capabilities, the battery power performance is traded off. We certainly hope that Palm won’t get into this PocketPC problem.

There are few Palm sites that I regularly visit from time to time; ClieSource, Sony Clie (/micros/clies/), Julies & Judies’ The Gadgeteers, the PalmInfoCenter, and also the regular PalmX newsgroup e-mail feed that for the last few days my mailbox from this particular source has flocked like in the 70 mails daily, good though! And interestingly our gathering mid this month looks like it will be a huge turnout. I am all excited to attend this one as I had to skip past three BTMs because of classes. It’s again another good time beamfest, see others try out Wi-Fi and GPRS on PalmOS5, have chit-chat, while sipping those tasty frappuccino, and at the same time having fun with our toys.

My recent favorite site has been the Brighthand as it provides news, reviews, commentaries, for all things on Palm, PocketPC, Other Handhelds, and Smartphones; a good well-covered scope for people like me who is hungry of these news. Their reviews have been very analytical and neutral, data and statistics are updated, features are well described, and the style of writings are to my liking. Besides, I am happy that they have extensively adopted portlets on their site now. And I waiting or probably write to them to introduce RSS feed for Brighthand!

In other development, RedHerring, one of my regular daily Internet mag-subscription beside Business 2.0 that closed down a year back, has recently back to business with a new management. Could it be that VCs are now back to full gear in Silicon Valley? Is this the new dawn for a full swing of recovery in tech? Perhaps some new interesting IPOs down the road? Or maybe new star will be born? Let’s wait and see.

Business is as usual at The Vault, my favorite MBA networking and knowledge site. Recently, I was asked to write about my undergraduate experience at my college. I have no idea when I will be doing that, and for a good reward it offers, I might as well plan my writing soon! My favorite publication, Knowledge Management this month features Verna Allae, one of the well-known figures in KM. Have yet to read this entire issue, but page 26 is worthy the read on e-learning development in New Zealand.

And the e-learning in Malaysia is about to see some new interesting developments. I am particularly excited with this new progression. I can’t wait for that to happen, for this to take place, for me to get there, for that agenda to take form, and all sorts of other things that have made me somewhat now see the light at the end of the tunnel. Finally, everything looks so much brighter. I have told myself to work, work, work, work, and work hard from now on to achieve lots of things that for once I thought quite impossible to achieve because things sometimes got taken by events and out of random, that initiatives got killed off, this one was turned down, and I couldn’t let this one fall into the same fate.

For what it matters, I just finished the second last module of my MBA. The exam and paper submission are due early next month, which leaves me with a full four weeks for preparation. Yet, I have gathered some materials for references but I probably require some quite reading time at the library this weekend for full concentration. Or probably work out task delegation with the rest of the class.

On the verge of finishing up another milestone in my life, I sometime reflect to whether I have read, understood, and possessed all the knowledge and analytical skills to analyze and critic all the issues in business management. And as this one finishes, I am now at a crossroad whether an academic future career or ‘plunge’ into the corporate line should be my next venture. And it looks like I have to put my decision-making capabilities to test now. Hopefully, I will have all the pros and cons gathered in these short periods of time.

At work, my spirit and energy have somewhat been rejuvenated. Thoughts are in place, and works are piling up. This is something that I have not felt this in a long period. Yesterday, for the first time in so many months, I worked late ;-) Can this be a good sign for all good things to happen? I really hope so.

October also means that fall lineups and releases of new movies, of which some will make it to Oscar nomination. The last one I watched at the theatre was Identity. Read it somewhere that Under the Tuscan Sun is a good watch, but I will probably opt for the last sequel of the Matrix and the conclusion on the Lord of the Ring. Too bad Harry Potter is not scheduled for any release this year. Otherwise, this is an October to be remembered for all the best sequels or trilogy, whichever you want to name it!

All in all, I am looking forward for all the positive prospects in life before I turn another year older soon. May the force be with me!

Thank You Mr. Nonaka & Takeuchi

In response to kaz.blogs.com "Knowledge and Wisdom I Seek"

Welcome to the "democratization" of knowledge. I was at the MIT Open Courseware site few months back when it was launched, only to find out that it is still a great challenge to codify all the tacit knowledge there is, much more to diffuse knowledge using this single mode of knowledge transfer, and ignore the other modes of knowledge transfer processes.

My reason? I firmly subscribe to the idea that the four knowledge transfer processes of Nonaka & Takeuchi (my two respected knowledge management gurus of whom some American knowledge management literatures love to critic or even ignore to cetain extent); externalization, socialization, combination, and internalization; has to be in harmony for the transfer and diffusion of knowledge to take place effectively and efficiently. Although, they imply that these processes facilitate the creation of knowledge creating company; firms are just like human beings, they are dynamic, they learn, they adapt, and they go through that selectivity process.

Therefore, although the site offers the externalization process, or shall I say codification, the process of socialization and others lack thereof. Although the materials are useful, it would be impossible to escalate them to the wisdom level without those other transfer processes taking place.

Therefore, it is no wonder that the best undergraduate programs in the world require four years, and that I simply can't buy the idea of 3+0 programs, of which I believe is a disgrace and humiliation to the sanctity and virtue of knowledge.

Review: Working Knowledge

Based on the premise that economists are only interested in the parameters outside the black box (the firm), i.e. input and output, Davenport and Prusak builds a blueprint at how the black box should be managed based on what it knows for sustainable competitive advantage. Hence the theme that builds this book of which I rate as an essential reading in Knowledge Management as Kotler’s in marketing.

This is without a doubt the best material that provides you with all the necessary notions, principles, concepts, and examples that you can leverage on to achieve that small initiative for early win in KM initiative.

Extending Drucker’s notion on information as ‘data that are of relevance and purpose’, information according to Davenport and Prusak are data that are contextualized, categorized, calculated, corrected, and condensed. And only information that you can make comparison, identify consequences, relate connections, and talked about in conversation derive knowledge.

iCome, iWrite; uRead, uHeard me!

This is the codification tool of tacit knowledge at its best. If knowledge is to be read, and wisdom is to be heard, there's plenty to be read, and there millions of unuttered words and thoughts yet unsaid, yet unwritten. This is the evolution of publishing tools that have allowed almost everybody to be a producer. A perfect market efficiency because information are freely available, nobody dominates. Cost is almost non-existent, and there is even healthy competition among producers. This is the truest manifestation of the knowledge economy.

This may sound like misogynistic knowledge management proponent trying to oversell a new tool, but, if you are not riding on this one, you might be left behind among the early adopters. You will probably loose out your edge at sharing your knowledge, doing your self-marketing, beginning your personal-accidental journalism, pushing new a social agenda, or building a whole new community (Najah, 2003). At this time, it's probably is that innovators' site like the ones of andrewsullivan.com, digitalfugue.com, and slate.com that have brilliantly started the movement, that has made this world a suddenly interesting place to live in.

Today, at this QWERTY keyboard my mind travels beyond new territory, new dimension, new idea, new hypothesis, new argument, new thought, new opinion that could soon become my stuff to be written, to be read by others, and my voice to be heard by my fellow readers.

Thank you to blogger.com and blogspot.com for you both has been the enabling tools to the enablers. And for making life much more intriguing than it has been.

[1] Najah Nasseri, How Weblogs Accelerate Communication, INFOSOC, 2003