Knowledge Management

There are 49 posts filed in Knowledge Management (this is page 3 of 5).

Resources for organizing information

I have compiled some links on how to better organize information:

Lifehack.org – Use the LATCH principle (Location, Alphabet, Time, Category, or Hierarchy), Mind Mapping, Create Lists, Create Collections, Place Priority on Key Information

The Visual Communication Guy – Gives examples of using the LATCH principle listed above

UXPin – How to Organize Information Effectively: What You Can Learn From Information Architecture 

  • Create systems for classification, labeling, navigation and search
  • Information architecture is affected by content, context, and user
  • Article continues by providing more specific example

ASBMB.org – How to gather and organize information

  • Describes a method to assist someone performing research to write an academic paper

Followup on Org Mode and Indexes

I was glad to see that Frank McPherson looked at Org Mode from my earlier post, and had a good observation about being able to assign priorities to a task in a todo list and to visualize that in Org Mode. I have not used agenda mode to view Org files, so I was not aware of that limitation. Overall, my use of Org Mode is pretty basic.

Frank’s recent post on indexes (aside: I like that term better than “indices”) provides a lot to consider. I think the ability to have items smaller than a whole OPML file included in other items as Frank describes is would be a terrific feature to have in an information product. The subject of indexes is also an important area of work, in that it represents the distilled experience/knowledge of the index creator. Brad Enslen and Joe Jennett have been working on individual indexes/directories. and Brad’s manifesto from 2018 called on other web users to create their own indexes or directories.

Perhaps another term that could be used is “resource pages”. To me, that is what the “awesome-X” Github repo README pages for Emacs and Drummer represent – a collection of resources, in an organized presentation (grouped by topic, for example). Frank’s technology page and Ken Smith’s page on resources for writing better op-eds are good examples.

More thoughts on organizing information for use

I recently created a web app to use the opmlPackage NPM module from Dave Winer to display the contents of four OPML files at one time. The app uses the includes feature, which can read other OPML files from a single OPML file and save the content locally for processing. I created four OPML files myself for this test app, but the four files could have been created by anyone. 

So the main benefit of the OPML Includes site is that it can display multiple outlines (which can be edited by multiple people, not just one person) and have the content refreshed whenever someone goes to the site. If the content is changing on a frequent basis, this could be an easy way to see the updates. If the content is fairly static, it may not be significant. In that case, single page apps could be used to view the outlines separately, so perhaps there is not much benefit in using the includes feature in opmlPackage.

Ken Smith has had some thoughts about potential uses:

“And I’m still musing about uses. About the slide down into the archive problem of blogging and social media, and maybe using the app as a partial remedy. Keeping the good stuff in view, and adding to the good stuff over time and linking the good stuff to a wider circle of relevant content. Taking the web part of the web seriously rather than letting the slide down into the archive turn it all into ghostly memories.”

Again, an OPML outline, rendered using existing tools, could provide a way to collect that information in a single document. In 2010, Jay Rosen’s Studio 20 journalism program at New York University partnered with ProPublica to research the area of “explainers”, or explanatory journalism at a site called explainer.net. The site is still available on the Internet Archive. I think that this is a method of addressing the “slide down into the archive” problem, but it does take effort. Someone has to create such an explainer, and then monitor the Web for items related to that topic, read and curate them, and add them to the explainer as needed. The main problem is someone has to have the desire and interest to collect information on a topic and share that information. If there is no one with that interest, no tool for collecting and displaying that information is going to be of much use.

Using OPML to organize information for use

Recently, Ken Smith shared an example of a directory of activities to do during a wedding weekend (primarily for attendees not familiar with the area). I recently started a OPML directory of sorts on Oregon elections. Using the drummer.this.how feature from Dave Winer, these directories can be easily reviewed by others. I also recently created a Github repo to collect thoughts on organizing information for use, but it is not in OPML format (although it could be…)

In the early days of OPML, some people were trying to organize podcast directories using OPML files. The idea was that someone could be the maintainer of a directory on a topic, and that file could be included as a folder/directory within a larger directory structure. After playing with the new includes feature in opmlPackage, I started thinking about this again. My impression is that many people who post lists of things do so with the idea of sharing, but the reuse of that sharing is difficult. However, if the list was in an OPML file, this would lend itself to reuse/sharing/remixing. If you had a group of experts who could summarize/curate information/resources for a set of topics in OPML, this could be the basis of a larger work which could be updated at anytime by any of the experts (see Ken Smith’s “Beyond griping” post for more info). As I mentioned in this post, maybe starting a little “beachhead” for experimentation would be in order. Watch this space for more details!

How to organize information for use

Ken Smith had two recent posts (“For the team” and “Or maybe not“), discussing the ideas of forming a community, collecting information on a topic, processing information as a group, and providing a summary of that information. I think the collection and processing tasks are attainable and occur on a regular basis. The task not being performed well is the curate/share/maintain steps.

As an example, I started collecting information on the topic of personal book lists in a Github repo. I provided a chronology of recent posts on the subject, collected tools and techniques, and also created some tools of my own. The recent Github repo for Drummer stuff would be another example, as well as other “awesome-fill-in-the-blank” sites on Github. A mega example of this is a tech guide put together by Stephen Downes on resources for creating an online community, class or conference. 

Perhaps the main thing is to start a “beach-head” of some sort where people can collaborate, then publicize and support that beach-head. Thoughts, anyone?

(cross-posted from my Drummer blog)

Bookmarked BOXING GRSSHOPPER (halfanhour.blogspot.com)

What, again? Yes, again. Today I’m working on creating and saving a reusable Docker image of gRSShopper. I have the benefit of some previous work on this set-up, and so it might work today, so I’m documenting my process.

I am planning to install this sometime….

Bookmarked

About These Notes

Hi! I’m Andy Matuschak. You’ve stumbled upon my working notes. They’re kind of strange, so some context might help.

These notes are mostly written for myself: they’re roughly my thinking environment (Evergreen note-writing as fundamental unit of knowledge work; My morning writing practice). But I’m sharing them publicly as an experiment (Work with the garage door up). If a note seems confusing or under-explained, it’s probably because I didn’t write it for you! Sorry—that’s sort of an essential tension of this experiment.