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Grow Your Wiki

Get your wiki adoption questions answered and plan a strategy for managed, successful growth. by Stewart Mader

How to Make Better Decisions That Stand The Test of TimeNovember 25

David Brooks writes in the New York Times:

We’re moving into a more demanding cognitive age. In order to thrive, people are compelled to become better at absorbing, processing and combining information. This is happening in localized and globalized sectors, and it would be happening even if you tore up every free trade deal ever inked.

The globalization paradigm emphasizes the fact that information can now travel 15,000 miles in an instant. But the most important part of information’s journey is the last few inches — the space between a person’s eyes or ears and the various regions of the brain.

• Does the individual have the capacity to understand the information?
• Does he or she have the training to exploit it?
• Are there cultural assumptions that distort the way it is perceived?

As a student, I remember boing told countless times that the most important skill I could develop was critical thinking. I still think that’s true. What’s different now is

Springpad: Online notebooks help manage informationNovember 25

Springpad is a new online collaboration tool that bills itself as a provider of “online notebooks to help manage your life.” Springpad looks like a good personal organizing tool for keeping track of notes, photos, maps, to-dos, contacts, appointments & more. You can share springpads with family and friends, create reusable templates, get email or text message reminders, and integrate with other web services like Google Calendar.

The Blogosphere is Not Dead. So What’s Really Happening?November 24

Who Killed The Blogosphere? Thats the title of a new piece by Nicholas Carr that examines the seeming decline in the number of actively updated blogs since Technorati started keeping statistics in 2002:

Technorati has identified 133 million blogs since it started indexing them in 2002. But at least 94 percent of them have gone dormant, the company reports in its most recent “state of the blogosphere” study. Only 7.4 million blogs had any postings in the last 120 days, and only 1.5 million had any postings in the last seven days.

133 million blogs? That’s the experimental phase. New technologies go through a normal phase where many people try it out, but only a fraction of those find enough value, motivation, benefit, etc. to keep at it.

7.4 million and 1.5 million? Frankly, that sounds much more digestible than 133 million. Every time Technorati released those “state of the blogosphere” reports showing ever-growing numbers of new bloggers, I immediately took them with a grain of salt and assumed that the numbers would eventually drop. Lamenting the “end of the blogosphere” is really just marking the end of a phase in its evolution.

Two comments on Nick’s post stood out for me. Joe Duck says:

Nope. The rumors of the death of the blogosphere are … greatly exaggerated. Ironically

Conversation with Sol Sender, Designer of the Obama “O”November 21

Steven Heller of The New York Times Campaign Stops blog writes about his conversation with Sol Sender, a Chicago designer and principal of Sender LLC, the firm that designed the now famous “O” logo for the Obama Campaign. Here’s an excerpt:

Steven Heller: How many iterations did you go through before deciding on this “O”? Was it your first idea?

Sol Sender: We actually presented seven or eight options in the first round, and the one that was ultimately chosen was among these. In terms of our internal process, though, I believe the logo — as we now know it — came out of a second round of design explorations. At any rate, it happened quite quickly, all things considered. The entire undertaking took less than two weeks.

It’s a fascinating interview, whether you’re interested in identity and logo design, politics, or just like hearing the backstory on remarkable pieces of work.

Webinar: Improve Your Projects Using Social CollaborationNovember 19

Interested to learn how social collaboration can help you improve project management and get better results? GroupSwim will be holding another of their excellent webinars tomorrow: Improve Project Results Using Social Collaboration.

Brian Krug, Director of Professional Services at newScale will be the featured guest, and I highly encourage you to attend. It’s an excellent opportunity to see how you can: “…get projects started on the right foot, keep consultants and customers on the same page, and reduce the frustration and errors associated with “Reply All” emails and multiple document versions.”