Friday, December 16, 2005

2005 KM Post of the Year

And my winner is...

Dave Pollard's post titled Personal Knowledge Management (PKM) -- an Update.

Why? First of all, I'd love to be able to write like Dave Pollard - he's insightful, analytical and even-handed, all qualities I look for in a daily read. And given the number of blogrolls he shows up on, I'm not the only one.

The post itself defines a 'real life' problem he was up against, where he was asked "to investigate a leveling-off of use of the firm's award-winning centralized knowledge resources", and how he chose to go head-to-head conducting interviews with his users.

The interviews he describes are very real, with an eye-roll, smile, ya-I've-been-there, kind of feel to them. Perhaps because he's no longer employed there, he's able to offer a bit more of that blunt honesty that makes Dave Dave.

He then moves off to an analysis phase that drives home point after point. How KM theory is moving from an aggregation stage to being much more proactive and bottom-up. Any KM post that talks about PKM, bottom-up, or Guerilla KM (ok, that's my term) is going to be a big hit in my books. As a reader, he's now got me glued to the post.

The last phase, and where he clinches the KM post of the year honours (IMO), is when he offers practical solutions. Dave knows he hasn't just described a unique situation, and is now ready to let his readers know the tools available to set things in the right direction.

I know I haven't re-hashed any of the details [that part's easy - go read it]. Really, what I wanted to blog about was the fantastic structure to this post... define a detailed problem, establish a connection with the reader, analyze, and describe some practical solutions. Dave Pollard probably doesn't give this much thought, he likely just writes that way...

KM is sometimes a tough topic to write about, flipping back and forth between practice and theory. Both are important ingredients in daily practice, and both are critical elements to a great KM blog post.

Do you know of a better 2005 Knowledge Management blog post? Make a case for it, and let me know.

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