Knowledge management just seems inordinately complicated sometimes, doesn’t it? Like there are so many disparate pieces to the puzzle that we’re not even sure what they all are sometimes.

I was doing some thinking over the past week about the reasons for this complexity — and what strikes me as a major reason is the amount of other disciplines that knowledge management gets its fingers into.

Within these disciplines, there are all kinds of complex concepts and subdisciplines as well. I decided to sit down and write out as comprehensive of a list as I could, along with a short description of that concept, discipline or subdiscipline’s connection to knowledge management.

I’ve come up with 51 items so far — and I’m very sure that there many I’ve forgotten. So if you happen to be browsing the list and see something else that should be in there, by all means, let me know.

1. Artificial intelligence – Figuring out how we can complement human decision-making or reasoning with technology.

2. Behavioural change – Changing the behaviours of individuals so that these behaviours are more productive to the individual and the enterprise.

3. Blogs – How we integrate blogs into people’s work lives and into the enterprise.

4. Change management – How we deal with any types of changes (from personal to enterprise-wide) in a positive, productive manner.

5. Classification – How we organize content through metadata once we’ve collected it.

6. Cleansing – Scrubbing undesirable information from documents before they are reused.

7. Collaboration – How to get people to work together efficiently on projects.

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Jack Vinson’s blog is one of the first knowledge management blogs I came across — several years before I decided to go off and create my own site. Check out Jack’s blog archives for proof of that fact — you’ll find loads of useful content in there.

I’ve been reading Jack’s blog since I found it — and considering the quality Jack has consistently put into his blog (and I know how hard it is to keep up with blogging over time), I don’t intend to stop reading any time soon.

Not only is Jack a prolific knowledge management blogger, he is also president of Knowledge Jolt Inc., a knowledge management consultancy firm.

So, on to the meat of this post. Jack was kind enough to answer some questions about collaboration, knowledge management, and the future direction of these interrelated fields.

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Heard enough about knowledge management in your organization? Getting tired of it?

Maybe it’s time you learned how to uninstall it.

If you’re looking to dump knowledge management, Dr. David Vaine’s guide should provide you with all of the information you need.

While it’s quite funny, the points made are also incredibly true (thanks to Patrick Lambe for posting this on Green Chameleon).

Upon receiving the latest issue of KMWorld, I noticed an article on the front page called The adversity of knowledge by David Weinberger. The article is a take on ex-General Electric CEO Jack Welch’s book Jack: Straight from the Gut.

In the article, David Weinberger suggests that Jack Welch’s adversial, even combative approach to business doesn’t work so well when it comes to knowledge — and rightly so. Yet does this adversarial approach even make sense in business in general?

What we’re really talking about is running your business like you’re waging war. I talked before about the business-as-war metaphor (where I also referenced another very interesting post about business-as-war), and how it’s a really difficult strategy to make stick in the long term (long, drawn-out wars don’t tend to do anyone any good).

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As I’m always interested in getting other people’s perspectives on knowledge management, collaboration and sharing, I’ve decided to open up the floor to guest bloggers — people who have a perspective on any of the above disciplines and would like to share their thoughts.

Interested? Great. I’m looking for guest posts that are informative, well-written and possess a unique perspective on knowledge. You don’t have to be the top expert in anything — I’m more looking for unique thoughts and ideas than I am for brilliant qualifications.

I’ve closed comments for this post, as the best way to get in touch with me about guest posting is to use the contact form (just click ‘Contact’ on the top navigation menu). I look forward to hearing from you!

Michael Clark has written up some fascinating ideas about the need for more open social networks. While I agree that this an extremely important area, I’m a little more concerned by the fact that social networking sites don’t have much incentive to share.

I’m reminded of the fact that it took (in the web world equivalent anyway) a long, long time for Microsoft and Yahoo! to allow users to start sharing contacts on their instant messaging platforms. I certainly applaud both companies for making the move — but there are still many other instant messaging platforms that aren’t part of the Microsoft-Yahoo! interoperability framework.

There are lots of very legitimate reasons for this — privacy being the number one concern as Michael points out. I don’t necessarily want some shady upstart instant messaging program having all my vital data. Yet privacy shouldn’t be something we have to sacrifice in order for interoperability to work.

The ‘just another social network’ phenomenon, however, has another twist to it. Those that run these social networks are only secondarily concerned about openness, and in fact, more concerned about competition. While a site like Facebook doesn’t really have much in the way of major competitors, this only encourages more niche sites to form.

For example, sites like LinkedIn offer the professional social networking take on things, and it seems that lately, there’s a social network for almost everything. Yet like most things web, standards are usually set after the fact. Let’s just hope that principle of openness doesn’t get lost along the way.

Doug Cornelius has put together some interesting thoughts about corporate wikis. Doug points to CNN Money’s Why commerical Wikis don’t work as evidence of the failed commercial wiki — with Penguin Books failed attempt to write a novel through a wiki being the article’s shining example.

Despite the assistance of a British university’s creative writing team, the collaborative book has become a hodgepodge of writing styles and plots. Let’s face it, there are some people who shouldn’t write a book.

CNN also tells the tale of the L.A. Times’ failed attempt at opening up their editorial page to user editing. Unfortunately, a few people started trashing the pages, and were generally just being destructive (I talked about the destructive potential of anonymity on wikis at the beginning of the year).

Chris Taylor from CNN makes some great points about the need for wikis to be focused — which keeps them from just recruiting anyone to contribute. It’s a bit of a fine line between being open to participation and being a closed community.

All discussions around wikis, however, seem to overlook one crucial and obvious fact. Wikis are often not the best technology to accomplish a goal. Creating a wiki to write a book is about the equivalent of picking several thousand volunteers off the street, putting them in conference centre for a few months, and asking them to design a car. Similarly, we’re not all talented novelists.

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