Social computing for knowledge management

As I had hoped my head was buzzing with ideas after Web Directions Government, some great speakers from Australia and around the world presented. We'll do a post soon when all their presentations are available, but there's one I wanted to talk about now due to its relevance to a project I'm currently working on.

Flickr, Twitter - work or play?

If you use any social computing tools such as Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, Wikipedia, blogs or even Twitter, you may have considered how they might be used in the corporate environment, and may even have utilised them in some of your web projects. I certainly have and am always looking for ways to employ new technologies and use my learnings from using these social tools in my corporate work. The only thing that might hold me back is a reluctance from stakeholders who have a fear of these tools and see them purely as social activities. This isn't helped when you hear horror stories in the press of things gone wrong. So I was very excited to see Matthew Hodgson's presentation at the conference so that I could hear about some real success stories as well as learn from the not-so-successful.

Social computing for knowledge management - Matthew Hodgson

Matthew talked about how corporate knowledge can be managed intelligently using tools like a wiki - making an amusing reference to how many organisations fall in to the trap of "network drive syndrome" by which network drives become the store of corporate information. How this becomes an ever growing tree which few (if any) can navigate successfully, and each time they go to find a new document or folder they have to find their way through the maze again. Often the structure grows out of control and each staff member is only ever likely to remember a small proportion of where things sit. Some organisations might also use record management systems for document management, these systems are orientated to storing records and are not really an appropriate tool for providing staff with quick access to corporate information on a daily basis. Matthew showed how using tools such as a wiki might be a solution, and was one of the key topics included in Matthew's engaging presentation. If you're interested in what Matthew has to say visit his blog: Matt's Musings

What's your experience?

I'm currently working on implementing a new intranet and so this presentation was very relevant to me. I'm in the early planning stages of the project and using a wiki is a strong possibility. My main concern is ensuring its easy to update and is soooo incredibly useful that people won't be able to survive their working day without it. I'd be interested to hear from any of you who've had experience in using a wiki or other social networking tools to implement as a corporate intranet, so please comment on this post or email me.