Talk about people who give meaning to the phrase ‘larger than life.’ Randy Pausch deserves this title. Okay, given that I’m a tad over a year late but, I’ve just finished watching his ‘final lecture’ in the ‘final lecture’ series at Carnegie Mellon. The video is linked to his homepage:
http://download.srv.cs.cmu.edu/~pausch/
Noted that in his lecture he gives thanks to his mentors, heroes, family, friends, inspirations and most notably his students. I agree and think we’d be nobody without the people who touch us from all sides of our lives.
An excellent asset of knowledge that not just Carnegie Mellon will miss, but I’m sure the whole world will.
His daily update pages, while somewhat surreal, are still up on the site too:
http://download.srv.cs.cmu.edu/~pausch/news/index.htm
Maybe he rest in peace, and his work and legacy be continued through his students and protégés.
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December 30th, 2008
It seems like the nice folks at Thomson Reuters have provided us with a gem of a report written by Dr Eve Y. Zhou and Bob Stembridge.
A gem it is indeed. It seems like the Chinese government are really pushing for an innovation economy by 2020. The incentives are there for companies to file their innovations as they are 1) paid for by the government and 2) further monetary incentives are being given to those who can successfully get patents registered in foreign countries too.
Such incentives seem to be working too, at least so far in the areas of: Digital computers, Telephone and data transmission systems, Natural products and polymers, Computer peripheral equipment and the Fermentation industry. With quite a large amount of filings being made in the last ten years.
I’m not too sure about the law being passed that will force foreign companies to file their innovations in China first or risk losing legal protection. Could this be a potential barrier that foreign companies, who wish to invest in the country, might have to face? On the other hand, at the rate China is going, will the country even need foreign companies in 2020?
Only the future will tell.
You can download the full report here:
Patented in China the Present and Future State of Innovation in China |
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December 18th, 2008
It is not a secret, your private life might just not be so secret anymore.
Remember the nosy old lady who lived down your street when you were young? The one who told your parents she saw you somewhere, or doing something, you shouldn’t have been? Well it appears she just went cyber.
Thanks to web 2.0 and the social web, our personal data is pretty easily accessible. Moreover, thanks to facebook and the likes, another side of us is now also exposed to the the whole world. Now everyone can see our least flattering pictures and drunken antics. We just can’t guarantee that we can stay anonymous anymore. Even if you think you can, I’m sure there’s at least something that can be found about you on Google.
So this brings up some questions:
- Is it ethical for a HR person to check up on potential employees? If the information is there, why not?
- Do employers have to realise that they are not going to be able to find a squeaky clean person who hasn’t gotten a bit too drunk from time to time and had pictures of them plastered all over facebook?
- How about insurance companies? Might they increase your premium after they see your sky diving holidays and random trips to conflict zones?
- What other implications are there for losing your anonymity? Psychological (loss of real identity?), social (family jealous that you’re spending too much time with friends?), legal? (can evidence be used in a court of law?).
Or do we all just need to lighten up and accept each other for who we are? Humans after all.
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December 4th, 2008
Bartering systems have been around since the beginning of time and might be referred to as the father of all business transactions. In a nutshell, a bartering system is a system where goods or services are exchanged for other goods or services of a different nature.
When I think of this, my mind wanders to images of a caveman (loin cloth, unkempt beard and homemade baton inclusive) trading a well crafted hunting spear, with his neighbour, for a beard comb; perhaps made from the overgrown canine of a sabre tooth tiger that he’d developed quite a skill in manufacturing.
Fast forward to the neuveo-hippie era that we are currently in where car pooling and recycling are not just hip but are realistically cost efficient it is no surprise that local exchange trading systems, or LETS, are starting to spawn all over the place. The Times Online reported that 100,000 Britons have joined such schemes.
Just to clarify what LETS exactly entails, here is the definition from the Wikipedia page on LETS:
”
1. Local people set up a club to trade between themselves, keeping their own record of accounts.
2. A directory of members’ offers and requests—goods, services or items for hire, priced in local LETS units—is compiled and circulated.
3. Members use the directory to contact one another whenever they wish. They pay for any service or goods by writing a LETS cheque or credit note for an agreed amount of LETS units, or by exchanging printed LETS notes.
4. If applicable, the credit note is sent to the LETS bookkeeper who adjusts both members’ accounts accordingly.
”
In other words, members of the LETS ‘pay it forward’ by carrying out services for the community which they can later ‘cash in’ on. Such examples in the UK have seen plumbing, gardening, babysitting and even miscellaneous odd jobs around the house traded via such a system.
So in comes my mind wondering about whether knowledge can be traded in such a system? After all, most advanced economies are shifting, if not already shifted to, a knowledge economy and it is becoming more and more common to pay people who ‘know which button to press’ rather than paying people to ‘press a button.’ Could we pay someone to tell us which button to press on our machine while we offer them knowledge, in return, of how to make their machines more efficient and cost effective? To place it more realistically I could indeed imagine a lawyer offering advice on a real estate transaction to a Realtor while in return the Realtor pays the lawyer back at a later date by offering advice on which location would be a wise choice to purchase property at.
Could it work in your industry? Maybe the next round of web 2.0 websites will enable this to happen. We will see.
As far back as I can remember, Experts Exchange, has always been a part of the world wide web even prior to the huge (and still largely undefined) web 2.0 movement. when they first started I recall that they had a points system where users were allowed to view answers to questions based on how many answers they had given themselves. That has since changed and now is subscribed to via monthly, yearly or various other plans. Did the model fail? Or did Experts Exchange realise they can make more money by charging corporate users who just need answers and unfortunately don’t have the time to share their knowledge? Then there are sites like rentacoder.com. Would it be possible to see rentacoder.com move away from hooking up buyers and service providers of software to traders of software components instead?
It is all definitely food for thought and if someone does know of more, better and clearer examples of where this is actually happening in the public domain I’d love to see them!
I’ll leave this post with a link to LetNet Milton Keynes. Do take a look at: http://www.mkletnet.org.uk/.
Mark
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July 15th, 2008
It might seem a bit cliché to begin this knowledge management blog with the story of the rich man who wanders into the forest. I would love to mention it but my good friend Samuel has beaten me to it and also saved me the trouble with posting it at his blog.
So let’s cut to the chase instead. Who am I? At this moment in time it might be easy to provide what Antoine de Saint Exupery might consider ‘metrics for grown-ups’ such as my age, my education and my life experience so far but I shan’t bore the reader with such trivialities. Rather, I wish to tell you, reader, that I am now in the cyclic process of discovering and re-discovering, every day, exactly who I am and would pose the philosophic question back to you too. Who are you? Are you your job? Do you do what you love or love what you do? Do you think therefore you are? What matters to you most deeply and where have you come from? Do you exercise true wisdom when you make your decisions by taking into consideration the thoughts of others? Maybe you are well on your way to true enlightenment or you might have forgotten where you’ve come from and need to just stop for a moment and do some realignment? I’d love to know. Just to highlight here, it was Bob Marley who explored this in both Exodus and Buffalo Solider; from which I quote “We know where were going, We know where we’re from.” It was also Sun Zi, or ‘Sun Tzu’ to us Westerners, who taught us that knowing yourself is half the battle won. He also said that knowing our enemy would be the other half of the battle. So who might our enemy be? Perhaps the greatest enemy of man is knowledge and more decisively the lack of it. Knowledge may bring us closer to God or whomever our chosen religion seeks refuge in.
My ‘who am I’ definition might call upon the knowledge I have gained from my little experience on this planet, but alas, I’ve finally re-rooted myself and settled back into my old way of thinking that that the more I know, the less I know. Not in a negative connotation at all, but in the most beautiful one that has opened up my thirst for knowledge even more. After all, a little education might be a dangerous thing, but it is a great start if one sees it as a solid foundation for building upon.
Where am I going then if I know where I’ve come from? Even though it is more powerful for others to ask me this, I do ask this myself every day. Where am I going? Well that is exactly what this blog is all about. Where I am going right now is on a quest for knowledge and a deeper understanding of the world. You my dear reader are invited to join my along this quest and be my faithful aid and companion. Afterall, my good professor tells me that in the 21st Century, knowledge is powerful, yes, but when knowledge is shared then that is where the real power starts to compound and flourish. Come, let us share knowledge and grow wiser together. I thank you for stumbling on this blog and stopping to read until this point. I hope it has been insightful and, naturally, your comments are more than welcome. Let the knowledge sharing begin!
Mark
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April 20th, 2008
WordPress is a wonderful tool for blogging. I hope to make good use of it!
Mark
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January 26th, 2008
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