KM disappointments

A reflection on ideas that never quite made it.

Topic maps
KM has always been about access to information in some form (for learning, awareness, problem solving, decision making....). Topic maps seem to be a useful, intuitive representation and standard with great potential for arrangement, organization, showing, relationships, search and navigation. There are obvious and immediate advantages for learning, search, improving understanding, mapping and synthesis.

As far as I'm aware the major software tools are all European and topic maps has gained little traction here in US. Discussions around topic maps quickly turn to code and standards and there are few texts covering the basic ideas and explaining their utility IMO.

Topic map links from Dmoz.org will help to locate the web literature. Steve Pepper's tao paper is perhaps the best entry point.

Somehow topic maps just have not caught fire, could it be the expensive software?, poor promotion?, slow social adoption?, lack of clear demos?, technology focus?, or just an idea whose time has not yet arrived

Knowledge augmentation
It seems that KM has failed to pay sufficient attention to the very basic practices needed to lift collective thinking and to the inherent social nature of knowledge itself. Sure we examined  AARs, lessons learned,  PKM, peer assists, knowledge cafe's, virtual exchanges & forums - but have we really explored patterns, distinctions, narrative, collaborative writing, core documents, mentorship, creative abrasion and tacit exchanges to the depth they deserve?

My impression is we have neglected sense-making, intuition, deep dialog and the role of shared understandings in our rush to build grand KM frameworks, expound self-serving KM models, advocate  half-baked standards and promulgate certification.

What think you??

Comments

[marcial losada]

There are at least two critical variables in KM that require special attention for it to work properly: connectivity and the positivity/negativity ratio. If connectivity is high and the P/N ratio is at least 3:1 (see "Losada line" in Wikipedia), then KM has a better chance to achieve its goals. This is explained at length in "The role of positivity and connectivity in the performance of business teams," American Behavioral Scientist, vol. 46, No. 6, pp.740-765.

[Mark Berthelemy]

There's a lot of work being done on Concept Maps in the US - these are a slight variation on Topic Maps. Take a look at the IHMC Concept Map software toolkit: http://cmap.ihmc.us/

Even if you don't follow the "rules" of concept mapping - it's a very useful tool.

[Carol H Tucker]

Topic Maps is another one of those ideas that sound great, and cannot be translated into a small business setting -- too esoteric, too removed from the daily grind.

[Alex]

> Topic Maps are an extention of the XML paradigm

Rubbish, all and through. Topic Maps has nothing to do with with XML, apart from the XTM *format* which is a separate standard. Topic Maps is a data model that is cleverly designed to fit the 80/20 figure for KM solutions.

As to why it hasn't caught fire, I'm not sure, but I think a combination of an idea too good to be true, lack of good and simple tools, and no power-backers should cover it.

I have noticed though that it is on the rise in acedemic circles, which may or may not be a good thing.

[David Locke]

I looked at Topic Maps and said no thanks. When they started talking about logical proofs across ontologies, I said no.

Worse, Topic Maps are an extention of the XML paradigm, which isn't fit for text. Extrinsic organizers like Topic Maps need to be replace by intrinsic ones.

I was hopefull of it in the beginning. I think that people still don't realize that this technology has a long way to go before it becomes a mainstream application. It is too geeky to be useful even to geeks. And, it isn't a geek focused application in the first place, so the fitness between what it does and the complexities of it, keep it out of the market.