On The Train, Feb 5, 2009 (Connection, Conversation)

I was sitting at the office, while waiting for my personal and office laptops to boot up, and staring outside overlooking the railway track when I realized I have one too many gadgets at my disposal. Thinking about it I asked myself if I really need them. While trying to find a clear understanding and answer to the situation the answer was right in front of me.

Virtually I am connected almost 24/7 and at one time or another one of my gadgets would ensure my connectivity. Of course on top of that I am present virtually as well. My virtual presence is via several channels and identity. I am in several social networking communities – Facebook, MySpace, Friendster, Twitter, hi5 and maybe two or three more that I could not remember. I am an owner, moderator and member of 15 mailinglists within Yahhogroups and Google Groups. On top of these I use Google Reader to aggregate all the blogs and sites that has RSS that I subscribed to. At least I’ll be looking at around 100 postings a day. I blog on six personal blogs and have 4 very active email accounts managing on average 500 – 600 emails a day. Being exposed is one thing being amazed at how I have coped so far is amazing. Let see – in the office I deal with my office emails and sometimes use the social networking tools for work. I also, most of the time, read my feeds using Google Reader at the office. I mostly blog on the train going home and read my other emails and alerts at home at night. Although I seems to be too expose virtually I am not worried. One thing good about virtual life is that somehow the degree of trust is very high. Without this element I am very sure nothing on the net would last long. It you betray this trust the whole community would reject you and your deed would travel across the Net making you an outcast.

The busy virtual life that I live also open me, even more compare to others, to information overload. Yesterday I was introduced to the concept of agnotology. According to it the more we get information the less knowledge we gain if we do not filter and evaluate the information that we receive. This is due to misinformation that somebody or organization purposely published to mislead people to see from their point of view or make us confuse.

I was welcomed at the station with an announcement that the incoming train was a shuttle to Kajang. It was around 1636 the time for the Seremban train to arrive just like the one I took yesterday. So my first instinct just likes before to take that train but when the train actually arrived I decided not to as I was sure the next Seremban train won’t be too far behind. I was right. It was more or less the same number of commuters on the train as yesterday. But looking around I was surprised to find out they are a different set of commuters. I did not see many familiar faces as yesterday.

On The Train, Jan 16, 2008

Since I was going to Renaissance again today I got down at KL Sentral and this time I just practically went straight to McD for coffee. When I was on the platform again it was just like yesterday except for this incidence of ‘Ugly Malaysian’. We had all this nice and discipline two lines when the train comes but after that as I was already almost in front an empty train came and just like that all the lines when missing and everyone rushed in. I was aghast and remarked loudly ‘where is the line now!. A young guy next to me seemed disappointed as well said, ‘No more lines.’ And I exclaimed, ‘Oh my God’, loudly in a tone of a frustrated and disappointed person. I guess nobody cares.

The questions are;
1. Are we that forgetful?
2. Is there something wrong with the way we learn?
3. Is there a disconnect from what we know, learn, understand and the reality
4. Does this means with all the hype about social network and computing we are more individualistic? Or is it because we only care and trust our close-nit communities?

The most useful concept that I have learned at the workshop today was enterprise mashup which technically also means as composite applications. In layman’s term what it means in the web environment today it is easy to put up, mashup, together several web applications or widgets to serve certain objective. It is just like building your personalize page where you pull together several portlets like emails, calendar, rss feeds and news. Only in mashup you actually integrate these application a bit more. But it is not a complex integration. iGoogle is an example that we can using to mashup several thing for us. Other good examples of mashup are Zillow.com and Yahoo Travel. The potential for is is to explore using iGoogle to develop Knowledge and Learning Mashup on any subjects.

On The Train, Jan 15, 2008

Since I was going to Renaissance attending an IBM KM Blueprint Workshop I got down at KL Sentral this morning. It was around 0715 when I got there and way too early to go to Renaissance. So I decided to have breakfast at KL Sentral. After awhile on indecision and moving up and down I settled for Mc D simply because of the coffee and muffin. I sat the at McD reading while having breakfast and my eyes could not escape looking at long distance train travelers arriving with their bags and what not. I saw two person actually carrying two big ‘kuali’, could be ‘kawah’, going down to the Komuter platform. When I looked at these I suddenly became excited and wished I could take the next train out of KL. I knew I could not do that but there always a possibility in weeks to come.

After a while I uprooted myself out of the McD and walked to the Putra LRT entrance. I did not realize it before but this was what I witnessed. When I arrived at the platform going downtown as usual I saw two nice long lines on each sides of every entrance to the oncoming train. I continued to read while standing behind one of the lines as I knew I was about three trains away before there would be space for me to board in. Whenever the train comes I just moved along the line without taking my eyes of the book that I was reading. However when I sense that I was moving closer to the edge I looked up and I saw commuters were alighting from the train that just arrived. Nothing amazing there but what amazed me was when I looked closely there were these two lines on each sides and the commuters came out in the middle. It was exactly like a two-line VIP welcoming parties. If all, at least most, of the out boarding commuters smile it would be really neat.

My other observation of this Putra train was when I was standing reading on the moving train. Of course the train was packed and more commuters that were standing were putting one hand up to hang on to something and in front of my nose was a Chinese lady’s hand smelling onion. I did not know whether Body Shop has come up with new fragrance but it was definitely onions. The lesson learned here was if you were boarding a pack train make sure you wash your hands properly. Especially if you just came out of a restroom LOL.

David Gurteen was at the workshop and the first person that I met after registration was him. We chatted catching up on each other for a while until others arrived. As for the workshop proper in attendance were old mates Riduan and Yazid from the SC and others that I have met before. David started the workshop given the current perspective of KM. Mainly historically from Techno-centric KM, to People-centric KM and Blended as it is perceived today. Since the workshop was fully sponsored by IBM, David also embarked of the social tools of Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0 and eventually KM 2.0 that he summarized as mostly Conversation. Looking at Web 2,0 it can be loosely said that KM 2.0 tools available today comprises of;

• Social tagging
• Social networking
• Blogs & Wiki
• Instant Messaging
• RSS Feeds & Readers
• Blogs

To be exact of the tools that we took for granted today are Facebook,, MySpace, Friendsters, You Tube, Flikcr, Fotopages, Google widgets like Google Reader, Blogspots and others. The rest of the morning IBMers took us through the landscape of these specific tools.

I agree that it is Blended today but we have to be very careful not to be too gung-ho about it as at the end of the day it has to meet business needs. This to different organizations could mean different things of which would mean different approach and strategy to achieve the bottom lines.

After lunch was David’s Knowledge Café and the topic of the discussion was stated as ‘The barriers of implementation social tools in our organisation’. However, because of the composition of the audience it became a little bit of KM implementation issues or barriers conversation. In essence a lot of the participants see KM from technology perspective and looking for the best approach to start the ball rolling. My advice was it is not necessary to push for holistic and big bang approach if they find it difficult but to concentrate on a smaller scope where at least success rate is better.

I went back to the office for a late evening meeting and eventually went home later then before. The rest of the journey home was totally me and my laptop.