THE WELCH COMPANY
440 Davis Court #1602
San Francisco, CA 94111-2496
415 781 5700
Date: Tue, 20 May 2003 15:17:27 -0700
03 00050 61 03052001
Mr. Patrick L. Lincoln
Director
Lincoln@csl.sri.com
Computer Science Laboratory
SRI International
333 Ravenswood Avenue
Menlo Park, CA 94025
..
Subject:
SDS, Com Metrics -- Blueprint for Knowledge Management
Dear Pat,
Thanks for timely feedback in
your letter
today reviewing the draft endorsement expanding
the language approved in the
meeting
on July 29, 2002. This helps ensure a productive meeting scheduled for next
Tuesday on May 27th, per our
telecon yesterday.
..
Your suggestion to publish another Welch paper, which other
people can cite, may be the right direction afterall. Everything in the
currently proposed draft reflects things I have already said,
and so is already available for people to cite,
but this is not being done,
as set out in the new draft. Assume KM is a "movement" toward a new way of
working that strengthens the ancient practice of literacy in
important ways that
augment intelligence, as explained in POIMS.
Assume further that in the early stages research
is required to move forward, because people like to rely on
things that are familiar and established. In particular, people
like familiar ways of using alphabet technology, and are not
familiar with opportunities for augmenting intelligence. Under
these conditions, I think you will agree that a movement needs
more than one voice. If Rod publishes everything this is not a
movement, it is a narrow, quaky, eccentric personality, much
like the genie in a bottle. As long as the genie is in the
bottle, people can only wonder why the genie is jumping up and
turning cartwheels inside, while everyone is hurrying to the
next seminar or the next meeting where there is
no progress, as we have seen the past 10 years or so.
..
Letting the genie out of the bottle, i.e., to break out of the
innovation loop
that has has the secret of converting information into knowledge
bottled up, as related in the draft
endorsement, and
explained previously
on April 25, 2000,
requires action by others.
While the Genie of knowledge is powerful once released,
the one thing the Genie cannot do is open the bottle.
..
Opening the bottle to Knowledge Management requires an act of
will and faith in the beginning by those who are comfortable in
the old way of working using information technology, like this
email program I am using. Where do we find people with the
vision to see, the courage to act and the will to persevere for
taking the early steps toward a better future? One place is in
research, because this area, by definition, must have one foot in
both worlds -- the world of today that must conform to make a
living, and the world of tomorrow that makes living more livable
for all.
..
Therefore, on the point of who should publish, it seems axiomatic
that unless others take up the issues in the draft, there will be
no movement, as you noted in
your letter
on January 11, 2001.
..
This means we should at least try to get something you can
support for the following two (2) reasons...
..
We need to grow your knowledge by getting you to engage the
issues, and giving you a resource you feel comfortable citing in order
to grow a culture of knowledge. If you don't do this, the chances you
will ever cite this kind of material is zero, because you will not have
made the investment of time and study essential for acquiring
knowledge. Lessons learned on OHS/DKR project for several years,
including Eric Armstrong's letter on May 3, 2000, showed that
without studying SDS, POIMS, etc., there is
not enough knowledge to develop Knowledge
Management, as related during the meeting at SRI a few weeks later on
June 15, 2000.
..
We need to attract other supporters, other bright stars, who can
learn to spread the word wide as the waters. People are attracted to
movements by momentum. We have achieved a fragile momentum with Gary
at Boeing. Gary getting another paper from Rod saying what Rod has
already said is not useful for giving other people the sense of safety
in numbers they need to embrace a new way of working. The respected
voice of research conveys trust that is critical to drawing support.
..
Thus, I am committed to fashioning a bridge from the draft to an acceptable
statement that helps
bridge the gap between the two (2) worlds of
information technology (IT) and knowledge management (KM),
as related in the draft endorsement.
..
For example, your appropriate concern to avoid assertions of fact
for which you do not have direct knowledge can be met by removing
material. We have started with a robust, comprehensive agenda,
and now we can scale it back, as needed to fit your comfort
zone. I think when we meet on Tuesday, some of this can be
solved by reviewing the public record. The IBM connection with
Lotus is well documented, but anything that is not supported to
your satisfaction can be removed.
..
References to the SDS record are framed, not as assertions of
fact by you, but as information in the SDS record. We can make
more clear that representations are not endorsed nor adopted,
but rather are published at specific locations which people can
examine for independent assessment in the same way that people
examine references to
Time
magazine,
Scientific American,
federal regulations
or other sources. The key point is to engage
people in the process of using knowledge management practices by
applying addressability in order to discover the benefits of a
new way of working. Using explicit links for comprehensive
addressability
has long been a goal Doug Engelbart has championed, beginning at
least with his 1992 paper on groupware,
reviewed on December 22, 1999,
and later called out by Doug's
letter
on April 5, 2000. Here now is an opportunity for SRI to
demonstrate the efficacy of this methodology, and so
solve the precise problem
you cited in our call a few weeks ago on April 21.
..
In any case, hopefully we can keep our eye on the core issue of
expanding the circle of people talking about SDS and Com Metrics
in order to encourage an expanding pool of people who are doing
KM.
..
Let's try to work on some of the conclusions, and then figure out
how you would feel comfortable making them, and those that don't
pass this test can be eliminated. Saying this another way, let's try
to identify some specific narrow issues you would like to address
that can apply your strategy of
citing Com Metrics publications,
and then work on generating those in a form you want.
..
On the open source issue, how would you propose accomplishing
this, given the
aversion to KM
that has stymied such efforts, as
set out in the draft endorsement.
.. I'll call to discuss these ideas if you have time today.