THE WELCH COMPANY
440 Davis Court #1602
San Francisco, CA 94111-2496
415 781 5700


Date: Thu, 16 Nov 2000 11:08:14 -0800

04 00067 61 00111601



Unfinished Revolution
unrev-II@egroups.com
OHS DKR Project
SRI International
333 Ravenswood Avenue
Menlo Park, CA 94025

Subject:   Culture of Knowledge
Listening to Doug - Alliance and Partners

Jack,

Thanks very much for favorable and constructive comments on SDS in your letter today.

Please keep in mind what Doug has requested, and what is important to objectives he has set for the DKR team, is to establish a culture of knowledge, cited recently in a letter on November 9, 2000, in order to discover a useful advance for existing information technology (IT). For convenience, we are calling this knowledge management (KM). Accomplishing KM requires, not simply citing URLs, but creating connections to relevant information showing specific correlations, implications and explaining nuance. These connections and explanations add value to information by growing "knowledge." Just citing archives, or web pages, is a waste of time, as Eric noted on August 24, 2000.

That letter says in sum: to create KM, you must do KM 24 7 instead of IT. Doug has placed a demand on the team to do this, but it is impossible to accomplish without tools, training and support, per the Launch Plan.

Second, SDS has demonstrated the ability to do KM, as shown in the record of the meeting on October 17, 2000. Jack Park and Henry van Eykan have recently commented on this capability. Additionally, research by the DKR team this past year has shown that it is difficult to discover a design for KM by talking to colleagues, looking at web sites and attending seminars, because none of those sources have the secret of KM. Architecture, design, whatever you call it, the core of KM is a secret because it is counterintuitive.

SDS can be greatly improved, once high powered capability begins working in the right direction. This requires forming alliances because I do not have all of the expertise needed for knowledge management. On December 22, 1999 I received notice, from the president for the local chapter of KMCI, about the Colloquium at Stanford that Doug Engelbart was planning to start this past January. Review of Internet resources included information on Bootstrap which showed Doug's work. This indicated that Doug wants to accomplish objectives that are supported by SDS.

I called Doug because he proposed "alliances" to advance KM.

That is what I am looking for: alliances to advance the technology.

Like everyone on the team, and everywhere in the world, Doug did not have enough bandwidth to consider Rod and his stuff, because he was thinking about how to get folks to build his stuff. So, I took 10 months to demonstrate that my stuff works, as reported in the record of the meeting at SRI on October 17, 2000.

Now, it is time look again for alliances with people who have the skills, temperament, and resources to move the ball forward.

This can be done through partnership, friendship, the flagship of solving world problems, or any other ship that gets the work done. There are a number of simple initial technology things that are needed, so technology partners are needed. There are number of marketing steps needed, so marketing partners are needed, principally to spread the word.

But, above all we need to get more people willing and able to do KM in order to move from information to a culture of knowledge. The more people use SDS, the more presence this has on the web, the more other people discover the power of knowledge that builds demand for product. If we don't build demand for product, there will never be a customer and we will never solve even a simple problem, much less a big one. The aim: positioning others to discover the fun and effectiveness of making connections.

So, this is a call for alliance, an offer of partnership.

I have spent 15 years to figure out a way to do KM. I know from that experience that putting this power in the hands of others requires leadership, technology and training. Tools alone are not enough. Resources alone are not enough. We need the right mix of ingredients to move forward.

Third, open source is a good development method to grow implementation technologies and practices for the core of KM. Linux, for example retains ownership of the core design. That seems like a good model to start. I am willing to give up ownership, because there is plenty of value to share; but, leadership is a bigger issue. Here is why.

There are two big issues on open source...

Strong leadership is required to build something that works, but people don't want to build it initially, because it is counterintuitive, and so conflicts with their common sense. Since open source people do what they want, they cannot be led to produce what is needed. Once the core design is released, this provides a foundation for open source to develop specific applications for different industries.

Stability of the core design for knowledge tools is needed today for the same reason that the core design of alphabet technology has remained stable for 2,000 years. If the core design is not stable, then nothing will ever be adopted, no world problem will ever be solved, at least by KM technology. My sense is that a nexus between open source and Rod might occur by looking to set up a consortium for KM, similar to W3C that enables industry to flourish according to standards. There seem to be all manner of consortiums sprouting up, so why not one to shepherd KM.

I believe that Doug is promoting open source, because he does not want usefulness he discovered in developing NLS (later Augment), to, again, be innovated out of the discussion by a bunch of kids, who don't have a clue how to create usefulness. I can see that SDS is subject to the same forces, unless we get going on creating a spec and installed based that provides cultural inertia to sustain the capability. I know that it took hundreds of years for our current KM system, alphabet technology, to become established. If KM is to improve on that record we have to get going. There is not a moment to waste.

It has been great working with the team. KM is a full time job. You cannot develop this part time, and you cannot do KM part time. I have devoted my full attention to the task, because if that is not done, it will not advance. As a result, I have not had any revenue for several years. That is the price of progress. But, I cannot pay the price alone. If a culture of knowledge is to emerge that carries civilization to a brighter day, others must be willing to pay the price of progress.

So, lemmeee hear from anyone who wants to be partners. Let's hear those open source ideas that align with requirements on moving KM forward.

And, if anyone wants help doing KM, if you have work that can benefit from this capability, I can do that. Would looooove to make some money doing work that is fun and effective for saving time and money by improving the competence of people and organizations.

Sincerely,

THE WELCH COMPANY



Rod Welch
rowelch@attglobal.net


Post Script

This letter is IT. Here is the same thing in KM.... http://www.welchco.com/sd/08/00101/02/00/11/02/142131.HTM