Why use a blog for knowledge sharing?

I thought, that i might like to share some of my thoughts regarding using a blog as a means of jotting down some thoughts - or as a sort of diary of some of my random thoughts.

I believe that people do like to share their knowledge with people for a variety of reasons - some people like to be recognised as being experts in their field - so if you are an expert in aviation agreements why shouldn’t you want to share that information with people.

However, people have highlighted that people share knowledge because of a concept called reciprocal altruism - or to put it more plainly - I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine - maybe not immediately but at some time in the future - and I’ll go into this area at a later stage.

For KM blogs are good tools for communication, personal knowledge management and to enhance your network.

As a communication tool they can be easily searched, and if you find someones writings interesting, you can subscribe to their blog and every time they make a new entry, you are advised.

For myself, I use it a bit like a notebook as it keeps a journal of insights, techniques, pointers or contacts - which I am happy to share with people on an as is basis - so long as they recognise and credit me with the original idea.

Also, you can start to build a network of people who are interested in a number of areas. I link in to a number of people who blog on issues that I’m interested in from cricket to management ideas. I find that reading these gives me new ideas and concepts that I can mull over and use in my day to day work. I also write comments on peoples sites with some ideas of my own - or suggest variations.

So if you can imagine a system like this operating within XXX as a means of placing information in an easy to use location that you could use any time of the day- wherever you are in the world. The range and thoughts of what we could use a blog for are endless.

Perhaps we could have blogs that relate to activities such as

• Project Websites for dealing with a large transaction.
• Client Worksites - these are used to talk about a specific client
• A work site for people to use - these are like internal resumes that show who is working on what
• Practice Worksites - these are used to communicate amongst a whole team
• Focus Worksites - the only thing that resembles a consumer blog, these are written by a small group and are like internal e-journals dedicated to specific technical topics.

When a company rolls out a knowledge management strategy and utilises pilots, then a wise knowledge manager can utilise a project work site blog covering the various works in the piloted schemes throughout the firm.

People do say to me some time, but I’m not a writer - well neither am I - but I do try to capture some thoughts as I do them in my notebook, which I will place on to this blog in due course. I find that my random thoughts are quite useful as they trigger things off.

I do think that if people see a good idea then they should capture it - or something that they found useful in their day to day work. All you need to do is to put a thought down on a blog or a link to an article or precedent in work site - which hopefully we will be able to do in due course.

I’d welcome some comments from people as to how they would like blogs to work within their area of their firm.