Knowledge Through Awareness & Creativity

I changed the name of my blog in order to more accurately reflect who and what I do. “From the Podium” reflected my training in music and conducting, and was a play on the idea of standing on my “soap box” which for a conductor is his podium.

There still may be more changes coming, but for now, this feels like a good fit for me.

Today I begin blogging again after a hiatus of several months. With the beginning of a new company, and a new web site, I chose to host my own blog, rather than allowing WordPress to host it. I moved some of my past posts to this blog as a way to initiate the new.

I am in the process of selecting how to present this new blog. There is some discussion in the blogging community about whether a blog internal to a web site, like this one, should have a consistent look and feel. I am choosing to play with the look and feel and see what I like.

Welcome to the newest addition to my web site! I hope you will find interesting articles here.

I have been exploring, with great amusement, the metaphor for formal and informal learning using bus ride, tandem and solo bike rides. The metaphor describes formal learning as a bus ride, and informal learning as a bike ride; tandem with a mentor or learning partner, solo as an individual.

I am reminded of my childhood, the vacations at Grandpa’s house, where I and my sisters would ceremoniously take walks with Grandpa to the Creek, where we explored what we imagined to be the great canyons and cliffs surrounding the roaring river. The walk down that alley to the creek was certainly a bus ride – Grandpa was always in control. But when we arrived at the creek, we were on our own to explore to our hearts content. Our imaginations were wild with adventure. Climbing down from the street down tot he water was like Tom Cruise on the cliff in the beginning of the Mission Impossible movie.

Back to the present. While exploring informal learning with blogs, wikis, and Web 2.0 technologies, I am pondering how innovation fits into the picture. True, just as we explored the creek at my Grandfather’s house, we were innovating in terms of our own personal experiences. However, I am sure that many other kids visited that same creek, climbed the same embankment. I am sure that our adventures and imaginative play was original, maybe not, but there is no documentation of our experiences, or theirs, to know.

The creation of new knowledge is my passion. How it is created, how the experience of innovating can be recreated, and why it happens in defferent situations fascinates me.

The technologies we are exploring in our Unworkshop3 are innovative in themselves in their application to learning. These tools are certainly instruments for transfering of knowledge between bike riders as well as bus riders. Unlike other tools for learning, blogs and wikis certainly make the process of moving tacit knowledge to explicit knowledge more easy and accessible (if not entertaining).

I am offering my readership to participate with me in my exploration of innovation in this technological paradigm. Can it be that innovation can be enhanced in this process? My wonder is that maybe it will have to be redefined. Honestly, I am finding that these questions are in my head, but i don’t understand why yet. And this is why I am inviting others to participate – I am exploration my own personal awareness here. I cannot put my finger on the question I am wanting to ask…or answer for that matter.

Allow me to share a true story from my adolescent years. This story has had a great impact on me as a knowledge/information manager who designs web applications/tools for knowledge workers.

My mother is now a retired teacher from the high school in my home town. At the time of the story, the high school was a seven building campus, all located on the same lot of land. A new science building was being built on a new parcel of land across the street from the main campus. The superintendent (my mother’s boss) was under fire because he refused to allow sidewalks to be built. Parents and board members were concerned that the students would be able to safely navigate crossing the city street in the short time they had to get to the new building from their classes.

The summer ended, and the building opened on the first day of school. One temparary path of wood chips to each of the entrances was provided. The rest of the lot was sodded, but no other landscaping was done.

One month after the opening of school (and the new science building), the school board met. The superintendent invited parents, the architect and landscaper to the meeting. Upon the opening of the building, the superintendent relocated the meeting to the grounds of the new science building.

When the meeting recongregated at the grounds of the new building, the superintendent simply asked all there to look at the ground. They discovered that paths had been worn into the ground in an intricate, simple design of straight lines that directly connected many buildings of the main campus with the new building’s entrances. Also, they discovered a now grass-barren area off the side of the building that resembled a courtyard. The superintendent ordered the architect to build the sidewalks where the paths were and to create a courtyard.

Allow me to first say that I know that there are many versions of this story in circulation. I don’t know if the superintendent knew those stories when building this building. However, what I have stated is fact. He would not allow permanent sidewalks to be built until the students themselves created their own paths to the building. He allowed the students to discover their own paths to the knowledge. The students created their own user interface!

This true story serves as a powerful metaphor for me on so many levels. As a professional in designing and building web applications for the distribution and acquisition of information, I always keep this metaphor in my consciousness.

When I am asked to build a new tool, or to design an interface for an application, I first examine all aspects of the users. Who are they? How do they do what they do now? I spend time with the users and examine how they accomplish their tasks now. In two cases, I rejected the project because I saw the project proposal as an example of building a sidewalk without paths defined (the sponsor wanted to tell the users how to do what they do).

An example of how innovative this approach can be: My manager asked me to automate an emergency contact list our organization relies on. It currently existed as an Excel spreadsheet that was updated monthly. My task was to create a web based tool that allowed searching, updating and creating of new contacts on the fly. I asked my manager how he wanted to use the application, and how he wanted the application to be used. They were two different things, as it turned out. He thought about my question, and later came to me with a new specification for the project. He wanted me to design the application/tool so that he and the users could find a person by a) whom they report to, b) what they did in the organization, and c) by their location in the building. Once the application was implemented, it soon became widely used throughout the organization, even though it was designed with our specific division’s purpose in mind. But that one simple question instigated curiosity and innovation where it did not exist before.

In summary, I am paying more attention to the paths I follow and create in my life. As I mature in my profession, it is my focus to find and discover paths engraved in the ground, rather than to blindly and arrogantly build concrete sidewalks.