What's so unique about Nucor Steel?

For one thing, the phrase Knowledge Management doesn't seem to appear anywhere on the company bulletin board. What matters is not the label, of course. It's doing what you know that makes knowledge a source of competitive advantage that truly matters.

Making sure good knowledge constantly gets created is fundamental. Networking with external sources is important. But being aggressive and systematic in running good experiments to create proprietary knowledge from within the organization can bring about even greater value.

Knowledge is created by people and applied by people to boost performance. Recruiting people from knowledge management perspective is an age old wisdom with a little new significance in today's knowledge economy.

Blogs and Wikis

We've barely scratched the thinnest surface of blogs and wikis as educational tools. Blogs and wikis have some things in common. But they are also different in several ways. Both can be used to capture thoughts and ideas. Blogs look just like a personal bulletine board that allows visitors to leave comments. Time is one of the most basic dimension in our experience. Content organization based on date and time, in and of itself, is a facinating feature. The core spirit of wikis is collaboration. Both blogs and wikis invite user participation in content creation. Wikis seem to be more open in terms of content contribution, while blogs give bloggers more control. Wikis give more room for participants to make their contribution. That is, more space is furnished by wikis. Just like time and space are both distinctive and related in some way, so are blogs and wikis.

I know I'm ready to use both blogs and wikis more for future teaching and research. Both are great tools for creation, organization, and distribution of both personal and enterprise knowledge. Increasing return is not just a good idea in knowledge economy. It's also a great driver in the enterprise of meaningful living.
Here's a great website on blogs and wikis for education. Now that I have put it down in my blog, I won't forget it when I need it. Ha! Ha!
http://opencontent.org/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page

Bloggers for hire

A recent BusinessWeek article introduced a new Internet company called Federated Media Publishing Inc. (http://www.federatedmedia.net/blog/) that active bloggers would be excited about. This company functions as a broker matching big advertisers with cool blogs. It's an equivalent of Google's Adsense in a sense. Instead of relying on programs to automate every single step of the process, Federated Media has human specialists providing blog authors with valuable supports to make their blogging more efficient and more attractive. With this kind of service, bloggers can more seriously consider blogging an endeavor not only emotionally but also financially rewarding.

Sharing your experience, insight, and observations is usally like an echo chamber. But you are the only one in the chamber. Perhaps, that's a great reminder that we are simply rushing from one day to the next most of the time. There is not enough might, soul, and heart engaged on the life journey. Or, you've got to double check on your crowded schedule and see if it's possible to set aside a little more quiet time for yourselves. If even for nothing else, reflecting on your classes and your study can be very beneficial for improving your academic performance.

Blogs also should be used as a community building tool.

Blogging is fun

Blogs can be used for both personal knowledge management (PKM) and exterprise knowledge management (EKM). As a PKM tool, blogs collect thoughts and ideas. With a little discipline, one can accumulate a great wealth of "thought prints" over years of blogging for life. Becoming famous or not, he/she will find it fun to go back and read about the journey traveled. For EKM, blogs are good for collaboration and knowledge sharing. For example, employees in different department can exchange ideas and feelings about a new company initiative. Members of the new product/service development team can provide insights from different points of view. Employee blogs can be kept on the intranet to prevent confidential content from leaking out.

I personally find blogging helpful in forcing me to practice my English writing. Since Chinese is much easier for me than English when it comes to expressing deep thoughts, I would usually prefer writing in Chinese rather than in English when given choices. However, I do love English as a language. Just like there are things that can only be more fully expressed in Chinese, there are also things that English does better than Chinese. Having been switching between three languages that I use regularly, I know how important it is to keep up with practicing. A great example of intellectual capital and increasing return here: The more you use, the more you have. And if you quit using a language for a while, you could lose it gradually.

The greatest challenge for blogging is time. But it's a habbit worth spending time to develop.