This is something that I have been thinking a lot about recently.  Would it be useful to be able to subscribe to a K-Log using your favorite IM client (AIM, ICQ, or Windows Messenger)?  I think it would be.  The interface would be simple.  Just click an icon on the K-Log you want to subscribe to, and new posts turn up as messages in your chat window.  The message would also include the information necessary to start up a chat session with the author.  Authentication would be handled via buddy lists. 

This type of interaction gets really powerful when Web Services are used (this is a little advanced, but it points to how powerful a K-Log tool can become).  For those who don't know what a Web Service is, it is simply the ability to send a question (example: what is the price of IBM stock?) to a remote machine, application, or system that returns an answer (the price is 104).  Destkop K-Log tools can be simply programmed to ask that question on a periodic basis and publish the answer to the Intranet as a post to a K-Log.

I recently ran example of this on my Weblog.  It is a simple Web Service that generates a table of horse racing statistics from New Zealand (see: http://jrobb.userland.com/2002/02/08.html#a1176 ).  The service is running on Chris Double's machine (in New Zealand) and to include it in my Weblog, all I needed to do cut and paste a simple one line "macro" to the editing box (macros are snipets of code that people often use when working with a spreadsheet, etc.).  Whenever I publish my Weblog, my desktop Weblog tool asks his desktop Weblog tool what the latest statistics are.  The results are sent to me and updated on my site.

Now, it is easy to see how this could extend to corporate K-Logs.  I could easily include macros that would ask the corporate sales system (via Web Services) to send me all new sales over $5,000 (the data returned would include the date, the amount of the sale, the customer name, the salesperson, and any comments).  I could ask my K-Log tool to ask the system my question every hour and publish it to a category on my K-Log called "sales."  I could even post an annotation to that new data by editing the automated post. 

So, now that the information is published to my K-Log as a category specific site, it is possible for people to subscribe to this "sales" newsfeed.  If tied to an IM system, subscribers could get a report on news sales sent to them as an instant message. 

Hopefully, you can see the power and the flexibility in this arrangement.  However, it is clearly an advanced extension of K-Logs into automated data streams.  This could yield excellent results given that control of this information is in the hands of end-users -- where it belongs. [John Robb's Radio Weblog]

Now this puts the IM question John raises in more context (the heart of KM challenges). I still think that IM's role is more likely to be one of access to the resident expert on demand. The design challenge is how to use IM for very low-frequency, very high-value messages. Otherwise, you get swamped with message traffic and are likely to miss what's important. It does make me think that one of the things we need to do in the KM arena is equip people to make more mindful media choices on a moment to moment basis

11:49:19 PM •  • comment