Agile Content

189858 Resource 187691 21 1 1195270550116 1201707962798 Controlled MyST Platform Agility and Corporate Memories

Today I reorganized almost 200 content channels spanning almost five years... in about two hours.

Since early 2003, when the first version of MySmartChannels was robust enough handle it, at MyST we started using using content channels for all sorts of <a title="A Holy Grail: Effective Knowledge Capture, Persistence, Enhancement, and Transfer" href="http://home.myst-technology.com/public/item/53612" target="_blank">knowledge capture</a>... R&D notebooks, server administration notes, developer journals, technical knowledge bases, idea management, time tracking, contact management, project management, and so on.Over the years, as the company grew, we continued to automate more and more tasks, work flows, and policies.  In most cases, the MyST Platform provided the central knowledge persistence layer and MySmartChannels the web application layer.With the Public (Free) MySmartChannels Service reaching "<a title="Public (Free) MySmartChannels Service End-of-Life (EOL) FAQ" href="http://home.myst-technology.com/msc-eol" target="_blank">End-of-Life</a>" status, I recently re-deployed our oldest internal project blogsite using the latest MyST Blogsite platform technology.  The experience was truly pleasant on two distinct levels.  First, in a techno-geeky sort of way, it reminded me of just how powerful and agile the MyST Platform really is.  Second, in a pragmatic, chief knowledge officer sort of way, it reminded me that <a title="Chad Dickerson's 'Blogging To Ourselves' article articulates a use case for blogs that has been in use for for years at MyST Technology Partners." href="http://home.myst-technology.com/public/item/36887" target="_blank">blogging inward</a> is an excellent way to achieve <a title="Effective Knowledge Capture, Persistence, Enhancement, and Transfer" href="blog/187966">knowledge continuity</a> and reduce the costs of <a title="Corporate Amnesia: Many, Small KM Failures" href="http://home.myst-technology.com/public/item/57559" target="_blank">corporate amnesia</a>.From the ground up, the MyST technology stack is a service oriented architecture (SOA) based on XML, XSL, and web services, and other standard.  The pieces fit together so elegantly, that I was able to take nearly 200 channels of content, created by various people and processes over the past five years, and in about two hours, meld them together in a single, seamlessly integrated blogsite.  And the new site is not just a hodge podge of linked together pages.  It is a single, coherent information space--a <a title="What can you do with a SmartSpace™?" href="http://home.myst-technology.com/public/item/26131" target="_blank">SmartSpace</a>--where content can be sliced and diced and navigated along countless axes.  By virtue of the MyST Blogsite framework, the new site automatically inherits powerful capabilities, including:<ul><li>a "What's New" channel roll-up view </li><li>secure XML web feeds (e.g., RSS, Atom, OPML, MyST-ML, etc.) </li><li>topic cloud, text search, and smart points </li><li>integrated tag server (i.e., a private, Technorati-like service for this site) </li><li>persistent search (e.g., the ability to subscribe to a dynamic search result) </li><li>flexible and customizable archive views (e.g., monthly, weekly, seasonal, etc.)  </li><li>audio/video content integration </li><li>sophisticated usage analytics and click tracking </li><li>Microsoft Office smart tags integration </li><li>e-mail publishing gateway (Mail2Channel)</li></ul>Although the original content channels had been presented in a variety of different sites, each with their own look and feel, the new site presents the content consistently using the new MyST Project Blogsite "skin" (a presentation model in MyST platform terminology), thereby creating a consistent site branding that carries through everywhere--web browser, iPhone, RSS aggregator, etc.Once the new site was up and running, it was fun to peruse the site and wax nostalgically (an sometimes wince <g>) on the early days of MyST.  But more importantly, the site represents a valuable knowledge asset that makes it easy for us to leverage past experience and accumulated know-how. 9 application/xml false content agility knowledge capture knowledge continuity MyST Platform Agile Content Information has become a key asset--if not the key asset--in most organizations. http://home.myst-technology.com/public/item/5675 Thanks for the (Corporate) Memories When employees leave, vital institutional knowledge may be lost forever. http://home.myst-technology.com/public/item/7238 The High Cost of Not Finding Information Bill French, MyST Co-founder, On the Value of Effective Knowledge Management http://home.myst-technology.com/public/item/24373 A Holy Grail: Effective Knowledge Capture, Persistence, Enhancement, and Transfer Since the 1980s, the connotation of "knowledge management" morphed from exciting technology business opportunity to an idea that largely failed, in commercial terms, anyway. But the underlying need for KM has not gone away; in fact, it has grown. http://home.myst-technology.com/public/item/53612 Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 2.0.50727) 127.0.0.1 127.0.0.1 $Admin false true false false true 188081 false false true false false false true 187691 blog blogsite/FASeidl/web