Joël Van Hoolandt — Fractional CTO | Magma Consulting

The same question is regularly posted on the net, with most of the time, KM people certifying that they are still active and innovative within the KM area, but ...this time, APQC releases the yearly question via Steve Denning (previous CKO at the World Bank and famous author of a story telling book). Check the discussion here online... My opinion is that as long that people are raising the finger to know if KM is still alive, it is a good sign of vitality. Plus, if you are still not convinced, check the number of publications that are foreseen in 2009 on Amazon - with a knowledge management title...amazing :-) My view is that we all started, very excited, in that new KM track, not really knowing how to structure the field - but, that in the meantime, a lot of research and progresses have been made. A lot of companies, that started some KM initiative in late nineties are now considering to grab the fruits of their investments. And all other organizations that stopped those projects ...

Finally, I took some days out of the office, with some free time for the family and an article...I bought a book about social networks (in French, from Pierre Mercklé, Sociologie des réseaux sociaux , Ed. La découverte) in order to try to establish a connection between the networks (and communities) and some Barak Obama elections strategy...This should be published in September in the Banking and Finance review magazine . PS: If you still don't know who is Barak Obama, I suggest you take a serious break ;-)

I just installed the new 'Live' editor, enhancing Blogging capabilities and enriching the Blog posts with Tag, Video and Maps (all from Microsoft), but with enhanced features (compared to Google Doc options, with the pretty cool one stop click option - posting your post from your online document). Some plug-ins have been developed (but I did not test it yet), but a first good point was the automatic language dictionary download (French, English and Dutch in my Belgian case :-) I also imagine the combination of two specific Microsoft 'content' editors that are  MS Office Sharepoint Designer 2007 and this Live Writer tool. Working and editing content with those two software should lead to rich and dynamic content. I will tell you more about that in some next posts. BTW, tomorrow I will have a KPMG Belgium Alumni cocktail (the alumni group is also virtually existing on LinkedIn for web experts). Normally, we will have some nice professional pictures to show about th...

I just started to use my brand mini (tiny?) EeePC - with so many useful and simple features on it (a basic 7 inches screen, 3 hours battery :-) and a 4Gig RAM on a good stable WinXP. Super !! It starts in a few seconds, with all loaded and a ready to surf interface. This will definitely be the future of mobile computing (900 grams in the pocket). A very good and cheap investment.

I mentioned earlier the Architecture Journal n°15 from Microsoft, where the monthly focus is on the role and definition of what's an architect (in software development, in business roles or in systems). And a good initiative has been taken by the IASA ( International association for Software Architects ) for trying to streamline the profiles, the core competencies that are needed etc. I believe they are right with that kind of exercise, because every job category needs some basic foundations - which are currently lacking in the software architecture world.

MS Office SharePoint Server 2007 standalone training made available! Microsoft has had a good idea with proposing standalone courses around web development, presenting the whole course track with Knowledge Management topics. Clearly, this means that the education material has been made available with a human readable lingo, with clear concepts like "Collaboration", "Enterprise Content Management" or "Search". There is also a good mix between readings and video sessions, just to see theory in practice. You can download the MS SharePoint Server 2007 standalone training version right here

Top ten Architecture articles and tutorials - December 2007 A good selection of technical articles and some documentation about the important software development shifts that are happening with Agile and SOA concepts. Check this out on the IBM side: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/architecture/topten/ar-toptendec2007.html Check also a special edition of the Architecture journal on the Microsoft side, with the edition 15 "The role of an architect" ( http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/arcjournal/default.aspx ) Happy reading!