I didn’t put this on live chat as it may be for another day, but I’d love to know your opinion on this:
Writing for my Zettelkasten system feels quite an intimate process. It can involve deep thought and personal opinions arrived at as a culmination of individual knowledge work. That said, do you think a Zettelkasten could be used effectively as a corporate knowledge management system? Have you ever heard of this happening?
@em_h said:
I didn’t put this on live chat as it may be for another day, but I’d love to know your opinion on this:
Writing for my Zettelkasten system feels quite an intimate process. It can involve deep thought and personal opinions arrived at as a culmination of individual knowledge work. That said, do you think a Zettelkasten could be used effectively as a corporate knowledge management system? Have you ever heard of this happening?
I think the main difference between a private Zettelkasten and a shared one is found on the individual note. If it is just your own individual note you have way more tolerance for leaving notes imperfect and idiosyncrasies.
I cannot say what the upper limit of people is who can share a Zettelkasten which combines management with creation of knowledge.
If we are talking about corporate knowledge management the constraints on what you can get away with are even higher. At the same time, the more people are involved the higher the rate of error is.
I have some confidence that the principles of the Zettelkasten Method can be used to enhance corporate knowledge management in some cases. However, I have no experience with that situation and therefore am in no position to have a strong opinion on that.
Example: The Zettelkasten Method entails currating the base network that emerges organically. Any hypertext begins to store information in the network itself instead of just in the nodes. But to make information (and more important knowledge) accessable to people it needs to be currated by the people and cannot be automated. Depending on the company that means developing a frame work for some predictability and then be open to what organically happens. This letting go of control and accepting some dead ends along the process is rarely allowed in bigger companies and companies that rely on efficiency. So, working to adapt the Zettelkasten Method to work on a bigger scale is a risk that is not rational to take. It entails investing time and ressources into currating hubs without having a evidence-based estimation of the outcome.
But if that is on the table, I see huge potential if the company is driven by innovation. After all, open source software developed already a frame work for cooperation with strange people on one project for decades. Just look what Emacs is at this point in time. Or Linux.
@em_h said:
Writing for my Zettelkasten system feels quite an intimate process. It can involve deep thought and personal opinions arrived at as a culmination of individual knowledge work. That said, do you think a Zettelkasten could be used effectively as a corporate knowledge management system? Have you ever heard of this happening?
Maybe the following comments should be in a new branch/post?.....
I set up a ZK at work on one project that required an in-depth literature search and compilation of information/ideas from a wide range of engineering and environmental specialties. None of the five people working on the project had any knowledge of or experience with ZK, so I had a one-hour presentation/discussion with them, had them read articles on this web site (and others), provided some rules on writing and connecting zettels, and then had them practice and critique writing zettels. After that, they embarked on a 2-month literature search. We had check-ins every week or so to look at the form of the ZK as it was evolving. At the same time we were developing event-paths for various landscape failure modes (this was work on mine closure), relying heavily on the information in the ZK.
We are now ready to issue our final report. In addition to finding and connecting information, the ZK has proven valuable in documenting what work was done. Selected zettels will be included in an appendix to the report and the full ZK will be provided electronically to the client. In our case, we elected to use Zettlr as our software, as it is available for several different computer operating systems (much as I would have liked to feature The Archive :>). Having software that worked with simple text files was particularly important, because the client can store and access all of the information in the ZK easily. We didn't want them to have to purchase expensive software to do so.
This is really interesting @GeoEng51. I'm really curious what it would be like to teach a group of people who were never avid note-takers the ZK approach from the start. For most people, the ZK is something they learn after having already been avid note-takers (or writers / researchers), and then there's this heavy unlearning process that can take months or years to work through. What would it be like if people were taught the ZK approach as children?! Before all the conditioning has taken place.
Was your team already researchers and note-takers?
@taurusnoises said:
This is really interesting. I'm really curious what it would be like to teach a group of people who were never avid note-takers the ZK approach from the start. For most people, the ZK is something they learn after having already been avid note-takers (or writers / researchers), and then there's this heavy unlearning process that can take months or years to work through. What would it be like if people were taught the ZK approach as children?! Before all the conditioning has taken place.
Was your team already researchers and note-takers?
Most of the people on the team have a graduate level degree of some sort (mostly Masters; I think one Ph.D.). And they are engineers. So - they have been note-takers for many years. Many have developed their own systems for extracting what is essential from their notes (e.g., using a Cornell Notes approach). They all took to the ZK approach like a fish to water. There was a small hump, getting them to understand the concept initially, which was easily handled by me "lecturing", them reading on this web site, and then them asking questions. Once they started practicing writing zettels and critiquing one another, they needed very little guidance. I think I started with 3 people and then a few more joined the team later; the existing members of the team trained the new ones. I was very happy both with the process of getting them going on the ZK method and then with the actual ZK as it evolved. Of course, it helped to have someone who had experience with the method and could mentor the team. If they had started from scratch, it could have taken quite a bit longer to reach the same level of proficiency.
Comments
Little reminder: If you put in questions in here I try to answer them at the end of the stream.
I am a Zettler
I didn’t put this on live chat as it may be for another day, but I’d love to know your opinion on this:
Writing for my Zettelkasten system feels quite an intimate process. It can involve deep thought and personal opinions arrived at as a culmination of individual knowledge work. That said, do you think a Zettelkasten could be used effectively as a corporate knowledge management system? Have you ever heard of this happening?
I think the main difference between a private Zettelkasten and a shared one is found on the individual note. If it is just your own individual note you have way more tolerance for leaving notes imperfect and idiosyncrasies.
I cannot say what the upper limit of people is who can share a Zettelkasten which combines management with creation of knowledge.
If we are talking about corporate knowledge management the constraints on what you can get away with are even higher. At the same time, the more people are involved the higher the rate of error is.
I have some confidence that the principles of the Zettelkasten Method can be used to enhance corporate knowledge management in some cases. However, I have no experience with that situation and therefore am in no position to have a strong opinion on that.
Example: The Zettelkasten Method entails currating the base network that emerges organically. Any hypertext begins to store information in the network itself instead of just in the nodes. But to make information (and more important knowledge) accessable to people it needs to be currated by the people and cannot be automated. Depending on the company that means developing a frame work for some predictability and then be open to what organically happens. This letting go of control and accepting some dead ends along the process is rarely allowed in bigger companies and companies that rely on efficiency. So, working to adapt the Zettelkasten Method to work on a bigger scale is a risk that is not rational to take. It entails investing time and ressources into currating hubs without having a evidence-based estimation of the outcome.
But if that is on the table, I see huge potential if the company is driven by innovation. After all, open source software developed already a frame work for cooperation with strange people on one project for decades. Just look what Emacs is at this point in time. Or Linux.
I am a Zettler
Maybe the following comments should be in a new branch/post?.....
I set up a ZK at work on one project that required an in-depth literature search and compilation of information/ideas from a wide range of engineering and environmental specialties. None of the five people working on the project had any knowledge of or experience with ZK, so I had a one-hour presentation/discussion with them, had them read articles on this web site (and others), provided some rules on writing and connecting zettels, and then had them practice and critique writing zettels. After that, they embarked on a 2-month literature search. We had check-ins every week or so to look at the form of the ZK as it was evolving. At the same time we were developing event-paths for various landscape failure modes (this was work on mine closure), relying heavily on the information in the ZK.
We are now ready to issue our final report. In addition to finding and connecting information, the ZK has proven valuable in documenting what work was done. Selected zettels will be included in an appendix to the report and the full ZK will be provided electronically to the client. In our case, we elected to use Zettlr as our software, as it is available for several different computer operating systems (much as I would have liked to feature The Archive :>). Having software that worked with simple text files was particularly important, because the client can store and access all of the information in the ZK easily. We didn't want them to have to purchase expensive software to do so.
This is really interesting @GeoEng51. I'm really curious what it would be like to teach a group of people who were never avid note-takers the ZK approach from the start. For most people, the ZK is something they learn after having already been avid note-takers (or writers / researchers), and then there's this heavy unlearning process that can take months or years to work through. What would it be like if people were taught the ZK approach as children?! Before all the conditioning has taken place.
Was your team already researchers and note-takers?
Most of the people on the team have a graduate level degree of some sort (mostly Masters; I think one Ph.D.). And they are engineers. So - they have been note-takers for many years. Many have developed their own systems for extracting what is essential from their notes (e.g., using a Cornell Notes approach). They all took to the ZK approach like a fish to water. There was a small hump, getting them to understand the concept initially, which was easily handled by me "lecturing", them reading on this web site, and then them asking questions. Once they started practicing writing zettels and critiquing one another, they needed very little guidance. I think I started with 3 people and then a few more joined the team later; the existing members of the team trained the new ones. I was very happy both with the process of getting them going on the ZK method and then with the actual ZK as it evolved. Of course, it helped to have someone who had experience with the method and could mentor the team. If they had started from scratch, it could have taken quite a bit longer to reach the same level of proficiency.
This is so great, @GeoEng51. Sounds like a success.