Archive for July 2008

Join a Practitioner Group

The owner of Connecting Practice is positive that most people have a natural desire to learn, to share what they know, and to make things better. Yet, this natural desire is thwarted by disorder (hurdles and deterrents - a problem of cultural domination in learning, sharing, and improving our HD practice) that we erect in our organization.

The disorder includes:

1. A culture that values personal technical expertise and knowledge creation over knowledge sharing. This is rampant in engineering and knowledge-based organizations, such as consulting and research firms.

2. An organization who disintegrates into a group of isolated camps With little incentive or lack of need or responsibility to share HD knowledge and/or practice with others. They promote “silo” thinking and hoard HD knowledge and/or practice, in which locations, divisions, and functions focus on maximizing their own accomplishments and rewards. Their question, “why should I share my HD knowledge and/or practice?”

3. An organization who allows or rewards not the people for taking the time to learn and share and help each other to improve knowledge and skills.

4. A leader who demonstrates the “not-invented-here” syndrome - it is the lack of experience learning from outside one’s on group - or refuses to bring in new ideas committed to an obsolete HD practice which once made the group successful, but which now threatens to sink it. S/he is unable to innovate or even reinvent the HD practice.

5. People who lack of contact, relationships, and common perspectives among others who don’t work side-by-side. It creates interaction patterns with little incentive to cooperate, collaborate, share information, or team up to pursue mission-critical outcomes. In most organizations, the left hand not only doesn’t know what the right hand is doing, but it also may not even know there is a right hand.

If you have one or more of this disorder, the owner of Connecting Practice invites you to join the HD Practitioner Group and participate in discussing and sharing your free HD practice materials, procedures, tools, trainings, and/or metrics. By registering, it will involve and give you an opportunity to:

  • provide, solicit, model, recommend new, or question free HD practice materials, procedures, tools, trainings, and/or metrics;
  • feel, reflect, think, and take on the best of “what is” and/or “what could be” of free HD practice materials, procedures, tools, trainings, and/or metrics;
  • understand the unique conditions, interpretations, assumptions, and/or concerns of free HD practice materials, procedures, tools, trainings, and/or metrics;
  • express openly free HD practice material, procedure, tool, training, and/or metric information, experiences, ideas, beliefs, and/or emotions with others;
  • Point out certain free HD practice materials, procedures, tools, trainings, and/or metrics that have proven unworkable or that is unnecessary;
  • cope with free HD practice materials, procedures, tools, trainings, and/or metrics and/or in one progress initiative;
  • find our where present free HD practice materials, procedures, tools, trainings, and/or metrics are working or not;
  • provide general comments on free HD practice materials, procedures, tools, trainings, and/or metrics;
  • learn more about free HD practice materials, procedures, tools, trainings, and/or metrics they seek;
  • improve the usability of a free HD practice materials, procedures, tools, trainings, and/or metrics;
  • learn and understand what is going on in the forum;
  • build networks and solutions together;
  • provide solution to problems;
  • open problems and/or issues;
  • suggest for improvements;
  • tell positive stories;
  • learn collaboratively;
  • keep up with friends;
  • point out errors; and/or
  • so on.

To join, please click the Practitioner Group link in the main menu and register.

Register now and invite your friends too to help Connecting Practice to progress in the hope of arriving at a solution to disorder!

Knowledge Management

Introducing the Linux user interface

Thanks to Michael Horowitz - this is a great find!

I’m not a Mac user, but from reading the article, it seems that the initial learning curve for switching from Windows XP to Linux, is less than that for switching to Macs. Both Macs and Linux are immune to the vast majority of malicious software, so from a Defensive Computing standpoint, each is good choice.

‘m a Windows XP user, but ‘m positive that the article is a heads-up to me. It touches me about what needs to happen if I think of switching.

Now, if you’re also thinking of switching, you may read more.

Software Development

Really Cool Waterproof Keyboard