The question was: “Are splash pages effective.” I thought about it for a few days and I posted a response. [...]]]> I hate splash pages. I hate being held hostage. The topic came up recently on the “Information Systems Forum” listserv. It’s a listserv of diverse participants, gracefully managed by the indefatigable Deborah Elizabeth Finn.

The question was: “Are splash pages effective.” I thought about it for a few days and I posted a response. Michael Gilbert (who I think of as my own personal Perry White) suggested I repost my response here, on the Diner. (I think he’s worried that I haven’t posted much stuff in the last few months. Not to worry Michael, it was just a dry spell caused by excessive time travel.)

On this particular list, the recent conversations have drifted into the rights and wrongs of collecting (and using) personal information (like one’s birthday) for fundraising, and, more recently, the efficacy of “splash” pages — especially by nonprofits. While musing over the thread, I was reminded by an early example — a pre-internet example — of an attempt to hold an audience hostage.

You’ll find my original post below, (slightly edited and embellished to make me look more thoughtful):

I’m equal opportunity: I hate pop-ups, pop-unders, pop-overs, fly-bys, and those cutesy floating windows too. Oh, and those “Do you want to take our survey” windows, I hate them too. Most of the time, if I can, I ignore them.

To be honest, I think, quite frankly, so does everyone else. Bottom line, if I can’t ignore such things — worse, if they try to hold me hostage — I’ll probably never return.

For the life of me, I can’t figure out how advertizing on web pages actually results in anything but ad sales to Google. In all truthfulness, I can’t even remember “seeing” the ads on most pages. My mind has learned to filter them out. Strangely, with hardcopy magazines, the adverts are half the fun of reading.

Quite on the side: It reminds me that there is a not-so-subtle schizophrenia to today’s internets — a crazy wackiness that seems to pit us against ourselves. It’s everywhere. It’s the ongoing drive to, on one hand, figure out how all this stuff might pay for itself, juxtaposed, on the other hand, with the almost universal hatred of all the ways people try to make this stuff pay for itself.

Sometimes the madness manifests itself in a particular ironic fashion. My favorite example is the use of banner ads to advertize software designed to stop banner ads. Clearly, there is a particular self-loathing paradox to that concept.

Even more clearly, there is some sort of dynamic tension between free and not free. Moreover, it’s a tension that manifests itself in the seemingly endless conversations about “monetization” that sneaks into the otherwise idealism of the bevy of entrepreneurs-two-dot-oh. I don’t have an answer, but I can tell you that the answer is definitely not irritating your members, customers, constituents, or patrons. There lies madness.

Here’s my example: It was the late 70’s. It was the pledge drive on KPFT – the Houston (Texas) Pacifica station I listened to (religiously) in graduate school.  It was a rather wild and unruly radio station.  I loved it.  Until.  That day.  That fateful day.

One day, that day, someone got the wise idea of holding the listeners ransom – they decided to play “Disco Duck” nonstop until they hit their pledge goals.

Now, rest assured, I have tremendous tolerance, and as a grad student, I was known to listen to just about anything from Neal Diamond, to Mott the Hoople, on through Coltrane, and Monk, and Miles, and to the gravely grumbles of Tom Waits, and beyond, to Zappa (turned up so loud that the nails would pop out of drywall…) all politely tempered with Elvis Costello (Elvis is King)… and, well, I admit it, maybe a little Little Feat… It was Texas, after all. (No Manilow, and for gawd’s sake, no Debby Boone — one has to draw the line somewhere.)

but…  but… but… Disco Duck … nonstop Disco Duck! Oh, the humanity.

To me, splash screens – especially ones that force you to watch some piece of, ahem… content… Well, they’re a bit like Disco Duck, played nonstop.

My rule is never, ever, ever, put a barrier between your members, customers, disciples, acolytes, or whatever, and the silver plate. Being alienated or irritating does not make you friends, and, IMHO, it most definitely does not raise money. Raising money is about message, involvement, community, and — lord love a duck —follow-on action.  At best, people learn to ignore the silly and irritating tricks (maybe they unconsciously start humming “Disco Duck” too often), at worst they hate you and never come back again.

Years later, when working with a member cooperative, I was reminded of similar mistakes made by the early food-coop movement. Someone, somewhere, came up with the hair-brained idea that members of a food-coop should volunteer time working — shinning the crystals, pricing cheese curd, or just pressing the tofu. Whoever it was should be bonked on the head, repeatedly, with a loaf of organic spelt hippy-bread.

Luckily, that thinking has gone the way of disco. But, it’s still a classic (and painful) example of creating an unneeded barrier between you and a sale, a member, a donation, or whatever. Good fundraising is about breaking down the barriers, not putting up new, technological ones. Keep the duck, and the splash, in the tub (with the fat man and the blues) where it belongs.

Shoes [...]]]> Who’d of thunk it? A simple shoe — well, actually two — thrown with the right twist could so clearly express an opinion. An opinion so succinct, that the world can do nothing but applaud (and perhaps wish the thrower had had slightly better aim). It was a shoe heard ’round the world.

Shoes have power. You can vote with them (or I guess more accurate, you can vote with your feet). You can heat up a cold war as Nikita Khrushchev, shoe in hand, pounding on the lectern at the UN, shouting, “We shall bury you.” (Although there are those that say the more accurate translation is “We shall attend your funeral”).

Sadly, it seems, shoes can be evil too. It is because of shoes — explosive ones at that — that we now all queue up and strip down to pound stocking-footed through airports, marching a sweaty-soled tattoo through the metal detectors. It’s all, no doubt, a dastardly plan by the Fungus Liberation Front to enslave the world and increase sales of tough-acting Tinactin.

Well, 2008 — the year that was — I throw my shoes in your general direction.

I look to 2009, with hopeful eye. With hope, I celebrate the end of dumb and the beginning of smart. I celebrate that “fun to have a beer with” is no longer a presidential attribute. I celebrate that “Nobel Prize” wins over cronyism when considering important cabinet appointments. I celebrate the end of “the end is nigh, prepare for the rapture” worldview that has been used to justify inaction. (Personally, if the end is nigh, I think someone’s going to be pretty pissed to see the earth in such a sad state of repair.)

I celebrate the end of out and out denial of facts and science and truth and intelligence. I celebrate an end to the supremacy of myth and superstition and intolerance. I celebrate a return to complete sentences, pragmatism, a belief in science and technology, and – dare I say it – rationality. I throw my shoes at 2008.

And there’s a hand, my trusty fiere! And gie’s a hand o’ thine! And we’ll tak a right gude-willy waught, For auld lang syne. (Robert Burns)

We careened through streets, shrouded in darkness, packed into a grubby ersatz-Fiat 128, a Soviet-era knockoff. I was compressed, folded, and spindled into the back seat, a human shock absorber, a Dell Optiplex cradled in my arms. With only me between the PC’s steel case and [...]]]> A Thanksgiving Tale from the Wild Wild East

We careened through streets, shrouded in darkness, packed into a grubby ersatz-Fiat 128, a Soviet-era knockoff. I was compressed, folded, and spindled into the back seat, a human shock absorber, a Dell Optiplex cradled in my arms. With only me between the PC’s steel case and the car’s steel struts, I felt every bump and grind of the ancient city’s streets. I was the car’s only functioning shock absorber. Noticing that it was past midnight, I thought: “Hey, it’s Thanksgiving.”

As we zoomed around yet another roundabout, my friend Tamás shouted over the engine noise: “This is ‘Hero’s Square. You can see the statues of the seven Magyar chieftains who led the Hungarians into the Carpathian basin. You remember, Saint Stephen — he’s there. See.” He gestured with his right hand, his ubiquitous cigarette smoldering in the other. He was a hell of a driver, Tamás. One hand always on the wheel, another manhandling the stick shift, ratcheting through the gears, clutch be damned; another Bogarting a constant cigarette, and another hand to spare, artfully used to point out landmarks and other points of interest along the way.

I struggled to see out of the side window, smudged and clouded with urban fallout and the night’s reflections. I could see shadows, light and dark, vague objects lit by the cold calculating stare of mercury lights. “Oh, yeah,” I said. “I’ll have to come back here sometime during the day.” “Yes,” said Tamás. It’s a beautiful city.” With those words, he lit another cigarette and whipped the car to the right, sliding me away from the window. Like a square, steel security blanket, I cradled the PC. We dove down, down into the dark, diving driving deep into the Budapest night. I was glad he knew where he was going, or at least he seemed to know. I wasn’t going to question. If this worked, it would be he who had saved the day; saved the week, saved my ass — assuming it, and I, survived the ride.

The week had been one unmitigated disaster after another. It was one of those times where just about everything went wrong. The giant rabbit, a bunny the size of a German Shepherd, had shaken my essential belief in my on sanity. The trip had turned all too Kafkaesque, despite the fact I was in Budapest, not Prague, and Nietzsche was tumbling through my forebrain. “That which does not kill us, makes us stronger,” I muttered to myself, “especially giant rabbits.” But I am getting ahead of myself.

The story begins the week before. Plans were afoot, and I needed to quickly outfit what was to be our new office in Budapest. Tamás was moving from Prague to Budapest, others were moving from Prague to London, and still others were relocating back to the States. The Prague office was to be closed. Budapest needed to be up and running first and fast and furious. With the others, I had some time to spare and a moving company to help.

Taking it in stride, I laid out simple plans that involved donating all the existing equipment in Prague, and starting fresh in the various new locations. That meant shipping new equipment to Budapest, post haste, and that meant DHL. This was a few years ago, before accession into the EU. If you wanted to get stuff into the wild, wild east, DHL was your Jedi Knight. Try to do it yourself, and you’d be tied up in paperwork for a month, and end up paying double in taxes and quadruple in baksheesh and baklava. If I had gone that route, winter would be here, and I’d be wearing a balaclava.

My plan was simple. Ship a new PC via DHL to Budapest. Order a new MFC printer from a local vendor. Arrange for all the necessary connections for phone, fax, and internet. Time everything, just so. Arrive after the PC had cleared customs. Carry all the other bits and pieces. Leave a weekend as buffer, just to be safe. Take a day and purchase the other things I might need (like a fax machine). Spend a few days in Budapest assembling, training, eating cakes, and drinking coffee. When done, zip up to Prague, tie up loose ends there, and make it home by Thanksgiving — a simple plan that adhered to the KISS axiom.

It started to go wrong when the PC went MIA, supposedly somewhere between Ohio and Budapest. The timing of this news couldn’t have been worse. It broke while I was snoozing on a plane somewhere over the Atlantic. “They’ve lost the shipment,” said the message in my Blackberry. Bleary-eyed and stiff from the flight, I had to read the message twice as I pounded my second espresso in Schiphol Airport. “Huh,” I muttered. “DHL lost it in mid-flight?

I could of understood it if it had been routed through Amsterdam. Then I could blame it on some chocolate-crazed Dutchman or a ring of international PC thieves, trading computers for aged Gouda. But this had been a direct flight. It got on in Ohio and never got off. I felt like Jodie Foster. How can a PC simply disappear in mid-flight from a DHL plane? Its fate remains a mystery. I figure it’s somewhere embedded in a cow pasture, as it must have fallen out of the door of the plane as it banked to the left over Ohio; probably surprised a few cows, no doubt. Watch out Ohio — falling PCs! Cowdude, you’re getting a Dell!

I was committed. It was too late to turn around; too late to do much of anything. I caught my connection to Budapest with a mind towards taking solace at the hotel’s all-you-can-eat cake bar. Upon arriving, strengthened by a Sachertorte, sugar and chocolate coursing through my veins, I hatched an alternate plan.

I was not to be outfoxed by the cows, or the Dutch. Quick as a wink, with a call back to the States, my staff had a second PC out the door and onto a DHL truck. I figured if we got all our ducks in a row, I’d only lose two days. I could hang out at Café Gerbeaud, pretending to be an intellectual, eating cake and drinking coffee. Not a problem. I am especially fond of Hungarian cakes and tortes, and other pastries. I’d just have to dig up a tattered copy of Proust to complete the image. Besides, there was Tokaji to try. (I discovered I did not like it — and also learned not to say that out loud to the waiter’s face and still expect any sort of service.)

I spent the days wisely, lining up the other ducks, setting up printers, NAT routers, and phones. I even had the immensely ironic pleasure, comrades, of buying a Hungarian fax machine at the largest shopping mall in downtown Budapest. The mall is located in plaza named for Karl Marx. The machine’s instructions were in Hungarian — a lovely language with absolutely no relation to any of the Indo-European languages. Rather it is Ugric, perhaps related to Finnish, perhaps not, and thought to have originated from Siberia, one, two, or three million years ago. I was lucky. There were pictures.

Everything was ready. Then the bureaucracy took hold, like a rat terrier, and refused to let go. The paperwork accompanying the PC was incorrect. We were sub-leasing. We weren’t registered in Hungary. We didn’t exist. It was surreal. I felt unreal. According to the Hungarian authorities, I did not exist. You can’t deliver a PC to a non-existent organization, said DHL. “You don’t exist.”

Easily rectified, I thought, my sense of identity barely dented, I’ll just have new paperwork faxed over. But time was against me. First, it was now Friday. Second, there’s six hours difference between Michigan and Budapest. I had to wait for my office to wake up and get to work. By then it would be 3:00 PM in Budapest. Of course, the customs office closes at 3:00. They wouldn’t get the new paperwork until Monday. Assuming it was all in order, the earliest I could get the PC from DHL would be Monday morning. I headed back to the all-you-can-eat cake bar where I considered supplementing my diet of Dobos torte with a bottle of absinth.

Bright and early Monday morning, I was on the phone to DHL. “Yes,” they said. “The PC is here.” “No,” they said, “It would not be delivered today.”

Working reverse banker’s hours, the customs inspector didn’t start work until 4:00 PM. I thought this fact particularly strange, since the customs office closed at 3:00 PM. Logic aside, DHL assured me that the inspector would look at the paperwork that afternoon, and IF it was all in order, the PC would be delivered the following day, Tuesday.

“There’s a certain perverse logic to it all,” I thought to myself. Customs closes at 3:00 and the inspector starts work at 4:00… This meant that, no matter what you did, who you paid off; no matter how pious and righteous your life; there was no way to get something through customs in a day. I accepted my fate and waited another day. My schedule was already shot to Shineola. I was supposed to have been to Prague by now, and be headed home by Wednesday. I was now, officially, a day late and a Forint short. I celebrated with a plate of goulash and a piece of Rigó Jancsi.

Bright and drearily Tuesday morning, I was on the phone to DHL. “Yes,” they said. “The PC is here.” “No,” they said, “it would not be delivered today.”

The paperwork was not correct. The people from whom we were subleasing also didn’t exist. We couldn’t ship something to them either. “You can’t deliver a PC to a non-existent organization,” says DHL. Tamás, in his quiet wisdom, spoke up. “Why not have it shipped to me?” he said. “I exist.” Not in the mood for epistemological arguments, despite the temptation, I agreed and new paperwork was put in process.

Back to the future we went, waiting until 3:00 to have a new commercial invoice faxed to DHL from the States; back to the café for coffee and cake.

Not-so-bright and early Wednesday morning, I was on the phone to DHL. “Yes,” they said. “The PC is here.” “No,” they said, “it would not be delivered today.”

There were taxes to be paid. Since we had shipped the PC to an individual, we had to pay import duties. “Let me guess,” I said, “once we pay the taxes, we have to wait for the custom inspector to clear the shipment.” “Yes,” they said, “he starts at 4:00. We can deliver the PC in the morning.”

Time, unfortunately, was not on my side, no it wasn’t. I had shuffled trains, planes and schedules. Now I was scheduled on a train, bound for Prague, the next morning. Even then, it was going to be tight. Time was running out.

On a whim, I asked: “Is there any chance we can pick the PC up ourselves?” “Why yes,” said DHL, “not a problem. After customs clears the shipment, you can pick it up at our airport facility after 6:00.

At 6:00, we pulled into the DHL facility — a facility hidden deep in the warehouse maze that surrounds the Budapest airport. Our timing was a thing of beauty. We pulled into the lot just in time to watch a DHL worker roll two Dell boxes off the back end of a truck. They fell, with a note of fragile finality, onto a flat-bed trolley and were wheeled away into the building in front of us. “Those have got to be ours,” I muttered, “got to be.”

Bundles of paper work in hand, we stumbled into the lobby, a lobby furnished in industrial green linoleum, Formica and vinyl, even the lighting had a greenish tinge to it. I shoved the paperwork at the first clerk I could see. He smiled and said, “Yes, the PC is here.” I handed him a fistful of Forints.

As if on cue, at that moment, the double-doors in the rear of the room burst open, and two Dell boxes tumbled into the room. Like a mother who’s found her long lost child, I gathered the boxes into my arms and lovingly tucked them into the car — the monitor into the trunk and, after a little light maneuvering, the PC into the only place it would fit, the front passenger seat. We headed off, full tilt, for Tamás’ new office.

Time being of the essence, I mentally mumbled a check list of tasks that needed to be done. With luck, I figured, I could catch a late dinner. My train left early the next morning for Prague.

By 8:30, we were back at the office. I slide the hard drive into the PC. I had hand-carried it, and a spare, from the States. I checked all the cables. I smiled and plugged it in and…

I could hear the “snap.” I could physically feel the “crack” and “pop” deep in my bones. I could smell the ozone. My face must have turned ashen, as Tamás immediately said “What’s wrong.” I slumped against the wall, defeated. “I forgot,” I said. “Shit. I forgot to switch the power supply from 110 to 220. I just fried it. I give up.”

Tamás looked at me quizzically. “What does that mean,” he asked? “It means we’re screwed,” I said, screwed, screwed, screwed — even in the States, I couldn’t find a new power supply at — glancing at my watch — almost 10:00 at night. Worse than that, it’s a Dell. That means the power supply is proprietary. We’re screwed.” “Humm,” said Tamás. “It’s just a part, right? Let me call my uncle.” He pulled out his mobile phone and, after a few seconds, spoke a few words in Hungarian. He hung up and smiled.

“My uncle says that there is this special number,” he said. “It’s a number you can call and get answers to any question, 24-hours a day.” I looked at him, incredulously, thinking to myself: “Any question? – whew I can think of a few I’d like answered…” But, before I could come up with a question about life, the universe, and everything, he was already off the phone, answer in hand.

“There’s a place,” he said, jotting it down on a pad of paper. “It’s way on the other side of the city. It does all night computer repair. They have the part we need.”

Without further ado, we bundled up the PC and piled into the borrowed car — the Soviet knockoff — and headed off into the Hungarian night. It was thus I found myself, self-employed as a shock-absorber, careening through the dark streets of Budapest, at midnight, in search of a Dell power supply, the day before Thanksgiving. Rabbits were the furthest thing from my mind.

After what seemed like hours, we pulled down a dark street — more warehouse than residential — and stopped in front of what looked like a small square suburban ranch home surrounded by 8-foot tall chain link fence, festooned with video cameras, and dotted with ever popular mercury vapor lights.

The rest of the street faded away into pitch black, stomped out by lights that would shame a football stadium. We parked and stood in front of the sliding chain-link gate. “This is the place,” said Tamás, glancing at the notepad where he had scrawled the address. On cue, the chain link gate silently slide open and we walked into the graveled yard, following the concrete walkway around the side, to the back, as there was no door in the front.

A giant man, six-foot-plus, dressed all in white — white pants and a white T-shirt, with a strange belt of off-white sheep’s fleece and leather wrapped around his substantial midriff — stood at the top of a short flight of stairs. Tamás and he exchanged what I assumed were pleasantries or secret Magyar passwords, and, once complete, Tamás motioned us up the stairs and into the house.

Glancing around, readjusting the PC cradled in my arms, I began to walk up the stairs. It was then I noticed what I thought was a rather odd looking white German Shepherd off to the side of the back yard. I looked again. It wasn’t a dog — despite being at least two or three feet high. It was the ears that had made me think “German Shepherd.” It was a rabbit. It was a three-foot-tall white rabbit. It was looking at me. I glanced around wildly, looking for Alice.

Tamás called, “Gavin, are you coming in?” I stumbled quickly up the stairs, and through the rabbit hole and into the house, glancing with every step at the rabbit. The rabbit watched intently and then turned away as the door closed.

I found myself in a house furnished in gilt, white lace, bad taste, and computer parts. The furniture — where visible under the computer parts — was that particular color of white and peachy gold favored by cheap hotels and porno producers.

After a brief technical exchange in Hungarian and English that consisted mostly of grunts and technical terms like “power supply,” “220 volts,” “Dell,” “Removable hard drive,” and “200 Euros,” the dead power supply lay abandoned on one of the gilt sofas. I was 200 Euros lighter, and we were back in the car, headed through the late night streets of Budapest.

Back at the office, still feeling slightly stunned by the bunny, I slapped the power supply into the PC, check things thrice, and powered it up. All things were right with the world. Tamás had an office.

We packed up shop, and Tamás dropped us at the hotel. Up before dawn, I was on the train and bound for Prague before a bunny’s breakfast. I spent the train trip in the dining car, either dozing or thoroughly entertained by the various notifications from different GSM carriers that appeared on my Blackberry. Arriving in Prague, I once again realized it was Thanksgiving — I had not made it home. As any ex-pat will tell you, Thanksgiving in Europe always lacks a certain je ne sais quoi. Nevertheless, I had three days to finish up in Prague before my rescheduled flight back to Amsterdam, and then on to Detroit. I would be seeing no more bunnies.

Since it was Thanksgiving, the evening called for at least a fancy dinner; if not turkey, then it would have to be duck (an easy call in Eastern Europe). My choice was Obecni Dum (Municipal House). It was just a short walk away. It’s called the “Pearl of Czech Art Nouveau.” It’s a landmark in downtown Prague, and home to a pivnice (beer hall) in the basement as well as a kavarna (café) and the classy Francouzské (French) restaurant on the first floor. You can dine surrounded by deco glass by Alphonse Mucha. The food is good too. I had duck, in lieu of turkey. Rabbit seemed out of the question. I remember the dinner with great fondness, and was to see the exact setting again, later, in “Triple-X” with Vin Diesel; same table in fact — art, once again, imitating life — through the rabbit-hole.

Oh, the bunnies; they’re real, by the way, and not at all a vision born of too many cakes and tortes, too many long days and sleepless nights. You see, this arrived in the email one day, assuring me of my sanity. Thanks Jonathan.

Having established the elements, theories, and principles, what I really wanted was pretty simple. I know what I wanted to keep (element one); I had a place to keep it (element two); and what I thought was a simple way to find it all again (element [...]]]> [The exciting sequel to "The Cuneiform Code"]

Having established the elements, theories, and principles, what I really wanted was pretty simple. I know what I wanted to keep (element one); I had a place to keep it (element two); and what I thought was a simple way to find it all again (element three).

Element One — Know what you want to keep:

What I wanted to keep were all the bits and pieces of information that are crucial to a sane IT operation. Here’s the dirty secret. There is a vast amount of stuff — facts, figures, incantations, mystical folklore, secret handshakes, twiddles and tweaks — that IT folks have to remember to keep tens or hundreds or thousands of computers happy and healthy. There’s even more to remember if you want to keep a vast army of squeaky users happy and healthy too. To most folks IT stuff is voodoo. I needed a simple system to remember all the voodoo, Papa Legba be dammed. What I wanted was a simple system to track all these assorted permutations, combinations, and incantations.

[My secret goal was to simply avoid the 11^th circle of IT hell — the hell where all bad programmers go, along with whoever invented the concept of "opt-out" email. (It should be "opt-in," you bastard — no fruit baskets for you! Oops that slipped out.)

It's a hell composed of forever clicking "Next" again and again and again, while simultaneously explaining how to print an envelope with Word. It's a hell where all three heads of Cerberus nip gently at your heels while you un-jam a printer. It's a hell where you are forced, again and again, to diagnose why "X" program doesn't play nice-nice with "Y" program.]

So, I needed a knowledgebase. My knowledgebase will serve as a repository for a host of esoteric knowledge, making it easy find again, right at my proverbial fingertips, so it’s there, when memory fails — a shared repository of the critical yet esoteric. By the way, the sharing aspect is as crucial as the “keeping it simple” part. It does no good if I know it and others don’t. Those “others” must be able to find it too.

Element Two — Have an organized place to keep it:

Abraham Maslow once observed “When the only tool you own is a hammer, every problem resembles a nail.”

[My variant on Maslow is: "When all you have is a hammer, you're bound to hit your thumb. So swing lightly." My father's variant on this was: "Nothing screws things up faster than a power tool." With a power tool, you're likely not just to hit your thumb, but cut it, and a portion of your arm, clean off. Beware the power tool. ]

It’s only natural I suppose, that when I wanted to build a knowledgebase, I turned to my preferred hammer, SharePoint. I’m sure there are other options. Maslow aside, SharePoint is well suited to the task. It’s perfect — really. It hits all the criteria. In fact, a couple of features in MOSS make this a cakewalk — specifically these new things called “email-enabled document libraries.” This feature, new to MOSS, eliminates a dozen headaches. Moreover, they make it easy to feed the beast. Email-enabled document libraries are also kind of smart. MOSS is a power tool, though, swing lightly.

First, using email-enabled document libraries, a knowledgebase is easy to feed. People already spend their days inside of Outlook; I figured I might as well capitalize on that. Second, MOSS’s document libraries are flexible. They’re flexible enough that they handle just about everything I’ve thrown — or emailed — at them, including multiple attachments, mixed attachments, weird attachments, and Buddhist email (no attachments).

Element Three: Have a Way to Find It Again

Finally, the “easy retrieval” requirement is well met by SharePoint, almost out of the box. Once you twiddle with it a bit, SharePoint’s indexing is terrific. It handles all “Office” documents, including (important for me) Visio drawings. I tend to think in pictures and flow charts drawn on napkins and, subsequently, translated to Visio. Other file types are a piece of cake too, as the search engine is extensible via add-ins called IFilters. There are IFilters available for PDFs, and JPGs, and MP3s, and all sorts of other stuff. Find a list here. There’s a filter for just about everything, from GIF’s, to TIF’s, through ZIP’s.

Creating and Feeding the Beast:

With SharePoint, feeding the beast is easy. You can send it an email message; you can send it attachments via email. SharePoint will magically convert the message to a file and put it in the document library. Along the way, it takes all the information it can from the email system and adds it as metadata, automatically. Everything — metadata, message and attachment(s) — are completely searchable.

Anything mailed to the library gets the following information automatically added as related metadata:

I added one additional field — a calculated field to store the concatenated value of the “Title” field and the “Subject” field. This is just so I have one field that contains either the “Title” or the “Subject,” instead of having to look at two separate fields. As such, if one or the other was blank, it didn’t matter.

Helpdesk Site Showing IS Knowledgebase View

When you email an item, SharePoint automatically detaches any attachments and saves them with the same metadata as the message (From, Subject, etc). As I mentioned, you can also feed the document library directly, dropping files directly into it, uploading, or by saving files to it from any Office application. You can even set it up as a mapped drive, should you want to. True to my needs, it handles just about anything, including images and Visio drawings, as well as Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, PDF documents, and the body of an email message.

Knowledgebase — View Showing Items Grouped in Folders by “From” Address

There is one nice option called “Group Attachments in Folder.” This option lets you decide to have MOSS automatically store things in folders based on the “Subject” or “From” field of the email message. I show a view of this above. I chose to group by “From” — neatly organizing the stuff by each contributor to the knowledgebase.

(Note: As you’ll notice in the above screen capture, I’ve once again mucked up the names and such. This is to protect the appropriately paranoid. I’ve left most of my info stand as is — it’s too late for me to be paranoid.)

If you turn on the “From” grouping option, items sent to the Knowledgebase are automatically sorted and filed into folders named for the originator’s email address. It creates the folder automagically. All the stuff I send goes into a folder named for me. Stuff from other people is automatically sorted into their own folders.

I should note that getting the mail-enabled features to work took some effort. I had to tweak it. In the end, I followed a guide from a site called “Combined Knowledge” verbatim. Here’s a link to the PDF.

(I emailed a copy to our Knowledgebase, by the way — illustrating the rule that you must use it to make it worthwhile. See it works!)

Knowledgebase — Standard View Showing Basic and Custom Metadata

In addition to the regular metadata fields, you can “roll your own,” adding as many fields and types and other crap as you might need. (So far we haven’t needed to add any. )The sky (and your imagination) is the limit. Beware, however, if you create the beast, you must feed the beast. Keep it simple.

In the end, I ended up with a simple, inexpensive system for managing information, something that met all my particular, curmudgeonly needs. A system that:

• Accepts any sort of information I can throw at it, including documents, pictures, diagrams, web pages, and just about anything else that can be digitized.
• Accepts that sort of stuff via all imaginable methods, including “drag and drop”, email, scanners, upload, and regular old file/folder access
• Automatically tracks the “who, what and when” in metadata (who put it there or who changed it, when they did it, and what it is).
• Is customizable and flexible (because, well, I’m going to customize it, like it or not);
• Is easy to search — a “Google-like” interface, except none of those annoying ads about linoleum, free cell phones, or timeshares in Essakane.

Nevertheless, the most important lesson in all this is clear: Never , unless, of course, you the and first. Everything else pales in comparison. Oh, and watch your thumbs.

There are three essential theoretical elements to effective knowledge management. I call these [...]]]> In theory, knowledge management is easy. Then again, in theory, lots of things are easy. In practice, things are never quite as easy as they sound. Nevertheless, lightly armed, I set out to put a few of my theories into practice.

There are three essential theoretical elements to effective knowledge management. I call these “Gavin’s Three Essential Theoretical Elements To Effective Knowledge Management.” Unfortunately, “GTETETEKM” does not lend itself to a memorable mnemonic, so let’s just call these the “KM-3.”

As I said, in theory, Knowledge Management is easy. In practice, organizations usually ignore the first element (especially the garbage part), do a half-assed job on the second, and muck up the third totally.

Moreover, the whole thing gets usually gets derailed when someone brings up the dreaded “T-Word” — Taxonomy. When you hear that word, it’s time to run screaming from the room. It’s a sure sign that you’re going to spend the next year in meetings trying to figure out how to “accurately” classify socks, or rocks, or ethnicity, or nationality, or chumps. The trouble is the world does not fall easily into logical groupings. For example, is Russia part of Europe or Asia? [It's a trick question. The answer is "yes."]

If you must, when in doubt — if you need one — use an existing taxonomy. You’ll save yourself a truckload of heartache. Trust me here — I know trucks and I know heartache. In fact, be daring, live life on the edge and don’t use a taxonomy at all!

Wait. Stop… Before you beat me about the head and ears with a leather-bound copy of the Library of Congress Classification System (or worse, the National Taxonomy of Exempt Entities), let me explain:

You see, there’s been a war going on for the last 5,000 years, give or take a Tuesday or two. It probably started with the first scribes in Sumer, as they struggled to do something with their ever-multiplying cuneiform tablets. Some, no doubt, wanted to keep them all stacked on their desks, while others wanted to file them away, sorted and organized, all the stuff in one place, all the stuff in another, and all the other stuff in a third. Never mind that no one had invented file cabinets yet.

Anyway, thus was born the first controlled vocabulary, the first taxonomy. There was no doubt a memo stating, unequivocally, that all clay tablets should be filed either as , , or as, upon pain of death or promotion.

[There was also all the stuff , but, I suppose it's best not to mention that, at least not in polite company.]

Thus began the war between those who file and these who pile — the filers and the pilers. I’ve been on the wrong side, it seems, since the beginning. I’m a filer, tried and true; a card-carrying member of Filer’s Anonymous. I even organize my paperbacks, first by genre and then by author. Nevertheless, my proclivities aside, the pilers have won; hands-down. So, ever pragmatic, I switched sides. No, I’ve not started just piling up my books, but I’ve embraced the “pile it on” approach. “Bring it on,” I say, “I’m no chump; Nuh-uh, not anymore.”

Technology [written language, clay tablets cuneiform, that kind of stuff] started the war, and now technology [fast full-text machine indexing, smart digital filing systems, and natural language query] has ended it. With today’s tools, you can just dump things into a nice digital pile o’stuff and let the machines sort it out. Our tools have ended the conflict, by ending the need for the conflict. As such, they’ve also eliminated much of the need for a formal, controlled vocabulary (the T-word). Instead, a simple one will do, if you need one at all.

How to Build a Simple Knowledgebase

Let me show you how I built a simple “knowledgebase” — using simple tools and a simplistic approach — what I call simple minded knowledge management (or is that knowledge management for the simple minded …).

It’s an approach that lets me just put things in piles. Moreover, there is no taxonomy — ok maybe a small one — but all the filing is done by the machine. It works; it’s easy to feed, stuff is easy to find, everybody’s happy. And, it’s out of sight, neatly self-organized, so it doesn’t irritate me at my core.

So, welcome to the machine — welcome to SharePoint’s “mail-enabled” document libraries — a world where the machine does all the heavy lifting, from submission, to organizing, to search and retrieval. It’s a piler’s dream, and a filer’s delight. One caveat: knowledge creation and synthesis still takes work. That’s an essential human process, one of creativity and editorial heavy lifting. Machines don’t do that.

First some rules. Remember “GTETETEKM”… err… the “KM-Three.” Remember those and you should ahead of the game; forget them and you’ll likely discover that “knowledge management” is an oxymoron. Moreover, you’ll probably end up either in management or looking for a new job, or [shudder] both. Rules in hand, let’s add a dash of required simplicity:

• Keep things simple. I like simple things, simple tools, and simple approaches. Tools that aren’t simple won’t be used. Simplicity wins, period. Complicated systems fail — usually because they’re too complicated. Complicated approaches fail for the same reasons. It must be easy to use and easy to find stuff again; easy, and I mean “Eee-Zee” with a capital EASY, else it’s a wasted exercise.
• Beware, you must feed the beast. Any knowledgebase must be fed. They live on a diet of — you guessed it — knowledge. If you create a beast, you must feed it. So, while you’re at it, don’t make the beast so impossibly complicated that you won’t, don’t or can’t feed it. It needs high quality chow, lest it bite your hand.

In summary: an effective knowledge management system starts with knowing what you want to keep, and knowing what you don’t want to keep. After that, it’s all about the tools, and your tools must: A) be simple in design, B) be some-what self-organizing, C) meet your security needs, D) be easy to feed, and F) easy to search.

[Don't miss the exciting sequel: "Cracking the Cuneiform Code — The KM Supremacy" – coming soon to a blog near you.]

Every day, as [...]]]> My car doesn’t trust me. My bank thinks I’m stupid. Fact is there are quite a number of things that seem to think I’m royally dense. The sad thing is I’m starting to believe them. The list includes the dipsy-dumpster down the road, my car, Amazon.com, and the American automobile industry.

Every day, as I drive to work in the birthplace of GM, I’m reminded of just how stupid they must think I am. On my drive, a billboard screams out “20 MPG!”

“Welcome to the idiocracy,” I mumble. As gasoline approaches $4.00 per gallon, and we suffer the geopolitical effects of oil addiction, only an idiot would see “20 MPG” as an enticement. They obviously think I’m an idiot.

The sad truth is that, if we had anywhere near the fleet MPG average of, say, Europe, we’d import no OPEC oil at all. Europe has a 40 MPG average, ours: half that.

Now, it wouldn’t be so bad if all these things didn’t take the opportunity to remind me every chance they get.

The uppity dumpster down the street has its reminder blazoned in big yellow letters, right on its lid. There, for the entire world to see is a reminder of just how stupid I might be: “Do not drop lid on head” it says. It must really think I’m stupid. But, nevertheless, I studiously avoid dropping the lid on my head.

Amazon continues to suggest that I just might want to buy “SharePoint 2007 for Dummies,” “Digital Photography for Dummies,” and “Canadian History for Dummies.” Does it know something I don’t? Who’s been talking, eh? Who, in his or her right mind, buys a book that starts out assuming you’re stupid?

I try to convince Amazon that I’m not a dummy – clicking on all the highbrow titles I can find – to no avail. It’s the idiot’s guide for me. I revolt against buying “dummies” books. I’d be embarrassed to have them seen on my book shelf, let alone carry them under my arm. Even if I’m a dummy, I don’t want to advertize the fact.

My car’s judgmental attitude is ever present. It reminds me of its lowly opinion of me every time I use the navigation system. I’m sure it’s chuckling to itself. Muttering things like: “Can’t read a map. What a bozo.” But, I still use it, pressing “accept” on the disclaimer that appears every time I turn it on. Acknowledging that its directions might not be totally accurate, and they’re not responsible if I just happen to drive into a river or something; failing to notice the “bridge out” signs as I blithely drive by wire. Clearly they think I’m an idiot. And just as clearly, I “accept” the fact every time I use it.

In today’s world, even consumer products think I’m pretty damn dense. Kellogg does. Pop tarts come with instructions. Not just simple instructions, I could understand if they said something like:

Step 1: Toast.

Or maybe two steps:

Step 1: Toast

Step 2: Eat.

But no, that’s not sufficient. Instead there are three steps, just for the toasting, that include how to remove it from the package, and advice on how and when to eat it. That doesn’t include the guidelines on toaster maintenance, or the microwave instructions. [Microwave a pop tart? Now that's just insane. Yuck.]

Then there is my bank. Every time I drive through the drive-through ATM, they remind me just what they think of me. I stare at the small notice — located above the Braille instructions: “Braille instructions are provided for our sight-impaired customers.” “D’oh,” I never would have guessed! (We won’t even talk about the fact that it’s on a drive-thru ATM — that’s too hackneyed.)

There’s a danger here. If you treat people like idiots, they’ll act like idiots. Study after study has shown that if you tell a teacher that the students in their classroom are the “bright ones”… they’ll magically do better on tests. You tell another that they’ve got the “not-so-bright” ones and their test scores will fall. Treat somebody like an idiot and they’ll meet your expectations, every time. Welcome to the idiocracy.

… "you know you say things are much of a muchness," said the Dormouse, — "did you ever see such a thing as a drawing of a muchness?" "Really, now you ask me," said Alice, very much confused, [...]]]> I’m reminded of the Dormouse’s advice to Alice when I start to talk about philosophy.

… "you know you say things are much of a muchness," said the Dormouse, — "did you ever see such a thing as a drawing of a muchness?" "Really, now you ask me," said Alice, very much confused, "I don’t think—" "Then you shouldn’t talk," said the Hatter…

In his blog, EEK Speaks, EEK took me to task for being a wee bit too black and white in my views about taxonomies and folksonomies. He’s right. That’s the trouble with waxing philosophical, it tends towards the polemic. In truth, the world is much more gray.[In Michigan, in January, this is especially true.]

Casting taxonomies and folksonomies as mutually exclusive was not my intention. I think my intention was to differentiate [not bloviate] — truthfully both have their strengths .

EEK sums it up pretty nicely when he says that comparing the two is asking the wrong question. In his words:

"Folksonomies and taxonomies are not quite apples and oranges, but they’re not apples and apples either. Debating the two is intellectually interesting, but it obscures the real opportunity, which is understanding how the two could potentially augment each other. Here I think there is a real possibility for some sort of synergy. "

That synergy is important, as it seems to me that that synergy would address the weaknesses of both approaches. I’d still argue that the folksonomic approach misses on accuracy [or inclusiveness]. As well, for the most part, folksonomies seem to be unbearably and essentially "flat," while taxonomies are almost by definition hierarchically structured. That "flatness" adds to the approachability of a folksonomy. [But, I think it also adds to my discomfort with folksonomies.]

Nevertheless, reading between the lines of a number of comments, posts and the like, it’s clear to me that the folksonomic approach has some real plusses:

• Folksonomies are very approachable. By this I mean that people seem to take to the concept quickly and naturally, there is no required decoder ring, no secret handshake. This is an important plus, by the way. The problem with taxonomies is that no one uses them or understands them.
• Folksonomies are extremely scalable. This assumes, of course, that you have a sufficient critical mass of folks doing usable tagging, what Kevin over at High Touch referred to as "peer generated." [The name "High Touch" made me smile, btw. The past has a way of wrapping around to greet you again.]
• Folksonomies tend to be self-updating/self-generating. As the world changes, they can rapidly change and morph. This, by the way, I think is one of their real strengths, and, conversely, is one of the real weaknesses of a traditional taxonomic approach to classification.

For an excellent summary and expansion of the discussion, please see Beth’s post NPTech discussion.

Slightly off the subject: This reminds me of something I sorely miss. It was a newsletter, now defunct, that told me more about the world than anything I have ever seen since. Back in the days of Disco, Leisure Suits, and Donna Summers, I was busy trying to develop software that would do ontological contextual analysis of online bibliographic databases. [As you can tell, in those days my answer to the perennial D.C. question of "what do you do" could (and did) glaze eyes at ten paces.]

One of the database venders I worked with then, produced an online equivalent to the Readers’ Guide to Periodical Literature. It was called the Magazine Index. They also did the National Newspaper Index, and a host of trade indexes. It was amazing stuff for the time — some citations were even (said with hushed reverence) full text!

Monthly, they also produced a newsletter that contained nothing but a list of all the new terms added to their taxonomy. It was an amazing snapshot of social change; a list of all the new terms — a reflection of all the social issues — that were being added to the national lexicon. Just between you and me, I always wondered what the trigger was; what critical mass had to be met before a term was "made."

Reminiscences aside, the problems I see with taxonomies are twofold:

First —there is a perverse tendency to overdo it, especially in the nonprofit world.

Having spent time both developing what I hoped where workable taxonomies and trying to implement such taxonomies, people have the damnest tendency to try to develop categorization schemes that include the kitchen sink, all the plumbing, and the plumber’s family, neighbors, and their pets.

This is a real problem. And, I believe, one of the reasons that taxonomies are so chumpy. Given a chance, a committee will create a taxonomy that effectively catalogs things so granularly that you end up with one item per category.

Instead of something like:

    Shoes/Mens/Black/Dress

You get:

    Shoes/Mens/Black/Dress/need shining/on my feet right now (left)[untied]

The irony is, of course, that the committee that developed the taxonomy will very likely be composed of the same people that find the taxonomy unusable.

My advice:

I’ve always felt that there is a sweet spot in the development of any taxonomy, something I call "the rule of four and one" (or four fingers and a thumb – when explained, I usually find myself wiggling my four fingers and wagging my thumb around to make the point.) A taxonomy, at its most granular level, should identify no less than 1-percent of the items being catalogued, and no more than 4 percent. If any one term identifies less than 1 percent of the collection (or god-forbid, one "thing") then you’ve gone too far into the heart of darkness, and if it identifies more than 4 percent.., well, you’re not far enough down the river quite yet.

Second — there is a tendency to forget the goal.

There is a tendency of those that develop and maintain a taxonomy to forget its purpose. The purpose is to make things easy to find, to add organization, to add "intelligence" to otherwise disorganized data. Its purpose is not to empower one group over another with secret knowledge, and thereby ensure continued employment.

[The true goal of the radical librarian is to empower people with the ability to find stuff they want. It's not to keep the books lined up neatly on the shelves.]

I’ve always figured that there are three elements to effective knowledge management, namely:

1. Know garbage when you see it or, conversely, know what to keep and why, and trash the rest. (From this, springs my core axiom that 80% of everything is garbage.)
2. Know where to keep it, and have a simple method to organize it; keep it neat, clean, and well weeded. "Weeding" is a key concept, by the way.
3. Know how to find it again, and that means an easy (read accessible) categorization scheme.

Most taxonomies are overly cumbersome, slow to change, and tend to be obscure to the very people that want to use them. And, in hindsight, this violates both my second and third elements. Violating those axioms means that, in the end, you’ll only have a beast that must be fed and fed, but that never delivers back much of any value. Coupling a folksonomy together with a taxonomy, and using the folksonomic approach to keep the taxonomy current, seems a perfect match.

Finally — re-reading all the comments to my original post — it struck me that taxonomic tools tend to be terrible; especially when compared to the tools associated with the folksonomic systems currently in the wild. Tagging on Delicious is a breeze. I see my tags, I see other peoples’ tags, I even get suggestions based on how others have tagged things. It’s quick and easy, and visible.

Compare and contrast that to the abysmal interface (and the abysmal taxonomy for that matter) provided by TechFinder. [I get to pick on Techfinder because much of what it is, and much of what it isn't, is my fault.]

Techfinder looks to me like a perfect example of where a folksonomic/taxonomic synergy would be eminently more usable. With TechFinder, it’s clear that spirit of Dr. Frankenstein was hovering close by during the development of the taxonomy (it’s missing a hierarchy, but it’s definitely Abby Normal‘s brain). It’s also clearly in need of some web-two-dot-oh tools to improve its unbearable chumpness of being.

With the NPTech tag, I think it just needs to be slightly less "flat." As it stands now, it’s a good catch-all, but it fails the "four and one" rule. I’d like to see it deepened somehow.