This is a VERY old example of a weblog I used to organize some of my thesis information and thesis projects during my grad work: Weeblog.
I think it's the only one that remains of my large raft of blogs that I used for teaching and for research. This is a very simplified version of what our projects would look like, but they were based on the same type of tools.
The blog was created using MoveableType, that allows you to "clone" as many blogs as you want from a single installation of the software, so adding subsequent blogs took only a few minutes once the original install was done.
You can see some common blog features; calendars, categories, links to outside materials, "most recent" entries in link form.
I created Weeblog in a few days (that includes building the database and fighting with UNM's equivalent of CCHD for UNIX permissions). I spent a year or so adding to it as a way of organizing my thesis tools. It's set to archive things monthly, and I haven't posted to it in a long time. Clicking on the links to the left shows you some of the content that I put into it at UNM.
It's loaded with spam (which you can't see or get to until you get inside the administrator tools), many of the links don't work, and it's been inundated by bots (not a problem for us with our internal logins) since I kind of abandoned it to itself a few years ago. That makes it, by the way, a "zombie blog."
Weeblog also documents a K-log project (under "categories" select "Sandia K-log project") that I helped create in 2912 (with Jeff White, strangely enough). The project didn't off the ground, not for technological reasons, but because the purpose of the blog actually undermined some team members ability to consolidate knowledge (i.e. power) under their "domains."
Goals for next semester:
I’m going to finish the administrator and user evaluations of our blogware options. From there, I plan to consult with the others in my little project group and select a software platform. After that, I’m going to bring in a few designers to talk about the interface for the blog, in the hopes that it can be created in a way that folks will use it.
Then, we start filling it with stuff. I have old QnA information that I’ve saved for just this purpose….
There have been some interesting developments in a few days time. Overall, the project is glacial, but there have been some rapid-fire developments interspersed among the nothingness.
According to our techie, there are THREE blogware installations up, which is TWO more than there were last week. I've been granted administrator access to at least one of them, so I'm going to be spending this week (before Thursday) going through and evaluating them both from the user's perspective and for an administrator.
I'm guessing that I won't be around forever, so I'm really looking for something easy-to-administer, and without that administrator access I couldn't really look at that.
One installation also has the blog-by-email feature that I've been touting as the "killer ap" for this project. My group has been through a lot in the past year; the changes in software and process have fundamentally changed the way their job is done. I didn't want to make any more changes that cut that deeply.
The hope is that integration, where they don't have to change the program they use to communicate, will enable everyone to use it as a resource and something worth doing without having to learn anything new; something they've had more than their fill of in the past year. Blog-by-email would allow them to contribute to the blog using Outlook, which is how they are used to communicating.
This semester has provided me with quite a few institutional challenges in getting this K-log project up and running.
The toughest part has proven finding the right people with the proper skills and the willingness to say "yes" to get some software on the right servers and configured so that we can evaluate. I'm not sure if that process has ended, but we are now at a point where we can at least move forward with evaluation. It has taken FAR longer than I"m comfortable with and it has involved some serious discussions with consultants about deadlines and accountability.
In some ways it's been beneficial because the glacial pace of evaluation and installation has given the group time to really think about the features they're looking at and the types of information they're going to want to get out of this.
As of now, there are two pieces of blogware up and ready for evaluation; Plone and WordPress. Ultimately there will be two more, for a total of 4.
My hope is that, after the holidays, we'll have some serious time to evaluate each system both in terns of easy of administration (CRUCIAL) and ease of use for end-users (the rest of the group).
Apparently dealing with server issues at the Lab is harder than anywhere else.
If I was installing things at my ISP, I'd call up the sysadmin guy and say "please make me a database," and they'd have it done in an hour, and we'd be good to go.
That is apparently not how things work here.
This frustrates me because I don't know where the truth of it really lies.
My next step is to either get a demo by the end of the Thanksgiving weekend, or start from scratch with a new consultant more familiar with the technical needs of this kind of software.
Some kind of miscommunication has resulted in our last meeting being completely missed by our software consultant.
This concerns me because our time horizon is somewhat brief.
The blog group met yesterday.
Primarily the conversation was about strategy. When you are in a room of believers, the biggest hurdle to overcome is your own belief.
We spent some time defining the problems that we see in the Department in terms of areas that lack formal processes or whose processes are not completely documented. Built into that are subject matter experts that hold all of the knowledge but can only give it to those who ask due to time limitations and maybe a tough of territorialness.
We then talked about what types of spaces we could create online to encourage the capture of what processes there are in place.
We talked about who really owned some of the common processes and who would the most likely candidate for a trial run. The idea is to take one person, collect the processes they "own" and see what falls out of it.
At the same time, we'll continue to evaluate software choices. What we don't want to happen is to jump into a software solution that doesn't fit and force a bunch of changes upon the group. Many group members are leery of change, and the closer we can map the blogging routine to their own current method of communication (email) the more useful it will be because the greater participation there will be.
Almost any requirement to share knowledge depends upon the dedication (voluntary) of the contributors. This dedication can be either to the technology (blogging is so cool) or to the discipline (communication is so important) or to one's professionalism (I do this because I feel an obligation to my peers). I wonder if any of these is sufficient motivation to spend significant amounts of time blogging, especially managing the blog.
Almost any requirement to share knowledge depends upon the dedication (voluntary) of the contributors. This dedication can be either to the technology (blogging is so cool) or to the discipline (communication is so important) or to one's professionalism (I do this because I feel an obligation to my peers). I wonder if any of these is sufficient motivation to spend significant amounts of time blogging, especially managing the blog.
For my project, I'd like to document the process of creating a blog (or K-log, as it would be called in a business application) for a documentation publications group at Sandia. I am a graduate intern in the publications area, I am both an outsider looking in as well as someone who must work within the current procedures to get books published.
The problem: In an area where secrecy is so prized, and information is rationed out on a need-to-know basis, often things that people really DO need to know don't get shared, or when they do get shared it is done piecemeal. That means that not everyone has access to the information they need to do their job effectively, and there is constant duplication of effort because multiple people work on the same things, and some of those projects are done wrong due to incomplete instruction.
There are one or two individuals who hold a lot of the information necessary to the publication process but no one person holds ALL the information.
My solution to this is to create a repository of process information for the creation, revision, and conversion of publications. This repository would be in blog format which allows multiple people to contribute knowledge without making them responsible for constantly-updating and formatting a whole document. It would live as part of the Group's home page, and would eventually replace it. Ultimately, it would be the information source for the whole group and would replace the random emails that get distributed now.
I would like to blog the process here on my personal blog, www.weeblog.com. Scott Sanders at UNM will be overseeing my documentation of this process and will provide guidance.
Because Sandia is a secure facility, I needed to clear that with my boss, David Olson, first to make sure that I did not violate any of Sandia's policiess. He has given me that approval, so I move on.
I have decided not to talk about the exact nature of the publications being produced.
I have a meeting with a systems administrator that can help us evaluate software and produce a plan. We have not yet selected which blogware we will use.