Maximize potential of asking the right questions
After some days of being to busy to read all my emails i went through my unread messages today. One of them was an invite to test a pre-beta version of Illumio. Illumio is a software package from Tacit, maker of the enterprise collaboration tool ActiveNet. After installing it and some connection problems it’s time to reflect on it. I think the system has a huge potential. We all know that there is more knowledge outside developed than we can ever develop by ourselves. So why not tap into that knowledge? And that is exactly what Illumio is doing. By using desktop search engines like Google Desktop, or Microsoft Desktop Search it tries to identify whether a person has knowledge on a certain topic.
After downloading and installing the setup-package the Illumio client connects to the server, and you can start working on your first request. If for example i’d like to know more on the relationship between knowledge management and innovation, i can send out a request which will be delivered to a predefined group of people. At the moment the early adopters-group exists of 419 members. Only those people where Illumio identifies files related to knowledge management and innovation will receive my request, upon which they can decide whether or not to respond to me. Only when someone respond the receiver of the request will become known, but in all other cases he / she will remain anonymous.
As i have found out in my thesis work as well, in learning from the outside it is important to start with [1] identifying what you need, and [2] asking yourself why you need that information. This is also the case with this Illumio tool. There is too much knowledge available outside, and you will never get the right answers if you ask the wrong question. Starting with asking the right questions therefore is essential.
The only problem now is that somehow i don’t get connected anymore to the server… maybe i should ask the early adopters group whether they know how to fix the problem.. too bad.. to send out a request i should be connected to the server :S
March 29th, 2007 23:56
[…] The rise of Social Network technologies Social network technologies nowadays offer a solution to this paradox. I covered earlier a launch of the product Illumio (Maximize potential of asking the right questions), which is a group Q&A tool with intelligent matching. Illumio matches seekers and solvers by using tags and desktop search tools. It anonymously locates users that have expertise on a specific topic, i.e. a solver and ask them to share the information with the seeker. Even stronger and of more importance for in-company use is the use of groups, which are closer communities where information can more freely flow. Where the current knowledge management systems place the responsibility and activity-need on the shoulders of a user, the new social network technologies automatically locate the expert. It enables the user to access the huge pool of blogs, comments and posts in discussion fora and interest groups without the time-consuming work of finding the relevant data. […]