Keyless klogging for the rest…

by  on 

Keyless klogging for the rest of us..

David Gammel suggests…



Perhaps we should enable the writers to write and find another way for the others.


Absolutely.


A few approaches come to mind.




  1. Capture experiences and thoughts differently.



    • Photo/caption.

    • Video blog.

      • Is Marc Canter listening? Vogs and vlogs. Daily movie.

    • Hand drawings and notes.

      • Pencil to paper to scanner to blog, wacom to blog, whiteboard reader to blog, Photoshop to blog.

    • Enclosures of work product.

      • Use your blog to chronicle each Office document you finish, each AutoCAD drawing.

    • Music blog.

      • Perform, edit midi and samples, save to blog.
      • Newsreaders become music readers, feeds enqued to a tightly coupled WinAmp. 

    • Emails of note.

      • Not just a forward button but a Post-to-Blog button. Suddenly on the record.

    • Audio interviews.

      • Talk freely with someone, into the microphone please. Save to blog. Just key the metadata.

    • Scanned handwriting.

      • Fax to blog. Might be handy in parts of the world with limited access to computers. For those languages where handwriting is almost as fast (or faster) and more expressive than a keyboard. Captures doodles too.  

    • Dictation via handheld recorder.

      • Audio plus machine transcription.

    • Voice mail to blog.

      • Handy, accessible everywhere.

    • SMS to blog.

      • For the thumbs generation.

    • GPS blog.

      • Do you make housecalls? Drive the kids all over the place? Field reports? Your mobile follows you through the day. A quick SMS logs your stops/visits, perhaps a voice annotation. Blogging tool generates a map of the day, overlay of the week/month/year, posts by location, posts by proximity. I can’t wait to see what happens with blogrolls, community services, where am I now, and just-in-time meetup. 

    • Proxy.

      • “Jim, can you blog this flanistam problem for me?”


  2. Prompt with Structure.




    3. True/False
    is easier than
    Multiple choice
    is easier than
    Fill in the blank
    is easier than
    an essay.


    When you fear a blank page, sometimes it helps if someone guides you.

    One way is with questions.



    • Pick a theme.
    • Deliver ad hoc or on a repeated schedule.
    • Prompt via enterprise calendar, email web form, or IM reminder.
    • Enter via web form.

    Consider:



    • Bernard Pivot’s 10 Questions
    • Friday Five – five new questions each week.
    • eMode quizzes – users’ choice, immediate confirmation, comparison to the average, guide to interpretation.
    • Pattern job interviews 

    The Friday Five helps you develop your writing voice and add human depth to your blog. But teams and enterprises want other content to support operational and strategic goals.



    • By project, flash reports. Maybe even assignments.
    • Time sheets.
    • Professional development (“What did you learn this week?”, “Who did you meet for the first time?”, “What are you reading?”)
    • Performance management (Weekly goals, accomplishments, concerns, and objectives for next week)
    • Process support. Polling for product proposal feedback, for example.  

    Manage these feeds like subscriptions to opt-in mailing lists. Moderators needed.


    Tech note: While not required, it would be handy to extend the metablogger API and RSS to support added schema to refine a post’s data and metadata. 




  3. Enterprise system streaming.



For every human prompt, the information systems in a mid-sized enterprise cook up a dozen review-worthy items. Every step in the life cycle of a process or transaction is running through your ERP, accounting systems, recruiting system, SFA/CRM, network monitoring and management system, and your KM tools. They usually stay buried.


Your klogging tool can collect personalized alerts and notices from all these systems, organized for your quick scan. See something blogworthy? Flag it to your blog. Have an observation on the process, on progress, on quality, on results? Jot a note.


Posts include links back to the transaction in the web app. 


Machine prompts for blogging:



  • Increase transparency.
  • Capture the human experience of impersonal systems.
  • Provide opportunities for structured input back to the originating system.
  • Help people narrate processes.

See also: Whither blogs? 


[aka klogs]

[a klog apart]