The Demise of KM - Part 2

Groucho Marx (American comedian) was often quoted as saying something like, "I won't belong to any organization that would have me as a member." 

Pumacy Technologies AG, a German-based company released this past week the results of an exploratory study that they did of Knowledge Management blogs, and named 50 blogs that are a part of their study.

In a roundabout way, Google Alerts notified me that Mary Abraham's blog, Above and Beyond Knowledge had linked to Jack Vinson's Knowledge Jolt announcing the study. So I eventually get around to the study and YKM (this blog) is listed on it. This is surely the sign of the KM apocalypse.

Of course, I appreciate the attention to the blog...why not....most posts are breadcrumbs for my own future re-use, but what was the selection process? 

In fairness, Pumacy is a Knowledge Management vendor. They appear to just be supporting the fact that the KM space is thriving and full of active participants writing about various aspects of KM....which is done here...and Pumacy did locate some prolific bloggers including the 2 mentioned above...but based upon the amount of postings, amount of comments and Google ranking, it just strikes me as a lack of good research (time and/or effort) on Pumacy's part add this blog to the list, instead of going out and finding the really active KM blogs and list them as a part of their study.

Since they studied and printed it once, hopefully Pumacy will continue their study and bring to light some great blogs.

Comments

[Ingo]

Hi Tom, you asked (Pumacy KM-Blogs) "but what was the selection process?" - We just started to explore. We chose active blogs (postings in august) that have to do something with knowledge management. In this step of the study we did not look in depth at the content of all blogs. A content analysis is not easy since there is a variety of km topics (and this means that some bloga are hard to find since keyword search means you already know what you are searching for) and very different styles of writing a blog. We will definitely continue the study and look at these issues.

[Yerfdog]

Thank you for coming over to YKM, responding, and filling in some of the gaps in understanding for me.

I am interested in following your continued study of KM Blogs. It will particularly be interesting after several months, I think. Perhaps in your next or in a not-too-distant future announcement at your site, you can relay what your methodology is, and how it is evolving over time.

Best Regards - Tom

[Mary Abraham]

Tom -

That's a great quotation. To be honest, it did cross my mind when I first read the Pumacy list.

Thanks so much for digging into the methodology of the study. When we have a clearer view of it, we should be able to assess better both the list and the value added by Pumacy. I for one am hopeful that they will continue to develop a list of substantive bloggers who really push our understanding of KM forward.

- Mary

Thanks Mary -

I agree, I hope that Pumacy continues the study as there are a lot of great blogs related to KM that I'm sure will make their list as they refine the study, and I'm hopeful that Pumacy will be forthcoming on the methodology.

Tom