NorthStarNerd.Org

The Power!

Hey thanks!  If one searches on <engineering> and <wiki>, our Engineering Learning Wiki is up to #6 in Google Results. Enclose that phrase in quotes and we rise to #4! Watch out Wikipedia! (just kidding)

Just today, Mr. Anonymous added to the engineering manuals section:

• In Pictures (In Pictures online tutorials are based on pictures, not words.)
  • Dreamweaver
  • HTML and CSS
  • MySQL Basics
  • PHP Basics
  • Perl Basics

What's even more cool, is Mr. Anonymous sent me an email to ask permission first.  I obviously know this person's name, but without permission I would never post personal information ... even a name! Thanks Mr. Anonymous.

What this does show is that I needed to trust the collective web and allow for anonymous posting. Folks really hate signing up for another account, but are very willing to help and collectively help build knowledge.
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Web 2.0 Partner in Crime

I was introduced overnight via a friend's email to Simon Revell’s blog, Corporate Punk. He leads Pfizer's charge into the use of Web 2.0 tools. It was intriguing to see how his company is adopting many of the same tools in which I have interest. I even like the name of his blog!

Seriously, it is cool to see additional companies installing these kinds of tools, which leads me to a podcast series my Google RSS feeds discovered for me last night (what ... you don't have Google RSS feeds??! ... get with it). MIT's library has a new podcast series, which has initially focused upon digital rights and innovation via the web.  I just downloaded Professor Eric von Hippel's podcast in which he talks about his experience publishing his book, Democratizing Innovation. This book is freely available via the web.

Patents at 7:30 a.m.

Good Saturday morning. As I wait for the sun to rise and warm the air a bit (36 degrees) before leaving on a 12 mile run, I'm focused upon patents?! As much as I prefer to avoid lawyers, engineering content requires that one pay attention to this domain. Via one of my Google keyword RSS feeds, I stumbled upon "The Invent Blog". My curiosity was piqued due to the reference to a screencast about PatentFizz. Wow, I thought ... maybe here is a challenge to network media shows like Lost!

Sadly, Lost will still reign supreme, but The Invent Blog seems to be a good place to hang your hat if you need to subscribe to at least one blog that focuses upon intellectual property and the law.  I did both  Google and Technorati searches, and the results were good. Stephen Nipper has been blogging since January of 2004, and seems to know his stuff.

Sharing Learning Innovation

In a few minutes, I'll attend a consortium meeting of many large corporations. As I've not asked their permission to be included in this post, their company names shall remain anonymous. However, our meeting's focus including the use of Web 2.0 tools for knowledge sharing and learning is not secretive. Our agenda includes demos by Connectbeam, Google, Safari Online Books and SocialText. Each firm will review their knowledge sharing tools.

Why should you be interested? We're practicing what we preach. Our consortium's engineering learning wiki is up and open for business. Access is open to everyone. Just last night an anonymous wiki visitor (no membership required) added these links to the Engineering Software Tools Page:

• CATIA Community (The Independent Community for CATIA, ENOVIA, DELMIA, & SMARTEAM Users)
• Inventor Connections (The Independent Community for Autodesk Inventor™ Users)
• MicroStation Connections (The Independent Community for MicroStation Users)
• SolidEdge Community (The Independent Community for Solid Edge Users)
• SolidWorks Community (For Users of SolidWorks, COSMOSWorks, PDMWorks, and affiliated products)
• UGS Community (The Independent Community for UGS, NX, I-DEAS, Teamcenter, Technomatix Users)

It would be super if all readers of this blog would add useful content to the wiki, but even for you lurkers, the wiki allows easy monitoring via the main RSS Feed.

Finally, if you don't thing the world is changing ... browse on over to NineSigma. This firm's expanding  business model uses online collaboration to solve Fortune 100 engineering research problems ... and even get paid! View some current projects.

Corporate Learning and Web 2.0

Where does most learning happen in any corporation? In the classroom? While my job dictates that I might want to answer "yes" to the second question, my intelligence dictates otherwise! For this reason my company now has internal podcasts, RSS Feeds, wikis, blogs, social tagging engines, and more.  The end goal is to encourage knowledge collaboration and sharing. However, knowing that everyone respects IBM, you need to listen to this short podcast interview from Radio Tuck (Dartmouth).  Here is the description:

"Chris Perrien and Ted Hoff (VP of Learning) share IBM's definition of Web 2.0 and discuss the biggest hurdles, and the opportunities, to Web 2.0 adoption and implementation in the enterprise."