A two-headed violinist; Attensa and What I Share I Know

I couldn't resist this post from enterprise RSS vendor Attensa discussing how internal collaboration started at one an anonymous firm.

One reason I couldn't resist was the cute--but not too cute--acronym / motto "Wiki - What I Know I Share" that said firm developed through an internal competition. If it's an acronym, though, shouldn't it be "WIKIS"? Or perhaps without the all caps, "Wikis"?.

The other reason I couldn't resist was the charming picture of the two men playing the violin, one bowing, one holding and fingering (if you've never tried this, take it from a violin performance expert, it's quite difficult to carry off). I'm so used to bowing and "fingering" at the same time that only doing one is quite an odd feeling. By contrast, the collaborative software I've been exposed to thus far does not really create a feeling of novelty, at least for a person used to shopping on the web and writing email.

The primary thrust of the article seemed to be that for knowledge sharing to truly add value to an enterprise, parallel efforts to A) establish technological sharing and dissemination channels and B) encourage a culture of sharing are necessary. Certainly that's a key realization and "lesson learned" of early knowledge management efforts, although it comes close to a truism as it leaves somewhat undefined what a culture of sharing would look like. Here's the key quote:

"[U]sing technology to channel information is only part of the solution. The greater challenge is creating a collegial culture that better serves the real world information needs of the enterprise. While their technology integration is focused on developing a collaborative environment where people can easily share their expertise, their cultural initiative is focused on encouraging people to do so."

Branding and slogans like What I Know I Share are the kind of rallying points that people need to develop a common set of goals and beliefs.