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I heard it on the radio this morning and realized I never knew the lyrics or what the song was about. I hopped on Wikipedia to look it up. Did you know that this song is used at graduations and funerals in Taiwan and did you know that the lyrics of South Korea’s national anthem were sung to this melody before Aegukga was composed? (I didn’t believe this at first but I did do a reference check in other parts of the Web).
As I take in this new information it makes me think about one of the books I’m reading: Knowledge Emergence. The book contains a variety of essays on care of knowledge, technology and cooperation, transnational knowledge creation, inter-firm relations, etc.
My takeaway: Knowledge is abundant – which leads to more choices. This can be a good thing but it can also get overwhelming (i.e. The Paradox of Choice does a great job of dissecting this). Companies can rein in the power of abundant knowledge by understanding the social context in which it is being transmitted back and forth. (Is this why “Friend Space” and “Blogrings” thrive online? – Members are essentially creating their own context in which their day to day postings are understood.)
So. While Auld Lang Syne reminds us of New Year’s Eve with Dick Clark, the song might conjure up other emotions or memories for others due to a different context with which the song is understood.
How does your company effectively create context around the mountains of knowledge created and distributed daily? Let me know what you think.
Happy New Year!
M.
Mazie Ng
Human Resources
Xerox
 It’s the time of year when you look back on what you’ve worked on and take pride in the projects that made a difference to someone else. This year, we took our Office Makeover Contest to nonprofit businesses, and the impact was an emotional one. Organizations like the Latin American Coalition in Charlotte, OpenWorld Learning in Denver, the Indiana Chapter of the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation in Indianapolis, and the Hickok Center for Brain Injury in Rochester that already provide so much for the communities they serve—are now meeting the needs of even more with simple changes in technology and design within their offices. It’s extraordinary reactions like this one from Jess George, associate director, Latin American Coalition in Charlotte that get you in the spirit this time of year:
As a nonprofit organization we typically end up sacrificing quality for a good price. This year, we didn't have to choose.
Like most nonprofits, we serve our clients first and all else falls to the side – technology included. Before our Xerox makeover our office was drab and our equipment was outdated. For programs or events, our only way to attract the attention of our audience was to use colored paper or outsource our printing and duplication needs. We had our own clunky, oversized printers and copiers – all many years old, full of quirks and, of course, donated – spread out in different areas of the office. Our technology was old, we were inefficient, and although this was because we were so focused on meeting the needs of our clients, we were blind to the fact that our clients were the ones who suffered.
The makeover has made our office beautiful and efficient – a place our community can be proud of! Not only is the environment a happy and welcoming one for both clients and staff, our printers and multifunction machines have streamlined the way we work and brought life to dull flyers and brochures. And – this year our Latin American Festival was the biggest and most successful event we have ever planned because we had the right technology and the right workspace.
Every year the festival attracts between 15,000 and 18,000 attendees. It’s an incredible undertaking for us, and the documents alone are always a nightmare. From back stage passes to promotional flyers – we create too many or not enough, catch a typo long after a document has been send to the printing house for duplication, or simply end up with poor quality products because we don’t have the time or resources to get them right. But this year, thanks to our new equipment, we saved time and money, and printed all kinds of terrific, full color promotion materials on demand. The piece of mind I had, knowing that whatever I needed could be produced immediately right in my own office – freed me up to concentrate on other important event details.
So, as I reflect on 2006, it’s exciting to know we helped some very important organizations have a Happy New Year—here’s to a successful 2007!
Paul Gleason
Vice President, Small and Medium Business
Xerox
We know that technology is critical to securing an enterprise's data and documents but we also know that information security is essentially a people problem as well as a management problem.
It has been my experience in the FBI and now with Xerox, that many corporations simply do not do a good job in identifying and protecting their critical information assets and trade secrets; the ones that mean the most to survivability and shareholder confidence. Why is this? Why do we get the idea security doesn’t fire on all cylinders despite the growing awareness of risk to confidential and privacy-protected information? The answer circles back to the ‘management’ side of the problem. With the many complex issues and challenges facing enterprises today, one question posed from the audience at all seven of the Security Summits we did last year was, “What can security professionals do to get senior executive buy-in for security? I think this is a very good question that drills down beneath the surface. It recognizes the difference between a top-down model versus a bottom-up or grassroots model. The top-down model has a champion that bridges the communities of interest across the enterprise and fosters a cohesive ‘process’ approach to best understand and mitigate risk. The grassroots approach lacks organizational support and just doesn’t operate on all cylinders.
But how you get upper management buy-in can be a daunting task. There is no pat answer. Some executives think, ‘it won’t happen to me’, and don’t easily scare – even in the face of horrific headlines describing security breaches. Others may consider their investment toward becoming regulatory compliant sufficient enough. Whatever the reason for a lack of senior executive buy-in, the implications are relevant to the need to better identify and protect critical information assets. Security professionals must have their act together to gain this level of buy-in and to have credibility. They must know their company – inside out – and all its assets. They must fully comprehend the ever-changing world of risk and develop specific metrics or measures of performance to track progress and the effectiveness of controls to mitigate risk. And perhaps most importantly, communicate the results to the senior team on a regular basis. Security professionals and risk managers have a unique perspective on business risk and impact that must serve as a counterbalance to the business objective of increasing shareholder confidence and value.
Making a compelling link to the company’s core values may be sufficient enough for some senior executives to raise the security banner, and fear of accountability and even jail time may be sufficient for others, but a razor-sharp security and risk management focus combined with measurable performance metrics can make a compelling case for the right champion to raise the banner and keep it there.
David Drab
Principal, Information Content Security Services
Xerox Global Services
Shouting out to all engineers out there reading this blog:
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printf("hello, world");
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Ok. Just kidding. I’m not really an engineer. Far from it actually (I’m in HR) but hey, I do love keeping up with science…technology… trends…and the market place! Hi there, I’m Mazie - and like Bruce, I’ll be one of the regulars on this blog too.
In future posts, I’ll try to write about what I’m learning about information, technology, social networks, knowledge management and the like - and also throw in some relevant odds and ends too…for a little fun. =)
To start, I came across this new start-up website Oddpodz. It’s basically a website that allows creatives to share information. How do you think start-ups like these are changing the way we manage intellectual property and documenting best practices? Let me know what you think.
Mazie Ng
Human Resources
Xerox
Welcome to Big I little t. My name is Bruce Talbert and I will be one of the regular bloggers on this site. Before I begin, let me give you some background on myself which will hopefully help bring any future dissertations into context. Since I have not yet cracked the nut on becoming independently wealthy, I still have to drag myself out of bed everyday and into the office where I work on technologies for embedded systems that go into multifunction products. My real passion lies outside the office where I’m a volunteer firefighter/EMT with my local fire department. Running into a burning building when everyone else is running out, or working a major trauma call sure beats answering email and attending meetings. If only it paid as well…Anyway I have a degree in investment finance (perhaps I’ll tell that story some other time) and spent time as an IT VAR, as well as the past several years in various capacities with Xerox as an SA in test and development labs, systems engineer, and technical program manager. I’ve specialized over the years in protocols and network administration. I have a wife and 3 kids which round out the story and keep me busy.
A recent article on Computerworld.com discusses the concept that successful companies use by combining the IT/technology function with business processes. These processes are not the typical ones you think of such as HR, or finance, but they align the IT function with business strategies and goals. For instance, a company making widgets might utilize IT for only PC support, file storage, printing, and email. However, a sustainable differentiator for that company might be the utilization of IT to support a business objective of cutting cost out of the widget development cycle. This would entail bringing the IT personnel up to speed in what the business actually does! How many IT people have you come across that know very little about what the company they work for actually does? The IT people who “get it” have the unique ability to look at their field of expertise and merge technology opportunities into the business at hand.
For instance: one thing MFP vendors face is how to get customers to utilize the features they enable in their products. Obviously we are in business to make money too, just as you are, but we try to do it by helping customers realize the benefits the technology can provide and facilitating the adoption of that technology. I think that is actually more fun than developing the technology itself. For instance, a few years ago I worked on the ability to scan a paper document and have it transmitted via email. Xerox was the first to manufacturer to incorporate this feature directly on the box itself without other software or PCs. Although that was a cool feature to work on, it’s been more fun helping customers realize the benefit to their business a feature like that can afford. A major nationwide retailer had process whereby each retail store would FedEx their daily reports to the home office, resulting in a $10-$12 charge per day per store. Once we helped them realize the power of scan to email, they automated this process and are now saving real cash.
Bruce Talbert
Architecture & Systems Engineer
Xerox
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