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December 2005

ARTICLES
Collaboration software: the productivity perspective
Collaboration software allows people to work together electronically to accomplish a task, such as writing a report, planning a PR event, or completing an IT project. The trouble is that collaboration can take many forms, from a simple e-mail exchange to a complex workflow with many steps and participants. In this article we look at how collaboration software affects the productivity of individuals, work groups, and the enterprise as a whole in four different workflow scenarios. Next we discuss the pros and cons of five different technology strategies from the perspectives of both enterprise and business unit productivity. Finally, we comment on the results of our own and our members' experiments with collaboration tools.
DIGEST
Knowledge Base Editor's Digest
This month's entries include articles on four enterprise architecture case studies, the value of human "curators" in the age of Google, how to select collaboration software, and a call for IT departments to facilitate innovation by lead users.
 
NEW FEATURES
New features for 2006 include:
Demonstrations — Free, one-hour demonstrations of the Montague Institute's teaching Lab and A - Z indexes. For a list, see the 2006 calendar. Members only.
 
Point of View (POV) articles — Monthly commentaries on one of the Digest articles. This month's POV is about metaphors in user interfaces.
 
Teleconferences — Four teleconference roundtables are scheduled for 2006. For a list, see the 2006 calendar. Members only.
 
Two A - Z indexes — The Knowledge Base Editor's Digest now has its own A - Z index. Topics in the Digest index are cross-referenced to topics in the Montague Institute Review A - Z index.
 
REGULAR FEATURES
Best of the Lists (collected wisdom of the world's information experts)
Identifying board members
 
How to get the most from our Web site (tutorial)
17 slides that contain an overview of our content and tips on how to use it.
 
Top 20 articles
Links to the 20 most popular articles on this site based on last month's server statistics.
 
ROUNDTABLES
Best practices for SharePoint and other collaboration software (Teleconference, February 16, 2006)
Collaboration software can improve work group productivity, but it raises a host of editorial and business management questions. In this 3-hour teleconference roundtable, Montague Institute founder Jean Graef will lead a group of experienced practitioners in a discussion of these issues.
 
COURSES
The following courses can be taken at any time via the Web. Participants receive expert individual coaching. There's no need to wait for a group to form, but we strongly encourage team participation within a company or business unit. Instruction revolves around a real world project of the participant's choosing. Project data is entered into an online lab (metadata repository) and can be exported or hosted at the conclusion of the course. Companies can also choose to license a custom version of the Lab software to install in house. Some courses have prerequisite requirements, but often they can be met by on-the-job experience. For a complete list of courses, see Knowledge Base Publishing Course series. The most popular courses are listed below.
 
Information modeling and metadata management
A hands-on course that shows you how to develop, evaluate, and use information models and metadata management tools. Models and tools include ontologies, topic maps, thesauri, metadata repositories, crosswalks and metadata maps, XML schema and style sheets, and application interfaces.
 
Creating and using business taxonomies
A hands-on course that covers the fundamentals of business taxonomies: how to do a needs analysis, create a controlled vocabulary, develop a thesaurus, and use taxonomy components in navigation. Includes personalized assistance from our instructors and supervised work on a real project in the Web-based Lab.
 
Integrating taxonomies
A hands-on course that covers the creation and use of authorities as well as the development of two independent thesauri that are linked through cross references. Includes personalized assistance from our instructors and supervised work on a real project in the Web-based Lab.