Sharing information doesn’t have to be complicated or convoluted. Of course, many software manufacturers want to you to believe that it’s complex and expensive. But, enough about money and all those business related headaches of making a profit (don’t let my business school professors find this blog, please). Here are some of the technologies we use at Lockheed Martin to put the fun- back into fundamental knowledge sharing at the grassroots level.

SharePoint Microsoft’s SharePoint is a big part of our knowledge sharing initiatives here. Not only easy to use (did I say that?) it’s also easy to add people to a SharePoint community, change privileges (lock them out), share authoring and administrative responsibilities and manage information. Advanced users, of which I am not one, can completely customize the look and feel of their SharePoint sites. In addition, documents can be “checked out” to manage configuration control and users can create forms, lists, and database connections (the latter with certain additional plug ins – hey it is Microsoft after all). I give SharePoint a five hammer rating (out of five) as a great tool.

Tomoye’s Communities of Practice I’m not a big fan of Tomoye. Frankly, I find it intimidating to use and to teach others to use. We have it, and some people swear by it. But for me, it’s just not happening. Still, I have noticed that we have a lot of COPs (communities of practice) out there in LM land, some which interest me, so I am not adverse to snooping around to see what others are thinking, doing and saying.  When I snoop, though, it becomes apparent who thought this was all a great idea and then gave up and who is a "Tomoye head". In that way I think the Tomoye tool is great, because it allows you to list all your communities without having to fat finger the information in and it allows you to rate the communities. Right now, I am feeling like Rachael Ray, as though I have not met a restaurant I don’t like. However, I give Tomoye 1 hammer for useability from an administrative standpoint (I like to drive the car off the lot immediately, not spend three days trying to figure out how to turn it on) but 4 hammers for organization. I think it might be pretty expensive to get an enterprise license for this particular software

By the way, this is my opinion as a user and implementer. I am not representing LM here.Simply sharing my experience with tools we use. Anyway…

Opentext’s Livelink: I would really love Livelink if we had gone out and bought all the cool stuff it allows you to do. I think in Livelink you have the makings of a great project management, document management, and all around knowledge system. In addition, you can create neat GUI’s (graphical user interfaces) really easily if you buy that capability from Opentext, but it’s more difficult if you don’t. Still, any HTML tool will allow you to create a decent GUI (I use Dreamweaver) but it’s a lot more work than if you just use their tool. I give them 5 hammers for a great tool but -1 hammer (that’s a negative one) for nickel and diming people on capabilities.

Instant Messaging. You either love it or hate it. There is nobody I have met who has said “I’m neutral about IM.” You can’t be. I love it, until I hate it. And I hate it when I am constantly interrupted and I feel that my space is being invaded. IM does offer a way to close people down. Simply “appear” off line or sign off as “busy” or “away” and people don’t bug you. With IM, you can instantly share files, share a white board, get useful information or help or, best of all, sidebar during conference calls (or even share the conversation to ask questions instantly of the presenter – very cool). But if you are sidebarring, make sure it’s about the content of the call, tsk, tsk.

Blogs and Wikis: We are piloting these and overall it’s going OK.However, we have cut off access to Blogs and Wikis to the majority of our employee population until the pilot is over and legal is satisfied so the jury is still out.

These are just a few of the tools made readily available to us at LM to use. There are many more, but I think these offer a great place to get started. What you can do with the right tools for the job, to quote Martha, is bounded only by your own imagination. Great tools (like a hammer, for example) give you the opportunity to either create something great or make a mess, so approach with caution and make sure to develop a plan before you proceed. Get as many people as you can involved who will add new ideas and approaches to how you set up your collaboration center  and how you go about collecting organizational stories.

Story telling and knowledge sharing are all about collaboration (see “Life in the Void”) and these tools are simply a means to collaborate across geographies, time zones and businesses.