Portals and KM

Video Blogging Steps Up: True Confessions from PostSecret

Video blogging has been around for a while but it seems to be getting more prominence now. Steve Garfield has been doing it for some time in Boston. Here is a brief post on some of his earlier efforts, Video Blogs – Steve Garfield from the DNC, that I found useful. Now someone has some up with the killer app for video blogging, true confessions. PostSecret, which facilitates people publishing their secrets anonymously online, is starting to do video blogs according to a New York Times article, Thousands of Words and Now Pictures, Too, which appeared yesterday.

It said that, “in December, Regan Books, an imprint of HarperCollins, published "PostSecret: Extraordinary Confessions from Ordinary Lives," a compilation whose release coincided with a Washington exhibit of the anonymous postcards received by the blog. The book was ranked No. 41 in sales on Amazon.com at midday yesterday.”

It is not surprising that someone would come up with online reality TV and that there is a big audience for it. Some blogs have served this function with words. The sponsors also plan to move the concept into actual television. What’s more, they plan to start a TV sitcom based on the blog of Stephanie Klein. I took a look and I see why the New York Times did not provide a link to it when they linked to everything else, but I do. Now there is a business model, blog your personal secrets and get published and serialized on TV. I wonder if the photos are actually Spephanie. She certainly has the Sara Jessica Parker look which I am sure is not accidental.

In a more modest effort, Gawker.com, recently announced plans to develop and publish original video content to support its blog on New York media. I am waiting to be discovered.

Networks for Newbies - Barry Wellman

Here is a good chance to get an excellent introduction to social networks. Barry Wellman, Professor of Sociology, University of Toronto and NetLab Director, gives a half-day workshop, Networks for Newbies, every year at the Sunbelt Network conference. As Barry says, it “is totally non-technical, but emphasizes concepts, lore.” The slides for his Networks for Newbies session are available at his site under the Publications section under social network methods.

He was teaching at the University of Toronto when I was there obtaining my doctorate in educational psychology. It did take a course in his department on participant observation but it was with one his colleagues.

It did find a number of other interesting articles that you can download for free which serve as introductions to the field. I am quoting below the description on the site.

"The Global Village: Internet and Community" (Barry Wellman). Idea&s – “The Arts & Science Review, University of Toronto, 1(1): 26-30. Magazine article for the general reader about NetLab's research into the internet in everyday life, especially their local and long-distance communities.”

Connecting Community: On and Offline – Barry Wellman – “The Internet is no longer a separate world for the in-group millions of people routinely come online. Rather than isolating users in a virtual world, the Internet extends community in the real world, and connects people through individualized and flexible social networks rather than fixed and grounded groups. The article gives examples from NetLab's research.”

The New Orleans Menu – A Site for Friends of NOLA Food and Restaurants

Tom Fitzmorris provides news for friends of New Orleans food and restaurants at the New Orleans Menu. Some of the content is only open to paid subscribers but the cost is whatever you want to contribute, interesting pricing scheme.

The free stuff included a list of reopened New Orleans restaurants which recently stood at 436 with more to come. Notables included: Antoine’s , Arnaud’s, Bayona, Emeril’s, Brigtsen’s , Casamento’s, Clancy’s, Galatoire’s, Maple Street Café, Marigny Brasserie, Napoleon House, Jacques-Imo’s, Peristyle, Tujague’s, Upperline, and the Windsor Court Grill Room. I have written about a number of these places in a post with my suggestions on New Orleans restaurants and another with restaurant picks by Harmony St. Charles.

This looks like you get a good meal in New Orleans now. I plan to go in the spring. Although this artilce in the NY Times, Can New Orleans Save the Soul of Its Food?, raises issues about the long term prospects for New Orleans cooking.

Thanks to John Maloney for pointing this out.

More Santa Fe Restaurants – A Local’s Favorite

I recently received an endorsement and some more favorites to my post on Santa Fe Restaurants: A Frequent Visitor’s Picks that I wanted to raise to post status with links and logistics. Thanks to Marc Orchant for providing this. Marc is a New Mexico resident, and writer of many blogs, including, The Office Weblog as part of the Weblog, Inc. network. He is currently the Storyteller at VanDyke Software. This role includes directing the firm’s marketing communications and public relations through its web site, discussion forums, and other channels. Marc’s blogging experiences are also a case in our book, Business Blogs: A Practical Guide.

In addition to approving the prior selections, Marc provided the following additions with his comments in parentheses.

El Farol (excellent tapas, sangria, and music). The site looks great. It says that El Farol “combines classic tastes of Spain, Santa Fe and Mexico with a unique blend of art, dance, flavor and aroma.” This includes flamenco dinner shows. They even have Chicago blues on occasion. It is located at 808 Canyon Road Santa Fe, (505)983-9912

315 Bistro (French/nouveau with a great wine list, wonderful prix fixe dinners and attentive, personal service). Here is the Gourment Magazine review. It is located at 315 Old Santa Fe Trail. 505.986.9190

The Cowgirl Hall of Fame (great bar-b-q and burgers and lots of colorful characters). There is frequently live music. I liked the Cabeza de Ajo starter for $5.25 a head of roasted garlic, planted in the middle of a plate of melted jack cheese with tomatillo salsa and toasted baguette. It is located at 319 S. Guadalupe St., Santa Fe (505)982-2565

What Blogs Bring to the Enterprise – SLA – Boston

This Tuesday Janaury 31, I will conduct a morning workshop on What Blogs Bring to the Enterprise for the SLA at Bain & Co. 131 Dartmouth St. Boston, MA. It starts at 9 AM with registration and networking. The workshop runs from 9:30 to noon. The combination of accessibility, transparency, and archiving that blogs provide has the potential to greatly enrich business communication. This session summarizes the insights gained from our interviews for Business Blogs: A Practical Guide and other sources. It addresses the use of blogs for enterprise applications such as marketing communication and knowledge management, as well as internal communication, project management, and collaboration. I hope to see your there. enterprise 2.0

Legal Issues of Blogging - Sheehan Phinney Bass + Green PA

Here is a summary about the legal issues of blogging by an attorney at the site of the law firm of Sheehan Phinney Bass + Green PA. Disclaimer: I am not an attorney or legal expert so I cannot evaluation what they say beyond common sense. It discusses personal employee blogs and corporate blogs. There are some familiar examples of both and how trouble has occurred.

The section on legal issues is useful summary. Here is part of what they said about personal blogs:

“First and foremost, make sure that your computer-use policy is up-to-date and specifically addresses blogs. Second, discuss with employees the company’s position on personal blogs. The chief complaint of all employees terminated for their blogging activity seems to be that they were never told the limits. While some limits may be self-evident, an employer can greatly ease any tension and uncertainty by developing a clear policy addressing the limits of permissible blogging activity.”

Good ideas. A blog policy is key for any company. A recent HP study found that 10% of small businesses are already using blogs for marketing purposes. I alos encourage anyone who has a blog to offer a policy. The policy for this blog is contained in my “about” section. Here is a prior post on My Blog Policy and Why I Blog. Here is a nice summary of personal blog policy issues by Lisa Williams.

The need for guidelines naturally extends to corporate sponsored blogs. Michael adds that “liability for violating securities regulations on selective disclosure. Thus, part of the company’s policy should identify the types of information (such as information about buying and selling stock, product launches, regulatory proceedings or investigations, results of product trials, etc.) that are not allowed in blog postings.” This issue also applies to individual employees personal blogs.

Here is more at Tom Reynold's comprehensive blog policy post, How To Blog And Not Lose Your Job. Required reading.

Here is a blog by Meg Spohn who got fired from her job as an instructor at DeVry College in Colorado because of her blog, which was not being critical of the school. Lisa Williams provided the link.

Blog Advantages – Portals Magazine

Here is a nice short piece, Blog Advantages, by Demir Barlas of Portals Magazine on the high-level benefits of the corporate weblog. It contains a familiar example, the GM Fastlane blog, but goes into some depth on several of the posts. What I like is that a magazine that began to look at the enterprise portals and intranet market is now continuing to look at business blogs. This is not their first piece on blogs. There have been several earlier ones which you can find summarized at The Case for Blogging. I wrote one of them as my first piece on business blogs in the summer of 2004.

In the piece on Blog Advantages, Demir concludes with the following:

“And, remarkably, this kind of valuable information is free; just by having an open, frequently updated blog, GM solicits all kinds of voices that would otherwise go unheard. If you haven't adopted a blog yet, keep in mind that it can draw in perspectives you won't get from your managers or partners, and that everyday posters can identify precisely what you need to improve. It's a remarkable concept, and it's only going to get more powerful in 2006.”

Blogs as Personal Knowledge Management – Learning 2.0 Podcast Series

I did my first podcast last week on Blogs as Personal Knowledge Management as part of the Otter Group’s Learning 2.0 Podcast series. The series offers weekly insights on learning in the world of Web 2.0. Speakers include Kathleen Gilroy, Glen Mohr, and now myself. Topics include the use of aggregators, blogs and other Web 2.0 tools to enhance and transform the learning process.

It was an interesting process for me. In this case, I spoke about the use of blogs for personal knowledge management, or how, as a number of people have suggested, they can serve as your back-up brain, keeping track of important ideas, documents, and meetings in a searchable archive than can be made accessible to others. Blogs can act like personal filing cabinets. When I have to speak or write about a topic that I have recorded in my blog, I can quickly do a search to find the right material. And then I can send these posts to anyone else that I want to share this knowledge with. For me, my blog is worth the effort simply for this capability even if no one else read it. It saves me an enormous amount of time.

In upcoming podcasts I will cover other business uses of blogs and other web 2.0 tools, including such applications as team workspaces and project management. This next generation of the web has transformed the opportunities that are open to the learning designer. I have long been in favor of participatory learning. Now this approach is more possible than ever. Kathleen and I have also joined to create the Learning 2.0 Boot Camp to enable you to develop work plans for using the existing and emerging Web 2.0 tools to develop innovative programs that invite participation and transparency in the learning process.

The New Digital Life – Rick Segal

Here is a great story about how you can be connected through hand held wireless devices. It also shows how to be nice to airline people and the rewards. I used to do some of this through my cell phone connected to my administrative assistant – just the scheduling part – not the HBO part. I have also been rewarded in the same way by airline gate agents appreciating being treated nicely for a change. Curious? Go to Rick Segal’s post on The New Digital Life. I learned about it from Cesar Brea through an automatic notification in my email inbox. He learned about it from the Scobleizer.

BTW – I am hopefully returning from visiting my daughter in Jackson Wyoming as you read this (if you read it on the day it was posted), the wonders of advance posting. Perhaps I will also get some nice treatment by the airlines.

Index to Cities and Towns with Restaurant Picks

I have now provided restaurant picks by friends for an increasing number of cities and towns. This blog post serves as an index to them with links for easy access. I will continue to update this index as I add more places.

Why do I wro\ite about restaurant picks by friends when Zagat and other places have plenty of reviews for most cities? My reviews are by people I know and trust their tastes. I do not know the people in Zagat’s. I get both personalization and authentication. You just have to decide how much you trust me versus the “official” guides. Google seems to like me more than some of them but then what do they know. I certainly do not pretend to be an expert. I just know what I like and the list is paart of my personal knowledge management system. I hope it helps you, also. Here is a post that explains it in more detail, Restaurant Reviews – Why I Blog Them. In this post I also show how I both agree and disagree with another ’official” reviewer, Gourmet Magazine.

Here are the places:
Ann Arbor, Michigan
Belmont and Somerville, MA lunches
Boston, MA - city limits
Boston, MA - surroundings
Boston and New York - Where to get good coffee
Boston Chinatown
Carolina BBQ
Cambridge, MA (1)
Cambridge, MA (2) update
Detroit
Detroit Restaurants: Part Two: Heavy Eating
Hanover, NH
Iowa City
Jackson, Wyoming
Jackson. Wyoming Update (2/06)
Jackson, Wyoming Cowboy Dance Bars
Los Angeles
Los Angeles Fast Food
Maggie Valley, NC
New York – Midtown and Village
New York - Upper West Side
New York – ICoppi & Savoy
New York – Spotted Pig & Magnolia Bakery
New Orleans – my picks
New Orleans – Harmony St. Charles
New Orleans Update 5/05
New Orleans 11/05 update
New Orleans Update 4/06
New South Cusine
Northern Michigan
Oklahoma Barbecue
Onset, MA – An Occasional Visitor’s Favorites
Philly Cheese Steak
Pioneer Valley (Amherst) MA Area
Pioneer Valley (Amherst) MA Area Brew Pubs
San Francisco – unlimited budget
San Francisco - ethnic
San Francisco –good value
San Francisco - Cafe Kati
Santa Fe
Santa Fe Update
Seattle
Seattle (healthy)
St. Louis
Tuckee, Nevada
Upper Cape Cod Massachusetts
Vermont Country Inns
Victor, Idaho
Washington, DC
Western Michigan
Williamsburg (Brooklyn) New York
Williamburg Update 4/06

Canada
Quebec (1)
Quebec (2)
Quebec Country Inns – Eastern Townships
Toronto
Toronto Update (3/06)
Vancouver

Europe & Asia
Barnes, UK
Geneva, Switzerland
Lucca, Italy
Lugano, Italy
Paris (1)
Paris (2) – Frenchguys.com
Meals in Paris September 2006
Eating in Honfleur, Normandy Coast
Rome
Sardinia & one from Rome
Sardinian Beach Bars
Singapore
Zurich, Switzerland

Quebec Country Inns – Eastern Townships

I recently, wrote about my trip to Quebec City for to celebrate the new years. One of the joys of going there is the opportunity to stay at one or more of the country inns in the Quebec country side of the Eastern Townships region. There are several nice ones just over the Vermont border about half way between either Boston or New York and Quebec City.

The Ripplecove Inn is my favorite and the one we stayed at this time. It is located on the pleasant small Lake Massawippi. In the summer there is a beach, tennis, and boats to use. In the winter you can watch ice fishing or whatever else crosses your mind. The stay includes dinner and breakfast. They also offer lunch. Dinner is a wonderful experience. This time for starters we had potato and goat cheese charlotte with sun dried tomatoes. And a wonderful smoked oyster chowder that had chanterelle mushrooms on an oyster shell on the side. The main courses included a rack of lamb encrusted with gremolata and a pruee of roasted salisify that was excellent. The other was several quails with winter vegetables. This was followed by a silky crème bruelee with pistachios and chocolate curls and a molten chocolate cake with spiced red wine reduction. It was fortunate that you do not have to go far to find your room. The wine list is also quite nice with many reasonable French reds. It is located at Auberge Ripplecove, 700, rue Ripplecove, Ayer's Cliff (Quebec), Canada, J0B 1C0 phone: (819) 838-4296

The Manoir Hovey is another fine place close by that I have stayed at in the past. It is also on Lake Massawippi with opportunities for summer and winter sports. The food is also a reason to go. Appetizers included a Calamari confit, Pan-seared scallops and Townships bacon lardons, mousseline of potatoes smoked over hickory shavings, carrot confit with star anise, as well as a Terrine of duck foie gras from the Périgord farm. Main courses included: Seared supreme of Brome Lake duck, sauce of wild cherries picked by Mr. Garcia, polenta with fine herbs; Pan-seared loin of venison from the Highwater farm, roasted baby vegetables, reduction of blackcurrant liqueur from Île d’Orléans; and Roasted grain-fed squab from the Miboulay farm, in the heart of Québec’s Montérégie farming region, seared Mulard duck foie gras, King Oyster mushrooms. Nice to know where the stuff came from. Hovey's restaurant recently got the 2004 DiRoNA (Distinguished Restaurants of North America) award. The wine cellar claims over 900 labels and earned the 2005 and 2004 Best of Awards of Excellence from Wine Spectator magazine. It is located at 575 chemin Hovey in North Hatley. Phone: (800) 661-2421 - (819)842-2421

Braintrust 2006 – San Francisco

It is nice to see that this year’s Braintrust 2006 is going to be held February 20 – 22 in San Francisco. It is one of the better KM conferences. There are many well known speakers on the Braintrust conference agenda. I presented there last year and enjoyed catching up on the field as I did at KM World this fall. It continues to be nice to see knowledge management alive and well and able to sustain support for these conferences as I wrote about in KM is Alive and Well at Braintrust 2005. Then, I added more on the sustainability of knowledge management after KM World. It appears to still be the case.

I see from the agenda that the Most Admired Knowledge Enterprise awards are still being given out. This is a long running initiative. I used to speak at their London events in the mid to late 90s which is getting to be almost ten years ago. It is a long running gig.

Disruptive Innovation Conference, Toronto, Ontario

On February 27 in Toronto number of industry experts will share their perspectives on the organization of the future at the Disruptive Innovation Conference. Hubert Saint-Onge will explore the changing role of senior executives. Steve Wunker will cover what next for innovators. Cindy Gordon will discuss research from her new book, Winning at Collaboration Commerce: The Next Competitive Advantage. Wayne Ronhaar will describe new approaches to Business Capability Mapping and Analysis developed by Microsoft. I am pleased to join this group and will discuss why blogs are a disruptive technology for marketing and customer communication models based on research from our book, Business Blogs: A Practical Guide.

The event will be held in the Founders’ Room of the Toronto Cricket Curling and Skating Club, 141 Wilson Ave. Toronto. Here is a link to the complete Disruptive Innovation Conference agenda and registration information. It is co-sponsored by SAP. Helix Commerce, KM World, and KM Cluster. SAP uses blogs extensively for marketing by employees at all levels. All the talk will followed by drinks and networking.

Are We Limited to 150 “Close” Relationships?

Here is an interesting article by two British scientist, R.A. Hill, and R.I.M. Dunbar. "Social network size in humans.” It was published in Human Nature 2003, 14:53-72. They looked at social networking in Western society through Christmas card exchange. They were following up on some neurological work that implied the human brain, because of the cortex size, might limit us to the ability to actively handle about 150 close relationships at any one time. The authors claimed that their work supported this contention.

They found that each household sent out an average of 68 cards to an average of 153 people (as some cards went to more than one person). I may be missing something here but to me it just means that white Brits (the sample) send out a lot of Christmas cards. It takes a great leap of faith to imply that this cultural act correlates with the closeness of recipients. There are probably many differing criteria for sending out cards. I am always amazed at some of the cards I get. Based on my own experience, I would not correlate degree of closeness with probability of receiving a card from someone. If anything, there may be a negative correlation with the exception of my relatives.

I wonder what other experimental situations can be mined here. Perhaps your email address list? What about your blog roll? But there are many reasons people get on each of these lists. I recently got a Linked In request from some guy who called himself “I am your linkedin daddy” with over 6,000 “close” connections. I wonder how big is his cortex? I declined but it appears that he got a lot of people who will accept any invitation to be connected. Perhaps he wants to sent up a “match.com” type service for linkedin junkies.

How many active relationships can you manage at one time? Intuitively I think the number 150 is perhaps right but I would not base this on Christmas Card behavior. Of course, this means you have to find 150 people who want to be connected to you.

Thanks to Valdis Krebs for sharing the link to this work.

Learning 2.0 Boot Camp – The Otter Group

Last week Kathleen Gilroy and I announced our new Learning 2.0 Boot Camp. We have already received some very positive feedback on this program. It allows you to jumpstart your efforts in this space by developing a practical Learning 2.0 project plan. The program is spaced over six weeks with about 24 hours of time requirements. You work in a team to define a project idea, develop a plan, and deliver the plan as a podcast and slide set.

Projects will likely take existing business processes and services and re-develop them into new models based on Web 2.0 services. There are many possibilities. For example, your team may find a way to distribute information more effectively using RSS feeds; or you may design a talent pool system that helps identify new talent for projects; or you may see the need for a wiki for customer service agents. You will document your project work on blogs read by all participants and faculty. And all projects will be reviewed and critiqued by the Learning 2.0 faculty. At the end of the program you will walk away knowing how to use these services and how to apply them.

A five page description of the Learning 2.0 Boot Camp is available for download at the Otter Group site. Kathleen has also started a Learning 2.0 podcast series that is available for free download. Podcast series on Negotiation by Dr. Josh Weiss, Associate Director of Harvard's Global Negotiation and Innovation Project by Dr. Eric Mankin, Executive Director of ICE at Babson, are also available at the Otter Group site. I plan to add a few podcasts to the Learning 2.0 series on ways that blogs can enhance personal productivity.

Best Recruiting Blog of 2005 - Gautam Ghosh

The Electronic Recruiting News said that Gautam Ghosh “was our top nominee for Best Recruiting Blog of 2005. His blog is entitled : "Gautam Ghosh on Management: Gautam's thoughts on Organizations, Work, People, Strategy, Learning, Knowledge, Innovation and High Performance. Focused on India, but spanning the globe." It's a stunning set of perspectives on Recruiting, HR and business realities.”

Gautum has received others awards recently and is frequently quoted on HR issues as in this article for DNA India. He was also a case in our book, Business Blogs: A Practical Guide. He is a human resource, training & organizational development professional located in Bangalore, India. While he often writes on topics of local interest, many of his posts address global issues. It is good reading for anyone interested in HR issues.

Santa Fe Restaurants: A Frequent Visitor’s Picks

Here are interesting sounding restaurant picks from John Maloney. John has provided food reviews and picks in the past, most note worthy is his three part series on San Francisco restaurants, his home town. Between meals John runs KM Cluster and Colabria, among other things. I have enjoyed a number of meals with John and certainly trust his judgment on food. I went to Santa Fe a number of years ago and enjoyed the opera, mountain climbing, and some good food. This was before my blog so I did not write anything down. I appreciate this guide for when I go back. Let me know of any additions. These review are in John’s words. I simply added the links and contact information.

Tomasita's -- Located in an older building near the historic train station, this chile temple is the most appropriate venue to start a gastronomic tour of Santa Fe. The menu is extensive, and the daily specials are particularly good. You will be stopping in their seductive bar for a margarita, since they don't take reservations, and there is always a line. A gregarious bar pal we met ordered verbatim a "Wednesday Christmas." Wednesday is simmered pork and a day's special, available, well, every day of the week. "Christmas" is the Santa Fe local codeword for dishes smothered in red and green chile. This place alone is worth a trip to the New Mexican high desert. It is located on 500 S Guadalupe St., (505) 983-5721.

Cafe Pasqual's -- This legendary cafe, located just off The Plaza, is the most popular place for locals in Santa Fe. A perennial winner of the prestigious James Beard Award, Pasqual's is Santa Fe's treatment of a relaxed, friendly cafe serving the best, 100% local, 100% organic fare in New Mexico and probably the USA. Don't event think of a reservation and be prepared to wait on the sidewalk for 45 minutes or more. It is absolutely worth it for the best breakfasts, lunch and dinner available. The menu is mostly traditional, but brought to extraordinary heights by the organics, culinary craftsmanship and original touches on the classics. It is guaranteed, if God had a restaurant here on earth, it would probably be Cafe Pasqual's. It is located at 121 Don Gaspar, (505) 983-9340 or 1-800-722-7672

Maria's -- Located on the outskirts, surrounded by new banks, strip developments and wide suburban-style avenues, Maria's is an adobe refuge that has stood the test of time. Effusive local proclaim Maria's has the only worthwhile margarita in town or state. In fact, the margarita menu is four, duplexed, fine-print pages, elaborating at least sixty variations, from five bucks to over seventy five bucks each. They are never blended. Freshly squeeze lime juice only, of course. To demonstrate your margarita chops, order one with anejo (aged) tequila only. Cointreau or Grand Marnier only please, never triple sec. Note that Santa Fe is at 7000'. One margi' feels like two, and two feels like four, and so forth. Have fun, but be careful! Maria's also features a crackling kiva in reception. There is a cherubic, brightly-clad Latina in a spotless glass enclosure hand-crafting the best, freshest tortillas you ever tasted. The sublime specialty is chile rellenos. Order the staggering appetizer plate to navigate to your main course. The rustic flan is the best in Santa Fe. It is located at 555 West Cordova Road 505/983-7929

The Shed -- This charming place is the last outpost of good eating on Santa Fe's famed Plaza. It is a 16th-century building (yes, sixteenth century) with all types of small rooms, cut throughs, low ceilings and terra-cotta floors. The cuisine is solid and inexpensive. There is a spacious, popular bar. A tiny, sunken kiva gets a lot of attention in winter. The kitchen produces all the standards, such as enchiladas, stewed pork, and posole. What is positively off-the-chart and earns The Shed the James Beard recognition year over year is locally grown red-chile sauce. Wow. Because it is inexpensive and fun, the shed is popular with young people, students and artists. It is located at 113 1/2 E Palace Ave. (505) 982-9030 (505) 982-0902

The Pink Adobe -- At the end of the Santa Fe Trail, lies the legendary Pink Adobe. Long the favorite of movie stars, writers, bohemians and Santa Fe society, the Pink has not lost one whiff of authenticity. Sure, they've expanded to a cafe and sell t-shirts, but genuine, earthy quality of the setting, people and cuisine seem just to get better over the years. The Pink Adobe is really two buildings, face to face. One is the famous/infamous Dragon Bar, the other, the restaurant. What sets the Pink Adobe apart is the fusion of high New Mexican cuisine paired with authentic down-home New Orleans cooking. Normally, this type blasphemous culinary 'con'-fusion should be avoid, but this place makes it transcendental. After all, it takes New Orleans to put the pink in adobe. The specials, such as red-chile barbeque ribs with green chile corn bread are tops. Easily the best apple pie in North America. (Sorry, it is utterly indescribable. Just order it, you will agree.). It is located at 406 Old Santa Fe Trail (505) 983-7712

Note: These establishments are institutions, having remained consistently good for decades. They deserve the requisite attention and respect. The balance of dining in Santa Fe can be touristy, flat and disappointing. Beware.

Finally, for the tuxedoed set and those about to go down on bended knee, The Compound on Canyon Drive is the place, It is excellent. For stylish hipsters and art dealers, go to Geronimo's, also on Canyon. Both are expensive, but worth it for high desert elegance. Also, state law prohibits corkage, off-sale liquor and carry-out of unfinished wine. New Mexico has a severe drunk driving problem and enforcement/penalties to match. Fuego, in our hotel, had a prix fixe menu for $175.00 (sic), sans wine, coffee, tip. Yes, Virginia, there is a thriving market in Santa Fe for this sort of excess, but considering, you're wise save that kinda dinning money for New York, Paris or your congressional representative.

Celebrating the New Year in Quebec City Restaurants

This year I had the fortune to celebrate the last three days of 2005 in one of my favorite places, Quebec City. I was surprised to find that my hotel of choice, The Hotel Dominion 1912 was recently rated the number one hotel in Canada by Traveler Magazine. It is a great hotel but they usually reserve such designations for much more expensive places. This place is value for money but now it has been discovered. This place is located in the lower city at 126 rue St-Pierre (418-692-2224), near the waterfront and St. Jean Street with its many galleries and a few bistros. The hotel was built as a warehouse in 1912 and converted in the last twenty years. The rooms have high ceilings and great views if you get above the fifth floor. I only hope they do not raise their prices. It is bad enough to have the stronger Canadian dollar. What used to be a 40% discount because of the currency exchange rates is now only 10%.

I do not normally write down all the dishes on a trip but these were worth the effort to remember them.

Café Du Monde was the choice for lunch the first day. It recently moved to be on the water front in a ferry terminal. Classic Paris bistro food is served with a good view of the ice flows in the St. Lawrence. Two onion soups and a shared puff pastry with escargots in a garlic cream sauce went well with a Kronenboug on the cold day. It is located at 84 Dalhousie, Vieux-Port (418) 692-4455.

L’ Echaude served us dinner the first night. It is my Quebec favorite for bistro food. Others agree. The place was full and people were being turned away but we had booked two weeks in advance. We started with a Jerusalem artichoke cream soup with truffle emulsion. Then, we had Angus tenderloin with a shallot red wine reduction and, the best part, a nice piece of bone marrow. It is hard to find this is the US. We also had a roast duck with plenty of skin and a nice sauce. With it were some of the best potatoes I have eaten anywhere. They were cubed and sauted in the duck pan juices with some pancetta and a few winter vegetables, also cubed. A rich chocolate pie was shared at the end. It is located around the corner from the Hotel Dominion on 73 Sault-au-Matelot (418) 692-1299.

The hotel serves an excellent cold breakfast with four different types of croissant. cheese, rabbit terrine, fresh squeezed orange and grapefruit juice and other good stuff. You can have it in the lobby in front of their very large fire place. They also provide trays in your front to bring it back.

Lunch the next day was on the main shopping street in the old town at the Pub Saint-Alexandre as they had onion soup and it was cold again. We shared a classic grilled ham and gruyere on bagette and, of course, pommes frites. They also had some of the Quebec Unibroue beers brewed in the Belgium tradition. I had a Don De Dieu which is hard to find in Cambridge. You can usually only get their Fin de Monde here. I later took back several different types of the Unibroue beer including Trois Pistoles and Don De Dieu. We noticed that they had blues that night so we came back. It is located at 1087 rue St-Jean (418) 694-0015.

Dinner was at L’ Ardoise near our hotel on 71 St. Jean Street (418) 694-0213. It served acceptable bistro food which was fine as we just wanted something simple before the blues. We had a duck confit with Grand Marnier sauce and pommes frites. In addition there was a nice pork tenderloin in a maple and walnut sauce, very Canadian.

Going back to the Pub Saint-Alexandre for blues turned out to be a good idea. We heard the Riverside Blues Group who talked in French and sang in English with a French & American accent, which seems a common practice. So we got many covers such as B. B. King’s “le trill es gone,” some Clapton, Muddy Waters, and the singer got her mojo working with a French accent. The female lead got most excited when she did CCR (Credence Clearwater Revival) and she did five of them during the three sets we stayed for. She had amazing bug eyes which got bigger on the high notes. The second set was the liveliest with dancing on the bar by some of the audience. They keep going until 1, a good warm up for New Year’s Eve. The pub also had the dark Leffe beer from Belgium on tap and a lot of other great beers from Europe and Quebec.

Walking around earlier we also found that there is blues at Le Pape Georges in the lower town (418) 692-1320 but opted for the Pub Saint Alexandre.

Aviatic Club hosted a New Year’s Eve party with champagne and appetizers, an excellent six course meal (see below) with a different wine with three of the courses, and champagne at midnight. All the wine was included and they followed the bottomless cup policy that is usually reserved for coffee. I was amazed that they would continuously offer to top off your glass with any of the courses. The price was at least half of what a Boston club would charge for all this. A live rock band fronted the active dance floor. The band, aka the Electrik Fab Four Band, counted down midnight James Brown’s “Sex Machine.” The lead singer opted for a toned down Clock Work Orange Look with black shirt and wide red tie. The club is located in the train station (418) 522-3555. It appeared we were the only out-of-towners and we were grateful for the hotel to tell us where the mid-aged Quebecers go on New Year’s Eve to party.

The first course involved salmon in several ways, including smoked and sashimi with a dark sesame sauce with a Tokay Pinot Gris. Next, was a first for me, kangaroo tenderloin mushrooms and a lot of other stuff and a nice old vine Zinfandel. After a citronelle with champagne, we had duck foie gras and blue fin tuna on opposite sides of the plate with some nice potatoes in sauce between. This came with a pinot noir. A Quebec cheese course followed and then a large assortment of deserts.

Before we left town the next day, we stopped at a market for bread, crossiants, cheese, pate, Bayonne ham, and other goodies to bring back along with the Uniboure beer. During the seven hour drive through Maine we feasted on some of this stuff.

Here is more on Quebec restaurants.

Wikis, RSS, and Blogs - New Ways to Solve Old Problems – Mass. Tech Trends Forum

Next Wednesday, January 18, 2006 from 8:00-11:00 a.m. the Mass Tech Leadership Council - Technology Trends Forum will present an interesting program on Wikis, RSS, and Blogs - New Ways to Solve Old Problems. The panel includes the following:

• Dan Bricklin, President, Software Garden Inc
• Nitin Gupta, Media & Entertainment Strategies Analyst, Yankee Group
• Kathleen Gilroy, CEO, The Otter Group
• Shimon Rura, Software Developer, Renesys and creator of VOO2DO.com
• Bill Russell, Attorney in Technology, Media and Communications Group, DLA Piper
• Pito Salas, President, Blogbridge

I know Kathleen, Shimon, and Pito quite well and they always have something interesting to say. The other three have good reputations, even though it is not the Bill Russell. The panel will review the web tools and services landscape, and provide examples of how they are enabling new solutions to old problems. The event will be held at the Silicon Valley Bank, 2221 Washington St. One Newton Executive Park, Newton. You can find out more details and register online at the Mass Software site.

BlogBridge Reading Lists

Pito Salas told me recently that the big new thing in BlogBridge is Reading Lists. BlogBridge is a great open source blog reader and aggregator. Reading Lists are a set of RSS feeds from blogs or other sites which someone else is maintaining, as OPML. They aggregate content from multiple sources. It is like a high powered blog roll that can be easily managed, modified, and shared.

BlogBridge can create a Guide for a Reading List that someone maintains and have in automatically populated based on the list of blogs that are part of the Workgroup. As the list expands, BlogBridge automatically and dynamically tracks it. It automates a lot of the technical stuff that would be hard for people like me. There is also a useful Cleanup Wizard to eliminate duplicate feeds.

This is a good way to share and track knowledge. Here is a post by Robin Good on the Blogbridge Reading Lists and an interview between Robin and Pito that very clearly explains it all, including the benefits and what BlogBridge adds to it.

BlogBridge also offers a list of blogs on a topic by “BlogBridge experts.” I provided the list of blogs on knowledge management. My co-author, Amanda Watlington, did the one on search engine optimization. They now offer the ability to make these more useful as reading lists. I am going to explore this more and will write more on it later.

Blogs in Product Development and Management - New England PDMA

The New England Chapter of the Product Development and Management Association will host an event on Blogs in Product Development and Management tomorrow, Thursday January 12 from 6:30 to 9:00 at Suite 3000, 1050 Winter Street, Waltham, MA. I will be presenting on the research from our book, Business Blogs: A Practical Guide.

Amanda Watlington and I spoke to 70 well-known bloggers at firms ranging from IBM, Microsoft, Yahoo!, and SAP, to many small businesses in a variety of industries about their business blog experiences. Many of these, in both large and small organizations, were involved in product development and management. I look forward to sharing their insights with those who can attend.

You can register online at the PDMA site. I look forward to seeing some of you there.

New York Times also writes about the Social Text Corporate Blog Site

Earlier today I wrote about the Corporate blog site that Social Text has set up. The NY Times beat me to it as usual and wrote about it a few days ago in this article, A Blog That Blogs Corporate Blogs.

More on Medical Blogs

Thanks to Ken Cohn of the Cambridge Management Group for passing on this excellent medical blog, The Health Care Blog. It reviews a number of others in the field if this is one of your areas of interest.

Fortune 500 Business Blogging Wiki

Social Text has set up a wiki to document Fortune 500 companies who blog. This is defined as “a directory of Fortune 500 companies that have business blogs, defined as: active public blogs by company employees about the company and/or its products.” They list all the Fortune 500 so you can be clear who is qualified. At this point 19 are listed as using blogs with a description with links to blogs. I assume that this will get filled in more. I plan to check in from time to time to see how it is getting filled out. It is a great idea.

Thanks to Tom Clark at Sun Microsystems who passed this on to me. Sun is one of the 19 listed and Sun actively promotes blogs by its employees. There is the Sun blog site. It is a space “accessible to any Sun employee to write about anything.” Employees with existing off-site blogs can also add their blogs to an aggregator on the front page of the Sun blog site.

ZDNet is Looking for a Few Good Bloggers

You can get paid for writing a blog on business and technology issues for ZDNet. Here are the details on their blog - Between the Lines. They are also seeking lT execs to contribute to blogs covering government, education and healthcare. They already have over 20 blogs in their list of active bloggers including blogs on Google, Apple, and Microsoft.

Champagne Army – Karen D’Amico

Here is a great idea, an army of champagne corks produced by my London artist friend, Karen D’Amico. It reminds me of those clay Chinese soldiers that were dug up a while back. Another commenter on her blog had the same idea. It is also a great thing to do with all those champagne corks from New Year's Eve. Karen does some wonderful conceptual pieces that you can view at her web site. Karen also does the blog, Fluid Thinking, “a sideways glance at my life: facetious observations on making art punctuated occasionally by serious reflection and perhaps the odd rant.” She also published the ezine, Tangent, on art in London, as in “she has gone off on another tangent.”

You can find more on the champagne army at Karen's web site under images. A coomentary says: "Champagne Army - Though unresolved, this piece of work has references to the Terracotta Army and Antony Gormley's 'Fields for the British Isle', as well as the ongoing 'Accumulations' work, which references the wish to apprehend both time and a sense of containment and order. Notions of accumulation, order, systems and identity are tied up in this work."

Here is a link to more of Karen's images on ArtMoCo,

Favorite Vermont Country Inns

I have been going to Vermont for years, often staying in inns in small villages or the countryside. Mostly, I go there in December get an early entry to winter as I did again this year. But there is still plenty of winter left up there for you. I have also gone some in the summer when the rates are actually lower for most places. I have a good friend who has also made many trips there. In this post I will list my three favorites and three from my friend. I have stayed in others but these are the ones I am mostly likely to go back to. Five of these are in southeastern Vermont and one is further north on the east side. The first three are from my friend and the last three are my picks. All the sites have great pictures. Take a look.

The Hermitage – West Dover. This inn has a great setting in the countryside on top of a hill outside West Dover and Wilmington. It started as a farm in the 1800s and then was the summer estate of Bertha Eastman Berry, an editor of the Social Register. The grounds have many ponds, including a trout one, and gardens that are nice in the summer when it is also less crowded. There is cross country skiing on the property. It is under new ownership. All rooms have wood burning fireplaces. The former owners maintained birds and animals on the property, as well as a wine shop. It will be interesting to see what the new owners provide. Dinner is served, as well as breakfast. The wine list has 350 labels. They have an interesting tapas menu on the weekends and Monday nights. These are not Spanish taps, just small portions of mostly New England fare but they look good anyway. Address: P.O. Box 1879, 21 Handle Road, West Dover, Vermont, 05356 (802-464-3511

The White House – Wilmington. This is a large inn on a hill overlooking the town of Wilmington. This time of year their web site has snow falling in front of the picture of the inn. It is slightly newer than the others, Built as a summer home in 1915 for lumber baron, it is Victorian rather than colonial. They have cross country ski trial on site and an indoor town and sauna in the basement for winter use, along with an outdoor pool for the summer. It is more like a small hotel than the others and offers a nice contrast. They have a bar and serve all meals. There are 25 rooms, nine with fireplaces, six with balconies or terraces, and four offering large whirlpool tubs.(800) 541-2135.

The Inn at Saw Mill – West Dover. This is the most upscale of the six and is priced accordingly but you do get value for money. Many of the rooms have fireplaces, balconies, and jacuzzis. The main house is a converted barn. The food is especially good. There is a selection of 1285 wines in the 30,000-bottle cellar which wins awards all the time. The grounds have ponds for fishing and canoeing in the summer and there is cross country skiing in the winter. They also have an outdoor pool and several gazebos. It is located at 7 Crosstown Road, West Dover, VT 05356 (802) 464-8131

Windham Hill Inn - West Townshend. Like all of the others, this place has wonderful rooms with antiques and views, some here have private porches, jacuzzis, and fireplaces. It has been a while since I was there but dinner was also quite good at the time. This place is up a dirt road, away from any other places with beautiful grounds and views. You can cross country ski on the grounds. The Music Room has a deck, a 1911 restored Steinway grand piano and a 400 title CD collection for guest use. Windham Hill Inn is located north of West Townshend on the road to Windham, approximately 1 1/2 miles from Vermont Route 30. (800) 944-4080

Four Columns Inn – Newfane. It has great rooms, many are large with see-through fireplaces that you can see from both the bath and the bedroom. Most of the baths have oversized tubs for relaxing in front of the fire. The rooms are the best feature of this inn. The breakfast in front of a large stone fireplace is also quite good. An upscale dinner is provided, priced accordingly. It can be good but, at times, it is inconsistent for the price. There is another place to eat, The Old Newfane Inn, that looks good but have not tried it yet. This second place promotes French-Swiss food. There seems to be quite an active competition between the two inns, a few hundred feet from each other. The Four Columns is located just behind a nice village green with many fine white buildings. It backs into a 150-acre private mountain with walking trails. The white, Federal-style inn fits right into the village. They also provide high-speed wireless internet access in common areas and in some rooms in the main building. Address: Four Columns Inn, On the Green, Newfane, Vermont 05345 (800) 787-6633

Rabbit Hill Inn – Waterford. This place is further north, at the bottom end of the Northeast Kingdom area. It was first started as an inn in 1795 to serve those on the 18 day road trip between Montreal and Boston. Now it is about 3 hours from each and is probably the best place in a direct line between the two cities. There is a nice feel to the place and a great setting. It also serves a nice dinner and has won a number of rewards. Many of the rooms have fireplaces are filled with antiques. Address: Rabbit Hill Inn, 48 Lower Waterford Rd., P. O. Box 55, Lower Waterford, Vermont 05848 802.748.5168 or 800 -762-8669.

BizTechTalk – Dan Keldsen

Here is an interesting new blog by Dan Keldsen of the Delphi Group. Delphi sponsors events around emerging technologies and other things. I have been aware of their conferences for sometime and there are always quality speakers. Dan writes on this topic in his blog. As this happens to be a major interest of mine I was pleased to see a new blog on this topic and added it to my blog roll.

I liked his post, Re: "Web 2.0" is a stupid term, in response to a blog post, Web 2.0 is a stupid term. While acknowledging the term has a bit of hype to it, Dan pointed out that the web is changing. I agree with both of these points and we need a term to label it. With 20,000,000 Google hits on the term in quotes (up from 16M in November), it seems to have become the default. It is far more useful to discuss the nature and impact of the web 2.0 changes than whether the defacto term is the right one. These same people, not Dan, said that other stupid terms included client/server. So what.

There is also a useful post by Dan on the now classic Nature magazine study comparing the wikipedia and online Britannica. They were found to be quite similar in accuracy.

CiteULike – Cool Knowledge Sharing Site

I recently heard about CiteULike from Carl Blesuis, Chairman of the Board of Directors at .LRN, another great tool for academics. CiteULike is a “free service to help academics to share, store, and organise the academic papers they are reading. When you see a paper on the web that interests you, you can click one button and have it added to your personal library. CiteULike automatically extracts the citation details, so there's no need to type them in yourself.”

What a great idea. I have passed this on to some academics who said they were going to get all their students to use it. CiteUlike say that you also can share your library with others, and find out who is reading the same papers as you. This can help you discover literature which is relevant to your field but you may not have known about. This is like Connotea and del.icio.us but with more focus for academics. This will also be useful to anyone in business that needs to keep reading lists and store web-based papers.

Tagging and Why it Matters – Dave Weinberger

Dave Weinberger wrote this brief piece, Tagging and Why it Matters, in May but it still is useful, especially for anyone new to tagging. Tagging is the “offspring” of key words but with some new twists as Dave explains. For those really new here is a piece I wrote on Intro to Tagging.

First, the readers, not just the writers get to tag. For this reason tagging becomes social, his second point. It also allows taxonomies to be built from the ground up by “the people” rather than be dictated by “the experts.” He argues that the inability to create common taxonomies was one obstacle to the success of enterprise knowledge management. I have seen this myself. Now tagging might help this and allow it to sweep through the corporation as socially accepted tags that reflect the thinking of individuals are now enabled. IBM has started to use tagging internally through its Dogear application. It will be interesting to see the effects.

Dave concludes that social tagging better represents our networked and cluttered world than any attempt at creating a universal framework that reflects a rational order to the universe. One look at my office and you would agree. enterprise tagging

What Can Web 1.5 Teach Us About Web 2.5? – Cesar Brea

Cesar Brea wrote this long post, What Can Web 1.5 Teach Us About Web 2.5?, over a month ago and I am just catching up but his insightful comments remain very relevant. Cesar writes about his extensive experience in Web 1.0 and 1.5. Six years ago, he joined ArsDigita, an open-source software firm in Cambridge. In 2001 he co-authored an article which made this accurate prediction, that the lasting value in the Internet commerce was in supporting and leveraging "the interaction around the transaction".

Cesar’s premise is now a basic theme of Web 2.0. As he summaries nicely, “So let's fast-forward to 2005. Today, some of the hottest online business models are described by appending the word "social" in front of something else: networking (Friendster, LinkedIn), shopping (Yahoo Shopping, Kaboodle), bookmarks (Yahoo MyWeb, Del.icio.us), software (Six Apart, PodShow), publishing (Pluck InSite).”

Cesar goes on to say that, “Web 2.5 will be about creating safe, supportive, and effective places for structured collaboration to take place.” This theme of the need for consumer confidence and security as major issues for the next phase of the Internet was also raised at a recent Berkman sessions with Microsoft’s Brad Smith and MIT’s David Clark. Cesar writes that once you have safe then you can move to supportive and from there to effective. He develops this theme using tagging as an example.

Cesar concludes that the lesson form Web 1.5 was that the “real value of the Web for business lies in supporting and leveraging collaboration, not simply opening up a new channel for transaction.” There is a lot of substance here and I recommend going to the original.

Some More Knowledge Management Blogs - Part Two

I have written about Some Knowledge Management Blogs and then More Knowledge Management Blogs. Recently I have come across a few more that listed below. I thought this would be a good way to start the year off.

Jeff’s KM Blog provides ”Knowledge management from the trenches - Experiences, good, bad and other from real-world KM implementation, with a major component being a new content management system.” He did an extensive post on the recent KM World 2005.

Information Management Now by Patrick Cormier from Ottawa who is writing a book by the same name. His category list is a del.icio.us tagroll and there is a link to a nice article on this, The Several Habits of Wildly Successful del.icio.us Users.

Excited Utterances is a long running blog by Joy London with a legal focus. She writes that is “more than just an exception to the hearsay rule.” Jessica Baumgart listed this one in a useful presentation on knowledge management and blogs at the Berkman Thursday blog group.

Jesscia Baumgart’s blog, J's Scratchpad, covers mostly library science topics but includes knowledge management, at times, such as her own list of KM blogs.

Babsonkonowledge.org is the blog of Tom Davenport and associates at Babson including Larry Prusack and Don Cohen. This one is rich in content by famous KM people. Here is a post on The Backlash to Process by Tom. He writes, “Several journalists and bloggers have begun to argue that process is injurious to organizational health and innovation.” He argues that while some of the detractors make good points, others are silly. Process is not going away. Tom concludes, “In structured business activities such as manufacturing, we need more process and less practice; in less structured knowledge work domains like innovation, we simply need less process and more practice.” But there is more.

Santana’s Sacred Fire and Salma Heyek’s Frida

Carlos Santana is one of my favorite musicians. The bio on his web site starts, “Born in Autlan de Navarro, Mexico—where there's now a street and public square in his name--to the son of a virtuoso Mariachi violinist, Carlos followed in his father's musical footsteps, taking up the violin at the age of five. It was when his family moved to Tijuana several years later, however, that Santana began his lifelong relationship with the instrument that would make him a musical icon–-the guitar.”

I remember Santana from the 60s and the great performance at Woodstock (I saw this on the movie, not in person as I was working at the time). I also have the Supernatural video and CD, among many others. Samba Pa Ti from Abraxas is one of my favorite guitar ballads

The other night after seeing Salma Heyek’s great performance in Frida on DVD, we decided to continue the Mexican theme with a video of Santana’s 1993 concert in Mexico City, Sacred Fire. I have watched this many times and never get tired. It is pure Santana in his home land with thousands of fans and shots of him play in the pyramids, cathedrals, and other sights near Mexico City. Best done with a little Spanish brandy if you don’t have any tequila on hand.

BTW, I choose the wikipedia link for Salma Heyek as most links under her name seem to be to “adult” sites. And I could not find her own site in the front pages of Google.