Project blog

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A Project Blog is a type of Weblog customized to record project, or a deliverable task, with its goal, procedures and status changes. It has "completed" state which puts an intended end to the blog. It is introduced to promote sharing of tacit knowledge by narratively recording projects' Research and Development process on the Internet.

1 Purpose
2 Structure
3 Implication
4 References
5 External Links

[edit] Purpose

In its generic form, a blog lets a user record events & ideas freely as individual posts without a container to define their scope and to group them by different goals. Blog posts of various purposes are recorded and presented in a single linear thread. When a user has multiple concurrent projects to blog, he'll need multiple blogs to avoid mixing different project posts into one thread. And since a blog is designed for frequent updates, when a project finishes and thus its blogging, the blog will be considered inactive and out-dated. The project posts also cannot be retrieved by a single URL web address, discouraging circulation and thus knowledge sharing.

An example is to blog a build-a-fish-tank project. In a generic blog, the fish tank builder blogs his project plan, the discussion with other pros, the implementation process, the milestones, etc. with multiple posts which interweave with his other project posts and his diary posts.

Category was introduced to organize the blog posts in a hierarchical structure, which, however, does not conceptually separate posts of different projects of the same category.

"Project Blog" system is introduced by Tov Solutions Inc. in Feb 2006 as an attempt to solve these problems. A user creates a "Project", which contains an "Abstract" post to record a description, status and tentitive completion date. Next is a series of "Milestone" posts to record the progress of the project. When the project is finished, the Project Blog is considered "completed". Each project blog has a permalink ("Permanent URL Link") as a single-point web presence. Each Milestone also has it own permalink and comments section to enhance communication and thus collaborative learning with other Internet users.

[edit] Structure

A basic Project Blog contains two sections:

 - Header
 - Milestones

Header section contains the abstract, start date, proposed or actual end date and the current status of the project

Milestones section contains a list of blog posts recording the background stories, development, ideas, research process and outcome of the project.

Each of this Milestone post has a title, body text, date and comment section (for dialog with the blog visitors), as a regular blog post.

[edit] Implication

Unlike traditional project manuals which record proven deliverables with pre-defined designs & implementation procedures, Project Blog records the developmental story of a Project. During blogging, the project result, the most suitable procedures and timeline are still uncertain. With the only certainty of the determination to achieve the project goal, the project and blogging continues.

When the project develops, this uncertainty usually allows room for research and experiment which leads to knowledge creation. Project Blog encourages this type of tacit learning and the sharing of it by blogging, since "Narrative is one of the most powerful means" ^[1] of expressing this kind of knowledge of experiential learning.

Linking up different projects and milestones from different project owners, particularly through tagging^[3], accelerates this kind of knowledge creation. Project owners learn from others' stories, while the blog visitors transverse across different projects to gain collective learning ^[2].

[edit] References

^[1] Charlotte Linde (2001) Narrative and Social Tacit Knowledge. In Journal of Knowledge Management, Special Issue on Tacit Knowledge Exchange and Active Learning, 5 (2), 2001

^[2] Learning Technology Newsletter, Vol. 8, Issue 4, October 2006. (page 25) Learning Technology publication of IEEE Computer Society Technical Committee on Learning Technology (TCLT) ISSN 1438-0625

^[3] Henrik Schneider (2005) Rapid ICT Change and Workplace Knowledge Obsolescence: Causes and Proposed Solutions. Research Publication No. 2005-04, the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School