Collaboration technologies:

First people collaborate with phone and FAXes. Then, tools evolved to be digital, digital telephony, video and the web using the PC. They are integrated into business processes with personalization, e.g. PDA, digital phones and wireless web. What is coming? Tools are converging with humans, e.g. artifical intelligence, wearable computers.

How do people collaborate?

People collaborate beyond the chat rooms, video-conferencing and discussion forum. They form communities of interests, communities of practice, e-neighbourhoods. It involves distance training/education, rich communication, employees and management.

What are some of the applications of collaboration technologies? They can be applied to distance education, training, conferences, speeches, telecommuting, virtual universities, employee communication, seminars, product updates and introductions, virtual tours, research team collaboration, customer briefing, virtual community building, etc. These technologies offer shared web browsing, PowerPoint presentations, application sharing, content sharing, desktop sharing, streaming audio/video, shared whiteboard collaboration, real time polling, transcripts, multiple presenter support, dynamic session control, remote participation, one-to-one, one-to-many and many-to-many participation, recording and playback, forum management, Q&A, templates, reporting and e-commerce.

These collaboration technologies are applied into knowledge management and knowledge transfer.

The knowledge transfer process (from tacit to explict): 1) Socialization: water cooler, conferences, 2) Capture: Write a report, 3) Dissemination: Contribute to a repository, and 4) Internalization: Form an opinion of the report.

Why KM? Organizations are having too much information. Smart companies try to harness the power of information. Knowledge Management is the process that uses utilize technologies with human interaction.

Data are transformed into Information, which are enhanced into Knowledge and Internalized into Behavior (Action). Data are stored, normalized and applied with standards.Information is meaningful data in form of a chart, graph, report. They are published and formatted. Information is transformed into knowledge by knowing, learning, filtering and evaluating information. Knowledge is transformed into behavior by performing: doing something, deciding a course of action, choosing an alternative, applying the knowledge and performing a task.