Work flow integration

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Note: This message is from the outliners.com archive kindly provided by Dave Winer.

Outliners.com Message ID: 3134

Posted by sub
2005-04-12 15:11:26

Graham

As you can imagine many of us are on a similar road; I’d like to share my own approach which is by no means finalised yet.

I’ve based my model on Stephen Diamond’s suggestions for a Knowledge Management Taxonomy (
http://www.outliners.com/discuss/msgReader$2267?mode=day ). The sequence is altered but the steps are more or less the same. These include:

1. Recording / collecting and organising background material; I tested a number of clipboard utilities for this but ended up using my trusted Brainstorm for text data and Hyperclip whenever I require formatted text (rather unusual). I see that many here have opted for MS OneNote as a short-term repository, but I prefer to be able to merge the organised collection into a larger database if required, i.e. as documentation of a finished project. I may turn to NetSnippets for web capture, though as I said, usually all I require is the texts, which I can grab with Brainstorm’s Magic Paste.

2. Brainstorming and analysis; I use BrainStorm, Freemind and Hyperclip’s tree. I turn to B-liner and Excel for project planning.

3. Organising the parts of a complete writing. As I do mostly technical writing, I usually remain within Brainstorm or Hyperclip, depending on were I have my background info; I may then export the draft to MS Word for reviewing and publishing. I will probably import the final version back into Hyperclip for documentation purposes. Though I haven’t tried ndxCards much, it looks like a very attractive and capable writing tool.

4. Creating a large and ever-expanding knowledge base; I use Hyperclip as a dedicated project knowledge base, including plans, contacts and small spreadsheets. This kind of monoculture means that I don’t always use the optimal tool for every single action, but the long-term leverage of keeping (almost) everything in one place, more than makes up for short-term frustrations. I guess UltraRecall could be a capable alternative, though not for me—yet.

5. Creating a permanent knowledge base for all issues related to my work; I still haven’t really done this with a single application; I keep this kind of info in Windows folders. I am currently testing Zoot, though I would still have to keep PDFs and formatted documents elsewhere. Actually, the new versions of Idea! may be a more integrated solution.

alx

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