IdeaNotes: Open Source Knowledge Sharing

"IdeaNotes provide an open source, electronic journal application for capturing ideas, best practices, and web links"

What are IdeaNotes?

IdeaNotes are electronic text messages representing short written descriptions of ideas, best practices, and web links. IdeaNotes function as "idea collectors" within organizations capturing thoughts, professional advice, and personal experiences as they occur during the workday. Unlike popular messaging systems such as Twitter, IdeaNotes are completely community-driven and incorporate open source spreadsheets for capturing and storing messages.

Problem:

How can organizations effectively capture ideas, best practices, or insights into solving problems as they emerge?

Solution:

A key strategy for organizing and sharing knowledge is to document critical "nuggets" of information as they are first peculated through an organization. IdeaNotes provide a very simple, non-proprietary method for capturing important ideas, best practices, and lesson learned experiences as they materialize. Think of IdeaNotes as personal online journal you can share with your peers. Unlike long, written documentation IdeaNotes are short, "sticky notes" you associate with communities, departments, or other taxonomy.

Benefits:

• Simple, online journal application organized through communities
• Provides electronic text messaging similar to Twitter
  
• Incorporates non-proprietary spreadsheet database (Google Docs Spreadsheet)
  
• Implements Javascript for simple, open source customization
• Easily modified to run within organizations for both private and secure knowledge sharing
• Very low cost to install and run
  

IdeaNotes in Action

Rather than focusing on what is going for individuals such as Twitter, IdeaNotes encourages community participation. Participants quickly add notes while linking to both individual and community feeds. Just click the links above to show the IdeaNotes raw RSS feed, a Yahoo Pipe custom feed generator, and the master spreadsheet containing all the data. Try it yourself. It only takes a few minutes to sign in using your Google account, navigate to a community and add a note. Then click any of the image links above to search, copy, and manipulate the data. Try it Now! To see it in action, simply navigate to ECMHUB.org, sign into your Google account, and start posting community ideas today. You may also check out the details located in this original blog.