--- title: Knowledge Workers As Switchboard Operators date: 2007-03-04T07:52:00Z modified: 2007-03-04T07:52:00Z permalink: "https://redmonk.com/jgovernor/knowledge-workers-as-switchboard-operators/" type: post status: publish excerpt: "" wpid: 939 categories: - Uncategorized timestamp: 2007-03-04T07:52:00Z tags: - Uncategorized --- ![](http://www.fundacion.telefonica.com/at/tec/tec34.jpg) The other morning I woke up and switched on my machine before I had any coffee. I guess its like a smoker reaching for a cigarette before they open their eyes for the day. So I am blearily checking out in my in box when a Skype IM box pops open and its Marjolein Hoekstra ([Fragile, Beautiful, Volatile](http://www.ziki.com/people/cleverclogs)), RSS’ resident [cleverclogs](http://dutchisms.typepad.com/). Before I know it she has invited in [Lars Trieloff](http://weblogs.goshaky.com/weblogs/) (I keep thinking Dogme) to tell me about his new open source \[MPL\] collaboration server, [Mindquarry](http://www.mindquarry.com/default/live/index.html). I think I said: “and what makes you think the world needs another collaboration server?” ### Subverting the collaboration server He took it in good grace though, and explained that he felt the [Subversion](http://subversion.tigris.org/) \[Collabnet license\] check in check out model made more sense than our usual documents distribution and version nightmares. Damn I thought – “he just talked about an open source CVS there, I might have to pay attention”… But I haven’t had any coffee, I pleaded. Anyway we had a good chat. But I wondered – where was AR, where was PR? And what’s Marjolein up to? She is a connector, and she just said “sometimes I feel like a telephone operator”. Lars had asked her who to talk to, and my name had come up. QED – now I am writing this blog, and you all know about the Mindquarry wiki server. [Hasso Plattner Venture Management Investors](http://www.hp-ventures.com/) (which REALLY needs to change its acronym – HP Venture Management – should be proud – their money is being extremely well looked after. Note to shareholders- expense on AR, zero euros. ### Izimi and Bubble Risk. Compare and contrast with [Izimi](http://www.izimi.com/), a UK startup I met this week through Weber Shandwick, a PR company helping the company spend a 3m pound investment (meeting the guys in the Nikko Hotel definitely felt bubbleicuous – but more on Izimi later). i am going to try and get Izimi as a client. I am not in AR or PR and definitely don’t want to be but i know about OPML, declarative living and tag gardening, and have a rolodex of influencers would make most PRs blush. [Hits sometimes come out of my fingers](http://redmonk.com/jgovernor/2005/02/09/three-hundred-hits-just-came-out-of-my-finger/). I am an operator. ### Sean McGrath, The Operator Theme, and Business Models. [Sean McGrath](http://seanmcgrath.blogspot.com/index.html) in his IT World Column, has an interesting [article](http://www.itworld.com/Tech/2987/nlsebiz070220/index.html) (linking to someone else just to read Sean sucks) where he talks to the new world of knowledge, and where differentiation and customer value lies. He hits on of my broken record themes about the software industry – success lies in working out what to keep secret and what to give away. If you keep everything secret/proprietary/closed source you can’t play in this economy. Sean says Its not What you Know its Who You Know. > The knowledge side of this hinges on the market value of something scarce. That is, some skill/trick/know-how that you have a better handle on than than most guys. The services side hinges on your ability to turn up every work day on time and get through some measurable body of finite skilled labor, servicing the needs of others. > > On the knowledge side, it is a matter of fighting for a place for your skill/tricks/know-how against everyone else in the sector. Thanks to technologies like the Internet, this is increasingly a global activity. Your competitors are not just the guys in the same local economy as you. Your competitors are in Boston, in Bangalore and in Belmullet too. > > Now an interesting tension exists in the knowledge economy between the Internet as a self-help tool for finding specialist knowledge and the Internet as a tool for the selling that same specialist knowledge. Let us say, for argument sake, that I have a skill/trick/know-how that most people do not. I want to monetize it in as big a market as possible. To do that I set up shop on the Internet/Web. I run a little website where I cobble together some words, some videos, some audio and hook it all up to a payments system. Some of my content I give away for free. I have no option really. I need to market my skill/trick/know-how somehow. The rest of my skill/trick/know-how I keep hidden until I get paid for it. I rely on the free stuff to pull in customers for the paid stuff. Yes indeedy. That’s why I love RedMonk’s contacts. Stephen kicks ass in open source. Cote is building out a wonderful set of systems management 2.0 people. I am richest in enterprisey contacts. We’re a full service global knowledge exchange. We’re doing [advisory in Australia](http://aqualung.typepad.com/aqualung/2007/03/lotusphere_come.html) but we’ve never been there. Pretty much everything is out in the open which means anyone in the world can find us, no enterprise sales required, which is nice. We keep secrets of course, but only for a reason. When I look around I see a world where the real value is in connecting people and knowledge. But doing so in utter secrecy doesnt scale. We don’t do sellside vs buyside. We do active endpoints. We don’t represent one side or the other. We represent the network. We’re switchboard operators for the digital knowledge economy. That’s what social networkers are and do. We’re connectors. While I have been writing this blog I have been talking to [Ed Hermann](https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/sdn/weblogs?blog=/pub/u/25984). In classic intertwingling fashion our conversation ended up mashupped with this blog. The big question is how do automate the switchboards – because we know its going to happen sooner or later. I would love to help my clients navigate the RedMonk information network [with a Nintendo Wii](https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/sdn/weblogs?blog=/pub/wlg/5940). The operators in the picture below look kind of listless. they must not have had their coffee yet this morning. ![](http://kelty.rice.edu/375/images/dracula/switchboard.jpg) **Technorati Tags:** [Propylon](http://technorati.com/tag/Propylon) – [SeanMcGrath](http://technorati.com/tag/SeanMcGrath) – [cleverclogs](http://technorati.com/tag/cleverclogs) – [Mindquarry](http://technorati.com/tag/Mindquarry) – [Izimi](http://technorati.com/tag/Izimi)