Work is learning. Learning is the work. Without AI.
There is no right answer in PKM. There are only processes that work. The test of PKM is whether it works for you. A person’s PKM practices will change over time, and the most important aspect is being aware of how we seek sources of information, make sense of our own knowledge, and then share ... Read more
On the last Friday of each month I curate some of the observations and insights that were shared on social media. I call these Friday’s Finds Shared by my Daughter I need privacy, not because my actions are questionable, but because your judgement and intentions are . In response to if you have nothing to hide you ... Read more
The decentralized web made of blogs and open publishing inspired PKM. Traditional knowledge management (KM) was top down, as Dave Pollard noted in 2005, So my conclusion this time around was that the centralized stuff we spent so much time and money maintaining was simply not very useful to most practitioners. The practitioners I talked ... Read more
On 11 March 2020 the coronavirus was declared a global pandemic. By 21 March, lockdowns were in place in Canada and most travel was suspended, including commuting to work for most people. By 26 March I noted that now is the time to look at new societal infrastructures to implement post-pandemic. If not, we may ... Read more
On the last Friday of each month I curate some of the observations and insights that were shared on social media. I call these Friday’s Finds. “I reject the idea that we have to be slaves to surveillance capitalism in order to participate in the modern economy.” —Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew, after rejecting a 350-acre ... Read more
In 2018, while working for the government of Finland, I developed a model of network literacies. Today our Prime Minister says that Canadians need to develop AI literacy and he even has a Minister of AI to implement it. Let s look back at network literacies — They could be described as individuals and communities understanding ... Read more
Self-determination theory (SDT) is one of the core pillars of my professional practice. I was glad to see that a past client of mine, the association of certified human resources professionals of Québec (CRHA), has adopted this framework for their profession. In my presentation in 2020 I concluded that while there is a modern HR ... Read more
On the last Friday of each month I curate some of the observations and insights that were shared on social media. I call these Friday’s Finds. Anytime anyone says: thoughts and prayers — my response is going to be: pitchforks and torches —@Julie Webgirl Could this be because they can recognize it as mansplaining as ... Read more
Knowledge flows at the speed of trust, I wrote in 2022, further stating that when trust is lost, knowledge fails to flow. This happens in organizations. It also happens at a societal level. Networks of trust are what create value at all levels for human society. The onslaught of generative AI and large language models ... Read more
Update: Please read this comment from Stan Garfield first and see the comments below to see that I was duped on writing this post. A lengthy article on organizational knowledge and the people in the field highlights a number of common mistakes, all of which I have witnessed in my almost three decades of professional ... Read more
On the last Friday of each month I curate some of the observations and insights that were shared on social media. I call these Friday’s Finds. The Four Classes of Military Officers (Or Office Workers): Clever, Diligent, Stupid and Lazy Clever and Lazy: While most senior leaders will deny this classification, it applies well, and ... Read more
In 2014 I started the first of the online PKM workshops, based on a model of three activities per week over six weeks to be done as a cohort with a common start and finish date. I would be available to respond to participants and provide support as required, including video calls. It s now the ... Read more
I have yet to find a use for Generative AI and continue to read about all the problems arising from the major purveyors of these tools. Drew Wilson provides dozens of examples of AI gone wrong in Drew Wilson was Right: Carney’s AI Push Leads to AI Hallucinations. Leaving it all to AI and just ... Read more
On the last Friday of each month I curate some of the observations and insights that were shared on social media. I call these Friday’s Finds. Grab your pens and shovels, rabble rouser rebels. Take to the streets. Dig in for the long haul! Globally, communities of creative resistance are saying no to bullies. Artists ... Read more
In smarter networks through better narratives, I noted that there needs to be a dominant narrative to counter “folks who’ve got nothing but conspiracies and medieval fantasies to base their arguments upon.” A new frame is required, not factual counter-arguments. This is how George Lakoff explains it, “1) Repetition strengthens the synapses in neural circuits ... Read more
On the last Friday of each month I curate some of the observations and insights that were shared on social media. I call these Friday’s Finds. Those who love how machines think tend to think like machines themselves. —Fiona Tribe Software engineering in 2026 be like “we need you to be physically present in the ... Read more
Everything is political — even the learning organization. Peter Senge s development of the fifth discipline has informed much of my work around workplace learning for three decades. Sheila Damodaran takes a deep look at this seminal book. The Five Disciplines were not assembled aesthetically. They were assembled structurally — each closing a vulnerability left open ... Read more
Joan Westenberg covers a lot of ground in the post the discourse is a distributed denial-of-service attack. I will try to summarize and highlight what I found of importance. A DDOS is an attack on a web server in an attempt to overload it so it can no longer function. The case that Westenberg refers ... Read more
In 2017 — we need faith in the future — I wrote that we are stuck between the Market and the Network era — citing the TIMN model — with significant yearnings in certain sectors to go back to our insular Tribal ways. While the Tribal form may be comforting, its structure threatens the foundations ... Read more
I was recently interviewed by Felipe Zamana which was published under the aptly named title of perpetual beta. It s been a while since I have had an interview so it was a chance to reflect on where I have been, where I am, and perhaps where I am going. tl;dr First of all, I ... Read more
On the last Friday of each month I curate some of the observations and insights that were shared on social media. I call these Friday’s Finds. Rights aren t rights if they can be taken away. They re privileges. That s all we ve ever had in this country: A bill of temporary privileges. And if you read the ... Read more
Knowledge flows at the speed of trust. What happens when we cannot trust the sources that inform our knowledge? How much information is now polluted with AI slop? Was that image we just saw manipulated or created by generative AI tools? In this world of mass information manipulation, learning really is the work. That learning ... Read more
“We become what we behold. We shape our tools and then our tools shape us.” —Father John Culkin (1967) A Schoolman’s Guide to Marshall McLuhan Disorientation and exploration are essential for human learning. By using Generative AI (GPT/LLM) are we bypassing these two stages of learning in search of efficiency and robotic productivity? John Nosta, ... Read more
Over ten years ago I wrote that we need to flip the office. Instead of going to work, we should be going to socialize, converse, and collaborate. Productive solo time is not for the office. Knowledge workers can be productive anywhere but at the office. This is just as pertinent today. There are times when ... Read more
In 2012 Ross Dawson observed that in a connected world, unless your skills are world-class, you are a commodity . Fast forward to the dawn of 2026: Here’s what AI did. It drove the cost of nearly every signal to zero. Resumes used to cost time and thought. Now they cost a prompt. Cover letters used ... Read more
On the last Friday of each month I curate some of the observations and insights that were shared on social media. I call these Friday’s Finds. RETRACTED: Safety Evaluation and Risk Assessment of the Herbicide Roundup and Its Active Ingredient, Glyphosate, for Humans via @Jan Wildeboer The article s conclusions regarding the carcinogenicity of glyphosate are ... Read more
Is human learning now an act of rebellion? Since 2017 I have made the following observation — For the past several centuries we have used human labour to do what machines cannot. First the machines caught up with us, and surpassed humans, with their brute force. Now they are surpassing us with their brute intelligence. ... Read more
I am not ignoring new technologies in the ‘AI’ field, but I believe there is a real need for people to get better at communicating and making sense with other people. Well that is what I wrote early last year in stepping aside. What have I learned since then? I still have not found any ... Read more
Recently I have found it difficult to maintain my writing pace of +20 years. There are 3,700 blog posts published here but few in the last year. The fact that large language models (LLM) have scraped my website and continue to do so has had me feeling less motivated to share my thoughts. But maybe ... Read more
On the last Friday of each month I curate some of the observations and insights that were shared on social media. I call these Friday’s Finds. The real power of PKM shows up not at the end, but in the consistent rhythm of seeking, sensing, and sharing. —Bonni Stachowiak America putting most of its eggs ... Read more
On the last Friday of each month I curate some of the observations and insights that were shared on social media. I call these Friday’s Finds. “Little men in lofty places throw long shadows, because our sun is setting.” —Walter Savage Landor AI isn t just like an intern, but like a *dishonest* intern. With careful ... Read more
Five years ago I wrote about the tendency on the web to tend toward constant doubt and outrage. Now, five years late, that trend continues, exacerbated by the platform monopolists who understand that outrage sells more advertising. I wrote that social media have created a worldwide Dunning-Kruger effect. Our collective self-perception of knowledge acquired through ... Read more
On the last Friday of each month I curate some of the observations and insights that were shared on social media. I call these Friday’s Finds. Please ignore last month s post ;) The [Canadian] Charter [of Rights and Freedoms] is not just a law, it is an expression of Canada’s most basic and deepest values. ... Read more
[Demis] Hassabis [CEO of Google’s DeepMind, Nobel Prize winner in Chemistry 2024] emphasized the need for “meta-skills,” such as understanding how to learn and optimizing one’s approach to new subjects, alongside traditional disciplines like math, science and humanities. —AP 2025-09-12 In the third bucket I discussed a conversation I had with a senior Human Resources ... Read more
After many years of publishing my Fridays Finds, I have given up. Even Mastodon has made their user interface so opaque that after an hour I could not find the favourites I had marked for the last month. They were available on my phone app but I cannot be bothered trying to transfer each favourite ... Read more
On the last Friday of each month I curate some of the observations and insights that were shared on social media. I call these Friday’s Finds. The Hater s Guide To The AI Bubble The Magnificent 7 stocks — NVIDIA, Microsoft, Alphabet (Google), Apple, Meta, Tesla and Amazon — make up around 35% of the value ... Read more
On the last Friday of each month I curate some of the observations and insights that were shared on social media. I call these Friday’s Finds. Look, I know AI is controversial, but just for a moment, let s set aside our preconceived notions, our biases, the environmental impact, the massive cost to train and run ... Read more
On the last Friday of each month I curate some of the observations and insights that were shared on social media. I call these Friday’s Finds. they called it trickle-down economics because financial waterboarding didn t poll well with focus groups —JA Westenberg If you aren’t using AI, you run a very real risk of falling ... Read more
On the last Friday of each month I curate some of the observations and insights that were shared on social media. I call these Friday’s Finds. The internet didn’t make us stupid. It made stupidity scalable. —J.A. Westenberg “Everything faded into mist. The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became truth.” —George ... Read more
The image below is one I have often used in explaining sensemaking with the PKM framework. It describes how we can use different types of filters to seek information and knowledge and then apply this by doing and creating, and then share, with added value, what we have learned. One emerging challenge today is that ... Read more
The automation of human work is an ongoing objective of our capitalist systems. Our accounting practices amortize machines while listing people as costs, which keeps the power of labour down. The machines do not even have to be as good as a person, due to our bookkeeping systems that treat labour and capital differently. Labour ... Read more
On the last Friday of each month I curate some of the observations and insights that were shared on social media. I call these Friday’s Finds. Secret Canada is a freedom of information project from The Globe and Mail. Information is the bedrock of democracy. Freedom of information laws give you the right to obtain ... Read more
In my last post on adapting to chaos I asked — what changes in our sensemaking practices should we incorporate to adapt to a world that is often more chaotic than complex? I received 12 comments here and another ten comments on LinkedIn. Confusion was one theme commented upon and Chris Corrigan referenced an excellent ... Read more
I m finding it difficult to write here these days. And I have written a fair bit as this is post #3,685. Given the turmoil with our American neighbours it s hard to focus on much else. Just in my professional networks on both sides of the border I personally know people who have lost their jobs, ... Read more
On the last Friday of each month I curate some of the observations and insights that were shared on social media. I call these Friday’s Finds. If you are staying on a corporate social media platform because the people you follow are still there, consider others are also staying there because you are still there. ... Read more
In the past year many workers in the tech sector have lost their jobs, often replaced by the vision of what generative AI can do instead. I know of lay-offs in bio-tech as well and now we are seeing massive firings in the US civil service. One consequence of all of these job losses is ... Read more
I came across an older blog post today that reminded me about the year 2001. That was when I left my university-based job at the Centre for Learning Technologies (which was closing) and joined a small local e-learning company that had developed a learning management system (LMS) where I was the head of professional services. ... Read more
On the last Friday of each month I curate some of the observations and insights that were shared on social media. I call these Friday’s Finds. “You cannot buy the revolution. You cannot make the revolution. You can only be the revolution. It is in your spirit, or it is nowhere.” —Ursula K. Le Guin, ... Read more
In 2018 — seeing the figure through the ground — I used the Laws of Media developed by Marshall and Eric McLuhan to examine the impact of social media. McLuhan s Laws state that every medium (technology) used by people has four effects. Every medium extends a human property, obsolesces the previous medium ( often makes ... Read more
I have worked in the fields of human performance improvement, social learning, collaboration, and sensemaking for several decades. Currently in all of these fields the dominant discussion is about using and integrating generative artificial intelligence [AKA machine learning] using large language models. I am not seeing many discussions about improving individual human intelligence or our ... Read…