Chris A Watkins - Business

A question asked on a business forum recently set me thinking. The question was – Your thoughts on the best invention of the last ten years? Try as I might I can’t come up with any single thing that fits the bill. Many other people suggested Broadband, Mobile telephone developments and improvements in the personal computer, some even suggested that search engines were of the highest order of importance. The problem is that none of these were invented in the last ten years. Probably the biggest single step has been the availability of Broadband access, but while the services to provide this are new, the technology certainly isn’t. DSL (as in ADSL) has been around since nineteen forty-eight. Up until around ten years ago it was just too expensive to deploy on a large scale basis. At that point in time a major step was made in the advancement of Very-large-scale integration (VLSI). This is another technology that has been around for a considerable period of time, but the late nineties saw...

Founded circa 300bc, the Great Library of Alexandria was the most famed literary repository of the ancient world. In the U.S., In 1731, Ben Franklin and others founded America's first free-lending library, the Library Company of Philadelphia. Today, it is asked, would the concept of establishing (not maintaining, but establishing) a library pass the muster of local municipalities. Would municipalities be in favor of buying tremendous quantities of books, tapes, CDs and newspapers, and lend them out at no cost through facilities scattered throughout a widespread geographic area? I hesitated for a long time before starting to try and answer this question. I don’t think that the establishment of libraries at municipal level is equal to the task. I believe that municipal branches of a national, or better yet, a world library would do a much finer job. Knowledge dissemination is a function we humans excel at. It alone places us apart from any animal species with which we share this plan...

On an environmental note. Are there any generally available alternatives to the petrol powered piston engine? There are many viable alternative fuels for the piston engine, but non are generally available. Since the sixties automotive manufacturers and independent engineers have developed and tested prototype alternate fuels, many with really encouraging results. One alternative, hydrogen, has gained some stock reasons for its failure to gain support and acceptance. No distribution network. Fear of explosion. At the time of automotive industry testing of this fuel, tests were similarly carried out with LPG. This fuel also had no bulk distribution network and was also more volatile than petrol. For safe handling both of these fuels require a robust fuel tank. In Europe LPG gained acceptance and promotion and is now widely available, hydrogen didn’t. Interestingly, LPG is produced by the same companies that produce petrol and diesel as it is a by-product of that process. More interesting...

I was recently asked – “Why aren’t you selling your knowledge?” In fact I’ve sold knowledge for more years than I care to count. Usually the sale is in a form where the knowledge is a part of the package I bring to bear in the course of fulfilling a professional role. Through the offices of ffox Software Ltd, I have also traded services as an advisor based on my knowledge and experience. How knowledge dissemination is delivered always depends on the needs of both the seller and the buyer at the point of the trade. Other than day to day purchase of professional advice in areas of accountancy, law, medicine and (in some cases) IT, my experience is that the purchase of knowledge is often a course of action pursued by buyers who seek a ‘magic carpet’ solution to an issue that has not been clearly identified or defined. The thing I find strange is that the purchase of knowledge is often fuelled by fear. So what fears drive the potential purchasers of knowledge to the point where they seek s...

Knowledge – the ultimate resource? I can’t argue with that. As a writer I’m in the business of providing knowledgebase elements. I take my own experience and that of others, I then turn it into some form of written document that may be understood and acted upon by the intended audience. Quote from Wikipedia - Human-readable knowledge bases are designed to allow people to retrieve and use the knowledge they contain, primarily for training purposes. They are commonly used to capture explicit knowledge of an organization, including troubleshooting, articles, white papers, user manuals and others. The primary benefit of such a knowledge base is to provide a means to discover solutions to problems that have known solutions which can be re-applied by others, less experienced in the problem area. · The most important aspect of a knowledge base is the quality of information it contains. The best knowledge bases have carefully written articles that are kept up to date, an excellent information ...