"PassItAlong - share your expertise" product from IBM webcast thoughts and commentary
Tags :Lotus Connections PassItalong
Way back in Feb 2009 I mentioned the Pass It Along site that was in Alpahworks that I had tested and played around it. Well today IBM had a webcast on Pass It Along meaning it has made it from Alphaworks to an actual possible product.
Pass It Along is about peer to peer training and knowledge sharing. It is not document management, but more of a mechanism to build connections of people around the content. Experts are expected to self promote and being the knowledge transfer process. The whole project is deployed inside IBM on the W3.
- Topics are learning paths. Short and to the point
- Content is the actual wiki, file attachment or web resource
- Knowledge paths let's you organize topics where they can be grouped for broader learning
- Teams are the people with interest or expertise in the topic in question
Now here the overlap and separation begins from the other social software Lotus has in place. There is linking, a more formal community that Lotus Connections offers, Q&A possibilities and the built paths. The lacking parts is true profiles (that already exist in Connections), a true Activities area and loose document management. You can invite others to participate in the topic via email with no directory integration. You must comma delimit addresses to send invites.
Lessons learned on a subject are built in with the ability to describe the issue and the answers. I can see the system being an advanced Q&A and even a helpdesk resource that builds over time. Past that, having this as a stand-alone product would leave a large gap in content location, directory integration and activity management. They mentioned hooking this to content in Learning Management Systems (LMS) yet the SSO and directory integration work still isn't there.
Case studies were given for companies using it to roll out education and training which would mean a large effort to get the Knowledge Path, Topics and content built into the system with heavy participation from Experts and Contributors for the learners.
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On Thursday, February 25th, 2010 by Chris Miller
