Page Turner

I'm struggling with entering all my notes. I went to the Rennaisance Festival and slipped down a hill, falling and breaking my finger in the process. So I am doing the two-finger typing thing. It's taking a long time.

I decided not to do the Kaiser proposal just because it would be hard to narrow it down to a small enough size. Bill understood and told me to keep him in mind for any future projects.

I had my initial interview today with the travel agency. I had a list of questions, which I will post on the discussion board. There were some other things that came up that I didn't cover in my questions, but, overall, my questions seemed to cover everything I wanted to talk about pretty well. I spent a little over an hour with him and had a great conversation. He was quite willing to talk about the company and will talk with me whenever I need to. I will get my notes written up as soon as possible so I don't forget anything.

I have two case study proposals. I would like to do both but am not sure if I have the time for two. If I need to pick one, my preference is to do DTR Travel. I thought I would start with both and see how it goes.

Many people know Kaiser Permanente as customers. I have been working as a contractor for them for about 6 months so have a little different view. I have been testing a new automated medical record system. Kaiser has so much knowledge they need to manage. From where I am, I see places where they manage knowledge very well and places where I think they could improve. Since my view is very limited I would like to do a case study on them. I will be able to get a more in-depth view of their knowledge management to see if I am correct in my viewpoint.

The person I will interview is Bill Good, the director of Information Technology for the Colorado Region of Kaiser. He is heavily involved in the new automated medical record project. He is instrumental in directing knowledge technology efforts for the Colorado Region.

My company is a small travel agency. I am interested in this business partly because I used to work in the travel industry and partly because I would like to see how they manage their knowledge. I think there will be a combination of paper and online database knowledge. I would like to see how they manage their customer lists and how they make information available to their customers. They do have a Web site.

I also want to see if there is anything I can do to help them improve their business. Small travel agencies have struggled the last few years. September 11th and a slow economy have taken their toll. Many smaller agencies have gone out of business.

I was not able to find much out about the company through public company searching as it is a private company. I found out the number of employees and the amount of money the company generates.

Good news today! I made contact with my second choice person, at Kaiser Permanente and he agreed to help me with the case study. Then, my first choice person also called and said he would help. He is with DTR Travel. So, now I have two projects. I'm thinking about continuing and doing both case studies. Not sure how that will work out. I'll work on my interview questions this weekend.

Well, Icame up with the following list of what to say to the person I called to ask about doing the case study. Unfortunately, he never called me back so I need to start on plan B.

• Study use of KM technologies in four areas
•Repository
• Internet, HTML, XML
•Full text search engines
•Document management systems
• Communities of Practice
• Web conferencing
• Discussion groups
• Automated workflow
• Expert directories
• Continuous learning
• Learning management
• Electronic performance support systems
• Performance management
• Business Intelligence
• Databases
• Data Mining Tools
• Enterprise Databases
• Decision Support Tools

• Evaluate what you are doing well
• Come up with ideas for improvement of KM
• Discuss results and include your response

Well, I chose to try to update the DU website while it is down. I'll try again in the morning. I'm in class tomorrow night so will have to wait until Thursday if I can't do it in the morning.

I'm trying to decide what my company will be. I could do Kaiser Permanente since I am working contract for them. So I am not officially working for them. However, that has been done so I might try a small travel agency. I know the owner and can probably talk him into letting me do my case study with him.