Software is knowledge, however this knowledge is not always apparent. And knowledge is really useful if it's connected to other knowledge. What we should do to connect "our" knowledge to the knowledge of people using it. This is not equal to acquiring their knowledge and integrate it into the product as software development always did. My wish is to open doors.
What if if we would make our help system open? We give some good structure (a taxonomy or a thesaurus) a basic stuff usually contained in helps and than let the users or other contributors add content. We can't let if do free but it's not Wikipedia (however I would prefer a wiki as knowledge container) so maybe we have to do more. We should select the contributors (only registered users and/or selected professionals), direct their interest towards the most hot (often searched but not answered) topics, take care of refreshing knowledge and give some incentives. If we do it well this content could turn to be very valuable, maybe users are even willing to pay for it. They could also contribute and evaluate the answers. Let imagine you extend a tax or computer aided engineering software with such a content. Maybe this is the way to enter the publishing business!
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