Linkedin and Obsidian

I like Linkedin. I use it every day. And over the past two years I have written 16 articles, 90 posts, and hundreds of comments. And for each I have attempted to reference as many LINKs as I can (links to other posts, mentions of people and companies, and appropriate hashtags) - here is a good example. But for a platform that is designed to link, it can be difficult to find and create these links. You have to do a manual search through your own "Posts and Activity" and then copy and past the link. Given the volume of content that I am creating, I am finding it very difficult to keep track of what I have written - and to whom.

Last week I came down with Covid - not serious - but I have been isolated.

So to kill some time, I thought I would look into this problem.

I came across a note taking program called Obsidian .

Obsidian is a personal knowledge base and note-taking software application that operates on MarkDown files. It allows users to make internal links for notes and then to visualise the connections as a graph. It is designed to help users organize and structure their thoughts and knowledge in a flexible, non-linear way.

So last week,

1. I converted all of my articles, posts and selected comments to Obsidian notes.
2. I created a note for all the people and companies that I mentioned.
3. I created a note for all the external sites that I referenced.
4. I then linked all these notes together - replacing external urls for links.
5. I then copied some of my own personal notes - from Twitter and Facebook.

So I created over 1600 notes, which is shown in the graph below, where:

• The black dots are notes - The big black dot in the middle is Linkedin
• The green dots are labels
• The blue dots are notes that make a reference to CSIRO (no surprise there)
• The magenta dots are notes that contain the word ARMhub
• The red dots are notes that have been labelled #nationalRoboticsStrategy
• The yellow dots are notes that have been labelled #innovationProvenance

The notes on the periphery are notes that have not been referenced or tagged.

So I still have some work to do.

But what is surprised me is how quickly it was to create this knowledge base.

Properties

Notes (files) in Obsidian can have properties , which allow you to organise information. Properties contain structured data (YAML) such as text, links, dates, checkboxes, and numbers. In this case, my notes can have the type: article, post, comment, company, person, etc. For publications, I have a field for publisher - in this case Linkedin, and for people I have an employer.

---
type: post
url: https://www.dhirubhai.net/posts/elliotduff_modernising-research-assessment-acola-activity-7163021599875547136-DoTT
refurl: https://www.chiefscientist.gov.au/ResearchAssessment
date: 2024-02-10
tags: "#researchAssessment"
publisher: "[[Linkedin]]"
---        

Because the notes have metadata, it is possible to search based upon this data. For example, here is the search for [Type:post].

Now the problem with this list is that it contains all my posts - posts on Twitter, Facebook, Crowdicity, etc. Whilst it is possible to add some filters to the search query, it is more practical to use a special plugin.

Dataview

Dataview is an amazing plugin that allows you to create automatic tables and lists.

For example, If I want a table of all articles that I have created in Linkedin, then I can insert the following code into a note.

```dataview
Table url,date
where type = "article" and publisher = [[Linkedin]]
SORT date desc
```        

Or a table of all my posts to Linkedin that contain the #NationalRoboticsStrategy

```dataview
Table date
FROM #NationalRoboticsStrategy
where type = "post" and publisher = [[Linkedin]]
SORT date desc
```        

Backlinks

One of the most powerful features of Obsidian is Backlinks .

A backlink is the referring page - in academia it is like a citation.

Here I have created a page on Australia's Chief Scientist - Cathy Foley.

---
type: person
url: https://www.chiefscientist.gov.au/DrCathyFoley
refurl: https://www.dhirubhai.net/in/ACoAAAMRyNkB3d565XvuvKxhCi3sna6bUZkwt8E
employer: "[[Office of the Chief Scientist]]"
---        

In the figure below:

• On the top left of her page is the metadata.
• Bottom left is local graph (at level 2) where notes that are labelled with #nationalRoboticsStrategy are coloured red, and #innovationProvenance are coloured yellow.
• On the right is the list of backlinks (notes that mention Cathy) which has been filtered with the document type of post. In other words these are all the posts where I have made reference to Cathy.

I am sure that there are better ways to use Obsidian. I'm just a beginner.

The point of this exercise was to help me write the next Linked article or post, and create the appropriate links, and mentions. I can now map out what I have already written and what I need to write. Trying to bring it all together.

Linkedin

10 years ago, I recall that Linkedin had the ability to graph your own network. It was a very promising tool, you could see the relationship of your connections.

In my case, there were three distinct group - Manufacturing, Robotics and Innovation. Unfortunately the graph was static - and it could not be interrogated.

And then it disappeared!

Linkedin has the potential to create links across different industry silos.

This was identified in a recent Australian Government report on Innovation - which ironically I cannot find - give me another week on Obsidian and I should have it.

Bridging these silos is critical for knowledge diffusion.

Knowledge Diffusion

Australia is really bad at this.

In the 2023 World Intellectual Property Organisation Global Innovation Index

Page 85 - Australia ranked 72th in the world for ‘knowledge diffusion’

In the 2022 Productivity Commission inquiry - Innovation for the 98%

"While novel, ‘new-to-the-world’, innovation is an important source of economic performance, it relates to only one to two per cent of Australian firms. The slow accretion of existing knowledge across the economy — diffusion — is often overlooked as a source of productivity. It has the scope to lift the performance of millions of businesses."

Yes we have low levels of BERD spending and low Economic Complexity.

But IMHO the cause of these problems lies in our abyssal level of diffusion.

"Innovation diffusion depends on information. While industry organisations and business networks facilitate information flows and spillovers, businesses may benefit from more tailored information to help identify the need and opportunities for innovation." Productivity Commission

Hence we desperately need an online platform to provide tailored information.

Social media (and search) is not knowledge management.

On many of the social media platforms - including Linkedin, I feel like singing:

Swimming in a fish bowl, Year after year.

Running over the same old ground. What have we found?

The same old fears. Wish you were here.

We may confuse social media with knowledge management because both involve the sharing and dissemination of information. However, there are significant differences between the two.

Social media platforms are designed for communication and social networking, where individuals can share personal experiences, opinions, and ideas with a wide audience. These platforms are generally more focused on user-generated content and are designed for social interaction, entertainment, and personal expression. While social media can be a valuable source of information, it is not necessarily designed for knowledge management.

On the other hand, knowledge management refers to the process of capturing, sharing, and utilizing knowledge within an organization or community to improve performance and solve problems. Knowledge management focuses on organizing and disseminating information in a structured and systematic way, often through the use of technology platforms and databases. The goal is to make information readily accessible and to promote collaboration and innovation within a specific domain.

While social media can be a tool for sharing knowledge, it is not a substitute for knowledge management. Knowledge management requires a more intentional and systematic approach to capturing and sharing knowledge, whereas social media is often more focused on personal expression and social interaction.

My Related Articles

• Innovation in Australia
• National Innovation Ecosystem
• National Data Strategy
• Research Translation in Australia
• Hidden, Fragmented and Unconnected

Other Related Articles

• The world has changed. We need to rethink industrial ecosystems
• Australia’s future depends on systems, not silos

Postscript

I have observed that using these tools changes the way you think.

After using Wikis for more than 20 years - I think in links not nodes.

In the connection and relationship between nodes of data.

IMHO the information contained in the links between nodes is just as important as the information in the nodes themselves. This is called systems thinking.

"Systems thinking is a way of making sense of the complexity of the world by looking at it in terms of wholes and relationships rather than by splitting it down into its parts. It has been used as a way of exploring and developing effective action in complex contexts"

And when we create these links we take in the role of Boundary Spanning

"boundary spanning is a term to describe individuals within an innovation system who have, or adopt, the role of linking the organization's internal networks with external sources of information.}

One of the most profound influences in my youth was the TV series called James Burke Connections -?which presented an interdisciplinary approach to the history of science and invention, and demonstrated how various discoveries, scientific achievements, and historical world events were built from one another successively in an interconnected way to bring about particular aspects of modern technology.?You can watch the entire series on Archive.org. More recently I have been influenced by the WEF and the call for Systems Leadership - which requires breaking down the SILOS and creating new connections.