For the organization to succeed, the individual must succeed.  This gets personal. We each have systems for processing information. Often, you can find improvements simply by examining what other people are doing.

You need to tailor your PKM to meet your needs. Here's Jay's Launchpad. It's on the web to make it accessible wherever I am. This is but the tip of an iceberg. Private things are stuffed in a password-protected wiki. I have blogs both public and private. My person system looks something like this:

Harold Jarche: My PKM System

Personal Learning Environments

Essays from 2006 Personal Learning Environments Workshop

A wise take on PKM and informal learning from Harold Jarche

10 useful things to do with Blummy Wiki

1) Store the URL for your own blog so you can paste it in when leaving comments etc.

2) Store short pieces of frequently used code relevent to the current project.

3) Maintain a private but portable “to do” list.

4) Jot down a phone number which somebody tells you.

5) Collect potentially interesting URLs from messages while you’re reading them, then Furl+deli.cio.us them more systematically later.

6) Write down a new idea in one sentence before it evaporates.

7) Save your last comment in case it fails to publish.

8) Refactor part of a Wikipedia entry before submitting it when their servers are too slow.

9) Write a reflective haiku.

10) Capture details of expenses to make sure they end up in accounts.

This is what I constructed while surfing for PKM sites thisevening.GoogleNotebooks: click/save. (Harold came up numerous times.)

Wales Wide Web on Personal Learning Environments

What is PKM?

Overview of Personal Knowledge Management(ifthislink does not work for your either-tryhttp://www.millikin.edu/webmaster/pkm/orhttp://www.furl.net/item.jsp?id=11340929)

By Professor Paul A. Dorsey

Personal Knowledge Management should be viewed as a set a problem-solving skills that have both a logical or conceptual as well as physical or hands-on component. These are skills that will be required for successful knowledge work in the twenty-first century. These skills should be interwoven into programs of university general education and into academic major programs; both general purpose (such as MS Office) and more specialized (such as disciplinary) tools can facilitate the practice of Personal Knowledge Management. Teaching PKM entails teaching both intelligent practices that guide the use of tools as well as intelligent and efficient use of the tools themselves.

The seven PKM skills are: (1) retrieving information; (2) evaluating/assessing information; (3) organizing information; (4) analyzing information; (5) presenting information; (6) securing information; and (7) collaborating around information. The significance of each of the seven is clarified below:

(1) Retrieving information. Underlying the PKM skill of retrieving information is everything from the low-tech skills of asking questions and listening and following up to the more complex skills of searching for information using Internet search engines, electronic library databases, and relational databases. Concepts of widening and narrowing one’s search, Boolean logic, and iterative search practices are an important part of the effective exercise of this PKM skill.

(2) Evaluating information. This entails not only being able to the judge the quality of information, but to determine its relevance to some question or problem at hand. Though this has no necessary computer mechanism for implementation (though Internet search engines have crude relevant raters), the greater availability of information in the current information-rich environments makes this skills of far greater importance.

(3) Organizing information. This entails using various tools to draw connections between items of information. In the manual environment, we use file folders, drawers, and other mechanism for organizing information; in more high-tech environments, we use electronic folders, relational databases, and web pages. Effective organizational principles must underlie effective implementation of information organization regardless of the environment.

(4) Analyzing Information. This entails the challenge of “tweaking” meaning out of data. Integral to analyzing information is the development and application of models, often quantitative, to “educe” relationships out of the data. Tools such as electronic spreadsheets and statistical software provide the means to analyze information, but the human element is central in framing the models that are embodied in that software.

(5) Presenting Information. The key aspect of presenting information is the centrality of audience. Presenting information—whether through PowerPoint presentation, web site, or text—builds on principles of chunking information to enable audiences to understand, remember, and connect. Web styles and monographs on designing web site usability provide concrete content for this PKM skill.

(6) Securing Information. While securing information is a different kind of PKM skill than the other six, it is no less important. Securing information entails developing and implementing practices that assure the confidentiality, quality, and actual existence of information. Practices of password management, backup, archiving, and use of encryption are important elements of this effectively practiced PKM skill.

(7) Collaborating Around Information. Increasingly information technology tools called groupware are being provided to support collaborative work. To use that technology effectively requires not just understanding how to use those tools, but understanding underlying principles of effective collaborative work. Principle of e-mail etiquette are an illustration of important knowledge underlying the effective exercise of this PKM skill.

(Taken from Goade’s work) “It should be noted, however, that these are problem solving skills and not problem definition skills. The PKM information skills take for granted that either 1) the problem to be solved is already defined or (2) the person doing the problem solving has knowledge enough of the problem to adequately define it.

An explanation of tagging and how it works for the individualinA cognitive analysis of tagging

Google has a starter page to which you can add all sorts of widgets. Get aGoogleaccount, and being a Google Personalized Homepage.