Sharing TeamLiquid's Knowhow
For a site that started off in 2003 as a StarCraft community, it's amazing how TeamLiquid.net has outgrown just the StarCraft side. We've become the home to a very active community with diverse interests, and grown into a business as well. We're happy to announce a new TeamLiquid.net feature that hopes to serve both those aspects of the site.
Team Liquid Knowhow is an attempt to create a unique knowledge base from the insights of our community. There have been countless posts in the past where TL community members have helped out fellow TL members by sharing their knowledge in a certain area. We are hoping to take it step further by creating a specialized section where community members can share the special insights and understanding they have gained as they have pursued their careers and passions in life.
We have very lofty ambitions for the quality of content featured on TL Knowhow. We want articles that can stand out amidst the sea of blogs and guides on the internet. To that end, we're only featuring content written by experts in their respective fields; for example our very own tech wizard R1CH might want to write about programming. Internally, we've discussed very deeply whether this is a realistic goal or not. In the end, we decided it was worth giving a shot, as it was a chance to create something uniquely helpful for our community.
The section will be headed by MightyAtom, who will also be writing TL KnowHow articles himself. MightyAtom has an extensive background in consulting and business (which you can read about in his
excellent series of blogs), and he has written a
series of
articles on
start-up businesses to launch TL KnowHow. We hope his articles set the right tone for the section.
Contributing to TeamLiquid.net
While serving the community, part of the TL KnowHow initiative is to find a way to financially benefit TL as well. Each post will include an Amazon referral link to a product relevant to the topic at hand. If readers of an article choose to buy a product via referral link, TeamLiquid.net will receive a commission/portion of the sales. That way, we hope TL KnowHow can benefit both the community and TeamLiquid.net.
We will be very up front about this:
All contributions are on a volunteer basis. At this point in time, the sole incentive for writing a TL KnowHow article is to contribute to the community and help TeamLiquid.net out financially.
Depending on the success of TL KnowHow, there is a possibility that in the future, writers will be compensated in some way. However, given the high level of professional knowledge and expertise required to write a TL KnowHow article, it's very unlikely that the compensation will be anywhere near fair market value. Ultimately, TL KnowHow's goal is to identify experts who want to contribute for its own sake.
Submitting articles
+ Show Spoiler [What is Knowhow?] +"Know-how (or knowhow as it is sometimes written) is practical knowledge of how to get something done, as opposed to “know-what” (facts), “know-why” (science), or “know-who” (networking). Know-how is often tacit knowledge, which means that it is difficult to transfer to another person by means of writing it down or verbalising it. The opposite of tacit knowledge is explicit knowledge. (Wikipedia)."
Knowhow is after the theories and strategies, it is the knowledge of how to survive to get to your goal, or to outperform others to make it or simply how to get to a level of practical understanding faster. The term 'knowhow' refers to knowledge which is critical and insightful but which is developed internally and not publicly known or taught in a systematic process.
Knowhow is usually applied to industrial processes, making the same machine or process produce 'more' than the same machine/process in the hands of another operator, whether it be the right room tempurature or the exact type of oil that adds 0.5% better performance. But in the broader context, social or career based knowhow is one of the last types of knowledge that is passed on through directly sharing experiences.
By its nature, knowhow is about results and getting to the results with less effort, more output or faster, it is about increasing your performance and it isn't something you can just pick up from a manual, but is something passed on through training or articulated by using someone's experience as a base. This is very different than a theory or opinion because it's value is based off a process that is validated because of its results.
An example of this is if you were raised in an engineering family, meaning both your parents are engineers or a doctor's family or restaurantuer's family. Whether you realize it or not, things that you take as 'givens' such as a more analytic approach to life, or understanding basic human biology and what certain types of medication do, or what are the different standards of customer service are, this is all knowhow that unless someone was raised in the same family or did the same job, they would have no access to though common resources of knowledge.
Knowhow is both simply passed on, but is also guarded fiercely as it may be the only competitive factor that a company or individual has when all things are equal. Thus, the effectiveness of knowhow is mainly to it's very specific nature to a process or task. It may be as simple as a single function command, but used properly can save hours of work and may be completely obvious after the fact, but the amount of experience to have come to such an obvious outcome may have been hours upon hours of trial and error. But the fact that it is obvious and effective makes it true knowhow.
Due to the nature of when and how knowhow is 'passed on', the only reason to share knowhow is because they are family or work in the same company and are aligned with the same goals/objectives
While MightyAtom's articles provide a guideline to the kind of content we want for TL KnowHow, we are very open to a wide variety of suggestions and ideas. Whether it's the eureka moment that changed your professional career, a technique you developed only after painstaking trial and error, or some amazing life tips that only you know, there's no limit on things that could benefit the TL community when shared. As long as you are very experienced in a certain area and can truly illuminate something for the TL community, then we would love to hear from you. If you are interested,
PM MightyAtom with the following info.
- Area of Expertise (finance, athletics, arts, IT, etc.).
- Level of experience and/or accomplishments.
- Proof of experience/background (i.e. proof of employment/experience, published work, etc.).
- Books or products you would like to recommend.
- Desired level of contribution.
*All articles may be subject to editing for content, format and focus by the TL Knowhow Staff.At the end of the day, we hope that the contributions made in TL Knowhow will be a solid addition to the things that make TL great. We hope you enjoy the content that we'll be producing, and we look forward to sharing our knowledge with you.
You can find the TL Knowhow section on the left sidebar as part of the Blogs section, or view the section directly at
http://www.teamliquid.net/knowhow.
-- TL Knowhow Team
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Flicky England. July 17 2012 02:18. Posts 1810
