Information sharing stimulates innovation and technical excellence
Almost 8 years ago I joined AMIS. Before this, I worked with a lot of Open Source projects and companies. The key to a good Open Source project is sharing information. In my vision, the AMIS Technology Blog is an excellent form of an opensource way of sharing information. In 2004 we were the first company within the Oracle knowledge domain to actively and openly share all our information on our blog. This has resulted nowadays in 5000 readers a day, a vast community of followers, and AMIS as a known name amongst Oracle technology specialists.
Share and you will get more in return
At the start of the AMIS blog, back in 2004, sharing information was not common practice. Especially in the Oracle domain. This could lead to a diminishing competitive advantage. Many Oracle professionals thrive on their own knowledge and practical experience. By sharing your knowledge you are educating your competitors. We have gradually shifted from the mantra “Information is Power” to “Sharing and networking is Power”. Nowadays we know sharing knowledge supports the community and builds our company and personal brand. Most innovation is directly derived from sharing information and discussion. New ideas bounce from one person to another with every person adding new insights and perspectives to this idea. You have to share to create something valuable.
Sharing of information within AMIS is a common practice. We do not own internal information repositories. All R&D work we do is shared publicly. This ranges from a simple Windows Service How-To to a vast overview of Oracle Fusion Middleware 12C product overview. We have shown information sharing is beneficial. Both technical and commercial. In the past years, we gained a lot of contacts via this technology blog. Some are very personal and others lean towards business opportunities.
Why sharing information is so powerful
For me sharing information is the most important factor for success among professionals. Here are my reasons:
Structure and learn
By sharing information you learn more about the subject you are writing about. By writing content for other people you need to know all loopholes and while writing a demo you need to document and explain all difficulties and strange behaviors you normally would encounter. With only one very important exception; You need to explain all this to the people reading your articles. This forces you to structure all content and make it understandable.
You add value to your community
By sharing valuable content about your core technology we contribute to our community. We spread the knowledge and help others become more advanced and experienced in the technologies we use in our day-to-day work. By just doing this we help others grow and when others grow our community grows…hence we, as a specialists in this community, grow.
You inspire other people to think and react
Apart from structuring and learning sharing knowledge is also excellent to inspire people to think and react. Just writing about something can spark a discussion and reflect on your viewpoint with a discussion or a valuable addition in a comment of one of your readers. Others might share their experiences and adding this to your article will make it only better and more valuable for the community.
You verify your ideas and learn something more
Sharing knowledge is also a great way to discover and verify if your idea works all the time. There might be situations where your solution does not apply fully. Hopefully, someone will add this as a comment and you can fix this for this specific case. New insights create new ideas and spark innovation. With the shared knowledge of the blog readers, you can create whole new things and challenge your own goals to create something new and innovative.
And of course, sharing knowledge will lead to new contacts
In the past years, we gained a lot of new contacts based on the articles written on our blog. Contact ranging from Oracle Product Management, competing companies in Europe, and of course a lot of new contacts from similar professionals from the US, India, China, Vietnam, and many more…Very valuable contacts and pleasant conversations. We never envisioned our blog becoming this big and having such an impact on the Oracle community and of such value for our own company.
Sharing knowledge has always been very beneficial for our company. Growing and learning by sharing our experiences, and best practices and creating innovative ways to improve ourselves and our community. Hope you’ve enjoyed reading the articles as much as we do.
