It is Christmas and I was thinking about gifts.
The thought about giving the gift of knowledge popped into my head. When I was a child my Auntie Winnie would always give me a ‘Look And Learn’ annual. I loved it until I was a teenager and then I wanted a much more trendy Jackie or Blue Jeans Annual but secretly I still liked to dip into my book of knowledge.
In my early PR career I handled the PR for Encyclopaedia Britannica and this was fascinating. This was in the days when you bought a shed load of mighty leather (or leather look – depending on your budget) volumes containing, well, just about all the knowledge in the world. Or so it seemed. EB were slow to get onto the online and epublishing bandwagon and so Wikipedia, the people’s encyclopaedia, emerged quickly.
And now we have so many sources of knowledge it is difficult to sort the wheat from the chaff much of the time. Enter Doxmart. Get user rated (more on this soon) documents that are quick to find and offer a description and partial preview before you upload.
So I was wondering about gifting the knowledge pool that we already have. I suppose referring a friend to the site is a good start. Also by getting friends etc. to sign up for the ezine you can keep abreast of new and interesting documents and developments to the site. On a more philanthropic level, once we have our first selection of charities on board next year, you could decide to gift part or all of your knowledge in the form of your chosen document to a nominated charity.
I am going to take a look at my archived documents on my computer and in files in my office over the quite period inbetween Christmas and New Year and see what further gifts of knowledge I can give. It is a start on a knowledge legacy.