(2014-09-03) Chamessian Designing A Personal Knowledgebase

Alex Chamessian: Designing a Personal KnowledgeBase (PKM)

As a graduate student

What I need is a personal knowledgebase

Some of the most popular options include Evernote, Devonthink, and Voodoo Pad. Over the course of my graduate studies, I’ve tried many of these programs, but all have fallen short of what I really need, given my own workflow.

Requirements of my Personal Knowledgebase

Minimal Effort to Capture and Maintain

whenever a thought occurs to me, I can instantaneously open up a dialog box, write a few lines, then close out and return to my work

Non-proprietary (open source) file formats

I mostly work with text, but increasingly my learning includes video and image files

Linkability

Searchable

Multiple organization schemes

I’d like my knowledgebase to be accessible to other people

I find using a GUI to ‘drag and drop’ things to be ideal for imposing idiosyncratic organization

A Personal Wiki – The Closest Thing to my Ideal

MediaWiki or DokuWiki. The problem with these tools though is that they lack the organizational features I’m seeking, and they also don’t have strong automation

My ideal PKB would be a hybrid of existing tools. I’d like the open and easy format of a Wiki, the smart automation of Devonthink, and the organizational power of an OmniOutliner or Tinderbox.

Long before I was thinking about this topic, Stian was tinkering with his researchr Wiki, which aims to integrate all the different sources he read

impressive as they are, these personal wikis require significant effort to create and maintain

Alternative homebrew solutions include simply using the file system on your computer with additional support from tools like nvALT and Devonthink. Jason Heppler, a history PhD student, describes this setup in over at GradHacker.

Workflow-Inspired Design

Future vision: What I want to do, but can’t do with my current tools

Instead of using Devonthink, imagine that my PKB has the structure of a Wiki, composed of interlinked pages

For me, extracts are movable parts, or, as Daniel Wessel at Organizing Creativity calls them, Lego Blocks. Any extract can be moved within a topic page, and also between pages. At the end of the day, there is just one extract, but it is replicated among the numerous topic pages where it is relevant.

, ‘smart outlines’ that are updated as new information comes into my knowledgebase. Konrad Lawson at the blog Munnin describes a similar idea for a smart outline

The Payoff – How Would I Use my PKB?

My number one use case would be when I’m wanting to write a research article or review, and I ask myself “What do I already know about X?”

Walton Jones describes how he uses his own custom PKB to support his learning and writing academic papers.