The BIZRULES Blog has moved to a new address

I finally made the switch from Blogger to Movable Type.

From now on I will be posting to the new blog http://bizrules.info/weblog/. All the old blog entries have been imported into the new blog. Most of the comments have been imported as well.

Hopefully your feeds will move over automatically, but if they don't you will find the usual feed sign up links on the bottom right of the new blog.

So this is the last entry I will post on http://www.bizrules.info/blog. I'll keep this blog around with all the old entries, so any links to it should continue to work.

Why the switch?

I finally outgrew Blogger. The new version of Blogger was a big improvement, but it was just not good enough.

Blogger recently added categories along with a really nice layouts feature to help you design your blog layout. But layouts does not work unless you let Blogger host your blog. Since I want to host my blog on the BizRules.info domain, I finally outgrew Blogger and decided to use something else.

There's a lot of good info out there to help you export your posts from Blogger and import them into Movable Type. Here are some links I found useful:

• detailed instructions...
• info from the manual: http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/docs/mtimport
• a very helpful link: http://neologasm.org/b2mt/

Adding categories to the blog using the new Blogger

I converted to the new version of Blogger so I can finally add categories or labels to each post. Just noticed that as I add labels to old posts, they may show up as "new" items in your RSS feed or news reader. Sorry about that!

A lot of the new features in Blogger such as layouts are still not activated, and as a result I can't add the list of labels or categories to the layout. If anyone knows why layouts may not work, please reach out and point me in the right direction!

So, the bottom line: The answer is... this blog is still a work in progress. I'll keep improving the layout, labeling the old posts, and writing new posts. If you have suggestions, questions or topics for the blog, let me know.

Thanks!

PS - The labels or categories so far include:
Analyst BestPractice Blog CEO Challenges Conferences FAQ FIC Haley IBM ILOG InRule Knowledge Mergers Mistakes MSFT Obstacles Pega Personal Predictions RETE ROI SME SOX

Business blogging in 2006

Sandy Kemsley at column 2 has a great story on how blogging enables niche consulting firms who get "IT" to compete on the same playing field as the large systems integrators.

See http://blog.kemsleydesign.com/2006/01/business-blogging-in-2006.html

Sandy says "I don't do any sort of traditional advertising, and rely primarily on personal contact and word of mouth for new business. This blog is a way of extending that word of mouth (or "word of blog") by putting my ideas and opinions online; not exactly an online portfolio, but a way for anyone out there who's interested in working with me to learn a bit more about how I think."

She goes on to say that people blog, not companies. There probably are corporate blogs out there, written by the "corporation", but who wants to read that? That's what the corporate website is for. The blog is one more tool in your kit.

For me, the business blog is a great way to keep up (and stay ahead!) with the ever-changing Business Rules market. It's also a great way to publish my ideas instantly. And if you subscribe to my RSS feed, my blog comes to you with no effort on your part.

If you sell ideas in our knowledge-based world, you need to blog.

Who Should Read the BIZRULES Blog

You should read this blog if you want to know more about business rule management and knowledge automation. I know a lot about these topics. I’d like to share some of my thoughts, experience and advice with you about documenting, managing, and automating business rules and business knowledge.

I have over 17 years experience designing, building, and deploying rule-based and knowledge-based solutions. This includes harvesting* business rules and expert knowledge from SMEs; documenting and modeling rules; redesigning and simplifying rules; and building intelligent systems using business rule engines and knowledge-based expert systems. I’ve worked with SMEs from various countries, in many industries, and throughout many functional areas. I’d like to share with you some of the lessons and best practices that I’ve learned along the way.

I started learning how to design and build rule-based and knowledge based systems in 1988 when Mobil Oil hired me to develop their global knowledge management and expert system initiative. I left Mobil six years later to start Competitive Edge Systems Inc., a business solutions and technology consulting firm focused on building intelligent rule-based and knowledge-based applications. Founded in 1995, the company started doing business as BizRules.com in 1999.

Through the years I’ve developed a proven and repeatable process for getting knowledge and rules from SME to BRE no matter what industry, function or application you’re dealing with. I know how to work with experts in order to understand and document their reasoning and decision-making processes. I know how to guide experts to explain what they know, how they do it, and why they do it that way. (What, how, and why – I’ll come back to that in a future blog)

In this blog I’d like to tell you about some of the methods and techniques for business rules and knowledge management that work in real life. I also want to tell what you need to know about business rule management and knowledge management, and what you should watch out for.

The more I learn about business rules, the more I realize that there is to know that I don’t know much about yet. Although I have been practicing in this field since 1988, I don’t want to call myself an expert. I read a definition of ‘expert’ years ago that went something like this:

Expert: “ex-spurt”. An ex is a has-been. And a spurt is a drip.

I know how to encode business rules and expert knowledge in computer languages called business rule engines and expert systems. I apply proven techniques and rigorous methods from these fields of Artificial Intelligence: Knowledge Acquisition, Knowledge Representation, and Knowledge Engineering.

Finally, I’d like to share some lessons learned and best practices with you in this blog as well.

I am not a professional writer, but I like to write. I have a lot to say about things that I know and have experienced. I know how to “do” business rules. Rules are what I know most about, so that’s what I want to write about in this blog.

My approach with the BIZRULES Blog and with the Business Rules Knowledge Base™ (see BIZRULES.INFO) is to tell you what you need to know about rules and how to do it. Proven methods. What works and what doesn't. Real benefits and real ROI from real cases. Facts not hype.

If you need specific help such as business rule management consulting services or BRE professional services and solutions, please visit BIZRULES.COM. That is where you should go to get information about BIZRULES® consulting services and solutions.

* I like to call this eliciting, as in eliciting knowledge from an expert. Extracting is another popular term, but ‘extracting rules from SMEs’ sounds like you’re taking something away that they don’t want to give up. Harvesting is the currently-accepted term for what is really a knowledge acquisition process. Harvesting sounds less threatening.

Welcome to the BIZRULES® Blog

This will be our spot on the web to share best practices, tips and techniques for building rule-based and knowledge-based applications. We'd like to share our knowledge and experience on rule harvesting, design, development, and management.

This blog will focus on these related topics:

Knowledge Engineering
· Knowledge Acquisition (Rule harvesting)
· Knowledge Representation (Rule modeling)
· Knowledge Engineering (Rule authoring and development)

Rule-based systems
· Business rule engines (BRE)
· Business rule management
· Business rule management systems (BRMS)
· Rule digitization

Knowledge-based systems
· Expert systems (ES)
· Knowledge management (KM)
· Knowledge base management systems (KBMS)
· Knowledge digitization

But we also want to learn from you and hear what you think. Send us your thoughts and questions. Tell us what you need to know. We’ll do our best to help you or point you in the right direction.

Rolando Hernandez
CEO and Chief Rules Architect
BIZRULES

BIZRULES is a registered trademark of BizRules.com