Tom Davenport purported in the Harvard Business Review that we are “info-satisficing” – being satisfied with sacrificing quality. I have examined this “good enough” quandary in my own blog.

Are we sacrificing quality because there is just too much information in too many channels to possibly read let alone absorb? I still receive six print magazine subscriptions (I just can’t move to nationalgeographic.com; I like the glossy photos) on top of my very active Google Reader account, Twitter stream, Facebook and YouTube channels I follow. I can’t seem to get on any other social medium right now or my head will explode.

Because of weather conditions, I settled for Skyping family instead of traveling to see them over the holiday. Instead of scheduling my time around when Modern Family comes on, I go to Hulu and watch it at my leisure. I can’t even find time to DVR the show!

I don’t know if we are sacrificing quality or just fitting the medium and level of content to the time we have.  Would I have preferred to see family in person for the holiday than on my LCD? Yes. But, Mother Nature had a different plan.  I can control what I receive, what I subscribe to and what I read. I used to feel under pressure to keep up on every medium but I don’t anymore.

Information is widely available but we have the power to filter and do so in the easiest way ever…thanks to technology advances. So, are we getting what we need? Are we sacrificing quality? Are we “overloaded”?

The answer is probably “yes” but I find that I am more selective than I used to be when I entered the socialsphere. I don’t accept every friend invite on Facebook. I don’t follow 5,000 people on Twitter. I don’t have RSS feeds from 500 blogs.

I pick and choose what I want carefully and I keep my six magazine subscriptions to ensure I have in-depth articles to not only spark an immediate thought in my brain but to have real, developed arguments and facts to consider. I still buy crime novels in paper because while Kindle is available, I’m not there yet. But, that’s just me.

Just by me typing the word “UFC” on my tweet, oodles of people DMed (Direct Messaged) me about free MMA (Mixed Martial Arts) training classes, tickets to future UFC fights and upcoming pay-per-view events. I know the power of social media and use it myself for my own personal, and sometimes professional, purposes. But, I wonder if it’s too powerful?

Started as a way to connect to friends, this has become a marketer’s dream realized, which I believe was the master plan all along. Programs running constantly to monitor the Twittersphere…”UFC” = potential prospect. Is this too intrusive? I was sharing a funny quip about social media on a social media tool and now I am the target of everyone and anyone in this space. Is that fair?

I am a huge fan of the grand social experiment we are conducting and am an active participant but I feel we need to set boundaries for ourselves when using these tools. The line between sharing and becoming a marketing target is getting fuzzier. Sometimes you want to be DMed if you need help or have a legitimate question but sometimes you don’t. In my UFC example, I was sharing but didn’t want to be marketed to. I’m not a huge fan of UFC; I was just out enjoying the evening with my significant other.

I think social media needs to be crossed with intelligent agents to help decipher when someone wants to be contacted and when they don’t. I know this technology is already here and just needs to mature as a concept. I think that will be the ultimate power for individuals using the technology. Are we going to have a “DO NOT TWEET” option just like “DO NOT CALL”? Maybe.

In the meantime, I guess I need to either filter myself or be prepared for marketing message blitzes. How does Ashton do it?

My own path has taken me from Communication (with a Master’s in Communication) to Learning to Knowledge Management to, now, some light Marketing. I pride myself on being a generalist because I feel these disciplines are very related as they all depend on content, messaging, organization and, yes, technology.

The audiences might be different; the objectives may vary but the skills sets needed are similar – listening, coordinating, compiling, distilling, writing, delivering, editing, managing people and projects – all necessary to achieve success in any of these areas.

I think the new bridge tying these areas together is social technology. The social sphere has a distinct and valuable purpose in all of these areas. The ability to connect, publish, engage and respond to people all have a significant role in communicating, marketing, learning and sharing.

Some are not comfortable with the fuzziness of the new frontier of communication generalism but I say embrace this era! Being flexible and having the ability to be plugged into any one of these situations has tremendous value especially in today’s cash-strapped environment.

I, for one, have been anxiously awaiting the time of the generalist. In the past, it has been difficult to articulate the value that someone can bring to the table if you can accomplish a lot of things in a variety of areas without a so-called specialty. Now is the time for generalists to shine!

A fascinating study was presented at this Roundtable: Edelman’s Barometer of Trust. I never thought trust could be measured but this study shows that people are tending to trust “People Like Me” more than their leaders. I find this shift of placed trust very interesting. Is this phenomenon a result of social media or have people always trusted their peers and social media enabled that to happen?

I would argue with the dawn of social media, people suddenly feel like they have a voice…maybe for the first time at least in consumer circles if not at work. This feeling of desired empowerment is trying to make its way into the business world and so a great struggle ensues in some companies. People want more say and responsibility and some leadership teams are hesitant to trust their employees with decision-making and expertise sharing.

Presenting this barometer of trust idea to leadership may help fuel the business case for why we should integrate social tools into our work processes and communication flows. The command-an-control, top-down method of operating is fading. In the years to come, “People Like Me” will be influencing our decisions and shaping the way we work and share. What an exciting time to be in the middle of knowledge management and collaboration!

We are so document-centric that it is difficult to understand how wikis could or should fit into the content management – collaboration puzzle. With most wiki software, you can attach files to a page within a wiki but I would not recommend using a wiki as a primary document storage vehicle. Instead, wikis are the ultimate collaboration tool, in my opinion.

When we think of the word “collaboration”, we think of working together, co-creation, teams and even innovation. Wikis are the perfect tool to enable the process of collaboration but require TRUST. To change others’ content, the users of a wiki need to trust each other that if something he or she wrote is deleted or edited, that the person making the change knows better. We also need to have thick skin to accept those changes. Most of us have come a long way from getting deflated at the sight of intimidating red ink our school papers, but one needs to foster a culture that can handle true co-creation just in case!

There can be no ego when using a wiki. Titles are checked at the door when you log in and every person’s opinion counts. If your culture does not accept this then wikis will be difficult to implement but not impossible. Sometimes, it takes new tools like this to prove efficiency and creativity to actually change a culture from being overly hierarchical to more collaborative.

The process requires commitment; the satisfaction is realized in the end result of a great piece of work co-created by many qualified minds. Below are some great applications for wikis:

• Company Policies: collaboration on a small team (usually Legal and/or HR)
• Training Guide: collaboration among a specific discipline or management level
• Lessons Learned Repository: collaboration among one or more project teams
• Best-Practice Language: collaboration among a project team (document assembly on the cheap)
• Knowledge Capture/Transfer: collaboration among retiring / exiting population and future population
• Institutional Knowledge Base: collaboration across the enterprise (great for acronyms, definitions and resource sharing)