As a knowledge worker, your business is to sell your knowledge.  Having the know-how that is in hot demand is paramount to achieving success. Do you know how to check whether your knowledge is aligned with the market needs?  In other words, can you determine your “knowledge market alignment”?

3 Steps to measure your Knowledge Market Alignment

1. Research your knowledge trends  - go to Google Trends ( http://www.google.com/trendsh) and enter the tag(s) that describe your know-how. For instance, in my case I’m a “business process management” expert, and the tag that I will be searching is exactly the same.
   

   The upper line is a measurement of the search volume, while the lower line represents a measure of the number of times that the tag was posted on google news stories.	This represents the location of the activity on the tag captured by google servers.

   Note: make sure you use the right tags to reference your knowledge.  For instance, I usually type BPM as an acronym for “Business Process Management”.  However, BPM is used to reference “beats per minute”, and it’s also a dutch acronym  for a disease.

2. Compare the trend with a RELATED known hot topic - continuing to use Google Trends, enter a known hot topic, that is related to your knowledge. In my case that is “cloud computing”.  It is important that the topics are related because the objective of this step is to allow you to compare trends, so you can have an idea of how the market is evolving.

You can see easily  that could computing is taking the world by storm, and that it is a relative new trend. From a distance, it seems the world is a lot more interested in cloud computing than in Business Process Management.	With no surprise India still ranks high but the United States makes the list in 6th position

3. Check the tag on the monster database - the job market reflects the present and what the market wants. Go to http://monster.com and enter the same tags. Go to the end of the page, and see the number of results

The tag “business process management” returns 180 jobs	The tag “Cloud Computing” returns 92 jobs

Conclusions

1. BPM may have achieved its peak - search volume going down is probably an indication that subject is started to be well known, and that people already acquired the necessary knowledge (no need to search for it). The knowledge of business process management may be at its peak, and its on its way towards commoditization.  This could be confirmed based on India’s huge traffic when compared with the rest of the world.
2. Cloud computing is RED HOT - “Cloud computing” is HOT right now. Jumping on the bandwagon may give you some strategic advantage in the future. If you can’t, it means that you need to start reading and preparing to acquire new skills. Even though there are twice as many jobs in “business process management”, it seems that “cloud computing” is not a fad, and at 92 positions, for such an early topic, may represent a clear shift in the market.

Wouldn’t it be easier if you could do this research more frequently? That was one of the many reasons to actively manage your knowledge using the oneCloud Individual Edition.  Stop guessing about the future, and get control of your future!

As a knowledge worker, you are in the business of selling your knowledge. You make money by applying your know-how to solve your customers’ problems.  This is true whether you work as a contractor or an employee.

Organizations (for profit or not) are no more that teams of workers, united under a common purpose, to develop services or products to solve people’s problems, right?  If organizations have their .COM domains, to indicate their COMMERCIAL intent and advertise their products/services on the web, why aren’t you doing  the same? If you answered:

“I thought of that many times, but I just didn’t know how to go about it”, then we have a solution for you!  Just click here in the link and read everything about how to be on the web with your own domain.

“I don’t know.  Why should I have my own .COM?”, then this could well be one of those blog posts that could change your future… just keep on reading.

5 top reasons to reserve your .COM domain… today

1. It enables others to remember you (always) - have you ever tried to tell someone at a business event, when you ran out of business cards, to call you at “456-987-2345″ ? no… right?  Wouldn’t it be easier to to tell people to go to “JohnBrooke.com”? Human are used to remember names and not phone numbers. A domain is a true life time address.
2. It shows your customers how serious you are about your career -imagine if you were recruiting for your own organization.  Would you prefer to see a resume with john3455@yahoo.com, or would you prefer to see JohnBrooke@JohnBrooke.com? With your own domain, your customers will immediately feel that you take great pride in your professional career. Would you go public if you didn’t?
3. It allows you to be perceive as more expensive - by having your own .COM you will be perceived by your customers as being an internet expert, on top of all your other knowledge.  In today’s economy, the web (or the cloud), is taking center stage. Because of that your customers will be willing to pay a premium for you.
4. It is the way of the future - do you expect others to have a cell phone?  What about an email?  Do you remember how you used to communicate before email and cell phones? How long do you think it will take for everyone to have a .COM domains?  Resumes and your connections can only take you so far. Become a global worker!
5. It sets your FREE - right now your web presence is associated to some other company.  You probably use your organization’s email address a lot more than you would like, and your personal email accounts has a Yahoo, MSN or Google domain.  Say goodbye to your “old poor web presence” and set yourself free by hosting your domain ANYWHERE you want.  Be on the web on your own terms.

Next steps

Did you decide to move forward? Fantastic. Here are the next steps

1. reserve your domain from a domain registrar. My advice is for you to use Godaddy - http://godaddy.com.  It is the most inexpensive domain registrar out there. A domain will cost $10/year.Note 1: I suggest you reserve your name for at least 10 years.

   Note 2: in case your “first name last name.COM” is already taken (which could happen if you have a popular name), please follow this link to get our suggestions- http://3wcloud.com/faqs/web/how-to-pick-a-domain-name/
   

2. After you have your own domain, it’s time for you to to publish your knowledge on the web, so others can find you. This is the exact area of expertise of 3WColud.  Please follow this link to know how we can help you have your own presence on the web (cloud)!

Congratulations on your new domain.  You are now officially a knowledge worker of the 21st century.

A lot of our customers asks me how long will it take them to load all the knowledge they acquired in the past, into their oneCloud Individual Edition.

The question varies tremendously, and basically depends on the number of projects in which you were involved in your professional career. It gets even worst if you also create original work such as videos, presentations, white papers, etc.  The reason for that is that most likely you had to access 2-3 different sources of knowledge to produce a product with minimum quality. Cataloging your knowledge will also require that you determine, to the best of your abilities, what those sources were.

The answer that I have give my customers, is that it will take between 5-10 hours per year of professional experience.  If you are like me, and you have almost 20 years of experience, that means that you’re are looking at 200 hours of work.  If you do 2 hours of week, that will take you close to a year. You can see my work in progress just on my books section of my oneCloud - http://filipe-pinto.com/books.

The good news is that, cataloging your knowledge going forward will be a lot easier, and that the quality of your work will increase because, you will have the ability to complement it, with past knowledge that, for the most part, you had forgotten.