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Knowledge-Letter
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Gurteen Knowledge-Letter: Issue 37 - 7th July 2003 |
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The Gurteen Knowledge Letter is a monthly newsletter that is distributed to members of the Gurteen Knowledge Community. You may receive the Knowledge Letter by joining the community. Membership is totally free. You may read back-copies here. ***** THE GURTEEN KNOWLEDGE-LETTER (ISSUE 37, 7 JULY 2003) ***** Its been a busy month, not only my own knowledge-conference, but a knowledge-bbq, a Theodore Zeldin evening and a k-cafe at an Information Warfare Conference! Not to mention the Henley KM Forum conference. What I love about these events is that I get to meet many interesting people. This month, two people stood out: Dave Snowden who gave the keynote at my own conference and Theodore Zeldin who gave a talk at the Tate Modern in London. I talk about both of them in this month's newsletter. They are both "bold thinkers". "Necessarily, the boldest thinkers - the ones most likely to transform people's views of themselves and the world - work on the fringes of society. As George Bernard Shaw said 'The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.' *************************** CONTENTS *************************** 1 - The Gurteen Knowledge Conference 2 - Dave Snowden 3 - Theodore Zeldin 4 - A Networing Idea 5 - Does Conversation Work? 6 - ActKM and KM Standards 7 - The Trouble with Standards 8 - Express Yourself 9 - Better Understanding Knowledge 10 - KM in 2010 11 - Who's who in KM? 12 - The Knowledge Barbecue! 13 - Living Networks by Ross Dawson 14 - Gurteen Knowledge-Calendar 15 - What's New? *************** THE GURTEEN KNOWLEDGE CONFERENCE *************** I would like to thank all of you who participated in my conference on the 18th June in London - especially the speakers and organizers Bizmedia who made it all possible. From my perspective, and judging from the feedback it was a great day and a huge success with 76 delegates, speakers and sponsors attending. I felt the event had a 'community spirit' and I would like to build on that sense of 'community' in future events. One key insight was that people would like to see future events designed to be far more interactive, allowing more time for conversation and networking. Whether you attended or not, all the materials associated with the conference are available on my website. You should take a look at Matt Mower's weblog. Matt blogged most of the events. In particular, his blog of Dave Snowden's talk is outstanding. http://matt.blogs.it/2003/06/19.html Conference materials and links: http://www.gurteen.com/gurteen/gurteen.nsf/ID/X00005BBE?open&p=0 ************************* DAVE SNOWDEN ************************* What I love about Dave Snowden is that he questions many things that we hold to be common sense about human nature and the KM world - assumptions that we have just not thought about or questioned deeply enough. A few ideas he questions: + We make rationale decisions! + We often do things accidentally while others always do things intentionally! + Even in complex systems there is a relationship between cause and effect and so prescriptive solutions are possible! If you have not seen Dave speak then its about time you did. There is plenty of opportunity. He seems to be speaking in a different country every day! But even if you cannot get to hear him speak, take a look at the following resources - in particular the download files he made available after my conference. I think you will 'enjoy'. Dave Snowden: http://www.gurteen.com/gurteen/gurteen.nsf/ID/X00025886?open&r=3&p=0 The IBM Cynefin Centre for Organisational Complexity: http://www.gurteen.com/gurteen/gurteen.nsf/ID/X001B8BCE?open&r=3&p=0 Dave Snowden Downloads: http://www.gurteen.com/gurteen/gurteen.nsf/ID/X00005BBE?open&p=0 ************************ THEODORE ZELDIN ************************ On the 1st July, Theodore Zeldin gave a talk at the Tate Modern in London. I had only a few days notice but mailed all 3,500 newsletter readers in the UK. What a great response! Over 100 people replied and about 25 turned up. What did Theodore have to say? Well you can find out - as the session was webcast and will soon be added to the Tate Audio Visual Archive. http://www.tate.org.uk/audiovideo/archive.htm But lets tantalize you a little. What do you think he considers the greatest revolution since we moved from a hunter-gatherer society to an agricultural based one? Answer: "'Equality of respect' between men and women." Not what you might have expected! Now, I can hear some of you saying that we still have a long way to go but then it was only in 1918 that women over 30 in England won the vote. My grandmother was 28 and had a young child at the time but even then could not vote! There has been huge change. What else? The idea that we are moving from a consumer society to the "economy of the gift" - a society where the purpose of work will be for learning and cultural activity - a society in which we move from acquiring goods to giving to and helping others. And much more that I do not have the space to go into! Needless to say, not everyone in the audience agreed with him and there was some 'interesting conversation' afterwards. Theodore spoke for an hour and turned over another hour to questions and answers and even longer in the bar afterwards. I think this 50:50 split should be a rule for any speaker. So a typical conference talk of 45 minutes would comprise 20 minutes talk and 25 minutes discussion. Now that would be a revolution! For more about Theodore Zeldin: http://www.gurteen.com/gurteen/gurteen.nsf/ID/X0000EDEA?open&r=3&p=0 *********************** A NETWORING IDEA *********************** At the Theodore Zeldin meeting I was trying to meet up with about 25 people, many of whom had not met me before. To make life easy I suggested they did two things 1. Check the photo on my website so they could recognize me. 2. Program my mobile phone number into theirs so they could contact me. But then Richard Stallard suggested that I wore a name badge. I took an old badge, printed out a new label as BIG and BOLD as I could make my name and wore it. It really did help. It helped me meet Richard for one who explained that he always carried a badge around with him so that when ever he was in a potential networking situation he could wear it. A great idea. Think about it. I carry mine with me now :-) Personal Networking: http://www.gurteen.com/gurteen/gurteen.nsf/ID/X00370002?open&r=3&p=0 ******************** DOES CONVERSATION WORK? ******************** Its always good to meet like minds. Ray Shaw is certainly one such person. He has written a provocative little article called "Does Conversation Work". "We take conversation so much for granted that whether it works is or not is rarely if ever open to question." Intrigued? You can download it from my website: http://www.gurteen.com/gurteen/gurteen.nsf/ID/X005B9EB2?open&r=3&p=0 ******************** ACTKM AND KM STANDARDS ******************** ActKM is a learning community dedicated to building knowledge about public sector knowledge management. If you are interested in this area then this Australian based discussion group is an interesting and active group to join. There is a healthy debate going on right now concerning the role standards have to play in KM. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/act-km/ The following item is a posting from ActKM by David Hawthorne, reproduced here with his permission. ****************** THE TROUBLE WITH STANDARDS ****************** By David Hawthorne The trouble with standards, according to some old engineering colleagues of mine in the broadcasting business, is that in practice they become both a floor and a ceiling. In the "explicit world," the "floor" is very useful. It gives us something to stand on. Without "standards (e.g. PAL, NTSC, Secam, and so on) television engineering would have never gotten off the ground. (Never mind that that's three standards for doing ostensibly the same thing, and never mind that each was nationally or regionally anti-competitive by intent. Things have not improved much.) Nonetheless, each set of standards permitted each economic zone (rightly or wrongly) to focus enough attention and capital on a reasonably focused development agenda. Now, over here in the inexplicit world of "K," I am inclined to believe that the "ceiling" is more dangerous than the "floor" is useful. In the explicit world of television engineering, we just ignored the ceiling. With our feet firmly planted on the floor, we built things that performed better than the "standard" (like systems that used higher than "standard" digital sampling rates) and if they were enough of an improvement, people ignored the standard and went for the new "generation" of equipment. It was sloppy, messy, wasteful and confusing from time to time -but all of those negatives have long since been forgotten (though all the wounds have not healed). Here in "K-World," the fear is that standards will be used to shut off debate, inquiry, discourse, and innovation. Someone who knows nothing else, will be able to look up the "standard" and beat us over the head with it. They will make all the same arguments of earlier generations of standards bearers: it adds clarity, it will help organize the market, it will create certainty, and so on. To this I would add one further argument. Having a "standard" in the K-world is like deciding to treat every infection with Penicillin. The problems we are trying to deal with are dynamic and many are the results of processes every bit as compelling as survival. Standards will focus energy on administering yesterday's solution to tomorrow's problem. The K-world is a harsh, hostile, and diabolical environment. Enter at your own risk. Passion (and other irrational characteristics) are required. The dilemma is that in the "explicit" world it is easy to demonstrate that the "new thing" works better than the "standard thing." But in the "K-world" the unproven but accepted standard thing confirms itself and the new thing offers to replace it with something that is also unaccepted. I keep thinking that medicine has something to offer in its Medical Review Board model that assess whether a practice is reasonable, given the current state of the art. It's objective, presumably, is to root out bad practice not rule out new practice. ActKM: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/act-km/ *********************** EXPRESS YOURSELF *********************** Take a look at this short article by Rob Ashton. In it he argues that long words don't make us clever, and that writing to impress is a serious barrier to knowledge sharing. I couldn't agree more but we are all prone to do it! A few words of wisdom from Rob's article: "We don't need to say, 'a systematic review of the research shows' when we can just say, 'the research shows'. And why say 'at this moment in time we are currently involved in the implementation' of something when we can just say 'we're implementing' it?" Which reminds me. I used to have a technical writer (Scott Cronenworth) who worked for me and would say "David, I can say twice as much as you can say in half the words!" So when I wrote something, I would edit it in half before giving it to him to revise. But somehow he would cut it in half again and still manage to add value! http://www.emphasis-training.co.uk/opinion_km.php **************** BETTER UNDERSTANDING KNOWLEDGE **************** Learning, creativity communities and leadership are all key to business success. All of these can be better understood in the context of data, information, knowledge and mental models. A first purpose of this paper is to make some of these links. A subsidiary purpose is to show how the additional understanding this gives can help in formulating solutions to common business and knowledge problems. So starts this article by Steve Hales. If you wish to try to get your mind around the relationship between data, information and knowledge - well worth a read. Better Understanding Knowledge for Personal and Business Success: http://www.gurteen.com/gurteen/gurteen.nsf/ID/X005B9EBA?open&r=3&p=0 ************************** KM IN 2010 ************************** By Jonathan Sage I'd like to brief you on an interesting, and arguably unique, KM project and ask for your assistance. On behalf of the European Commission DG Information Society Technology, we are carrying out a study on "Market Prospects, Business Needs and Technological Trends for Business Knowledge Management". We are involving a select panel of KM thought leaders in Europe and America in the prelimary phase of the study: Victoria Ward (Founder Spark Knowledge, former CKO Nat West and one of the first CKOs), Steve Denning,(Former CKO World Bank), Steve Barth (Editor at large, Knowledge Management popular Journal), Rory Chase (Editor Journal of Knowledge Management Academic Journal), Elizabeth Lank (Independent, former CKO of ICL creater of Knowledge Cafes and one of the first CKOs), David Gurteen (runs the web based largest Knowledge Network in the world), David Ewbank (CK Aventis), Peter Schuett (Author of the best selling book on KM in Germany), Euan Semple (CKO BBC), Hugh Wilmott (Judge Management Institute Cambridge, UK), Joseph Horwath (CKO Millenium Pharma and author of a leading book on tacit knowledge), Nancy Dixon and of course, Dave Snowden who has been instrumental in getting the above involved. Besides these experts, we are aware of the vast, rich experience and knowledge within our community and would like to take advantage of this - and tempt you to participate. We are therefore looking for serious "volunteers" to contribute to the study in its different phases, these being: (1) current state of KM in terms of business needs and technology trends (2) scenarios for 2010. The process we will use is to share a "straw-man" document with volunteers for consultation over a period of two weeks in July, for the paper on current state of KM and invite you to join a discussion group. We'll use the same process in July for the 2010 scenarios. Following these consultations, consolidated documents will be distributed for your final comments. What is in it for you? Apart from the experience, you will be acknowledged in the final report - published by the European Commission. You will gain first hand insight into how the project is progressing and will take part in the debate. You will also be able to invite others to participate in the study. You will be invited to attend the eChallenges conference in Bologna, Italy for the launch of the study. You will also receive a personal printed copy of the study. What we expect from you? Your ideas, your active participation in July and September to review and provide input (5 - 10 hours approx in total), according to your availability. And, if possible, one key paper that you have contributed representing your perspective of KM. How do you express interest? Mail me, indicating your special area of expertise and sector. Best regards Jonathan Sage IBM Business Consulting Services mailto:jonathan.sage@be.ibm.com *********************** WHO'S WHO IN KM? *********************** Whenever I come across someone interesting in the field of KM, I add them to the "Who's who in KM?" section of my website. The list has grown to 46 people. Everyone taking part in the above study is included if you would like to learn more about them. Who's who in KM?: http://www.gurteen.com/gurteen/gurteen.nsf/ID/X0010FF42?open&p=0 ******************** THE KNOWLEDGE BARBECUE! ******************** About 40 people turned up for the "knowledge-bbq" on the 25th June, hosted by the University of Greenwich Business School on the Old Royal Naval College Campus, Greenwich. It was a fine summer's evening in a beautiful historic setting and everyone seemed to have an excellent time with plenty of intense conversation going on. If you are based in the UK you may be interested in the London Knowledge Network Foundation Workshop that is being run by the Business School - see link below. The next knowledge-café is not yet scheduled but will be held in September. Knowledge Café home page: http://www.gurteen.com/gurteen/gurteen.nsf/ID/X0024749E?open&p=0 London Knowledge Network Foundation Workshop: http://www.gurteen.com/gurteen/gurteen.nsf/ID/X005B7DF2?open&r=3&p=0 **************** LIVING NETWORKS BY ROSS DAWSON **************** Yet another book in my knowledge-raffle. This month it is Living Networks by Ross Dawson. I can highly recommend if you wish to learn more about leveraging networks - both of the technological and people kind. Knowledge-Raffle: http://www.gurteen.com/gurteen/gurteen.nsf/ID/X0028667E?open&p=0 Living Networks by Ross Dawson: http://www.gurteen.com/gurteen/gurteen.nsf/ID/X004B10EE?open&r=3&p=0 ******* S U B S C R I B I N G & U N S U B S C R I B I N G ******* You may s u b s c r i b e to this newsletter, via the following link: http://www.gurteen.com/gurteen/gurteen.nsf/(Views)/WebNewsList?open or you can e-mail your request to s u b s c r i b e or u n s u b s c r i b e to mailto:knowledge-letter@gurteen.com ***************** THE GURTEEN KNOWLEDGE-LETTER ***************** The Gurteen Knowledge-Letter is a free monthly e-mail based knowledge management newsletter for Knowledge Workers. Its purpose is to help you better manage your knowledge and to stimulate thought and interest in such subjects as Knowledge Management, Learning, Creativity and the effective use of Internet technology. It is produced in association with the Knowledge Management Forum of Henley Management College, Oxfordshire, England (http://www.henleymc.ac.uk/kmforum) You may copy, reprint or forward all or part of this newsletter to friends, colleagues or customers, so long as any use is not for resale or profit and the following copyright notice is included intact: "Copyright 2003, David Gurteen, All rights reserved." David Gurteen Gurteen Associates Fleet, United Kingdom
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