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Knowledge-Letter
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Gurteen Knowledge-Letter: Issue 125 - November 2010 |
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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. Gurteen Knowledge-Letter: Issue 125 - November 2010 Contents 1 Introduction to the November 2010 Knowledge Letter 2 Gurteen Knowledge Community Group on Linkedin 3 Maggie Doyne and Kopila Valley Primary School 4 KM Videos from Judi Sandrock 5 Does "being professional" limit things? 6 Self-Improvement Myths? 7 Clay Shirky on Cognitive Surplus 8 Improving understanding 9 Hot tweets: November 2010 10 November 2010: Major upcoming KM Events 11 Subscribing and Unsubscribing 12 The Gurteen Knowledge Letter Introduction to the November 2010 Knowledge Letter (top | next | prev) I am now back home after six weeks on the road (Singapore, Sydney, Canberra, Melbourne, Christchurch, Nelson, Wellington, Auckland, Sydney, Singapore and home - phew!). This is the third year I have made such a journey and I am still amazed that these trips go off without a hitch! I met a lot of great people - many whom were good friends or I had met on earlier trips and many who introduced me to clients, hosted me for the night, bought me dinner and more. But also a lot of new people who so enthusiastically engaged in my knowledge cafes and workshops. To all of you a BIG thank you. Gurteen Knowledge Community Group on Linkedin (top | next | prev) The Gurteen Knowledge Group on LinkedIn is now the central discussion forum for the Gurteen Knowledge Community. Over the past month, it has grown by over 100 people to 1,308 members. It's a great place to post questions and slowly more discussion and interaction are taking place on the forum. If you would like to join then you can register here. Maggie Doyne and Kopila Valley Primary School (top | next | prev) Maggie Doyne is an amazing young woman. This is how her story starts (watch the video): After my senior year of high school, as my friends were heading off to college, my parents dropped me off at Newark Airport where I boarded a plane and set off to travel the world. It was just me and my backpack on my first solo trip away from home. Four countries and 20,000 miles later, I was trekking through the Himalayas in war-torn Nepal, where I began to meet hundreds of orphan children. I fell in love with their bright eyes and beautiful smiles, but was shocked to see them barely surviving without the most basic things that I had grown up with as a child. Why is it that some people accept things as they are and others like Maggie set out to change the world? KM Videos from Judi Sandrock (top | next | prev) Here are some short videos on various aspects of Knowledge Management by Judi Sandrock in South Africa from her DVD provided with her book The Art of Managing Knowledge. In this one on KM Team Development she makes a point that I make time and time again, where she asks "At all times we must ask ourselves - what is the value that we are contributing to the organization?" Enjoy :-) Does "being professional" limit things? (top | next | prev) I recently attended ECKM 2010 in Portugal and one of the participants, Kalle Tomingas, an amateur photographer, captured the social side of the conference so well in his photographs. In an email, later, to Daniela Castrataro I commented: "Yes I loved Portugal and Kalle's photos really captured the conference. I do like the ECKM conferences as they are so social. I think every conference should have a professional photographer to capture the spirit of the event - and its not that its an expensive thing to do :-)" To which she replied: "I think you're right about the photographer but I think that when we start adding the word "professional" to things, we somehow limit them. Talking about a photographer at a conference, he would certainly capture beautiful images and colours, actions, important moments, but the real essence will probably be missed out. If Kalle was called to take pictures at ECKM as The Professional Photographer, he would have seriously focussed on his job and probably missed the interaction and the 'social' of those days, and with that the true spirit of the event. It's exactly the same difference that we have between conferences and your Knowledge Cafes. Conferences put pressure on people to do their job in a serious, formal and "professional" way. This will never change. I'm not saying that nothing good comes out of conferences, but it's a very slow process and often an empty exercise, which keep the brains stuck on the same ideas and beliefs for too much time. In just one hour of knowledge cafe you can get as much content, interactivity, flexibility, new ideas, opinions..., as you will get in 10 year of ECKM (maybe)!" Daniela is of course right. I never do like that word "professional" and I am not too sure why I used it. I have written about my dislike for it in the past. Some how "being professional" seems unnatural and is the antithesis of "being human". Self-Improvement Myths? (top | next | prev) In reading this article on Self-Improvement Myths by Michael Schrage. It reminded me of a quotation I recently added to my collection. Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Good advice, given its 2,500 years old! Almost everyday I seem to trip over recent and not so recent research that shows that much of what we take for granted and never question has little or no evidence to support it whatsoever. Clay Shirky on Cognitive Surplus (top | next | prev) My son Jonathan bought me Clay Shirky's book Cognitive Surplus for my birthday and I am looking forward to settling down to read it. Clay Shirky has been talking about the Cognitive Surplus for a couple of years now and I have blogged about it in the past and I had assumed that everyone was aware of the concept but during my recent travels I was surprised how many people had not heard of Clay nor Cognitive Surplus so here's the gist and video talk here. The central theme of the book Cognitive Surplus is that people are now learning how to more constructively use the free time afforded to them since the 1940s for creative acts rather than consumptive ones, particularly with the advent of online tools that allow new forms of collaboration. It goes on to catalog the means and motives behind these new forms of cultural production, as well as key examples. Improving understanding (top | next | prev) I received an email from a student a month or so back in which she asked for my advise. She told me that she was working on her KM thesis and thought she was doing well as she had received a merit on her literature review but was devastated when her supervisor told her 6 months later that she was doing worse than other undergraduate researchers as she had a very poor understanding of the main points. In my reply I suggested that she found a small group of her fellow students whom she could come together with once or twice a week over coffee and have conversations around the work (a mini knowledge cafe) and that she would soon get to see that other people had different points of view - not necessarily right or wrong but different and this would cause her to think more deeply about the topics and reflect on her own perspectives and that this should help lead to a deeper understanding. She replied very excitedly that she thought it was a brilliant idea and would try it. I have yet to hear back but I hope it works for her. Funny though, when I think back to my undergraduate days - I never ever had conversations with my fellow students about our work. I recall once a few us thought about getting together to form a study group and my tutor urging me not to waste my time. Now where did I read something recently that the critical success factor at Harvard was not innate intelligence (you need that to get there) or hard-work but the ability to network and to form study groups and learn informally and socially. I wish I could find the article. Hot tweets: November 2010 (top | next | prev) Here are some of my more interesting Tweets for the month of November 2010. Take a look, if you are not a Tweeter, you will get a good idea of how I use it by browsing the list of micro-posts. And if you like what you see then subscribe to my Tweets.
November 2010: Major upcoming KM Events (top | next | prev) This section highlights some of the major KM events taking place around the world in the coming months and ones in which I am actively involved. You will find a full list on my website where you can also subscribe to both regional e-mail alerts and RSS feeds which will keep you informed of new and upcoming events. KM Asia 2010 Online Information Conference 2010 30 Nov - 02 Dec 2010, London, United Kingdom I will be at this event. KM INDIA SUMMIT 2010 02 - 04 Dec 2010, Bangalore, India Knowledge & Information Management for Oil & Gas USA 08 - 09 Dec 2010, Houston, United States 3rd Iranian Knowledge Management Conference 08 - 09 Feb 2011, Tehran, Iran I will be speaking at this conference in Tehran Henley Knowledge Mangement Forum Annual Conference 16 - 17 Feb 2011, Greenlands, Henley on Thames, United Kingdom KM Middle East 2011 15 - 16 Mar 2011, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates I will be giving the keynote talk at this conference. Online Information Asia-Pacific 2011 23 - 24 Mar 2011, Hong Kong, China APQC’s 16th Annual Knowledge Management Conference 2011 12 - 13 May 2011, Houston, United States KM UK 2011 21 - 22 Jun 2011, London, United Kingdom Subscribing and Unsubscribing (top | next | prev) You may subscribe to this newsletter on my website. Or if you no longer wish to receive this newsletter or if you wish to modify your e-mail address or make other changes to your membership profile then please go to this page on my website. The Gurteen Knowledge Letter (top | next | prev) The Gurteen Knowledge-Letter is a free monthly e-mail based KM 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. Archive copies are held on-line where you can register to receive the newsletter. It is sponsored by the Knowledge Management Forum of the Henley Business School, Oxfordshire, England. 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 I am attributed. And if you have any queries please contact me. David GURTEEN Gurteen Knowledge Fleet, United Kingdom
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