Welcome to the Gurteen Knowledge Weblog. This log is a
weblog
in which I blog items of interest that I have found on the web, experiences or insights that I think you will find useful mainly but not strictly limited to the area of knowledge management and learning. Like the rest of my site - it an eclectic mix.
I think over the coming years we are going to see more and more social businesses as capitalism evolves and they will go a long way towards alleviating many of the sustainability issues we face in the world!
For most of us, business means one type of organization--the for-profit company that is the backbone of the free enterprise system. Ranging in size from a one-person corner store to a giant corporation like Wal-Mart, such companies recognize one fundamental purpose: to maximize profits. To be sure, they create other benefits along the way: they employ workers, provide useful goods, and pay taxes. But the bottom line is, precisely, the bottom line--the profits generated for owners and shareholders.
But we all know this is an incomplete pictue of human nature. People are driven by the profit motive, of couse. But they are driven by many other forces as well. Among these are the desire to do good for others, to help the needy, to make the world a better place--in fact, to solve all the unsolved problems that challenge humanity around the world. Yet today's capitalism is powerless to act on these motives, because it makes no place for them.
Unlike an NGO or a charity, a social business produces goods and services, sells them for a fair price, competes in the market for customers, and strives to cover its costs through revenues generated. But unlike a traditional profit-maximizing business, it exists to serve a social goal: to feed the hungry, house the homeless, provide health care for the sick, or clean the environment. What's more, it does not generate profits. Instead, any surplus generated goes right back into the business, enabling it to serve more customers and expand the benefits it provides. Hence this simple definition of a social business: a non-loss, non-dividend business with a social objective.
Muhammad Yunus, Nobel Peace Prize winner and founder of The Grameen Bank, explains his "social business" model, a plan for addressing social issues through entrepreneurship.
Dave Snowden has worked hard to try to establish a high quality KM article in Wikipedia but it still needs a great deal of work to bring it up to an acceptable standard.
I have agreed with Dave that I will get involved and help achieve this but we could do with few more collaborators to help ensure a balanced view point.
Take a look at the article and if you would like to play your part introduce yourself at the bottom of the discussion page.
Have you discovered Common Craft yet? I am surprised just how many people are unaware of them! Their videos are short, simple and focused on making complex ideas easy to understand.
There are a range of videos but many of them focus on explaining Social Tools in simple entertaining ways. Take a look, its a great resource. You will find them in my media player.
Online 2008 and London Knowledge Cafe - Comments (0)
If you are attending Online Information 2008 in London in November then although I will not be at the event this year I will be holding a Knowledge Cafe in central London on Wednesday 3rd December that coincides with Online.
The Kafe is hosted by Deloitte and starts at 18:00 for 18:30 and goes through to about 20:30 with drinks in a local pub afterwards for diehards :-)
Do register and come along if you can make it. I can assure you a great evening with plenty of intellectual stimulation with a great bunch of people. And hey even if you are not attending Online - you are still invited!
I will be staying in London the week 1-5 December. If you would like to meet with me - please get in touch.
He makes some good points but I just don't agree that this is a generation war. I have run scores of knowledge cafes and knowledge sharing workshops around the planet these last few years and although I have met people of all ages: Boomers; Gen-Xers and Millennials - I have not seen attitudes and behaviors differentiated by chronological age.
As Mark Gould commented in his blog post Oh good grief… "Date of birth does not determine a generation. Where you fit in the generations will depend on a range of personal factors — personal responsibilities (are you a carer or a parent, or are you fancy-free), political focus (do you tend to respect authority, or do you seek your own gurus), and age (not when you were born, but how old are you)."
Personally, I think the post is nicely argued but it is a crude stereotype and is wrong but take a read and decide for yourself from your own experience.
I love this concept of "service learning". Why can't most learning be like this. It seems to me that teaching in its quest to be objective is too academic; too theoretical and simply not grounded in the real world and this strips it of its context and relevance and to put it bluntly makes it dull and boring. Service-learning not only brings learning back to life but achieves worthy social goals at the same time and we have those in abundance that need addressing.
Service-learning combines service objectives with learning objectives with the intent that the activity change both the recipient and the provider of the service. This is accomplished by combining service tasks with structured opportunities that link the task to self-reflection, self-discovery, and the acquisition and comprehension of values, skills, and knowledge content.
For example, if school students collect trash out of an urban streambed, they are providing a service to the community as volunteers; a service that is highly valued and important. When school students collect trash from an urban streambed, then analyze what they found and possible sources so they can share the results with residents of the neighborhood along with suggestions for reducing pollution, they are engaging in service-learning. In the service-learning example, the students are providing an important service to the community AND, at the same time, learning about water quality and laboratory analysis, developing an understanding of pollution issues, learning to interpret science issues to the public, and practicing communications skills by speaking to residents. They may also reflect on their personal and career interests in science, the environment, public policy or other related areas. Thus, we see that service-learning combines SERVICE with LEARNING in intentional ways.
Benjamin Zander was the closing keynote at this year’s World Economic Forum in Davos Switzerland. In this short inspirational talk, amongst other things, he explains how he gives all his students an "A" grade at the start of each year and how it transforms his relationship with them! Take the time to watch the clip, I think you will love it.
Benjamin Zander was the closing keynote at this year’s World Economic Forum in Davos Switzerland. In this short inspirational talk, amongst other things, he explains how he gives all his students an "A" grade at the start of each year and how it transforms his relationship with them! Take the time to watch the clip, I think you will love it.
Having watched the video Money as Debt, I now realize that if we are to create a sustainable world we have to fix the money system first! I had often wondered how money was created and why it was never taught in schools - now to my horror I understand!
Paul Grignon's 47-minute animated presentation of "Money as Debt" tells in very simple and effective graphic terms what money is and how it is being created.
Google have launched a new service called Google SMS Channels. It is only available in India.
With it, you can create SMS groups to communicate with your friends, family, and co-workers.
Google SMS Channels are free both for content publishers as well as mobile phone users who subscribe to text updates via SMS.
It seems they have only released it in India because Indian Telcos have made SMS free.
This seems like an interesting development. It raises two questions in my mind. What does it mean for services like Twitter and how long will it be before other Telcos make SMS a free service.
Because there’s poverty, and war, and hunger, and AIDS, and because when adolescent girls in the developing world have a chance, they can be the most powerful force of change for themselves, their families, communities, countries, and even the planet.
But while those 600 million adolescent girls are the most likely agents of change, they are often invisible to their societies and the world.
So what can you do about that? Help make girls visible. Tell the world that you think the 600 million girls in the developing world deserve better – for themselves, and for the end of poverty.
That’s a start. Ready to learn and do more? Head over to girleffect.org.
This seems to be building on the philosophy of Muhammad Yunus and the Grameen Bank in lending primarily to women as women are far more likely to spend the money wisely on their family then men ever are.
I love the concept but I need to figure out how best to personally take action though lending some money to Elitza Naidenova to buy a cow a while back was one teeny-weeny contribution.
Because there’s poverty, and war, and hunger, and AIDS, and because when adolescent girls in the developing world have a chance, they can be the most powerful force of change for themselves, their families, communities, countries, and even the planet.
But while those 600 million adolescent girls are the most likely agents of change, they are often invisible to their societies and the world.
So what can you do about that? Help make girls visible. Tell the world that you think the 600 million girls in the developing world deserve better – for themselves, and for the end of poverty.
That’s a start. Ready to learn and do more? Head over to girleffect.org.
This seems to be building on the philosophy of Muhammad Yunus and the Grameen Bank in lending primarily to women as women are far more likely to spend the money wisely on their family then men ever are.
I love the concept but I need to figure out how best to personally take action though lending some money to Elitza Naidenova to buy a cow a while back was one teeny-weeny contribution.
Because there’s poverty, and war, and hunger, and AIDS, and because when adolescent girls in the developing world have a chance, they can be the most powerful force of change for themselves, their families, communities, countries, and even the planet.
But while those 600 million adolescent girls are the most likely agents of change, they are often invisible to their societies and the world.
So what can you do about that? Help make girls visible. Tell the world that you think the 600 million girls in the developing world deserve better – for themselves, and for the end of poverty.
That’s a start. Ready to learn and do more? Head over to girleffect.org.
This seems to be building on the philosophy of Muhammad Yunus and the Grameen Bank in lending primarily to women as women are far more likely to spend the money wisely on their family then men ever are.
I love the concept but I need to figure out how best to personally take action though lending some money to Elitza Naidenova to buy a cow a while back was one teeny-weeny contribution.
Because there’s poverty, and war, and hunger, and AIDS, and because when adolescent girls in the developing world have a chance, they can be the most powerful force of change for themselves, their families, communities, countries, and even the planet.
But while those 600 million adolescent girls are the most likely agents of change, they are often invisible to their societies and the world.
So what can you do about that? Help make girls visible. Tell the world that you think the 600 million girls in the developing world deserve better – for themselves, and for the end of poverty.
That’s a start. Ready to learn and do more? Head over to girleffect.org.
This seems to be building on the philosophy of Muhammad Yunus and the Grameen Bank in lending primarily to women as women are far more likely to spend the money wisely on their family then men ever are.
I love the concept but I need to figure out how best to personally take action though lending some money to Elitza Naidenova to buy a cow a while back was one teeny-weeny contribution.
When I run my knowledge sharing workshops - one of the sessions is about networking and more often than not the question of ethics is raised. Some people falsely see networking as unethical as they seem to think that networking is about making friends with other people for personal gain - they don't quite understand that although its possible to behave like that - genuine networkers approach networking with a mindset of "mutual advantage" - they as much want to help the other person as they wish for help from them.
The question of ethics also gets raised in other KM settings. Storytelling is one of them. Is it ethical to use storytelling to say sell an idea to another person? Another might be is it OK to reward people with tangible rewards such as money or intangible rewards such as praise to get them to do what you want.
It seems to me that we all have agendas; we all have the need, for good or for bad, to influence people; to get their buy-in on an idea or to obtain budget or resource from them. If we wish to get things done in life then we need to be good at gaining the support we need.
But is persuasion or influence, inherently manipulative and unethical? Well of course not; so much depends on the intent. `But what is the yardstick? How do you question yourself to determine if you are being unethical or not?
The test in this blog post seems a good stating point: “Would it lose its power if people knew exactly what you were doing and why?”
I held one of the most energetic knowledge cafes for a long time in London recently. It took place at the end of the first day of a Unicom Web 2.0: Practical Applications for Business Benefit conference that I was chairing. (Sue Charman-Anderson blogged the conference). The speaker was Luis Suarez of IBM (whom I got to meet for the first time after many years of cyber-contact) who spoke on the subject of email overload and proposed the question "Could you stop using email?".
As you can imagine, a lively debate ensued Several folks have blogged the Cafe in a little detail see Nick Bush and Jon Mell. And also the Gurteen Forum.
I held one of the most energetic knowledge cafes for a long time in London recently. It took place at the end of the first day of a Unicom Web 2.0: Practical Applications for Business Benefit conference that I was chairing. (Sue Charman-Anderson blogged the conference). The speaker was Luis Suarez of IBM (whom I got to meet for the first time after many years of cyber-contact) who spoke on the subject of email overload and proposed the question "Could you stop using email?".
As you can imagine, a lively debate ensued Several folks have blogged the Cafe in a little detail see Nick Bush and Jon Mell. And also the Gurteen Forum.
I held one of the most energetic knowledge cafes for a long time in London recently. It took place at the end of the first day of a Unicom Web 2.0: Practical Applications for Business Benefit conference that I was chairing. (Sue Charman-Anderson blogged the conference). The speaker was Luis Suarez of IBM (whom I got to meet for the first time after many years of cyber-contact) who spoke on the subject of email overload and proposed the question "Could you stop using email?".
As you can imagine, a lively debate ensued Several folks have blogged the Cafe in a little detail see Nick Bush and Jon Mell. And also the Gurteen Forum.
I am not all that hot at predictions but the one thing to me that does seem obvious is that as more and more devices such as laptops, digital cameras and of course mobile phones such as the Apple iPhone have GPS and Wi-Fi built in, we are going to see some interesting applications.
I am looking forward to the day when most people have GPS enabled devices.Unlike some, I would like others to know where I am in real time and have the ability to connect with me though I also like the idea of being in control and having the ability to "hide" at times.
Someone told me recently of a person they had met who had given them his business card and suggested that she called him to talk further but had also given her a password. He explained, that when she phoned, her call would be answered by his secretary and unless she quoted the password, his secretary would not put the call through to him!
I guess one good way to prevent "sales calls" but I am not so sure i like it!
Note-Taking: A Fundamental Skill of the Independent Learner via Stephen Downes.
Some time back I wrote about the importance of note taking - Simplest KM Tool - in a Gurteen Perspective article for Inside Knowledge magazine. So I am delighted to see that others recognize the importance also.
I find it odd that so few people take notes. At an academic KM conference recently, I looked around the room of maybe 120 people during the opening key note talk - I noticed only one lap top open and just a hand full of people taking notes - most just sat and listened and the audience was mainly students and academics. I was also the only one taking photos and video. It was the same throughout the conference.
I don't care how you take notes. Use the computer, like I did today. Use paper and ink, like I did at the collaboration workshop last week. Take photographs, as I do when I travel. The main thing is, if you want to learn, take notes. Learning is not a passive act; it is an act of engagement, where you involve yourself physically and mentally, where you struggle to understand and integrate the material. Note-taking is your contribution to what is a two-way communication with the source of the learning. Maybe you'll review them again, maybe not. Keep your notes in good order, just in case. But the main this is, that you take them.
Note-Taking: A Fundamental Skill of the Independent Learner via Stephen Downes.
Some time back I wrote about the importance of note taking - Simplest KM Tool - in a Gurteen Perspective article for Inside Knowledge magazine. So I am delighted to see that others recognize the importance also.
I find it odd that so few people take notes. At an academic KM conference recently, I looked around the room of maybe 120 people during the opening key note talk - I noticed only one lap top open and just a hand full of people taking notes - most just sat and listened and the audience was mainly students and academics. I was also the only one taking photos and video. It was the same throughout the conference.
I don't care how you take notes. Use the computer, like I did today. Use paper and ink, like I did at the collaboration workshop last week. Take photographs, as I do when I travel. The main thing is, if you want to learn, take notes. Learning is not a passive act; it is an act of engagement, where you involve yourself physically and mentally, where you struggle to understand and integrate the material. Note-taking is your contribution to what is a two-way communication with the source of the learning. Maybe you'll review them again, maybe not. Keep your notes in good order, just in case. But the main this is, that you take them.
Like Patrick Lambe, I loved this story of telling stories to hear stories. Only wish I had thought of it when my children were younger. It's a great technique - well actually its not a technique at all - that would soon be seen through and is manipulative. What it is really about, is treating the person you are talking to with as an equal; not talking down to them or patronizing them. When you do that then you can have a conversation of equals.
When I see my teenage daughter after school I would often ask how her day went, whether anything interesting happened at school, and the standard response is often monosyllabic: yep, nup. In fact the more questions I’d ask the shorter the answers. So I changed tack and rather than ask questions I simply recounted something that happened in my day. I would launch into something like, “I met a bearded lady today. This morning I drove down to Fitzroy to run an anecdote circle for …” and immediately my daughter would respond with an encounter from her day. A conversation starts and it’s delightful.
Its also what I try to do in my knowledge cafes - ensure that everyone is an equal - there are no table leaders; no people nominated to report back. Everyone has an equal voice and this helps free up the conversational flow.
I recently tweeted this talk of J.K. Rowling, author of the best-selling Harry Potter book series, delivering her Commencement Address, The Fringe Benefits of Failure and the Importance of Imagination, at the Annual Meeting of the Harvard Alumni Association.
Its a great address and I had several people who commented how much they enjoyed it. It was brought to my attention by Heather Davis - thank you Heather. Here is a quote from the transcript that Heather sent me:
You might never fail on the scale I did, but some failure in life is
inevitable. It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless
you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all - in
which case, you fail by default.
I recently gave a keynote talk at KM Brasil titled "People 2.0: Working in a 2.0 World". I only got to take a few photos but you will find them here though many more here.
Here is a description of the talk and the slides. If you have seen my KM 2.0: KM goes social presentation then you will recognize the early slides but fast forward and you will find the new stuff.
People 2.0: Working in a 2.0 World
David Gurteen, Gurteen Knowledge
KM and the world of work is on the brink of a profound transformation.
Driven by new technology, increasingly, we are no longer consumers: of goods, services or education - we are prosumers - we can now both produce and consume. We have the potential to be participants in everything and not the “victims”. The emerging 2.0 work place will reflect this and be a fundamentally participatory world.
We are moving from an organizational world where we were told to do things; where things were structured and planned for us to a world where managers and staff work more closely together to decide what to do and how to do it.
This has deep implications for KM and already we see a move towards Social KM or KM 2.0 where new social tools such as blogs and wikis put the power and responsibility for knowledge sharing in the hands of the individual.
But the real challenge is in people's mindsets - both managers and individuals. Managers need to stop trying to manipulate people and doing things to them and to take a more participatory approach. On the other hand, individuals need to open up and grasp the potential that the new tools and mindset offers them - to be more proactive; to take responsibility for their work; to innovative and to work in new ways. It’s about a change of mindset, attitudes and behaviors.
If the central question asked by managers in the KM 1.0 world was “How do we make people share?” the question of the KM 2.0 era is “How do we get things done by better sharing, learning and working together?” And is asked by everyone!
In this talk, David will explore what it means to live and work in a 2.0 business world; to be a 2.0 worker and indeed a 2.0 manager. And what we need to do to make it a reality.
I gave a talk, well in fact two talks, back to back, to about 150 librarians at the IFLA conference (IFLA: The International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions) in Quebec City in early August. My first talk was KM2.0 KM goes Social and the second was a rerun of a talk I gave at actKM Conference in Canberra last year where I look at how I use social tools. You can find the slides in SlideShare.
My talks were the lead in to three shorter talks from Mary Lee Kennedy, Executive Director, Knowledge and Library Services (KLS), Harvard Business School; Moira Fraser, Parliamentary Librarian & Group Manager, Information & Knowledge, New Zealand Parliament and Patrick Danowski, Project Manager, Statsbibliotek su Berlin. All ably chaired by Jane Dysart.
We then broke out into a panel Q&A and discussion. There was a huge amount of interest in KM and social tools from the librarians in the room. I think everyone was pretty much trying to figure out how they could apply social tools in their own organizations. And of course the perennial question came up : "how do you measure the benefits of social tools?"
There were some answers from the panel but my answer was that there are basically two approaches: 1. Was the traditional - figure out your business outcomes and measure against those and 2. if you don't understand social tools and what they can do for you then there is no way you can measure the benefits. So experiment and pilot first. (There is a short article or blog posty brewing in my head on this!)
In his travels he looks at the views of many different people and so if you are looking for a comprehensive overview of the state of thinking on KM 2.0 then this series of posts is well worth the read.
Lucas McDonnell has some interesting comments on what I have to say on KM 2.0 and "2.0" in general.
I understand his concerns. I too was hesitant, at first, to apply the "2.0" moniker more widely to KM and other areas. But I have come to believe that although it all started with Web 2.0 and the new participatory technology and tools that it is not just about the technology and that we are moving to a "2.0 world" - a more participatory one.
I feel that far from devaluing the "2.0" concept - it expands it and makes it more powerful.
And of course I agree, 2.0 is not the answer to everything and brings as many new problems as it answers old ones. That's the nature of things!
I always love to learn new things and often its the little things that excite me the most. When I am in Thailand I love the way people greet you by placing their hands together and giving a little bow and I started doing it myself although I did not fully appreciate the meaning or the tradition.
And then recently some one signed off their e-mail with the greeting: "Namaste". I was intrigued and went straight to Wikipedia to discern its meaning and was delighted with my find. Take a look at the 7 global meanings. Which one works best for you? For me its :
"All that is best and highest in me greets/salutes all that is best and highest in you." or maybe "The Divinity within me perceives and adores the Divinity within you."
The precise meaning does not matter and I like it that the word can mean slightly different things to different people. Its the intent behind it that I so love.
I had a conversation recently when I was in Indonesia - I don't recall whom it was with but the subject turned to motivation and the person I was talking to started to talk about the need for rewards and charismatic leaders and the like but I did not agree and when I got back to my hotel room - I listed some of the things that I think motivate people - they certainly motivate me!
listen to them
show them respect
help them find their voice
have conversations with them
show genuine interest
give them help and support
engage with them
trust them
give them responsibility
give them recognition
give them opportunities for self fulfilment and personal development
don't try to tell them what to do
Now the crunch: you don't deliberately do these things to motivate people - that's not motivation - that's manipulation. You do them because you genuinely care in their development. Its more akin to the love you might show for a son or daughter than anything else.
I recently came across this interview with Peter Taylor, research fellow and leader of the Participation, Power and Social Change Team of the Institute of Development Studies (University of Sussex). I love his ideas though that is hardly surprising given my own interest in the role of dialogue and participation in the transmission of knowledge. Here are a couple of quotes from the interview.
My reason for wanting to see an integration of citizenship, sustainable development or multiculturalism in the curricula of universities is to enable people to learn in a way that is different from simply being passive recipients of preformed ideas. For me, education is about learning and learning is about change. So where we see the need for social change, for human and social development, which really is rooted in issues of rights, power and voice of people, then I think it is absolutely necessary for higher education to actually build the curricula upon these issues, not just to add them but actually to integrate them and use them as foundations for learning and teaching.
A lot of educative curricula, especially in higher education, are still based on the idea of transmission of knowledge. In fact it is what Paulo Freire called “banking”, and it is still very common that university teachers provide information, that is to say, the idea of transferring knowledge from the expert to the passive recipient. For transformative education to take place there really needs to be a much more experiential form of learning, for people to actually engage in processes of change, to try things out from themselves, to address real world problems, and to realize that not all solutions can be found easily. And it’s when you start to ask the hard questions and grapple with some intractable problems that you begin, perhaps, to open up opportunities to learn in a different way.
Wikileaks - a document-leaking website has some amazing material that many people would rather wasn't shared! This is the power of the web for good or for bad. Its getting very difficult to keep secrets anymore. Take a look - there will be something there for you! I find the military manuals the most fascinating.
So why do I have threeTwitter identities? - Comments (0)
I recently created two Twitter feeds in addition to my regular one and received this email from my friend Lilly Evans.
David,
Just a quick question re Twitter. You have created two other identities. Why? And, have you got any business from being on Twitter? Basically, what is the main benefit for you hanging in there?
Thanks Lilly
This was my reply:
Hi Lily,
Its not so much that I have 3 identities on Twitter more that I have created 3 Twitter feeds in addition to the 20 or so regular RSS Feeds that I support.
1. DavidGurteen is my personal feed that I use to keep people updated with where I am, what I am doing, thinking etc i.e. the traditional use of Twitter.
I embed this "what am I doing..." status on every page of my website so unlike many other twitterers I tend to only twitter once or twice a day and do not use the in-built Twitter messaging feature.
This status is also automatically displayed in FaceBook, Plaxo and other social tools like FriendFeed which is very useful for keeping people updated on what I am about.
2. GurteenQuotes - this starts out as an RSS feed that I generate from my website (where I have over 700 quotations stored) and feed through TwitterFeed to convert it from RSS to Twitter format. People can follow this (subscribe to it in RSS terms) and get a neat little quote from me each day.
A Lotus Notes agent does all the work here - only selecting those quotes in my database that are less than 140 characters and thus fit in the limited space allowed by Twitter.
3. GurteenNews - is similar to GurteenQuotes except that I post newsitems to my site and an agent releases one or two each day to an RSS feed that again gets turned into a Twitter feed via TwitterFeed.
I plan for most of these to be short hot items i.e. "Google releases Knol" along with a direct link to the announcement. When I come across such news items it takes me less than 30 seconds to post to my website and so the overhead is not high. Again a Lotus Notes agent running in the background takes care of all the detailed work.
As for money, I make no direct income from any of this but :
1. the cost and time of doing this is negligible and the feeds provide a valuable service to my community.
2. it helps build my network - people get to know me and visit my website; sign up for my knowledge letter; get to know me even better and this is how I get my work and ultimately my income.
3. also, by following people on Twitter I get to know them better and this helps me develop and build my relationships with them; additionally I get breaking news in near real time and lots of useful little insights to what is going on in the big wide world.
So the bottom line: I find the Twitter ROI high. I couldn't imagine life with out it!
My opinion: I am in the Snowden and Boyd camp. Without any robust process to ensure the accuracy of the articles - the breadth of quality will vary from extremely good to total rubbish or articles published by people in order to promote themselves or their obscure point of view. And whilst, Wikipedia articles are alive - they are always being challenged and updated, Knol articles are pretty much dead once posted.
I understand Knol is different to Wikipedia. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia whilst Knol is a library of articles but it still does not make up for the lack of screening or quality control.
Take a look at the articles on KM and draw your own conclusion. And in particular note this article - see the comment from Ron Young at the bottom and the author's reply!
I just came across this article by Tom Davenport referring to an article on the KnowledgeBoard site in which supposedly IBM have stopped using the term Knowledge Management and have started to call to Knowledge Sharing as Knowledge Management implies command an control!
I understand the sentiment but it all seems rather silly to me - especially when KM is far more than just Knowledge Sharing. As I have argued for a long time - KM is not meant to be a descriptive term - its simply a LABEL, a NAME for a diverse collection of practices that seek to 'leverage' knowledge. But the IBM article is well worth a read as to my mind IBM really seem to have understood what KM is all about. See:
IBM now sees organic and unimposed sharing as the biggest agent in the circulation of knowledge. Its stated strategy is to facilitate that sharing, not through any vertically integrated structure but through the empowerment of its many communities and individuals to network as openly and efficiently as possible.
Like Patrick, I believe that KM has not been irredeemably corrupted. To my mind, it is evolving rapidly under the impact of social tools and although it may be implemented differently and at times not even be called KM - it is still fundamentally unchanged as a discipline with similar goals and objectives.
In a conversation held in Kuala Lumpur on July 1st 2008, Larry Prusak, Dave Snowden and Patrick Lambe discuss the topic of whether KM is dead or dying, and what lies in store for it.
I am sure that many of you know Victor Newman and will be delighted to hear that he has started a blog. He has put his blogging-toe gingerly in the water with a slightly controversial article: "The Innovator's Got To Do It!". Well worth a read, especially if he can keep it up as I hugely respect Victor's insights and his wit.
There is also, online, a video of him explaining 4 Faces of a CEO to an audience of Chairmen of CEO mentoring groups from the ACE (Academy for Chief Executives) franchise. It lasts under 20 minutes, and he claims only to have made two mistakes!
Over the past two years, I have written about 20 Gurteen Perspective articles for Inside Knowledge magazine and it seemed somewhat a waste to not do more with them and so I have merged them together with the profile that was written about me recently into a little twenty page saddle stitched A5 booklet.
I have had a batch of these printed off in color and plan to give them away to people at workshops and conferences. They really look quite stunning and I am delighted with them!
To top this, you may recall I recently mentioned the Scribd iPaper utility that allows you to publish PDF files on-line. This is a great little service and I have loaded all my PDF files up to the site including all my past Inside Knowledge Perspectives where they can be viewed individually; downloaded and even embedded in other sites or weblogs.
But since then I have come across yet another great site called Calaméo. It turns PDFs and indeed other files into on-line interactive web publications such as magazines, brochures, sales catalogs, annual reports, presentation brochures and more.
The Knowledge Management Specialist will be responsible for the strategic development and implementation of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority’s (NDA) Knowledge Management and Intellectual Property Strategies and Policies both within the NDA and its wider estate. In addition they will lead the creation of a sustainable learning and knowledge culture.
To join us, you should be educated to degree level in a Science, Engineering or Business related discipline and have substantial practical experience working as a professional Knowledge Manager. In addition to this, you’ll have experience acting as an agent of change within a large organisation and have a thorough understanding of financial, contractual and commercial issues.
RioTinto Community of Practice success story - Comments (0)
Mark Bennett of Rio Tinto in Perth, Australia has told me about a brief (5 minute) video which describes a Community of Practice success story.
I think that everyone who has embarked on a CoP Programme has struggled with communicating what success looks like, and so when we (Rio Tinto) came across a great example of how our Maintenance CoP fixed a vexing problem by quickly transferring knowledge across the world between people who didn't know each other, we decided to make a video to communicate what happened by telling the story using a video medium.
Credit: Mark Bennett, Rio Tinto, Principal Adviser - Communities of Practice
Ron Young of Knowledge Management Online has created a Global Community of KM Practitioners where he invites KM practitioners, consultants, students and interested parties, to join, create and upload their own web page about themselves, their KM interests, and their KM needs, problems, issues and challenges to his website.
ebic 2008 is the key networking event for people working in the Knowledge and Information arena. Berlin is the venue for the 17th ebic conference.
Between 1-3 October 2008, outstanding speakers and facilitators will work with Knowledge and Information management (KIM) leaders and influencers to explore the trends and drivers that are determining the future of our organisations, market places and societies.
They will 'imagine' how the KIM community can play a significant and positive role in this future.
The theme of the conference is 'Connecting with the future' and the underlying focus is innovation. For programme information or to register please visit www.tfpl.com/ebic
I had a great time at the SLA coneference in Seattle last week. Started out on the Saturday with a boat trip on the Seattle waterways thanks to Paulette deGard and her family. It was a beautiful evening as you can see in the photos.
Dave Snowden gave a keynote talk on the Monday morning that was well received and that he has podcasted. However, many times I see Dave and hear the children's party story I always come away feeling motivated and energized.
I had been a little nervous about my talk and knowledge cafe as it was to be held in a room with lecture style seating for up to 200 people. In the end I need not have worried as we the only had 100 or so people and as everyone told me - librarians love to talk. So just getting people to turn to each and talk where they sat and to move between groups worked just fine.
The only real down side was that we could not have a whole group conversation and people had to report back via the fixed microphones. But the event pretty much proved what I have often said that a knowledge cafe cannot go far wrong as long as you have a good facilitator, a bunch of people and an interesting theme. Nothing else matters!
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