Feb 16
Getting Their Attention
Here’s a really nice idea to get senior managers’ attention for participation in a KM strategy workshop! It’s from one of our clients, where the KM team has found it very difficult to grab the attention of their senior people for involvement in framing the organisation’s KM strategy. It’s not that they are against KM, it’s just they have a lot of things going on. So here’s the “wedding invitation” look, backed up with personal visits, and several pre-session briefings.
Feb 15
Take Nothing For Granted
This hilarious video (thanks to David Weinberger) shows a monk getting help from his monastery’s help desk, when codex books started to supercede the scroll.
Feb 15
Participatory Conferences
David Gurteen has written an excellent series of suggestions on “participatory conferences”:
“ Too often, talks are packed in back to back, often in multi-streams with little or no time for questions and answers and genuine discussion - never mind - networking among the participants. Speakers are not sufficiently briefed or disciplined and run over time; insufficient time is allowed for coffee breaks and for lunch and no time is built in to the day for conversation and reflection. What’s worse is that these conferences are about ‘learning and knowledge management’ - the organizers are just not walking the talk! So this page is one that is continually under development and captures and disseminates some ideas and tools for making conferences more interactive, participatory and engaging and thus better learning environments.”
Feb 14
Remote Control KM
I travelled this morning from Hong Kong to Singapore. When I left the hotel early in the morning I asked the taxi driver to take me to the Kowloon Airport Express station. He only spoke Cantonese, so while he recognized “Kowloon” he had no idea what the other words meant.
We repeated words at each other a couple of times and I was not confident about what he thought I was saying. I flapped my arms, and then worried he might take me all the way to the airport, which costs a bomb.
We both decided to seek help. I looked back towards the hotel staff at the entrance, thinking they could translate. He was quicker. He hopped out of the cab and ran to the taxi behind us.
Feb 02
The Kingdom of Taxonomy
Here’s a little something I put together as a visual aid to explore the relationships between taxonomies, ontologies and folksonomies. I’ll be giving a seminar on this topic (from my new book) at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University in Kowloon next Friday. Click on the image to see a bigger version. Enjoy!
Feb 01
How to be a KM Guru #2
This is the second in a series of posts exploring what it is to be a KM Guru, and the role that they play in the KM professional space. It’s a little tongue in cheek, but also has its serious side. The first post and ensuing discussion is here.
Tip #2. Be Accessible
To be a successful guru in KM, people from a wide range of backgrounds need to be able to understand you. One of the main objectives of staking out your territory (see Tip #1) is making sure that you can easily be associated with a particular domain, and recalled with great ease during an elevator ride. This won’t happen if people don’t understand what you are constantly going on about. To be a guru you must simplify. This is assuming you are a genuine guru, and have a handle on genuinely complex things (as distinct from a fake guru who only knows how to complicate simple things - Dave Snowden, by the way, has recently suggested that fake gurus be tarred and feathered - is there a digital equivalent to this community-based punishment, or should we reserve special sessions at KM conferences?).
Jan 30
How Einstein’s Big Idea Became Big
Back in school, when I was taught about Einstein’s theory of relativity and his famous equation e=mc2, I assumed that not only did he come up with the equation but that he somehow owned the various elements in it as well. Recently, I discovered that I had been grossly ignorant, thanks to a documentary called Einstein’s Big Idea.
Jan 26
The Prize To Retain Expertise Became The Price
Recently, I caught up with a teacher I know in a primary school. She was one of 8 teachers recently handpicked to be trained as a mentor for other English Language teachers in primary schools. It was a one-year programme she had to attend for which she had to be assigned to the headquarters (HQ) after which she would return to the schools to mentor other teachers. It was a golden opportunity. The “problem” was she was a talented and dedicated teacher in her primary school.
Jan 25
Taxonomy Development Needs A Human Touch
Came across this nice article on why you’ll still need to involve the users in developing taxonomies even though taxonomy software tools are available, and also on sustaining users’ interest in tagging content long after the taxonomy has been deployed.
Jan 24
How to Conduct a Peer Assist
Via Nancy White a nice little animation with voiceover explaining how to conduct a peer assist, including a nice idea for a large group “rotating” peer assist with similarities to World Cafe.
