More NSW KM Forum

So Thursday October 6th at the NSW KM Forum.

We got Steven Layer, MD of Weblogics and Marcus Gibson from Lend Lease.

And may be some special guests...

Blog To Learn!

Got to have a chat to Anne Bartlett-Bragg at UTS. Anne is using blogging with her students as pedagogical technique. One point of real interest was the role that blogging has in developing writing skills and strategic thinking. The more her students blogged, the better their writing skills got. The other thing was, as they got used to linking to things, they started looking at the periphery of their subjects - at the points of overlap with other disciplines. This is the beginning of strategic thought - the big, joined-up picture.

Speed Limits

Went down to Melbourne last weekend to see a friend. He and his partner very kindly took me to the Slow Festival at Melbourne. Apart from gorging ourselves on fantastic food, I had a chat to Carl Honore. This was highly opportune as I have been thinking a great deal about speed limits. Just because tech allows us to move fast, that doesn't mean we always should. As Shawn said to me: The default exchange in business these days is "How are you?" "Oh, really busy. And you?" "Yeah, flat out". If we aren't busy then some how we've failed. Now, knowing the right speed to go at is crucial and yet we never talk about it. Go figure...

BTW I am aware that this post contains some name-dropping - but I'm very lucky in that I get to meet cool people pretty much every day. How fantastic is that?

NSW KM Forum (2)

At exceedly short notice, we got Tom Davenport to speak courtesy of Leonardo Consulting who had flown him over to be part of a conference on Business Process Management (BPM). Tom's talk was thought-provoking (well, given his experience, it would have been a bit disappointing if it wasn't) - esp. around the links between BPM, KM & embedded learning.

Tom's 10 ways to improve knowledge work:
1. Adopt a process orientation
2. Change the external environment
3. Script the work
4. Embed knowledge into work
5. Automate decisions
6. Focused knowledge management
7. Address personal capabilities
8. Reuse existing intellectual assets
9. Put someone in charge of improvement
10. Build effective social networks

NSW KM Forum (1): KM Standard

So our last session was the Australian KM Standard. Sue Halbwirth & Kim Sbarcea did a good overview and it looks pretty sound but...

It hasn't been released yet. Standards Australia - you teasing tricksters where is it?

An Australian KM?

Went to see the exhibition of Maggie Preston's work at Gallery of NSW on Sunday. One thing that impressed me was her commitment to creating a thoroughly Australian modernism - rather than just following the Europeans or the Americans.

This reminded me of the IBM report on KM for the EU (which some people on this list were heavily involved with). The report is unusual because its basic message is that the Europeans cannot beat the US at its own game - i.e. tech-driven KM. Instead they must find a way drawing on their differences to the yanks.

So the question I'm posing myself is: what would an Australian KM look like?

Because I am convinced that if Australian is to survive beyond the current resource boom, it needs to do more than simply ape America.

Some initial thoughts about Australia:
- A "big" country with a small population - hence an opportunity for collaborative technologies.
- More culturally homogenous than the US or Europe (main differences are between rural and urban rather than states).
- A "slower" culture than the US that has traditionally valued the good life rather than absolute material wealth. How does this impact how Australians like to make decisions and the support tools they require for that.
- A unique flora and fauna (which is danger of disappearing).

Blink At A Glance

Malcolm Gladwell is not a great thinker.

But he is a superb populist writer. His latest book will frame thousands of conversations around intuition and "shadow' thinking - the thinking without thinking of his subtitle.

The work of Gary Klein has interested me for the last 18 months. I hope Gladwell's book will increase the conversations that occur around these topics.

N.B. Gladwell seems to be someone you love or hate. Would that be the sound of nerves being touched?

Multimedia Learning - Going Back To Cali

Richard E Mayer is a ridiculously well-published doyen of mul-ty-mee-ja-lernin'. And his first lecture at UNSW was a damp squib. Apparently pure "discovery learning" or pure exposition are not as good as guiding participants. Anyway, this was a sucker punch coz his second lecture on multimedia instructional design was fantastic. 50 mins of best (& worst) practice for designing courses.

The only grating note at the end was a jibe against social psychologists - and hence social theories of learning (see the note on Wenger below). Coz we don't ever learn in isolation. We learn for a reason. And that reason is often as not linked to the social environment we live in (e.g. the workplace). Any approach to learning that does not acknowledge this will end in gibbering autism.

Bodymovin'

ISPI hosted a conversation between Rada Millwood and Zoran Kovich around embodied thought.

Underpinning the whole thang was their experience as Feldenkrais practitioners. And I thought it was great. There was a sample in early-90s jungle/hip hop from asian chop-socky movies that went "you must think first before you move". Rada and Zoran state the reverse - "you must move first before you think".

Suggestive rather than definitive, the session provoked all kinds of questions around how we use our bodies to think - and what that means for our day-to-day lives...

So much stuff but so little time

OK, I am way overdue with posts on globalism (John Ralston Saul & Clyde Prestowitz), body posture & thinking (ISPI), Multimedia Learning (Richard Mayer) and lots of other stuff.

But I'm pretty busy at work at the moment and also my new laptop disagrees with my broadband connection.

But soon...