actkm - networks

Graham and Laurie both ran sessions on networks of different sorts. BTW networks are so hot right now.

I interpret Graham's work as being built on a single, brilliant insight (plus lots of hard work). The insight is that the nodes in social network analysis don't have to be people. They can be projects or policies or many other kinds of business objects. I strongly advise you to read his blog.

Meanwhile Laurie's partnership scorecard is also shaping up nicely. He now has lots of nifty templates. The session suffered from being a dash hypothetical (I imagine it plays so much better for real) but again definitely worth checking out.

actkm - arthur shelley's wiki

Arthur presented on his wiki experiments with RMIT students. The trials and tribulations. The collective efforts. It's a shame that this one wasn't recorded as the slide don't really do it justice.

actkm - dave snowden's challenge

Rewinding to the actKM conference a couple of weeks ago, I want to pick apart a comment by Dave Snowden. In a public discussion, he stated that knowledge managers should focus on solving intractable problems.

I have two responses to this:

1. That's easy for you to say, Dave. To my knowledge, Dave has never held down a KM role inside an organisation (apologies if that's wrong) and his primary engagement with KM has been as a consultant. He gets to pick and choose "intractable problems" that he will work on. Most knowledge managers do not have that luxury but must try to sell innovative projects to a sceptical management while ensuring that things like the intranet are working.

2. As a provocation, an incitement to knowledge managers not to get pigeon-holed as document minders, it's a great one.

mp3 on advice to new knowledge managers

I asked several people at the actKM conference what advice they would give to people new to the field of KM. You can now listen to their advice on the actKM site.

Hear what Mark Schenk, David Gurteen, Arthur Shelley, Graham Durant-Law, Keith De La Rue and Cory Banks have to say.

What piece of advice would you give?

actkm 2008

Massive shout out to the team who organised and contributed to the actKM 2008 conference in Canberra this week. Here are the presentations from Day 1 (including my own). Further reflections will follow on the weekend.

km researcher wiki

Every so often the actKM mailing list will get hit with a survey request - often from students or staff in academia. Sometimes the surveys are OK. Sometimes they are awful.

It's as though they don't know what other researchers are doing. Or how best to ask us practitioners (and others) about our experiences.

After a full & frank exchange of views with Graham Durant-Law*, I have set up a little experimental wiki. At the moment it has two components:

• A draft FAQ for would-be KM researchers wanting to engage with actKM.
• A list of surveys that have graced actKM in the last 2 years.

Ideally I would like this to develop into place where researchers can connect with each other and also with practitioners.

If something like this already exists then please tell me about it. Otherwise make what is there better (because it is just a start).

*Graham has been trained to kill people with his bare hands but fortunately he is Canberra and I am in Sydney.

actkm day 2

The actKm web site seems to have gone down - possibly due to people downloading the conference material. So for now, I'll just have to say that:

• Patrick Lambe's session on "Getting stakeholder buy-in for KM projects" using archetypes was excellent.
• Nerida Hart & Co seem to be doing a lot of cool stuff at Land & Water Australia.
• The session on KM & governance in hugher education was surprisingly engaging.

Plus there was a fantastic turnout for Dave Gurteen's Knowledge Cafe in Sydney last Thursday.

actkm (4) - with a paddle

The acktkm conference dinner featured an award for some Tasmanian dudes who recreated an aboriginal stringy bark canoe. Such canoes have not been around for 170 years. They collected 500 kg of bark to construct the boat and the results were impressive.

actkm (3)

After some very interesting papers from Luke Naismith, Richard Vines & Laurie Lock Lee, Tory Maile talked about Cultural Heritage Information Management Systems (CHIMS). These systems allow indigenous communities to preserve stories, images & recordings - mapped to representations of their environment. The first example he talked about was a system at Uluru. Cultural protocols restrict certain knowledge to men & to women so certain parts of the site are only accessible to those groups. Troy worked on another system in Vanuatu and is now in the wet tropics of Queensland working on a cultural heritage project with the Aboriginal Rainforest Council. As this involves 18 tribal groups (made up of 50+ clans), the protocols will be a bit more complicated.

Troy made the following priceless observation: Indigenous people in Australia had 60,000 years to work out their protocols - most organisations have not been around that long.

actkm (2) - gurteen by sea

"a vain confidence of divine favour or communication"

Dave Gurteen is probably not one of KM's thought leaders - thank heavens. He is not really concerned with staking out an intellectual pig-pen. Instead with DG, you get a sense of enthusiasm. For connection, conversation (he's a fan of the work of Theodore Zeldin) & social software. DG looks and acts younger than his years because he is an enthusiast. He is one of the few people on the international KM circuit that isn't bitched about in private - because you get the sense that what he does is not really about him.

actkm conference (1) - su-age

ANU University House is cute. Really cute - even if it's 8 am and I've been awake since 5. And Patrick is suggesting - no, advocating - that knowledge managers should be sued when they screw up. Now Patrick* is trying to be controversial. But he's also taking this position because he cares. And he believes. He believes that information management & knowledge management matter. That they have a genuine impact. So that when these activities fail people should be angry. Angry enough to resort to lawyers and court cases and that whole world of pain. And I sympathize with his position - not least because he presents it well - but because these things should matter.

*Patrick is one of the great thinkers still associated with knowledge management. His combination of erudition, rigour, clarity & modesty is shamefully rare.

UPDATE: Patrick's presentation is available.

actkm conference

So it is the actkm Conference 2007 tomorrow & Wednesday. I will be running on Wednesday afternoon after lunch. I have 75 mins. When I ran something similar with a bunch of UTS postgrads a couple of weeks ago, it went for 3 hours. I have no idea what will work and what won't - but hey, that's half the fun.

I am quite excited - Dave Gurteen will be there. As will Patrick Lambe, Laurie Lock Lee, Luke Naismith and a bunch of other people.