the day after tomorrow for knowledge management

So we know that today is pretty screwed up. The world was running on US consumer debt and now the tab has to be paid. It's all about cost reduction and efficiency at the moment. Knowledge managers will face a tough couple of years. You can axe most KM operations and not see any impact for, ooh, 3-6 months. Of course 6 months down the track managers will be saying "we used to do this stuff well, why do we suck at it now?" but that's in the future.

The bad news: Some of you will be fired no matter how good your work is. Corporate cullings may be presented as rational exercises in cost control & restructuring but from the inside seem more like frantic acts of self-harm by bulimics at break point. If the chamber in your game of involuntary Russian Roulette does contain a live round then take the money and get out of there.

The good news: KM really began as a movement after the last major recession (and the BPR-related blood-letting) of the early 90s. Organisations will fire too many people, just as they probably hired too many people in the recent past. They will be awash with ignorance. Fertile territory for those whose job it is reduce the dead weight of ignorance.

Hang on.

2020 hindsight

So there's been a lot of noise from Stephen & Laurel & others about the Australia 2020 Summit. Frankly they are welcome to it. Because these things are about timing.

Australia is not in a place to ask any questions about 2020 let alone answer them. The 2007 election was fought on a common platform by both parties: "We will stuff things up less than the other guys". We are still doing rather nicely from the commodities boom. Australia will only be able to define its future when it can work out what it should be. And it will only be able to do that when it faces an existential crisis brought on by declining commodity revenues.

Let me tell you what I think Australia's future should be. Australia is at the edge (or arse-end) of the world. Frankly no one cares about us. Which is good. It gives us a freedom. An opportunity to innovate & experiment should we choose to do so. If we take our position as an edge culture seriously, if we own our outcast nature rather than reject it then the future is ours to invent. We need to cast of the last vestiges of our anglo conservatism and recognise that none of us can go back to a 50s semi-rural world. And our future will be different to our present.

The best the 2020 Summit can do is float some tenative suggestions around that future - upturn a conceptual apple cart or two - but its immediate impact will be minimal. The rest of us will be biding our time...

That'll learn ya (2): Kronberg is lovely at this time of year

Both Kim & Arthur have drawn my attention to the UNESCO Kronberg Declaration on the Future of Knowledge Acquisition and Sharing. Now there are more than enough motherhood & apple pie statements here to cause serious mental indigestion but I want to examine one key statement (with maybe others down the track):

The importance of the role of teachers as instructors will decrease, while their role as facilitators, consultants, guides and coaches for learners, as role models and as validators and interpreters of knowledge sharing, creation and acquisition, will increase

And with impeccable timing, James Farmer loses his rag in relation to an IFTF jolly the future of teaching:

Is suppose it’s inevitable that a room packed with futurists, bureaucrats and people who’ve done well out of social technologies would come up with this kind of definition, and if you’re going to call your seminar “The Future of Learning Agents” then this is the kind of guff that you’re going to expect.

Now let me stress that James is not having a go at Kronberg (although I'd like to know what he thinks about that as well). And let me also say that I am not a teacher (although I have been involved in corporate training) and I haven't been a student for a decade. With those caveats in place, let me move right on to the ill-informed generalisations:

• There are many different learning environments out there and they are all somewhat different: primary, secondary & tertiary education, vocational education & organisational training. For a learner to take responsibility for their own learning, they have to be able to take responsibility for stuff and getting a 5 year-old to take responsibility for a goldfish is tricky enough, let alone their future. Asking a 40 year-old corporate executive to do so is a different matter (just don't leave him alone with the goldfish).
• Many tertiary educators (& corporate trainers) would love to be collaborative learning agents, partnering on the great educational adventure with their students. Many of the students (tho not all) don't want this. They want the quickest route to the piece of paper at the end of the course. "Just gimme the course notes and don't make me think too much".
• There are two big trends in education: The first trend focuses on the standardisation & control that can be seen in development of national curricula on the one hand & competency-based LMS tools on the other. However, the individual does not learn in a "standard" way so this has triggered the second big trend - the focus on user-centred learning. Both of these views have some legitimacy but both by themselves are harmful. We need to build some kind of synthesis between these two approaches. Suggestions?

Ultimately I think that statement from Kronberg might be right. I would add that it's not just the teachers we need to change but their students / stakeholders as well (i.e. the rest of us). If we are all to become life-long learners (which I believe in the current, crazy world, we must), we must also become teachers (of others & also ourselves). Are we ready for that?