Contents
1 Introduction to the March 2010 Knowledge Letter
2 A colossal Knowledge Management failure!
3 Father Guido Sarducci's Five Minute University
4 Its a Cinch!
5 Have you started your revolution yet?
6 Zero rupee note that Indians can slip to corrupt officials who demand bribes
7 Facts are free
8 Indosat Innovation Week: A knowedge cafe in a reception area!
9 Excel makes a poor shared database!
10 KM Event Highlights
11 Subscribing and Unsubscribing
12 The Gurteen Knowledge Letter
Introduction to the March 2010 Knowledge Letter (top | next | prev)
I now have over 17,000 subscribers in 170 countries to this newsletter. Some of you are new but many of you have been receiving it for almost ten years. I always think that if you read a little of every third newsletter and take away just one idea or action then it is all worth it.
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A colossal Knowledge Management failure! (top | next | prev)
To my mind the failure by business but more so governments to understand the adverse affects of measures, rewards and targets is a colossal Knowledge Management failure. As far as I can tell nearly all the research and evidence shows that rewards and targets do NOT work in complex environments. In fact they have the opposite effect of what is intended! But despite all the evidence to the contrary they continue, out of habit, to put their heads in the sand and do not change.
This post from Ron Donaldson on A blind pursuit of targets points to yet more evidence. I really wish I had collected all the stories of the failure of targets by the Labour government over the last 12 years or so. I think there is enough to write a book! As Ron says "Is anyone in Govt health, education or the environment listening?"
This really is a KM issue. We have the knowledge but we refuse to act on it!
But apart from anything else "we really must stop trying to do things to people and to start to work with them".
Father Guido Sarducci's Five Minute University (top | next | prev)
At Father Guido Sarduccis Five Minute University, he teaches what an average college graduate knows after five years from graduation in five minutes.
This is so funny because at its heart it is so true. Universities, schools and other educational establishments in their current form have had their day!
Thanks to Barry Camson for pointing me to this.
Its a Cinch! (top | next | prev)
I recently discovered Cinch and I love it! It's a really easy way to create and share audio, text and photo updates using your phone or computer. Using a simple interface, you can take a photo and annotate it with a short piece of audio. You can then notify people through Facebook, Twitter or CinchCast. Its very simple and very effective and has the potential for being a powerful sharing tool. For example, photos could be taken of artifacts and annotated with a short voice description to form a simple library of sorts. Here are my Cinches so far.
Have you started your revolution yet? (top | next | prev)
Take look at what Chris Brogan. has to say on Revolutions. My way of looking at this is that you get to achieve major revolutions one day at a time or as Chris puts it one tiny revolution at a time. Its pretty much the way I have worked over the last fifteen years or so. I have had a vision in my mind of what I have wanted to achieve and each day I have tried to take small steps in that direction. No grand plan but learning and adapting as I go. Chris describes the process well.
So have you started your revolution yet?
Zero rupee note that Indians can slip to corrupt officials who demand bribes (top | next | prev)
If someone asked you for a bribe and you offered them a zero denomination note, how do you think they would react? Woild they get angry and demand the full bribe they were asking for or apologise and back down?
Surprisingly in India as this story about a zero rupee note that Indians can slip to corrupt officials who demand bribes explains the reaction seems to be the latter. Yes I can hardly believe it either. One posited explanation is that they shock people into honesty.
I often think that confronting people with the reality of their actions or behaviour in an in indirect, non-threatening way can cause them to reflect and change. Maybe we should experiment more with counter-intuitive ideas like this one. So often our intuition gets things wrong - nothing beats testing ideas - even crazy - ones in practice.
Facts are free (top | next | prev)
I am not so sure I am comfortable with the style of this speaker Dan Brown on the theme An Open Letter to Educators but I have learnt over the years to try to overlook the presentation style and focus on the content. I may not like his style but although Dan is only 20 years old he is already a minor YouTube celebrity with over 100,000 subscribers and 2 million page views to his credit.
Two messages jumped out at me:
- "Society no longer cares how many facts we can memorize because in the information age, facts are free."
- " Education is about empowering students to change the world for the better."
Indosat Innovation Week: A knowedge cafe in a reception area! (top | next | prev)
I have run Knowledge Cafes in lots of interesting places but this Kcafe at the Indosat Innovation Week last week in Jakarta was the first time I had held one in a reception area with people walking by :-)
Excel makes a poor shared database! (top | next | prev)
Fifteen years ago or more when I was developing Lotus Notes applications I was often asked to take an Excel spreadsheet and turn it into a Notes app. A common way of sharing information then was to create an Excel spreadsheet and store it on a shared disk drive where people could access it and update it or to pass it around by email.
Why Excel and not a database? Well Excel was the only tool that everyone had easy access to. Either they did not have access to a database tool because IT would not allow it or they did not have the skills to develop a database application themselves and could not afford to ask IT. But everyone had Excel and everyone knew how to program it - however crudely. Turning a spreadsheet into a Notes app was usually trivial and only took an hour or two but hugely improved the quality and accessibility of the information.
Using a spreadsheet was a very poor fudge back then but today its a crazy solution given all the modern tools we have! But guess what I came across an organisation a week or two back that were sharing information just that way - Excel spreadsheets on a shared drive! I still find it hard to believe.
KM Event Highlights (top | next | prev)
This section highlights some of the major KM events taking place around the world in the coming months and ones in which I am actively involved. You will find a full list on my website where you can also subscribe to both regional e-mail alerts and RSS feeds which will keep you informed of new and upcoming events.
Making KM Productive
30 Mar 2010, Hong Kong, China
I will be speaking at this event.
The Gurteen Knowledge Café Masterclass
31 Mar 2010, Hong Kong, China
I will be running this Masterclass as a post-conference workshop at HKKMS 2010.
KM Egypt 2010
20 - 21 Apr 2010, Cairo, Egypt
I will be speaking at this event. My first trip to Egypt!
Driving Business Performance
26 - 30 Apr 2010, Houston, United States
5th Knowledge Management International Conference
25 - 27 May 2010, Terengganu, Malaysia
Global MAKE Conference 2010 Brasil (GMC 2010)
25 - 27 May 2010, São Paulo, Brasil
Third International Congress on Knowledge Management
03 - 04 Jun 2010, Bogota, Colombia
I am looking forward to this conference. My first trip ro Colombia.
KM UK 2010
15 - 16 Jun 2010, London, United Kingdom
I will be giving a keynote talk at this event.
5th Knowledge and Project Management Symposium
04 - 05 Aug 2010, Tulsa, United States
World Library and Information Congress
10 - 15 Aug 2010, Gothenburg, Sweden
11th European Conference on Knowledge Management (ECKM 2010)
02 - 03 Sep 2010, Vila Nova de Famalicão, Portugal
I will be attending this event for the seventh year in succession.
7th International Conference on Intellectual Capital, Knowledge Management & Organisational Learning (ICICKM 2010)
11 - 12 Nov 2010, Hong Kong, China
KMWorld & Intranets 2010
16 - 18 Nov 2010, Washington DC, United States
Subscribing and Unsubscribing (top | next | prev)
You may subscribe to this newsletter on my website. Or if you no longer wish to receive this newsletter or if you wish to modify your e-mail address or make other changes to your membership profile then please go to this page on my website.
The Gurteen Knowledge Letter (top | next | prev)
The Gurteen Knowledge-Letter is a free monthly e-mail based KM newsletter for Knowledge Workers. Its purpose is to help you better manage your knowledge and to stimulate thought and interest in such subjects as Knowledge Management, Learning, Creativity and the effective use of Internet technology. Archive copies are held on-line where you can register to receive the newsletter.
It is sponsored by the Knowledge Management Forum of the Henley Business School, Oxfordshire, England.
You may copy, reprint or forward all or part of this newsletter to friends, colleagues or customers, so long as any use is not for resale or profit and I am attributed. And if you have any queries please contact me.
David GURTEEN
Gurteen Knowledge
Fleet, United Kingdom
