**** The Gurteen Knowledge-Letter (Issue 57, 13 March 2005) ****
I have been running "Gurteen Knowledge Cafes" in London for the last
two years but I suspect given your location you have not been able to
get to them :=) Well that is starting to change!
A long-time associate of mine, Steve Hales, has agreed to set up and
to run a Knowledge Cafe in the North West of England that may be the
first of a number of regional cafes around the world. But for now,
one step at a time - if you would like more information about the NW
Knowledge Cafe then see:
http://www.gurteen.com/gurteen/gurteen.nsf/id/kcafe-events-nw-england
A knowledge café is a simple means for a group of people to have an
open, creative conversation on a topic of mutual interest to gain a
deeper collective understanding of the subject and the issues
involved but if you would like to learn more see:
http://www.gurteen.com/gurteen/gurteen.nsf/id/kcafe-events
Or if you more academically inclined then download a recent paper by
Prof. Dan Remenyi on "Knowledge Sharing and Collaboration: Knowledge
Cafés -- Do it yourself knowledge sharing? " from my download center:
http://www.gurteen.com/gurteen/gurteen.nsf/id/downloads
*************************** CONTENTS ***************************
1 - Get that smile from the heart
2 - Academic turns city into a social experiment
3 - Making Knowledge Work
4 - Identity Theft
5 - An Introduction to KM by Jerry Ash
6 - Cynefin Centre Update
7 - KnowledgeBoard Update
8 - Defining Success
9 - Distributed Journalism
10 - On the cost of not knowing and where KM is going
11 - New Google Toolbar & AutoLink
12 - Google Maps and GPS
13 - WebProNews
14 - Gurteen Knowledge-Calendar
15 - What's New?
***************** GET THAT SMILE FROM THE HEART *****************
One of my favorite blogs is that of Dina Mehta in Mumbai, India, see:
http://radio.weblogs.com/0121664/
Dina is also a regular contributor to the Global Knowledge Review and
its her article "Get that smile from the heart" that I have published
on-line from the February issue see:
http://www.gurteen.com/gurteen/gurteen.nsf/id/L001413/
This is how she starts ...
"I’ve been thinking of the concept of client or customer delight, and
the old wise 80/20 rule that says businesses get 80% of their revenue
from 20% of their clients, that a lot of companies seem to be
forgetting while prospecting for new business, and servicing their
customers.
The environment in India is perhaps different, still it is changing
so rapidly from a low-wage, unorganized work environment to
increasing structures driven by large multinational organizations,
which in turn have a rub-off on small entrepreneurs.
My local vegetable vendor, my local grocer, my local Indian take-away
food joint and my local beauty salon have taught me more about
customer delight than from any 'corporate' service-driven
organization.
I wonder whether these experiences are true to India alone? Do you
have similar stories in your culture? When have you been delighted?
What does customer delight mean to you?"
Think on her questions ... what Dina has to say reminds me a lot of
the messages of Tom Peters. In Tom's words: "Make the words glow,
tingle, thrill, wow, dazzle and delight the primary bases for
evaluating the quality of all your products and services -- i.e., do
customers "like" your service, or are they "gaga" over it? "
********* ACADEMIC TURNS CITY INTO A SOCIAL EXPERIMENT *********
Antanas Mockus is a former mayor of Bogotá, Colombia. He was a very
effective but most unusual mayor. For example, he hired 420 mimes to
control traffic in Bogotá's chaotic and dangerous streets and he
launched a "Night for Women" and asked the city's men to stay home in
the evening and care for the children; 700,000 women went out on the
first of three nights that Mockus dedicated to them!
Here are a couple of quotes from him in an article in the Harvard
Gazette.
"The distribution of knowledge is the key contemporary task.
Knowledge empowers people. If people know the rules, and are
sensitized by art, humor, and creativity, they are much more likely
to accept change."
"To me, it is important to develop collective leadership. I don't
like to get credit for all that we achieved. Millions of people
contributed to the results that we achieved ... I like more
egalitarian relationships. I especially like to orient people to
learn."
See: http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2004/03.11/01-mockus.html
I think we need a few more people in the world like Mockus who are
prepared to experiment with very unconventional solutions to social
problems :-)
Thanks to Peter Fryer of Trojan Mice for pointing me to this article:
http://www.gurteen.com/gurteen/gurteen.nsf/id/trojan-mice
********************* MAKING KNOWLEDGE WORK *********************
My next big conference with Bizmedia is coming up on 17-18 May in
London.
I have always been unhappy with KM conference formats where too much
focus is placed on technology; 'chalk and talk' presentations; death
by powerpoint and not enough time for networking, conversations and
real interaction among the participants.
In "Making Knowledge Work" I have worked hard to avoid these
pitfalls. The conference is a two day event of small facilitated
workshops and highly interactive sessions that are designed to
engage, inspire and entertain you but ultimately to allow you learn
in your own way and at you own pace through interaction with the
facilitators and others.
The event is built around the central question: "How do we make
knowledge work - what do we need to do to be more creative,
innovative and effective in the knowledge economy?" But I think the
measure of the two days is the quality of the speaker/facilitators I
have recruited:
+ Dave Snowden, Director, Cynefin Centre
+ Victor Newman, former Chief Learning Officer, European Pfizer
Research University
+ Chris Collison, Author and Director, Change & Knowledge Management,
Centrica
+ Prof. Clive Holtham, Professor of Information Management at the
CASS Business School
+ Angela Dove, Angela Dove Consulting
+ Prof. Leslie Johnson, Director of University of Greenwich Business
School
+ Mick Cope, Wizoz
+ Sheila Moorcroft, Research for Tomorrow, Today
+ Jon Thorne, Director, Team Performance
+ Lee Bryant, Director, Headshift
+ Ron Donaldson, Senior Knowledge Ecologist, English Nature
I know each of these speakers personally and have seen them
present/facilitate on many occasions and I am sure you will find them
as inspirational and engaging as I do. I have a lot more about them
and the two-days online so take a few minutes out to take a look:
http://www.gurteen.com/gurteen/gurteen.nsf/id/L001182/
************************ IDENTITY THEFT ************************
Identity theft is becoming more and more of a problem and it is not
just an online phenomena. Take a look at this article by Robin Good
that provides some useful tips on how to avoid your identity being
stolen.
http://www.gurteen.com/gurteen/gurteen.nsf/s?open&id=L001438
Robin Good: http://www.masternewmedia.org
************** AN INTRODUCTION TO KM BY JERRY ASH **************
Many of you will know Jerry Ash, founder of the Association of
Knowledgework (AOK). Well Jerry has written a series of six 500-word
essays that can be tailored to your purpose and published as a paper
or as a series in your company publication.
These are not journalistic articles meant for a general audience,
though journalistically written; they are consulting tools to help
you introduce or reinforce KM with key people in your organization.
Most importantly, they are based on the credibility of the collective
thinking of hundreds of top KM gurus and practitioners during the
evolution of KM over the past 10 years. For more information see:
http://www.gurteen.com/gurteen/gurteen.nsf/id/L001432/
********************* CYNEFIN CENTRE UPDATE *********************
Just a reminder that if you are interested in attending the 4-day
certification programme with Dave Snowden, 31-March to 3-April 2005
at the University of Greenwich, London on Cynefin frameworks, tools,
and methods then see:
http://www.gurteen.com/gurteen/gurteen.nsf/id/L001355/
Other Cynefin programmes and events where Dave is speaking see:
http://www.cynefin.net/events.php
Dave has also got a lot of material up on his site now in the form of
a 'knowledgebase' see:
http://www.cynefin.net/kbase.php
********************* KNOWLEDGEBOARD UPDATE *********************
The KnowledgeBoard content team have been collaborating with
publishers (including the Global Knowledge Review) to provide free
papers to their community. The publishers get good honest marketing,
and the community get high qualityresearch papers for free.
They are very proud of this 'win-win' achievement and hope you enjoy
them too:
http://www.knowledgeboard.com/knowledgebank/journals.html
*********************** DEFINING SUCCESS ***********************
My "Getting Buy-in" workshop with Jon Thorne went off well a few
weeks back. Lawrence Clarke from SIFT attended the workshop and wrote
this short article for KnowledgeBoard. Take a look - I think you will
get a good feel for the power of Jon's ideas especially when trying
to get buy-in for knowledge management initiatives which is always an
issue :-)
http://www.knowledgeboard.com/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=138241
As Lawrence says:
"The day was all about getting the participants to rigorously
challenge their assumptions and starting points based on two simple
truths: You cannot succeed without defining success and you cannot
define success without separating the what from the how."
******************** DISTRIBUTED JOURNALISM ********************
Here is an interesting article from Christian Einfeldt in Mad Penguin
on the disruptive influence of 'open content':
http://madpenguin.org/cms/?m=show&id=3497
This is how he concludes:
"Soon, we will see online communities producing, creating, and
distributing their own video feeds. I personally don't think that
Google news will ever push the New York Times into irrelevance, as is
the premise of the very cool and very slick flashmedia video, EPIC
2014.
Much of what is found on the Internet is of questionable value, so
there will always be a need for professional reporters, editors,
producers, directors, and actors, and commercial entertainment
aggregators like the major broadcast news networks.
But as time goes by, their control of the news and entertainment
industries will certainly shrink, and open source once again will
have radically changed the way that we see the world."
EPIC 2014: http://www.robinsloan.com/epic/
Watch the EPIC video - it is cool! What is the 'information' world
going to look like in 2014?
******* ON THE COST OF NOT KNOWING AND WHERE KM IS GOING *******
I greatly admire the thinking and the work of Dave Pollard. In this
recent posting he has taken a look at the current state overview of
KM, with particular emphasis on Personal Knowledge Management (PKM)
and The Cost of Not Knowing. Interestingly, he has written it in a
q&a format. Here are just some of the questions he poses :-)
Q: How do you help management become aware of knowledge gaps in their
organization?
Q: How do you address resistance to change when it occurs at the
implementation stage of a KM project?
Q: What role should blogs play in KM systems?
Q: What are the best KM tools to start with?
Q: What are the characteristics of a good KM implementation?
Q: Where do you see KM fitting organizationally in the future?
Q: How do you assess the companies' and employees' readiness for a
formal KM system?
Q: What are the biggest "don'ts" in implementing KM?
http://www.gurteen.com/gurteen/gurteen.nsf/s?open&id=L001441
***************** NEW GOOGLE TOOLBAR & AUTOLINK *****************
Have you discovered Google's new toolbar yet?
http://toolbar.google.com/
Google is being strongly criticized for its new Autolink feature.
Street addresses on web pages are automatically linked to Google
Maps, and publisher's ISBN numbers for books are linked to Amazon
which has required Barnes & Noble, for example, to turn all the ISBN
numbers on their website into links to thwart Autolink.
Dave Winer's view on the Autolink feature is that they go against the
nature of the web:
http://www.thetwowayweb.com/2005/02/22
I utterly agree. Google have no right to change the content of a
webpage, even if instigated by a browser user, but especially when it
links the webpage to a competitor as in the case with Barnes & Noble
above!
********************** GOOGLE MAPS AND GPS **********************
I have just discovered Google Maps. The system and the quality of the
graphics is awesome! I have yet to really understand the technology
but apart from being a great mapping tool it also seems to be a
development platform. People like John Udel and others have done some
incredible things like combining Google Maps with a GPS system, still
photos, digital movies and a sound track to create a "walking tour of
Keene"
Google Maps:
http://maps.google.com/
A walking tour of Keene, New Hampshire
http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/2005/02/25.html
The application of this technology - geolocation and presence - is
going to be huge and open up a whole new world. As John says we are
going to use it to "Annotate the planet".
Listen to this panel discussion on "Geolocation: The Killer Map"
from the Web 2.0 Conference in San Francisco last year and you may
get a better idea why:
http://www.itconversations.com/shows/detail318.htm
One fascinating tidbit - digital cameras that not only stamp your
photos with date/time but also a GPS stamp. The Ricoh camera below
has just such a facility and by the looks of it much more!
http://www.geospatialexperts.com/ricoh.html
************************** WEBPRONEWS **************************
I don't recall signing up for it but I have recently started to
receive a weekly newsletter from WebProNews. If you are a website
developer/manger I would highly recommend it - it is packed with
useful tidbits. I am rapidly finding it indispensable.
http://www.webpronews.com
