Well that's all over now, the last workshop was here in Bangkok on Friday (from where I am writing this newsletter in a Starbucks!). Its been a fun couple of weeks and I have loved working with the people at IBM - it felt like being back at Lotus in the 80s - a lot of energy and a lot of fun.
And although I have been doing most of the talking when meeting IBM's clients, I have learnt a great deal. The bottom line is that there is a huge interest and enthusiasm for Social Tools in Asia but very much in the context of KM and "creating a knowledge sharing culture". The questions I was asked time and time again by senior managers was "How do you create a Knowledge Sharing Culture?"; "How do you get started?" and "How do you motivate people to open up, collaborate and share?"
Here is my presentation. You may recognize it as an expanded version of the talk - KM goes Social - I gave at Online 2008 in London in December.
I had much to say on this challenge; shared my thoughts with them freely and found myself frquently referencing the work of Bob Buckman. Expect me to talk more about this in the coming months as their questions and enthusiasm has helped reinforce my view that the combination of 'hard' social tools such as blogs and wikis and 'soft' social tools such as knowledge cafes and after action reviews are a powerful combination.