A huge thank you to all of you who replied to my e-mail requesting
help. I have had over 100 replies and will be getting back to each of
you over the coming weeks - bear with me though as it may take some
time. If you missed the e-mail and wish to know more about me see
here:
http://www.gurteen.com/gurteen/gurteen.nsf/id/about-dg
and here for more about my services:
http://www.gurteen.com/gurteen/gurteen.nsf/id/services
But you can all help grow the community. Its just over 12,000 strong
now, with members in 140 countries. If you enjoy this newsletter and
the site then please forward it on to friends and colleagues and tell
them about it.
The crazy thing right now is that between 200 and 300 people sign up
each month but I lose about the same number as people change their
e-mail addresses and do not inform me or when e-mail servers decide
the newsletter is spam and blocks its delivery.
In September, 230 people signed up. Lets see, with your help, by how
much we can increase this number in October. I will let you know the
figure next month :-)
btw you will get a good idea of the geographic distribution here
http://www.gurteen.com/gurteen/gurteen.nsf/id/world
And if you are using the Firefox browser you will experience some
great Google maps :-)
*************************** CONTENTS ***************************
1 - Wikibooks
2 - Interview with Jimmy Wales
3 - The Strategic Knowledge Management Forum
4 - Anita Borg Scholarship
5 - Conversation Dinners
6 - KCC Europe 2005
7 - Google RSS Reader
8 - Globalization 3
9 - People of the Lie
10 - The Innovation Cafe
11 - Managing Knowledge Workers
12 - Gurteen Event Calendar
13 - What's New?
*************************** WIKIBOOKS ***************************
There is a quiet revolution going on. If you thought Wikipedia was
awesome then take a look at Wikibooks - open-source digital textbooks
on any topic, in any language, available to anyone, anywhere, for
free!
Wikibooks
http://en.wikibooks.org
In the longer term, along with open access journals, this is really
going to shake up the academic publishing world.
Open Access Journals
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_access
And take a look at the Wikiversity Project - read the vision
statement - the potential is enormous.
Wikiversity
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikiversity
More on Wikibooks:
http://www.gurteen.com/gurteen/gurteen.nsf/id/wikibooks
****************** INTERVIEW WITH JIMMY WALES ******************
Jimmy Wales is the founder of Wikipedia which to my mind makes this
video interview with him - complete with transcript - a must read.
How many full time employees? ONE! How many page views per month? Two
billion! How is Wikipedia funded? Through donations!
The Interview:
http://www.q-and-a.org/Transcript/?ProgramID=1042
Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org
*********** THE STRATEGIC KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT FORUM ***********
I will be attending "The Strategic Knowledge Management Forum" on the
28th and 29th November in London. This looks like being a great event
with some extremely good speakers, including several I know well,
such as Steve Ellis, Sandy Keilloh and Jane McKenzie - hey and
Victoria Ward as well :-)
On the second day I will be speaking on "Valuing Knowledge Sharing"
and then running a post-conference workshop on the 30th entitled
"Dare to Share"
http://www.gurteen.com/gurteen/gurteen.nsf/id/S207610/
I hope one or two of you can get to make it.
If you quote "gurteen" when booking you will receive a 10% discount.
******************** ANITA BORG SCHOLARSHIP ********************
Every so often I trip across a quotation that I find humorous but
also somewhat profound. This is one from Anita Borg:
"Well-behaved women rarely make history."
I clipped the quote some time back but never dug deeper to see who
Anita was. I wish I had done so earlier as she was a very interesting
woman indeed:
http://www.anitaborg.org/
But see this Google 2006 Anita Borg Scholarship also
http://www.google.com/anitaborg/
Quotations
http://www.gurteen.com/gurteen/gurteen.nsf/id/quotations
********************* CONVERSATION DINNERS *********************
I at last got to attend one of Theodore Zeldin's conversation dinners
when I attended a "Social Computing" conference last week at
Templeton College in Oxford.
More information on the conference below and Theodore's talk but the
dinner was quite fascinating - we were sat in pairs, our partner had
already been selected and as well as the dinner menu we were given a
'conversation menu' by Theodore. For each course there were several
questions about ourselves we could chose to discuss. We were
instructed to only talk with our partners.
We were asked not to 'blog' the questions but they were intended to
help us discover what sort of person we were talking with, their
ideas on different aspects of life, such as ambition, curiosity,
fear, friendship, the relations of the sexes.
My conversation partner was a young American woman, working in London
whom I had never met before. We had a fascinating conversation -
talking far more deeply about ourselves and life then we would ever
do in normal circumstances.
Why? Well I guess, in a strange way, Theodore had given us permission
and then the intimate questions which made it easy to talk. If you
get the chance to attend one of these dinners I'd highly recommend it.
Social Computing & the Organization
http://www.gurteen.com/gurteen/gurteen.nsf/id/S197426/
Lloyd Davis blogging on Theodore's talk
http://www.perfectpath.co.uk/archives/000304.html
Conversation Dinners
http://www.oxfordmuse.com/projects/projects.htm#9
Theodore Zeldin
http://www.gurteen.com/gurteen/gurteen.nsf/id/theodore-zeldin
************************ KCC EUROPE 2005 ************************
It doesn't look like I am going to make it to KCC Europe (was KM
Europe) in Amsterdam this year. But no reason why you shouldn't go
along :-)
In particular, take a look at the Fringe event organized by
KnowledgeBoard - this looks a really great collection of 'mini'
workshops:
Fringe agenda
http://www.knowledgeboard.com/item/146178
Art exhibition invitation
http://www.knowledgeboard.com/item/146153
KCC Europe
http://www.kcceurope.com
*********************** GOOGLE RSS READER ***********************
So have you taken my past advise and got yourself an RSS reader yet?
I use bloglines:
http://www.bloglines.com
but Google have just released their own reader:
http://www.google.com/reader
If you want one good feed to start off - try Dilbert - you get a new
cartoon every day
http://www.tapestrycomics.com/dilbert.xml
or my knowledge quote of the day
http://www.gurteen.com/gurteen/gurteen.nsf/id/quote-01.xml
More on RSS
http://www.gurteen.com/gurteen/gurteen.nsf/id/rss
************************ GLOBALIZATION 3 ************************
I have not read Thomas Friedman book "The World is Flat: A Brief
History of the Twenty-First Century" but I do like his concept of
three great eras of global transformation:
Globalization 1. 0 (1492 - 1800) - driven by countries
Globalization 2. 0 (1800 - 2000) - driven by multi-national companies
Globalization 3.0 (2000 - ?) - driven by individuals
Summary
http://innovationcommons.blogspot.com/2005/07/world-is-flat.html
The World is Flat
http://www.gurteen.com/gurteen/gurteen.nsf/id/L001727/
*********************** PEOPLE OF THE LIE ***********************
Long ago on my website, I posted a short profile of M. Scott Peck -
the well known psychiatrist and author of "The Road Less Travelled" -
supposedly the biggest best selling book after the bible. Another of
his books was "People of the Lie" - a book about narcissism.
According to Wikipedia ...
"Narcissism, in psychology is the pattern of thinking and behaving
which involves infatuation and obsession with one's self to the
exclusion of others."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissism
What has fascinated me are the comments that have been posted on the
page from people who have at last been able to better understand
someone (usually a close relative). Something that many have
struggled with, most, if not all of their lives.
Take a look - you may find it disturbing; you may find it moving but
if you have experienced such people you will certainly find it
enlightening.
http://www.gurteen.com/gurteen/gurteen.nsf/id/scott-peck
(Scroll down to bottom of the page to see the thread of comments)
In researching this item - I discovered that Scott Peck died on the
25th September this year. I feel sad - his books helped me hugely
when I was going through a difficult time.
********************** THE INNOVATION CAFE **********************
You have probably heard of my knowledge cafes but Victor Newman and I
have got together to bring some of the cafe concept together with his
innovation workshops to create what we are calling iCafes or
Innovation Cafes.
What is an iCafe? "An iCafe is a structured conversation using fast,
creative techniques to unlock thinking and define the opportunity to
innovate without triggering NIH behaviours."
We recently ran an open one at the RSA in London and Ana Neves
produced a short write-up for us see:
http://www.gurteen.com/gurteen/gurteen.nsf/id/icafe-report
We are running another open iCafe at the Greenwich University
Business School in London on 20th October. You can find out more
about the iCafes and register for the Greenwich event here:
http://www.gurteen.com/gurteen/gurteen.nsf/id/icafe-report
****************** MANAGING KNOWLEDGE WORKERS ******************
I recently came across this interview with Tom Davenport on how to
manage knowledge workers and this subject being close to me heart
thought I'd share a few quotes from it with you:
"Managers can't easily enforce an order when work takes place in
people's heads. You have to make it easy for knowledge workers to do
what you want them to do."
and in talking about competition with countries like India:
"People should realize that unless they do knowledge work better,
they're not going to be doing it at all. "
and lastly something I have been saying for so long
"When you redesign knowledge work processes, it's got to be much more
participative than it was in these top-down re-engineering efforts.
People have to see what the benefit is to them."
http://www.cioinsight.com/article2/0,1540,1846780,00.asp
***************** THE GURTEEN KNOWLEDGE-LETTER *****************
The Gurteen Knowledge-Letter is a free monthly e-mail based knowledge
management 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.
It is produced in association with the Knowledge Management Forum of
Henley Management College, Oxfordshire, England.
http://www.henleymc.ac.uk/kmforum
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.
David Gurteen
Gurteen Knowledge
Fleet, United Kingdom
Tel: +44 1252 812 878
