***** The Gurteen Knowledge-Letter (Issue 72, 5 June 2006) *****
One of the hot debates in KM is "What is the meaning of the word
'knowledge'?". There are fundamentally two schools of thought. One
that says knowledge is something that can only ever exist in your
mind and everything else is just information. Another that says there
are two forms of knowledge - 'tacit knowledge' that exists in your
head and 'explicit knowledge' that is stored in some other medium
e.g. paper or digitally.
To my mind both views are valid. They are just two different ways of
interpreting a word that has always been used rather loosely. I can
quite happily switch between each depending on the context. But it is
important to recognize that there are two views if you are to avoid
arguments that at their core hinge on a different interpretation of
this thing we call knowledge.
Personally, I tend to use the tacit/explicit model because I find it
more useful. I like to distinguish the ingredients of a cake
(information) from the recipe (explicit knowledge).
But which model do you prefer? Enter this month's On-line Poll and
lets find out the consensus.
http://www.gurteen.com/gurteen/gurteen.nsf/id/poll-june-2006
And oh by the way this was all prompted by a discussion taking place
in the actKM Discussion List
http://actkm.org/mailman/listinfo/actkm_actkm.org
*************************** CONTENTS ***************************
1 - Lesson of the Month from Fifty Lessons
2 - JOB AD: Senior Knowledge Manager
3 - Karl-Erik Sveiby's new book
4 - Clive Holtham Knowledge Cafe
5 - Stop apologising for knowledge management!
6 - What's New
7 - The essence of KM?
8 - Knowledge Raffle
9 - Google Note Book
10 - Why don't you share your knowledge?
11 - Event Highlights
12 - Event Calendar
************ LESSON OF THE MONTH FROM FIFTY LESSONS ************
This month's video lesson "Believe In The Power Of One " is from
Marilyn Carlson Nelson and its a 'cracker'.
Here's the situation. Your 12 year old daughter telle you she no
longer wishes to attend Sunday School as the other kids are fooling
around; it is out of control and she is not learning anything.
What do you say? Think about it. And then think some more. And then
watch the story and discover what Marilyn's father said. What a smart
dad!
http://gurteen.50lessons.com
*************** JOB AD: SENIOR KNOWLEDGE MANAGER ***************
Senior Knowledge Manager : Major international consumer brands.
Important high profile strategic position offering a significant
career opportunity.
Duties cover: Creating and maintaining a knowledge structure to help
build increasing demand for the brands Developing processes and
networks to make the knowledge available and useable Providing
training to help best use of the knowledge.
Career development: Possibly moving into senior operational
management in 2 – 3 years.
Requirement: Several years experience of consumer goods combined with
change management, possibly through working in a consultancy practice.
Location: Attractive part of mainland Europe. Working language:
English.
Salary: Euros 100-150k plus benefits
Please apply to: Dr Keith Phillips, Director, CPL Executive Search,
Wallingford, OX10 8DE, UK [email protected]
****************** KARL-ERIK SVEIBY'S NEW BOOK ******************
Many of you will know of Karl Erik Sveiby one of the pioneers in
intellectual capital and KM.
What you may not know is that he has an exciting new book"Treading
Lightly" that shows how traditional Aboriginal stories and paintings
were used to convey knowledge from one generation to the next, about
the environment, law and relationships. See:
http://www.gurteen.com/gurteen/gurteen.nsf/id/L002563/
Karl-Erik is coming to England in late September to present this new
book at the Westminster Business School and Elayne Coakes at the
Business School is looking to find a sponsor to cover the expenses of
his co-author Tex Scuthorpe
Whilst she has a small budget towards expenses it will not cover the
trip from Australia and she is looking for co-sponsors. She needs
about Euros 10,000 (GBP 7,000) in total and is hoping for some
additional monies from a number of sponsors to spread the load.
In return she would ensure that there was publicity about the
sponsorship including (hopefully) articles in the press etc.
Please, help Elayne, if you can. She can be contacted at
[email protected]
***************** CLIVE HOLTHAM KNOWLEDGE CAFE *****************
Professor Prof. Clive Holtham of the Cass Business School did a
tremendous job recently of facilitating one of my London Knowledge
Cafes. What made this one a little different and work so well was the
fact that he used a 'dialogue sheet' to help draw out the
conversation.
We caught the essence of this on video and after the session I also
had a short conversation with him.
You will find both the video of the knowledge cafe and the
conversation in multimedia format here along with past conversations
with Bob Buckman and Martyn Laycock.
http://www.i-t-l.com/gurteen_kcon
********** STOP APOLOGISING FOR KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT! **********
I almost forgot about this until Lilia Efimova mentioned it in her
weblog:
It' s a thought leader I wrote for Inside Knowledge. This is what
Lilia had to say:
David Gurteen has a nice piece at Inside Knowledge - Stop apologising
for knowledge management!
"I wonder if they really think that there could ever be a short two
or three word phrase that could adequately described this discipline
we call knowledge management.
And yes it’s OK to make the point that we cannot really manage
knowledge but do we really need to attack the name by referring to it
as an oxymoron?
To my mind, there is no need to apologise for the term. It is just a
label. A label does not need to be descriptive. If you really choke
on the words ‘knowledge management’ then use the shorter label – just
call it ‘kay-em’. It is then so much more obviously just a label and,
if needs be, you can go on to describe it."
This is pretty much the position I take myself, but I'm glad David
raised the issue in a public venue. Wonder how people would react :)
I wonder too - have had no feedback so far other than from Lilia :-)
Stop apologising for knowledge management!
http://www.gurteen.com/gurteen/gurteen.nsf/s?open&id=L002573
Lilia's Weblog posting:
http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2006/06/05.html
************************** WHAT'S NEW **************************
If you have not visited my website for a while - take a look and see
what has been posted or updated in the last month:
http://www.gurteen.com/gurteen/gurteen.nsf/id/whats-new
I am quite amazed even myself: 7 books; 17 events; 6 jobs; 11 media
files including 6 videos; 4 quotations and over 40 other pages. I
would have hoped something for everybody :-)
********************** THE ESSENCE OF KM? **********************
I always love Denham Gray's views on KM. To me, he gets the closer
than most to articulating the essence of what KM is really all
about. Take a look at this post in his weblog (again stimulated by
actKM discussion). This is how he summarizes:
"The essence of KM then lies deeper than pragmatics, it gets close to
sustaining an environment, building trust, promoting continual
inquiry and testing beliefs"
Denham's Weblog
http://denham.typepad.com/km/2006/05/the_essence_of_.html
actKM Discussion List
http://actkm.org/mailman/listinfo/actkm_actkm.org
*********************** KNOWLEDGE RAFFLE ***********************
Some of the longer standing members of my community may remember my
knowledge raffle.
Well I have just resurrected it - cleaned it up and have gone live
again to raffle a place at KCUK that has since been drawn.
But now that its running again I thought I'd raffle a spare copy of
Tom Peter's "The Project 50" that I have. Its one of my favorite
books and is full of provocative ideas and TTDs - "things to do".
See here:
http://www.gurteen.com/gurteen/gurteen.nsf/id/raffle
Tom Peters
http://www.gurteen.com/gurteen/gurteen.nsf/id/tom-peters
*********************** GOOGLE NOTE BOOK ***********************
Not a month seems to go by when Google does not announce something new.
This time its a real simple but effective tool known as Google
Notebook that makes it easy for you to clip and gather information
while you're browsing the web. As it lives in your browser all your
web findings are gathered into one organized, easy accessible
location that you can access from any computer.
http://www.google.com/googlenotebook/overview.html
And while on the subject of Google, take a look here at this talk by
Sergey Brin, cofounder of Google.
http://www.gurteen.com/gurteen/gurteen.nsf/id/L002549/
Quite a normal sort of a guy - hard to beleive his net worth is $11.0
billion at age 32!
And if you have not taken a look at my media player yet see:
http://www.gurteen.com/gurteen/gurteen.nsf/id/media-player
where you will find a library of about 50 videos that I have built up
over recent months that I think you will find of interest.
************** WHY DON'T YOU SHARE YOUR KNOWLEDGE? **************
Last month I posted an on-line poll: "What is the main reason you do
not share your knowledge more freely?"
I was not surprised that 51% of you said "Lack of time" but I was by
second place at 22% - "Lack of recognition/reward". I wish now I'd
had drawn a distinction between recognition and reward :-)
See here for detailed results:
http://www.gurteen.com/gurteen/gurteen.nsf/id/poll-011
also see this month's poll on your view on the meaning of the word
'knowledge'.
http://www.gurteen.com/gurteen/gurteen.nsf/id/poll-june-2006
*********************** EVENT HIGHLIGHTS ***********************
Here are a few events coming up in the UK with which I am involved.
Hope to see you at one of them :-)
Knowledge Management for Professional Services
13 - 14 Jun 2006, London, United Kingdom
http://www.gurteen.com/gurteen/gurteen.nsf/id/S378083/
Knowledge & Content UK 2006
04 - 06 Jul 2006, London, United Kingdom
http://www.gurteen.com/gurteen/gurteen.nsf/id/kcuk-2006
Innovation and Knowledge Management in Research & Product Development
05 - 07 Jul 2006, Oxford, United Kingdom
http://www.gurteen.com/gurteen/gurteen.nsf/id/S350547/
ICKM2006: Third International Conference on Knowledge Management
31 Jul - 02 Aug 2006, London, United Kingdom
http://www.gurteen.com/gurteen/gurteen.nsf/id/ickm2006
The European Knowledge Management Thought Leaders Forum
28 - 29 Sept 2006, London, United Kingdom
http://www.gurteen.com/gurteen/gurteen.nsf/id/L002543/
************************ EVENT CALENDAR ************************
My website contains such a comprehensive list of events that it is
no longer possible to display them all. The list below shows only the
major events or ones of special interest that will be held in the
next month or so.
http://www.gurteen.com/gurteen/gurteen.nsf/id/events
Event Calendar:
KMO'2006
13 - 14 Jun 2006, Maribor, Slovenia
http://www.gurteen.com/gurteen/gurteen.nsf/id/kmo-2006
Knowledge Management for Professional Services
13 - 14 Jun 2006, London, United Kingdom
http://www.gurteen.com/gurteen/gurteen.nsf/id/S378083/
The fourth Gurteen Knowledge Barbecue (15 June 2006)
15 Jun 2006, London, United Kingdom
http://www.gurteen.com/gurteen/gurteen.nsf/id/kbbq-2006
HyperThinker for Entrepreneurs with ebaY
16 Jun 2006, Brussels, Belgium
http://www.gurteen.com/gurteen/gurteen.nsf/id/S421504/
Collaborative Technologies Conference
19 - 22 Jun 2006, Boston, United States
http://www.gurteen.com/gurteen/gurteen.nsf/id/ctc-2006
iX 2006 - ICT at Work: Collaboration and Peer-to-Peer Technologies
21 - 22 Jun 2006, Singapore City, Singapore
http://www.gurteen.com/gurteen/gurteen.nsf/id/S429180/
Creative Problem Solving Institute (CPSI) 2006
25 - 30 Jun 2006, Chicago, United States
http://www.gurteen.com/gurteen/gurteen.nsf/id/cpsi-2006
Information Management: Understanding and Engaging your End-Users
28 - 29 Jun 2006, Sydney, Australia
http://www.gurteen.com/gurteen/gurteen.nsf/id/S387889/
Future Challenges And Current Issues In Business Information,
Organisation And Process Management
29 Jun 2006, London, United Kingdom
http://www.gurteen.com/gurteen/gurteen.nsf/id/S324279/
An Introduction to the Knowledge Cafe
29 Jun 2006, Zurich, Switzerland
http://www.gurteen.com/gurteen/gurteen.nsf/id/L002560/
Risk Management, Labeling Decision-Making, Personalized Medicine, and
Knowledge-based Clinical Decision Support
03 - 05 Jul 2006, Oxford, United Kingdom
http://www.gurteen.com/gurteen/gurteen.nsf/id/S350544/
Complexity, Democracy & Sustainability
09 - 14 Jul 2006, Rohnert Park, CA, United States
http://www.gurteen.com/gurteen/gurteen.nsf/id/S330082/
The Sixth International Conference on Knowledge, Culture and Change
in Organizations 2006
11 - 14 Jul 2006, Prato, Italy
http://www.gurteen.com/gurteen/gurteen.nsf/id/m06
***************** 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
