Contents
1 Introduction
2 Cafe Culture
3 ADVERTISEMENT: Study Knowledge Management in London
4 Knowledge management: Is HR in the know?
5 Podcastng my Knowledge Videos!
6 Unnatural?
7 Barriers to Knowledge Sharing
8 Lincoln's Gettysburg Address in Powerpoint!
9 Facebook
10 KM Event Highlights
11 Subscribing and Unsubscribing
12 The Gurteen Knowledge Letter
Introduction
Welcome to a revamped Knowledge Letter. I have made two changes. First, the newsletter is in HTML - something that was long overdue. Second, I have integrated it with my website and weblog. This means that each item in the newsletter is also a post on my weblog.
So each month when I write the Knowledge Letter I will write several items specifically for the newsletter and also pick some of the more interesting weblog posts from the month.
This makes life easier for me as all my writings are in one place and I can simply select the ones I want and have them electronically stitched together to create the newsletter. I am hoping this will also encourage me to blog more often.
Please let me know if you have any problems with the new format.
Cafe Culture
Last month in my newsletter I talked about my cultural experiences of running a Knowledge Cafe in Jakarta and mentioned that I had written about it more fully for InsideKnowledge Magazine.
The article has now been published on-line if you are interested in reading it.
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Knowledge management: Is HR in the know?
I was interviewed a few weeks back by Rob Lewis of HR Zone who was writing an article on why HR are not that involved with KM. Overall its not a bad little article though some of my words are not quite what I said. Interestingly he did not ask me to review the article before it was published though to be fair he was in a hurry.
One key point he missed was that although I said I thought HR might be a logical place to drive KM within an organization, I also feared it would be the kiss of death for KM, as In my experience I never felt that HR were really interested in people or in the business - well at least not in the KM sense and this might just explain their lack of involvement!
But one piece of advise in the article (not mine I might add) that I did totally disagree with was this:
Write your own Yellow Pages -- One of the simplest ways of sharing knowledge is to let your organization know where they can find it. Writing a corporate directory of employee expertise may be a pain, but it'll be a lot easier than trying to get them to enter it into a database on their own.It might be easier but it will be for ever out of date and little used. No one wants to undertaken this chore. The only way a Yellow Pages system will work is where people see the value and keep their profiles updated themselves. I think Corporate Yellow Pages also need to learn a lesson or two from MySpace, FaceBook and other Social Networking platforms where people are given a wide array of tools to personalize their home page and to link with other people and activities.
In other words, help people see the value, make it easy, make it social and make it fun and people will update their own entries.
Podcastng my Knowledge Videos!
I recently discovered that Patrick Lambe had created a podcast for all his videos on KM. Now this is something I have been wanting to do for my videos for some time but it seemed like a lot of work to program this for myself. So I thought I would explore and see if there was an alternative and indeed there was. This little page told me all I needed to know.
It turned out to be so easy because all my videos had already been uploaded to Google Video and I was already using FeedBurner. Once I had read the instructions - it took me less than five minutes to create the podcast feed; to subscribe to my own feed via iTunes and to start to download them to my laptop and hence my iPod in mp4 format.
I have downloaded all my videos plus Patrick's to my iPod now! Amazingly simple! I am over the moon!
If you have iTunes installed on your PC you may subscibe to the Podcast by clicking here
Unnatural?
Little things sometimes irk me. I was reading a back copy of the RSA Journal last night and in one of the articles a statement by the author had been separated out as a quote:
"Cloning is certainly unnatural. But so is virtually every human activity."This makes no sense - it sees human beings as being separate from nature. Which we are clearly not. We are part of nature and in that sense cloning or anything else we do for that matter is perfectly natural. It might be detrimental to the world - it might not - but its as natural as bees pollinating flowers.
Barriers to Knowledge Sharing
When I attended KMAP 2006 last year in Hong Kong, Karl-Erik Sveiby was one of the key note speakers. In his keynote he talked about the frustration, anger and despondency that many knowledge workers felt not being able to work effectively in their organizations. I was moved by his talk and conducted one of my mini-video interviews with him on the subject.
Here are the top ten barriers that he gleaned from his questionnaire.
- Silo mentality
- Knowledge is power
- Lack of knowledge sharing processes
- No time allowed
- No knowledge sharing by executives
- Management do not walk the talk
- Poor IT systems
- Lack of encouragement
- Bureaucracy
- Resistance to change by management
And James Robertson of Step Two Designs wants to avoid the term knowledge sharing!! In conclusion he writes:
It is recommended that 'knowledge sharing' not be discussed beyond the confines of the KM team. Instead, KM initiatives should take the following approach:I am not too sure I agree with his idea that 'knowledge sharing' should not be discussed beyond the KM team though I empathize with his rationale but I am totally behind his approach to KM!
- identify key business needs or issues
- determine appropriate KM initiatives
- communicate these initiatives in business language that matches the problem being solved and the staff being targeted
Lincoln's Gettysburg Address in Powerpoint!
If you ever want a compelling reason not to use Powerpoint when giving a talk then take a look at this version of Lincolns Gettysburg Address.
I originally joined Facebook a month or so ago when someone thought they had found me there but could not understand why I looked so young. Well it was another David Gurteen - only two of us as far as I know - me and my nephew.
So I joined and the first friends I added were of course my nephew and then my children though in their early twenties they are hardly kids anymore. I am not so sure though that my son liked the idea when he posted on my "Facebook wall" - "lol. i never thought i'd be networking on facebook with my dad. welcome to facebook"
But since then I have found a load of other people on Facebook. It really does seem to be a hit. If you wish to see my profile - even add me as a friend then here I am.
But watch this video of a presentation by a rather nervous Mark Zuckerberg. Mark is the founder and CEO of Facebook - age 23. Facebook's growth figures are amazing. It has 24 million active members and 100,000 people are signing up each day.
KM Event Highlights
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.
Events:
http://www.gurteen.com/gurteen/gurteen.nsf/id/events
RSS Feeds:
http://www.gurteen.com/gurteen/gurteen.nsf/id/rss-feeds
The fifth Gurteen Knowledge Barbecue (20 June 2006)
20 Jun 2007, London, United Kingdom
http://www.gurteen.com/gurteen/gurteen.nsf/id/kbbq-2007
I can't believe we are running this for a fifth year! If you are based in London please do register and come along.
Knowledge and Content UK 2007
26 - 27 Jun 2007, London, United Kingdom
http://www.gurteen.com/gurteen/gurteen.nsf/id/kcuk-2007
I will be chairing the KM stream at this conference and trying to make it as interactive as the organizers will let me!
The Effective Knowledge Worker
10 Jul 2007, London, United Kingdom
http://www.gurteen.com/gurteen/gurteen.nsf/id/L003062
My 1-day workshop on Personal Knowledge Management. I'd love to see you there!
Social Tools for Business Use
11 - 12 Jul 2007, London, United Kingdom
http://www.gurteen.com/gurteen/gurteen.nsf/id/L003060
I will be chairing this UNICOM conference for the third time.
The Video Knowledge Cafe!
11 Jul 2007, London, United Kingdom
http://www.gurteen.com/gurteen/gurteen.nsf/id/kcafe-video
This should be a fun Knowledge Cafe on the first evening of the UNICOM Social Tools conference.
KM Australia
25 - 27 July 2007, Sydney, Australia
http://www.kmaustralia.com/default.htm
The programme includes a Gurteen Knowledge Cafe facilitated by Helen Paige who is the regional director for the Gurteen Community in Adelaide.
ECKM 2007: The 8th European Conference on Knowledge Management
06 - 07 Sep 2007, Barcelona, Spain
http://www.gurteen.com/gurteen/gurteen.nsf/id/eckm-2007
I hope to be attending - so long since I was last in Barcelona.
The European Knowledge Management Thought Leaders Forum
19 -20 Sep 2007, London, United Kingdom
http://www.kmthoughtleaders.com/tracker.asp?magazineid=767
Great event - wil be the 3rd year that I will be atetnding and will br running a Knowledge Cafe to round off the second day.
actKM Conference 2007
22 - 23 Oct 2007, Canberra, Australia
http://www.gurteen.com/gurteen/gurteen.nsf/id/actkm-2007
I will be giving the keynote at this conference.
KM Asia 2007 29 - 31 Oct 2007, Singapore City, Singapore
http://www.gurteen.com/gurteen/gurteen.nsf/id/km-asia-2007
I will be running a Knowldege Cafe and a workshop at KM Asia this year.
KMWorld & Intranets 2007
06 - 08 Nov 2007, San Jose, United States
http://www.gurteen.com/gurteen/gurteen.nsf/id/kmworld-200
I wil be running a Knowledge Cafe at this event - maybe more. This would be my first time to KM World!
Subscribing and Unsubscribing
You may subscribe to this newsletter on my website.
But 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
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 sponsored by the Knowledge Management Forum of Henley Management College, 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.
David Gurteen
Gurteen Knowledge
