Just had James Dellow from Headshift speaking at AusAID this afternoon on Government 2.0.  Among the audience were several representatives from other government agencies giving the seminar a real whole-of-government feel.  Government 2.0 is often considered in the light of open government, something I have blogged about before.

James spoke about the Federal Government sponsored Government 2.0 Taskforce final report published at the end of 2009. Key insights included some of the thinking behind the Online Engagement Guidelines and Web 2.0 Toolkit.

Much of the discussion focused, naturally enough for a government-centric audience, on risk.  There remains a considerable concern among some senior executive service that web 2.0 and open government are too risky. The fear largely is about the risk of negative publicity or political sensitivities, but also includes concerns about the technology and giving public servants more authority and responsibility in dealing with the community. In sum, the issues relate to risk, privacy, responsibility, responsiveness, and consistency (quality).

Personally, I don’t see the risks as being too different from that facing the private sector – just replace the government Minister with a company CEO and you get the same sort of concerns.  The challenge is how to mitigate risk and yet get the benefits from using web 2.0 applications and thinking to provide a better public service; one more in tune with the community and what the community needs from government agencies.

In addition, the challenge is also in asking where does the leadership for Government 2.0 come from?  Is it from the politicians, the senior executive service, the communications unit, or IT?

I will get the Slideshare link of James soon and post for the presentation slides to be available.

All in all, a very good seminar and thank you, James!

 As part of the Taskforce’s consultation process, they commissioned the creation of Online Engagement Guidelines and a Web 2.0 Toolkit. This was designed to provide guidance to government agencies using web 2.0 tools and provided a recommendation for a toolkit of web 2.0 technologies that agencies can use based on principles of shared services and re-use.

On web content publishing

The World Wide Web is an amazing place.  There are literally billions of pages of web sites and documents out there to be found.  And of those billions, if not trillions, of web pages and documents out there, only a miniscule proportion of that content will be of any use to you.  That’s because the content is unbounded – anyone can put up a web page or a document onto the World Wide Web.

But intranets are different.  An intranet is a bounded web environment, usually within an organisational context.  The intranet is a major information and communication platform for an organisation.  As such, an intranet needs to be considered as a significant organisational resource and treated with a great deal of respect.

Respected web content expert, Gerry McGovern, writes about information content and information quality on the intranet: ” [look at] the web ‘management’ approach called distributed publishing. The theory was: buy the tool, train people to use it and watch them go. What happened? Each division or department that the publishing tool was distributed to sought to publish to the website with the absolute minimum resource input. If ever there was a disastrous non-strategy it is distributed publishing. It led to website junkyards full of vanity publishing and out of date garbage … We need to seriously raise the standard. Anybody can put up a document. It requires precious little skill to write boring, vain, unreadable, organization-centric content”.

Writing and publishing for an organisation’s intranet requires a number of important skills – skills that cannot be obtained by a quick one hour lesson in uploading documents into a content management system!  The decentralised approach has generally failed because these skills have not been developed in the administrators responsible for the content decisions and content uploads of their intranet.  Moreover, little training or advice has been provided to these people about the difference between web content and print content publishing – there is a big difference!

A centralised and specialised intranet/internet publishing team is probably the best way to go to ensure quality and effective control over content.  However, there is a problem here.  A centralised web team is often removed from the important happenings within the organisation that warrant good content publishing.  And given the small size of many intranet teams, they don’t have the time to search and edit and publish the content themselves.  They do rely on content generation from outside the intranet team.  There is thus a potential schism between content and control. 

And of course, there is also some cost cutting thinking from senior management in having a small intranet team and relying on decentralised intranet content administrators.  This is usually the result of senior management having no idea about intranet content and intrant publishing, and certainly a lack of respect to what an intranet can do for the organisation.

One practical option is to provide decentralised administrators with proper training (or even at the recruitment stage) about web content management and web publishing.  The administrators need to be part of the intranet “team” and they need to know that web content publishing is about solving problems for people within the organisation; not boosting egos.  The decentralised system can work if there is sufficient effort put into recruitment, training and ongoing support for these people about web content management.  This is actually no different to what should happen throughout the organisation to ensure quality and effective workforce participation.

On conferences

Conferences are events that I generally support because of the learning and conversations that take place.  I consider conferences to be an integral part of knowledge management, especially the person-to-person interactions that occur between sessions and at meal breaks.  The networking opportunities are also important.

But I am wondering if conferences are really all they are cracked up to be.  I heard on the news last night that there is going to be a big conference  in Canada in the coming weeks to discuss donor response to the disaster emergency in Haiti.  And in the world of international development there are always plenty of conferences taking place around the world.  Are conferences the right forum to discuss disaster relief and emergency aid when people still don’t have access to aid, food and shelter in Haiti even now?

My questioning about conferences has triggered some thoughts about networks.  The world wide web is a network of computers. An organisation is a network of functions performed by individuals, some of whom will form personal networks in order to do their jobs, and become more effective in their work.  So why aren’t networks sufficient to act in times of crises, or at other times for that matter, instead of formal conferences?  Conferences may act as a catalyst for the creation of networks, but at what point should networks replace conferences?

Whilst I have given examples from international development, the questions are just as valid for other subjects and issues.  I’d like to hear what people think about this conference issue, and whether there is any scope for networks to take over.

On knowing the customer and what they want

It always amazes me that some internet sites are not really set up to serve the needs of the customer.  You see examples of it time and time again.  As many readers will know, I am a big fan of Gerry McGovern and Mark Hurst, both of whom extol the common sense line that the customer experience is all important and should be uppermost in the mind of any selling organisation.

One of the first maxims of internet or intranet design is to know your customer and what your customer comes to your website to do.  People are busy, and in the majority of cases, go on the internet to do something; find some specific information; complete a task.  Sure, there is serendipitous search but website design is not about focusing on the per chance customer; internet design should be about identifying your customers and servicing their needs. 

Let’s take an example – I am going to another city for work or for a holiday and I need a hotel.  What is the information that is most important to me - the customer? 

- the address and service offerings of the hotel
- price (including any discounts or specials)
- availability
- reservations
- maybe booking and cancellation policy for the more detail-oriented patrons among us.

Now, do you think people search for hotels based on price or do you decide upon the place first?  Price is nice, but people want a hotel in a specific place.  Choose the place and then check out the prices. 

So when I went to check out the IBIS hotel (I am an A-club member) in Christchurch, New Zealand, I found this IBIS hotel site.  You will see that the site gives the address and contact details, provides information on the service offerings of the hotel, and allows online bookings and reservations.  This is all good standard stuff.

But what about that header at the top of the page, especially the one titled IBIS special offers.  Naturally, before I check out the price and availability of the hotel I am looking at booking in Christchurch I want to see what special offers might be available.  Well, what you actually get is the global IBIS special offers page with great deals for IBIS hotels in ….. Bregenz, Austria; Marrakech, Morocco; Basle, Switzerland, and Toulouse, France, etc.  There are also major cities to explore …. but not Christchurch.

Please tell me, why would I want to know what special offers are available in Toulouse and Bregenz when I am going to Christchurch?  Why is there a link to these European special offers from the Christchurch IBIS Hotel page?

Well, the answer is that the Christchurch page is a page (a local page) on the global IBIS Hotel internet platform.  The header information at the top of the page is the global banner across all the IBIS Hotel pages, from Christchurch to Marrakech. The banner bears no relation to the local hotel page other than for IBIS Hotels to tell you stuff that you don’t need to know; stuff IBIS Hotels obviously thinks is grand news!

The obvious point is that if you are offering special offers on the Christchurch IBIS hotel page then give me the special offers for the Christchurch IBIS Hotel – that is where I want to go and that’s why I am looking at the IBIS Hotel Christchurch internet page!

The message is: design the web page for the particular customer that you need to service.  Do not design a web page for the ease and ego of the organisation.

On flickr and development agencies

There’s an interesting blog post from Timo at the Red Cross about the use of Flickr to showcase the international development and humanitarian work done by that agency (thanks Nadejda on KM4dev for the tip).  The Red Cross Flickr stream is really a terrific site and well worth a visit.  Where I work, AusAID has a Flickr site too.

Timo’s blog post cites eight lessons learned from the experience of using Flickr:

1. know your audience
2. newsworthiness beats quality
3. less is more
4. understand what you want to achieve
5. use Flickr groups
6. appreciate the work of others
7. need to give solid attention to Flickr to maintain traffic
8. be careful with creative commons licensing

What is missing, and Timo alludes to this in his blog post, is that Flickr needs better integration with other applications. Timo suggests that Flickr needs to better integrate with Facebook, for example.  In addition, I think we also need to work out how better to use Flickr to tell the stories behind the photos.  I still feel that the images, words and tags are not enough to really give me a strong sense of place and story.  There is greater potential for education and learning beyond just the images themselves, albeit I know how powerful images can be in their own right.

It would be great to be able to link the photos to a short podcast, perhaps a narrative fragment from one of the image subjects, to really give stronger context to the individual images.  Not sure if this is possible, but I am certain narrative would add to the user-experience.

On whether Knowledge Management matters

I’d like to start the New Year with a rhetorical question: does knowledge management (KM) really matter?

Well, it matters to me and to people within the KM world.  It matters to people who want to do their jobs more effectively and more efficiently. And it matters to conference organisers, book publishers, consultants, contractors, and people and institutions providing KM courses.

But does KM really matter to the people in organisations who have the power and authority to make the big decisions and then carry them out?  Based on my own observations and discussions with people, perhaps the only people who care about KM are the KM-ers in the industry itself.

There aren’t many examples of people like Bob Buckman from Buckman Laboratories (Book: Building a knowledge-driven organization) who really saw the benefit of pursuing a knowledge-driven strategy for his company.  I certainly read the Buckman Laboratories story with great interest, and might I say, with a great deal of hope that other organisations see the KM light as clearly and positively as Buckman himself.

It seems to me that the KM industry, and I am part of it too, spends a great deal of time talking about what KM can do; what KM could do; what KM might do; and what KM is all about, but actually struggling to get any key decision-maker within an organisation to actually support and promote an organisation-wide approach to KM.  Sure, we get by with the odd successful initiative or project and we can champion them (I certainly do!) but this is pretty small-fry in the big scheme of things.  We can lay claim to a nice intranet site, or a great social networking initiative, but rarely are these initiatives the well-spring of senior management.  More often than not, these KM initiatives emerge (struggle through by sheer individual persistence in many cases) and we celebrate them. In fact we actually make-believe that bottom-up approaches are the way forward rather than seeing these successes as symbols of bright KM cracks in a dull and disinterested organisational landscape.  Bright cracks of KM success are indeed positive, but they are not bright enough to penetrate the dim, dark recesses of conventional and political organisational management.

There was plenty to hear and read about “the KM success stories” when I did my Master of Knowledge Management course at University of Canberra, and all the readings and discussions on KM years prior to that.  In my Masters course, one subject on leadership highlighted the characteristics of great organisational leaders and how they made a big difference to their organisation – the US female newspaper publisher from yonks ago was the case study in fact (sorry, the details have skipped through my memory bank at this time).  And, of course, there are bestselling books and biographies of champion business leaders extolling more success stories.  I am not convinced that these tales are actually ever read by business leaders to stimulate thought about their own organisations, but perhaps they do.

However, in the ubiquitous world of organisations, all these success stories and learnings are the exception. We in KM seem not to be able to shift key management thinking and action towards an organisationally-driven knowledge management (or knowledge capable) enterprise, better able to recognise and solve internal problems, and more resilient and agile in the business environment.

So, does knowledge management really matter?

On the Christmas break

Firstly, let me wish readers the best of the Christmas season.  I hope that people can find some peace and happiness over the Christmas break.  While Christmas is usually a time for friends and family; it is also a time for personal reflection and hope. 

Part of that personal reflection and hope is enhanced by some serious reading time.  In the coming month, I do hope to get through a number of books that have sat idle in boxes during all the house moves I have had this year.  And I hope to be able to read a few more new books that should come my way on Christmas Day, including an Elizabeth Jolley trilogy that I have been keen to spend time with for many years now.  Also on order, and likely to arrive in January, is the non-fiction Niche Construction by Odling-Smee, Laland, and Feldman.

Until January then, have a wonderful Christmas break and a happy New Year.

On open government

This evening I discovered the text of a speech by UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown on working smarter in government (i.e. the civil service).  Now working smarter, and leveraging what organisation’s already do more effectively,  are at the heart of good knowledge management.  The speech is much broader than simply having the civil service become more efficient – Brown outlines a vision for open government and engagement with the citizenry.  Interestingly, what Brown says about government and public engagement sounds very similar to the sentiments expressed in the Engage Report that I blogged about in my previous blog post.

In particular, Brown says: “We will ensure that people can get access to the information they need to engage in dialogue with public service professionals; and in doing so reduce bureaucratic burdens. This will drive improvements in public services, making them more personal and cost-effective, whilst at the same time strengthening democratic deliberation and giving frontline workers and voluntary organisations the freedom to innovate and respond to new demands in new ways. We are determined to be among the first governments in the world to open up public information in a way that is far more accessible to the general public … In this way people will no longer be passive recipients of services but, through dialogue and engagement, active participants – shaping, controlling and determining what is best for them.”

I applaud the sentiments expressed in this speech by Gordon Brown.  Similarly, the Engage Report in Australia says: “Engagement is the central theme of this report. It deals with the connection of people to information so that knowledge assets can be re-used to create new and often unexpected value. It deals as well with the growing opportunities for more effective collaboration with citizens in different dimensions of government – policy development, regulatory reform, program and service design”.

Yet I still have that nagging concern that public-government engagement is not what it appears.  Sure, I understand the desire to publish government content (in greater volume no doubt, but hopefully in a form that is of most value to the public).  I applaud the use of web 2.0 tools to facilitate some form of public feedback or dialogue.  I certainly understand the view that the public has a right to be informed and that government needs to become more accountable.  These are all good things and are very big steps for government to be actively pursuing.  Yet, how much of all of this is just an enormous content dump, and how much of it will be real engagement – engagement where citizens actively become involved with the workings and decsions of government departments and agencies?

Web 2.0 requires a different way of thinking.  There is more emphasis on distributed intelligence and networks rather than centralised control systems and fixed hierarchies.  Web 2.0 is not about control, but more interested in the dialogue and “the conversation”. Web 2.0 tools and applications are interactive and immediate.  And most importantly, web 2.0 thinking is the thinking of the new world environment of the 21st century so there is no excuse not to partake of the best that web 2.0 can offer.  It’s simply evolutionary organisational dynamics.

Brown in his speech goes on to say: “But if the purpose of our reforms is not only to be more efficient, but to meet future challenges and re-engineer our public services from good to great, Whitehall has to let go – and empower staff and the public to shape provision in meeting local needs and priorities” (my bold and italics).  This cultural change will not be easy.  The same issue was identified in Australia in the Engage Report – that there is a strong cultural and operational tendency within government to withhold information.  There are many reasons, some of which are spurious and others that have some legitimacy. Traditional control-based organisations in government will need to change if open government is to become a reality. But there are realistic concerns around privacy, political risk, and copyright – challenges all of which can be overcome I must say.

The challenge for open government and increasing citizen engagement with government is not the web 2.0 tools which are readily available.  The challenge is how to foster a culture of openness and collaboration in government agencies.  In addition, there may be significant resource issues around content management and web sites, records management systems, information management, and knowledge management.  The classic organisational problem, “we don’t know what we don’t know”, is no longer now just a knowledge management problem; it’s now a government-wide problem that must be overcome before open government can be effective.  However, the fundamental success factor for open government will be people-based – trust and organisational culture being pivotal.

The vision for open government espoused by UK PM Gordon Brown and in the Engage Report for Australia are commendable.  They are optimistic and challenging.  But they also offer opportunities for knowledge management to become a significant and active stakeholder in the way in which open government might unfold.  I certainly hope so.

On engaging government with web 2.0

The draft report Engage: getting on with government 2.0 has just been released.  The report is 159 pages long so it’s a fairly hefty piece of work looking at how government can better engage with the Australian public.

The sentiments within the report are good.  Open government is a nice idea but it remains to be seen whether open means “just ajar” or whether the door is really left open.  I am still to see how open government works within a political system that is essentially both protective of information and adversarial politically.  Perhaps there are some lessons from the UK government experience.  From what I hear, open government over there has caused a massive tsunami of useless information being made available at considerable expense.

Engagement is a nice idea too.  Government needs to better hear from, and collaborate with, the public.  There needs to be improved transparency and a more informed conversation between the public and government.  Online engagement will certainly be assisted if Australia ever manages to get a decent and affordable  telecommunications system.  The great Australian broadband initiative is still to come online.

One key message is for better engagement between the public and public servants. However, I sense from the report that what this engagement really means is that government departments increase information on websites to gargantuan proportions and, somehow, this plethora of “government information” is actually what people want.  Using my content management experience, I can tell you that what people use the internet for is to complete a particular task, or find out some information to complete a task, not just a casual trawl through government documents for the fun of it!

The report does talk about the web 2.0 tools and suggests that they can be used to facilitate greater engagement and interaction between the public and government.  The trouble is, for these tools to be effective they have to be placed within an information architecture and organisational culture that is not currently the norm, and in some cases completely opposed to openness and innovation.  Such conservative long-held public service cultural norms will not easily be dismantled and this will certainly limit the effectiveness of web 2.0 tools.  The tools won’t be the problem, but the operational architecture and hierarchical workforce structure of government will be inhibitors.

The online engagement strategy using public servants is also interesting.  I think this aspect will involve some major organisational cultural shifts, especially at senior levels of the public service.  Engaging online with public servants  has some pretty important ramifications. 

To start with, public servants work for the Minister first and the workplace culture is still one of protectiveness rather than openness. I’d love to see a truly open and innovative public service but I am not confident that one will emerge quickly enough to really make true public engagement count.  The notion of a public service that offers fearless and frank advice, let alone responds that way to the public, remains elusive in the current Australian political domain.

Furthermore,  there needs to be better funding of public servant agencies to allow people to allocate time to engage and respond to the public.  It’s all very well to say that government information is a public resource, but it’s people in the public service who have to find the time to provide appropriate information, and actually find and deliver the necessary information.  One only has to experience the intricacies of obtaining assistance through Centrelink, Veterans Affairs, and Health to know how difficult and time-consuming obtaining the right information can be.

There is likely to be a significant resource issue here since the technology alone will not be sufficient to really provide true levels of public-government engagement.  Perhaps the web 2.0 technologies, and some traditional web 1.0 technologies, will help governments provide a platform for engagement.  But these are only platforms.  This is why I fear that government websites will become massive dumping grounds for information rather than true portals of public-government engagement.  Plonk a trillion words and documents on a website and bingo – engagement!  It really doesn’t sound like a pathway for successful engagement to me.

There is also the issue about understanding what is required and who has the ability and capacity to find it.  As any librarian knows, the “reference interview” is sometimes difficult in any one-to-one encounter, let alone online.  In many public service agencies, these type of informal information requests come to a “library” or some “library-like function” because libraries are traditionally staffed by people whose experience is understanding the reference question and finding the resources best suited in answering the question.  Unfortunately, there is a perception in some quarters that libraries are not needed, or are not key players, within government departments.  Oddly, there are no additional resources elsewhere in government departments to undertake this kind of work, let alone by people skilled in finding, reviewing, and making quality judgements on.  Once again, I fear engagement only goes as far as a website crammed to the gunwales with information….and then sinking slowly under the weight.  Still, there might be opportunities for content managers and librarians in this area of government engagement.

The draft report also makes recommendations about privacy, security, and the “Commonwealth Record”.  Well folks, I gotta say, that many government agencies don’t have a complete understanding or proper record of the historical and current information within its own walls.  Unless there is significant investment in electronic document and records management, there can be no guarantee that government  information will be input onto a database within the organisation, let alone found and made available at the appropriate level of security and with accurate version control.  Records management and knowledge management need far greater attention in government than is currently the case.

I truly hope that the Australian government is open to many of the recommendations in the report, especially the important issues of openness and citizen engagement.  The job won’t be easy but I can say with confidence that there are plenty of information professionals – librarians, content managers, information architects, knowledge managers, records managers, information specialists, and web editors - that are keen to make the report’s message a reality if only government would give them the responsibility, the authority and resources to make it actually happen.

On sailing ships and dodos

Dave Snowden told a good story at a knowledge management conference a couple of years ago about the sailing ship.  In the early 19th century, mighty sailing ships with giant masts and sails were the dominant form of sea transport in the modern world at that time.  Along came ships constructed of iron and powered by motorised engines which were more efficient (they could power along whether the wind blew or not) and became more reliable and versatile shipping vessels.  The sailing ship industry responded with even bigger ships with more masts and more giant sails but in the end the sailing ships were doomed by a new technology that made sea transport more efficient and effective.  Perhaps the sailing ship may make a return in an oil-depleted and global greenhouse environment in the 21st century but that’s another story…

And that poor old bird, the dodo, was no match for the slaughter by humans, and by invading pigs plundering their nests and territory.  Alas, they were unable to adapt to the ravages brought upon them in such a short space of time and they became extinct.

Which brings me to this article in the Sydney Morning Herald about a conference in India at which the media moguls of the 21st century are battling to stay in the game in a world enriched and informed via the World Wide Web.  The World Newspaper Congress is hearing from embattled media moguls about how unfair the internet is making the news and information business since they haven’t been clever enough to work out a successful business model for the changed world media environment.

Like the 19th century sailing ship industry, the newspaper moguls are desperate to keep alive a form of business that is actually being surpassed by more modern and disruptive technologies. The internet and social networking are changing the way content is published, consumed, and valued.  Content on the internet is more immediate, more personal, more varied, and more versatile compared to traditional newspaper publishing.  Not only that, but people these days do not have to rely on newspapers for their dose of worldly information since much of the information out there on the internet is provided by people for free and can be accessed for free! Even newspapers and television news programs seek out these stories from ordinary folk who witness events first hand or who have some other form of newsworthy story.

Of course, the newspapers are indeed part of the problem.  Over the past twenty years (at least) newspaper proprietors have dumbed down journalism and investigative reporting so much that newspaper content is hardly superior to much of the informed news and information provided by ordinary people. In fact, it is ordinary people who actually have something interesting to say, without the caveat of having to say something that will generate advertising revenue or hanker for the bouquets from supporting ideologues.

Reading newspapers these days is like reading a bevy of opinion pieces; the opinions being no more informed or relevant than that of bloggers and social networkers.  Instead of lifting quality and gaining some comparative advantage this way, newspapers have taken the easy route and proffered a multitude of opinion, loose reporting and drivel that can be easily replicated anywhere. 

At the same time, newspapers continue to search for more “eyeballs” to convince advertisers that newspapers are still relevant.  Newspapers still want to be found on the internet to capture these “eyeballs”, yet they want to determine and control the method and channels of being found. They want to use the 21st century technology but only in the manner of their 20th century world view of dominance and control of the news. Even advertisers are shifting their world view.  Advertisers are increasingly using new methods of messaging and advertising utilising the new communication mediums available via the internet, social networking, and other forms of communication channels.

At least the newspaper industry hasn’t had it as bad as the dodo. The dodo had relatively little time to adjust to the ravages of invading species before they finally met their final and irrevocable end. Newspapers have had plenty of time, and had plenty of warning about the competitive content available via a host of alternative sources.

Newspaper organisations are like the 19th century sailing ships trying to battle their way forward using their existing tired techniques and old-century attitudes, and failing to confront the new realities of a brave new world.  Like those 19th century sailing ships, newspapers as they exist today will die off and be replaced by a more efficient and effective form of  news communication that does not rely on old thinking and old technologies.

Newspaper moguls can whine all they like but they need to accept the new communication realities and make the necessary adjustments, or go the way of the sailing ship and eventually, the dodo.

On internal and external sources of knowledge

I just received my latest Gurteen Knowledge Newsletter from David Gurteen.  David alerts us to a new book by Chris Collison and Geoff Parcell  entitled No more consultants: we know more than we think.  I have already ordered the book for my personal library and look forward to reading the book when the order arrives.

I have often wondered what the appeal of hiring external consultants is when people already working within an organisation could do the same or even better job at solving a perceived problem.  There seems to be an attitude that only good knowledge exists outside the organisation; a situation that I feel undervalues the existing knowledge assets of an organistion, or at best, underutilises that existing knowledge capability. And perhaps this is where knowledge management needs to make more of an inroad – in bringing these knowledge assets out in the open so that they get the righful attention of decision-makers.

Of course there will be times when people are busy working on other things and so a consultancy allows for an issue to be looked at sooner rather than later. But in many situations, it’s almost like the organisation doesn’t think highly of it’s own staff being able to undertake the work, something a bit strange when the staff are best placed to consider the workplace context.

Now before readers get the wrong idea, I do think that consultants have an important role to play, especially in offering a new approach to problems and in looking at issues in a different light.  Good consultants really want to help their clients overcome obstacles, look for new opportunities, and solve problems that really matter to an organistion.

I often take on the “consultancy role” when I start a new job or where I want to begin a new project: I seek to determine the current position of the organistion; what are the problems, constraints or concerns about the project or activity; what are the priorities and capabilities within the organisation; how this all fits within the organistion or business unit’s overall strategy and desired outcomes; and then I look at solving problems and issues within the organisational context using whatever combination of people and resources is required for the task at hand. 

Management certainly need to consider the effective utilisation of knowledge assets that exist within the organisation as well as what external knowledge assets can bring to an organistion.

On advertising and web 2.0 for knowledge management

Just received my latest UTS Alumni email newsletter.  I completed two postgraduate degrees from UTS.   I was pleasantly surprised to hear that the The Fred Hollows Foundation won the world’s best not-for-profit television advertisement at the International Fundraising Congress in the Netherlands.  Readers may recall that I did a nine month contract with The Fred Hollows Foundation before coming to AusAID earlier this year.

The full excerpt from the UTS alumni newsletter is here:

Fred Hollows’ ad voted best in the world

An advertisement featuring the late Professor Fred Hollows has been named the world’s best not-for-profit television ad at the International Fundraising Congress in the Netherlands. Heading up the advertising campaign was BA Communication (Hons) graduate Joe Boughton-Dent, The Fred Hollows Foundation’s Communications and Community Engagement Manager.

“The 90-second advertisement started out as a YouTube clip… It got a great response and was viewed over 50,000 times, so we knew people were interested in Fred and what he achieved,” says Boughton-Dent.

“People really respond to a positive message that one person can have a real impact,” he says. “This award shows that Fred Hollow’s message is as powerful today as it was when he passed away in 1993.”

The other finalists in the best not-for-profit advertising category included Action Aid, RSPCA and Operation Smile.

The award-winning Fred Hollows ad has been aired on Australian television since June this year. To view it, [visit the clip on] YouTube.”

The knowledge management take from this success is that YouTube clips can make a difference. I firmly believe that such clips are an excellent way of getting important organisational messages and information across, whether internal or external to an organisation.

There really is no excuse for organisations NOT to consider YouTube and other web 2.0 technologies as a legitimate part of the knowledge management and communication armoury. Importantly, web 2.0 technologies like YouTube and audio podcasts should be key considerations for effective knowledge and information management within an organisation’s strategic and functional  information architecture.

On bright minds and serendipity and passion

Here are a couple of quotes that are important to me when I think about knowledge work, and pretty much everything else to do with life.  I like the fact that randomness and passion have such a strong impact on what we do.

“Chaos is very important to me. I keep my office very messy because it creates interesting random thoughts. Often I have to look for a paper and on my search to find it I will find other things that trigger off new thoughts that I probably wouldn’t have had if I had found the paper straight away. Often in problem-solving you have to think outside the box, go sideways, and I think the chaotic mess in which I work often facilitates this. I also find yellow paper useful. I love working on yellow legal pads with black ink; it’s really good for thinking” (Professor Marcus du Sautoy, mathematician).

The quote is from an article published in the Sydney Morning Herald today (syndicated from the Sunday Telegraph in London) in which some of the brightest minds in the UK are asked to talk about everyday things.  The bright minds belong to Professor Marcus du Sautoy,  Professor Nathan Seiberg (particle physicist), Henry Marsh (brain surgeon), Daniel Jubb (rocket scientist), Michael Beloff (QC), and Nigel Short (Chess Grandmaster).

And finally, what about passion? This from Nathan Seiberg (particle physicist): “If you love something you become obsessed with it and then you eventually solve the problem. I discovered a passion for science at a very early age. I always enjoyed solving puzzles: logic puzzles; maths puzzles; jigsaw puzzles. I was obsessed. The passion is no guarantee of success, but without the passion it won’t work, that’s for sure.”

On getting into podcasting

As you may know from my Twitter feed, I am back at work after my trip to the US.  It all feels kinda weird being back in an office after spending almost two weeks out on the plains and Badlands of South Dakota and Minnesota.  Anyway, I am back at work and back to the old reality.

But one interesting development is in play at the moment.  There is a growing interest in doing some podcasting among a few of my client areas.  At the moment, we make do with a very primitive system using a digital voice recorder.  It’s therefore not surprising that this is not well used because the recording and audio quality are so poor.   And, to be fair, this digital recording device is not really sold for podcasting use.

Now I am personally a big fan of podcasting; perhaps some latent interest from my primary school days when I was one of the four “broadcast boys” responsible for broadcasting educational radio programs throughout the school’s classrooms.  Some childhood interests never leave you.

In much more recent times were the discussions last year with Matt Moore in Sydney about his podcasting and podcasting techniques.  Matt has done some really interesting podcasts using relatively low-cost equipment and Audacity freeware.  Check out Matt’s blog and scroll down his label list to find podcasts.  As to regular podcast listening, I am a big fan of the podcasts from IT Conversations.

Since we are in the early stages of looking at podcasting and podcasting equipment at work, I thought I’d share this recent blogpost from Dan Benjamin on podcasting equipment to get the thinking process moving along.

On being away from KM…and loving it!

Well, if you have been following me on Twitter or reading the Twitter feed on my blog you will know that I am in South Dakota, USA.  My car was totally encased in snow when I got up this morning.  The weather east of Rapid City gradually improved as the day wore on, albeit a local DJ was pondering if the all-time record for cold weather for this time of year would be broken in the coming nights.  The coldest day on record around Rapid City and environs is 20 degrees Fahrenheit and we are already expecting a minimum of 24F tonight.  I am in Huron (SD) tonight, staying at the Dakota Inn, “home of the world’s largest pheasant” (akin to Australia’s amazing big things like the Big Banana).

I will be heading off to Winona, Minnesota, in the next couple of days to see the mighty Mississippi River.  And then I drive back the 600-odd miles to Rapid City and, hopefully,  get to see Mt Rushmore before I fly out.

Even after only a few days away, I haven’t had the urdge to read or write about knowledge management…and loving it!