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!

On clarity

One of the forgotten aspects of knowledge management relates to clarity.  Wikipedia defines clarity as referring “to one’s ability to clearly visualize an object or concept, as in thought, (and) understanding”.  Without providing clarity, can we have successful knowledge management?

And when I speak of clarity, I am not saying that “we know in advance” or that clarity means that we have “the answer”.  What I am saying is that clarity provides for understanding.  Understanding, whether of the task or expectation, provides people with some sense of direction and confidence that might otherwise lead to confusion.  We will certainly not always know the future and therefore we cannot always be confident that we have prepared in advance.  However, providing clarity, often with explanation, is helpful in overcoming confusion and inertia.

I am looking at a number of issues in my current workplace where some of the knowledge management components would be improved if there was some clarity.  This relates to how the organisation uses explicit knowledge contained within project documentation as well as the ability to use tacit knowledge within thematic networks – networks that may become communities of practice (CoP’s) in the near future. Clarity is about guidance.

There is a lack of clarity about the correct work processes and final destination of project documentation (we don’t have a true electronic and document records management system), let alone what use could be made of them later on outside of reporting requirements.  This example is knowledge management 1.0 – KM as a process and a tool for information capture, analysis and re-use.

If we were to define this problem using the Cynefin framework, we could see that some of the business processes around project documentation are in the simple space and some of the later issues are in the complex space.  The simple space refers to the systematic way in which the project documentation should be originated and the steps to take to put these documents into a repository for retrieval and use.  A “rules and tools” approach could work here.  The complicated space refers to the area in which different needs and opportunities may be serviced by using these project reports for a range of activities if only there was some knowledgeable response to the problem.

Similarly, there is a lack of clarity about how our networks should operate and what the expectations are surrounding the networks.  There are differences in opinion depending on where one sits along the management pole, for example. Hopefully, the recent review may provide an answer – we will see.  A big success factor for what happens next will be in determining a clearer picture as to what the networks can contribute and what role members are to play.  This may take some time and we might need to explore different ideas – “probing the complex space” to use a favoured expression from Cognitive Edge.  But providing clarity will give people confidence and some assurance as to the role they can play within the networks and in the exchange of tacit knowledge within the agency.  Building confidence within CoP’s is a critical requirement for successful networks.

Providing clarity is something that we should not ignore.

Using social media

I often hear that some people are reticent to use social media in organisational contexts because they feel that unless they have high quality production equipment, there is no point.  I must say that I have some sympathy to this view. However, I also believe that having simple equipment can also be effective so long as you have a good story to tell, and that the purpose and use of your media makes sense for what you are trying to do.

When I worked at Rabobank in Sydney a few years ago, one of the young chaps in the IT area used his mobile telephone to take video of himself talking through the proposed move to new office premises at Darling Harbour.  He basically filmed himself (at arm’s length) walking through the new office premises showing the refurbishments on the floors we would be occupying.  He gave a personal and informative commentary. And despite the video being somewhat jerky at times (he didn’t edit the video at all), it was still effective – but the BBC it certainly was not.  He even did a nice story, encouraging all of us at Rabobank to visit, about an historic visiting Dutch sailing ship moored at Darling Harbour (Rabobank is a Dutch bank).

Think of it, a mobile phone was used to record video which was uploaded to the intranet.  Well actually, in the initial phase I think the video was sent around as a file attachment.  Soon there was some buzz within the organisation about his chatty and informative videos.  In the end, I think he either had the files loaded on the intranet or he was fired … I think probably the former!

His personality and use of (mobile phone) video in such a seemingly amateuristic and informal way was of significant appeal; far greater than the formal channels of communication (newsletter and text on the intranet) about the office move.  And had his initial video been official policy, turning his video into some high-end production would have destroyed the natural and honest appeal of his reports.

More recently, I have enjoyed a number of reports about the World Food Program in Malawi.  The reports are videocasts (sorry, I always refere to video podcasts as videocasts) called On the road: Malawi.  It looks like the video is shot on a hand-held camcorder.  The story is natural and easy going.  It really is like being there in a real place – not some media-constructed and phoney backdrop to showcase production quality and five second soundbites.  The video has been edited, but video editing software these days is inexpensive and can yield good results.

These two examples demonstrate that having low-cost production techniques can in fact communicate high quality information and knowledge in an effective way.  Certainly, one has to ensure that the video is (mostly) in focus and the sound is audible and can be understood, but you don’t need expensive HD cameras and top-end audio recording equipment all the time. 

And of course, one has to pick the right audience and story that best suits these low-cost production strategies.  A corporate video and advertising campaign are likely to require higher level production values than (say) showcasing an internal success story within the organisation.  Digital images for National Geographic and the weekend colour supplements in national newspapers will have different quality requirements than a digital photostory on an intranet or website.

Similarly, the number of social media distribution tools (such as blogs, podcasting sites, Picassa Web and Flickr, MySpace and YouTube, for example) allow for a far greater range of production qualities than ever before. Instead of not doing things because we don’t have everything perfect, why not experiment with some of these low cost production options and see how effective they can be?

On purpose and need: an example

In my previous blog post I strongly advocated the need to determine purpose and need in our knowledge management planning and strategic thinking.  In fact, purpose and need are important in most business contexts.

To illustrate the point more, I was pleased to read in my latest Good Experience newsletter about how a major US hotel chain (Courtyard by Marriott) went about reinventing itself in order to deliver a better service to meet customer need.  You can read the interview from the Good Experience blog.  Also of interest, and something I have advocated previously, is thinking about marketing principles and practices and how we can use this in our knowledge management activities.

The key message from the interview was in defining a purpose (who is our customer and how do we service that customer to ensure they prefer to stay at Courtyard by Marriott) and working out the best way of meeting that particular need.  The method Courtyard by Marriott took to undertake this transformation was in good market and customer research.  Out of this research came “a set of insights based on what we learned from our segmentation, interviews, and ethnography”. Courtyard by Marriott calls these results the “brand blueprint” and the rest of the interview talks about how the hotel chain went to work making the “brand blueprint” come to reality.

And the result: “We’ve seen a dramatic change in our market share, almost 10%, a 28% increase in guest satisfaction from the new lobby, and average food profit has increased 113%”.

The classic marketing approach to determine who really is your customer is something that practitioners in knowledge management should also consider seriously.  Sometimes, it is important to realise that one cannot service everybody to the same extent or in the same way.  It is certainly the case that people have different needs even inside the one organisation.  When the hotel chain determined who was the main game, they sought to understand this particular segment in order to determine how best they could match their needs.  I am curious to find out if they used any form of archetype analysis in their research. 

As a consequence of the research and analysis, the company worked out strategies and designs that would support the now-recognised needs of the customer.  Listening to your customers is very important and doing what is best for them (and not just for yourself) is critical.

I think that those of us in knowledge management can take some lessons from this essentially marketing experience to enhance our own abilities to rethink our purpose and meet the needs of our particular client groups.

On determining purpose and need

I was reading the latest blog post from Gerry McGovern this morning. Gerry highlights the fact that Craigslist is an immensely popular website, even more popular than bookselling behemoth Amazon, but the site is incredibly ugly.  Craigslist, in case you don’t already know, is a webite for localised classified ads and discussion forums. Craigslist is successful not because it looks good; it works because it serves a particular purpose that satisfies a particular need that people find easy to use and which gets results.

I don’t want to get into the merits of website content and aesthetics right now but I do want to reinforce the absolutely essential task of determining purpose and need. What is the purpose of this activity and what need will it fulfil?  In my field of knowledge management, establishing purpose and need are vital to any effective strategy or activity.  Purpose and need should be key determinants not only for websites, but also for intranets, document  libraries, discussion lists, and communities of practice.

Craigslist (and Googlefor that matter) succeed with pretty basic and boring interfaces because they do what the customer wants them to do in a simple and consistent manner.  There is consistency in terms of use and in what outcomes can be expected.  There is no mystery – no lack of clarity nor uncertainty about what people using Craigslist and Google are actually there to do.

Half the battle of getting people involved in a knowledge management or content management endeavour is to ensure that these activities serve a particular purpose to meet a definite user or client need.  Having something somewhere for the sake of it, or on the off-chance, is not good enough. Clarity of purpose and establishing activities and facilitating solutions based on need are far more effective ways to use time and resources.  And if there is a need that is served by a particular service or activity, you will find there will be no shortage of use.  Craigslist is indeed the proof.

On communication, language and meaning

Last night I watched a movie on DVD called Where the green ants dream.  The film came out in 1984 and was directed by noted German director Werner Herzog.  I remember seeing the movie at the cinema back then and not quite fully coming to terms with the storyline.  When I saw the DVD of the movie in a shop recently, I bought it to have another look.

The film is about a land claim by a clan of Australian aboriginals of a sacred site in an area where a mining company is prospecting and drilling for uranium.  The aboriginals claim the land is sacred because it is where the green ants live until they are ready to fly east, after which the cycle of renewal begins again.  The story is couched in terms of birth, death and rebirth.  The mining company, with all their drilling and explosions, are at risk of waking and disturbing the green ants and breaking the dreamtime cycle.

The first observation about the land predicament is the difference in the explanations given by the aboriginal people and the white mining company representatives concerning the importance of the land in question.  For the aborigines, the land is a sacred symbol of life while for the white man, the land is something to be exploited and used for riches.  The meaning surrounding the same patch of land is totally different and dependant on the contextualised stories of each group – the green ant story from the aboriginals and the development and progress story of the white people.  This is a common point of difference between indigenous populations and settler groups in North America and Africa as well.

This isn’t a film review, so I just want to point out one particular scene in the film when the aboriginals and the mining company representatives are in court.  They are in court to settle ownership of the land in question.  At one point, an elderly aboriginal man stands up and walks to the witness box in the middle of another witness’s evidence.  The witness steps down and the aboriginal elder takes his place and starts to speak in his own language.  The judge is confused but sympathetic and asks if the man can speak English or whether anyone can translate.  The judge looks at his notes and identifies the elderly aboriginal man, saying “I thought this man was mute!”.

One of the other aboriginal men, one of the plaintiffs, stands and tells the judge that there is no one in the court room, or in the country, or in the world that can understand this man – he is the last living survivor of his language and that is why he is referred to as mute.

If we cannot understand what people are saying (or writing for that matter) we do not have communication. Unless somebody can translate the meaning for us, it will be as if we are mute.  In all our communications, we must try and put ourselves in the shoes of the other so that we can find the best way to ensure the meaning of our message is understood.  At the same time, when we try to put on the shoes of the other person, there will be times when we also have to look beyond just the shoes, but to consider the whole contextual environment in which those shoes have walked.  This is not always easy and usually forgotten in our rush to speak.

Without good communication in all its forms, there can be no knowledge management.

On social networking for business

I want to periodically keep up the thinking about the positive benefits of social networking and social media. My interest is both personal and professional. I view social networking, used in the most effective manner, to be of enormous benefit to business and government within the workplace environment. And, like most things, the value of the tool has to be considered within the workplace context and by the manner in which it is used.

I blogged a month ago about Euan Semple giving a series of short interviews on specific topics about social media. Euan gave some very good reasons as to how and why social media is good for the workplace. To complement the sentiments from those vignettes, I want to draw your attention to a simple but very valuable explanation as to why social networking is good for business.

This time, I want to illustrate the point using  Seth Godin’s explanation via Youtube on why social networking is good for business. I recommend you view the clip.  

Essentially, social networking is good for business because it facilitates the establishing of effective relationships based on trust and reciprocity. According to Godin, you can’t count the worth of social networking by the numbers – it’s the quality of the relationships that give the greatest meaning to social networks and that’s where the value sits. 

If we accept Dunbar’s number, we could say 150 people was the upper limit to effective realtionships. It is important to maintain authenticity and depth of interaction within these relationships. I certainly agree, albeit I am conscious that even weak ties within a network may be useful at times, especially in response to specific questions or where making use of the collective intelligence can be harnessed. The difference here is the emphasis on social (indicating interactions at a greater level of personal intensity) than a traditional online network, such as LinkedIn. 

As with most things, use and purpose are critical dimensions to the effectiveness of social networking.

On a writer in residence and the airport experience

The bods at Heathrow Airport in London are reported to have hired author Alain de Botton as a writer-in-residence. The idea is to give de Botton unfettered access to the airport so that he can write about the modern experience of airport life. As de Botton says in the article, airports are a good microcosm of the global themes of human life (ok, I paraphrased a bit here).

However, de Botton will only have full access to Heathrow Airport for a week so perhaps the tag writer-in-residence is a little on the exagerated side. I guess that the term short-term publicist doesn’t have the same sort of public interest as writer-in-residence for those high brow types in London. But let’s wait and see what de Botton gets to the bottom of at Heathrow first before speculating any further as to the outcome of the exercise…

I suppose the bods at Heathrow Airport are hoping that de Botton can write something positive about the airport experience since it has continually underperformed passenger expectations. The opening of Terminal Five last year was a disaster. And when I travelled through Heathrow in 1986 on the day Terminal 4 opened, there was a baggage handlers strike and the best part of the Heathrow experience back then was leaving it!

Yet now in this modern age I am surprised that de Botton wouldn’t just blog or tweet about his airport experience. The fact that he has been contracted to write a book based on his one week tour of duty at Heathrow smells suspiciously like a publicity stunt to me. Moreover, the chap needs to be given more time – let’s say a writer-in-residence for three months. We all know that one week doesn’t make a summer!

So de Botton will write a book that will be published and all will be revealed then – hopefully including the answers to many a passenger problem at Europe’s busiest airport epicentre.

But speaking of answers, Heathrow Airport should just listen to the thousands of customers that use the airport each day if they really want to know what goes on in the airport and what people really think. Having a well-known author intermediate these airport experiences in the 21st century is no longer necessary – go straight to the source and get the information direct from the people using your services and respond accordingly. I am sure there would be plenty of narrative fragments (stories) that could be collected from customers and suppliers,and then aggregated to identify common patterns or themes that the airport owners would need to address.

That is, of course, if you’re really serious about understanding the true airport experience.

On organisational network analysis

I arranged for Cai from Optimice to come into AusAID today to give a short presentation on organisational network analysis (ONA).  Some people may also refer to ONA as social network analysis (SNA).

I had previously talked with Cai and Laurie from Optimice at the recent KM Australia conference in Sydney.  Cai had offered then to do a presentation for me on his next trip to Canberra.  And today was the day.

The interesting thing for me about using ONA was in the visualisation of data and the direction and intensity of relationships. My interest is largely directed at the information relationships between people, as well as the relationship between people and knowledge objects.  At the same time, some consultants have just finished a draft report on the thematic networks and I was thinking that the report could have been improved with some good organisational network analysis using the Optimice product.

In addition, the online team in Communications were interested in the mapping possibilities tied to internet/intranet content management and the broader communication issues between head office and overseas posts.

Suffice to say, I am keen to try out some ONA with my own workplace responsibilities in information and  knowledge services.  ONA might not have all the answers, but the visualisation of the data and relationships would be a great starting point for deeper research and analysis.

On judgement

The KM Australia conference is over for another year.  There were some great presentations and I took plenty of notes.  Thanks to everyone involved.  In particular, I want to thank Aimee Rootes from Ark Group.  Aimee was always helpful and pleasant, and went out of her way to find people when I couldn’t find them.

I am not going to launch into my notes from the conference just yet.  I do, however, want to tease out something that Dave Snowden mentioned in his presentation on Wednesday morning.  Dave said that “judgement is what KM is about”.  He reconfirmed the importance of judgement by saying that people in organisations “need to be allowed to make good judgements”.  This was not the central thrust of his presentation but it was important to me.

Judgement should be about choice.  On the one hand, knowledge managers need to judge what elements from their knowledge management armoury is appropriate for what problem (or opportunity) and in what context.  Sometimes knowledge managers have a tool box approach wherein everything in the tool box must be used, irrespective of the need.  A KM tool box requires judgement as to what is appropriate for the task at hand.

But I think Dave was referring to allowing people in organisations to make judgements.  And judgements must be made when dealing with complex environments.  How can KM emerge or be successfully facilitated in an environment in which judgement (by the very people KM is supposed to help) is so completely hindered that standard drone-like thinking pervades everything one does?  An organisational culture needs to support and enhance good judgement.

In my current role I am looking at the way in which our information services go beyond just supplying information and research to people within the organisation.  This is indeed part of our function and we can say we have supplied x number of items and had hundreds of people read our material.  But this is not enough.

I am working on delving more deeply into how people use the information and research my team supply; for what purpose, and most importantly, for what outcome.  I will leave impact to later on – first things first!  I am basically seeking to discover the knowledge trail from where my team gets involved, as part of a much wider process, and where that fits in to give people the capability and confidence to make decisions, or in reality, make judgements about what to do.

If judgement is what KM is about, then I want my team and the services we provide now and into the future, to enhance the capacity and capabilities of people to make good judgements.

On KM Australia 2009

I will be heading off to Sydney later this afternoon to spend the next two days at the KM Australia conference. I am looking forward to a number of the presentations, including the keynote from Dave Snowden and his debate on Thursday afternoon with Shawn Callahan from Anecdote.

In addition, just looking at the programme, I am keen to hear from Stephen Bounds (ITSA), Felicity McNish (Woods Bagot), and Dale Chatwin (ABS), among others. I hope to catch up with Helen Paige as well. Helen will be running a knowledge cafe tomorrow afternoon.

I’ll have a report on the conference at the end of the week.

On outcomes and impact

There are many ways to find out about things. Research is obviously part of that. And research likes to use quantitative measures in order to maximise objectivity, even if these measures don’t give you much meaning.

Let’s look at hit rates on a website – a metric commonly used for “statistical purposes”. What does it mean? Well, it means that a website or page view has been looked at a certain amount of times. The inference is that the more hits you have the better must be the result. But what is the result?

If the intended result is to have as many hits as possible since one assumes hit rates equate with “eyeballs”, then surely high hit rate numbers are great. But is this the result an organisation really wants from it’s website? What happens as a consequence of the “eyeballs” is the question I really want to get an answer to. In reality, high hit rates could indicate a bad website. Your website visitors and customers are clicking away, frustrated by their inability to reach an outcome they want to achieve. Just get those click rates up and everything will be fine….hmmmmm.

Let’s do a survey then. A survey is actually pretty limiting.  A questionnaire is bounded by the construction of the questions and limited answer options. In nearly all cases, one could answer a question yes or no, depending on the particular circumstances at some point in time. Surveys also don’t do a great job in measuring continuous change over time. And conducting surveys or focus groups with large numbers of people are often difficult and time consuming, certinly if a continuous process is required.

Yet these methods are still held to be superior to more qualitative approaches to research. However, if you actually asked your website users what they thought of the website, perhaps they might tell you that it takes a lot of clicking to get through to complete the task at hand. They might tell you that your website is poorly organised, with lousy navigation and confusing labels. They might tell you that the photos on the home page add nothing to their customer experience. They might tell you that your website could better… for them. And if you have a continuous dialogue with them, they will be even more insightful as to how to improve or validate what you are trying to do. Observation at point of impact is a good way of thinking about this.

I can see some meaning from getting those kind of responses! Click rate numbers – forget it. Now I have real information that can make an impact to the people I say (and the organisation) I am trying to serve.

So what we are interested in finding out is impact. What is the  impact that occurs from what we are doing? This is different to outcome. Click rates are an outcome. Obtaining continuous feedback to ensure satisfied customers buy from you, recommend you, and stay loyal, is another.

Now what if we could get this feedback quickly, continually over time, on a large scale, context-sensitive, and in a way where the person giving us the information gives it in terms of how it affects them, and not through some intermediary or stilted survey method?

I set the scene this way to introduce some thoughts from a presentation at the ANU yesterday by Dave Snowden,  special guest speaker at the ACT-KM forum. Dave talked about a number of current projects he was working on. The common element from his talk was the importance of  determining impact and how then to take relevant action as a consequence.

I will use the example of the Liverpool Slavery Museum in the UK from Dave’s talk yesterday; albeit the Children of the world project was for me the most fascinating.

One could count the number of people going through the museum each month and year. The numbers might indicate level of popularity but one can’t be sure. At best, they show that “x” number of people came and paid “y” number of UK pounds to do so.  One could do a simple accounting calculation at this point and perhaps leave it at that.

But what if you wanted to know what effect the museum had on people? What if you wanted to know how successful the museum was in educating visitors about slavery, or in providing a unique experience? What really was the impact of the museum visit?

[It is of course true that if you don't want to know about your customers' experiences and are happy with just throughput figures - akin to an assembly line - then impact will have very little interest for you. The process will be sufficient].

Dave told us how there are computer screens and keyboards at the museum where people can record their experiences and feelings about the museum exhibits. People can nominate any of the individual exhibits to make a comment or express a feeling. The people making these comments are then able to “index” or tag their comments using terms chosen freely that signify meaning to them. Nobody  is interpretating what they say and adding any bias. At the same time, this information capture is continuous and provides for scale, something a static survey couldn’t do. The museum now has thousands of narrative fragments “indexed” by the individuals themselves. This information is aggregated and patterns observed. These patterns may suggest a change to a particular exhibit, or perhaps some alteration to how a museum education officer conducts a group tour.

In the Liverpool Museum case, they have both quantitative information (number of visitors and monies received) AND what impact the museum had on the visitors.

Yet still there are detractors:

• stories (narrative fragments is the preferred method used by Dave Snowden) are not real facts
• some people may just write junk and not tell the truth
• it’s all so subjective

All three statements might be true. The point is, if we want to measure impact, then we need to know what people think and what effect something had on them. And we need to know what they think, not what what we might guess at. The capture and aggregation of narrative fragments is a good way of doing this. “Junk” can be easily discarded but sometimes “junk” may be of interest as a weak signal, something we should pay attention to. Where you want to establish an impact on people, of course there is subjectivity. However, how the narrative fragments are captured, aggregated and used is quite a rigorous and objective method in itself.

Lastly, no matter what the method, unless people use the tools correctly and respond appropriately, no research activity will have any validity.