The great debate – tacit knowledge and collaborative technologies

I have been looking at the program for the upcoming KM Australia Congress in Sydney on 24-25 July with a strong degree of longing.  At this stage, my employer doesn’t look like sending me to this conference so I am very disappointed in not being able to attend.

However, I was particularly taken with the proposed debate on Day 2 – making tacit knowledge explicit with collaborative technologies. There are two debaters on both sides. I personally know one from each side – James Dellow (on the yes team) and Shawn Callahan (on the no team). The debate is worthy of some pre-congress discussion because it is a key knowledge management problem – can tacit knowledge ever become explicit?

I always remember Dave Snowden saying that we always know more than what we can write, we know even more than that when we speak, but we know even more than all of that inside our own heads – tacit knowledge. It is an interesting point to make in the context of how we might look at the tacit knowledge-explicit knowledge conundrum within knowledge management.

Is it therefore impossible to directly transfer tacit knowledge into explicit knowledge because tacit knowledge is full of personal experiences, nuances, and particular contexts than cannot be replicated or converted into a codified (explicit) format?

I recognise that the earliest expositions on tacit knowledge pretty much said that you cannot make tacit knowledge explicit. And I can certainly sympathise with the position (I am assuming) to be taken by Shawn in the upcoming debate since Shawn is the man behind Anecdote, a company that is in the business of storytelling and narrative. The focus here is on the speaking and personally shared experiences which cannot be communicated with the same contextual references and meaning if it was to me made explicit, say, by writing it up in a Minute for capture in an electronic database.

On the other hand, certainly within the realm of knowledge management, there has been much to say about tacit and explicit knowledge. In my readings over the years, I am inclined to think that in the field of knowledge management there is a belief in tacit knowledge – explicit knowledge transfer in what Nonaka first espoused as the knowledge management spiral. I can see James Dellow (from Headshift) making the point that collaborative technologies facilitate tacit-explicit knowledge transfer.

In my opinion, it may be true that a person’s complete tacit knowledge is unable to be codified and captured in an explicit form. I can see the purist belief in this. However, I do happen to believe that one can make some tacit knowledge explicit.

Collaborative tools such as wikis and blogs, and even listservs and email groups, can assist in having some tacit knowledge becoming explicit knowledge. We can see how this might happen when a person with particular knowledge and experiences shares them by writing it down (thereby becoming codified and explicit) for others to read and discuss. The codified knowledge is distributed and shared via collaborative tools to enhance reach and scale. A conversation may ensue using these collaborative tools, which may even foster face-to-face communication as well. The point is that now we have knowledge and experiences surfacing for other people to benefit from and/or participate in. What becomes explicit may only be a fraction of the tacit knowledge this person posesses, but this fraction may indeed be a gold mine of value to someone else.

This was certainly my experience when I established and facilitated communities of practices at Rabobank in Sydney. The communities of practice surfaced tacit knowledge (became explicit) from a host of knowledgeable and experienced people that could have remained underutilised without a mechanism to bring this knowledge to light.

I think it is more important to recognise the degree to which tacit knowledge can become explicit and thereby move the debate into the issue of quantity and quality of that knowledge, and how that knowledge can be communicated and re-articulated to generate thinking, discussion and new knowledge.

Unfortunately, while I am not likely to be able to attend KM Australia, I will be there in spirit hoping that the discussion enables some solid thinking about how we might try to use tacit knowledge more effectively and with greater scale.

I wish the debaters all the best for an interesting and intellectually challenging discussion.

KM Australia 2012

KM Australia is on again this year. KM Australia 2012 will be held in Sydney at Luna Park (Milson’s Point) on 24-25 July.

Featured presentions are scheduled from the following organisations:

• McDermott Consulting (United States of America)
•  LEGO Group (Denmark)
• Toyota (United States of America)
• Federal Transit Administration (United States of America)
• Federal Aviation Administration (United States of America)
• Department of Defence (Australia) Rio Tinto (Australia)
• Queensland Treasury (Australia)
• Genea (Australia)
• Woods Bagot (Australia)
• The Paige Group (Australia) Anecdote (Australia)
• KPMG (Australia)
• Telstra (Australia)

Should be a great event.

Information Architecture for the digital-physical world

Day 2 of the Electronic Resources and Libraries Conference is over and I am still finishing the second part of yesterdays blog post! Oh well, there are a few distractions in Austin after the conference that get in the way of sitting in a hotel typing away on a computer.

I want to follow on from yesterdays blog post with the seven points Andrea concluded his presentation with. For want of a better word, he used “manifesto” to box the following seven points:

1. Information architecture becomes an ecosystem – all of the information artifacts no longer stand alone. They are all part of the single user experience and need to be acknowledged as such.

2. Users become intermediaries – users produce and re-mediate content. [In content management circles this idea has been around a while]. Andrea cited the example of Rosenfeld Media with its range of user experiences.

3. static becomes dynamic – information and content acquisition really never gets finished. There is always something more. Content is always changing and being reconstituted in different ways. The example of a dynamic information example is Wikipedia.

4. dynamic becomes hybrid – boundaries are separating media; there are thinner channels and genre. The example given in the presentation was the Hitachi 2400 windshield that could display a bevvy of information on the screen as you drove along! For example, the logo for a company might pop up to alert you to the fact that a XYZ fast food joint was coming up. I am sure there are probably more worthwhile pieces of information that could be presented but I’ll need to see if digital placement of information on the windscreen is the way to go.

5.horizontal prevails over vertical – intermediaries push for more informal structures and meaning; push for spontaneity and ephemeral meaning. Tagging was the example given.

6. products become experiences – from single object to a wider experience. Experience spans multiple steps for the user experience. [I think that recognition of the customer experience has been around a while among companies and marketeers (love that US expression) for a while as they attempt to differentiate their products - objects - from competitors.]

7. experiences become cross channel experiences – no longer tied to the one artifact and experiences span across channels. The great example used was for selling teddy bears! Build-a-bear not only allows you to create your own teddy bear (thereby outdoing the boring standard teddy bear and associated fluffy pals), you can also enter a digital world and play with other kids and teddy bears there as well. Your teddy bear has a unique bar code and you can give it a name. You can go to Bearaville and play, as an avatar with your bear who is “alive and playing as well”. Whoa – life couldn’t be so good!

Ultimately, Andrea concludes, the information architecture experience needs to account for a vary range of experiences useing cross channels and taking advantage of the integration between our physical space and our digital space.

Within the library context, we need to be aware that information silos may not hold the answers as they once did. We need to look at what channels of information we can use to help our users/clients/patrons get the outcome they want – to find the information they need.

My favourite quotes from Gov. 3.0 conference

I went over my notes from the Gov. 3.0 conference over the weekend. There was much to read and think about. In my notes were some key quotes. A summary of key quotes from the conference is worth keeping – here they are:

“Sometimes we forget that social media is an exchange” Angelina Russo (Museum3). This quote really identified one of the biggest problems with the hype around social media – for many, social media is used as a broadcast mechanism and this is fine up to a point. But the real reason for social media is to allow communication exchange; to make mutual connections; and to learn from each other. Government – are you listening or just broadcasting?

In a similar vein, Amanda Eamich (US Dept of Agriculture) said that “it’s not about the technology…it’s about the people and intent”. I couldn’t agree more.

“Web 2.0 is the social filter” Robert Thomas (Dept of Innovation, Industry, Science & Research). A key reason people use social media is to be able to share experiences and opinions with friends. These experiences and opinions are used to filter the vast swamps of information out on the web and in junk mail catalogues. Word-of-mouth marketing has never been more significant.

According to research from IBM, “every week businesses waste 5.3 hours due to inefficient processes” Mike Handes (IBM). This quote was actually on a slide in Mike’s presentation but really reinforced the point to me that knowledge management is vitally important to the bottom line in business and government. If we as knowledge managers can improve the way information is used and knowledge accessed within an organisation, then we are saving people valuable time AND ensuring that decisions can be made with the best available information.

The other quote from Mike that makes a lot of sense is that “content revolves around people”. Technology is a wonderful enabler but it really is the people who really count. That’s the difference between loading documents onto a website and calling that open government when what should be happening is increasing the access and level of interaction between government, it’s workforce, and the citizenry. My fear is that government doesn’t think much of the social and prefers the document repository form of community “interaction”.

Anni Rowland-Campbell (Intersticia) quotes Genevieve Bell when she said to “think of data as a person”. I liked this metaphor because it gives awareness to the fact that data can be viewed with many personas and used for many different reasons. Whilst I am not certain of the context the quote was originally used, “data as a person” opened my thinking as to how we might perceive data in the web 2.0/web 3.0 world.

Tudor Groza (University of Queensland) observed that “the problem (with social media) is the silos”. By this he meant that our social media is compartmentalised (in silos). Social media relies on formal links (hypertext) to join information elements together rather than having the right combination of information about a person or an object in the one spot at the one time. Personally, I don’t see this as a problem as the “silos” can be linked if they want to be. I also believe that a person’s identity is comprised of many different personas representing different interests and associations. Let me think this one through in the context of the semantic web…

My final key quote is less about the potential  “dryness” of a topic, but more on the way in which the topic can be communicated.

“I’m the kind of person who, if you met me at a dinner party, would find accountants more interesting to talk to” Paul Storey (Dept of Health). I certainly disagree, Paul. Your presentation about the use of health data to solve medical riddles was both interesting and passionate. Don’t underestimate passion in anything that people do.

Gov 3.0 conference Day 1

My post-conference blogging reports usually provide a summary of the presentations. I report this way so that I have a record of my conference notes in digital form that I can access at any time.

This time, I want to pick up a theme that developed during the course of the day at the Gov. 3.0 conference – how social media can be used in organisational settings to provide positive outcomes.

The two presentations that were of most interest to me were the ones from Mike Handes (IBM) and Jeffrey Levy (Environmental Protection Agency – USA).

Mike’s presentation (I think he used prezi) demonstrated how social media is applicable for both business and government. He gave some examples; the most interesting for me was the use of the IBM Connections in his own workplace and professional life. The product is a more systematic and comprehensive platform to Yammer. The key message was that content revolves around people. Social media in all its different forms allows people to get connected, at varying levels of intensity. Despite all the talk about the semantic web, I still believe it is people who derive meaning from information and turn that into knowledge. Using tools like Yammer and IBM Connections, it is possible to enhance people-to-people contact, facilitate information sharing and problem solving, allow meaningful search, and have these exchanges recorded for others to participate and learn from. Best of all, such systems allow for an organisation’s human and social capital to be effectively utilised. How I wish for a Yammer-style solution to my own workplace staff directory for example, or as a replacement for email-based thematic networks.

One interesting titbit of information from IBM was the observation that every week, 5.3 hours were lost by workers due to inefficient processes. Having completed my own study on information seeking behaviour, I can vouch for the fact that people are losing valuable time and getting frustrated by their inability to locate the right information at the right time.

Jeffrey Levy spoke about the use of web 2.0 as a major form of communication  in times of crisis. Web 2.0 is both immediate and accessible. The example he gave was the Japanese nuclear disaster earlier this year. Naturally, the Environmental Protection Authority (EPA) was following developments and what impact the disaster might have on citizens and the environment in the USA. The EPA monitored and sampled radiation data over the USA. There was a daily report of information on the website. In addition, the web page was divided vertically in two – text (news) on the left and data on the right. Most people wanted to know what was going on so the daily news was adequate, but there were others looking for the data.

The data was provided, including a “heat map” of the USA which showed where the greatest number of hits on the EPA page were coming from. Naturally, the west coast of the USA was a flash point, as was the Boston-New York area on the east coast (shades of Three Mile Island?). People could click into the map and get state and localised information. There were also links to Twitter and Facebook.

The EPA created a Facebook page solely for this particular disaster. Information was delivered through this channel. The EPA also responded on Facebook to posts challenging or critical of the EPA message.  It was important for the EPA to maintain credibility and to enhance confidence in the information provided. Facebook posts would be repeated so that the message was regular and relatively immediate to people as they logged into Facebook during the course of a day.

The success of the crisis management communication delivery was in the way the EPA used the different communication channels to broadcast, and respond to, the information needs of the citizenry.

The take-home is that social media can deliver a positive and effective outcome for both your internal and external audiences.

Gov 3.0 Conference 2011

Tomorrow (Thursday 24th November) I will be attending the Gov 3.0 conference in Canberra. The tagline for the conference is “the future of social media and public sector communication”.

I am looking forward to what the speakers have to say, albeit I remain to be convinced that governments in Australia are serious about openness, citizen dialogue, and the full use of social media both inside and outside of Departments.

With respect to openness, the observable evidence in Australia and the United Kingdom seems to suggest that uploading millions of documents onto government websites is the solution. In many cases, there is little (if any) contextualised meaning applied to these documents. Documents written for specific purposes are placed into the public domain without that context being explained. There is still the issue over timeliness and relevance.  And the internal approval mechanisms to authorise (and disallow) the publication of certain government documents on the web can be trying. But really, is the average Joe Citizen in the mood to spend oodles of time scouring government websites to read through public-service-speak documents when all they really want to do is ask a knowledgeable person for an answer? Of course, not. There is therefore a need to consider the real needs of the citizenry beyond the selective publication of government documents on the web by government departments. After all, if publishing government documents is what open government is about, then we may as well ask Julian Assange to project manage the whole government openness agenda.

That is not to say that government documents on the web don’t have a place in providing information to the world. However, selective document availability is not the answer to openness without at least providing the necessary assistance and feedback mechanism for real citizen engagement. If I can download a government report but cannot discuss the meaning of the report with anyone inside government (i.e. the public service), then openness and dialogue are rather hamstrung.

When it comes to dialogue with citizens, the general polity likes to think that spewing forth tweets and answering constituent emails is enough. But the reality is that there is not much conversation and two-way dialogue in these type of exchanges. I remember Neil Postman saying in “Amusing ourselves to Death” that in the US in days of Lincoln and co., political dialogue was much more personal and immediate through public gatherings and political campaigning than what it has become now. Sure, I appreciate the issues of scale and technology, but citizen dialogue remains something that the political machine (and the administrative servants in the Public and Civil Service) are yet to achieve.

Social media is also important. There are plenty of politicians using social media – US President Obama and a number of Australian politicians are good examples. But there remains a certain disquiet about social media in the hallowed halls of the Public Service. The main concern is around risk (although there is also a good deal of ignorance about communication in general, let alone via web 2.0 technologies within a Department or with an external audience). The argument goes that social media represents a loss of control, is subject to unknown responses in the public domain, and acts as a diversion to the real work at hand. I’d like to have some sympathy for these concerns because I see some intelligent people using these arguments to say “No” for even the slightest of reasons.

However, there are many risks that can be mitigated against through proper procedures, through establishing organisational trust, and in the recognition that the benefits outweigh the risks. There also needs to be a recognition that organisations need to adapt to a changing world; where stakeholders have different needs and aspirations, than in previous times.

In the corporate world there are also communication risks associated with social media but, for the most part, the corporate world is more willing than the public sector to use social media in positive and interesting ways.

It is therefore of immense interest to me to hear tomorrow and on Friday what the speakers have to say about open government and connectedness; about particpatory discussion and citizen dialogue; about the transformative effects of social media; and about how information, knowledge and learning can flow more effectively in the digital economy than ever before.

In particular, I am keen to hear the experiences from the US about the use of social media and web 3.0 (?) communication channels to distribute information and enhance public engagement with stakeholders. I will also be interested to hear how social media fosters improved communication and participation from both citizens and within the public sector. There is much to learn – I hope that the conference provides those thinking and learning opportunities.

Day 1 KM Australia

Yesterday I was in Sydney for the first day of the KM Australia Conference. The conference is a two day event at Milson’s Point.

David Gurteen opened proceedings with an introduction extolling the benefits of conversation. David made references from Theodore Zeldin – “The kind of conversation I like is one in which you are prepared to emerge a slightly different person” and David Weinberger (Cluetrain Manifesto) – “better to understand the knowledge we already have”. The basic message is to engage, listen and learn.

The two stand out presentations today were from Nicolas Gorjestani (ex World Bank) and Pete Williams from Deloitte in Sydney.

Gorjestani focused on obstacles to change from existing mindsets, noting that cultural change at the World Bank started  in the mid-1990s with the ideal of a “knowledge bank” but that the ideal is still to be realised. That’s not to say that nothing has changed; however, change takes time and continuous encouragement.

Moreover, sometimes “unlearning” something is just as important as learning something new. Human mindsets see only some things; something that has been reinforced with me over the years with readings and presentations from people such as Dave Snowden from Cognitive Edge. Gorjestani emphasised the need to ask “what could be?” rather than “what can be?”  I imagine a few mindsets in some organisations that need a jackhammer of gargantuan proportions to shift….but that’s another story.

Pete Williams from Deloitte emphasised how existing communication tools can be used for good business outcomes. He was specifically focusing on social tools that allow connection and collaboration between individuals and teams. He informed us how Deloitte uses Yammer to share information and experiences within Deloitte. He gave many examples as to how the system was used to ask and solve problems; problems that might otherwise take much longer to solve or deal with. In a telling point about Sharepoint, Williams said this about the Microsoft product: “if I want to get a glass of water, Sharepoint wants to dig a well. Why not go to the tap that’s already there?”.

And the meaning here is that there are fabulous tools out there already to use.  So why spend time and resources building new things when it already exists, especially at such low cost? He continued by commenting that in many cases the customisation of Sharepoint from previously requested work still hasn’t been finished so how could new work be taken on board and completed in a timely manner? Indeed.

Williams also highlighted new ways to present information through mashups and through minor adjustments to existing software apps. Bamboo was a product that he mentioned that I need to investigare further. Again, Williams advocated a culture of “can do” rather than “won’t do”.

Deloitte actively encourages good ideas in many ways. They provide time and financial resources for new ideas to be tested and developed. Microfunding is available to anyone with an idea that has potential, approved by the innovation team.  In addition, Yammer is used across Deloitte to not only solve problems and respond to questions but to comment and improve upon decisions. Williams gave the example of the change from a per diem rate for expenses to actual cost recovery by individual receipts. When it was pointed out by many people that this procedure would take forever for those in consulting jobs at sites for months at a time, the CEO took this on board and changed the policy back.

All of these ideas and experiences work because of a culture of can do and of encouraging ideas for improvement. Unfortunately, many organisations prefer a command and control model where innovation is unlikely to get very far.

I look forward to hearing what speakers bring to the table on day 2.

Meta 2011 conference

The 2011 Meta Conference is being held in Canberra from 25-27 May at University House, Australian National University. The conference this year will focus on business intelligence, data execution, governance, and overcoming obstacles in project implementation and delivery.

The conference program on the website has been a bit sparse. However, it is being updated as speakers are confirmed for their particular session times.

The conference cost is very reasonable at $850 (plus GST) for the three day event.

KM Australia 2011

I received the program and conference registration information for the KM Australia Conference to be held in Sydney on the 18-19 July. The knowledge management industry is never short of having something to say.  Full information is available from the conference website – click here.

I also received notification about the ACT-KM conference which will be held in Canberra later this year in October. The conference organisers are looking for speakers and presentations on the theme, “what keeps CEO’s awake at night”. Full details on the ACT-KM website – click here.

Having already been to two library conferences this year (Information Online in Sydney in February, and Electronic Resources and Libraries in March in Austin, Texas), it should be interesting hearing the perspectives about knowledge management inside the organisation.

I hope to attend both KM Australia and the ACT-KM conference – we shall see…

 

 

Libraries and the customer experience

I find the day after a conference has finished is a good time to let the knowledge gleaned from the previous days flow through the brain without reference to notes. I like this type of unstructured post-conference flow because it allows key themes to emerge by themselves in my thinking.

A key theme for me (and I mean a theme that I have been thinking about in response to the combination of information and experiences from the conference) is that libraries and organisations need to go where to the clients are in a way that is meaningful to them.

Amy Sample Ward started this thought in me when she emphasised working with the community, not for the community. Working with a community or a client group means working with them in consideration of what they want and how they want it. How they want their information may be different to how the organisation believes it should deliver the information.

Michael Clarke (no, not the Australian cricketer) from Silverchair (no, not the Australian band) presented on “the great unboxing”. Libraries had to start thinking more about content than just the format (the container the information was in). The focus on content is something I have emphasised in my workplace as well. Other presentations, particularly around library catalogue search and the library catalogue GUI, also emphasised the need to provide the traditional library service in a way that was effective, but also both familiar to users and appealing to users. In some cases being like Google was important because Google is a familiar and well-used information search option. If we want users to use the catalogue, then we must make the catalogue as appealing to use as Google.

My thinking around this is that whilst as librarians we have a range of library tools and information technologies at our disposal, they don’t really mean much unless we meet the needs of our clients in the way the clients want their needs met. And information needs are becoming more focused on content from a multitude of sources and networks than ever before – and libraries and organisations need to be there in all those places. In marketing speak, you go to where your customers are and meet with them in a way the customers have determined. So, if your customers are on Facebook, then that’s one place you need to go. Interestingly, at the Web 3.0 conference I attended last year in Sydney, the same sentiment was expressed: using social media is fine but it only really means something if it means something to your audience. The Web 3.0 conference is on again in June.

The upshot (take-home?) of this is that if libraries or organisations want to push a system that their clients won’t use, but go ahead with it anyway because the library or organisation sees some other “benefit”, then we are wasting time and resources because the clients aren’t going there. We need to consider the customer experience!

And if your clients aren’t going there, then it doesn’t matter what the system can do compared to something else, it just isn’t going to work!

End of ER and L Conference for 2011

Today was the third and final day of the Electronic Resources and Libraries Conference in Austin, Texas.

There were presentations given on standards; acquisitions and assessment, web discovery, ebooks, and content indexing.

From the presentations I saw, there were two stand-outs. The first was the presentation by Hana Leavay of the University of Washington Library who gave an interesting and informative talk on assessing electronic resources. Considerable thought had gone into the data collection, the sorting and analysis, and then finally the input into decision-making. Once again this presentation demonstrated to me why we need to better capture a range of statistics and work out ways of using the data for management and reporting purposes.

The other presentation was a group presentation about web discovery. The prime mover here was John Law from Serials Solutions and the product called Summon. Tammy Allgood from Arizona State University Library and Anne Prestamo from Oklahoma State University Library both provided practical ways in which Summon could (and did) work. Summon is a way to search across electronic journals from different sources and providers, with the added benefit of consistent indexing across repositories and databases, and quicker retrieval of material. I will investigate this product further when I get home.

I am organising a couple of library visits tomorrow and hope to see more live music before I start my way home with a flight to Los Angeles on Friday afternoon.

Finally, Austin is a great place to visit and you gotta see the Eric Tessmer Band live – awesome!

Halfway through Electronic Resources Conference

I am at the halfway point of the Electronic Resources and Libraries Conference in Austin, Texas. The conference has been pretty good so far, with a nice mix of thinking pieces and practical case studies. And Austin is a great place to visit for live music!

Some key highlights so far:

Amy Sample Ward yesterday emphasised the library should be thinking of working with the community (or your user group), not for your community (or user group).

A couple of presentations yesterday looked at presenting your library’s story ( your story to management or other stakeholders) in a more effective light by using good data and effective data presentation for your data to tell your “data story”. My only criticism was the lack of focus on the stories (narrative) from the library user group or your clients. Naturally, I made a comment and let the audience know about what SenseMaker might offer.

Library promotion was another topic of interest from Day 1. Nothing revolutionary to me in that presentation, although it did focus my attention on executing marketing strategies back at work when I can find the time to escape the daily minutiae of my administrative library work.

Yesterday afternoon we heard a passionate “rally to the library cause” from Michael Porter of Library Renewal who advocated public and academic libraries needed to organise more effectively to combat a growing threat to library budgets and library work. I do wonder how much impact ”the intrinsic value of the library” has on governments looking at slashing budgets; and that’s exactly what US states are trying to do across the country at the moment. A more focused argument needs to be made on how libraries service the needs of community and what the impact that has on people and their ability to get things done both socially and economically. And enlisting the support of people (voters) is something libraries also need – so, libraries need a more politically focused approach.

Today we had some presentations of a more practical nature. We had a great presentation on analysing ejournal collections from database vendors. Nice MS Access database used as an effective tool to compare database collections.

Well, gotta get back to it. The afternoon session is about to start shortly.

Electronic Resources and Libraries Conference

I am in Austin, Texas, for the Electronic Resources and Libraries conference ( http://www.electroniclibrarian.com/ ) which starts tomorrow at the AT&T Conference Centre. I don’t know why the embedded link option isn’t working, but it’s not!

I am looking forward to the conference  and meeting up with other information professionals.

So far, I have enjoyed a great weekend in Austin and seen some great bands. Austin really is a music capital if you like good indie rock. Funnily enough in a couple of weeks time, the famous SXSW (South by Southwest – http://sxsw.com/) kicks off in Austin.  Awesome!

But for now, it’s Electronic Resources and Libraries.

Three information projects about to start at AusAID

It’s quite an interesting time in my workplace at the moment. I have three big projects about to commence.

The first is the information seeking behaviour project. I will be working with Optimice to investigate the information seeking behaviour of selected areas of staff within the organisation. I am looking to discover how people use knowledge objects and people to find information and knowledge using their everyday information seeking behaviour.  I hope to understand how people currently get the information they need to do their jobs and be informed as to what is going on. I can then determine how the library and information service needs to respond – what services can be improved, what services could be dropped, and what knowledge gaps there are that my team could try to fill. The project is of interest to other areas of AusAID as well – records management, internal communications, and the online team to name but three. I have the first meeting with Optimice in Sydney on Friday.

The second project I am working on with my team is the library management system upgrade. We use SirsiDynix and will migrate from the Horizon system to the new Symphony system. It’s taken longer than I anticipated to get all the approvals in place just for this system upgrade. Hopefully we will have everything ready to go shortly. In the meantime, we are looking at the positive and negative aspects of library catalogues and GUI’s. We are also hoping to establish country and subject-based portals within Symphony to better reflect our wide ranging content sources.

The third project we are working on is Yammer. We would like to officially pilot Yammer as a tool for sharing information and knowledge with selected groups within the organisation. Yammer is a useful web-based tool that we see plenty of great opportunities to use for internal collaboration and information sharing beyond group emails. We are currently going through the technical and security procedures to get formal permission to set up official pilot projects. I know Yammer is used by UNICEF. I understand that some Australian government departments may use Yammer and I’d be very interested to hear from their experiences. The oft-preferred Govdex just doesn’t cut it in terms of functionality and ease of use. 

While these projects will take shape in the coming weeks, I also have a nice little detour to take next week when I fly to the US to attend the Electronic Resources and Libraries Conference in Austin, Texas. I am paying for much of the travel but work is chipping in for the actual conference. I am looking forward to hearing some great presentations and talking with other information professionals during the course of the event. If you’ll be there, make sure you try and find me for a chat.

All up, some pretty exciting times coming up in the next couple of months.

Conference alerts October 2010

There are a few interesting conferences coming up this month that are related to knowledge management. Looking at the programs, and on past experience, the conferences have much to offer if you can find the time to attend.

Oz/IA 2010 for information architects and similar knowledge professionals is being held in Sydney on the 8th and 9th October.  The program looks terrific and if I wasn’t spending this Friday and the weekend down the coast, I would certainly have been going to Oz/IA.

Web Directions South is taking place on the 14th and 15th October in Sydney. The conference also offers workshops on the preceding two days (12-13 October).

The ACT-KM Conference is being held on the 18th and 19th October at the Australian National University in Canberra.  The full program is now available. I have been to several of the ACT-KM conferences in the past and can thoroughly recommend them.

And if you’re lucky enough, there is the National Digital Forum being held in beautiful Wellington, New Zealand, on the 18th and 19th of the month. The program is available from here.  Throughout the conference the following key issues will be discussed:

1. connecting our collections
2. linking up with each other
3. using data
4. working with communities (e.g. iwi, family historians, etc)
5. working with content creators and consumers

All in all, a pretty good selection of events.