On blogs and CoP’s

Joitske Hulsebosch blogged about the potential of using blogs with communities of practices (Cop’s). Joitske gives four very useful ways in which blogs can support CoP’s but I just want to focus on one of them. Quoting Joitske:
“A weblog with summaries of discussions can be a repository for the community. An example is the weblog [...]

On pegging down taxonomy

Tonight I watched The Collectors on ABC TV - good to have the show back in 2008. One of the featured collections was the peg collection of Mike Bradley. Yes, that’s right, a collection of clothes pegs!
There were some really interesting moments (yes, truly) in this segment on pegs. Firstly, Mike Bradley was terrific at telling [...]

On conversation

One of the questions I am often asked is why people in knowledge management are so preoccupied with conversations. Why does conversation need to be facilitated, is another question.
Let me answer with the following points:
1) Sometimes conversations inside organisation need permission since there is still the belief that conversation is just idle chatter. Knowledge managers like [...]

On stories and leadership

Last night I watched a documentary on Edmund Hillary, the New Zealand mountaineer who (with Tenzing Norgay) became the first men to climb to the summit of Mt Everest in Nepal. Hillary died last fortnight, so the documentary wasn’t just coincidental!
The documentary was particularly revealing to me about the actual mission and ascent up the Himalayas by [...]

On poetry

I had a coffee and a chat with Matt Moore last week and he told me about his poetry project. He has been blogging about it recently but this post is the one I want to think about today.
When I was at high school my favourite subject was English. Naturally, this education included novels, plays and poetry. [...]

On new and simple ways to display information

I was reading the Green Guide in today’s Melbourne Age. In the Websights section I noticed a short paragraph about a service, still in beta, that combines photos, video, and music into a professional looking multimedia product.
The service is from Animoto and this is what they are about: “Each video is a fully customized orchestration of [...]

On storytelling and memory

When I was officially studying economics at Sydney University in the early 1980s, I was also unofficially sitting in on psychology lectures and reading texts and articles on perception, brain science and social psychology. I have periodically kept up that interest ever since.
I want to share my discovery some years ago about a technique used [...]

On narrative, sensemaking, and volunteering

I did promise on Saturday that my next blog post would be on narrative, sensemaking, and the volunteering project. However, Doris Lessing did come between posts with an earlier blog post this afternoon.
Looking at my notes from the debrief from the volunteering project on Friday, I took this point from Dave Snowden’s introductory remarks on complexity and sensemaking, and [...]

On the wisdom of crowds and volunteering

My latest Knowledge@Wharton newsletter has this article about a new book called: We Are Smarter Than Me: How the Wisdom of Crowds Can Help Businesses Succeed by Barry Libert and Jon Spector. It’s a timely reminder that networked knowledge has a significant place in the competitive world of business. I recommend the article and the book to [...]

On new staff, new knowledge

One of the most under-rated resources in any business is the knowledge new staff bring to their new organisation. I am not just talking about the set of skills and capabilities that a new employee brings into an organisation, but the knowledge they bring with them from working at their previous employment.
One of my knowledge [...]

On sins and other things

It’s been quite a week since I lasted posted. I have been confronted with some technical issues regarding web access and have been limited in the online time available to me. A wireless 3G account might have to be arranged…
Anyway, I can give some follow-up to a couple of activities from last week. Firstly, Patrick Lambe [...]

On KM Australia 2007 (Part 2)

Dave Snowden was the opening morning keynote speaker at KM Australia 2007 and presented on narrative and sensemaking. He emphasised that one of the problems with management and business strategy was the reliance on past performance and hindsight to predict the future. Hindsight cannot predict the future - the context is different and hindsight selects the [...]

On KM Australia 2007 (Part 1)

Wow. Today was the first day of the KM Australia 2007 conference in Sydney. I was very impressed with some of today’s presentations, although I must say it was sometimes difficult to hear the speakers due to the noise coming from the vendor and catering area next to the stage.
Not surprisingly, Dave Snowden was in fine [...]

On “words are powerful”

Words are a powerful communication tool if we use them wisely. This is another “isn’t this obvious” statement, surely. However, the reality is that people are often sloppy with words and use them in ways that are actually completely unhelpful.
I have almost finished Martha Beck’s book, Finding your own North Star, about finding your own authentic [...]

On audio slideshows

Rob Galbraith’s website  had a recent news item about audio slideshows and how they are being used by newspapers on their websites. Galbraith’s cited example is from the Miami Herald. Even our own Sydney Morning Herald has an audio slideshow of the recent Panamax ship stranded on the beach at Newcastle.
The audio slideshow is simply a combination [...]