One of the best parts of participating in KM World 2009 last month was the opportunity to catch up with some long-time friends, turn some long-time e-friends into face-to-face friends and to make some new friends. One of those new friends was Allan Crawford, who directs an online master’s program in knowledge management at California State University Northridge. He’s put together a brief video post capturing the spirit of the conference:
Perspectives on KM World 2009
At this year s KM World conference I had a chance to talk to several of the participants and ask them the question what stood out for you from this year s conference.
Listen to what stood out for Carla O Dell, Jim McGee, Patrick Lambe, Stan Garfield and others.
Here are a few of the responses:
Carla O Dell (APQC): Video will make a big difference in how we share knowledge YouTube has changed the world of KM
Jim McGee: The return to the organizational dimension of KM and the shift away from being enamored with technology
Bob Wimpfheimer (Dr Pepper): It has shifted how I think about KM. Previously it has been storing documents and making them available I ve come to see it s much more important to connect people with people
Jon Husband: After years of taking about how to reuse knowledge, optimize it and classify it, people are beginning to understand that it s really not very useful if people can t access it, share it and build upon it and that involves learning. We are going to see blending of the disciplines we now know as learning, KM, personal development, organizational change
Eric Mack (ICA): The talk about social tools and social media the primary value of these social tools is in the connection they provide between other peoples knowledge and the work we do social networking tools allow us to bridge the connection between our experience and knowledge and that of others.
Patrick Lambe (Straits Knowledge): KM is in a long pause. It has reached the limits of what it can do based on how we currently understand how knowledge is use in organizations. It is still focused on individual transactions and individual pieces of knowledge .it needs to get to grips more with how organizations work as organisms as thinking organisms. It is touching that with the collective intelligence and wisdom of crowds stuff but it is nowhere near sophisticated enough to show results and I think that is where it needs to go.
Stan Garfield (Deloitte): KM is definitely not dead it s alive. But we still have a lot of things to do the things that I think are more important than the technology is the leadership the things we need to do to get people to behave in a certain way to get communities to take off. These are leadership issues not technical challenges.
The consistent themes appear to be that KM is about connecting people to people KM is social and success is dependant upon behaviors. Even with the emergence of E2.0 techology is an important enablor for the connections ( YouTube has changed KM ) but is not the center of KM.
If you were at the conference what stood out for you?
Perspectives on KM World 2009
Allan Crawford
Tue, 08 Dec 2009 23:46:34 GMT