A Compound of Alchymie

Contactivity 2006

Just spent two interesting days at Contactivity at the University of Greenwich. Contactivity is a sort of fluffy people focused KM event which has grown out of KM Europe (which is considered to be too systems focused). The first Contactivity event ran alongside KCC Europe in Amsterdam last November (see previous entry). It’s supported and promoted by Knowledge Board. It was an unusual event to say the least, with lots of opportunity for participants to contribute to the agenda.

Day 1 was the most structured – I helped facilitate a Cayenne project simulation for over 60 people, we also did some structured networking (Peter Toxler) and witnessed the launch of a new free KM book  (see separate article).

Day 2 was a lot more free-form comprising three do-it-yourself sessions:

Future Forwards and Backwards - This scenario planning tool  is used a constituent of the Cynefin stuff used by Dave Snowden. It's a little confusing initially and we didn't really have time to complete the exercise properly, however I do like the approach and it would be good for a whole range of scenario planning activities (including defining your business strategy).

Open Space - An free-form collaborative experience with built-in agenda setting...the best bit is the principal of 'two feet' which allows you to circulate freely until you find something that interests you.

Knowledge Café - David Gurteen's 'conversations in a cafe style' based loosely on World Cafe.

Taking part in three such events in one day was probably a little ambitious – at times I would have loved to have had a breakout session for a couple of PowerPoint presentations – if only for the visual stimulus! One advantage of such an event is the complete lack of notes one makes – you’re so engaged in discussion you don’t have the opportunity to transfer your own ideas or reflections to paper. However your own notes are partly replaced by the flip charts that each group produces – the plan is to share this as an output online (see links below). The strength of Contactivity apparently is in the conversations and I have to agree that my lasting impression is of a bunch of slightly quirky people (me included) who have a passion for exploring issues in the domain we loosely call KM.

The next Contactivity is in Israel in September – don’t think I’ll be able to make that but I’m keen to do another one closer to home sometime. Not sure if there are any plans to run it alongside KCC Europe this year?

Photo is courtesy of Ed Mitchell at KnowledgeBoard (forgot my own camera) - lots more images at Flickr.

If you took part in Contactivity and you are reading this please leave a comment!

Link: Contactivity 2006 Wiki
Link: KnowledgeBoard Event Write-Up
Link: Contactivity Amsterdam

Gurteen Knowledge Cafe - Bristol

I attended the inaugural Gurteen Knowledge Cafe in Bristol on 16th February. David Gurteen made a special trip down to the West Country to support Debbie Lawley the Bristol Cafe organiser. It was hosted by the Orange KM team and specifically Peter Hall, Head of KM. Since it was a launch event we didn't get much time to discuss any specific theme but we did take the opportunity to get to know each other and to think about what topics and themes we might like to discuss moving forward. David also spent some time (probably a little too much time)  introducing the Knowledge Cafe format. It was well attended with a good mix of people from different work backgrounds - from corporates, to public sector and even a few fierce independents like me.  I was interested enough to commit to the next event - I guess it will depend on the theme but I'm not completely clear on how as a group we will select a theme?

Three ideas from me:

Are learning and knowledge sharing the same thing?
Is there such a thing as knowledge overload?
Is there such a thing as sustainable development?

ExLink: How to run a Knowledge Cafe (David Gurteen)
ExLink: Gilly Salmon's Knowledge Cafe Set-up (Online Educa Berlin 2005)

Not KM Europe

This year’s KM Europe Conference was re-branded Knowledge, Content and Collaboration (KCC). Why? Possibly because the organisers feel that KM is losing its shine. There was some criticism of last year’s conference and a certain polarisation between the systems centric KM and people centric KM camps (or as Dave Snowden calls them the techno-fethishits and the fluffy bunnies). This year’s conference was also reduced to two days rather than three and a new charging structure introduced. Like some others I had decided that maybe the trip across to Amsterdam wasn’t quite worth the effort this year but once the Knowledge Board team came up with the idea of a ‘fringe’ track to the conference I was intrigued. I joined the debate on Knowledge Board and agreed to present a session with Piers Young on ‘The Effective Knowledge Worker Handbook’.

The fringe idea worked really well – the fringe track comprised a wide variety of interactive sessions with only a few bullet points delivered via PowerPoint. Full reports of all the sessions are available at Knowledge Board but here are some of my high points:

Paolo Martinez kicked off Day 1 with a workshop on ‘Open Source KM’. Paolo works for Firenze Technologica in Florence and my lasting memory is his wonderful comment about the difficulties of ‘doing innovation in a city with such deep roots in the past’. This seems paradoxical since Florence was one of the centres of innovative thought during the renaissance. I’m currently reading a book entitled ‘Renaissance e-Learning’, maybe Florence should re-assess its role in 21st Century Europe and start an e-renaissance. Paolo also got us started on the ‘holding big sheets of paper at the front’ mode which was continued throughout the two days.

Later in the morning Hank Kune and Ron Dvir gave us a whirlwind tour of ‘future centres’ and ‘joy zones’ – Skandia’s Future Centre near Stockholm was featured and not unsurprisingly was joined by others in Scandinavia. Even the UK had one - courtesy of our fast modernising postal service, The Royal Mail. One of my favourites was the one run by the Dutch Tax Office which used the metaphor of a ship to explore the structure of their organisation. Actually the ship metaphor came up a few times during the two days, and is something worth exploring, especially for an ex navy guy like myself!

In the afternoon Edna Pasher hosted a Knowledge Café on ‘KM and Sustainability’. I think it’s the first ‘Café’ event I’ve done (are these based on World Cafe?) – the format is pretty interactive and has been used extensively in the public and not for profit sector. The main focus of the discussion was on sustainable development – a term which for me has a strong philosophical dimension. Like 'knowledge management' isn’t 'sustainable development' an oxymoron? Development implies continuous improvement and it’s hard to place limits on that process. Maybe the developed world has developed enough? Why do we need to keep ahead of the less developed world – forget sustainability let’s pull over onto the hard shoulder and let the rest of the world catch up? But when they do catch up will they pull over too? Big questions – and beyond the scope of this blog but here are some interesting links on sustainable development:
World Bank,  Wikipedia ,  and UK Government.

The last session of Day 1 was a networking session hosted by Patricia Wolf and Peter Troxler. Based on some key details we gave earlier in the day it sought to connect participants by identifying common interests – nothing new in that then! Patricia though facilitated a session where she place our profiles on the wall then drew interconnections between us. After a while we had created a very low tech social network diagram with many interconnections – so many in fact that the picture looked chaotic (see artistic rendition of this on the left). This is the nature of networks and networking – on a superficial level it appears chaotic – it’s only when you work harder and encourage a deeper understanding of the connections that you begin to uncover value in those connections. For me it’s not just about the people you know but what you know about what they know. It’s this tacit knowledge that enables us to build real value from networks. This actually links in well with a social networking analysis tool (called Antelect) that was demonstrated to some of the Fringers on Day 2 by Simon Lague.

The first session on Day 2 was an Open Space session run by Ton Zilstra. Numbers were low probably because of the 'Dave Snowden effect' – he was delivering a session on Narrative Technologies in the room next door! However I joined a group that decided to explore the concept of 'slowness' - is it good or bad and what can we learn from going slowly?

Martyn Laycock ran the London Knowledge Network session on The Employee Knowledge Lifecycle later in the morning. This is an informal  project that is being championed by two KM experts in two UK public sector organisations. Martyn used a couple of Cynefin techniques (but maybe they come from elsewhere) including one of my favourites ‘Future Backwards’ to explore some issues around the future of knowledge work.

Later in the afternoon I ran a session with Piers Young on The Effective Knowledge Worker Handbook. It was a useful session and we are hoping to build on it via a wiki – but it looks pretty quiet there at the moment! I will definitely be following up on the session in future blog articles though and also via the wiki.

The final session on Day 2 was more of a traditional presentation – and it was actually a welcome relief to just sit back and listen to Peter Kreig’s approach to ‘knowledge and assimilation’. Broadly he talked about new approaches to modelling intelligence using technology – so as expected AI is on it’s way back! I’ve always been interested in AI and expert systems and I’d like to follow-up on this in later articles in this blog.

Well that’s pretty much it for the Fringe. What did I enjoy most? The buzz, the interactivity, the sweets, the champagne, Ron Dvir’s brilliant KM art gallery and last but certainly not least the Fringers themselves.

Learning Technologies 2005, London,

I managed to get to Learning Technologies this year – wanted to see what aspects of e-learning are currently being marketed to corporates. The exhibition was a little disappointing, especially in comparison with the much more lively BETT Show (see BETT entry). Strangely, it also attracts a completely different set of vendors. The only key companies to exhibit at both were Macromedia and the BBC.

It included the usual mix of enterprise systems (LMS, LCMS etc), authoring solutions, content developers and off-the-shelf providers. Nothing really new but I did hear the term ‘rapid e-learning development’ more than once – I guess primarily as a defence against the sometimes extended time that it can actually take to get a good bespoke e-learning course developed. Most of these rapid development tools though are simply variations on the Power Point theme – with the addition of self-test functionality. It’s hard to imagine that ‘anyone’ can produce engaging e-learning courses ‘at the touch of a button’ using these tools especially when you consider that most users’ PowerPoint skills are pretty poor. However, Macromedia’s Breeze product does integrate neatly with Power Point (Breeze gets it’s own menu within the application) and though not a fully featured learning content development tool it does allow basic e-courses to be put together relatively quickly.

I shall be trying Breeze out soon and hopefully using it both to support my own learning programs, and those of my clients. 

Not a lot else to report. Saba weren’t there. Blackboard was also missing. Docent merged last year with Click2Learn and are re-branded as SumTotal (www.sumtotalsystems.com). Tata Interactive were showing some neat bespoke induction programmes developed for Orange, Vodafone and also NTL. I asked them about the development costs of such programmes – between £15k and £20k per hour for the first hour - which is a fairly standard figure for the industry, but don’t forget that Tata send most of their development work to Mumbai. Bespoke development costs – even when you offshore it to India.

If you missed Learning Technologies then you didn’t miss much. Maybe HRD 2005 (www.cipd.co.uk/hrd) will be better for those of us interested in using technology to improve the way organisations train and develop their employees.

BETT Show, Olympia, 12-15 January 2005

The British Educational Technology and Trade (BETT) show is targeted at the education market and specifically the primary and secondary sector (5-18). This isn’t my normal client base but the show is useful because after substantial government investment the education sector is ahead of industry in innovative use of ICT to support learning.

There is an eclectic mix of companies and organisations exhibiting at the show. Centre stage are the government funded bodies themselves - the DfES, Teacher Training Agency, Becta (the Government agency for ICT in education) and the National Council for School Leadership (NCSL). Key players in ICT such as Apple and Microsoft were also there - Apple promoting it’s user friendly machines and software - Microsoft it’s office applications plus it’s Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) product Class Server. Macromedia was also there showing its creative development tools (including Dreamweaver and Flash) and also its Virtual Classroom product Breeze.

Interactive whiteboards are clearly big business in the education market with products from a variety of companies and accompanying software applications which make the most of the format’s advantages. I have used these interactive whiteboards at a number of venues and though they take a little getting used to, if used thoughtfully, they can really improve interaction in a presentation or workshop. Crucially, like most technologies, you have to try them to really understand how to get the most from them.

“Interactive whiteboards are the most common method of interacting with large visual displays, a key benefit being the ease of manipulation of texts and images. This kinaesthetic motion of dragging images and text into correct positions can assist in embedding learning and understanding of concepts and links to pedagogical approaches based upon visual, auditory and kinaesthetic approaches to learning.” www.nestafuturelab.org

Some highlights at BETT 2005:

Microsoft Class Server
Although late to market with their VLE product Class Server Microsoft appear to have developed a tool that nicely supports the conventional classroom based approach. Based on a range of existing Microsoft technologies (including SharePoint and IIS) Class Server provides an integrated schools portal aimed at teachers, students and parents. Though it’s targeted at the education market I can also see it having potential within a corporate learning environment or as an added value service from a dedicated training provider.

Virtual Classrooms
Virtual classrooms are going to grow in popularity as pressure grows to train people more quickly and more cheaply. One of the most polished is Macromedia’s Breeze which combines video, VOIP, IM and presentation facilities to provide a virtual learning experience that is the next best thing to actually being in a classroom together. None of the individual elements of Breeze are new but the way it combines them and runs on Flash technology within a standard web browser makes it a product that has enormous potential.

NESTA Futurelab
“NESTA Futurelab is helping to transform the way people learn. We're using new and emerging technologies to create rich learning resources that are involving, interactive and imaginative.”

NESTA Futurelab is an initiative of NESTA (the National Endowment for Science Technology and the Arts) and is funded from National Lottery cash. They fund projects which break new ground in using technology to support learning. If you think e-learning or virtual classrooms were cutting edge check out their upcoming workshop on ‘artificial emotion technology’.

ExLink: www.nestafuturelab.org
ExLink: Microsoft Class Server
ExLink: Macromedia Breeze

Review of KM Europe 2004, Amsterdam

Just back online after a very inspiring trip to the Knowledge Management Europe 2004 Conference in Amsterdam. As with any conference the sessions varied from really great to really poor but on balance I got quite a lot from the sessions I attended and my fellow participants this year were a really interesting bunch of people from all over the world (including South Africa, Canada, India, Austria, The Netherlands, Germany, Russia, France and Australia).

Highlights included a far ranging opening keynote which was nominally entitled ‘Knowledge Navigation’ – a high speed tour through the intellectual capital landscape by the self-proclaimed grandfather of intellectual capital himself - Leif Edvinsson. I recorded his words in a ConceptMap (which I will make available from this weblog) but many of the areas covered simply weren’t joined-up very much, so my map is a little chaotic. Some key words and phrases from his talk included ‘insourcing’, ‘innovation ecology’, ‘psychologically supportive design’ and ‘brainstilling’ (as opposed to brainstorming). Claudia Schmitz – an ex SKA colleague and energetic KM consultant in Germany summed up his approach by saying “He’s a jumper.” I couldn’t have put it more succinctly myself.

Karl Wiig also spoke on ‘People-Focused KM’ – sadly I missed his keynote but did get the opportunity to speak with him and get a signed copy of his latest book ‘People-Focused Knowledge Management’ – review to follow once I’ve got through it – I’m afraid that it’s quite intense but there is a lot of original thinking in there so I will persevere.

At the ECLO event we had an interesting presentation on ‘Return on Thinking’ from Ruud Bolsius and one on ‘Personal Knowledge Management’ (or PKM) facilitated by KnowledgeBoard. As far as PKM is concerned no one was clear exactly what it meant but we had an interesting Open Space session trying to create some sort of shared view as to what it could be. The results from the session will be shared via a ‘wiki’ – a sort of group developed web site. I’ll link to it as soon as it hits the web.

‘The Vendors’ were promoting their usual systems approach to KM and it just made me more certain that most of what people are now calling KM is actually IM in a shiny new suit. Of course the acid test depends upon your definition of exactly what knowledge is but I’m increasingly behind the idea that knowledge resides in people’s heads and nowhere else. I’m on the look-out for a knowledge litmus test that I can use whenever I come across IM being positioned as KM. My first step will be to have a sign made containing the words ‘NOT KM’ that I can hold up at conferences whenever I see IM masquerading as KM. Luckily for me I’m interested in IM too so it was good to see some useful tools from people like Addept and OpenText (who’s ‘KM’ solution had high praise from Siemens). Google were also there to promote their ‘Google Search Appliance’ – basically a ‘yellow black-box’ that brings Google strength searches to your organisation – for a price (but I’ve forgotten what the price was). Hardly KM though? Comments anyone?

Away from the conference Amsterdam had its usual easygoing vibe. It’s not always the smartest looking of cities but like my home town Dublin it has a great feel and is a tremendously cosmopolitan place. And the Dutch have wonderfully open minds – if only they could export some of that freethinking to the UK along with the Heineken!

Plans for KM Europe, Amsterdam 2004

Next Monday (8th November) sees the start of the principal KM conference in Europe.

I will be there together with at least four of my colleagues from the European Knowledge Group. EKG was formed at the beginning of 2004 by an enthusiastic group of ex Sveiby Knowledge Associates – me included. I first came across SKA at an earlier KM Europe Conference in London in 2002 and loved the experiential learning tools which had been developed by Karl-Erik Sveiby and Celemi. I’m still a big fan of the tools and simulations - they provide a welcome contrast to much of the consultant speak that often surrounds KM. If you work in KM – or in some sort of knowledge capacity – you should try Apples & Oranges or Tango.

Anyway, I’m expecting lots of consultant speak next week plus an avalanche of new KM tools and systems from the technologists. Don’t get me wrong – I’m not caught up in the polarisation of KM. I believe that KM needs approaches that balance people and technology elements, but like most KM practitioners I worry that those new to KM often get sold a technical solution way before they have the capability to use it (and I don’t mean knowing which keys to press). It’s a little like my 15 year old son learning to drive in a Ferrari F60! As a technologist myself though I will be interested to see what new technical advances have been made with search algorithms, expert locators and knowledge aggregators – I’ll report back on the latest in KM ICT after the conference.

As far as the input from consultants and academics goes I guess that social network analysis and complexity theory (Dave Snowden’s new baby) will feature – especially as they represent such ideal topics for the people-centric KM camp. Storytelling is still around. Karl-Erik Sveiby is focussing on collaboration as well as presenting his KMAP tool. Personal KM (or PKM as it’s now been labelled) may be discussed – Karl Wiig is talking about People-Focussed KM – I guess as opposed to Organisation Focussed KM - or EKM as I saw it called on KnowledgeBoard recently (with, I assume, the ‘E’ representing ‘enterprise’). One wonders how many KMs we’ll end up with.

Refreshingly, my recommendation for the three days doesn’t have KM or even knowledge in the title at all. It’s the ECLO (European Consortium for the Learning Organisation) micro-event on Wednesday 10th. I literally stumbled across their event at last year’s conference and was richly rewarded with some genuinely insightful viewpoints on learning within organisations. Quirky maybe, but lots of food for thought and a great break from all that techno KM (or should I introduce a new label - TKM).

ExLink: KM Europe 2004
ExLink: European Knowledge Group
ExLink: ECLO