Mathemagenic

I've got a bit of time to reflect more on my experiences during KMSS.

• I met only a few people who knew about blogs (only one outside Knowledge Board). I expect that it will get more time for the idea to get rooted in KM community.
• KM and learning people still talk different languages.
• (related) KM is evolving discipline, but it seems like an evolution in isolation. KM people are getting stuck with KM problems: they (we) can hardly communicate across boundaries of their discipline.
• 60 people is too much for a good networking: even with some degree of group discussions it's difficult to talk to all that I would be interested. I really hope for "digital follow-up".
• Weather is never good when there is some free time.

Blogging from the conference feels strange: I have a laptop next to my paper notes. It takes a bit of time to arrange notes into readable form, so I publish them with some delay. Sometimes I'm not sure what I can include (I know that presenters are not aware that some ideas from their presentation can go out of the room), so I include mainly "safe" things - brainstorming results and my own comments. I'm going to come back to these notes for a bit of editing and adding a few links (KMSS organisers promise to publish all the presentations on-line). The funny thing is that I still need a piece of paper next to the laptop - for drawings, contact details and bits of ideas that are not mature enough to become full sentences.

Back to work I'll have to write a report about KMSS (this is usual practice in my company). I wonder how I will use my blog notes: as a basis, rewriting text around them, or as an attachment that shows my personal impressions. But in any case it might appear at the KMSS web-page, as organisers are interested :)

Finally I'm totally confused. It's not only difficult to narrow down my ideas for PhD research, they are also getting more diverse. And I don't know what do to with it. Does anyone knows a strategy to define a PhD?

Core questions for today's presentations: Why are you doing KM? What's the connection with research? What are you looking for?

We worked in three groups to identify practical problems and research questions in three groups: private sector, SMEs and governmental/non-profit organisations.

Problem list for private sector

• informal networks (e.g. communities) vs. hierarchy
• where KM is located in a company? Is there KM department? Who is responsible?
• how to show KM success to managers and employees (=individual benefits): measurement and making people believing in KM
• knowledge is power vs. sharing
• right implementation decision on a small scale
• range of competencies in KM team
• KM competencies that enable people to share knowledge
• long-term vision: how to show that initial investments lead to future benefits
• communicating across different perspectives, background, languages
• articulating knowledge - how to scale up elicitation and active sharing
• how KM reaches those who don not have access to a computer
• finding who knows what
• technologies are not designed for people

Next to it we had extended discussions about connecting KM research and practice. I've got a feeling that we deal with typical KM problem: there are two groups of people with different goals, languages and mindsets, and knowledge is not openly flows between them. This discussion has triggered more thinking, but so far it's too implicit to write about :)

I also thought about a couple of emerging research directions. One would be to look at motivation and embedding KM activities into everyday work. Next is KM introduction in a company: getting people involved, decision-making and power games. KM across heterogeneous groups is another: how to overcome barriers for knowledge flows between different contexts.