Mathemagenic

A weblog by Olaf Brugman - Knowledge Bridge (many know Olaf well via communicating at the Knowledge Board, where he also supports Special Interest Group on KM in NGOs).

I'd like to pick up a couple of posts by Olaf. First one is on Social Networking: Beyond Communities:

Social networking on the internet is beyond the communities of practice phenomenon, since the former is initiated and driven by the individual, and the opportunities for networking are more flexible, dynamic and fluid than communities of practice.

This somehow brings me to the old conversation with Denham Grey about individual vs. community aspects of knowledge and learning (see also recent post by Dehnam on personal learning). In one of the discussions at KM Summer School 2003 I found some kind of formula to explain my position.

I believe too that learning is social, but I take perspective of an individual while looking at it. I would bring system analysis here and say that I'm more interested in individual as part of a ecosystem of communities than in a that ecosystem (still having the ecosystem in mind).

For me, there are still many secrets in differences between our individual motives and practices regarding "knowledge work", many uncertainties about knowing how to help people to find What's in it for me? answers and many open questions about releasing energy of others... The funny thing is that my most difficult "KM discussions" are with "community people", with whom I share so many beliefs.

...and another post of Olaf on What do I want Knowledge Management to be for me?:

What I want Knowledge Management to be is to make a meaningful difference in someone's life.

To me, this means:
- I need to find the 'someone',
- along the lines of communality of interests, competences and circumstances,
- without wasting my time.

So what do I expect from KM solutions on the internet such as, teamsites, CoPs, blogs, professional networks, web directories:

1. To offer me a "Issue and Interest Finder" navigation to:
. interests (why),
. issues (what), and
. places (where) that
. I relate to.

2. To offer me a "Resource and People Finder" to:
. relevant people and experts
. relevant projects
. relevant competences
. relevant previous experiences
. relevant methods and tools

3. A Workplace:
. to meet
. to exchange/learn/teach
. to coordinate and work together
. to build community, competence, memory, work products

A few month old writing by Jim McGee:

Weblogs are interesting in organizational KM settings because weblogs are technologically simple and socially complex, which makes them a much better match to the KM problems that matter. One thing that we need to do next is to work backwards from the answer - weblogs - to the problem - what do organizations need to do effective knowledge management. We need to avoid the mistakes of other KM software vendors and not assume that the connection is self-evident.