For some time I was involved in working with others on KM Europe fringe event (also here) – it was an exciting opportunity to shape the conference in a way that adds more value. In a process I was wondering why there is no any info at www.kmeurope.com. Now I know – because of dramatic changes…

First, the conference is renamed into Knowledge, content and collaboration Europe and moved to a new domain. The focus has changed accordingly.

Second, the conference is not free anymore: it’s £595 for two days (and the fringe event is expected to cost something as well).

My thoughts and questions:

The power of KM Europe was in the critical mass for networking. As the basic program was free many people who wouldn’t participate otherwise were there; knowing that someone you know would be there was a reason to come as well.

It was one of the events with a pretty good mix of academics and practitioners (usually practitioners don’t go to academic conferences as they wouldn’t have a voice there and practitioners’ events are usually too expensive for academics).

The “core” was attractive enough to participate, so doing something “on the fringe” was meaningful.

Not anymore.

Even if we find a way to make participation in the fringe event free/low-price/independent from the main registration it couldn’t stay the same as we envisioned it: the “core” has changed.

Now it doesn’t make sense to go to the conference to meet people – it’s too much to pay just for it. Of course, there is content and main program, but to be fair I don’t see how it is different from just a good (?) deal on usual Ark Group workshops.

I wonder how many people I met last two years would go there. The chances I go are extremely low: the price is too high, the content is not research-specific enough and, most important, I don’t expect that people I want to see will go.

And if people I want to see are not there than the fringe event doesn’t make sense as well.

:(

And a couple of small questions:

• How “smart” you should be to leave your old domain with an error message? Without even trying to set up a redirect?
• There is a session on corporate weblogs and wikis in the day 2 program. I wonder who is presenting…

More: my earlier posts on KM Europe / TopicExchange KM Europe / Technorati KM Europe tag

Archived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2005/07/21.html#a1619; comments are here.

• Personal KM at KM Europe: 9 November, 15:00-18:00
• KM Europe, PKM workshop and wiki migration
• KM Europe: pre-workshop anxiety

Back from KM Europe… Some highlights:

• VIP pass from Knowledge Board team so I could go to all keynotes
• Bean bags in a coffee area that worked well as a metaphor a couple of times: talking about technology that shapes around you and thinking about shaping workplaces to make you happy.
• Getting a group of people for lunch, promising to show them “a place with a better food” and discovering that all “better food” places in a congress centre were closed.
• Free WiFi area given that commercial rates are pretty high (Martin Roell suggested that this was an intended hole in a network made by geeks for other geeks :)
• Fun of introducing people in a meaningful (I hope :) way
• KMwalk in Red Light District
• Thinking on “amplified networking” inspired by Karl-Erik Sveiby and Dave Snowden
• Martin Dugage walking to the coffee corner when I was sure he wouldn’t be at KM Europe
• 40+ people at personal KM workshop, energy of conversations in the room and thrill of facilitating it
• PKM dinner fun: people, talks, cockroach killed, food, collecting dinner payments from 35 people, more talking…
• Future PKM research planning with Piers Young and Florian Heidecke
• Finding out that Roberta Cuel comes to Enschede (this is where I live :)
• Not finding energy to join Heiko Haller for a tango party, but finding that I can actually dance it in a middle of coffee area
• Invitation from Richard McDermott to join his workshop and discovering his work on knowledge work
• Talking with John Seely Brown about weblogs, wikis, legitimised theft and meeting at Hawaii
• People I have never met recognising my face or my name or telling that they read my weblog
• Not being able to visit any vendor stands
• Meeting people, conversations and a sense of community

Thinking themes:

• “Amplified networking”
• Personal productivity factors
• Managing “personal knowledge managers”: simple rules and emergence, getting things done, organisational support and critical mass
• Triggering reflection
• “Fear factor”: fear as a barrier, fear as a driving force
• Different types of networks
• Learning to be
• Defining community and community boundaries

Many notes drafted, hope to post them during coming days (and if you want to help you can cross your fingers to make C&T 2005 deadline extended, so I can blog :)

This post appears on channel KM Europe

Archived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2004/11/10.html#a1424; comments are here.

• Notes on my PhD methodology: reflexive ethnography
• Improving Knowledge Workers’ Productivity and Organisational Knowledge Sharing with Weblog-based Personal Publishing
• BlogWalk: if you want more

Since there are just a few hours left before PKM workshop my anxiety builds up… It’s not that I’m scared, but it seems to be a way to concentrate and to focus, to get to the state of alertness that makes me sensitive to subtle signals in a group and helps to react…

Somehow I can’t think about anything else at the moment. It’s strange that given all the preparation, Ton as co-facilitator and lots of friendly folks who are going to be there, I’m still anxious more than I’d expect from myself.

Actually writing it up makes it lighter :) Keep your fingers crossed for us… And hopefully I’ll post more on interesting sessions and talks in between after we are done.

This post appears on channel KM Europe

Archived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2004/11/09.html#a1420; comments are here.

• Personal KM at KM Europe
• Personal KM at KM Europe: 9 November, 15:00-18:00
• KM Europe: summary

Just a quick note for those coming to KM Europe and PKM workshop there: we have changed the wiki-engine from WakkiWiki to Media Wiki and made life a bit complicated in the short-term (to make it easier in a long-term :)

Things you may need are:

• Wiki homepage – wiki.knowledgenetworker.net
• People at KM Europe – PeopleAtKMEurope
• PKM workshop intro – PersonalKMatKMEurope
• PKM workshop format – PersonalKMatKMEuropeFormat
• PKM workshop participants – PersonalKMatKMEuropePeople

This post appears on channel KM Europe

Archived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2004/11/06.html#a1415; comments are here.

• Personal KM at KM Europe
• KM Europe: random quotes and thoughts
• Experiences of using del.icio.us

One more instance of dreams coming true :)

KnowledgeBoard workshop at KM Europe: Personal KM?

In spite of KM’s evolution as a field, a key question remains unresolved: ‘How do we improve knowledge workers’ productivity?’

Much of knowledge management practices are focused on an organisational level; interventions and systems are designed and implemented without much thinking of how they would match the practices and daily routines of individual knowledge workers. While this personal side of knowledge management seems to be neglected in corporate KM initiatives it has increasingly become a topic of discussion by KM practitioners.

Personal KM is about personal effectiveness: about knowing what is your expertise, being an effective networker and finding time to participate in interesting conversations, about managing your ideas, communication and documents, selecting tools that help without adding stress, about getting your work done and knowing how to make space for reflection and learning even when deadlines are piling up.

Knowledge Board is proud to host an afternoon workshop on Personal KM on November 9th, providing a space for collaborative exploration of the emerging world of Personal Knowledge Management. In this workshop we are going to share personal experiences of being effective knowledge workers, to look at methods and tools that make us smarter and to discuss what and how personal KM can add to organisation-wide KM initiatives.

So, you are very welcome to join us on 9 November, 15:00-18:00 (and make sure you are there for dinner after it :)

Two places to contribute:

• Workshop topics and format – add questions to be discussed and your ideas about structuring the whole thing
• Workshop participants – add your name there if you are planning to join (or just thinking about possibility)

I’ll post more details soon. Email or Skype me if you have burning questions…

And, if you don’t want to miss others at KM Europe (last year’s sad story), add your name and details to People at KM Europe page.

This post appears on channels KM Europe, knowledge management

Archived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2004/10/26.html#a1400; comments are here.

• Making choices
• PKM: purposes and practices
• Blogs vs. KnowledgeBoard

It’s time to start preparing for KM Europe. This year it’s in Amsterdam again, 8-10 November. Apart from keynotes and specific workshops the conference is free, which turns it into a good networking event since it’s easy to join.

Talking about personal KM at “BlogWalk3″, Piers Young, Ton Zijlstra and me discussed an idea of organising a session on pKM at KM Europe. At this moment I’m talking with organisers to see if something like that would be possible…

So far the idea is to talk about:

• value of personal KM
• relation between personal KM and KM initiatives organisation-wide
• pKM how-to – methods and tools (talking about weblogs between other things)

So, if you are

• planning to be at KM Europe and interested to join the session
• have ideas how to organise it or want to speak
• have any connections with KM Europe organisers or host a session there

please let me know…

And – I also started KM Europe TopicExchange channel, so make sure you notify it if you post something about it.

See also: notes from KM Europe 2004 by me and others.

This post appears on channels KM Europe, knowledge management, BlogWalk

Archived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2004/09/05.html#a1331; comments are here.

• Blog capture ideas, but it’s still difficult to find them
• BlogWalk: quiet
• Digital work style: The new world of work (white paper)

Many controversial answers by KM Europe participants on Where do you see the link between KM and innovation? Good for thinking :)

Archived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2003/11/21.html#a846; comments are here.

• Community straddlers and innovation: asking right questions about communities of practice
• KM Europe: pre-workshop anxiety
• Listening, learning and innovation

This is the growing list of other weblogs posts on KM Europe (see also conference presentations online). Please don’t be angry when updated :)

Martin Dugage: A quick report on KM Europe in Amsterdam

Lee Bryant (Headshift): general notes and more about

• Dave Snowden on influencing complex systems using boundaries and attractors
• Verna Allee on Knowledge, Networks and Value Creation
• Sam Marshall – Unilever Research & Development Case Study
• Jean-Marc David – KM at Renault: a contribution to the e-transformation of the enterprise

Ton Zijlstra: Squarewise: KM’s Soap More Slippery Than Suggested, On the KM-community, Keynote Dave Snowden and much later – How to organise valuable congresses/conventions

Sam Marshall: The Kindness of Strangers, KM Europe notes (Renault, Dave Snowden, Rolls-Royce, Verna Allee), see also notes on KM Asia 2003

Martin Roell: KM Europe 2003 – So war’s (in German, but make sure you use Google translation for a story which is less about the conference content, but more about people and observations)

Archived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2003/11/15.html#a837; comments are here.

• BlogWalk: if you want more
• KM Europe
• The end of KM Europe :(

I know that drafted blog posts have to be finished within a few days, otherwise I never finish them. This collection of quotes and thoughts from KM Europe is still drafted, but I post it before it gets lost.

Edna Pasher

• biggest KM challenge is not knowing what we have to know (me – how do you know what you need to know?)
• you need “critical mess” (I’m not sure now if it was Edna or Ton who sat next to me)
• If you see a conference with “emergent” in the title, go there.

Dave Snowden: if you force visibility into a system you stuffle innovation

Gerald Prast: BLOG = Benign Low-threshold On-line Growth

Audran Sevrain: blog is personal intranet

Knowledge Board discussion – activity vs. content access

Things to think about:

• weblogs and apprenticeship
• blogging in different languages (extend to multiple blogs): difficulty of switching contexts
• visibility and traces, public and personal spaces

Archived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2003/11/15.html#a836; comments are here.

• Studying weblogs at Microsoft: blogging as a person or as an employee
• Nancy White on blog communities and more questions
• RSS vs. browser for weblog reading

I was very happy to listen to Dave Snowden‘s keynote. I tried to follow some of his writings, but listening is much better way to grasp complex ideas. This speech provided a good initial framework to glue pieces together when I’m reading again.

Below are some of my notes. They are quite random and text-only: I’m too lazy to make something of my drawings. If you want some background there is enough articles by Dave Snowden on-line. The one I can link without much searching is The new dynamics of strategy: Sense-making in a complex and complicated world (.pdf).

KM is about:

• Content management – managing what can be written
• Narrative management – managing what can be spoken
• Context management – managing the rest (what is the rest?)

Rules vs. heuristics. Rules tolerate no ambiguity, so they are difficult to apply then context changes. Heuristics are more flexible, but there is lack of consistency in applying.

Retrospective coherence – in advance it doesn’t make sense, but looking back it makes a good sense. The final pattern is clear only once it formed and can be explained

Why people are different from ants

1. We never make decision based on rational grounds
2. Human beings have multiple identities
3. Free will

Random quotes

• When people change between groups (re: size) they change identity.
• People are very good in managing serendipity.
• People know that databases are dangerous.
• Human beings are brilliant in gaming explicit systems.
• All innovation processes are work on incremental innovation. True innovation is achieved by seeing the world in a different way.

Categorisation and sense-making

• Categorisation is about fitting ideas into an existing frame. Exploitation. (Good example here: asking people to allocate things into 2×2 matrix with 2/3 things designed to be not fitting –> people squeeze all of them into 2×2).
• Sense making is about pattern recognition and discovering emerging frame from the data. Exploration.

Managing chaos (managing a party of 12 years old as an example)

• gain different perspective
• create, modify, remove boundaries
  • permeable
  • rigid
  • elastic
• create, modify, remove attractors
  • single point attractor
  • multiple points
  • “strange” attractors

With my system dynamics roots I’m used to think about the world in terms of boundaries and attractors, so I’m definitely interested to learn more. Dave said that there are some kinds of training programs for students. Will find out.

Archived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2003/11/15.html#a835; comments are here.

• Preaching to the converted: PKM is not about methods and tools, but about attitude change
• KM change management
• Complex domains and researcher accountability