KMUK11 - Knowledge Cafe

Having a cafe after the desert makes some sense, and the second good news: this time it was not in the virtual coffee-corner (here and here), we even had a beer at the end of an exciting KM day.

“Participate in an inbuilt 70-minute David Gurteen knowledge café, with an opportunity to discuss where KM has failed and what can be done to change this” – this is how it was advertised.

3 very interesting points to cover: What is a Gurteen knowledge café? Where KM has failed? What has been done / can be done not to fail – Personal KM (which is only one strategy – but enough for this post!)

David has done an excellent presentation skill job, which makes it easy for me: I only sum up the titles of his intro slides, and you end up with a very good idea of a Gurteen knowledge café: “Business is a conversation”, “Conversation is a meeting of minds”, “KM is about understanding”, “Dialogue”, “Conversation is our most effective KM tool”, “Conversation is a learning technology”. Everything other detail you find at Gurteen Knowledge Café.

The subtitle for the event at KMUK 2011 was: "KM has not lived up to its expectations over the past 15 years …” Of course with 80 Knowledge Managers in the room, there were 120 strong opinions, but my summary of what was discussed is along the following lines:
A there was a hype of Knowledge Management, and the character of a hype is that you can never live up to its expectations
B Knowledge Management mean the technical implementation of an IT-tool large-scale.

However Knowledge Managers seem to be positive people (or is it the fact that we make a living on KM) and thus quickly went on to what can be done to change. One tendency I have encountered at the KMUK11 was what I call “Personal KM”.

The Knowledge Café itself is a good example. Can you imagine the 90.000+ Ericsson employees all participate in a knowledge café? Just only a considerable fraction? No.
And many other speakers showed remedies, where knowledge interaction takes place on the size that can be facilitated with personal interaction (that is not to be confused with Dunbar's number, it is not about knowledge sharing of one person, but the KM approaches for the company).

Away from IT-based tool implementation large scale to conversation on the personal horizon: Michael Kelleher (De Norske Veritas) was “Using knowledge markets to support business-led KM at Sellafield Ltd”, (1 day in 1 huge auditorium). Purpose: Designed as a marketplace with traders and buyers, this event often opens up opportunities for participants to identify potential collaborators and helps to establish the principles of knowledge sharing as one that has a collective benefit – between companies. Succesful size: 50-300 companies/persons.

Linda Davies, (Mars, Incorporated) was “Sharing knowledge in a global corporation”, but not targeting 60.000 Mars Inc. employees at once, but with the principle “Keep membership small, focused and relevant” (12-15 members, globally spread).

So basically we had a nice café (beer / whine) seeing the dinosaur-like and dinasaur-size IT-based KM extinct as paradigm and the rising of small-size, warm-blooded mamals of personal KM from the KM catastrophe of failure.

regards

gerald