KMUK11 - Let's start with the desert

Being a Knowledge Manager at the KMUK11 I thought it would be a good idea (however not a real innovative one, I admit) to mingle around to share some knowledge.

I was very early since this sunny morning the walk from the hotel to the conference, which took in yesterday’s rain for some reason 45 minutes, was just a piece of 15 min cake. “Hi, my name is …” My consulting teacher would have been really proud of me, as I made a real good introduction of myself and was sure to leave a good impression, only to learn from the name sign in this minute that my radar with 100% accuracy had spotted between 80 other people the only Ericsson person in the room. Sometimes you have to go the extra mile to get to know each other. Happy to have met you, Ranu!

But later on I have met of course some interesting people not from Ericsson and heard some interesting things about KM, and I want to share some of it in some posts.

I on purpose did let get some distance inbetween to really focus on the big hits.

And the next punch really hit hard on my ego. I don’t attend too many conferences, so I decided to wear the pride-of-my-wardrobe-tie – apparently just to learn from Dave Snowden (blog: The Cognitive Edge), one of the big names in KM: “If you want to be taken seriously as Knowledge Manager, you can't wear a tie, real Knowledge Managers don’t wear ties”. Well, at least this was something I could take away from his presentation, because most of the other time he spoke about a fancy Sci-fi movie that no one else had ever seen, and at least I did not get too much of a clue.

But I was still alive and kicking and devouring a wonderful lunch, so Dave decided to go for a final kick, when joining our table: “Why are you here?” Well between his beard and the lines, and in context of the situation, this meant: You should have been here 7 years ago, then KM was hot, what kind of loser are you, still to flog the dead horse, KM has failed.

Haha, I was prepared for that by my blog post: KM is dead, long live KM, but somehow he was not listening, maybe because of all the sweet desert in my mouth, so I let him do the talk, and – quite some interesting came as a third desert so to speak (yes, I took 2 physical sugary ones): Sorry guys, storytelling doesn’t work (that’s what he said, but now I knew the pattern), now micro-narratives is hot; the brain structure changes with age, which gives explanation to the fact that many scientific disruptive innovations come from people before they share my age; KM has been taken hostage by consultants, and they are not worth a dime, but doing worse; inspiring thoughts for KM come from reading neuroscience and ethnology  blogs. A lot to digest!

via stockxchng, Cakes by runrunrun

Of course there have been more interesting aspects on the conference, e.g. to include facilitated learning in KM, After Action Reviews, KM in crisis discussion, should we name it KM, the reduction towards the personal KM, but all these interesting topics have to wait, because now I was going for another desert.

regards
gerald