I am not sure if you folks would be subscribed to the mailing list from the superb Knowledge Management community over at actKM but just in case you may not be I strongly suggest you sign up and join that community because for the last few months there have been some incredible discussions taking place around the world of KM. One of the latest ones, and one that also comes very close home, is the recent discussion thread on The Essence of Knowledge Management where folks are actually venturing into putting together what Knowledge Management is in just a (short) sentence.

Yes, I know what you are going to say. No way you could do that ! Well, there are plenty of folks who have ventured into providing a good, short definition of what Knowledge Management is. I know for myself that I wouldn’t be able to come up with one just like that since every time that I have ventured to do so I end up adding much more than what was required in the first place, thus in the end I give up. If people ask me what I do for a living I have got a tendency to take a couple of minutes to try to explain what it is and as soon as I get to see people’s faces looking strange that is when I know I need to stop.

Either way, since I, too, have always had some difficulty in coming up with a short definition of what KM is all about I thought I would create this particular weblog post and share with you some of the definitions that people have been sharing so far. And as time goes by, if more of them come up I will be adding them up into this weblog post. One thing though the attached quotes are actually definitions that I would feel comfortable with because they related to the same concept that I have myself about KM, thus if you are part of the mailing list and do not see a particular quote that is because it didn’t strike me as good enough for me, which is what we should all be doing at the end of the day, look for a definition of KM that would work for you so that you can then convince others about it. Thus without any further delay here you have got some of my favourite definitions so far:

“We always know more than we can tell, we can always tell more than we can write down. Knowledge Management is not just about the things we can write down, its also about the stories we tell and the stuff we know but can never articulate in any way.” by Dave Snowden. Does it ring a bell ?

“KM is a systematic process of connecting people to people and people to the knowledge and information they need to act effectively and create new knowledge” by Mark Schenk (From Anecdote), taken from Carla O’Dell, The Executive’s Role in Knowledge Management

“Knowledge management is a business process that connects people to people and people to information for competitive advantage and better decision making.” by Kaye Vivian (A slight variation from Carla’s quote mentioned above that I particularly like)

“Knowledge management helps people learn, to use the new knowledge they acquire through learning, to share what they know when appropriate, and to help create knowledgeable communities of work mates, colleagues, and friends. It is concerned with innovation, managing complexity and ambiguity, forming and using knowledge networks and connections, sharing behaviours, and utilising people-centric technologies” by Ron Robinson (I like the learning aspect put together by Ron on this one, since I have always believed that KM and Learning walk hand in hand all along)

And, finally, perhaps the one definition of them all that I feel the most comfortable with thus far. It is coming from Denham Grey and you can find it as well over at the KMBloggers community wiki space KMWiki:

“A practice concerned with increasing awareness, fostering learning, speeding collaboration & innovation and exchanging insights. There is a delicate balance to be maintained between explicit and tacit, between personal and community, between collecting assets and enabling flows, between looking inward and externally, between mining and capturing insights and building on shared experiences.”

That one indeed I feel that it captures the true nature of KM as being related to learning, collaboration, innovation, knowledge sharing and confirming that there should be a balance between explicit and tacit knowledge, between personal and communities, amongst other things. But instead of me telling you all about it let me suggest you take a look into Denham’s recent weblog post on the subject where he actually explains a whole lot more in detail that particular definition: The essence of KM?.

I think that I may have finally found a definition that I would feel comfortable with whenever I would need to describe what I do for work. What do you think ? Have you found yours? Dare to come up with your own ?

Technorati Tags: Knowledge Management, KM, actKM

While going through my daily catch up of RSS newsfeeds I have bumped into one particular article over at CIO that I am sure plenty of folks over here would be very much interested in, specially if you are into Social Network Analysis. The article is titled Who Knows Whom, and Who Knows What? and you will be able to find it over here. The reason why I mentioned above that it is an interesting read is because of the fact that it will provide you with some very good examples of how SNA, when used and applied correctly and in a wise manner, can bring some incredible value to the overall Knowledge Management strategy that whatever company may have. I think I am going to leave it up to you to read further on how several companies have used SNA to their own advantage to become better with handling its knowledge and the different networks of knowledge workers, but I thought I would highlight in the mean time some interesting quotes that clearly state how there are folks out there who do get it, as far as Social Network Analysis is concerned:

“Social network analysis provides a clear picture of the ways that far-flung employees and divisions are working together, and can help companies identify key experts in the organization. ”

Indeed, who would have thought, making use of SNA in order to be able to locate key subject matter experts within the organisation? Isn’t this one of the main issues that traditional KM has been struggling with for quite some time. Locating your experts is not an easy task and it looks like SNA could certainly help out here. Amongst many other areas.

“SNA isn’t a replacement for traditional KM tools such as knowledge databases or portals, but it can provide companies with a starting point or blueprint for how best to proceed with KM initiatives.”

This is certainly one of my favourite quotes from the entire article. Not only from the point of view where it just places SNA, quite nicely, in the overall KM strategy but also from the point of view to reply to all those folks who have been saying for quite some time how SNA could stand on its own, when we all know that it is actually not the case. SNA will provide you with the data, but you still need to figure out what you would want to do with it in the larger picture, which is the overall KM strategy that you may have in place.

“As a component to a larger KM strategy, however, SNA can help companies identify key leaders and then set up mechanisms—such as “communities of practice” or other groups—so that those leaders can pass on their knowledge to colleagues”

One of the many great advantages of conducting an SNA is the fact that as a result of it you would be able to help businesses identify those key subject matter experts who would eventually may venture into creating different communities of practice, for instance, about the topic(s) they are passionate about and as such you would be creating instantly a pool of expertise that would help you drive whatever your KM strategy may be. We all know that with all this buzz about social software there is an increasing interest in knowledge sharing and collaborating with other knowledge workers and as such those same communities would become the main engines that could help businesses transition from a labour-based model to an asset / knowledge based one. And all that thanks to a single SNA.

“SNA can be defined as “the mapping and measuring of relationships and flows between people, groups, organizations, computers, or other information- or knowledge-processing entities.“” by Valdis Krebs.

And, finally, here is perhaps one of the most effective definitions about SNA that you would find out there provided by Valdis Krebs. Simpler than that I doubt you would be able to state it.

As I have said, a very interesting article worth while reading and which will clearly open up people’s eyes about how SNA can be used in a wise manner to help improve the different connections between knowledge workers within whatever the company, like many of the examples state quite clearly throughout the article itself, in order to allow them to boost their knowledge sharing and collaboration with other knowledge workers.

Technorati Tags: Social Network Analysis, SNA, Knowledge Management, KM, Communities of Practice, Social Software, CIO

If you would remember, last year, when I was moving from one Internet weblog to elsua, I actually migrated a number of different weblog posts in order not to lose the information. Well, one of those weblog posts was this one: The Biggest I Have Ever Seen So Far, where I was actually detailing the largest paella party I have ever been to and where I shared some pictures about the event itself. What can I say, folks? If I was flabbergasted back then when I attended the event for the first time, this year it has been more of the same. But this time around I was well prepared. I thought.

Yes, the traditional paella party or festival, whatever you would want to call it, took place this year as well as the ending event from the local festivities of El Tablero de Maspalomas. There were perhaps a little bit less people than in previous years but it is also true that there wasn’t much paella left at the end of the event (About two and a half hours later) thus it looks like it was a bit more scaled than in previous occasions. This time around I did my homework and I arrived a little bit earlier than usual so that I could take some pictures before hand of a paella that was going to feed several thousand people! I cannot describe it with many more words, other than saying that it is an art to be able to cook such a tasty giant paella for such a large crowd and still make it worth while eating! A big thumbs up for all of the cooks and rest of personnel who helped making it possible year after year! Just brilliant! Congrats, guys!

I doubt that I would be able to say something more than just show you a few of the pictures that I took during the event. There are many more that I will be sharing later on in my Flickr account but here you have got some of the most representative ones:

Next year, I will be ready for some more. No doubt ! Thus if you happen to be around here on holidays, or whatever, you know where you will find me! Yummy!

Technorati Tags: ElTableroDeMaspalomas, ElTablero, Paella, Flickr

Back after a re-energising long weekend! As I get busy catching up with some of my RSS newsfeeds, and while I have been playing around with a few changes with elsua that will be taking place during the course of the next couple of weeks, as I transition into a new host, I bumped into an interesting link that I am sure would be of interest to all those folks out there who feel that weblogging is all about linking with other weblogs/webloggers in order to be part of the conversation and share and collaborate with others. Something that I have been much in agreement with all along. Check out How Linkable Is Your Blog Post? presented by Philipp Lenssen’s Google Blogoscoped. Over there you would be able to read how Philipp has put together a short test to let you know how linkable your weblog post(s) may be.

It will not take you more than a couple of minutes to go through it and the good thing is that after getting your results you would also see listed a number of different tips on how you can improve the linkability of your weblog posts. Pretty interesting seeing that most of those tips contain lots of common sense and would take you very little action to get them implemented.

Yes, of course, you guessed it right. I tried it out and got the message that my linkability is on 65%, that although not too bad it could certainly be improved to a higher level. Say to something like 80% or above. Thus I went down the list of tips I got recommended to improve that linkability and I have decided to actually do a little bit of an experiment with this particular tip:

“Sometimes, a small illustrative or explanatory image can go a long way to improve the linkability of your post. It just makes an article feel more fun, and more complete. Naturally not everyone’s an artist or designer, but there are many Creative Commons licensed photos around on Flickr and others.“

Thus from now on, and since I have been maintaining a Flickr account where I have been sharing a number of different pictures already, every single post that I create here in elsua will have one of those explanatory or illustrative images of the pictures that I have taken so far and which are available for a larger image over at Flickr. As I said this is going to be an experiment that I am willing to give it a try and see how it goes. But then again when I come to think about it I feel it may be a good idea as well as it would provide me with a great opportunity to share some of the pictures I have taken so far and which I have been delaying weblogging about them for a couple of weeks now. That way, I keep up to date with that and, hopefully, it would help me as well improve that linkability.

We shall see how that goes. I will get started with it from this weblog post onwards and would appreciate if you would share a comment or two on how you, faithful readers, would feel about it. If it works out it would be one of the many changes I have got planned while I transition into a new host, which I suspect is not going to take me much longer any more since I think I have found a very good choice. But more on that later on this week…

Technorati Tags: Metablogging, Linkable, Google Blogoscoped, Flickr

You would expect that having had a day off today (And tomorrow, too!) I would have had plenty more time to write a couple of weblog entries over here to share some other interesting ideas that have been crossing up my mind lately, but alas that will not be the case, at least, it doesn’t look like it would be like that for today. We shall see what happens tomorrow. The weather has been rather nice, once again, and after having spent most of the day in Arguineguin and Little Venice (Goodness! I really like that place, I tell you, folks) I just got home in order to get ready to leave again. Yes, I know what you would be thinking by now

Yes, folks, that is what days off at work do to you, and some lovely weather, too ! Thus there would be some light weblogging ahead for the next couple of days. But don’t worry because earlier on this morning, before I left, I was working already on a couple of rounds of some incredible pictures that I have taken in the last couple of weeks from several different places, including from the recent trip I did to Madrid, and since I have neglected sharing some of them over here I will go ahead and add some more whenever I find some free time to do it. For the time being, I think I am going to enjoy these couple of days off and catch up with life. After all, there is more to life than just weblogging on a daily basis, right? I shall be back soon!

Technorati Tags: Metablogging, Work Life Balance

If you have been reading my weblog for some time now you would know how time and time again I have always been saying that weblogging, whether you do it on the Internet or on the Intranet, is always about the conversation(s), about engaging in them and sharing your knowledge and collaborating with others. Indeed, a very interesting option for Knowledge Management to explore further if you would want to look for alternative ways of facilitating that knowledge exchange. However, there are times where you may be engaging in the conversations and lose track of those folks who you may have been collaborating with just because at some point it may be more difficult to catch up than anything else. So how can you get that focus back and give you and your readers some more visibility about where you are engaging with other webloggers in the Blogosphere?

Check out WhoLinked, folks. You are going to like it. At least, I have been enjoying it quite a bit since I got it installed in my weblog after having gone through Corporate Blogging 101’s Cool New Service - WhoLinked.com by Patrick Dodd. Patrick shared a very nice overview describing how it actually works but basically with WhoLinked, and in three very very easy steps, you would be able to get a more visual view of what other webloggers are saying and linking about your own weblog. Pretty neat, indeed. Yes, indeed, it is all about keeping track of the conversations.

So if you scroll down in elsua under the blogroll, on the left column, you would now be able to see who is linking to my weblog and with a direct link so that you can go there and check out some more about those different conversations. I know you are going to say that Technorati does some of this already and you are right but the main difference between both offerings is the fact that Technorati forces me to go to their web site whereas with WhoLinked I get to see the direct links and it would take me there right away without having to go through an interim web site to find those links. Yes, I know, very handy !

Right now you would be able to create that widget in a couple of minutes (Even less!) providing you with information from web links up to 10, which I think would be a good number to give you an idea of who else is currently linking their weblog to your weblog. If you go and take a look now you would be able to recognise some of the webloggers that I have been following up for some time now and some other interesting links that you probably never thought would be there in the first place, which is always a good thing because you can then see how diverse and engaging participating from the Blogosphere could be.

Thus if you are looking for a way to bring some visibility to those folks who link back to you and want to find an easy and inexpensive way of doing so I strongly suggest you have a look into Patrick’s weblog post Cool New Service - WhoLinked.com to see how WhoLinked works and then head over to their web site and set up your widget in less than one minute, upload it to your web site and start seeing the immediate benefits that, believe it or not, you are not along out there in the Blogosphere!

(Thanks, Patrick, for the headsup and for the great tip!)

Technorati Tags: Metablogging, WhoLinked, Technorati