Over the last couple of days I have been exchanging a number of different e-mails with one of the folks over at actKM that I have been following for quite some time now, and who is currently running KM Institute: Douglas Weidner. He just recently ventured into creating his own KM weblog over at ITtoolbox, too! We actually connected directly just a few days ago through another fellow KMer and colleague, Swan, and it already feels like we know each other for some time already. Anyway, in one of the e-mail exchanges Douglas actually shared with one a link to a web site there you would be able to watch a very interesting interview that details the true business value of Communities of Practice (a.k.a. CoPs)

Indeed, over at The World Bank there is a vidcast of Ludovic Shirima interviewing Frannie Lautier around the topic of the business value that the PAC (Poverty Analysis Community of Practice) community has been providing to the entire organisation all along as a place for people to hang out online and share knowledge and collaborate with one another. The interview lasts for about 14 minutes and it is one of those must-watch references that I would recommend any time to anyone out there who may be rather skeptical about the business value of communities, and CoPs, in particular.

Frannie gets to some of the key elements that make CoPs successful as organisms that allow people to get together in an informal way and share information much more willingly than through other traditional means put in place for knowledge sharing. It is all in the informal networks indeed and this particular interview just clearly shows that communities are the way to go. Every KM program should have a community program if they would want to succeed.

You can find the link to the Poverty Analysis Community over here to see how some of the action is taking place but if you really want to be sold out on the concept and adoption of CoPs in the enterprise world, then I would strongly suggest you watch that videocast of 14 minutes because you would be able to identify some of the different success factors from communities for every single type of business. I could detail over here some of the major highlights from the interview but since it is Friday and you can probably watch better than read at this point in time I am not going to. I will leave it up to you to head over there and read on! You will see why the title of it just fits in quite nicely: PAC One of the Best Example of the Communities of Practice (CoPs) at the World Bank.

(Thanks, Douglas, for sharing the link ! Good stuff !)

Tags: World Bank, PAC, Poverty Analysis Community, Communities of Practice, CoPs, Knowledge Management, KM, Communities, Collaboration, Knowledge Sharing, Remote Collaboration, Social Networking, Douglas Weidner

In the past I have been talking several times about one of my favourite topics related to Knowledge Management and social networks and that is the one about Social Network Analysis. As fascinating and enlightening as it is, lots of people seem to confuse it with Social Networking so after the long weblog post I shared yesterday I thought I would make a short one just sharing over here a few interesting links related to Social Network Analysis, a.k.a. SNA, that would certainly help folks clarify the idea at the same time that they could act as useful resources for future reference.

All of these links have actually been published just recently through the mailing list from actKM and you would be able to read some of the background behind them over there. Or just head over to those links themselves and read on. I know I have got a few other links related to SNA stored in my social bookmarking tools so I think that I would eventually be adding them to this weblog post as well as time goes by and be able to come up with a, hopefully, useful weblog post that I can revisit every now and then to check on those resources once again. Hope it has got the same purpose for you. So, here are the links:

a. A quick primer on Social Network Analysis: A weblog post created by Andrew Rixon, from Anecdote that provides a very handy, and short description, of what SNA is all about, and from where I have taken the graphic to illustrate this post. So all credit due to Andrew.

b. An SNA Sensemaking Activity- Preparing people to see: Another very helpful weblog post by Andrew where he actually gets to explain SNA through sensemaking. This is perhaps one of my favourite resources that explains some of the major benefits from doing Social Network Analysis.

c. Social Networks Analysis and Sensemaking: And talking about some other interesting resources, here you have got the Squidoo lens Andrew created around the same subject (Yes, I know, one of these days I have got to weblog about the superb Squidoo offering).

d. And, finally, one of the other resources that was shared just recently through actKM was this particular event that took place in May 2005 but which has got an incredible amount of different resources and presentation materials around Social Network Analysis: Theories and methods for understanding human social networks. You would agree with me that with that title we are bound to get ourselves busy with some interesting topics of discussion around the subject of SNA. I haven’t dived into the different presentations just yet, but this is one of the activities I am planning to start getting busy with over the course of the weekend. It sounds like it is going to be an interesting one!

Hopefully, I may be able to weblog on some of them at a later time. We shall see how that goes.

So as you have been able to see lots of different and interesting resources around the world of Social Network Analysis and which will hopefully help people get a much better idea of what they are and how they differentiate with social networks. Oh, and before I forget, if you know of other resources you would want to recommend to help add on further into this topic (Yes! It is going to be an in-progress post, I am sure) around SNA feel free to append a comment with your suggestion(s) or contact me offline and I will add them into the main post. The more, the better.

Tags: Social Network Analysis, SNA, Social Networking, Social Networks, Sensemaking, actKM, Anecdote, Knowledge Management, Andrew Rixon

Well, here it goes. The long awaited weblog post that will detail some of the major highlights from my recent trip to Cincinnati to attend a workshop with my virtual team with folks coming from all over the world (UK, Australia, India, Germany, Spain and the US). I know that some of you have been looking forward to this weblog post but I must say that you would have to bear with me because it promises to be a rather lengthy post as there are just far too many things to detail about the trip. So I guess I will split it up in the multiple days I have been there and I will leave it up to you to jump back and forth from each of them. As I said, lots of great things took place during the course of that week so this would be just a small report of how things went. Oh, before I get started,  you would also notice how I have been taking some pictures while I was there and have included them as part of this weblog post but you may want to check out my Flickr account to find over there some more. So, here it goes:

Saturday 9th of September: Nothing major to comment on in here, except for the fact that for me to get from where I live to Cincinnati it took me over 20 hours travelling non-stop ! And all that without counting all of the different security checks. Six in total ! Yes, I was. Completely drained and exhausted after such a long trip. So off to bed.

Sunday 10th of September: The next day I experienced one of the major highlights from the whole trip. I mean, I knew it was going to be a great opportunity to meet my distributed team but what I never expected was to actually be able to meet up on that Sunday morning one of the folks that I have admired the most in the field of Knowledge Management for a number of years now and perhaps one of the main guilty parties that got me involved in KM in the first place a few years back. Yes, indeed, I had the real pleasure and honour of meeting up with Denham Grey. The one and only! (I feel very tempted now to upload the picture we took together contemplating KM…).

And he wasn’t coming alone. He also brought with him Patrick Hindert. Another real treat that would be difficult to forget ! What a fantastic morning we had the three of us talking away on all sorts of different things related to Knowledge Management. Fascinating ! Actually, Patrick wrote a very nice description of that morning over at his weblog and I doubt that I would be able to come up with a better overview of what we talked about. It was an incredible experience, to say the least, because more than anything else it was the first time that I have met these two gents face-to-face even though we have known each other for a number of years (Even though I got to know Patrick just recently) and it kind of felt like three good old friends getting together, enjoying some brunch over at Vinyl, and talking away as if it were yesterday. It felt like we knew each other from far too long ! Ahhh, the power of weblogging !

But that was not all of it. While we were catching up on things we also had the great honour of meeting up with Melody Sawyer Richardson and engage in one of the most interesting and enlightening conversations I have had in a long while. As Patrick mentioned, Melody is currently working on a very exciting project, Second Sunday on Main, in Over-the-Rhine (How cool is that? They even have got a Wikipedia entry for it!), that is certainly, I am sure, going to change things over there big time. Her passion, charm, involvement and commitment are just unbeatable. It has got to work. I am sure it will.

Anyway, during that conversation we talked a great deal about Knowledge Management topics in general, online communities, emerging technologies related to social software and the like and how they could actually help out on that particular project and a whole bunch of things that I may be able to relate to as time goes by. An incredible experience to say the least.

After we were done with brunch we actually continue with the tour around the city and Patrick kindly took us to several different places that were really worth while checking out. See the pictures scattered around this particular weblog post to have a sneak preview of them all. It was a pity that for the rest of the week the weather was not really that nice with plenty of rain so I didn’t get much chance to take some more pictures. Perhaps next time I get to visit Cincy once again.

The rest of that afternoon I stayed at the hotel, hanging out at the pool, relaxing and thinking about what a fantastic morning I had with both Denham and Patrick and, of course, with Melody. And from there onwards off to get ready for the workshop.

Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday 11th, 12th, 13th, of September respectively: Those were the days I was very busy attending a workshop at the IBM office with hardly any time to do anything else. Lots of interesting and worth while conversations about KM at Global Business Services and what would be happening from there onwards and into 2007 and some of which I may be able to share with you over here as time goes by as well. It was really nice being able to see all of my colleagues coming from different countries and showing the same passion as always about KM, Communities and  Collaboration. Having working sessions from 8am till 6pm without that passion can be somewhat difficult I can imagine, so it was great to hang out with them getting plenty of stuff done.

In the evenings we had the opportunity to go and check out a number of different local restaurants, like Jeff Ruby’s (Where the fillet mignon was just out of this world ! Highly recommended! Oh, and in there, I bumped again into Patrick who was having dinner with a client! Talking about coincidences, eh?), Montgomery Inn (Where I tasted for the first time the unbelievable Graeter’s Ice Cream. Peach flavour was just awesome!) and P.F. Changs (I have been to many other better Chinese restaurants, but this one in West Chester was rather good, too!), although while I went to the latter with my boss the rest of the team decided to enjoy a baseball game. Yes, I know. I missed it, but I have never been too much into such sport. Never managed to learn the rules. I guess next time I will try harder.

Thursday 14th of September: This was the last day of the workshop that lasted till mid afternoon. After that most of my colleagues did eventually head back home but I was still going to stay one more day. I was not really sure at the beginning if I was going to stay or not but I am certainly glad I did because during the week Patrick and Melody invited me to a charming family party that I just couldn’t resist taking place that same Thursday evening. It was like the icing sugar on the cake, if you know what I mean. I thought we were just going to have a small, rather cozy, party at Melody’s  unique house. But on the contrary, it was one of those parties difficult to forget. I know I will not forget it that easily. Not only did Melody open her house to everyone as if they were close family members but everyone else even made you feel that way, too ! An incredible experience ! It felt like I was part of the group and all that from someone who visited Cincy for the first time ever and who didn’t know most of the people back there. If there is a way to define hospitality in the best terms possible that, folks, would be the best I can come up with.

It was surely an honour to be invited to such intimate gathering and although I could tell a whole lot of stuff about what happened that evening I am just going to keep it for myself. You know the drill. There are some things you can weblog about, then there are other things that are better left out of the blogosphere and just for your own personal enjoyment. This was one of them. Suffice to say that the party was *the* grand finale for such a week that it will be difficult to forget. I won’t.

Friday and Saturday, 15th and 16th of September, respectively: Not much more to say regarding those two days since I spent most of the time travelling. This time around with over 25 hours non-stop and arriving home the next day, due to the timezone craziness. Still incredibly excited about the whole week that I had just experienced which I am sure made the whole trip a lot more enjoyable than expected.

Overall, one of the best weeks I have ever had in a long while. I was able to meet up with my virtual team for the first time in several years of working remotely, away from the office. I had the incredible opportunity to meet up for the first time with both Denham Grey and Patrick Hindert and catch up with some good old friends as if it were yesterday and I finally got the unique opportunity to feel at home in Cincinnati thanks to the hospitality shown by Melody who certainly made me comfortable enough to make me want to go there again soon. And I will. I am sure.

And, finally, to finish off this rather long weblog post that I am hoping you would bear with me just a couple of minutes more I just wanted to let you know that if you ever get a chance to go to Cincinnati do not leave that city without tasting Black Raspberry Chip ice cream or, even better, my new old time favourite, Double Chocolate Chip, which I had the immense pleasure of tasting over at Melody’s home. They are just unbeatable ! I mean, the double chocolate chip ice cream is one of those delicious deserts that you know you would enjoy big time with folks like Nancy White having a lovely conversation on KM at the same time. That is how good it is ! Perhaps next time we would be able to make it, who knows.

Yes, I will be back!

(From here onwards I just couldn’t finish off this post without taking the opportunity to thank Denham for wanting to meet up with me that Sunday when I know he has got an incredibly busy schedule; Patrick, for meeting up as well on Sunday and for helping make my stay as pleasant as it can probably get; and finally, to Melody for being what she is: wonderfully amazing! Not to mention as well both of my managers, Alice and Doug, who made my trip to the US possible in the first place!)

Tags: Knowledge Management, KM, Communities, Denham Grey, Patrick Hindert, Melody Sawyer Richardson, Cincinnati, Over-the-Rhine, Graeter’s Ice Cream, Chocolate, Nancy White

What are your plans for October 2006? What are you going to be doing the whole month? Got better plans than engaging actively in some of the different activities from the Knowledge Management Month for 2006? Of course, not! Thus read on ! Over at Dr. Dan’s Daily Dose weblog Dan has just announced a few hours ago the Knowledge Management Month 2006 where during the course of October this year all KMPro members, and much more importantly, everyone working and advocating around the world of Knowledge Management, is more than encouraged to participate in different activities related to KM that would help spark some further interactions amongst knowledge workers and KM advocates in order to keep spreading the word and the message(s) about what KM can do for any single business out there.

You would be able to read some more on the actual information details over at Knowledge Management Month but here is a quick excerpt of what this event would try to eventually do over the course of 31 days coming up very soon:

"KMPro has designated October as international “Knowledge Management Month” — a month for KMPro members and all other KM’ers worldwide to participate in activities intended to increase awareness and focus upon knowledge management. Recognizing that Peter Drucker had identified improving the effectiveness of knowledge workers as the “most important management challenge of the 21st century” knowledge management has become critical to organizations world-wide. Yet despite that fact, it seems that many organizations remain unclear of the value of KM or how to implement it. Which is why KMPro has decided to “champion” this event.

KMPro encourages ALL KM’ers and all other KM societies and associations to join in this month — to promote all that is KM. Additional information on plans and activities will be available on the KMPro web site as well as on the KM Month event site itself (available October 1st). If you would like to volunteer to sponsor, host or coordinate any activities (including online events) or contribute in any way (suggest an idea!), please contact Dr. Dan Kirsch (email or call +01-757-460-6500)."

Thus you would be able to read how there are some exciting things about to start happening around the world of Knowledge Management all over the world and for the first time we would all have the chance to chime in different ways to help make it work. As you can read from the different announcements and Dan’s weblog post if you would have any ideas or would want to sponsor, host or coordinate an event you would need to contact Dan himself.

I talked to Dan already about this and although I still need to figure out in what shape or form I will be participating there is one thing for sure and that is the fact that I will certainly be quite excited about chiming in and participating further, whether it may be through an online or a face-to-face event. Either way, I am game. How about you ? Will you be ready to participate in the KM Month 2006? Fancy getting together to put something through, whatever that may be? If so, do not hesitate to let me know and we may be able to submit something to Dan that would be put forward as part of whatever other event activities. The more, the better.

Think you still have got something better to do in October ? Think again ! Get ready, get involved, act on it and become part of the KM Month 2006 ! I hope I will be able to see you there, or, why not, get together to put an event out there! Ready for the challenge? Let me know if you would be interested … Let’s get it on !

Tags: KMPro, Knowledge Management, KM, KM Month, KM Events

If earlier on today I created a weblog post about the level of accuracy from a news article on weblogging created over a year ago, here you have got another different example that proves the point that some times when you bump into really good content it doesn’t really matter how long ago it was created. It would still be very valid and could just fit in quite nicely in the current business environment. This is exactly what happens with a YouTube video put together by Rod Boothby some time ago that very clearly puts together, in under 17 minutes, an impressive and compelling business case for Enterprise Weblogs.

You can go ahead and watch the video over here:

In it you would be able to see how Rod states that enterprise weblogs are powerful enablers for (key) innovators to go out there and reach out through multiple conversations that would allow them to keep collaborating and innovating constantly with other knowledge workers.

At the same time, and while you get to dive into the more in-depth presentation, you would be able to see how he actually gets to build that business case by focusing on some real examples of what is going on at the moment out there on the Internet with examples like Apple, Google, wisdom of crowds, etc. Also you would see how one of the strongest points from Rod in that particular video is how to empower all enterprise employees into a single strategic objective: Constant Innovation.

From there onwards he finally explains how to actually tackle constant innovation through innovation creators and he actually manages, quite successfully I should add, to describe how they would operate as a team / community, or whatever the grouping, by allowing them to build up different relationships and establishing different informal networks where they could get to share their knowledge and collaborate further with other knowledge workers.

However, what I found most interesting about his business case is that towards half way through the video he is actually indicating how innovation creators do need better communication tools and not Knowledge Management. WOW! That was a strong statement, indeed ! Specially when later on he keeps on talking further about weblogs, which we all know are part of the social networking or the social software hype going on at the moment, that, in its own right, I am not sure what you would think about it, is Knowledge Management. And very much so.

Perhaps the focus might no longer on the explicit knowledge exchange, which is what, for instance, his example on Office products would be like, but rather on tacit knowledge exchange, which is what weblogs help enable big time! Yes, indeed, weblogs are powerful communication tools but not just that. I would go a bit further with that notion and indicate how they are also powerful knowledge sharing and collaborative tools going beyond the point of just communication, which is what e-mail and IM have done all along thus far. There is a difference, in my opinion, and why weblogs would still be part of what Knowledge Management is all about. Perhaps even more so with the so-called Personal Knowledge Management, where weblogs are perhaps one of its main examples that people keep relating to over and over again. Empowering knowledge workers to be able to manage their knowledge in a space where they are the ones in control of the knowledge sharing flow and how they would collaborate with others.

Either way, for the rest I have thoroughly enjoyed the video itself as I feel it does make for a good and compelling business case for enterprise weblogs and, best of all, are the last few minutes of the video where you can see some extended hints and tips on how to get things going, just in case you may be contemplating doing something similar, and what items you would need to incorporate and which ones you would need to forget. A good show, for sure. Highly recommended for those who may still be a bit skeptical about weblogs in the enterprise. I am sure they would change their mind after watching the video.

Link via A YouTube business Model in the Enterprise (Another interesting reading on the business value behind video for the enterprise)

Tags: Weblogs, Metablogging, Enterprise Weblogs, Enterprise 2.0, Knowledge Management, KM, Personal Knowledge Management, PKM, Social Networking, Social Software, Web 2.0, Innovation, Innovation Creators

Some time ago you would remember how I created a weblog post announcing the new and incredibly useful podcasting initiative from IBM, available externally, called Shortcuts, where over the course of a couple of minutes you actually get to find out some really good hints and tips about different aspects of IT that would help increase your productivity, whether it is related to tool tips, good practices, emerging technologies, etc. etc. You name it.

So by now you probably have listened to the different podcasts on spyware, Instant Messaging, Lotus Notes e-mail archiving, managing contacts, weblog spam, phishing, recovering sent e-mail and Instant Messaging (Again). Well, this time around, regarding Cut #9 (Gosh, I just love that number!), I just wanted to mention how I have been given the pleasure and great honour to participate in this week’s podcast talking about one of my favourite subjects: How to Use Social Bookmarks. Yay!

The podcast itself was recorded with both Ben Edwards and George Faulkner and lasts for about 4 and a half minutes and it was a real treat. I had an incredible good time and these guys surely know their stuff about podcasting and everything around it.If you ever would want to know some more about podcasts and how to get started with your own they would be the right folks to talk to. Thus, thanks much, folks, for giving me the opportunity to chime in and participate in one of my favourite podcasts of all times: Shortcuts.

(Have you subscribed to it already?)

Anyway, if you were wondering what I talked about during those 4.30 minutes here is a quick overview of the topics I touched base on. I know there is a whole lot more to be said about the topic, but I am sure that will be coming up in future sessions…

1. Desktop independent: That is right. Now it is all about accessing your favourites on the web regardless of where you may be, whether at the office, while on the road or working from home. Right now, you just need you favourite social bookmarking site and an Internet connection and off you go.

2. Finding experts through their own bookmarks knowing not only about their interests but also what their subject matter expertise may well be based on those same bookmarks and the different annotations they may well have used thus far.

3. Visualisations available through TagClouds: Who doesn’t like TagClouds to get a visual representation of how people get to annotate their bookmarks, eh? I love TagClouds. Everyone should have one in their weblogs or whatever other web site(s). Everyone should perhaps even have one, or multiple, of them as business cards ! It would make things so much easier, don’t you think?

4. Integration with other online resources, i.e. blogs, web sites, wikis, etc. This is one of the features that I like the most myself about social bookmarks and something that you will get to see both in my IBM internal weblog and over here as well (See bottom of the page). The fact that with some simple HTML or Javascript you can embed your favourite bookmarks in your favourite sites and share that with everyone else. Pretty much like I have done with Dogear (Inside IBM) and also with BlinkList over here. Very nice!

Thus there you go. My first participation in an IBM external podcast and I am really excited it is Shortcuts. What a nifty entrance into the external podcasting world, for sure, but do not worry, because it is not going to be the last one. I am sure… But more to come at a later time …

Tags: Shortcuts, IBM, Tips, Hints&Tips, Productivity Tips, Social Bookmarking, Social Software, Web 2.0, del.icio.us, BlinkList, Dogear, Knowledge Management, KM