2008/06/03
Latest updates to our site
Last changed: Jun 07, 2008 10:51 by Karen Huffman Labels: expertise, perspective, student_views
We have talked about mentoring and involving students within our division, but instead....Christian Tomas approached us! He is a student in the Master's of Information Management at the University of Maryland in College Park, Maryland, USA. He interviewed two fellow SLAers and included his own research for a final paper he submitted for a class in the spring. When talking to Christian about how he wrote the paper, he said, "It just wrote itself." This idea of sharing ideas as just happening is really the underlying essence of Web 2.0. If you start "doing it," it [knowledge sharing] seems to just happen.
Please note: This research paper will remain open to SLAers for 30 days. After that, we will close this report to SLA KM members only.
David Stern and Karen Huffman have developed a KM Expertise database. In essence, it is simply a "bucket" for adding and sharing your expertise to fellow KM members. It takes about 10 minutes to read the instructions (or view the video) and add a short description about who you are and what you are best at doing within your role, or roles. We hope you will take a moment to complete the template we have set up to add your expertise. Please add your feedback as a comment to the KM expertise website or this blog post if you think we need to alter the template in any way to benefit our members the most. Remember...this database will not be a success with your input!
2008/06/09
From Our Chair
Last changed: Jun 09, 2008 18:43 by Karen Huffman Labels: conference, expertise, 2008
The annual conference is almost upon us -- that magnificent networking venue. For those who do not attend, and even for those who do, the face-to-face meeting is supplemented by our new Expertise Database. This tool will allow us to effectively identify fellow explorers in specialized areas or with specific tools and techniques. Please enter your data in order to make this the prime benefit of our Division.
Summaries of annual conference activities will appear shortly on this web site. Stay tuned for important data (and possibily embarassing photos).
~ David
2008/06/14
2008 SLA KM Program Highlights
The SLA Annual Conference is just a few days away! As the Program Planning Chair, I would like to take this opportunity to both highlight our sessions as well as thank those who gave their time, ideas, and support in planning a program that speaks to the various interest of our members.
Many, many, thanks go out to the program planning team David Shumaker, Maryhelen Jones, Dianna Wiggins, and Jeanne Trimble who contributed by developing great session concepts, finding the right speakers, and ensuring all was done within the time frames set down by SLA. I would also like to acknowledge and thank the other SLA Divisions who worked on some of these sessions as cosponsors and the KM Board Members and Officers for their feedback and insights.
Janice Keeler, Dianna Wiggins, and Jeanne Trimble formed a smaller group to work on the Knowledge Management reception that will take place at the Sheraton Hotel, Cirrus Ballroom, Level 35 on Sunday, June 15th, from 8:30pm to 10:30pm. Why not kick-off the conference by joining fellow attendees at this event! I was told that we do have a "room with a view".
In addition, many of these sessions could not be possible without financial support from our vendors. In alphabetical order, the KM Division is pleased to acknowledge and thank Dow Jones Factiva, Elsevier, EOS International, IHS Global, InfoCurrent, Inmagic, and Thomson Reuters.
Our program covers many interesting topics to include a "spotlight" session with Dave Snowden, Founder & Chief Scientific Officer, Cognitive Edge, who will speak about strategies, tools and techniques one could use to facilitate knowledge sharing within their organization, and David Gurteen, Gurteen Knowledge Management, who will talk about what a "knowledge Café" could mean to a group of people who have a topic of mutual interest.
Other planned sessions include: a sold out breakfast roundtable discussion, presentations about why you would want to use social networking applications, personal KM, informatics across the biological sciences, educating the next generation of knowledge managers, sharing knowledge with after action reviews, and to complete the offerings, what cutting edge KM activities some leading corporations in Seattle are executing in their work environment. To view details about each session, click the link on the left under Shortcuts for Upcoming 2008 Programs and Events.
In closing, we have already started to think about possible sessions for the 2009 SLA KM program in Washington - so please, take a moment to drop me a line (gibsond@mskcc.org) and share your ideas about hot KM topics and speakers or if you are interested in joining the 2009 "planning team."
Donna Gibson, Director, Program Planning, 2008-2009
2008/06/17
Monday, June 16 KM Division Breakfast Roundtable - What's New in KM
Focus of the session was primarily about Microsoft SharePoint than on other applications. Many in the room were using either Microsoft 2003 or 2007 or migrating from one to the other. Although many people commented that they liked the application, there were a few than noted some incompatibility issues across Microsoft products and no one commented on whether it would work on a Macintosh. Peter Hobby asked how people engage users to use the tools and a woman from Linden Lab mentioned the top-down approach within their organization towards a culture of transparency. Since the topic was to "discuss current trends and how you practice and walk the KM path!" not sure the roundtable actually addressed all aspects of this topic. Tell us what you thought about our KM roundtable - format, coverage on topic(s), etc. All comments welcomed!
Sponsor: Elsevier (silver level)
Monday, June 16 KM at the Core - Facilitating Knowledge Sharing
Spotlight session with speaker David Snowden, Cognitive Edge
Podcast of session will be made available through Dave's website: cognitive-edge.com.
Some key ideas from David's presentation:
- KM is ten years old. The question is... How do you create a knowledge sharing culture? Must understand that knowledge is only ever volunteered; it can't be scripted. You can't measure whether someone has shared their knowledge. You can measure conformance if you want to force people to complete a form to share their knowledge.
- No one will share knowledge in anticipation of your need. Most knowledge systems are anticipation systems.
- What's happening now...People chatting with other people they trust in fragmented ways.
- The way people describe what they are doing is not actually how they are doing it.
- We can always know more than what we can tell and more than what we can write down. Hard to take tacit knowledge to explicit knowledge.
- Living oral histories: Working with knowledge in the field through stories, narrative base. Homo-narrans (rather an homo sapiens), people who tell stories, storytellers to make their point, make it stick (stickiness).
- Sense-making: How do we make sense of the world. so we can act in it. How do we re-route social systems to make sense of the world. It's not enough to know that something appears to work, you need to know why, only then can you scale it, and understand the limitations of scale.
- Cynefin framework decision making framework for KM. Space for innovation. Don't confuse innovation with creativity. Creativity is a sub-consequence of innovation but not a cause.
- Hindsight does not lead to foresight - retrospective coherence & premature convergence.
- Mental models... get rid of that idea. Human beings are more complex. Human formulate concepts through pattern recognition not as a series of processes like machines. Much more dynamic patterns, more diverse experience that you can draw on. If someone says they are going to create a taxonomy... it'll be a failure. Remember that the word "taxonomy" is very close to the word "taxidermy." Everything is fragmented. Social computing as it is currently practiced is a chaotic system.
*We need to move to pragmatic system that allow people to self-index their own material. The cost is very low. Two-thirds of our brain are associated with visualization. Knowledge is a great human capacity.
Types of knowledge systems:
- Ordered systems
- System constrains agent behavior, cause and effect relationship discoverable and repeatable, prediction possible. Ordered system is on the edge of chaotic if go into catastrophic failure.
- Hierarchical taxonomies, threaded conversations, in house facebook, etc.
- Chaotic systems
- Agents are unconstrained, often deterministic at agent level, use of probability and statistics allows for predictability.
- Free form tagging, assuming it will just work out, failing to manage, just increasing links (linked in)
- Complex adaptive systems (less known type of system)
- System and agents co-evolve and system effects are therefore inherently unpredictable. Non-causal in nature. Highly sensitive to starting conditions and local interactions. System level effects are emergent and non-aggregative.
- Applying constrains loosely. Fragments signified at the point of origin (or on access). Signified by name, key words, and free text. Signified by positioning on ambiguated forms. Signified by modulator scales.
Tell us your ideas and thoughts
If you attended David's session, tell us what you learned, how it might change the way you currently do something within your organization, or evolve how you view KM.
Sponsor: Thomson (spotlight session)
Monday, June 16 What's All the Buzz about Social Networking?
Speakers included Karen Huffman, Laura Leavitt, Jill Hurst-Wahl, and Michele Vivona
Below are key takeaways from the panel of speakers as well as links to their full presentations.
Karen Huffman, National Geographic | Presentation (PPT)
- Don't underestimate the impact of micro interactions and fluidity of communication
- Social networks are user driven: Living it, defining it, sharing it!
- Portability of applications through widget-like applications and RSS feeds
- Profile 2.0: Just-for-me resources and services
- Must localize, experience Web 2.0/3.0 tools to internalize, become sticky
Laura Leavitt, Michigan State | Presentation (PPT)
- Use a mix of Web 2.0 tools
- Don't reinvent the wheel; just go to Facebook if you want to use something like Facebook
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Michele Vivona, LexisNexis | Presentation (PPT)
- Lives between personal and professional are blurring
- Developed a beta resource that connects, integrates with LinkedIn profiles
- Beta launch many applications, allows for shorter development cycles, involve users earlier on for feedback, etc.
- Explore and experiment with the tools
Jill Hurst-Wahl, Information consultant | Presentation (PPT)
- Social networking allows us to connect, keep up, exchange ideas, market, and learn
- Means of communication has changed radically
- Twitter is like IM on steroids
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2008/06/20
Key Takeaways from Sessions
A few more ideas....
Below are a few additional ideas that I'd like to share with you from several other sessions attended during the conference:
- Skills we all must possess to remain viable: life-long learners, risk-takers, and early adopters. Make sure to sign up for SLA 23 Things, a 9-week initiative to help members become more familiar with Web 2.0 tools.
- Trust, respect, and role modeling are essential elements to encourage collaboration and facilitate knowledge sharing.
- Narratives and stories help people to articulate more complex ideas, share knowledge.
- Action after reviews is a KM tool that allows individuals to learn from what happened, why it happened, what went well, what needs improvement and what lessons can be learned from their experience.
Share yourself and your favorite resources
We have numerous ways for you to share your ideas and key takeaways from the conference:
- Check out our SLA KM's Facebook Group. We've uploaded photos from the conference.
- Bookmark websites of interest by tagging items SLAKM on Del.icio.us.
- Add comments to our blog posts OR start your own post to share your conference learnings.
Visualize our tweets
During many of the sessions, a handful of SLAers shared ideas with conference attendees using an area Daniel Lee (thank you, Daniel!) set up for us on Twitter. (We have been thinking about setting up something similar for our KM members. We'll keep you posted.) To view the posts visually, see the tag cloud below saved on Many Eyes: SLA Knowledge Management topic hub OR view Daniel's Twitter cloud on his blog.
2008/06/21
Conference thanks from the Chair
Thanks to all who made the conference experience such a stimulating event. The speakers, the planners, the attendees, and the sponsors. We will soon be posting the presentations and reports.
2008/06/22
A huge conference thank you
A huge agreement to David Stern's thank you. The KM Division reception was fantastic and great thanks to inmagic for their financial support to conduct this new event - it was a huge success in a delightful venue.
We had an array of exceptional presenters with international KM gurus Dave Snowden and David Gurteen both making valuable contributions to our understanding and application of KM.
We would love to get more ideas from our KM Division members on who they would like to see presenting next year - send those ideas in to the KM Division Board. This is your chance to make a difference.
From a very cold Down Under - Nerida
2008/06/24
actKM Annual Conference 2008 - call for papers
Last changed: Jun 24, 2008 20:10 by Karen Huffman Labels: conferences, australia, papers
 Dear all,
For those who would just love to visit Australia in the Springtime, the annual actKM conference is being held at University House, Australian National University in Canberra from the 14-15th of October 2008.
We have a call for papers out at the moment and welcome papers and interactive activities which are relevant to our theme Managing Knowledge for Competitive Advantage.
For full details go tour our website.
Nerida Hart
Message from David Gurteen
Last changed: Jun 24, 2008 20:11 by Karen Huffman Labels: knowledge_cafe, speaker, conferences
 To: Members of the SLA KM Division
I'd just like to say a few words to everyone I met from the SLA KM Division in Seattle last week. I had a tremendous time and met some great people and was delighted to see such a high interest in KM. Who ever says KM is dead!
For those of you who attended my knowledge cafe, click here to find the photos that I took. And if you would like to learn more about my knowledge cafes, see my website: www.gurteen.com/gurteen/gurteen.nsf/id/kcafe.
Finally, I'd like to wish you all the best with your KM endeavors and if I can ever be of help in anyway whatsoever please drop me an email 
Regards David
David GURTEEN
Gurteen Knowledge
Fleet, United Kingdom
Tel: +44 1252 812 878
Mobile: +44 7774 178 650
Skype id: dgurteen
Website: http://www.gurteen.com
RSS Feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/GurteenKnowledgeUpdate
Email: david.gurteen@gurteen.com
2008/06/25
Request for Feedback About Conference Sessions
2008 SLA Annual Conference - KM-Sponsored Sessions
To all who attended,
Please take a moment to complete the brief evaluation survey and let us know what you thought! Your feedback is important and will help us to develop the right sessions for the annual conference in 2009!
KM Program Evaluation Survey
Donna Gibson
Director, Program Planning, Washington 2009
2008/06/30
Reminders
Last changed: Jun 30, 2008 20:28 by Karen Huffman Labels: members, benefits
We have tiered user access on our wikis:
- Non-KM division members: Individuals may view and comment on unrestricted wiki pages but cannot edit pages.
- KM division members only: As a special benefit of membership, we have created "KM members only" areas including our expertise database just for you! To access these areas, it's a two-step process:
STEP 1) If you have not yet created an SLA wiki account, please click here.
STEP 2) Send your wiki username and confirmation of SLA KM membership to Jin Xiu Guo jguo2@washcoll.edu.
Reminder: You MUST be logged in to view the members-only areas, participate in our discussions, and contribute to and/or view our expertise database.
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Jun 09, 2008
Jun 25, 2008
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News from June, 2008
