- I’ve very much enjoyed taking a break from blogging, what I’ve been calling my “blogging hiatus.” I’m not certain if I’m now back in for real, but I feel the urge to write again today, even though it has turned out to be a gorgeous, almost summer day, in Boston…after a rainy start.
- I’ve just completed week six in my new job and time continues to move by quickly — too quickly, as I haven’t made as much progress as I had hoped for in these few weeks. I’m still adjusting to being a knowledge management group of one at the global scale of my industry vertical. We have a distributed team — nah, I’m now calling it a ‘network’ as a more accurate description, without judgment there — covering about 30 countries. A few in the network also carry ‘knowledge management’ in their titles, while the majority have their country-level KM duties as an extra assignment. This makes complete sense as many countries are not at the scale to justify a full-time person. So far, knowledge management means almost entirely “information management” and I find that I now introduce myself externally as an “information manager” or “information specialist”…my most preferred term for what I have been up to. Again, no judgment…rather just what it is. Near-term I’m mostly consumed by the need to move to a new content management system and fielding tactical classic requests for information (have we ever done work like this before?, who are the internal experts on this topic?, who can we use as a client reference in this proposal?, etc.) I am also at the very front-end of working towards launching some global communities of practice to complement existing country-level activity.
- Within the context of this last point, on Thursday I attended the Boston KM Forum meeting; my first since the one I presented at during week #1 on the new job. Gian Jagai’s presentation was titled So You Were Just Promoted to Knowledge Manager – Now What?. Gian and I appear to be on somewhat similar paths within our respective corners of very large companies. Sadalit Van Buren nicely blogged one of the key points that emerged from conversation: For Knowledge Management, Add a Human — as many in the audience on Thursday lamented on why companies just didn’t “get it” relative to the value provided by research librarians, information brokers, community coordinators, and the like. Newly Bostonian, Jack Vinson (who I met in person for the first time at the event) shared his notes with KM in Global Services. Some sound-bites that stood out as potential connections to my own new journey:
- Gian actively recruited membership in his first community…going after particular individuals that he wanted in the community based on their expertise, their believed connections to others, and a “personable and accountable” nature.
- For the community kick-off meeting he asked each person to share an “influence map”…showing their connections to others that they thought they could/should carry the community learning to. I was surprised to hear that this didn’t appear as an uncomfortable or threatening request to people.
- The heavy-lifting of keeping the community going is shared by a two or three person core team, and facilitated by a community coordinator (Gian). This is an identical model to what we used at my former employer.
- The community coordinator role is targeted to be 25% full time equivalent per community.
- The communities typically hold monthly calls and rotate the time of day to suite the various regions of the world. Calls are recorded and made available in mp3 for internal to the company “podcasting”
- During the conversation, Forum leaders Lynda Moulton and Larry Chait spoke passionately about the necessity of logging every single request for information or assistance that the community fielded, to then later use to validate this one aspect of the community’s value. This is something I am tackling in my new role; however, I do find it takes a lot of discipline to pull off.
- There, I’ve done it. I’ve broken my blogging silence. See you again next month? Or, sooner?
Hi Ray,
I’ve blogged about the event here. Slides are also available.
http://kmapprentice.wordpress.com/2008/05/20/boston-km-forum/
Ray, thanks for linking to my blog! I saw your talk at the last full-day KM Forum event, and you inspired me (among other things) to create a timeline (similar to the one you presented) of my web 2.0 technologies adoption compared to when the technologies were released. Now if only I had access to a source of data for when these technologies are adopted on average!