Check out consultant and blogger Euan Semples latest post, Why HR, Comms & IT should be really excited about the social web.

A past speaker at KMWorld, Euan hits on a theme for KMWorld 2009 — People, Talent & Knowledge.   He says, “People are starting to do it for themselves. Increasingly staff are using web-based tools to perform some of the functions that have ostensibly been the responsibility of these departments. They are writing CV’s and finding jobs for themselves, even within the existing organisations, using Linkedin; they are using social sites like Facebook or blogs of to communicate with each other; and they are increasingly using flexible tools such as Google Documents and calendar to provide basic platforms for working together. They are showing imagination, energy and a willingness to do with it takes to get their job is done. These are qualities that organisations keep telling us they want their staff to have.”

From the keyboard of Stuart Henshall, one of the most advanced thinkers about the “flows” of information combined with usability and innovation.

Stuart helped out with the blogging at the just-ended KMWorld and also gave a presentation on the last day about how people are beginning to use Twitter to connect, stimulate, catalyze and coordinate flows of information.

I thought he did a great job of outlining interesting possibilities .. but it seems he made some people nervous and some people stretch their minds.  That may be because he has been immersed in the world of constant micro-flows of information and mobility for the last half-year while many of those at KMWorld are just now beginning to come to terms with blogging, using wikis and social computing.  There may be one of those classic mismatches, the kind that lead to phrases like “You can always recognize the pioneers, they’re the ones walking around with arrows sticking out of their backs“.

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Accelerating Innovation, Knowledge Innovation

Social Media or KM / KM or Social Media

 

I sat in earlier on a session on the Future of KM. There are three very different people on the panel. I’ve been listening with half an ear. This means what I write may have nothing to do with the context of the session. However, part of the reason we come to events like this is to spark other thoughts and tangents.

So far today I’ve not heard the word “flows”, I don’t hear “lifestreaming” I still feel what I am hearing is that knowledge is to be managed, moved, manipulated. Plus I just heard Dave Pollard say that SARS, 9/11, Katrina etc were all failures of classic knowledge management. I can’t quite put my finger on why KM isn’t learning and moving forward more quickly. It suggests to me that there remains a bigger problem.

Individuals are increasingly using personal tools, blogs, wikis, social networks, mobile phone, etc. As they move into this realm publicly they create more information about themselves. I’m increasingly seeing these tools being put to use by marketing / PR. KM seems to be missing these social media implications. Thus adoption of these tools is not being driven by the need to manage knowledge. Rather it’s driven by responding faster, being more adaptive, building on what others do, opening up systems so they can find that they need just in time. It’s a learning centric approach. I see it when I go to blogging sessions and talk to people there. The difference is they are believers.

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I’m thinking more and more that the social media experts are likely to usurp or overturn many KM practices in time. The fact that SAP, Oracle and IBM are today all working with Twitter like updates is at least encouraging.

Maybe they can still sell a knowledge platform?

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At this very same conference one year ago Stuart wrote a post with which I agree 100% … while people in companies and business everywhere are looking for business case or ROI justification for using social media tools (while understanding semi-consciously that of course useful knowledge gets built in social interaction) they have to work (and experiment) at overcoming a lifetime of working in environments that divide and separate problems, responsibilities and challenges into discrete and divided bundles of tasks that are supposed to fit together like an orderly paint-by-numbers-like template (by which I mean an organizational chart).

To understand how using social media to increase effectiveness, responsiveness and innovation in an environment characterized by constant flows of information, you have to Use the Tools First; Then Talk To Me.

Read the whole post on a possible future for KM here .. 

Social computing gets a lot of press these days, and rightfully so. Collaboration in its many forms is vital to wise knowledge sharing, which, after all, is what knowledge management is all about: discovering the best ideas and skillfully integrating them within the business environment to ensure the right information gets to the right people at the right time.

Heck, we’re taught as toddlers how important it is to share. Now, as adults we have the software tools to share not just toys and cookies, but ideas and best practices; impressions and images; knowledge and prejudices. We can find experts and build communities of common expertise and interests. We can even live “virtual lives”–the most notably of which is through Second Life and it’s avatars, a concept, I think, is a phenomenal waste of time and resources in the business environment.

I ran into someone who advocated turning KMWorld into a “virtual” conference. He was a Second Lifer (or maybe a Scientologist) and claimed we were so far behind the times. We were “shameful dinosaurs,” in his words. He even became aggressive in his criticism of the way we produced our conferences. I let him try to make his case, and after 10 minutes of his “pitch” (a term I hate). But then I asked if he enjoyed John Kao’s opening keynote. He informed me he has read everything Kao has written and the only reason he came to the conference was to hear Kao speak in person. He didn’t see the irony.

It seems to me that even the best social, collaborative computing solutions pave the way for deeper professional relationships. They encourage knowledge sharing and facilitate business relationships by identifying areas of common ground and interests and make it so much easier to develop communities of practice. In many cases these online relationships are sufficient–in some, even preferred–for a certain level of business activity.

In the past two days, I have seen and chatted with more than 40 different people whom I haven’t seen in a year–and at least 15 more with whom I hope to stay in touch. Meeting and talking with them paves the way for a deeper professional relationship.

Social computing is here for good (both literally and figuratively), and it will certainly get better and better. The very best tools will be increasingly adopted and help bring a degree of humanity to enterprises that have lost touch with their personal relationship chain. It provides a marvelous opportunity to facilitate conversations but, for me, anyway, it will never match the value of face-to-face interaction. It will never replace the value of a conference such as KMWorld and Intranets.