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“.

.

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.

[ Snip ... ]

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?

.

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 .. 

Stuart Henshall – Founder & head of Mosoci (a US / India joint venture for marketing consulting)

Stuart wants to offer examples of leading edge tools and service to support working with knowledge flows.

From “what are you doing” (the question that Twitter uses to instantiate a flow of information .. to “Can you talk ?”

How do we escalate and manage “conversations” online?

Pew Internet research … 10% of 68% of Internet users read blogs at work.

Use of Twitter . who and why ?

Go outside of the organization, listen and learn, bring it back into the organization.

In twitter, the customers are “learning faster” than the organizations.

Important from a marketing point of view:  If you’re not in the stream of conversation (as a company) you’re always going to be behind your customers.

Elements of knowledge flows today:  Names, Numbers, Coordinates

No bridge between a world increasingly made up of names and the world of telephony (phone numbers).

“What will be the bridges be at the intersection of organizations, social media, communications and location?”

Skype – level of usage within organizations (not so great)

Other forms – there but mnot majority

Skype on a web page – 5 years, maybe three calls

People reluctant to interrupt other people (my interpretation)

Twitter – has become Stuart’s primary means of communication

What about following numbers – are you scared of following too many people ..

I respond “yes” .. because I think most people believe they are supposed to be paying attention to everyone they follow.

There are easy-to-use tools to allow us to capture nuggets (bookmarking) … to delicious or Diigo

Rather than that, people have started saving and posting URL’s to Twitter .. through Twurl (Twitter URL).

It is important to recognize that there are existing social networks underneath the Twitterverse, and it is also important to recognize that you must go about building up networks through sharing and developing trust .. without that interaction / feedback possibility there are risks that Twitter and similar services can be arid.

Twitter well suited to iPhone / mobile environment .. allows ongoing contact and exchange with followers (people ostensibly in your social networks) almost in real-time, all the time, wherever you are.

Zappos.com … everyone of their 100+ employees are on Twitter .. each and evryone is customer-facing and engaged with the outside world.

Conversation with the audience re: Twitter, ways of communicating

iPhone as a platform

Average kid has over 100 iPhone apps

iPhone as a platform

Revenue from iPhone Apps store expected to exceed revenue for iTunes platform by the end of next year (?) .. That’s amazing !

Facebook on the iPhone – screenshots showing presence and pictures

Interesting audience conversation abou the degrees and utility of being open and transparent, showing how much of you you want to let other people know ..

There are varying degrees of openness to how much information we should or want to share with others ..

Ongoing conversation about risks and opportunities of being identifiable and exposed online.

On to Mashups 

How do they work ?

Mashups are useful in many ways, for many reasons

Problem – escalating communications has been (to date) clumsy

Demand is growing for seamless communications

Bringing things together, eg Lifestreaming, context / status updates, helplines / relief efforts

Phweet – smart links calling

Permission-based message requesting voice communications via SMS

http://phweet.com/6MPa

Here we go.  KMWorld 2008 is kicking off tomorrow morning.

There’s a great roster of sessions and speakers this year, coming at a time of massive and rapid changes coming thick and fast to the knowledge -based workplace of this first decade  of the 21st century.  Web 2.0. Enterprise 2.0, SaaS, Cloud Computing, advances in algorithm-based contextual enterprise search, a growing understanding of social computing and the ways people share and exchange information to build effective and flexible responses on a dynamic basis to demanding customers and markets.

Last year at KMWorld 2007 several bloggers kicked out a few posts that helped highlight and spread awareness of some of the thought leaders on offer at this major conference.  This year we’re kicking it up a notch … we’ve asked a number of key contributors in the KM domain to offer up one or more blog posts, either on sessions they are attending or offering, or that offer a glimpse of an interesting session they’ve attended.

We’ve asked leading lights Dave Snowden and Dave Pollard to offer up some of their thoughts.  We’ve asked Jenny Ambrozek and Patti Anklam to weigh in.  Stuart Henshall will, we hope, bring his considerable blogging skills to bear in a couple of posts.  Learning maven and guru Jay Cross of the Internettime blog has agreed to weigh in, conference organizer Jane Dysart (also an active blogger in her own right) will pitch in, and I’m going to do my best to provide you with an over view of some of the interesting sessions I attend.

We also have a Twiiter account that these bloggers will use to “tweet” issues of interest and once Stuart helps us make sure we know how to use it correctly, we’ll have the Twitter channel Phweet-enabled so that people can connect and talk easily.

The conference opens up first thing tomorrow morning with a keynote speech by John Kao, the author of Innovation Nation and a serial innovator who is widely acknowledged as one of the world’s leading authority on the future of business. He will explore the intersection of innovation and transformation to help define the landscape for enterprise—and knowledge workers—in the years ahead.  John has a proven record of identifying circumstances long before they coalesce into trends and is a highly qualified voice to help us set a course for the next decade.  

You’re welcome to check on, give us feedback and ask questions – we will do our best to respond quickly in a useful way.