ThinkingShift

I seem to be doing a lot of “sojourning” lately. A brief trip to Hong Kong recently to speak at a conference and I’m just back from 3 days in my beloved New Zealand - Wellington - where I gave an international address on social media at the 6th Annual Information Management summit. I’ve spoken at 5 of these summits, missing out last year as I had to pull out at the last minute, damn.

Now, the really interesting thing about this conference was not me speaking! Nope, it was experiencing social media (the very thing I was yapping about) in action. Because as I was speaking, I was being live-blogged. About 15 mins into my session I became aware that two people in the audience were furiously typing away. And then it twigged: I’m being live-blogged, gulp. Here I was talking about social media (such as blogs) and how you can make connections based on what is of relevance to you or how our private identities and what we have to say is increasingly blurring with public space - and wham, within seconds, two summaries of what I was going on about were available on two blogs.

So thanks to Cairo Walker and Michael Sampson, I can spare you my own summary of this conference. You can read Cairo’s summation here and Michael’s here. Both Cairo and Michael have summarised other sessions from the 2-day conference.

Take the time to check out both blogs by the way. Cairo is a REALLY talented artist and just two amongst her paintings that I’m loving are here and here. This girl has talent with a capital T!  I met Michael for the first time at the conference but am impressed by his blog Effective Collaboration. There’s a wealth of information on his blog from white papers on enterprise collaboration and virtual teams to daily reports.

I used to participate in KM conferences. Once you’re on the conference circuit, it’s rather addictive, especially if, like me, you enjoy public speaking and an audience. But about two years ago, I decided to be more selective about the conferences I spoke at or the workshops I would run. This was not because I didn’t want to share what I know or learn from others. Nope, it was about not wanting to be seen as one of the “usual suspects”. You know, those dudes you see on conference brochure after conference brochure. Probably recycling the same PowerPoint presentation from one conference to the next or retelling the same old war stories. I suspected I was falling into that trap. So I started to decline conference invitations and recommended other people instead.

This may not have been too smart a strategy because in late 2005 I was appointed Chair of Standards Australia KM Committee following my editing of the Australian KM Standard. As Chair, I guess I should be out and about, pressing the flesh so to speak. I’ve done that at limited events, but am conscious of the need to have something new, something fresh to say.

So last week, I did appear in Hong Kong for KM in a Wiki-World. I happened to be in Hong Kong anyway for teaching purposes but this conference looked to me to be different. It was a one-day conference with the following line-up of speakers: Dave Snowden, a glittering gem in the KM world. Robert Neely – who gave one of the most refreshing conference talks I’ve seen in a long while. All about e-discovery. Me - going on about social media – more to follow in this post. Jack Chong from Ericsson and finally, but by no means least, Leif Edvinsson. This was the first time I’d met Leif or seen him in action. In a separate post, I’ll share with you what I learnt from Leif’s thoughtful presentation on Signals from the Future.

But what did I talk about at this conference? Well, I predicted to myself (accurately, thank goodness) that Dave would set the scene and outline Web 2.0 and how collaborative tools enhance KM efforts (if not rescuing KM!). Check out Dave’s blog for his slide set.

So I concentrated on the two areas that interest me most: law and identity. You’ll be pleased to know I refrained from any ranting about privacy issues in cyberspace. Here’s a run down of what I covered:

• the power of social media is in connectivity and contactability
• knowledge is emergent. You can change the knowledge flow so that it is meaningful and contextual. For example, I recently kicked 10 blogs off my RSS feeds because I found them no longer stimulating or I didn’t like the direction the blogger was going in. And I replaced those 10 with 3 new ones. So I changed my connections based on what is useful to me.
• Social media can help to build familiarity and trust. It can’t help you to build a “knowledge-sharing culture” (what the heck is that anyway?) but it can strengthen the weak ties, construct new pathways and connections.
• With social media, we don’t have to indulge in that tacit and explicit knowledge nonsense.
• With the growth of social networking sites like Facebook, Flickr and so on, I talked about individuality in public space. How we are building Brand Me through blogs for example. Through building a public identity we can showcase our expertise, attract an employer, find people with similar interests.
• I confessed I am obsessed with Flickr ☺
• Social media challenges the notion of knowledge as static.
• I dealt with trust. How social media helps to create a non-structured environment and you learn to trust people based on what they recommend for example.
• I talked about the tyranny of the IT expert in the sense that control and knowledge of collaborative tools lies now with you and me. We can set up a blog in no time at all. We can wiki away. We don’t need IT departments telling us what wiki or blogging software we should have. IT should let go control and recommend collaborative tools. But IT people are still shrouded in mysticism in some organisations. I did say that if I could I’d get rid of IT departments – meaning centralised policemen – not IT people per se.
• I looked at the major barriers to social media.
• I covered some case studies: museums, lawyers and law firms who are actively and successfully engaging with Facebook and blogs.
• I looked at why organizations should be rethinking their stance on Facebook if they are banning it
• The 3Cs of blogging – consistency, comfort and capability.
• Social bookmarking as a form of sense-making
• I briefly covered Citizen Journalism
• Then I ended with a brief look at the MySpace Mayor – what can happen to you if you share too much about yourself on a social networking site.

As usual, I covered too much in 45 mins! But I rediscovered my enthusiasm for speaking at conferences and found this forum to be the best I’ve attended in years. And I think that was because of the unusual angles covered, particularly in Leif’s session – but more about that in the next few days.

Next up, New Zealand for the 6th Annual Information Management Summit. I’m giving an “international address” - considering I’m a New Zealander, not sure how I’m “international”! But hey, I’m also running a champagne roundtable - now THAT sounds good to me.

UPDATE: 3/4/08 seems ThinkingShift good friend, Patrick Lambe, is having a tussle with a dude who likens KM to a “snake oil solution” with snake oil salesmen. Having been one of the speakers at the conference in question, I sincerely hope this guy isn’t referring to me! A quick glance at this guy’s original post, tells me he isn’t in the KM profession and so perhaps doesn’t really understand the issues we KM’ers grapple with. I think Patrick’s done a sterling job in defending KM so I have nothing to add except, Go Patrick!

I feel like a roving reporter! I’m here in Hong Kong with a brief moment between conference speaking, tutorials and taking photos. So, dear reader, thought I’d report in! Thanks for the wonderful comments to my “brand slave” post of the other day. I met someone yesterday at the HK conference who told me they read the ThinkingShift blog every day but never comment. I asked why and the response was they just wished to learn. Okay by me! I suspect I have a number of readers just like this lady.

So…how am I going in Hong Kong? Well, the day before the conference, I took myself off to Harbour City - gigantic mall of nothing but designer brands. I thought this would be a very good test for me in my new guise as anti-brand Kim. It was tough, let me tell you. I was either going to hyperventilate at the sight of all the luxury goods we don’t get in Australia or faint from the pressure of it all!

I checked out a few handbags; looked at some designer fashions and then……something happened that really propelled me run out of the mall. In came a gaggle of American tourists (would that be a gaggle, a hoard, a bunch??). Women with husbands in tow. Ooohing and aahing over a particular brand pair of jeans and how they simply MUST be seen in those back in the good old US of A. One of the women said “Oh Jean will be SO jealous that we have the very latest look”. Gasp! I threw them a look - they didn’t notice!

Then in tottered some Japanese tourists. They had been to the Hello Kitty! shop and were laden down with goods. They also oohed and aahed. Time for me to high tail it out of the shopping mall as I could feel the pressure mounting. So….I took off outside and…was met with the most glorious view of the Star Ferry terminal against a backdrop of glittering skycrapers towering up towards the clouds. Photos, photos and more photos! Within 5 minutes, I was feeling so much better.

Yesterday, was the all-day conference, so that kept me out of the shops. I had the pleasure of hearing Dave Snowden talk about Web 2.0 - he was his usual engaging and articulate self. And I met Leif Edvinsson for the first time and will help him set up his own blog.

So tomorrow and Sunday are my big tests. Two days free. I have planned a photographic expedition and will try to take shots of people. Still reluctant to do this (yep, privacy issues) but I’m going to look at this place through a different lens.

Will report in again soon!