Another excellent KMWorld & Intranets Conference and Exhibition was held at the San Jose McEnery Convention Center on September 22-25, 2008. This worldwide gathering of information professionals and vendors examined many topics related to KM, including content management, intranets, portals, taxonomies and enterprise search. There were special programs provided by both an Enterprise Search Summit and a Taxonomy Boot Camp. All were superbly planned and executed, providing numerous multilevel learning opportunities.
The key coordinators were KMWorld & Intranet Program Chair Jane Dysart of Dysart & Jones Associates; KMWorld Co-Chair Hugh McKellar, Editor of KMWorld magazine; and Meeting Organizer Thomas H. Hogan, President of Information Today, Inc. In addition, Michelle Manafy coordinated the Enterprise Search Summit and Rebecca Jones coordinated the Taxonomy Boot Camp. These experienced professionals did an outstanding job. Some attendees even suggested that this conference should be considered among the best-managed multi-conferences of 2008.
Along with pre-conference workshops, there were many networking opportunities. Exhibits demonstrating products and new features represented the top players in the KM, CM, search, taxonomy and intranets marketplace. In addition, both attendees and exhibit visitors had an opportunity to explore the latest products and services solutions. Conference announcements clearly suggested that these sessions would also offer attendees multiple opportunities to learn or add to their knowledge and skills on topics such as
• Driving enterprise innovation and achievement through user-focused tools
• Learning about leading edge KM practices
• Gaining insights for enterprise innovation
• Collaborating with colleagues
• Exploring social media in the Web 2.0 age
• Discovering ways to streamline information and knowledge flows
• Improving content and intranet management know-how
The kick-off session held on Monday evening was hosted by Dave Snowden, Founder and Chief Scientific Officer of Cognitive Edge Pte Ltd. This networking event was a "worst practice session" where participants shared their knowledge and experiences about KM initiatives that had failed. The focus was on what could be learned from these failures. Snowden skillfully managed the discussion so that participants learned how to achieve positive results in organizational knowledge sharing.
The opening keynote on Tuesday morning, "Innovation and Knowledge Management," was presented by John Kao, widely acknowledged as the world’s leading authority on the future of business. The Economist has called him both "Mr. Creativity" and "a serial innovator." His latest book, Innovation Nation: How America Is Losing Its Innovation Edge, Why It Matters, and What We Can Do to Get It Back, was published in 2007. A new book is planned for early 2009. Readers may remember his previous best seller, Jamming: The Art and Discipline of Business Creativity, which was published in 1996 by Harper Collins (ISBN: 08873077469). Kao is also considered a leading authority on innovation, organization change, and digital media. He taught innovation and entrepreneurship at Harvard Business School from 1982 to 1996.
Following Kao’s keynote on Tuesday, attendees were offered four topical tracks. Track A: KM Thought Leaders was moderated in part by Patti Anklam. This track began with a session entitled, "Snowden on KM: A Hot Seat Interview." As you might expect, this was a lively and interesting discussion with Dave Snowden answering interview questions posed by Mary Boone, President of Boone Associates.
Track B: KM in Action & in the Business was moderated by Tim DeWolf, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. This track provided views from KM practitioner Moira Fraser from the New Zealand Parliamentary Services and from Grant Margison, Director of Information Leadership Consulting. They examined the major challenges of delivering an organization-wide "one size fits all" knowledge strategy across major applications.
Track C: Enterprise Content Management (ECM) was organized and moderated by Theresa Regli, Principal at CMS Watch. This track focused on examining content technologies and their usability, dealing with ECM Suites, email management, and integrating content tools, especially with search and governance structures to enhance knowledge sharing in any organization. The first paper in this series was delivered by Tony Byrne, Founder of CMS Watch. He provided an overview of the content technology market, examining the major players, how they have evolved and how the current economic environment is influencing buyers.
Track D: Intranet & Portal Strategies was moderated by Howard McQueen, McQueen Consulting. There are many strategies and technical options for designing, implementing, enhancing, and growing an intranet. The speakers in this track shared their "special secrets," practical strategies, successes, and what they learned from building a winning intranet or portal. The first session in this track highlighted the 2008 Intranet Innovation Award sites. These winning entries demonstrated new ways of innovating the design and delivery of intranets in order to improve support of knowledge sharing and other business functions within their whole organizations.
The Exhibit Hall held its Grand Opening Reception from 5:00-7:00 pm that evening, offering attendees and visitors opportunities to learn more about the latest products, services, and solutions for knowledge management, intranets, and portals. Experts and advisors were on hand to answer questions and suggest solutions to a variety of training, technical, and administrative problems.
On Wednesday morning the opening keynote session began with KM Awards followed by the keynote lecture by Peter Skarzynski, CEO of Strategos, and author of Innovation to the Core—A Blueprint for Transforming the Way Your Company Innovates (Peter Skarzynski and Rowan Gibson, Harvard Business School Press, 2008, 295 pages; ISBN-13: 9781422102510). Peter reported that leading companies are now creating and deploying new innovation capabilities in an effort to outperform industry rivals. He provided examples from leading companies including Whirlpool, Best Buys, and W.R. Gore. These examples demonstrated his thesis that innovation is the only sustainable source of competitive advantage. His focus was on how to build organizational capabilities in innovation and create an environment of entrepreneurism. He suggested ways to identify enablers and the obstacles that block or delay innovation. Peter also suggested how to use a systems approach to dynamically improve the organization’s innovation capabilities, how to apply a disciplined approach to in-market experimentation, and how to manage a continuous pipeline of new growth platforms. He offered an action checklist to identify and address the most critical steps in successfully executing successful strategies. These action plans need to consider multiple phases involved in anytime, anyplace collaboration among multiple parties throughout the world. He also spoke about innovating at scale.
Following this opening keynote on Wednesday, attendees were offered four interesting tracks. Track A: Innovation offered a stream of sessions looking at tools and techniques for accelerating decisions, innovation, and knowledge discovery in a various types of organizations. It was moderated by Richard Hulser, Hulser Consulting.
The first session in this track was "Connecting Knowledge, Learning, and Innovation to Improve Business Performance." The speakers were Janine M. Valvoda, Chief Culture Officer, and Tracy Conn, Supervision Support Services Officer for the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland. They reported that the bank is using a new integrated approach to increase knowledge sharing, accelerate the learning curve and spark innovation through new ideas and projects. They shared lessons learned, experience gained, and some of the challenges of this unique approach.
Richard Geiger of the San Francisco Chronicle moderated Track B: KM Tools & Practices. This track provided a series of sessions focused on different user-centric tools and practices that are being used in real situations to drive positive achievement in a variety of enterprises and highlighted specific tools and practices.
The first session, "Google Gadgets, Gears, and Glue," was presented by KM World columnist and independent consultant, Stephen Arnold, Arnold IT. Arnold has recently completed a detailed study of the major patents held by Google and has extrapolated the company's possible business strategies, in his e-book, Google Version 2.0: The Calculating Predator. Full details are available at Infornortics Ltd. The following extract from this site will give the reader a peek into Stephen Arnold’s recent work:
"This is the first time someone has made a detailed study of the major patents held by Google and has extrapolated the company's possible business strategies. Traditionally, it has been difficult to get to grips with what Google is. The company is not specifically secretive; rather, it is unforthcoming about its aims, plans, strategies and ambitions. "Provide access to the world's knowledge" is about as focused an articulation of mission as one can get from the Google people....Stephen Arnold…concentrates on analysing Google's potential via a study of the company's intellectual property (patents)…[and] deriving information about the company from an analysis of its key patents…[which] are often difficult to discover…." (http://www.infonortics.com/publications/google/google-predator.html).
This book will be of special interest to anyone in the software, telecommunications, search, publishing, financial and investment industries.
Deb Hunt of the Exploratorium moderated Track C: Enterprise 2.0. The sessions in this track highlighted ways in which enterprises are currently finding new ways of working and sharing knowledge. They also examined how organizations are more highly dependent upon higher capacities for collaboration, learning and innovation in order to cope with fast-changing environments. Harnessing capabilities and building smarter organizations are both critical to organizations who are attempting to attain higher levels of performance. This is the organizational make up or essence of Enterprise 2.0.
Track D: Intranets: Collaboration Tools & Practices was moderated by Martin White of Intranet Focus Limited. Enterprise 2.0 intranets are cooperating with the corporate intranet in order to collect contributions and participation from everyone. The challenges and opportunities are vast. The speakers in this track tended to look at new as well as established collaboration tools in order to understand how they might most effectively fit into current and changing organizations.
Thursday morning's opening session began with a keynote lecture by Peter Morville, President of Semantic Studios and author of Ambient Findability: What We Find Changes Who We Become (September 2005, ISBN 10: 0-596-00765-5 | ISBN 13: 9780596007652). According to Morville and others, search is considered among our most important and complex challenges. As the choice of first resort for many users, search is often the defining element of the user’s experience and a critical window into the taxonomies we build. However, it not only influences who we find and what we learn, but search also shapes how we create value and share knowledge. In this fast-paced session, Peter highlighted best practices and emerging technologies that transform enterprise social search capabilities into a vital tool for collaboration, knowledge management, and discovery.
Following this opening keynote on Thursday, attendees were offered four interesting tracks. Track A: Knowledge Sharing was moderated by Pam Strayer of Stryer & Co. Sharing knowledge is a critical activity in all organizations regardless of size. This track offered many perspectives and applications of knowledge transfer, with most speakers focusing on knowledge sharing.
The first session was "Transferring Knowledge Isn’t Just for Nice People." Steve Trautman, PeerMentoring.com and author of Teach What You Know: A Practical Leader’s Guide to Knowledge Transfer (July, 2006 Prentice-Hall, ISBN 10: 0-321-41951-0 ) offered a very interesting and practical presentation on knowledge sharing along with useful ideas on how to accomplish this important task. Trautman’s approach should be useful to anyone trying to communicate, share knowledge, teach, or mentor in any environment.
Track B: Learning and KM was moderated by Rebecca Jones, Dysart & Jones Associates. Here the focus was on learning as a major driver of knowledge sharing. This stream of sessions focused on the learning processes in a number of organizations and shared strategies, experiences, and lessons that could be reused within organizations.
The third session in this track was "Lessons Learned About Lessons Learned." This session was chaired by Tom Beckman and Art Murray of Applied Network Sciences. They reported on lessons they have learned from a system they are developing for the U.S. Air Force. After analyzing, and then using the results uncovered so far, they were able to focus on the management of knowledge rather than documents. By focusing on knowledge management they believe that expertise captured from domain experts and practitioners can be refined into knowledge "nuggets."
Track C: Enterprise Information Discovery was moderated by Kimberly Silk, Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto. One of the most challenging activities in an organization is information discovery. This track focused on latest trends in information discovery, looked at improving search design, and provided some case studies of search initiatives within a number of enterprises.
Richard Hulser of Hulser Consulting, moderated Track D: Intranets: Value & Usability. With the focus on increasing the value and usability of intranets within organizations, the sessions in this series focused on tools and techniques, as well as case studies illustrating how to find value and enhance usability. Sessions included "How to Measure Web 2.0 Content," "Increasing Usability by Creating an Actionable Website," "Build, Buy, Consolidate —Then Repeat," and "Intranet 2.0 in 10 Not-So -Easy Steps."
The closing keynote was provided by Dave Snowden, Founder and Chief Scientific Officer of Cognitive Edge Pte Ltd. His presentation was entitled, "Putting It All Together: Project Management and System Design." Using his rich insights from complex adaptive systems theory and his wide range of knowledge of design and governance approaches, Snowden provided a framework for a co-evolutionary approach. He included self-forming teams as a bridge between formal development and open-source, plus he suggested the use of social computing tools in design and narrative based approaches to requirements capture.
As always, Dave Snowden was an informative and stimulating presenter. He was the right person to bring this excellent KMWorld and Intranets 2008 to a successful close.
SLA members should plan to attend KMWorld & Intranets 2009 next November in San Jose. There is much to be learned from the sessions and exhibits, and the networking opportunities are superb.
Karen Takle Quinn, Ph.D.
[email protected]
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