AcKnowledge Consulting

Keith April 30th, 2012

I am talking about Twitter at the First Tuesday Blog Club tomorrow night.  This may be an odd format for a blog post, but here are some of the ideas I may or may not talk about, depending on how the session goes, with links to the places some of the ideas are derived from:

Intro

• Why do you use Twitter?
• Do you want to use Twitter for business or pleasure?
• What to you want to achieve with Twitter?
• Does it matter?

 I won’t be telling you how to get 300,000 followers; but I can tell you how I have got to 1,400!

Why I use Twitter

• Working on joint project – questions and answers.
• Offering tech help – stuck volume control on iPad.
• Retweeting observations: “If only they enforced bank regulations like they do park rules, we wouldn’t be in this mess.”
• Reading thoughts: “Closed networks are ignorance amplifiers”.
• News: The world’s lightest material has been created – a nanotechnology metal grid 100 times lighter than polystyrene foam.
• Sharing domestic activities: Making Christmas pudding.

 http://delarue.net/blog/2012/04/a-series-on-social-media/

How to get “Klout”

• Set goals?
• Develop your own voice
• Get noticed
• Find interesting hashtags and use them – eg #km, #kmlf, #kmedu
• Find people using paper.li and tweet on their subjects
• Get re-tweeted by influencers 
• Klout.com is interesting, and gives some guidance on your effectiveness.
• It can tell you a bit about your style
• It isn’t everything, and don’t compare yourself too much with others, as it can be gamed.
• It can be misleading: eg, am I influential on Melbourne, Sydney and the Philadelphia Eagles?

 http://klout.com/

How to misbehave on Twitter

• Multiple @s too often
• Nothing but links
• Duplicating same link > 25%
• Posting same tweet too often
• > 50% “app spam” – 4 sq, blip.fm, etc
• No activity for over one month
• Fewer that 10 tweets
• Never interact with followers
• Over 90% RSS feed
• Follow back < 10%
• All talk, no interaction, over 24 per day
• Unoriginal – > 70% RTs
• Self-obsessed – > 50% of tweets about themselves
• Unpopular – < 30% follow back

 http://thetwitcleaner.com/

Expanding your scope

• Set goals.
• Choose who to follow – look at lists. Where is your audience?
• Tweet throughout the day. Use schedules, but be there to follow up.
• Use a simple handle that is easy to remember.
• Use your profile – include useful info, a welcoming picture and link to landing page.
• Connect with other social networks
• Do not use protected tweets or validators – make it easy!
• Remember to think about context, particularly if you are tweeting via another social network.
• Be helpful to others – it’s not all about you.
• Be nice – don’t name and shame unfollowers.

 http://inboundmarketinggeek.com/twitter-mistakes/

And who knows? Some of that may even make some sense. Thanks to those on Twitter who tweeted some of the links I have used here.

• Events , Social Media
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Keith April 25th, 2012

Seems I’ve been featured in IABC Victoria online properties three times recently.

I was interviewed in March on The link between comms and knowledge management for the chapter blog, and I was profiled in the February Connect newsletter.

Now I am the subject of an article published on the main web site – Tweak your business conversations to achieve more, highlighting the topic that has been discussed on this blog before, and mentioning my upcoming appearance at KM-UK in London in June.

• About , Communication , Conversation , Events , Knowledge Mgt , Travel
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Keith April 3rd, 2012

I recently wrote a series of three articles for Star News Group’s Business West magazine on Social Media. One of these is mentioned in the previous post here – now I can upload all of them here in a set.  They are:

Let’s talk Social Media (Nov 2011)
Social media is not only something you can no longer ignore, it’s part of a bigger shift that is changing everything…

To tweet or not to tweet (Dec 2011)
Let’s first dispel the myth that it’s all about telling people what you had for breakfast…

Time to face facts (Feb 2012)
The real power of social media is in opening the shop or factory walls, and letting the customers in – making them part of the business…

Do these reflect your experience of social media? I would love to hear your thoughts…

• Social Media
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Keith November 20th, 2011

Well, that was my working title for an article published in the November issue of  Business West. The title for the published article ended up as the more prosaic – but probably more appropriate – Let’s talk social media.

A PDF version of the article is now available for download from this site.

This is planned to be the first in a three-part series at Business West. I have just submitted article number two, titled (for now) To tweet or not to tweet. You’ll see it first on Business West.

• Social Media
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Keith June 11th, 2011

David Gurteen has recently posted an article comparing his Knowledge Café concept and World Café, which are similar processes, but with “some subtle but significant differences”.

As I have been doing a fair bit of both work and writing on collaboration recently, I have been attempting to sharpen up my own ideas about these techniques and the differences. In practice, I tend to modify the techniques to match the context, rather than necessarily follow a strict format, but it is useful to understand the origins and strengths of the different approaches.

David has spelt out the differences quite thoroughly in his article, but I thought that it may be helpful to put together a bit of a summary here, also drawing on my own experience and observations.

As David is at some pains to point out, he is not saying that there is anything wrong with the World Café approach – it is just different. Each approach has its place and purpose.

David makes the point that World Café tends to have a fixed structure, whereas Knowledge Café can be more varied. However, there are also a number of other techniques used by some practitioners based on the World Café approach, such as Pro-action Café, which adds some features of Open Space Technology to a more focussed World Café to explore specific issues and produce action plans.

I see either format as potentially valuable in a range of contexts, alongside many other conversational techniques. These techniques can help both community groups and business organisations to share knowledge, build rapport and develop solutions to problems. As David has listed in his article, these can include:

• Peer Assist
• After-action Review
• Post-project Review
• Knowledge Café
• World Café
• Open Space Technology
• Appreciative Inquiry
• Unconference
• Barcamp

Here in Melbourne we also have our own very special format, Trampoline,  which is now being taken to the wider world.

Remember – it’s the conversation that matters!

• Change Mgt , Communication , Community , Conversation , Facilitation , Knowledge Mgt
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Keith May 13th, 2011

Later today I’m speaking at Knowledge transfer in a digital age - a free Information Awareness Month event in Melbourne, jointly promoted by a number of organisations in the “records, archives, library and information management community”.

I am presenting an updated version of the Knowledge Transfer Toolkit presentation - read more about the background on this site, including this recently published article. The outline of the presentation is as follows:

Building and managing a knowledge transfer program:

How do you encourage technical experts to share their knowledge with others in the organisation that need it to do their jobs? How do you maintain currency and accuracy? This case study presentation will explain how to build a successful knowledge transfer toolkit.

Topics include:

• Encouraging knowledge-sharing behaviours
• Building a program-managed multimedia toolkit, comprising content, communication, learning and social media
• Governance – keeping content up to date
• Engaging the target audience in improving content
• Using social media principles to build trust and engagement

View or download the slide pack on SlideShare here.

• Communication , Events , KM Toolkit , Knowledge Mgt , Learning , Social Media
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Keith May 9th, 2011

Further to previous posts here on the transformative power of conversation – the Ignite presentation at KMLF, and the trampoline presentation - I have now also written an article on the topic, which was published by Thomson-Reuters’ Online Currents last month.

This article has documented in a little more detail the recent research that highlights how conversation can actually make us smarter and more innovative – this research is from:

• Anita Williams Woolley et al, who found that “small groups demonstrate distinctive ‘collective intelligence’ when facing difficult tasks”.
• Steven Johnson’s book Where Good Ideas Come From, on cultural progress and how innovation really works.
• Oscar Ybarra et al, showing that even brief, friendly conversations can improve individual mental function.

This research is summarised and drawn together in the article, along with other thoughts on conversation, change and social media.

Download a copy of the article here.

• Collaboration , Communication , Community , Conversation , Creativity , Knowledge Mgt , Motivation
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Keith April 22nd, 2011

So just over a month ago – just after landing back from my few days in Brisbane - I spent a few days down at Wildwood Retreat in Pennyroyal Valley with twelve other people.

We came together to talk about – and experiment with – various tools and techniques of group facilitation.  The retreat was arranged by Viv McWaters (@vivmcw) and Johnnie Moore (@johnniemoore), who had also just flown in from a couple of weeks of facilitation in the Solomon Islands and other places.

As much as it was about learning and doing stuff, it was about relaxing and having fun. I was there as Matt Moore (@engin_eer) had invited me. (Thanks, Matt!) Although I did already know some of the other people there, it was also a great time of meeting new people. It was also the first time that I had picked up a guitar for over a year – Geoff Brown (@geoffbrown3231) very kindly didn’t protest when I borrowed his every time he put it down!

Wildwood was a bit run down, as it was actually on the market, and the owner was no longer resident on site. The catering was excellent, and the location marvellous, but the nights were getting cooler, and the wood fire heating was rather short of fuel. Some of us tracked down some wood, and Geoff kindly wielded the splitter. Given my experience with wood fires at Blackwood, I got the Coonara going on the first morning there, and kept it stoked up for the duration. (For which I was christened “fireguy” by Johnnie.)

One of the highlights was the evening that I was sitting around fiddling with the guitar (or guitaring, I guess), and Johnnie suggested we improvise a song. After a bit of work, we got a chorus going, and improvised as many verses as we could as the others came into the room – and then ran away to the other end of the room as quickly as they could!

Continue Reading »

• Complexity , Conversation , Events , Facilitation , Humour , Travel
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Keith April 16th, 2011

So today I presented this topic at trampoline.  Trampoline is a “self-organising event for those who find the world interesting, have something to offer and share, and have an inquisitive mind”. I’ve been at some of the earlier trampoline days, and it’s great to get back and get energised again!

photo: thesquigglyline

This morning, I presented on the same topic as my last KMLF presentation – see this post for the details.  This time, I have tweaked the presentation a little, and had the luxury of enough time to get the audience engaged in the conversation. Since the KMLF presentation, I have also  written an article on this topic for Online Currents, which is being published this month. A copy of the article will be posted here a little while after the magazine is out.

The new slide pack is now up on SlideShare.  One thing that has emerged from this work that is added to this version of the presentation is my proposed Innovative Meeting Test:

• Have we all been introduced?
• Is everyone open and willing to change?
• Are we all taking equal turns?
• Is the talk friendly and constructive?
• Do we have sufficiently diverse viewpoints?

• Collaboration , Communication , Conversation , Creativity , Events , Facilitation , Social Media
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Keith April 1st, 2011

Matt Moore, the chair of the NSW KM Forum, and I will be facilitating two Knowledge Cafés on 11 April, one on each of these topics.

These events will be taking place at the Abbotsford Convent. Information Governance will run from 10:00 am to 12:00 noon; Followership from 2:00 pm to 4:00 pm. Booking is required for these sessions – entry is only $20 for each.

Information Governance: How do we manage this flood of “stuff” that we have created as individuals and organisations? More information here; Book now.

Followership: We hear a lot about leaders, but what about followers? Some more background at the Followership Centre; Book now.

Matt Moore is Director of Innotecture. He has over a decade’s worth of experience working in knowledge management, learning and development, internal communications and community development with PricewaterhouseCoopers, IBM, Oracle and the Australian government. See more info at http://innotecture.co….

Please feel free to pass this on to anyone else that may be interested in attending.

• Events , Knowledge Mgt , Management , Motivation
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