Keith November 5th, 2008
Well, as promised threatened, a video of “Clancy of the Knowledge Flow” is now available on YouTube. (If you want to skip the introduction, the music starts at 1:40 into the video.)
Read more about this on the previous post here, or go directly to the full list of the lyrics.
Keith October 21st, 2008
One of the highlights of this year’s actKM Conference was the Collaboration Cabaret. This is well documented on Serena Joyner’s site.
My contribution to this was a musical item. It was introduced something like this:
Australia actually has a long history in Knowledge Management. Over a hundred years ago, we had two key practitioners in the field - ‘Banjo’ Paterson and Henry Lawson. They did some ground-breaking work in conveying knowledge of life in rural Australia to the emerging urban environment.
They collected knowledge using Anecdote Circles (around the campfire) and delivered it as Springboard stories, often published in a major Knowledge Management publication of the day, The Bulletin magazine.
Tonight, we will look at one of Banjo’s key archetypical characters, Clancy of the Overflow. Clancy works in an ideal environment as a drover. The Narrator is contemplating his lot in his “dingy office”.
We are updating the story: how would these knowledge workers fare in today’s collaborative environment?
To find out, read the full lyrics. Breaking news: The video is now on YouTube here.
Keith September 25th, 2008
I wrote earlier this year about “Practice, Communities and Technology“. This post stressed the importance of the “practice”:
For a CoP to be successful, the community must become part of the practice itself… the community needs to become part of how they do their job.
People in an organisation will just not do things that aren’t part of their job accountability and that they see no point in doing.
Just today I hit on a really neat metaphor to illustrate this…
Keith September 3rd, 2008
“… I knew him, Horatio, a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy.”
(If you are out there, Yorick, I hope you don’t mind me posting this. I’m not making fun of you, but I do wonder about your parents’ taste in names…)
Keith September 1st, 2008
Scott Adams - of Dilbert fame - owns and operates a restaurant. He also writes a blog. In a recent post, he outlines a number of initiatives he has introduced to increase his competitive edge, to some extent borrowed from Internet marketing techniques. In summary, these are:
Neat ideas - where else could you apply this sort of thinking?
Keith August 28th, 2008
Now everybody wants one:
Mistake makes ‘iPhone girl’ a celebrity
“A Chinese factory worker has become a celebrity after her smiling face was accidentally loaded onto an Apple iPhone and shipped to the other side of the world, her employer has said.
“The unidentified worker flashed a smile and made a peace sign to a co-worker whose job was to test the device’s camera in the southern city of Shenzhen, said a spokesman for Foxconn, which assembles the phones for Apple. The woman’s colleague apparently forgot to delete the photo from the phone, which was sold to a consumer in Britain, who posted it [to MacRumors.com] on the Internet, Foxconn spokesman Liu Kun told AFP on Wednesday.”
Apparently Apple have no plans to adopt this as standard practice, but this raises an interesting question:
“As one person wrote in an Internet post: ‘It would be great for every Chinese worker who makes your iPhones to take a snap of herself or her factory friends … a hello from a person you would never otherwise meet. Globalisation in practise.’”
A new social networking technology?
Keith August 7th, 2008
Start with a cage containing five monkeys.
Inside the cage, hang a banana on a string and place a set of stairs under it. Also, set up a system of cold water sprinklers over the whole cage.
Before long, a monkey will go to the stairs to climb towards the banana. As soon as he touches the stairs, spray all of the monkeys with cold water. The monkey will leave the banana alone and try to get away from the water. Turn off the spray.
After a while, another monkey will make an attempt with the same result. Pretty soon the monkeys will get sick of getting wet, and will stop any of the monkeys from attempting to climb the stairs, even though no water sprays them.
Keep this up for several days.
Now, remove one monkey from the cage and replace it with a new one.
The new monkey sees the banana and wants to climb the stairs. To his surprise, all of the other monkeys attack him. After another attempt and attack, he knows that if he tries to climb the stairs, he will be assaulted.
Next, remove another of the original five monkeys and replace it with a new one. The newcomer goes to the stairs and is attacked. Even the previous newcomer takes part in the punishment with enthusiasm. Likewise, replace a third original monkey with a new one, then a fourth, then the fifth.
Every time the newest monkey takes to the stairs, he is attacked.
Keith July 22nd, 2008
“It has always surprised me how little attention philosophers have paid to humour, since it is a more significant process of mind than reason. Reason can only sort out perceptions, but the humor process is involved in changing them.”
- Edward de Bono
The last presentation at KM Australia last night was from Gene Smith. This was one of my favourite types of presentation - wide-ranging, interesting, mind-expanding and minimal text on the slides.
The main topic was the future of information architecture. Among other things, Gene talked about the following:
Keith July 18th, 2008
“… officials held a press conference to alert law enforcement officials of a dangerous new hallucinogen…”
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