• Martin Dart has a few quite detailed posts on his blog.
• Shawn has put up a post that includes the results of the dotmocracy exercise on “Trust creating behaviours”.
• Cheryl Doig posted on “The Importance of Trust“.
• Anthony Coles posted his thoughts: “There were more cliches and acronyms than a orthodontists convention…”
• Che Tibby, vising from NZ, has posted this so far.
• Gene Smith posted before the conference here and here – I expect that there may be more to come.
• Jeff Kelly also posted before the conference here.

(For all posts on this topic here, see the KM Aus 08 category.)

Regarding the KMLF session – a bit hard to say more than Frank has already written at VPS-CIN!

“If something’s worth doing, it’s worth making someone else do it.”

I’m sitting in a small bar in Bourke St called “Spleen Central“, listening to a great three-piece jazz band (Heather Stewart jazz blues trio – featuring Heather on violin). Just come from this month’s KMLF meeting – more about that later. Ideal environment for a final post on KM Australia…

The quote above is in reference to another twist on social networking – Dabble Do. The idea is to use your online social network to get your friends to do your stuff for you.

The first session of the second day (which I sadly missed part of) was from Jeff Kelly. The following points are mostly from Jeff, so far as I remember.  (* Late addition – I expect some were also from John Girard and Ian Farmer of Bullseye – apologies to any other presenters I may be quoting here!)

• Enterprise 2.0 is supported by three legs – technology, process and culture, and all three must be in balance. Unlike the old days of big IT installations, the technology is now the easy bit. Culture is now the challenge. We have to move from command and control to open and sharing.
• People learn differently in this environment.
• Search and discovery is replacing hierarchy and structure.
• “Fuzzy boundaries create innovation.”
      – Verna Allee
• People are talking about FriendFeed – I’ll have to check it out.
• People are learning things outside their organisations. In Enterprise 2.0, we need to think about “organisations without borders” – we all need to think like freelancers. (Fairly easy for me at the moment!)
• Another example of Second Life being used as an organisational training environment – see the simulated Canadian Border crossing on YouTube.

To blog or not to blog?

And finally – for those in major corporate (and government) organisations trying to decide whether or not to engage with the public using Web 2.0 tools, just remember that they are already talking about you anyway. You get to choose whether you join in (and influence) the conversation or not…

(Thanks, Nerida!)

“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:

• Twitter search – compared to Google, this adds the power of mining conversations, as well as content.
• Microformats – DOPPLR uses microformats to import your Twitter contacts. (Guess I’d better try this…)
• Somebody during the afternoon – I think it was Gene – mentioned the Semantic Web in the same category as time machines: “not practical”.
• Tagging – particularly social tagging (delicious, etc). He also mentioned ZigTag, which offers “tagging with semantic context.”

This last point again reminds me of my thoughts at a Patrick Lambe presentation a while ago. Patrick talked about taxonomies and folksonomies, but added that there are some tools that allow you to combine these. Build a taxonomy, but then allow the construction of folksonomies as well. Once you see how people tag content, you can use this to refine the formal taxonomy.

This concept can be illustrated with a very clear analogy. Imagine a schoolyard, where nice, regular concrete paths have been laid down between buildings, around the manicured lawns. What happens now? The students will wear their own paths across the lawns on the most direct lines between buildings.

What do the gardeners do to protect their lawns? Do they put a fence around the lawn, or install “keep of the grass” signs? The best idea would be to simply pave the new (and probably more efficient) tracks.

Even the team arguing against freely admitted that technology is an important enabler – we aren’t Luddites – the argument is that it’s first and foremost about people.

Arthur asked another question – how many people changed their mind as a result of the debate? Only two.

(For all posts on this topic, see the KM Aus 08 category.)

The show started on a good note. Arthur Shelley asked for a show of hands from the audience to indicate all those from organisations that are increasing their investment in Knowledge Management. Over half of the audience of around 150 put up their hands.

This is definitely good news!

Sad news from Ark, though – Kylie is moving on! (Good news for Kylie, though – congratulations!)

Interesting keynote from Hideo Yamazaki. Japanese companies previously had very effective social networks, but the focus on efficiency in the 1990s destroyed this. This loss of “shared feelings” has destroyed trust, and thus reduced knowledge sharing.

The current awakening in the west to the importance of networks and trust means that we all now need to go back to where Japan already was for hundreds of years…