Archive for the 'Travel' Category

The Business Adventure

Keith March 9th, 2010

Adventures are not adventures if there isn’t a degree of danger and uncertainty about them. – Ewan McGregor

Adventure

While in Blackwood this weekend, we drove into Trentham for a visit.

There was a group of motorcyclists in town, and I struck up a conversation with one (who was riding a very nice touring BMW). He was preparing to take part in the “2010 Long Ride”, an event to raise funds for prostate cancer research in Australia, in which he and others will be riding from Melbourne to Darwin via New South Wales and Queensland – a distance of over 4,000 km.

I talked about my 1980 trip across the Nullarbor from Melbourne to Karratha, WA. On this trip, I travelled 5,000 km in six days on a GSX 750 Suzuki (and home again at a slightly slower rate).

Crossing the Nullarbor

This put me in mind of “Long Way Round” – Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman’s epic 2004 motorcycle ride across Europe, Russia and North America. I have recently watched this on DVD, and have now just started reading the book. Inspiring stuff!

Thinking about this on the way home, I also thought about some of the other things I had heard about adventuring from Nick Farr at a recent CPX meeting.

Climbing Everest is pretty serious stuff. Here are some of the thoughts that I tweeted from Nick’s presentation:

  • The number of deaths on Everest is 8% of the number of summiteers.
  • A dream becomes a goal when you start actively planning it.
  • Success requires taking risks.
  • Failure teaches that taking risks is crucial.
  • Failure provides an experience you can’t buy.

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Going to KM World?

Keith October 6th, 2009

The nice people at KM World offered me a free invitation to attend this year’s conference (17 to 19 November, in San Jose, California) in return for posting here about a discount offer for readers of this blog.  They have very kindly told me that this site is one of : “the top blogs covering knowledge management and knowledge workers”.

Unfortunately, I can’t really take them up on the offer to attend – not unless someone is willing to sponsor me for the travel and accommodation costs, etc – but you, dear reader, can still take advantage of the discount offer.  You get a $200 discount on each full-conference pass, and you can also sign up for a free expo pass, all by clicking through to the discount offer.

They did send me this some time ago, and I am not sure if there is a cut-off date for the discount, so you may need to be quick.

So now you can’t say that I never do anything for you…

:-)

The rains down in Africa

Keith July 11th, 2009

I have been following the “TOTO challenge” for a while now.  ActionAid Australia is sending Australian bloggers to remote parts of the world. Why? To help give poverty a voice:

“Using blogs, Twitter, Facebook and more, the outreach blogger will travel to one of ActionAid’s program countries to help locals harness the power of social media to secure their human rights. You don’t need to be a blogging expert, you just need to have an open mind and be passionate about fighting the root causes of poverty. Social injustice and poverty are easy to ignore when hidden from view. Your mission will be to help bring attention to the scandal of poverty.”

The bloggers will spend one to two weeks in a remote community, blogging their experiences, and – importantly – training locals to use tools such as Twitter and blogs to shine a light on social injustice and human rights abuses.

One blogger has already been there to check out how the program will proceed. Read about Stilgherrian’s experiences on his blog.  Read some further discussion on how challenging this really is on Laurel Papworth’s blog – particularly read some of today’s comments (11 July).

Some very worthy people are now nominating themselves to be outpost bloggers. I have also put my hand up. My nomination text is as follows:

Most nominees here are far more worthy of this than I am – seriously. However, if you still need any more candidates, consider my hat to be in the ring.

I blog (and tweet – @kdelarue), and I have taught people about blogging.  I have been writing my own web sites for 10 years.

I absorb other cultures by eating in Lebanese restaurants in Sydney Rd, Coburg, and go to difficult, remote places by walking around Little India when I go to Singapore to speak at conferences.

The most adventurous thing I have done is to travel 5,000 km by motorcycle from Melbourne to Karratha, WA, in 6 days (29 years ago).

I enjoy writing and talking, researching and teaching. I have been known to get passionate about injustice, and I support Oxfam and others from the comfort of my armchair.

I am not fazed by having to set up my own technology under difficult circumstances, and am quite used to helping others to get things working as needed.

Work-wise, I only need approval from myself to make the time available to go.

Does any of this qualify me to help out with this project? Probably nothing like as much as others here, but drop me a line if you run out of the really suitable people, and I’ll be there.

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KM Strategy Slide pack available

Keith March 11th, 2009

The slide pack I presented at the recent BrightStar conference – 7th Annual Information Management Summit, in Wellington, New Zealand – has now been loaded to SlideShare.

There is a brief synopsis of the presentation on a previous post.  Summary points as follows:

  • Developing a knowledge sharing toolkit
  • Keeping content up to date
  • Dealing with knowledge hoarding
  • Using multiple media and applying Social Media principles 

As I also chaired one day of the conference, there is also a bonus introductory slide pack, featuring photos of New Zealand!

Developing an Organisational KM Strategy

Keith February 17th, 2009

 After a long break (due to appearing to be very busy for some time), back to the blog.  Just a brief note to advise that I will be speaking in Wellington, New Zealand at BrightStar’s 7th Annual Information Management Summit on Tuesday 3 and Wednesday 4 March. The title of my presentation is: Developing Organisation-Wide Knowledge Management Strategy and Incorporating Social Media in the Process.  A brief precis follows: 

This international case study presents the Knowledge Management and Transfer toolkit developed by the Telstra Corporation (Australia) Enterprise & Government KM team.
 
This toolkit was used to capture the product and service knowledge developed by the Product Management teams, and make it available to the business sales force, using an integrated program of content, communications and training initiatives.  This included developing a standard taxonomy, governance processes and templates, with all developed content made available via a single portal.
 
This presentation will focus on the processes used to maintain the currency of content, the use of an open policy and rewards and recognition to promote knowledge sharing, and the use of multiple media to ensure that the needs of the total audience were adequately catered for.

The lessons learned from this development are broadly applicable to knowledge capture and sharing in project teams, organisational changes, enterprise-wide knowledge programs and many other similar situations.

I will also be chairing day two of the conference. 

In other news, my son Scott is in the final stages of planning for a two-month trek on the National Bicentennial Trail with three friends (and six horses). We have set up a new blog for loading stories and photos once the trip commences.  They will be starting at Providence (near Canberra), and the plan is to finish at Knockwood, Victoria.  We will be travelling to meet them at least once during the trip.

So that’s two trips I’ll be doing in March, not counting a few days in Darwin for my mother’s 95th Birthday.  And then there’s the CPA Congress in Newcastle, as well…

Mr. Conroy, you are Talking Cock!

Keith November 13th, 2008

Talking Cock (v.): A Singaporean term meaning either to talk nonsense or engage in idle banter.
 - The Coxford Singlish Dictionary

Over the last few years, I have had the privilege of traveling to Singapore on a number of occasions to speak at conferences.  I have greatly enjoyed the experience - both the conferences, and wandering around Singapore as a tourist.  I have met some fantastic people there, and have greatly enjoyed the culture – and the food!

Singapore is a land of contrasts.  It is richly multicultural, with all public signage in four languages.  The population is predominantly Chinese, yet most of the public institutions are as British as they were before independence.  It has earned a reputation as a non-democratic nation, yet the country is alive with art and innovation, and not in the least like a totalitarian state.  I feel safer walking around the streets anywhere in Singapore than I do in some parts of Melbourne.

Some would like to portray Singapore as a place where freedom of speech is suppressed by the government, yet Singapore is now becoming increasingly open. One friend I have made in Singapore is Enrico Varella.  Enrico introduced me to a fantastic local web site – Talking Cock.

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Nostalgia – it ain’t what is used to be

Keith November 3rd, 2008

I have just been along to a reunion at my old school – Colac High School, in western Victoria.  I have only ever been to one of these before, and that was a long time ago.  All the more interesting this time, as this will be the last reunion at that campus, after something like 96 years of a school on that site.  A new, single campus is now taking over from the two original government schools – once the High and Tech schools.

It was an interesting experience.  Trying to recognise people after all these years was particularly interesting.  Some of the school-ground and buildings seemed almost identical to what I remember.  Some of the buildings do seem much smaller than I remember, too!  The old back-stage lighting control room in the hall was boarded up! I spent many happy hours there… Some of the locations brought back poignant memories, one of which I have written about here. 

I met a few of my classmates.  It was interesting comparing notes on the events of the intervening years.  I didn’t really ever engage with school much, or with many of the people there.  It was great to be able to effectively start off all over again with the people that I did meet. I may be in touch with some of them again.  I even met an old family friend, who had apparently once been a student there.

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Managing Knowlege for Competitive Advantage

Keith October 13th, 2008

On my way to this year’s actKM Conference.

Should be a fun couple of days!  While I am only booked in to this one as a regular attendee, I am also taking part in the activity on Tuesday night – the “Collaboration Cabaret”.  All will be revealed in due course!

I expect that I will be tweeting at the event – tag will probably be #actkm08.

Kakadu – Life at a different pace

Keith July 13th, 2008

While you sleeping
you dream something.
Tree and grass same thing.
They grow with your body,
with your feeling.

Bienvenue en Nouvelle Calédonie

Keith July 6th, 2008

Actually just back in Australia now from a few days’ holiday.  Had fun in Nouméa, Ile des Pins, and Phare Amédée, but couldn’t actually log into WordPress from the hotel, as the connection there was via some sort of rather badly behaved VPN.

Enjoyed the time, but some aspects were disappointing.  Mining is treated as more important than tourism in New Caledonia.

It was fun to practice my French again, but ran into an interesting language barrier.  On our second day there, Marilyn was experiencing some pains.  Fortunately turned out to not require any critical attention, but we did spend a few hours at the main hospital in Noumea – Gaston Bourret.

It was easy enough to communicate that there was some pain, using a mixture of my French and their Anglais.  But the problem arose in communicating the type of pain. How do you distinguish between a dull ache and a sharp pain across the language barrier?  A “niggly” pain doesn’t really translate. 

Looking up “pain” in my English-French dictionary was potentially dangerous.  One of the French alternatives offered was a word that I suspect actually means “labour pains”.  An attempt to use this could well have got us onto the wrong track entirely!

Language barriers become fairly obvious in this context, but how often do we have equally misleading communication when we are all speaking the same language?

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