The brief was a keynote presentation for Panviva’s annual SupportPoint User Conference.  SupportPoint is a “Business Process Guidance” system.

The brief was to deliver a Keynote presentation, and to set the theme for the conference: “Communication and Collaboration”.  The underlying theme that I used to couch this on was Creativity, and the importance of creativity in both leadership and knowledge work.  The slide pack is available on SlideShare.

I have used this as a good opportunity to shake off (at least some of) the shackles of PowerPoint – by using lots of pictures, and a lot less words.  Some of the photos are mine, and most of the rest are Flickr “Creative Commons – Attributions” licensed photos, all with links on the relevant slides.

As there are lots of pictures, some of the slides may not be clear without the voice over (which maybe I’ll add to SlideShare later).  The initial point is explaining my initial perceptions of creativity – influenced by the paintings of both my mother and my sister.  (See the post “Moving mountains” on this site for more of this story.)

The next section refers to the material in this post on creativity in leadership, and briefly touches on my thoughts on Change Management. I then go over some of my past experiences with a Knowledge Management Toolkit, and how we went about developing it.  The final part of the presentation picks up on a recent post on story at Anecdote, which includes a link to the story of “the one-armed boy”.

With that explanation, I hope it all makes sense, and that you enjoy this as much as I did!

Here’s mine:

Knowledge, communication, storytelling, language, learning, social media; with a dash of Zen. Oh, and consultancy and a big black cat.

If you are here because you read this, then you can read about the big black cat here.

You’ll find the Zen posts here.

The new projects I have been working on have mostly come via the network of people that I have had the privilege to meet and work with over the last four years or so.  Much of my contact with these people has been via this site, and via Facebook and LinkedIn.  (Which have also helped me to find a new car!)  So it was very timely that one of my network colleagues has drawn my attention to this NY Times article on LinkedIn’s recent capital raising.  (Thanks, Sharon!) 

LinkedIn has just raised $53 million (USD) in capital.  Based on this - and recent valuations of Facebook and MySpace - these three social networking sites are potentially worth something like the following (in USD):

• MySpace: $580 million
• LinkedIn: $1 billion
• Facebook: $15 billion

LinkedIn is planning to use the new capital to add further functionality, making it a more flexible collaborative working site.

The new mix of increased business applications and the existing personal applications is yet another sign that the traditional boundaries between work life and personal life are becoming even more blurred than when I wrote about it here last year.

Collaborative tools are all the rage at the moment.  In my new role (and without corporate services to rely on) I have been finding great benefits in such things as DOPPLR, Skype, Google Docs, Google Calendar and yes, even Twitter (in spite of earlier doubts).  In fact, Matt Moore and I spent a very fruitful few hours the other day working together on Google Docs and Twitter* to put the final touches on a 4,000 word magazine article (on Knowledge Management for B2B Sales Teams).

I recently heard Michael Sampson speaking on collaboration, and he has developed a great model for assessing the effectiveness of collaborative tools – 7 Pillars of IT-Enabled Team Productivity.  We (at the KMLF) are arranging for Michael to come to Melbourne to speak on Wednesday 23 July – keep an eye on the KMLF blog for further details.

So, here’s to more regular blogging again!

We have a whole generation of tech-savvy people now entering the workforce that have no memory of a world without PCs and the Internet – and only bad memories of an Internet without broadband access. They live on MySpace and Instant Messenger. If they come into a corporate office today, they will probably feel like their arms have been cut off. (I remember that one of my first workplaces didn’t have STD on the phone system and I had to go through an operator to make long distance calls – it seemed so archaic then!)

Different social media tools may suit different business environments. RSS allows individuals to choose what they read, which may be a big benefit, but corporate communications managers may be somewhat scared by this prospect! (Funny, because they can do that now by deleting emails…). People will adapt to use the tools that suit their needs.

Is there a distinction between “personal” and “professional” use of Social Media? Should we restrict the use of these tools in the workplace to “business use only” – or restrict the use of some media for fear that they will be used (or abused) for “personal” use?

If we do this, we are potentially restricting the ability of our people to be creative and productive. We are also showing mistrust, and knowledge sharing only flourishes in an environment of trust.

It can be unhelpful to try to compartmentalise our life too much. Is this blog personal or professional? Here’s another quote – one that I still find can be quite provocative:

The successful person in the art of living makes little distinction between their work and their play… they simply pursue their vision of excellence in whatever they do, leaving others to decide whether they are working or playing. To them, they are always doing both.