After KM Europe 2004

Not KM!

Just back online after a very inspiring trip to the Knowledge Management Europe 2004 Conference in Amsterdam. As with any conference the sessions varied from really great to really poor but on balance I got quite a lot from the sessions I attended and my fellow participants this year were a really interesting bunch of people from all over the world (including South Africa, Canada, India, Austria, The Netherlands, Germany, Russia, France and Australia).

Highlights included a far ranging opening keynote which was nominally entitled ‘Knowledge Navigation’ – a high speed tour through the intellectual capital landscape by the self-proclaimed grandfather of intellectual capital himself - Leif Edvinsson. I recorded his words in a ConceptMap (which I will make available from this weblog) but many of the areas covered simply weren’t joined-up very much, so my map is a little chaotic. Some key words and phrases from his talk included ‘insourcing’, ‘innovation ecology’, ‘psychologically supportive design’ and ‘brainstilling’ (as opposed to brainstorming). Claudia Schmitz – an ex SKA colleague and energetic KM consultant in Germany summed up his approach by saying “He’s a jumper.” I couldn’t have put it more succinctly myself.

Karl Wiig also spoke on ‘People-Focused KM’ – sadly I missed his keynote but did get the opportunity to speak with him and get a signed copy of his latest book ‘People-Focused Knowledge Management’ – review to follow once I’ve got through it – I’m afraid that it’s quite intense but there is a lot of original thinking in there so I will persevere.

At the ECLO event we had an interesting presentation on ‘Return on Thinking’ from Ruud Bolsius and one on ‘Personal Knowledge Management’ (or PKM) facilitated by KnowledgeBoard. As far as PKM is concerned no one was clear exactly what it meant but we had an interesting Open Space session trying to create some sort of shared view as to what it could be. The results from the session will be shared via a ‘wiki’ – a sort of group developed web site. I’ll link to it as soon as it hits the web.

‘The Vendors’ were promoting their usual systems approach to KM and it just made me more certain that most of what people are now calling KM is actually IM in a shiny new suit. Of course the acid test depends upon your definition of exactly what knowledge is but I’m increasingly behind the idea that knowledge resides in people’s heads and nowhere else. I’m on the look-out for a knowledge litmus test that I can use whenever I come across IM being positioned as KM. My first step will be to have a sign made containing the words ‘NOT KM’ that I can hold up at conferences whenever I see IM masquerading as KM. Luckily for me I’m interested in IM too so it was good to see some useful tools from people like Addept and OpenText (who’s ‘KM’ solution had high praise from Siemens). Google were also there to promote their ‘Google Search Appliance’ – basically a ‘yellow black-box’ that brings Google strength searches to your organisation – for a price (but I’ve forgotten what the price was). Hardly KM though? Comments anyone?

Away from the conference Amsterdam had its usual easygoing vibe. It’s not always the smartest looking of cities but like my home town Dublin it has a great feel and is a tremendously cosmopolitan place. And the Dutch have wonderfully open minds – if only they could export some of that freethinking to the UK along with the Heineken!