The KMWorld knowledge management conference is an annual deep dive into all things KM. And for people with wide interests and lots of stamina, there are parallel conferences focused on enterprise search, SharePoint and taxonomy. The reality is that these conferences offer far more sessions than any single person can take in during the course of three or four days. That said, I definitely gave it my best effort!
As is my practice, I generally live-blog or live-tweet the sessions I attend. For those of you interested in following the tweet stream, you can check on Twitter under the hashtag #KMWorld or you can check my personal tweet stream (Twitter.com/VMaryAbraham). You can also see the Storify archive of KMWorld tweets created by Eric Ziegler.
On the blogging front, here are my blog posts from the conference. (Since I was live-blogging, these summaries are raw reports rather than polished blog posts. So caveat lector!):
- Nicco Mele Keynote: Building Collaborative Organizations
- Dave Snowden Keynote: Big Data vs Human Data
- Carla O’Dell Keynote: Transforming the Way We Collaborate
- Dan Rasmus Keynote: 10 Things KMers Can Learn from Angry Birds
- Digital Workplace Trends and Transformation
- Expediting Learning for Smarter Organizations
- Following the Curve: A Change Management Strategy for the Digital Workplace
- Innovation Techniques
- Networked Worlds and Networked Enterprises
- Communities for Innovation
- Creating a Connected and Collaborative Organization: Top Tips
- Enterprise Collaboration Technology Market Review
- Building Smarter Networks
If you’d like to read more about the conference, I commend to you blog posts written by my friend, Catherine Shinners:
- Building Collaborative Organizations with Nicco Mele
- Business Value with Social – Wells Fargo, Unisys Stories at KM World
- The New Social Operating System – Pew Center Research
- Collaborative Culture, the Competitive Advantage-Telus at #KMWorld
On a final note, after the conference, the organizers asked us to identify our biggest takeaways from KMWorld 2013. Here’s my reply:
@KMWorld We need more convo abt why humans behave the way they do, & less abt why technology behaves the way it does. #KMWorld
— VMaryAbraham (@VMaryAbraham) November 11, 2013
Let me explain: As I attended various sessions, it became clear that there was a significant gap in understanding and execution among the participants (presenters and attendees alike). Some were still focused on what I would call “KM 1.0 activities” such as building and digitizing document collections. Meanwhile, others had moved past that to create virtual and physical spaces in which people could work collaboratively in a manner that maximized the sharing of useful knowledge. Some of this gap can be attributed to differences in experience and learning. Some of the gap was due to choices about technology. However, one huge piece of the puzzle related to differences in understanding about how humans behave in the work environment and how best to foster practices that achieve the primary aims of KM, as articulated by Dave Snowden: enable innovation and support better decision making.
When thinking about the wide range of human behaviors, we need to go beyond technical specifications to topics such as psychology, sociology, anthropology and behavioral economics. My hope is that next year’s KMWorld conference will include more conversation about those disciplines as a way of providing insight to rank-and-file knowledge management professionals so that we all can get a little closer to the goal of enabling human innovation and supporting better human decision making.
Above and Beyond KM 