We had an excellent session at KMLF last night with Stan.  24 of us in the room joined in the discussion on Communities.

Stan has kindly agreed to pass on his slide pack – you can now see it here: 

Communities Manifesto for KMLF

You can also read more about the Communities Manifesto on Stan’s site.

We also had some very active tweeting – not only from people in the room, but a number of others were also following the discussion from across the globe.  Here’s a slightly edited version of the Twitter discussion (from the #kmlf hashtag):

@Metaphorage A big thank you to the ARK Group Australia – organisers of #kmaus10 – for supporting Stan Garfield’s visit to Melbourne for #KMLF
@RodSherwin Checking out the new Emily McPherson Building for #kmlf (@ RMIT Building 13)
@helmitch #kmlf starting now @metaphorage intro’ing @stangarfield
@kdelarue #kmlf just kicking off – had to move to level 3 to get a working projector! The new RMIT building just opened today.
@kdelarue #kmlf – @stangarfield now on – “The communities manifesto”.
@helmitch #kmlf communities are people – they want to connect due to their interest + passion. This bonds them.
@helmitch #kmlf communities within organisations are *not* based on org structure or region
@Metaphorage Listening to Stan Garfield at #KMLF on his Communities Manifesto based on his experiences and research.
@Metaphorage Stan Garfield at #KMLF – things and focus in KM have changed, but the overriding principles remain the same.
@RodSherwin Communities are people not tools. Start with people 1st then find tools to support it #kmlf
@lukegrange RT @helmitch #kmlf communities within organisations are *not* based on org structure or region
@Metaphorage Stan Garfield at #KMLF – communities are people interacting, not tools (although can be useful to support communities).
@helmitch #kmlf there are so many tools for communities now, it’s confusing for people. Minimise choice.
@kdelarue Don’t offer *too* many choices of tools to a community; people just get confused, and opt out #kmlf
@helmitch #kmlf people join communities. Make it appealing to join, and stay.
@Metaphorage Stan Garfield at #KMLF – communities need to be voluntary, motivate members to join not conscript
@kdelarue Communities must be voluntary – make it something people don’t want to miss out on. #kmlf
@lukegrange Make sure communities cross boundaries but you need to be diplomatic. Key skills in EI needed. #kmlf
@helmitch #kmlf make communities broad around the area of interest – increase diversity of opinion/knowledge
@kdelarue Communities should be open, and span boundaries. Don’t lock out people who could offer diverse perspectives. #kmlf
@Metaphorage Stan Garfield at #KMLF – minimise redundancy in communities. Join people into existing similar interests in preference to separate.
@kdelarue Start broad, narrow down. Try to avoid redundancy in communities; helps to build critical mass. #kmlf
@helmitch #kmlf start broad and then narrow down into spin-off communities as needs. Niches not critical mass.
@helmitch #kmlf critical mass for communities – at least 50, better at 100 – rule of thumb.
@kdelarue A community should have about 50 members, with 100 an even better target. #kmlf
@Metaphorage Stan Garfield at #KMLF – build critical mass. Helps diversity of views and volume of interactions
@Metaphorage 24 people listening to Stan Garfield at #KMLF – clearly engaged with what he is sharing.
@kdelarue Avoid having too narrow a scope – challenge niche communities to prove they need to be separate. #kmlf
@helmitch #kmlf SCENT tools – Site, Calendar, Events, News, Threads
@Metaphorage Stan Garfield at #KMLF – communities need to be actively nurtured. Leaders make a big difference to fostering the interactions.
@helmitch #kmlf SHAPE tasks – Schedule, Host, Answer, Post, Expand – the community lead/facilitator role
@kdelarue People with niche interests should join a broad community 1st. If too broad *and* if enough interest, *then* form a new community. #kmlf
@Metaphorage Stan Garfield at #KMLF – enable interactions through TARGET – Types, Activities, Requirements, Goals, Energy/Engage, Tools
@Metaphorage Stan Garfield at #KMLF – SPACE- Subscribe, Post, Attend, Contribute, Engage.
@Metaphorage Stan Garfield at #KMLF – SMILE – Subject, Members, Interaction, Leaders, Enthusiasm
@helmitch #kmlf stories are a key measurement – what it did for the community members.
@lukegrange ROI is not critical it’s the stories which communities tell that determine it’s health. #kmlf
@Metaphorage Stan Garfield at #KMLF – PATCH (measures of community interaction) Participation, Anecdotes, Tools, Coverage, Health (activity)
@helmitch the ‘thank yous’ can be a key measure – no. of times people say thanks. #kmlf
@kdelarue Community success should not be measured by RoI – Participation, Anecdotes, Tools, Coverage, Health. #kmlf
@rosshill #kmlf @stangarfield suggests that stories are the most relevant metric for judging the health of a knowledge sharing community
@helmitch #kmlf great points re how to measure communities and ‘health check’ from @stangarfield
@kdelarue Health: activity – meaningful posts & articles, meetings, members, participation. #kmlf
@gaurisalokhe enjoying tweets coming in from #kmlf about community M&E. Thanks @kdelarue @Metaphorage @lukegrange @rosshill @helmitch
@kdelarue @gaurisalokhe Our pleasure! Lots of tweeps at #kmlf tonight.
@helmitch #kmlf need a mix of communication in a community; F2F, webinar, blogs, forums, conference calls, etc
@kdelarue … and thanks to all the people retweeting #kmlf tonight!
@helmitch #kmlf set the tone; welcome people, share stories, develop trust
@janstewart #kmlf @stangarfield trusting tone key for developing communities
@gaurisalokhe @kdelarue Thank god for that! Keep it rolling.. #kmlf
@Metaphorage Stan Garfield at #KMLF – looking forward to hearing Stan at #KMaus10 on his other experiences to draw on other aspects of collaboration
@kdelarue 5 key tools to support a community: “SCENT” – Site, Calendar, Events, News, Threads. #kmlf Don’t really need more than this.
@Metaphorage Stan Garfield at #KMLF – some open dialogue happening about the effectiveness of communities. Enjoying the interactions and perspectives.
@RodSherwin Awesome presentation by @stangarfield at #kmlf abt communities with lots to apply to #yammer and #vepn
@helmitch #kmlf ask communities for help – don’t give them orders or tasks. Tap into their knowledge.
@helmitch #kmlf fantastic talk – lots of food for thought here and practical things to take back to work.
@allisonhornery Likewise! RT @gaurisalokhe: enjoying tweets from #kmlf about community M&E. Thanks @kdelarue @Metaphorage @lukegrange @rosshill @helmitch
@kdelarue Communities should span org boundaries & be voluntary – they should not follow org lines & teams… #kmlf
@kdelarue … In fact, Cadbury once re-organised to match existing communities, due to the value they delivered. #kmlf
@elmibester RT Likewise! RT @gaurisalokhe: enjoying tweets from #kmlf about community M&E. Thanks @kdelarue @Metaphorage @lukegrange @rosshill @helmitch
@lukegrange @elmibester great to be in touch and pleased you enjoyed the #kmlf tweets.
@hwakelam @helmitch – sorry I missed #kmlf last night – family called – loved the tweets
@helmitch @hwakelam thanks, glad you enjoyed #kmlf tweets – hope to see you there some time!

Wednesday night’s presentation was fun, with about 20 of our community joining in the conversation.  The slide pack is now available for download from SlideShare.

For more background on the topics covered, here are some links to the material referenced:

• Read the original blog post at AcKnowledge Consulting.
• See the Wikipedia entry for Cynefin.
• Read more about Teresa Amabile’s work at the AcKnowledge Consulting blog – and the original Harvard Business School article.
• See the RSA Animate overview of Dan Pink’s Drive on YouTube – The surprising truth about what motivates us.
• Read Greg Lloyd’s blog post about Drucker – Enterprise 2.0 Schism.
• See John Smythe’s Engage for Change site.
• See the Wikipedia entry for The Wisdom of Crowds.

For more on the change management tools and approaches mentioned, see these sites:

• Cognitive Edge - David Snowden’s site  – for Cynefin and complexity tools.
• Anecdote - Shawn Callahan and Mark Schenk’s site – for business storytelling, change and anecdote circles.
• Gurteen Knowledge - David Gurteen’s site – for knowledge cafés.
• Change Management Toolbox – Michelle Lambert’s site - for the change management cards..
• The Organizational Zoo – Arthur Shelley’s site – for the book The Organizational Zoo and the matching zoo cards.

Finally, see “How to organise a children’s party” on YouTube.

“Nearly 60 percent of projects aimed at achieving business change do not fully meet their objectives.” – IBM, 2008.

Why does this happen? As many working in Knowledge Management and related fields understand, it’s all about people and complexity. Organisations are increasingly dependent on people and what they know in order to operate successfully in today’s environment. It is no longer sufficient for organisational change to be driven by a small handful of people – there is no monopoly on ideas.

In this session, Keith De La Rue will present and lead a conversation on: 

• Recent insights into effective organisational change.
• The impact of complexity and the importance of engaging people. 
• Creativity and the wisdom of crowds. 
• Social Media – the power of trust and openness.

Participating in this event will enable you to…

• Develop a clearer understanding of complexity and how to address it.
• Take away some new approaches for addressing change in your organisation.
• Find out where to go for more up-to-date information on change.

Agenda:  Wednesday June 23rd

6:00-6:30 Networking with other thinking collaborators (over drinks and nibbles).
6:30-7:15 Keith De La Rue –The Idea Monopoly?
7:15-8:00 Informal conversation amongst the group to explore the ideas and concepts.

Venue:

RMIT Graduate School of Business, 300 Queen Street, Melbourne
Lecture room 158.1.2B (Ground level – just behind reception).
Ample metered street parking nearby in Queen Street (between La Trobe and Little Lonsdale).

RSVP: by email to melbournekmlf@gmail.com

About our Guest Speaker

Keith De La Rue is an independent consultant at AcKnowledge Consulting, working in knowledge, communication and learning. He previously worked in Knowledge Management at Telstra for eight years. He has worked in a number of aspects of organisational change for over 20 years in a range of industries.

His most recent client project involved writing post-graduate training material covering trust, communication, social networking and knowledge sharing.

Keith has been a member of the Melbourne KMLF for 10 years, including time on the leadership committee, and has been a regular speaker at conferences in Australia and overseas since 2004 on a range of topics.

He blogs at http://delarue.net

Kate Andrews spoke to us on this topic on 24 February.  We have now uploaded a copy of Kate’s Presentation, and a related article: “Knowledge Assets – targeted knowledge transfer to mitigate risk“.

A couple of thoughts from Kate’s session that were shared on Twitter (thanks @helmitch):

• “Knowledge risk” is the risk associated with the under-utilisation or loss of knowledge that is critical to organisational performance.
• The challenge – how to tap into the knowledge that is in our heads to share – knowledge that is critical to organisational performance – and get it into the heads and hands of those who need it now.
• It’s not about ‘experts’, it’s about knowledge among and within the team.
• There is a high risk of knowledge loss where there is a high reliance on tacit knowledge, and unique problems or situations.
• It’s not about succession planning, it’s about understanding knowledge about “what” is most important to our organisation. Then we need to find where the knowledge is, and who has it.
• Prioritising knowledge risk is a business decision – understanding which knowledge is business-critical.
• If there is anyone who “can’t” go on leave (without being on call) – this is a knowledge risk person.

Kate gave an example of knowledge risk – a utility company had staff reaching retirement age with a total of 17,500 years experience in the industry.  Is this a knowledge risk? It is if a major part of that accumulated knowledge is business-critical.

Kate has also kicked off some discussion on this topic on our LinkedIn group.  If you are not already a member, you can click here to join up.

You can also now follow Kate on Twitter at @knowablekate!

 - Keith De La Rue

Topic:  User Adoption Strategies for Collaboration Technologies

What is the biggest complaint around the introduction of new collaboration technologies into a group or organization? The answer: No one uses them.

New tools are often rejected.  The very people who are supposed to use them don’t do so—they keep going with earlier ways of working.  Sometimes “culture” is blamed for this failure, but our speaker, Michael Sampson believes it is more accurate to point the finger at the lack of intentional effort on user adoption.

This discussion session provides an opportunity to learn about user adoption strategies, how other organizations around the world are tackling user adoption for collaboration technologies, and to share what strategies are working well in your organization.

Participating in this event will enable you to:

• Learn about the current state of play with user adoption strategies
• Develop your thinking about the user adoption strategy for collaboration technologies at your organization.

Agenda:  Monday February 15^th

6:00-6:30      Networking with other thinking collaborators (over drinks and nibbles).

6:30-7:15      Michael Sampson – User Adoption Strategies

7:15-8:00      Informal conversation amongst the group to explore the ideas and concepts.

Venue: 
RMIT Graduate School of Business and Law, 300 Queen Street. Melbourne
Lecture room 158.1.2C (Ground level – just behind reception).

Ample metered street parking nearby in Queen Street (between La Trobe and Little Lonsdale).

RSVP: by email to melbournekmlf@gmail.com

About our Guest Speaker

Michael Sampson is a Collaboration Strategist. He helps end-user organizations in New Zealand, Australia, the United States, Europe and other places around the world improve the performance of distributed teams.  Key themes are the effective use of collaboration technology to enhance distributed teams, using SharePoint for collaboration, and encouraging user adoption of collaboration technologies.  Michael has written two books on collaboration strategy, and is about to publish a third.  Michael is running a Masterclass on SharePoint Collaboration and Governance in Melbourne on Tuesday 16^th, for details see:  http://www.sharepointroadmap.com/melbourne.html

Link to the  presentation that Nancy decided NOT to deliver, instead facilitating conversations based on the concepts.  Conversations went very well and a great interactive session was enjoyed by all participants.

CoPs – a Personal Journey

Peter Chomley’s slide pack for last month’s event: “CoPs – a Personal Journey” is now available for download here.

Some of the things that struck me from the presentation, shared on Twitter during the session (see the slide pack for more details):

• How many “communities” have you been a member of over your life? How many things have changed over that time?
• Looking back, you can see times when you made decisions that fundamentally changed your life.
• Information Management is  explicit, individual, and about technology. Organisations do it for efficiency and productivity.
• Knowledge Management is tacit, and is about people in teams and communities. Organisations do it for effectiveness, learning, competency, responsiveness and innovation.

———————————–

Free event – Intranet Innovation Awards

Also, Step Two Designs will be announcing the winners of the annual Intranet Innovation Awards on 5 November in Sydney.  They will then be taking the show on the road with a free event in Melbourne on Tuesday 10 November:

“This year’s winners come from the USA, UK, Denmark, Russia, Australia and New Zealand. One winner has demonstrated $8 million of savings from their intranet project, and others have delivered solutions that have become core to how their organisations work. With ten winners, there are ideas that can be implemented by every intranet team.”

The event will be at the Telstra Theatrette, 242 Exhibition St, at 2:00 to 4:00 pm.  Step Two will share insights, screenshots and ideas from this year’s winners. Note that while this is a free event, registration is required before attending. Get all the info, and book your place promptly here!

2009 has been a great year for KMLF (see events summary below).  It is the first year that we have offered events in every month (two in August!).  We collaborated with other networks (KM Roundtable and VPSCIN) to manage a larger activity and hosted three international speakers.  Participants have enjoyed a wide range of topics and formats and we have successfully kept the events interactive and conversation based. This has generated a lot of positive feedback and good participation throughout the year.

The KMLF organisers are very much interested in your feedback and participation (both face to face and on-line).  This December (Wed 9^th) we will be hosting a preview/review conversation about where KMLF is at and where we want to be. We will start with drinks and conversation at the Business School and then walk to a nearby restaurant to continue dialogue over dinner.

Please start the conversations with colleagues and feel free to share your ideas with organisers through any of the means below (starting tonight at the meeting with Peter and again with Nancy White on Mon Nov 16^th).  

You can follow KMLF activities and events in many ways:

Talk with other members at events is always best, but alternatives exist:
Twitter use search tag #KMLF

KMLF Google Calendar see future events (usually 4^th Wed each month):
http://www.google.com/calendar/render?gsessionid=F6HUGXAlSpyYoDAK4TxCbw

KMLF Blog for comments and feedback: http://www.melbournekmlf.org/

KMLF mailing group for all previous announcements: http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/KMLF/

KMLF LinkedIn site for sharing comments and access to members blogs
http://www.linkedin.com/groups?home=&gid=1981496&trk=anet_ug_hm&goback=%2Eanh_1981496

Events Summary 2009

Had an excellent session with David on 17 Sep. About 30 or so people there – at least 7 of whom heard about the session on Twitter.

After David delivered his Twitter presentation, we moved into café format, with live tweets displayed on the screen via Twitterfall.

A couple of the highlights from David’s presentation:

Guide to the relationship building process:

1. Find an interesting person. 
2. Establish connection. 
3. Build relationship via social tools
4. Do stuff together
5. Go to 3.

Social Media Principles:

1. Share knowledge.
2. Be transparent & open. 
3. Be found & connectable anywhere!

Lots of other meaningful things were discussed, and shared on Twitter on the #kmlf tag.

We’ll be announcing our speaker for October shortly – stay tuned!

Some info from our previous meetings, notice of future events, and other updates. 

Knowledge Integration or Corporate Disintegration?

You can now download Bill Hall’s slide pack from the 26 August session.

Adaptive Leadership for Turbulent Times

Dave Snowden’s special session on 30 July was based on two earlier sessions. You can access the slide pack and a podcast of his session at the Civil Service College in Singapore on the Cognitive Edge site.  A shortened version of this was delivered to the IPAA in Melbourne on the same day as our presentation – the slide pack and podcast of this are also available at Cognitive Edge.

Leading Successful Knowledge Initiatives – Enhancing personal and organisational performance with embedded knowledge flows

As advised earlier by email, our own Arthur Shelley is delivering a two-day KM Masterclass for Ark Group in Melbourne on 28-29 October.  It will be at the Novotel Melbourne on Collins, and will feature a series of interactive conversations, supported by practical exercises to help you build your own knowledge-based strategy.

 As usual, a discount applies for Melbourne KMLF members. For all details, please refer to the online brochure. (We also have printed copies of this available at our meetings.)

Nancy White in November

We are in the early stages of planning for Nancy White to address us while she is in town.  Please keep the evening of Monday 16 November clear for now – more details later.  See the Full Circle Associates blog for more info about Nancy.

While she is here in November, Nancy will also be undertaking a series of workshops across Australia, in partnership with Innotecture (Matt Moore’s company) . I highly recommend this!  (Disclaimer: I am assisting  Matt with the Melbourne session.)

The Australian Collaboration Software Report

A reminder – if you are in Australia, and currently using collaborative software, or planning to acquire it, please fill out the survey at http://tinyurl.com/ozcollab now! This will give you the opportunity to benchmark your experience against that of others.  Read more about the survey on the OzCollab blog here; and our preliminary findings here.

(This initiative is being conducted by Matt Moore of Innotecture and myself).

Get the Buzz

Although the KMLF is mostly about the face-to-face meetings, you can follow some news and join the online discussion via our LinkedIn group – Melbourne KMLF. 

You can also check what’s going on by following the Twitterers amongst, or by searching for #kmlf on Twitter, or searching on #hashtags. (Results may vary!)