Each day as Knowledge Management practitioners, we work to build and retain knowledge and networks. We each have our preferred systems to help us make more efficient and effective decisions, presentations, reports and proposals to impress and engage those around us or just prove a point.   Today’s forum is an open collaborative discussion to share what KM support tools we each use both from a personal and business perspective.

Luke will facilitate the conversation by introducing some new innovative collaborative platforms he has been prototyping and engage in open conversation about others you like.  Consider:

• What tools do I use to get my job done? 
• Which of these are most helpful and in what ways?
• What are all these new tools I have heard of and do they help?
• What business activity do I need a tool for, but have not yet found one?

Participating in this event will enable you to:

• Walk away with a list of the latest tools and support systems for KM
• Hear about what other have done to satisfy their requirements
• Take charge of your knowledge and social network base

• Highlight the tools KMLF practitioners find most useful at this time. 

Agenda:  March 24

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

6:30-7:15      Luke Grange  – Favourite new social tools & requirements.

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 158.2.4 (One level up from Ground 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

For over 15 years, Luke has been offering practical advice to small and large businesses on how to understand and disseminate their knowledge so that they can make better decisions. He recently developed a project together with the Swinburne Brain Sciences Institute to understand Online Social Media and Emotional Intelligence skills and bring these concepts together for the first time in a worldwide research project. His e-Book “Developing an Online Social Media culture” was successfully launched this year.  Luke has recently been helping companies develop and nurture online communities both inside and outside the organisation.  Luke ran the ICT department for a national company in South Africa and worked in international Business Intelligence and Business Performance roles for Comshare in UK, USA and Europe and rolled out Knowledge Management and Social Customer Relationship Management projects across Europe for Internet Consultancy, marchFIRST.  Since migrating to Australia, his company Knowledge Solutions has grown through helping clients build benefit from open innovation, crowd sourcing and customer engagement by developing their understanding of Online Social Media and knowledge sharing.

 The world is turning faster & faster and the only element that will remain is change. Organizations have to deliver better, faster, more efficient products & services to clients who demand more and more. You can wait until a great idea pops up but this reactive position can mean the end of your organization.

Another approach is being pro-active and continuously search for new opportunities. This workshop from the Belgian creativity expert Cyriel Kortleven can help you and your colleagues to break out of the box and generate lots of new ideas in a very short time.

In this very interactive presentation we cover the following:

• Thinking in patterns and the curse of knowledge
• Creative skills to break fixed patterns
• Postpone judgment and get into a ‘yes and’ mood
• Creative observing • And action – bring the wild ideas into action
• Networking exercise to get to know somebody in a ‘different way’

Participating in this event will enable you to break your own fixed thinking patterns, learn some simple tools and skills to generate loads of new ideas and network with interesting people of KMLF in a very creative way.

Agenda:

Thursday March 11 6:00-6:30 Networking with other thinking collaborators (over drinks and nibbles).
6:30-7:15 Cyriel Kortleven – Give yourself a creative boost
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 158.2.4 (One level up from Ground level ).

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

Cyriel Kortleven is a crewmember and co-founder of new shoes today – a growing number of soul mates in business who give support to people and organisations on their road to creation, innovation and change. Cyriel makes people more conscious of the opportunities in life. Cyriel is a popular speaker in the domain of creativity and innovation. He gives workshops and presentations in creative skills and attitude and the breaking of fixed thinking patterns. Cyriel moves people in a literally and figurative way by means of a combination of creativity and improvisation – also brought together in the successful Dutch book ‘And … Action!’ More info on http://www.newshoestoday.com/site/we/cyriel_kortleven/

Matt Moore (of Innotecture and the NSW KM Forum) will be hosting a full-day event in Melbourne on Thursday 25 March on Social Media for Lawyers.  This event will feature attorney turned social media consultant Adrian Dayton.  Adrian consults to global 100 firms like Dorsey & Whitney and AmLaw 100 firm Womble Carlysle, and has been helping lawyers all over the world bring in business through social media.  Adrian is also the author of Social Media for Lawyers: Twitter Edition.

Read more about this session, registration, and the “Word of Mouth” special offer on the Innotecture site.

Matt is also scheduled to address us at a regular KMLF meeting on Wednesday 26 May on Performance Enhancing – more information will be provided on this one closer to the time.

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