Knowledge-at-work

CoP2.0 - January 2006

That is not the official title, but it is the tag that grabs me most.

http://www.cpsquare.org/News/

Decided to participate in this mini-conference with past colleagues at CPSquare. I belonged to this meta-community for a year then quit when the on-line dialog faded.

This conference with regular telephone conferences and asynchronous web conferencing using webcrossing seems to be a strange mix. For me, phone conferencing always seems to be too much introduction, way too little about the real subject, too difficult to reflect upon, even if there is a 'record'. This has been my experience with the KnowledgeBoard phone gigs - note the next one is with Dorothy Leonard - a favorite KM author.

Plenty going on in web2.0 that will be useful to CoPs - my hope is this conference concentrates on the practices rather than the tools. The intention is to cover developments in this blog as the dialog unfolds.

Tags worth tracking via a RSS feed:

• http://del.icio.us/tag/cop2.0
• http://del.icio.us/tag/e-learning2.0
• http://del.icio.us/tag/library2.0

Any related tags to share?

Patterns on patterns

Representing, capturing, sharing and verifying solutions that work and experience.

Patterns are a key knowledge practice, helping with sharing working solutions, recording experience and forming a high level language for articulating local domain theory. This is practical stuff for building and mastering complex knowledge. Here is a pattern about patterns from the Hilside Group

A.1 Pattern: Pattern

Context:

You are an experienced practitioner in your field. You have noticed that you keep using a certain solution to a commonly occurring problem. You would like to share your experience with others.

Problem:

How do you share a recurring solution to a problem with others so that it may be reused?

Forces:

• Keeping the solution to yourself doesn't require any effort   
• Sharing the solution verbally helps a few others but won't make a big impact in your field.   
• Writing down your understanding of the solution is hard work and requires much reflection on how you solve the problem.   
• Transforming your specific solution into a more widely applicable solution is difficult.   
• People are unlikely to use a solution if you don't explain the reasons for using it.   
• Writing down the solution may compromise your competitive advantage (either personal or corporate.)

Solution:

Write down the solution using the pattern form. Capture both the problem and the solution, as well as the reasons why the solution is applicable. Apply Mandatory Elements Present to ensure that the necessary information is communicated clearly. Include Optional Elements When Helpful to capture any additional useful information.

Distribute the resulting pattern to the largest audience you feel it could help that does not compromise your competitive advantage. Often, this means publishing your patterns exclusively within your company via Intranets or company journals.

Formal pattern writing follows a style, records the problem, defines the context, gives the solution steps and pointes to related patterns. Patterns are introduced and verified within a community. Here their importance, relationships and meaning are shared and their boundaries tested. Accepted patterns are then stored in a pattern library

Here is another useful pattern link

IMO patterns rank with stories, metaphor and analogy as an effective way to work with knowledge.

RCA as a knowledge practice

Do we take sufficient time and trouble to ask questions to really learn from accidents, failures and near-misses? Root Cause Analysis (RCA) is one approach.

Every time things go wrong there is a huge opportunity to learn, redesign and improve performance. Bill Corcoran suggests we start with these questions:

Eight Questions for Insight:

1. What were the most important consequences? Actual, expected, potential?
2. What makes this event significant?
3. What set them up for it?
4. What triggered it?
5. What made it as bad as it was?
6. What kept it from being a lot worse?
7. What should be learned from it?
8. What should be done about it?

Some other questions:

• What is it about the way business is done that makes events like this inevitable?
• What were the earlier, better, safer, cheaper ways that we could have found the causal factors of this one without having the event?
• What's wrong with this picture, i.e., the news story?
• What do you think were the non-consequential precursors to this Real McCoy?
• Can you think of some negative causes for this one?
• Which accidents in your industry does this remind you of?
• Which related accidents does this remind you of?

To enable the learning, we need an environment where failures are celebrated (as learning opportunities), messengers are not shot, reflection in community is encouraged, there is commitment at all levels to avoid known pitfalls, share experience and learning is supported.

Adopting a reflective practice, is a useful additional regular activity within any community of practice, it helps to surface patterns and anti-patterns that capture group expertise and experience in a common advanced shared language.

I found this volume expensive and useful, (get a copy from your library)

Reflecting on knowledge spaces

What makes knowledge spaces so special?

Nonaka etal 2000, "Integrated IT systems to capitalize on market knowledge" in von Krogh etal (eds), "Knowledge creation: a source of value", St Martin's Press, (pp89-109). 

Draw attention to ART cycles (attention - reflection -trigger) in knowledge creation and suggest autonomy, redundancy, creative chaos, requisite variety and intention, are the key drivers. The authors expand the SECI model and explain the social, dialog, explicit and integrating components of ' Ba'.

I'm of the opinion that we need to 'front-load' our knowledge creation rather than having a focus on validation, as I see Ba - a supporting environment, as the key to knowledge generation. Validation tends to look after itself to a large extent and is best handled via informal practices of social conformance.

Nonaka and his co-authors highlight the emphasis on explicit information in western culture and I think they are correct. They illustrate the concept of a commercial Ba with a case study of a Japanese Seven-Eleven. Showing how building customer relationships, listening, engaging & exchanging with customers and co-construction with suppliers even competitors leads to competitive advantage and increased profits.

If there is no Ba, no environment, no trust, no connections, no relationships, there will be no knowledge, learning, new meaning, innovation opportunity and most likely no business.

This is not chicken and egg stuff, it is fundamental to working with knowledge - the profit, ROI, IC mindset is the wrong foot to start the race, it sets you off in the wrong direction, it 'forces' you to cut corners and take the quick gains, gather the low hanging fruit and to skip over the learning, awareness, community building, the "soft" stuff that can save your entire company, show you how to come down from your profit mountain and cross the desert plains in search of another mountain to climb.

See Knowledge landscapes

An organization that puts their energy and attention into documentation, validation & teaching of knowledge assets, without cultivating and supporting the community that generates and refreshes that knowledge, would have a false & brittle token and no deep competence.

So what are your opinions around the conditions and affordances necessary to create value via knowledge generation?

What theory and principles would you use to build the best knowledge space!!

RMBL - what does it mean for KM?

This is an exploration of the RMBL (rip, mix, burn, learn) culture. Not copyright denouncement or P2P music stealing, but the potential to build on the ideas and works of others, the synergy that happens with sharing, the innovation that emerges from making novel connections & rework.

• My first introduction / inkling was this C5 piece
• My first immersion this wiki presentation
• My first (major) rip AOK 

Remixing
In a larger sense, remixing can be seen as a major conceptual leap: making music on a meta-structural level, drawing together and making sense of a much larger body of information by threading a continuous narrative through it. This is what begins to emerge very early in the hiphop tradition in works such as Grandmaster Flash's pioneering mix recording Adventures on the Wheels of Steel.

The importance of this cannot be overstated: in an era of information overload, the art of remixing and sampling as practiced by hiphop DJs and producers points to ways of working with information on higher levels of organization, pulling together the efforts of others into a multilayered multireferential whole which is much more than the sum of its parts. Wikipedia

A non-musical example of a remix may be wikiversity

Take a look at some of the examples in this piece from Jon Udell. In particular, the wikipedia history visualizations using grease monkey are impressive - like playing the annealing in fast time

http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/2005/06/27.html#a1258

There is something very powerful when software scripts can 'bring forth new meanings' from the same text or music.

More examples:

• ccMixter - one of many, the the best known community music sites featuring remixes where you can listen to, sample, mash-up, or interact with music in whatever way you want.
• Austafe2005 - A collaborative (rip, mix, feed) effort to present at, and document the AusTAFE 2005 conference
• H20 Playlists - An H2O Playlist is a series of links to books, articles, and other materials that collectively explore an idea or set the stage for a course, discussion, or current event. Check this KM playlist
• WebJay - An example of a 'playlist' community website.
• RipMixLearn - Alan Levine
• More Ripping and Mixing - from Brian Lamb and the UBC's Office of Learning Technology,
• Watching Katrina - Will Richardson's interest in 'citizen teacher' and wikipedia's early start to documenting Hurricane Katrina.
• News - book mashups - XML at work

Ripped without shame from:
http://networkedlearning.wikispaces.com/knowledge+sharing

Learning & web2.0

How will emergent web2.0 applications influence KM, learning and relationships?

Been presenting at AOK these past two weeks, looking at the links between social knowledge and social software. Things are moving ever faster - making it difficult for me to keep up with the exciting new services, applications and enhancements.

Knowledge sharing and social software - an open wiki

Web feeds are driving ways to connect, notify, and offer novel, useful ways to keep you informed. New cultures are coming such as rip, mix, burn, learn that promise to speed creativity, re-purpose content and distribute via different channels are on the rise. Podcasts offer a neat way to access JIT information while 'on-the-go', when combined with synchronization (iTunes, Odeo, iPodder), this is a powerful way to subscribe to very directed content and news.

Collaborative concept mapping is a powerful knowledge practice that encourages alternative ways to make connections and uses visual and spatial reasoning to convey deeper meaning.

Learning is an ecology and depends on your network

Mashups promise to integrate content sources and result in new genre.

Textologies from UBC is a useful place for keeping abreast of developments associated with learning2.0.

Please feel free to add, anneal, refactor and rehash this open wiki.