KM blogger community ??

How can we best define and circumscribe a community of KM bloggers? Talking to Lilia this afternoon we looked at ways to discover and explore this question.

Does such a community really exist?

Lilia feels there is a KM community based on her personal contacts and experience, and is currently looking at ways to quantify this. She mentioned an analysis of blogrolls (who mentions whom), a study of RSS feed subscriptions (who reads whom), cross posting and commenting on another's blog (who writes about or to whom).

We mused on the role of back channel communications (Skype, IM, e-mail, phone) and the role of personal contact via blogwalks and itinerant visits - almost impossible to quantify.

Been interested in KM bloggers since 2000 and have been watching the genre evolve. Not sure the community is quite as strong as Lilia feels, but this may be my bias from sitting in the mid-west

USA

and not participating f2f in the EU meets.

KM blog list

Here are my suggestions for the core group:

* Lilia Efimova - an early articulator, maven and key broker

* Ton Zilstra - influential broker

* Dave Pollard - thought leader

* Seb Paquet - well connected

* Martin Roell - strong proponent of PKM

* David Gurteen - a key node

* Jim McGee - key player

* Stuart Henshall - thought leader

* Jack Vinson - active contributor

* Jon Husband - always connected

Still pondering the position and roles of: Judith Meskill, George Siemens, James Robertson, Piers Young, Magdalena Boettger and others.

How do you see yourself - is the next question

Comments

[Sally]

Look at me....

[Garsett Larosse]

Hey, quite a few good reactions here.

This is to acknowledge that you are a KM-information integrating pioneer, Denham.
But I'm not really convinced that this blog format makes any difference in daily business practice.
Convince me that this is really a community of practice and not an elitist clique.

I think that the new version of our telecommunity platform is ideal for working out Etienne Wenger's ideas and invite you to take active part in shaping it.

Re: virtual communities - you know I'm actively working to see that term replaced by telecommunities, ref. http://www.telecommunity.info

[Carol H Tucker]

so -- if we are all KM gurus, how are we tracking the blogging contributions and building upon them?

I'm using RSS feeds and bloglines to monitor posts, Feedster and Technocrati to search and hoping fellow KMbloggers will point me to stuff I have missed.

[Seb]

Just wanted to point out that there's 30% Canadians on your list. Go Canada! :)

[Jon Husband]

Thanks for the mention, Denham. Whilst it won't be apparent from my blog, I've actually been studying "KM" for quite a long time, dating back to the early '90's, and I call my (more-or-less non-existent these days) consulting practice Work Design Associates ... lots of OD work in the past, self-directed teams, Emery and Trist Participatory Work Design, etc.

Used to try to get companies in the small provincial place where I live interested in the sociological aspects of KM back when (early to mid-90's) they were buying big rigid file management systems, gave up when I realized they thought I was nuts.

I've begun the process of girding my loins to get back into it ... armed with a combination of technology, blogs, SNA, Open Space, wired organization dynamics, etc. .. so maybe I can contribute a bit more than just being connected ?

[Neil Olonof]

KM Blogging Community? Larry Prusak would say no way, based on his comments in the recent "Leading in a Connected World Conference," in Charlottesville. He asked what is a community? The consensus was that communities are proscribed in space, have probably no more than a few hundred members, and share common norms ....

It would be interesting to do a social network analysis of the people who participate in KM blogs and really get a handle on the quality and quantity of the relationships between us.

If we did, Denham, you'd definitely be one of the 'energizers!'

[Edna Pasher]

Hi Denham,
I feel that virtual communities are really more real than virtual. The two us have never met face to face yet we keep bumping into each other again and again in cyberspace and it is always a pleasure.
I know Lilia too.
She facilitated an open space session at KM Europe sponsored by Knowledge Board where we are partners and Sari Erlich, my associate was there too - face to face.
I know we will meet one day face to face, even though you are in the Mid West and I am in the Mid East :)
Warmly,
Edna
PS: I know Martin Roel and David Gurteen and Nancy White and Carol Tucker too ! Warmly, Edna

[Gautam]

and how did you forget me.. :-)

oh well, haven't been posting too much about KM recently..!

I agree Denham, that's a great list !

[Nancy White]

Interesting question. I'll defer the semantic argument about 'what is community' and instead skip to your question. "How do you see yourself?"

I'm one that lives on the boundary of KM as a domain per se, but perhaps in a sub community or a connected but separate community. Or set of communities. The domains for those communities might be called: communities of practice practitioners, online facilitators, online interaction designers, organizational developers, etc.

When I tried to answer your question it made me think that KM is a sort of "umbrella" domain and that the community exists within more specific subsections. Places where there is persistent interest/inquiry that starts bridging between a set of recurring people/relationships.

Any sense?

[Denham]

Hi Monica,

Thanks for posting.

A shared language or perhaps meaning, is indeed a prerequisite for community. Rather than all speaking the same language, it is the concepts and distinctions we co-create that tend to bind a group. So you set me thinking what are some of those core concepts?

* Voicing?
* PKM?
* Internet communication?
* on-line dialog?
* SNA?
* blog conversations?
* k work as craft?

[Richard MacManus]

I'd be on the boundaries of the KM community (both thematically and physically!). So maybe I'm a "Thought Explorer" :-)

[Mónica]

Hello Denham,

For a long time that i've been following your great contributions around KM, and what makes me not to contribute with my opinions concerns mainly my english (un)skills and also the fact that i think i'm more of a student than a knower on the field. So forgive me for showing up and living my humble opinion regarding the KM blogger community tread.
Thank you for all the good insites and learning that you have been sharing.
Since starting to use blogging (not so long ago), i've been discovering that this tool allows for a sense of belonging to a diverse and disperse evergrowing «visible» network of people. If some of the names on your list do configure a sense of «community of KM bloggers», i can not say the same thing for all of them, although i recognize them as leading and visible experts on the subject.
My point is, one of the core attributes that make a community a community is sharing a commom language, ever more important if we are talking about blogging. I believe this is why Lilia blogs in English although it is not her first language, the same when submitting papers to the international cientific community ;-)

[Denham]

Something like:

One of the first to write, define and talk about the concept?

My impression is you were blogging about a KM 'community'among bloggers, well before most of us started to wake up.

[Lilia]

Wonder what do you mean by "early articulator" :)