Curiouser and Curiouser!

Curiouser and Curiouser! on david-gurteen http://matt.blogs.it/ RSS feed for topic david-gurteen Copyright 2006 Matt Mower Squib/0.1 self@mattmower.com self@mattmower.com en-gb Intro to the conference Thu, 19 Jun 2003 09:01:02 +0100 Yesterday I spent the day at the <A href="http://www.gurteen.com/gurteen/gurteen.nsf/0/6A95D999AAB331EA80256CE6003C2E22/">Gurteen Knowledge Conference</A> organised by <A href="http://www.gurteen.com/">David Gurteen</A> in association with <A href="http://www.bizmedia.co.uk/">BizMedia</A>.  I've known David for nearly a year know through attending meetings of his Knowledge Café and it was a great pleasure to be able to go this is event.  Being David conversation was a central theme of the day which made a nice change from the standard conference fair.  I think he has succeeded in doing something different and am keen to see how this develops. I took a Wi-Fi card in the hope of maybe doing some live blogging but alas the Novotel London West has not taken that bold step into the 22nd century yet.  Subsequently my posts about the conference will probably be more substantive but have less of a 'now' feel to them as I edit them into shape. Sadly also it has to be said that I am not much of a photographer and the lighting in the conference rooms defeated me for the most part.  I have some excellent candidates for shadow puppet theatre but not many shots where you can identify the speaker.  Oh well. After coffee and pain au chocolate the day started with a brief introduction by David, who quickly handed over to Dave Snowden for his keynote. http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00001493.html Gurteen Knowledge Quest Fri, 10 Oct 2003 15:24:00 +0100 Went to the a meeting of the <a href="http://www.gurteen.com/gurteen/gurteen.nsf/0/056D4ED7BA1F1BA580256D8800359FAA/">Gurteen Knowledge Cafe</a> last night. A slightly different meeting to usual in that the topic was, broadly, how <a href="http://www.gurteen.com/">David</a> can make his community building work into something that can support him financially. At heart it's a common enough problem: <div style="margin-left: 40px;">How do you get paid to do what you love? </div> It was a very interesting session as we tossed around the issues and ideas. There was lots of energy and good humour which is really the hallmark of these meetings. It was also interesting seeing the interplay between those who had been to some or all of the previous cafe's and the relatively high number of newbies. That definitely added to the mix. I know from my own experience that it's a tough quest to be make a living doing things you enjoy and working with good people. But it definitely has it's rewards. Hopefully we've given David food for thought. http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00001669.html 3rd Gurteen Knowledge Conference on Managing Organisational Complexity Wed, 03 Mar 2004 20:13:46 +0000 Spent today at <a href="http://www.gurteen.com/">David Gurteen's</a> 3rd Knowledge Conference on Managing Organisational Complexity. It was a great day and I took lots of notes and photos (to the extent that I annoyed most everyone!) Sadly Dave Snowden was not able to attend in person due to personal circumstances, however we got virtual Snowden which was still very good. Today certainly added a new layer to my thinking and i'm going to be percolating all this stuff for days and weeks to come. Right now I'm up to my ears in a market research exercise for K-Collector so expect blogged notes & photos probably Friday. Plus I got to meet Ian Glendinning of <a href="http://www.psybertron.org/">Psybertron</a> which was cool. http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00001949.html 3rd Gurteen Knowledge Conference on Organisational Complexity Sun, 14 Mar 2004 23:18:32 +0000 I've finally gotten round to editing my notes from the 3rd Gurteen Knowledge Conference on Organisational Complexity. This was held on the 5th March so apologies that it's taken me this long to come up with the goods. In the end I had about 30 pages of rough notes which I am working up into 4 postings, 1 for each session. Tonight I shall be posting the first piece correspoding to Dave Snowdens presentation on the Cynefin framework and dynamics. I have also put up a <a href="http://matt.blogs.it/Gurteen%20Knowledge%20Conference%203/GKC3.html">selection of photographs</a> to give a flavour of the event. http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00001991.html Techno-fetishist or Fluffy-bunny? Fri, 26 Mar 2004 09:17:00 +0000 Attended David Gurteen's <a href="http://www.gurteen.com/gurteen/gurteen.nsf/0/89FC3E957C3552A180256E4F0039794C/">Knowledge Café</a> last night. The theme for the night was: Techno-fetishist or fluffy bunny which are you? If that sounds a little weird it may help to know that these are Dave Snowdens archetypes for those who, on the one hand, believe that knowledge management is a purely technical problem and, on the other, believe it's all about the people. What made tonights event a little different from normal was the number of new people there. I think for the first time over half of the people were attending their first café. David decided to start with 15 minutes of speed networking (Find someone you don't know, then you each have 60 seconds to tell the other person about yourself). I have to say I groaned inwardly (It had been a long day and this sounded like hard work) at the thought. Nevertheless it turned out to be quite good fun although my voice didn't hold up too well. There followed 40 minutes of good discussion about the role of technology in KM. Some good observations from around the room, I can't remember most of them but a few that struck me: <ul> <li>You can have an organisation without technology, but you can't have an organisation without people. People are the key and technology is an enabler.</li> <li>How you see yourself (techie vs. fluffy) is only one aspect of, as it is also important how others see you. Someone made the observation that a number of his team of KM workers were seen around the organisation as techies even though (mostly being from a journalistic background) they were the fluffiest people you could wish to meet.</li> <li>Design is important in building knowledge systems. Consider how good a job companies like Amazon and Ebay have been.</li> <li>Technology is a good way of holding information and allowing it to be sifted and, in due course, preserved when it meets the criteria of being Hallmark Knowledge.</li> <li>You can make people use a new finance system. You can't make people use a KM system. Incentive systems often provoke the wrong behaviour (what happens when the incentive stops). You need to involve people from early stages and get buy in. I would ask the question: What's in it for me?</li> <li>Do people see what they have as knowledge? They won't share what they feel is not valuable. This has to be addressed.</li> </ul> I think there was definitely a fluffy bunny conscensus in the room at the end of the day. So there is hope for us yet! We all excused ourselves to the pub to finish the evening. Thanks to Alison Leahy of Universities UK for providing a great venue, coffee and directions to the pub! http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00002024.html Social Tools for Enterprises Symposium in London Tue, 08 Jun 2004 12:24:14 +0100 Now that we have the agenda sorted I am happy to announce the 1st, London, <div style="margin-left: 40px;"><a href="http://www.kmcluster.com/lon/LON_Summer_2004.htm"> Social Tools for Enterprises Symposium</a> </div> which <a href="http://www.evectors.com/">Evectors</a> is organising ably supported by <a href="http://www.kmcluster.com/">KM Cluster</a> and a group of the usual suspects (see the <a href="http://www.socialtext.net/stes/">Wiki</a> for details). We think this is a great opportunity to start showing people that social tools (both people tools and software tools) are ready for prime time and deliver bottom line benefits to enterprises. The event will be held on Monday 12th July at the <a href="http://www.bloomsburysquare.co.uk/intro/index.html">Bloomsbury Square Training Centre</a>. We've got a great list of people leading sessions which we hope will be a bit different to the usual chalk & talk conference fare. We really want a conversation to emerge from this event which will help to enlighten people interested in social tools but unsure how to put them to best use in their own contexts. So we have: <ul> <li>Stowe Boyd - <a href="http://www.corante.com/about/research.shtml">Corante Research</a> & <a href="http://stoweboyd.typepad.com/awm/">A Working Model</a></li> <li>Lee Bryant - <a href="http://www.headshift.com/">Headshift</a></li> <li>Prof. Marc Eisenstadt - <a href="http://kmi.open.ac.uk/home-f.cfm">Knowledge Media Institue</a></li> <li>David Gurteen - <a href="http://www.gurteen.com/">Gurteen Knowledge</a></li> <li>Euan Semple - <a href="http://www.bbc.com/">BBC</a></li> <li>Phil Wolff. - <a href="http://www.dijest.com/aka/">A Klog Apart</a> & <a href="http://blogcount.com/">BlogCount</a></li> </ul><a href="http://paolo.evectors.it/">Paolo</a> and I will also be there. I think it has the potential to be a great event and a great day I hope that you will come and join us. Please tell all your friends! http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00002291.html