On Thursday November 19, I will be joining a KMWorld 2009 conference panel to share thoughts on "Envisioning the Enterprise of the Future." My goal will be to identify the driving forces shaping the knowledge-based organization of the future. Three of these forces are in play today:

1.      Multiple Generations@ Work
2.      Social Computing & Networking
3.      Decline of Attention Span

All three reflect a chasm between what used to define "productive" and what may define it in the future.  One thing we know for sure: Every generation is more productive than the last one, despite the dire predictions.  Managers complain about "social not-working" and the lost time on the job while people update their friends on Facebook. Maybe they are right...or maybe not. How could social networking actually make us more productive? 

I will be thinking about that and related profundities between now and November 19. If you have any ephiphanies, let me know.

More information on the panel, including the other participants, is available here. Slides will be up on the KM world site for registrations in a few days.

Do you have a knowledge management story to tell? I encourage you to review the call for presentations and submit your abstract using our online form.  The deadline to submit a presentation abstract is November 20, 2009.

Examples of presentation topics include:

• New and effective approaches for knowledge transfer
• New ways of collaborating
• Driving support, participation, and change
• Linking KM to strategic issues

If you have any questions or need further information, contact Debbie Norman at dnorman@apqc.org.

Please join us for our next knowledge management community call, at which APQC Senior Program Manager Marisa Brown will discuss  how leading companies are using stories and images to communicate with senior leadership about innovation.

Examples will be drawn from APQC's 2008 research study "New Product and Service Innovation: Improving Front-End Effectiveness" featuring Shell International Exploration & Production's GameChanger program and J&J's Ethicon Endo-Surgery Inc.

The one-hour call will take place this Thursday, October 22, at 10:30 a.m. Central time. Click here to register.

About a year ago in this very blog, I extolled the enjoyment I got from attending the annual KMWorld conference, meeting new folks and catching up with old friends. I say now, as I did then, that Jane and Hugh (if you're reading this, you already know who they are) put on a great conference. It's easily my second favorite conference of the year (I'll let you guess which conference is my top pick). Sadly, this year client commitments will prevent me from attending KMWorld--but a client commitment is a good thing to have these days, so I can't complain too much.

However, what this amounts to is akin to getting a free upgrade to first class for everyone else attending. I was scheduled to participate in the panel discussion. Luckily, I was able to convince our president, Dr. Carla O'Dell, to step in and provide her insight into the future of knowledge. What an upgrade! By the way, Darcy Lemons, our top KM researcher, is also scheduled to speak at the conference. If you want to find out why your lessons learned program doesn't work, be sure to attend her session.

Whether you're telling a joke or changing lanes, context is everything. Web 3.0, also known as the semantic Web or the rise of the intelligent machine, has been in the buzz for a while, but is now getting enough traction that you might want to check it out. This is a great basic article from Information Management:

"Web 3.0: Rise of the Intelligent Machines" by Phillip Green

It seems to be a world-wide discussion. Check out this PowerPoint presentation from Romania:

"Why Web 3.0?" by Dr. Sabin Buraga

Please join us for APQC's next knowledge management community call featuring guest facilitator Malcolm Dowden, environmental and property law consultant for LexisNexis. During the one-hour call, Dowden will discuss how legal teams are evolving to meet environmental changes and the knowledge management tools they need to provide effective service to their clients.

The call will take place this Thursday, September 24, at 10:30 a.m. central time. Attendance is free and open to everyone. Click here to register.

I learned a few things when I was in graduate school studying cognitive and experimental psychology that have proven useful to me when I'm trying to send a message that will stick, either in a presentation or a blog.  Knowing about human beings' limited short-term memory and attention comes in quite handy. These limitations are hard-wired into us, regardless of how smart a particular person is. So, here are three important things I learned about making points memorable.

First, people will remember the first and last thing you tell them.  It is much harder to remember what's in the middle. This is caused by a combination of the primacy effect (remembering the first thing on a list) and the recency effect (remembering what you heard recently or last). Even though human short-term working memory can hold seven bits of information (plus or minus two), that information rapidly dissipates and is gone in seconds or is pushed out my more incoming data. That's why you can't remember the names of people when you first meet them at a party or retain a phone number long enough to write it down if there isn't a pencil handy. You are pushing your audience's limits if you ask them to remember more than three points, unless you give them handouts as memory aids.  That may be the reason for Death by PowerPoint: We have more than three things we wish our audience would remember, so we blast it out in 24 point font.

I'm happy to report that, although the recession may have hit bottom and the economy is still shaky, you couldn't tell that by the number of people and transactions going on at the 2009 San Diego Comic-Con. For the third (or fourth, I can't remember) year in a row, the Con sold out. That means that more than 125,000 individual badges were sold for the 4.5-day event. Wow!  

Want to know what 125,000 people looks like? Check out this picture. I'm somewhere...way in the back... 

Actually, I was probably in line at the Hasbro booth waiting to purchase one of their exclusive Con toys. Yes, I'm that big a geek! (In my defense, I purchased the item for my niece.)

Last month, APQC surveyed its KM audience about ways to sustain and enhance communities of practice. The response was great, and now we'd like to share some of the results with you.

During this month's knowledge management community call, APQC Senior Project Manager Darcy Lemons (who is also a contributor to this blog) will share highlights from our recent survey, talk about what the results mean in light of APQC's past research, and discuss future research in this area. The call will take place this Thursday, August 20, at 10:30 a.m. Central.

Attendance is free and open to everyone. To register, visit www1.gotomeeting.com/register/567469512.

Why and how to measure the impact of knowledge management are questions that never go away. A savvy reporter called me about this the other day. She said that she keeps hearing that people don't know how to measure KM. I admit that I find this upsetting given the amount of time APQC spends helping KMers do just that. It isn't always easy, but few things worthwhile are.

The holy grail of knowledge management measurement is to tie participation to outcomes. The more people participate in communities of practice, share information, use information, adopt practices, and so forth, the more we expect to see a correlation with business and mission outcomes. And we do.

But there is more to it than that.

Flirting with Disaster: Why Accidents Are Rarely Accidental by Marc S. Gerstein with Michael Ellsberg (forward and afterword by Daniel Ellsberg) is an analysis of famous disasters intended to answer the question, "Why do really smart people running very capable organizations with lots of smart people working for them often charge headlong into disaster?"  Another perspective is that the book tries to address the question we all have--"What were they thinking?"--after a space shuttle burns rapidly (Challenger's liquid fuel tank did not "blow up," it suffered a "hypergolic burn") or disintegrates on reentry and we find that the organization's leaders knew about the risks, but managed them (the nicest way to write it) so poorly?  Once we learn more about these problems, are there any steps we can take to make future disasters less likely?  I think the answer is yes, but read on.  I have some complaints about the book (i.e., that many of its key recommendations are overly simplistic), but most of it is on the mark and that makes it worth reading.

I continue to ponder what the emerging business models for sharing content on the Web might mean for knowledge management.

I see three characteristics of the emerging model that are relevant to knowledge management:

• Most content is free to the user, yet it cost someone else to create it.
• Access to others' content seems to bring high value to the user and to the "connector."
• Rare or expert content (that which can make you money) is still costly and often charged for.

Chris Anderson, editor of Wired Magazine and author of The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More, declares in his new book that the emerging online business model for content is Free: Give away your best content online, build a brand, and make your revenue on the ancillary services generated. In Anderson's case, his money comes from the book and his speeches. At $50,000 a pop, not a bad model for him. But what if you aren't "branded"? Is helping your colleagues by answering their questions a way that employees can build their personal brands within communities of practice? There is no additional money to be made by helping your colleagues, at least in the short term. The value must come from being seen as helpful and having good content. Then it must lead to reciprocity and, eventually, a promotion.

Okay, so maybe this topic hasn't quite risen to the level of a myth, but it certainly has been an interesting one to research. What is it, you say? It's the notion that what "KMers" choose to do in their free time is, at least to some degree, related to their predilection for knowledge management work.

Using sports as the differentiator, my original hypothesis was that folks whose work is specifically KM will exhibit a preference for team-based sports, rather than individual sports. That thought comes from a general perception that those of us involved in knowledge sharing might also find the collaboration of team sports more appealing than that of the lone, individual-participant sport. It also comes from my personal experience with groups of KMers when I've asked, "How many of you play x sport?" and finding that few, if any, would respond that they played a certain non-team sport. My conversation with Darlene Shaw of SPAWAR also added a data point to the discussion.

So how to investigate this phenomenon? Through the survey that I created and then  invited, asked, cajoled, and even begged you to complete a few weeks ago. A fair number of folks participated (n=100), and I'm prepared to report the results today. Kudos to the contributor in our KM Edge LinkedIn group who correctly guessed the purpose of my survey; apologies to my KM colleague for leaving out the all-important sport of ice hockey as a choice; and thanks to everyone who participated in this blind survey to provide the data.

Please join us for APQC's next knowledge management community call featuring a presentation from Kevin Hans, manager of knowledge management for the American Red Cross. During the one-hour call, Hans will discuss the initial implementation and subsequent expansion of SharePoint at the American Red Cross, including the upgrade to Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007. The presentation will conclude with a look at current SharePoint trends in governance, taxonomy, training, and workflow and how the American Red Cross is addressing these issues.

The one-hour call will take place this Thursday, July 16, at 10:30 a.m. central time. Click here to register.