This is an edited version of a post I recently put up on the KMWorld 2008 blog (in blockquotes, below).  The KMWorld 2008 conference was interesting (FAST had an exhibitor’s booth) and the contrast with last year in terms of the tangible interest in and take-up of social computing tools was evident.

People everywhere are beginning to understand, and practice with, the utility of "watching" snippets and fragments of peoples’ thoughts (see Dave Snowden’s KMWorld article titled "Everything Is Fragmented") and being able to instantiate and jump into a possible conversation when something interesting to them flows by.

 It works … for example, late last night I twittered a response to one of Jeremiah Owyang’s tweets pointing to his recent blog post about "What’s After The Social Web?", and shortly thereafter I had a Twitter direct message from Jeremiah in my email inbox saying "sounds interesting, I think you’re on to something .. tell me more".  A professional, potentially knowledge-building, conversation is brewing.

Here’s a summary of Stuart Henshall’s reflections on working with and in knowledge flows with the nascent micro-blogging

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A Master Strategist’s Take on a (Possible) Future of Knowledge “Management”

From the keyboard of Stuart Henshall, one of the most advanced thinkers about the “flows” of information combined with usability and innovation.

Stuart helped out with the blogging at the just-ended KMWorld and also gave a presentation on the last day about how people are beginning to use Twitter to connect, stimulate, catalyze and coordinate flows of information.

I thought he did a great job of outlining interesting possibilities .. but it seems he made some people nervous and some people stretch their minds. That may be because he has been immersed in the world of constant micro-flows of information and mobility for the last half-year while many of those at KMWorld are just now beginning to come to terms with blogging, using wikis and social computing. There may be one of those classic mismatches, the kind that lead to phrases like “You can always recognize the pioneers, they’re the ones walking around with arrows sticking out of their backs“.

Here’s Stuart’s post:.

Social Media or KM / KM or Social Media

I sat in earlier on a session on the Future of KM. There are three very different people on the panel. I’ve been listening with half an ear. This means what I write may have nothing to do with the context of the session. However, part of the reason we come to events like this is to spark other thoughts and tangents.

So far today I’ve not heard the word “flows”, I don’t hear “lifestreaming” I still feel what I am hearing is that knowledge is to be managed, moved, manipulated. Plus I just heard Dave Pollard say that SARS, 9/11, Katrina etc were all failures of classic knowledge management. I can’t quite put my finger on why KM isn’t learning and moving forward more quickly. It suggests to me that there remains a bigger problem.

Individuals are increasingly using personal tools, blogs, wikis, social networks, mobile phone, etc. As they move into this realm publicly they create more information about themselves. I’m increasingly seeing these tools being put to use by marketing / PR. KM seems to be missing these social media implications. Thus adoption of these tools is not being driven by the need to manage knowledge. Rather it’s driven by responding faster, being more adaptive, building on what others do, opening up systems so they can find that they need just in time. It’s a learning centric approach. I see it when I go to blogging sessions and talk to people there. The difference is they are believers.

[ Snip ... ]

I’m thinking more and more that the social media experts are likely to usurp or overturn many KM practices in time. The fact that SAP, Oracle and IBM are today all working with Twitter like updates is at least encouraging.

Maybe they can still sell a knowledge platform?

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It’s interesting that Stuart pointed out the directions large collaboration platforms are taking; Hylton Jolliffe, who manages this blog, just sent me an email a few days ago pointing out that Oracle’s developments with BeeHive may be signalling a new phase, while this ZDNet article (Did Oracle Burst The Enterprise 2.0 Startup Bubble?) suggest something similar.

At this very same conference one year ago (KMWorld 2007) Stuart wrote a post with which I agree 100% (link in the paragraph below) … while people in companies and business everywhere are looking for business case or ROI justification for using social media tools (while understanding semi-consciously that of course useful knowledge gets built in social interaction) they have to work (and experiment) at overcoming a lifetime of working in environments that divide and separate problems, responsibilities and challenges into discrete and divided bundles of tasks that are supposed to fit together like an orderly paint-by-numbers-like template (by which I mean an organizational chart).

To understand how using social media to increase effectiveness, responsiveness and innovation in an environment characterized by constant flows of information, you have to Use the Tools First; Then Talk To Me.

Read the whole post on a possible future for KM here ..

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