Learning from mistakes versus learning from feedback

On the knowledge management for development list there was a discussion about learning from mistakes. Matt Moore pointed to the mistakebank ning platform. I decided to join because I was curious to understand whether you can really learn from mistakes. Some of the examples I felt were rather blunders. For instance, I bumped into another cyclist today- that was clearly my mistake or rather blunder but nothing that you can really learn from, unless maybe to watch out more carefully but hey this is life... so you just say sorry.

And can we only learn from our own mistakes or also other people's mistakes? Through the mistakebank I found a blogpost citing Eleonore Roosevelt who said "learn from the mistakes of others, you can't live long enough to make them all yourself" which was contrasted with the idea that you can only learn from your own mistakes. That would imply we can observe others, their mistakes, and incorporate that in our own practices.

However, most mistakes are not as obvious as bumping into another cyclist. Most mistakes may go unnoticed, may not be recognised like mistakes by the mistaker (did I hear someone mention Bush??) or only by some and not by others. Or the effect of the 'mistake' may take long to become visible. I went back to Kenya where I worked and found out the whole irrigation scheme we built was flooded again because the water levels had risen. And at times it is easy to label something as mistake in retrospect.

In terms of changing practices, learning from honest feedback may be more important, in the form of spontaneous feedback or in organised processes like After Action Reviews. Today I got positive feedback about my blog by being mentioned in this list of knowledge management bloggers. I also got positive feedback after a meeting I conducted "may I give you a huge compliment for this meeting" someone said spontaneously. Since I became freelancer I got much more positive feedback than when I was an employee. I have the impression it is much harder to create a culture of feedback in organisations, after all, it is quite sensitive and may alter your relationships. I also got feedback recently I don't recognize. Hence, it's important the receiver recognises the feedback in order to act upon it, by giving clear examples.

Maybe we need to distinguish levels and types of mistakes? Or rather talk about experiments? Or is it more worthwhile to improve feedback? And how do we learn from mistakes as organisations?

Collaboration across divisions is unnatural

We're writing a booklet in Dutch about the possibilities of web2.0 tools to foster learning and collaboration in knowledge-intensive organisations. I'm struggling a little whether the tools are just helpful and nice, helping you to do your regular work. Or whether they hold the potential to turn over the way knowledge workers collaborate in organisations. On the one hand I don't think it is an automatic process- you introduce a wiki and hoops, the various departments that used to have such diferent attitudes start to collaborate. On the other hand it is true that fervent web2.0 workers are very open to share what they know and to respond to questions. Having lots of those people would make a different workplace, wouldn't it?

So I found a great article about boundaries in organisations. (Boundaries Need Not Be Barriers). I really liked it because it highlights the psychological difficulties to collaboration across groups within organisations. It's not natural to work across departments since we have an intergroup bias towards other groups, favouring our own group. This is complemented with a territorial need of groups. Territory includes physical space and other tangible and intangible objects. Groups may see themselves as possessors of certain knowledge and may restrict their information exchange to what they consider as 'their' members (the ingroup). The final barrier is that people are poor negotiators across groups or departments. We first think of how to get a large piece of the pie and don't think about enlarging the pie for the whole organisation.

What managers or leaders can do to stimulate collaboration across boundaries (often very needed!) is to emphasize group goals but at the same time organizational goals at a higher level. Furthermore showing that collaboration can yield a more secure place in the organisation instead of lead to insecurity. Lastly, people need to learn how to negotiate and identify win-win opportunities. It's a skill to look at the broader picture and see how we can all create a larger pie.

It's clear that collaboration is not as natural as it seems through the web2.0 tools. Possibly web2.0 tools can help to connect people across divisions, and help see the larger picture and identify opportunities to collaborate...

Wikis as a repository for an online community

Via Nancy White I found his funny video talking about blogs versus wikis. It matches well with my previous post about an online community using a mailing list, with a wiki as a repository. Why? Because I have experiences with an online community using a mailing list, teleconferences and a weblog as a repository. It could have been a wiki too.

The choice between the two probably depends on personal preferences and experiences (do members have more experiences/habits of reading weblogs or working with wikis?). Stories are probably better for a blog, and frequently asked questions are more easily structured in a wiki. In the video, wikis are shown as more democratic. That might be a consideration too. Do you want a really large group to work the repository? Then a wiki might be easier than a teamblog.
Enjoy the video!

Wiki as repository for a virtual community

Through a comment on a blogpost by Nancy White I found this article about a virtual community using a discussion list (listserv) in combination with a wiki. The wiki serves as a collaborative repository. You can access the article here if you want to read it in full.

I've been advising a community where using an online discussion forum where few people had experience with a wiki. We started a wiki to put knowledge products together. Though it was hard to get people to work on the wiki, it was very attractive to some because of its structure as compared to the discussion forum that may look very chaotic. So I'm a little jealous that the community in this article has such an active wiki process. But it does provide a clear picture of what's possible!

The community is a help-based community discussing the applied use of CSS, hence a technical topic. The interesting part is the analysis of how the wiki helps with the social processes of keeping the conversation on-topic and avoiding holy wars. Because the email list is a push technology and the wiki more a pull technology, more off-topic discussions can be allowed on the wiki than on the mailing list, hence it provides a space to address wider needs. Holy wars are redirected to the wiki and because members are forced to summarize their arguments into an information product, the wars are used more constructively.

The wiki also has helped in the process of retaining the old members. It helps to introduce new people by having a place to redirect them when they pose 'old questions' that have been discussed before. As a result, the questions on the mailing list can remain focused on new problems. The wiki also worked to attract new members because people find the wiki and become interested in the mailing list.

By the way, CPsquare is organising a conference about wikis for communities. You can track the resources by following http://delicious.com/tag/waatwaat.

Web2.0 security risks: driving is dangerous too!

I interviewed Rolf Kleef of Nivocer for my Dutch blog and a booklet that we are writing about web2.0 for learning and collaboration. It really made me rethink my online sign up behaviour and see that I usually don't see any dangers.

I asked Rolf what the most important dangers are if you look at web2.0 from an IT/management perspective. He outlined the following 5 security issues.

1. The risk of bringing virusses on board when you are working with pieces of software that you have to download (eg. skype)
2. The risk of giving outsiders access to your company confidential information. All connections can potentially give access to everything that your office computer has access to.
3. The use of your broadband capacity. Some applications like skype use the bandwidth of the whole network. In case you have a quotum, this may lead to higher costs.
4. Loss of information. If crucial information is stored in web2.0 services online, you don't have a garantee that your data will be available when the services goes bankrupt.
5. A non-technical risk is the risk posed by employees posting information about your company to web2.0 sites.

With regards to the fourth, we discussed the fact that conversational data like in twitter may not be crucial information, it is dynamic, so you may run the risk of loosing that information. However, the information about your twitter network may be important social capital, so you may want to make backup copies of your twitter network at times.

It all sounds super risky. But as Rolf said: "driving on the highway is dangerous too", the risks should not lead to the conclusion that web2.0 is too dangerous. So how to reduce those risks if you believe in the potential of working with web2.0? We discussed 3 major strategies an organisation may adopt:

• Develop a living code of conduct for use of web2.0 site and above all what and how employees share.
• Create awareness about these risks amongst employees, help them make good decisions and employ a good password strategy. Help them to be conscious about what they share in public on the web and what in password protected environments. And what not at all.
• Work with software with web2.0 functionalities behind the firewall for optimum security. Ofcourse there is the downside that you may not be able to integrate with other professionals outside the organisation. So a two-prone strategie might work best (internal in-house software for confidential information and external services for networking).

Rolf also had some tips about passwords, which I will share in a separate blogpost.

When NOT to use social network sites

At times, when I read too much web2.0 stuff, I get concerned about the positive cases and the hype. Is it really so revolutionary? Is being a good professional and reading a good book not more important than being able to produce a lot of crap online? In one of those moods I found the Techsoup article: Should your organisation use social network sites?

I liked the down-to-earth tone and the audacity to say that an organisation might decide not to use social network sites. Some of the situations your organisation might find itself in:

1. You're still trying to get a handle on basic software infrastructure
2. Your target audiences aren't using social network tools
3. You don't have time to experiment with something that might not work
4. You're not willing to deal with technologies that don't work as well as they could
5. You're not ready to invest in gaining a real understanding of the medium
6. You want clear editorial control over your brand and message

I think I would put number 5 as number 1. If you want to explore whether or not to invest your time, try understanding social networks and their cultures.

Visual thinkers in Sesamestreet

Via Sibrenne's blog (in Dutch) I found this great video illustrating what visual thinking is. I think I'm a visual thinker and that makes it hard for me to listen to podcasts without getting distracted. Videos work much better! After my months summer holiday I forgot one of my bankpass codes and I felt very stupid. Ofcourse I feel too young to start writing them down :). I then read about visualizing your code, for instance an eight as a snowman. Or visualizing it as a ladder; from 3 to 4 one step up. So this is what I did with two new codes. Enjoy!

Social media- changing the world from the edge?

Christina Merl, whom I know from CPsquare, interviewed me last year about my experiences with social media in the development sector. She wrote an article for the rural development news from Agridea with the title: social media- changing the world from the edge? If you are interested you can read it online here. The pictures look great in black and white! Let's see if I can a quote that is not too embarrassing....

How can social media support learning processes?
There are many ways in which social media can support learning processes. They can support individual learning, team learning, organisational learning and cross-organisational learning via networks and communities of practice. For example, my own learning process is supported by blogging. I blog about what interests me and read blogs of people in knowledge management. That keeps me thinking and developing my own ideas. An important mindset of people participating in the online exchange in social media is to be comfortable with having intimate conversations in public spaces. That means those conversations are opened up to be listened to. Likewise, listening into other circles helps you to understand the world, broaden your view and learn about your interests and unexpected things. I tend to believe that social media will change learning processes of professionals in organisations and allow for more cross-fertilization of ideas. Furthermore, it is much easier to network online through social media. I had two old friends from Ghana and Mali on a Skype chat this morning. If we didn’t have Skype, I would probably lose touch. One of them helped me to find a water expert in Mali for a friend working with OXFAM in the US. The barrier to ask questions and help each other is very low. However, the basis for such contact via social media is often still face-to-face contacts.

You might also prefer to read some of the other articles from rural development news, which you can find here.

Web2.0 as alternative to watching television

I'm trying to compile a short presentation on how to create structure in the web2.0 chaos for people who are not web2.0 adepts. It will probably start with the recognition that web2.0 offers a personalized experience, and that you can help people to filter and aggregate and navigate. I haven't found many relevant materials, but during my search I found this video.

I'm a big fan of Clay Shirky and I found another brilliant speech (roughly 15 minutes) through the boondoogle blog. Shirky start refering to the industrial revolution and the fact that gin was probably the most critical technology during that revolution. It took some (gin drinking) time before the revolution got crystallized. In the 20th century the big challenge is managing freetime, leisure. It takes some time to see freetime as an asset. Everyone started to watch television. But now web2.0 offers other ways to use the cognitive surplus created by the surplus of freetime. All over the world 1 trillion hours per year is spent on watching television. We are now just entering the early phases of the revolution with presentation of cases like wikipedia. The huge potential of carving the cognitive surplus through cheap tools is yet to be exploited. If you have the time, watch Shirky explain this!

Happy 2009!

Crash course in Dutch to understand this new year's card:

Luchtig = Light

Creatief = Creative

Vreedzaam = Peaceful

Relaxed = Relaxed

I admire all the blogger that give away their highlights of the year, the most frequently read blogposts etc. I don't have any data whatsoever, so no highlights!

How do you introduce a web2.0 way of working in your organisation?

Guess who these two gentlemen are? They are two of the 'civil servants2.0' or rather the initiators of such a project within the ministry of agriculture in the Netherlands. I interviewed them and posted it in my Dutch blog, but since their lessons about introducing web2.0 in a (civil service) organisation are very relevant I'm going to cross-blog it.

The initiative started with a small (roughly 10) group of people from different departments, but it started from the information policy side. They wanted to create room to discuss the implication of an open, web2.0 way of working as a strategic change for the ministry. They started with the joint drafting of a plan: in a wiki because they wanted to walk the web2.0 talk. In the meantime, they worked on influencing the various management layers. Almost two years later, Davied was appointed full-time project leader of 'civil servant2.0'. They formulated 4 critical success factors looking back at the process so far:

1. The small but growing network they created was crucial. It created its own dynamics and energy.


2. Creation of support throughout the layers of the organisation by means of informal contacts rather than using the formal decision-making ways.


3. Recruting and working with people with enthusiasm and energy. Not investing time in people who are not interested at all. (but remain aware of those people at all times)


4. Collaboration and interaction with other organisations (the 'outside') has had a positive influence on putting web2.0 high on the agenda.

Interestingly enough, this could read like advice for any change trajectory... I'd be happy to explore more in-depth how you can design the introduction trajectory as a change process.. What's special about this process as compared to other change processes?

The networked student and knowledge worker

Irene Hanraets alerted me about this video about the networked student by wdrexler:



The way the networked student uses web2.0 services is basically the way I use them. So it could be the knowledge worker2.0 too. I wonder though, about individual paths and diversity. I don't think learning by blogging works for every student, or does it? I also wonder what it takes in terms of knowing what direction you want to take. In my experience you have to be quite focused (and not loosing any serendipity at the same time) not to waste a lot of time. What do you think?

And what does it mean for education. I'm teaching too, but the blog idea I introduced didn't take off naturally and I didn't have time to guide it properly. So it would need sufficient guidance from teachers to make it really useful..

Social media for 'draagvlakversterking'

Last Thursday I had a great day with communication specialists (and a few technologists) of the Dutch development sector at the Context Masterclass about 'web2.0 for draagvlakversterking'. This really completely untranslatable word refers to the creation of support for development cooperation- apparently that is a science in itself :). The day started with two presentations, an introduction into web2.0 by Sandra van Heeswijk and the experiences of Nabuur as a platform where neighbours in north and south can collaborate. I was asked to help with the interactive workshop.

We played the Dutch social media game in 3 groups of 10 people. After the game we organised peer coaching in small groups of 4 behind the computer. People could show each other examples of how they used web2.0 for 'draagvlakversterking' and/or ask each other for informal advice. The game was inspired by the social media game developed by Beth Kanter and David Wilcox. In itself an example of how web2.0 can help you do your work! I used the motivation that people wrote before the workshop to tailor the cards towards the questions in the group. It worked really well, in my group the first card already started a 20 minutes discussion! At the end of the day we discovered by reading twitters that it was snowing outside in Utrecht :). From the evaluation I noticed that it opened people's eyes to the complexity of 'using' web2.0 and realized web2.0 is not a panacea. They appreciated the realism, attention for the difficulties and risks involved. Some learned that working with web2.0 is not equivalent to building your own communities, but that your strategies may include making use of other online spaces like hyves, facebook or twitter.

A few questions that I remember:

• How to deal with the paradox of 'promoting' something and the spontaneous nature of web2.0 conversations?
• Where are the spontaneous online conversations about development cooperation or our topics taking place?
• How are trusted sources constructed within web2.0?
• Is there prove that using web2.0 tools works to create 'draagvlak'?
• and... where to start?

Talking about where to start I showed a few people the graph of museum2.0 about how much time does web2.0 take? On the techsoup site Jacob Colker answers the question: "If my nonprofit were to start using only one of these (web2.0) technologies, which one should we adopt?" Jacob's answer was 'start blogging'. For draagvlakversterking I'd say: start following what's discussed about your organisation, your campaign or your causes online, using tools like technorati (for blogs) or socialmention.

Some interesting web2.0 examples that I learned about (or already knew) in the context of 'draagvlakversterking', with a few exceptions Dutch-based:

• Doenersnet ( a ning platform started by OXFAM NOVIB)
• 1procentclub ( a social network for people who want to devote 1% of their time)
• Helpalot (a social network for charities)
• JongOS ( a ning platform for professionals in development cooperation)
• KIVA (lending directly to enterpreneurs in the south)
• Nabuur (neighbours al over the world helping each other)
• Our future network on Hyves by Pax Christi
• HIVOS blogs (on their website)
• HIVOS.net (Knowledge integration, learning and capacity building for development)
• Dederdekamer (for concerned citizen)
• Change.org (gathers people around causes)
• Couchsurfing ( a worldwide network for making connections between travelers and the local communities they visit)
• Voordewereldvanmorgen (Heb je een goed idee waarmee je bijdraagt aan de wereld van morgen?) via Rolf Kleef
• Geefsamen (Start je eigen actie voor een goed doel)
• Endpovertyblog (daily log of experts from around the world promoting the Millennium Development Goals and the global fight against poverty)
• Een (Samen maken we een einde aan armoede)

Great to notice that Doenersnet and JongOS make use of the easily available NING service rather than building their own (expensive) social network site. Other interesting examples?

My scientist blog

Via Cindy, I discovered Typealyzer, a fun tool that analyzes Swedish and English blogs.

This is a scientist blog.

"The Scientists enjoy theoretical work that allows them to use their strong minds and bold creativity. Since they tend to be so abstract and theoretical in their communication they often have a problem communcating their visions to other people and need to learn patience and use conrete examples."

More interesting is the graph with the parts of your brain at work while writing. Mine is high on thinking and low on feeling. That is something I recognize: I don't easily write about my feeling on my English blog, my Dutch blog tends to be slightly more personal. Maybe because it has a smaller readership? Or because it is my mothertongue? Unfortunately Typealyzer did not work for my Dutch blog, I'd be happy to see analyze it and see any differences....

Is my blog too scientific or do you like the strong focus on thoughts?

I borrowed and read wikinomics (in Dutch). I'll return it tomorrow, so I thought I'd blog the things I'd like to recall from Wikinomics- my blog is the extended memory of my brain. Wikinomics was quite different from 'Here come's everybody' by Clay Shirky because it focuses so strongly on the case of business collaboration. Shirky focuses more on the fact that the availability of these tools will foster new levels of (unexpected) collaboration on all sides of the worlds. Important to remember is that peer-production does not work in all cases, but in cases where 3 pre-conditions are met:

1. The purpose of production is information or cultural which makes participation costs low.
2. Task can be fragmented and split up (like in wikipedia).
3. Costs of integration of these tasks in an endproduct should be low.
   
   Three ideas I would like to remember are:

- The ideas agora

Ideas agoras are market places for ideas, innovations and talents. The example of InnoCentive where solution seekers and problem solvers are matched. The problem solvers can be rewarded with a cash reward. It is not the typical type of voluntary collaboration I had in mind (people contribute because of the reward), but it seems to work well as an innovative way to put expertise to work. Another example is yet2 where patented innovations are marketed. I would love to see an idea agora in development. Not Nabuur where people in development countries can try and get direct support from their neighbours in the north, but a place where development organisations can share their sticky problems. I'm sure it would be great to read and see various organisations struggle with similar problems, and get fresh ideas from outside the sector.

- The Tech Scouts

Scouts that search for innovations external, to avoid reinventing the wheel. In development I would love to see a tech scout function in organisations. Someone who purposely liaises with others. Though everyone should ofcourse be a little tech scout for his/her field of expertise, it would be good to make this more explicit.

- The idea of productive friction

This idea is presented in The Only Sustainable Edge by John Hagel and John Seely Brown. and refers to the new type of learning that takes place when knowledge and tasks are exchanged outside the boundaries of companies.

The best example in wikinomics is for me the example on page 260. The director of the Geek Squad thought of introducing a wiki for internal communication. As he was working with geeks, knowing what a wiki is shouldn't be an obstacles. However, the wiki was not used. Finally he discovered the employees were communicating a lot while playing games. The lesson is that rather than designing tools for communication, it is better to find out what the tools and modalities of communication are and go from there. In development for instance, most intense sharing and conversations occur during extensive travels... So instead of changing this, you can build on this by stimulating certain people to travel together.

The wikinomics books continues as an open wiki online at wikinomics.

Innovation in the development sector

Last week I attended the conference organised by Strohalm on this topic. It was a little weird, because it was a mix of talking about innovation in the development sector (which was the reason for me to attend the conference) and talking about Stro's innovative social trade system (which was the reason for most participants to attend the conference).

The first two sessions were really interesting: Henk Molenaar from Wotro was speaking and noticed that the development agenda is getting wider, which call for more knowledge intensive processes. Innovation is increasingly seen as a recombination of knowledge, and through trial and error, as opposed to a narrow view of innovation happening through lineair research and development processes. Innovation has to be seen in context, and therefore should be demand-driven (not sure if I agree there). The conclusion is that processes of endigenous innovation should be stimulated by using trial and error. However there is a tension between such an approach and projects planned with logical frameworks aiming at succes. Innovation may come from new, surprising actors. All this means to create room for innovation, actors like the ministry should let go of managing and steering tightly. (I'm not sure that we should blame the logframe, but rather acknowledge that we have banned risk taking).

The second session was a panel with 3 people from the private sector (men) and 3 people from the development sector (women). They talked about questions like: 'how to create room for innovation?' and 'what are important lessons about innovation?' The private sector innovator said that you need to search for audacity and passion for something new- dare to let go and reduce procedures. Search for what moves people and try to bring that to the surface. The Rabobank said that innovation is often local, change and innovate yourself, don't innovate others. For development organisations this means that the drive to help partners is larger than the drive to please donor bureaucracies. From the examples it was clear that there are currently a lot of private sector- development organisations collaborations, like the collaboration between HIVOS and KPN around HIV/AIDS awareness creation. I'd like to quote Gert van Maanen who said: 'put the people with the ideas more central than the bosses with the budgets'. and 'innovation happens through the spark between people', ING talked about innovation departments: 99% is about incremental change, and 1% about out-of-the-box change (the EUREKA innovation).

If you want to know more about Stro's proposed innovation in the economy, play their social trade game.

Obama's use of social media: what can we learn from it?

The netsquared thinktank question is this time: 'What was the best example or lesson learned about leveraging social media from the political campaigns this year?'

At first, I didn't feel like responding. I have followed the campaigns of Obama and McCain filtered through the Dutch news. But it's a nice opportunity to find out more about how Obama leveraged the social media- I have heard it was a great campaign and his team made good use of the media in general and social media in particular.
I'm a fan of Obama (like 90% of the Dutch I believe!), because of his ideas but also because of his grandmother, who is a Kenyan, living in the Luo speaking part of Kenya. This is where I lived two years working with farmers on irrigation between 1990-1992, near Lake Victoria. When I saw her in a documentary, I really recognised the type of homestead and could understand some of the Luo language she speaks. I also lived with a Barak family (Barak Odwar). Kenya is proud! It would be great to have a presidential swap for a week between Kenya and the US! (like in the TV series 'your wife, my wife' or 'teenage swap' puberruil XL?)

But back to social media. What I found out from this blogpost on the blog 'cooler insights' is that he has a very web2.0 friendly website, with links to all kind of online hangout places like facebook, twitter, etc. which shows they understand it is not enough to think everyone comes to your website, but that you have to go out and be where your people are online. Make it easy for twitterers to stay updated. Not only myspace, but also on migente, a social network for latinos. Check it out to see a web2.0 friendly website (miss the tagcloud though!).

It seems is not only used to spread messages around, but also to engage with people online, to listen. Via a Dutch weblog called 'civil servant2.0' I learned that Obama's team doesn't simply use social media to campaign, but experiments with a site where you can share your story what these elections mean to you and has a weblog to keep people informed what happens till the transition of power.

My personal lesson is that it is not a social media strategy, or the wider campaign that made Obama win. It is Obama himself who did it. Don't overestimate the role of social media (or campaigns in general for that matter). A crap candidate with a good social media strategy is still crap. Social media can help and support you when you have a strong service or product, but can also amplify weak services or product. At times I have the impression that is forgotten and that people think a web2.0 tool will automatically give you a good reputation. Take the example of a weblog: a weblog can also worsen your reputation because your work and ideas will be exposed.

To summarize this in 3 lessons:
1. Go out to where your audiences are online, don't assume they come to your website or portal
2. Make it two-way communication, not only talking, but also listening
3. Make sure your service or product is strong, otherwise you will amplify your weaknesses

By the way, not only Obama is using twitter, you can also get news about the Ghana Election on twitter by following Ghanaelections.

Anonymous browsing

Yesterday we had another inspiring ecollaboration meeting in Ede, kindly hosted by MDF. I met David Jacovkis who works for the Free Knowledge Institute and explained why and how you can browse and contribute anonymously to the internet.

I'm crossblogging this from a blogpost I made for the ecollaboration blog: David tells us browsing and contribute anonymously to the internet is a basic skill that parents should teach their children. There is a open source software that you can download on TOR. TOR is an anonymiser tool. It makes use of a network of intermediate computers so that nobody knows from where you are connecting and to which websites. You will find the instructions- which are quite easy on the website of Torproject.

You can watch David explain this system:

If you want to know more about anonymous blogging, Global Voices has put up a technical guide for anonymous blogging which you can find here. It explains more steps like choosing pseudonyms.

Thinking out of the in-box

Luis Suarez works for IBM and I've been following his experiment to reduce his email through his weblog. I was a little sceptical about his efforts. I don't have any problem keeping up with my mails I see it as communication concerning the tasks I'm working on with other people. If people have problems with their mails, they probably have problems with setting the boundaries of their tasks too. I felt he was blaming the medium email for the mailculture, like blaming the telephone for the fact that many people are calling you. I thought the solution would be in becoming better at deleting non-relevant mails and knowing when to use other means, like telephone or walking by. But then it is true that there is a real problem. I have heard so many people complain about email. They tell me for instance that they still have 150 mails to 'work through'. Or that working at home is problematic because these people start sending so many mails. Email seems to de-energize many professionals and makes people feel not in control of their work. When I worked for an organization I had more mails, which made it hard to wait a few days in checking your mail. Now that I'm freelancing, it seems easier to control my mail.

So I was happy to see Luis Suarez presenting on this topic in a 9-minutes presentation in a youtube video, and I get his point. Luis tells us basically: Most of the people get over 30-50 mails per day, taking about 2-3 hours per day spent on emailing. Mails are not transparent- there is a political game around bcc's and cc's. When you spend the same amount of time on social media like twitter, it is more supportive of a colleagial teamspirit. It sounds like an important difference. Be in control of your online communication, rather than be controlled by it.

You can watch the video here, unfortunately he doesn't explain how he did it, but you can get that information from his blog.



This seems an excellent entry point to get people interested in social media in organizations!

Terrible teams doing wonderful jobs

(picture through the reality and fun blog)


I've been working with 3 Intercultural teams composed by people with various nationalities and I've been part of a 100% Dutch team, all teams of 6-8 people. The Dutch team has used a learning history to learn about their teamprocess. The 3 intercultural teams have done an individual self rating followed by a group discussion of their teamwork. The rating sheet I prepared for them was based on the definition of effective groups by Harris.

Effective groups:
Produce what customers want
Are able to do it again
Do it in a way that makes the members of the team feel good
(Harris, 2005)

It was interesting to see that the Dutch team had more issues of different perceptions of the work at hand and approaches to deal with it than the intercultural team, as you would expect the opposite. In a way, the Dutch team had more differences to bridge. Whether we all understand the Dutch way of greeting each other doesn't help you, when you have a different understanding of the way to work on this particular task.

Looking through the lens of the team development stages of Tuckman, two of the three intercultural teams managed to get to a level of effective performance, the third group seemed to still be in a kind of storming phase, and never got to the level of high team performance. Neither did the Dutch team. However, despite the fact that these two teams were not at the performing stage as teams, they managed to perform the task quite well. I guess this is my personal learning point- that you can have a sub-optimal teamprocess- but still perform a good task. The downside is that in these teams people are happy when the task is over and eager to depart! Another learning point is that taking time for bridging the difference is often hard when there is a lot of work to do, so it's tempting to just continue focusing on the task.

Have you ever been in a terrible team that did a wonderful job?

The institute for minimal impact knowledge management

Green Chameleon made a funny video about the institute for minimal impact knowledge management (KM). You can learn to be seen involved in knowledge management without disturbing your real work. It is really funny, making fun of appreciative inquiry, corporate vlogging, six sigma, knowledge cafes and complexity. Knowledge cafes- the more you talk about something the less you understand it and the less you want to do something about it. Complexity is a great contribution to minimal impact KM, the more complex you can make it appear, the less accountable you are for the impact. Can you win the 0 impact award?

Watch it here:


It helps in our study of monitoring and evaluation of knowledge management strategies: if you have become an expert in minimal impact KM, can you become an expert is showing the maximum impact of your minimal impact KM? Maybe that's an idea for the next course for the institute?

Dilbert adds to my last blogpost

Source: wwww.dilbert.com

Impact assessment of knowledge management interventions

Let me use (part of) a rainy saturday afternoon to try and organize some of my new thoughts about impact assessment. We (team of 3) are doing a study about Monitoring and Evaluation of Knowledge Management Interventions. I have been in 8 interviews and read a pile of papers around this topic. We are blogging some of it on the Giraffe team blog on this topic. We are currently working on a draft of the publication hoping to do justice to all interviews and literature. Here are my personal insights- developments in my own thinking. When I worked in development project I wasn't always enthused about monitoring and evaluation, apart from some participatory impact monitoring (PIM) efforts. However, working with various communities of practice, I come across the need to monitor and evaluation the impact. After all, the aim is not to have a community of practice, but to have a functional community of practice and which functional I mean stewarding knowledge and innovating practices. What has struck me in the interviews and literature is the following:

1. One remarkable thing is the concept of Knowledge Management itself. It is such an accepted, ordinary term for me, but not all others. It is a discipline I like, because of its integrated nature, fed by information technology, psychology, social sciences etc. The people who have negative associations with the term seem to find it difficult to see how you manage 'knowledge'. Personally, I don't think knowledge management is about managing knowledge, but about managing knowledge workers, organisational structure, process and systems. In our definition it is very close to terms as Organizational Learning. Chris Mowles felt knowledge management is coopted too much by management science, but I don't think it is in the development sector.

2. I see that I need to be more careful in distinguishing between measuring (using metrics like nr. of kilos etc), assessing (to determine the value), and reading (picking up signals, evolving understanding). Often I used these terms interchangeably, but they are different. Reading organizations is a powerful term that we used in Ghana when I worked with SNV (thanks Laurent!), but it took some time to see the link with this subject, I think reading is underestimated. Formal evaluation exercises take quite some investment, but informal readings by actors and sponsors take place all the time. Maybe we can more often trust the informal readings by actors instead of waiting for the report of an 'objective' evaluator.

3. The need for distinction (and often separation) between a developmental assessment and an extractive assessment. The first type of assessment has the aim to improve the situation and make sure the actors gain insights themselves, upon which they can act. An extractive assessment (or sometimes called for accountability) is aimed at proving value to sponsors or donors who are outsiders, to secure continued support. I think it's useful to keep the two aims more often separate. Lumping them together in one process can be very dangerous, as you will never be completely open when you are keen to prove something. A developmental assessment, or 'monitoring in the service of learning' as CDRA has neatly coined has its limits there is an extractive purpose too. I'm not saying it is impossible to combine the two purposes in one process, I think it is very well possible where there are fairly equal, mature relationships between actors and sponsors. However, in the development sector this is always a tricky thing. Who judges? What kind of decisions will be made on the basis of the results of the assessment? I've done it too, evaluate a network with the purpose to 'learn' but at the same time, everybody is aware that the donor has serious doubts.

4. The language of learning is another powerful insight- the way you talk about learning, the way you experience learning determines your choice of knowledge management interventions and the way you measure. Do you belief in informal learning or in training or both? When the purpose of an assessment is extractive and the language of the sponsors is not aligned with the language of the assessment, it may not have the intended effect. Continuous conversations between the knowledge actors and the sponsors may be more useful in that case. But if a person doesn't believe in an intervention will he/she be convinced by an assessment? Probably only when accompanied by the right conversations, not by a report. Discuss what the change process is that the knowledge management should bring about and choose an appropriate way of monitoring the changes.

5. Balance the cost of an assessment with the expected outcomes - it was very, very remarkable in the interviews with people working in the profit sector, that the whole topic of monitoring and evaluation of impact of knowledge management interventions seems less relevant. Why invest in an assessment when as a manager you see that something is changing in the right direction? When the cost of the knowledge management intervention is relatively small? Unless the outcomes will really be the basis for a change in strategy, or a major decision, why do you want to assess the impact in the first place? The fact that impact is not formally assessed does not mean there is no impact and that people don't have a sense of the impact. Managers have to stay in touch with reality and trust their professional observations. Investments in a formal assessment may only be justified when it's really important and strategic to know. On the other hand, a very light mechanism may do the work.

6. The need to discuss and decide where you stop to assess impact. I am a big fan of the INTRAC ripple model. Which makes the distinction between output, outcome and impact very clear. Etienne Wenger shared another similar model, but focused on communities of practice. Using such a model, you can decide where you stop your assessment. Unless data is readily available going to further levels may mean investing a lot of energy in collecting information that may be useless. The further away from the centre the ripples are, the more uncertainty in attribution. I enjoyed the example of Mattieu Weggeman of a management team that was more open and collaborative. Only to find out that the director had fallen in love with a legal person and this relationship rather than the intervention changed his attitude. However, stories may go a long way in explaining changes in all their complexities.

7. Figures, stories and conversations
Etienne Wenger stressed that figures don't mean a thing without the stories explaining the figures. And without conversation about both, it is not likely that it will lead to change. I find it interesting that a person from outside the sector mentioned this, since in the development sector this 'rule' would apply even stronger because in the south the preference for oral communication above textual communication is even stronger. Chris Mowles added his observation that there are far too many monitoring and evaluation figures and reports, and far too little sense-making.

One thing I'm struggling with is how to avoid that stories become success stories. Maybe by focusing on the right questions?

Traces of how ideas travel

What do I have in common with Mark Gould, Dawn Foster and Richard McDermott? I wouldn't know but we are all mentioned in this blogpost in an unknown language :). I found it through tracking the referring URL to my weblog. I think this what is exciting about the online interactions. In the offline world, there is no way of tracking who is using your words, ideas, or who is talking about you. Unless you get some feedback. But online, it is much easier to track down what kind of ideas or blogposts get referred to. When you work in face-to-face communities a lot of impact may happen without anybody noticing for instance, ideas may continue to be told to colleagues, publications shared, ways of working copied. For online communities it must be easier to do so? On the other hand, you can't track how it travels from the online into the real world. Anyone who know what kind of language this is?

Building healthy communities

Richard McDermott write the cover story of inside knowledge on the topic of building healthy communities. A three years in-depth assessment was undertaken in a dozen companies to look at mature communities. Interestingly, old thinking about CoPs was that goals and deliverables woud inhibit people's openess and that communities needed to evolve on their own over time. However, the study found that many communities without organisational support fade away. Most of the healthy communities are more like 'official' organisational structures.

Key characteristics of healthy communities were consistent across the various industries studied. Following are some characteristics:

• Most active communities are also highly valued by their organisations
• Projects, goals and deliverables give a community something specific to organise around
• Healthy communities have enthusiastic, active, energised leaders, spending between 10-25% of their time engaged in community activities
• Leader activities include facilitating meetings, handling logistics, networking among members and networking among sponsors
• Healthy communities have a core group of active members
• They have a clear sense of making progress, even if goals are informally formulated, which energises the community
• Healthy communities are far from the margins of a company even though management attention can easily inhibit community development.
• Some communities are developing the organisation's knowledge assets

I think this is interesting, as I also encounter the belief that communities should be left alone in organisations. What I observe is that this marginalizes them, because there is no attention for learning from the community of practice. For inter-organisational communities (as I'm now mostly engaged with) it is even less likely that an organisation is closely involved. Though this may create the space for authentic development, is can also be interpreted as lack of interest in the domain of the community. Good to read the whole paper, it is not very long and gives a very pragmatic insight in communities within companies.

List of 50 Knowledge Management Blogs

Following the referrals to my blog I found this list of 50 KM blogs. Hard for me, as I'm trying to keep my bloglist under 50, but I'm already at 90. If it is more than 50, I get discouraged to read them, and it starts to feel like an additional duty. And that's not what I want. So maybe I should change my bloglist to this 50? Anyhow, a useful reference for people who learn through reading blogs and want to learn about the field of Knowledge Management

Clash of generations

Via Steve Bridger I found this cartoon on the clash of generations on the Geek and Poke blog. On my Dutch blog I wrote the story about the train where a girl was looking for the women's toilet. I told her the toilet in front of her was for everyone. She answered that it was written that it was for 'men'. That was true, but 'men' in Dutch is a rather old-fashioned way of talking about men and women jointly!

Secrets and lies

If a conference is well blogged, and video-ed, you can probably learn as much from it as when attending.. At Picnic I heard people talk about the fact that men lie about 70% of the time on internet and women about 30% of the time... it made me curious how this was measured. And it may be reflective of face-to-face communication?

Anyhow, I just found a post by Ethan Zuckerman blogging Genevieve Bell's presentation on secrets and lies.

"Men and women lie differently. Men lie more, and we’re not as good at it. Men lie about their jobs and cars. Women lie about their weight, age and what they’ve purchased.
Why does this happen? We probably need to understand that lies aren’t always opposed to truth. They are often a form of self deception, a way of coping with the world. “Lies are not always opposed to truth - they are opposed to reality.” Children lie to test boundaries, to discover what is and isn’t an appropriate response in conversation. Is it okay to say that you’re seven when you’re actually three?"

She also point to the cultural determination of secrets and lies:

"Secrets are different than lies. Genevieve grew up in indigenous communities in Australia, and there secrets are a big part of life. Not everyone gets to know everything - there’s knowledge held only by women, only by men, only by the old or the initiated. She tells a story about indigenous women wondering at white women’s honesty with their husbands. “The white men asks, ‘What did you do today, dear?’ And the women answer! And the women I spent time with were howling with laughter over this.”

I recognise this as in Ghana there was definitely a different perception about what is allowed as secret or lies. Some lies are publicly known as lies to insiders, it is only the outsider that may be confused... Back to the internet: I have the feeling that the more you are online, the more you have to be honest, since everything gets connected. The more people you add on twitter, the more likely it is they know it when you are lying. But that sounds a bit contrary to her findings about lying?

Call answering practices change -very- slowly

I had a sudden insight on Friday that was a bit shocking and funny at the same time. During a discussion about online 'openess' someone explained that his daughter answers the phone by greeting the person calling, she knows who is calling her. I realized I always say my own name when I answer the phone.. but in a way it is ridiculous, because on my display I already see who is calling me! It is just a matter of habit. It's an old habit from the time when you could not see on the display who is calling you... There is my age-group playing out a small act as if we don't know who is calling.. It shows clearly that practices change very slowly following technical solutions. The way we interact and communicate with friends is grounded in a lot of conventions. If a persons picks up the phone saying her name, you know she is from the era before the displays!

Jaroslav Azhnyuk on education 2.0 in Ukrain

Jaroslav is 19 years old, lives in Ukrain, and started an NGO called Internet Initiatives. Is also a founder of Semantica Company.

What's education 2.0. Education + web2.0= education 2.0?? It is not as simple as that. First we need to educate people how to use the internet. A sixth of the population use internet, but mainly browsing and email. They don't use web2.0 tools, RSS feeds etc. Primary skills are using email; secondary skills are use of RSS feeds, slideshare, blogs, social networking, etc. How to use this, not only for fun, but also for business.

Hence Internet Initiatives organises:

- Barcamps where everyone can give presentations of about 30 minutes, a very open format. It's cool and fun. Barcamps were very inspiring and successful, starting a barcamp virus- 12 barcamps en monthly minicamps organized in a cafe. Lots of fun, beer and snacks. See blogcampCEE for an impression.

- New technologies on the Internet with 18 seminars on universities sponsored by EJC and Apple IMC. 6 topics, social networks, blogs, RSS feeds, search. Found out level of knowledge highly varies. Some students are deeply engaged, other don't know about it.

- Educamp in Kyiv on 8-9 november 2008. First day with prescheduled sessions, the second day with asked questions. For more information contact Jaroslav, he answers all his mails!

Heike Sperling on visual music and limerence

My second life-blogging blogpost! Heike Sperling works for the Institute for Music and Media. (IMM) She teaches visual music.

She talks about 3 subjects:

1. Her institute IMM

2. Visual Music

3. Current research project: music and limerence (?)

When she studied there were no computers. MTV started when she was in her 20's. Then works as a creative director. In the 90's she worked with clips and invested in experimental music videos. Now Managing Music Director of IMM.

1. IMM- based in Germany

Evolved from training sound engineers. Since a decade the IMM has incorporated video, which is unique in Germany. Sounds and visuals have different languages, so there is mutual learning between the students and herself. In October two new bachelor will be launched: program music and media, the other sound and media. The idea is to bring the two cultures together to inspire each other. Students enhance their personalities on the basis of an instrument.

2. Visual Music

Term is 90 years old. Visual music refers to the use fo musical structures in visual imagery. Many aspect of music are visual, think of the covers etc. From experimental films. Audio and visuals are considered as equally important. This is not common. They take a close look at the coherence between technical innovation, new artistic languages and contents. this requires constant dialogue and reflection. She learns a new language from the musicians. Audio and visuals together should be more than the sum. She shows a visual music clip called light/speed by Maurice Braun one of their students. The clip won a the visual music award. (she didn't tell us this, but I saw it when googling!). In visual music the musician and visual person need to communicate because they can not understand each other. the goal is to develop assertiveness, self awareness and communication skills, so visual music is rather the stepping stone, not the goal.

3. The next project: Limerence

Limerence is an involuntary coginitive and emotional state in which a person feels an intense romantic desire for another person (Dorothy Tennov). (in English: to have a crush)...

She is the only female teacher, all 40 students are male. So she thought to study a cliche topic for a woman: romantic love. It is a sort of tabu in the scientific world to talk about it. Limerence involves acute longing for reciprocation, and a general intensity of feeling that leaves other concerns in the background, amongst others. Love has been called a madness, which implies loss of control and inspires fear. Limerence hence conflicts with the idea that human beings are free and rational creatures. 85% of populair music concerns love and limerence. Limerence as an ideal is financially profitable. She will cook up a question for a project, whose ingredients will be identity, society and interface. Interface looking at the connection between limerence and music. Why is it so connected? Falling in love has the same effect as cocaine. Have you seen Stanley Kubric's films? If not, you have to see them as soon as possible.

I ask her whether she encounter a lot of conflicts between the two world, audio and visuals. She does encounter conflict all the time, but sees conflict not as something negative, but the reason to dialogue. Musicians sometimes say she doesn't understand at all. Especially when both are equal, you need to work through your conflicts. That's exactly what makes her so interested in it.

Reversing familiar ways of working stimulates creativity

During my last painting class, we did an excercise painting our model in negative (black= white and vice versa), a very good exercise that turns your thinking and way of looking at a model upside down. When I reversed later, it took some time to get used to 'normal' painting.

At Picnic, I was suddenly asked to interview Werner Vogels, the CTO of Amazon.com for the Picnic daily newspaper. We had only 5 minutes, I didn't have a clue who he was, so I proposed to do it with someone together, so Kerim Satirli and I worked together. My 'normal' interview mode is to listen to a person for a long time (eg. during a presentation or conversation), understand his view and then do an informed interview. In this case, we were advised to ask personal questions about his Picnic experience. Soon we found out the question: 'what's an idea that struck you so far?' didn't work because he had just arrived! Reflecting back, I think Werner might have been surprised that I asked him questions like 'what brings you to Picnic' when he is invited as keynote speaker :). But that may be refreshing too (hopefully!). The rest was improvisation.

The collaboration worked out well, without knowing eachother since Kerim knew the context better than I did, he had a video camera, I had a laptop, I started the questions and he added another one.

You can find our interview on the weblog of Kerim Satirli, the video will be there too- soon. The most interesting thing he said was that the way social media enterprises start is changing so rapidly, you don't need a lot of money to start something. On the other hand, everyone seems to want to design the next youtube or facebook and there needs to be more attention for sustainable models. I feel very much like a newcomer here, because I'm not a start-up, but rather a user of social media! (and not knowing the heros of the crowd like Werner Vogels..)

Paul Keller about Creative Commons

This is my first attempt at live blogging, I've never been in a conference or workshop where it's allowed to sit and type during a presentation.. I'm at the European Bloggers Lab of Picnic 2008 and Paul Keller from Knowledgeland is going to talk about Creative Commons. He has a t-shirt of Che Guevara, who wrote the motor cycle diaries, which is in a way one of the first weblogs...

The revolution of the internet is that it enabled small organisation and individuals to publish like all the big players leading to a more level playing field. No technical barriers left from getting your message across if you have a message and can write well- you can blog. Previously specialists in publishing were publishing and had access to lawyers etc to deal with copyrights. Copyright law had evolved as a complex system over the 19th and 20th century. Now come the internet where every body can copy, and suddenly these regulations apply to ordinary citizens.

Copyright basics: it is an exclusive right to interdict any uses of the copyrighted work. It arisen when a work of sufficient originality is created. Expires 70 years after the death of the author. It protects authors, artists, etc. Technical protection measures (DRM) forms a protective layer on top of it. Copyrights protect people to stimulate them to create.

Two types of copyrights:

• Right to reproduce, modify or broadcast
• Moral rights- to protect the integrity of her personality

Exceptions: the right to make quotations with proper attribution, educational exceptions and private copying, public interest, reuse of press materials by the press.

Now- there's an explosion of creativity for other motivations than rent seeking that's not really recognised by the copyrights. For most people the problem is not being copied, the problem is not being read/seen/ copied enough.. it limits authors and access to orphan works.

Creative commons was set up in 2002 by US non-profit corporation (by Prof. Lawrence Lessig) similar to open source licenses. As long as you adhere to certain principles, you can use it freely. Now in 44 countries though the concept of national licenses may be outdated. There are now more than 250 million CC licensed objects available on the internet, like good quality pictures on flickr. There are 6 different licenses that allow sharing, or transfer the work into another format. Give proper attribution to original author. licensor can choose if she wants to limit this to non-commercial uses of the work or include commercial purposes as well. You can choose to allow performance of derivative works. See the 6 core licenses here. Important is that they do not limit the 'fair use' rights and do not exclude the use of other licenses simultaneously.

Good news: Adam Curry has a flickr account with a creative commons account! Which the tabloids took to use in an article. Adam sued them and won (because it was commercially used), which was the first court case involving a creative commons license.

- By the way life blogging doesn't distract me it keeps me quite focused! though during boring parts you start to do other things on your computer and that's really distracting.. I wonder why the topic of copyright always seems slightly boring to me whereas it seems important enough.

Digital media and learning competition

I've been asked to spread the news about the digital media and learning competition. The focus is on Participatory Learning. Participatory learning is defined broadly: using new digital media for sharing ideas or planning, designing, implementing, or just discussing ideas and goals together. So if you have an innovative idea or project, give it a try!

Innovation in Participatory Learning Awards support larger-scale projects
that demonstrate new modes of participatory learning in a variety of
environments, by creating new digital tools, modifying existing ones, or using
digital media in novel ways. Collaboration is strongly encouraged. International
applications are welcome from eligible organizations.

This year we are piloting international eligibility for our Innovation Award and will be accepting submissions from primary applicants in Canada, People's Republic of China, India, Japan, Mexico, the Netherlands,Nigeria, Russia, Singapore, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States; collaborators can befrom anywhere in the world.……

Application Deadline: October 15, 2008

Full information at: DML competition
Twitter: twitter.com/dmlComp

(You can find out about last year's winners here)

Pathways into working in virtual teams

I'm working with Mark Turpin and Sibrenne Wagenaar on a study into impact evaluation of knowledge management interventions for the IKM emergent research programme. Since Mark is based in South Africa, and we are based in the Netherlands, we have to use online tools to communicate and organize our work.

When we had a skype conference call, we opened a chatroom to take notes. However, Mark couldn't see the chatroom and I explained what he should see on the bottom of the screen. He couldn't see it. Then it appeared he had a Mac computer and it was showing up at the top of his screen! It makes me think starting to work online has similarities to working in a different culture. You have to be prepared to open yourself up to new ways of working and alternatives to what you expect. It's a whole new world and you are a total stranger till you get familiar with it.

Sibrenne and I have worked online quite a lot, but Mark is new to our way of working. It's amazing to see how easy he is picking up on working with various tools, as compared to efforts to introduce tools in organisations! We are using skype, Unyte, various google docs and write for the giraffe weblog. Mark is enthusiastic about google docs and has started using it for other projects too, and has recently started his own weblog about learning and social capital in South Africa.

Linking this to the lessons about teaching web2 tools to researcher by Pete Shelton, I think you can say that Mark has experienced how it can work from peers (us) and is therefore able to apply it to his own work situation. And ofcourse we are great, patient co-workers that don't make him feel stupid when he doesn't know how it works (or do we?)...

I'm not sure if I linked already to the article that I wrote with Sibrenne about tools for virtual teams - (because it is in Dutch I may not have linked it on this blog but here it is for any interested Dutch speaking persons)

Defining the domain of a community.

Nancy White has a good blogpost about domain definition. I belief domain defintion is one of many powerful interventions that a coordinator/facilitator or advisor in a community of practice can make. Domain definition or re-definition can help a group to articulate the domain they are interested in and strengthen their focus and become attractive for newcomers. But what is a domain? Is it the same as topic or theme? Nancy provides the definition of Etienne Wenger:

A community of practice is not merely a club of friends or a network of
connections between people. It has an identity defined by a shared domain of
interest. Membership therefore implies a commitment to the domain, and therefore a shared competence that distinguishes members from other people. (You could
belong to the same network as someone and never know it.) The domain is not
necessarily something recognized as “expertise” outside the community. A youth
gang may have developed all sorts of ways of dealing with their domain:
surviving on the street and maintaining some kind of identity they can live
with. They value their collective competence and learn from each other, even
though few people outside the group may value or even recognize their
expertise.

From the definition you can see that a community of practice is a special type of network, one with a focus on its domain. By interacting, the members are forging common ideas and practices around their domain, and may achieve -slowly- innovation. Slowly, because there is a stage whereby the members need time to exchange and establish the common ground and bridge differences. You have to know what exists before you can innovate. What I can add from my experience is that there are no hard rule for domain definition. Yet, it is best if the domain is not so vast, that you start drowning and get too wide a group of interested people. On the other hand, it should not be so narrow that it becomes like a problem. You may have a 'name' and a 'description' for instance the e-collaboration community focusses on 'how to guide the introduction of e-tools into development organisations in a way that it improves collaboration (north-north and south-south) in development cooperation.' Probably 'teleconferences' would have been too narrow a focus and 'using ICTs' too wide a focus - in this particular case.

Here comes everybody: book review

I blogged a video with presentation by Clay Shirky before I read his book 'Here comes Everybody'. I'm happy to blog his book too, since I was very impressed by it, despite some weak parts.

To start with the weaknesses: I don't buy into his idea that social media will make organizations obsolete, because they will bring the power of 'organizing without organizations'. His explanation of the raison d'etre of organizations is very simplistic; when you want to organize something with a group of people, you start an organization. First of all he overlooks the fact that there are many more informal and formal forms of organizing - families, networks, associations, friendship groups etc. Secondly, he does not enter into a description of the different functions of businesses, governmental and civil society organisations. Each have a function to play in society and I don't think this function will disappear because people can organize things without costs by using online tools.

What I'm impressed with is his understanding of the impact of new communication tools. "communication tools don't get socially interesting untill they get technologically boring. The invention of a tools doesn't create change; it has to have been around long enough that most of society is using it". I think that is very well said. The tools don't change us. It is through experimenting with the tools, and becoming at ease with new tools that our behaviour changes. Shirky provides the recognisable example of the cell phone- now with cell phone, we don't make clear appointments, we say- I'll call you later. It's not the cell phone that makes us sloppy, it's the fact that we've become comfortable and used to cell phone that changes our appointment making habits. When anorexia patients meet over the internet, it's not caused by the internet, but it is a latent interest of anorexia patient to connect that gets crystallized into a network because of they make creative use of the new tools. I recall that when the students went on strike, the Dutch newspaper headlines were: MSN calls for strike! But in reality it's the students that called for strike and they were very effective in organizing themselves because they had their MSN networks. Online tools remove the barriers to collective action. He provides a very convincing example of the first groups that used Meetup to connect. They were not the well-established groups you'd expect. On the contrary groups that used Meetup to organize gatherings were groups with a latent desire to meet, but for whom it was difficult to organize it (for whatever reason).

As a result of experimenting, behaviour may change and the balance of power may change too. And that's the exciting - or revolutionary if you wish, part of the story. Clay Shirky: " the most profound effects of social tools lag their inventions by years, because it isn't until they have a critical mass of adopters, adopters who take these tools for granted, that their real effects begin to appear." So this is a stage of intense experimentation. There are definitely chapters of the book I'm going to reread.

By the way, you can find all the weblinks mentioned in the book (often annoying to retyp a paper weblink into your browser) here.

Employees Must Wash Hands

I am back home from a one month holiday in the eastern part of the USA - my first time to visit the US which was very inspiring and revealing! I thought I would blog on the way; but I didn't get to it because I did not spend many hours on computers. Somehow I thought you need to blog regularly to prevent that your readership will drop drastically. It is nice to see that isn't the case. I don't see any noticeable drop after 4 weeks at least.

Visiting the US was interesting because seeing part of the US made me understand a lot of the movies I have seen, and world politics, economy, etc. in a different way. The US is not a new country you don't know anything about, but seeing it with your own eyes makes a huge difference. When you work in an African country, people from the US and Europoe are often seen as 'Westerners'. It was impressive to see the cultural differences between the Netherlands and the US, but also to experience that as a newbie you don't know about many things and don't understand them. At first we didn't know how to fuel our car ('lift the lever') for instance. One of the signs in the bathroom struck me as utterly weird- the sign you see in the picture reading "Employees Must Wash Hands Before Returning to Work". At the end of the trip it felt normal seeing the signs (you see them in virtually all the bathrooms in restaurants-called restrooms by the way). I still wonder whether the reminder is seriously intended for the employees - which seems quite paternalistic to me to be told to wash your hands! Or rather for the customers to show the company cares about hygiene. Anyhow, this is just one example of how a newcomers looks around with fresh eyes.

To make the link to knowledge management in organisations: I guess organisations could make more systematic use of this phenomenon by asking explicit feedback from their new employees after a certain period on job. I heard of an organisation that did a 100- days feedback. Seems that can give very good insights and would allow the managers in the organisation to see the organisation with fresh eyes.