Tag: personal knowledge management

Bentley CS 299

I spent some time this afternoon with Mark Frydenberg‘s class at Bentley University: CS 299 Web 2.0 – Technology, Strategy, and Community.

I talked about my perspective on Web 2.0, trying to show how 2.0 tools can be used to help you organize the information you need to do your job better and develop yourself professionally. My take on web 2.0 tools is that they are great for personal knowledge management.

Web 2.0 has some obvious uses for marketing. But that’s like saying you watch television for the ads.

My slide deck is embedded below.

I used Google Docs to create the presentation. It falls far short of PowerPoint for the way I create my presentations. On the positive side, I could access the slide deck from any computer and make an edit when I had an idea.

Updates:

Personal Knowledge Management and Compliance

boston km forum

Today, I am presenting at the Boston KM Forum on Personal Knowledge Management. My presentation is part an all-day symposium on personal knowledge management.

My take on this subject is that knowledge management had been too focused on the benefits to the enterprise instead of the immediate benefits to the individual.

Firehose of Information

We are all on the receiving end of a firehose of information. We need tools to help filter, reduce and save that flow of information. In compliance, we are dealing with ever-changing rules and regulations. We need to find out which ones affect us, how they affect us and what we should do. Even better would be to see the rule changes coming so we can be ready for them.

What’s In It For Me

I’m sure it’s great for the enterprise that we save our stuff into a central place according to the rules imposed by that central system. But how does that help me manage my firehose of information? Give me a tool, a system or a technique that has an immediate, direct affect on me.

Many companies offered incentives, like gift cards, for contributing to the system. If you have to give away a prize to motivate people to contribute, then perhaps they do not seen enough value in contributing. What in it for me? Sure, you get the Starbucks giftcard. And you get some smug satisfaction for contributing into the central knowledge system vault.

Marketplace of One

Davenport and Prusak, in Working Knowledge, point out that “People rarely give away valuable possessions, including knowledge, without expecting something in return.” There is a knowledge marketplace. But I’m the biggest consumer of my knowledge. Help me organize and memorialize the things I know. Others can benefit form this, but the focus is on me.

Knowledge management solutions will work better if they are focused on improving the normal workflow and better capturing that information. The user is more likely to use a new tool if it is easy to use and provides more functionality than what they currently use.

Compliance Building is published for me. I am the biggest consumer of information on the site. I am happy that it allows me network and be a part of the compliance community. But I primarily put the posts together so I have a collection of the information I need for my personal use.

Lessons from Web 2.0

I spend a lot of time during the presentation showing how web 2.0 tools have helped me manage my flow of information. Compliance Building being one of them.

Slides

Here is my slidedeck:

Personal Knowledge Management

References:

Update:

Other views from the Knowledge Management Forum Symposium on Personal Knowledge Management:

Social Media Best Practices

social-media_580x1501

This afternoon I am at the Harvard Club in New York City participating in Social Media: Risks & Rewards, an Incisive Media event. My second panel presentation is Social Media Best Practices. (My morning presentation was Develop your Company’s Corporate Policy for Social Media.)

I was joined on the panel by:

  • John Lipsey, Vice President Corporate Counsel Services of LexisNexis, acting as the moderator
  • Vanessa DiMauro, CEO of Leader Networks
  • Eugene Weitz, soon to be former Corporate Counsel of Alcatel-Lucent
  • Daniel Goldman, Legal Counsel of Mayo Clinic

Unlike the earlier presentations which focused on what the company should be doing, this panel is focusing on how the individual lawyers in the audience could use social media to help them.

Here is the slide deck we are using:

Social Media Best Practices

Vanessa will be starting off with some highlights from her 2009 Networks for Counsel Studypdf-icon. (A Global Study of the Legal Industry’s Adoption of Online Professional Networking, Preferences, Usage and Future Predictions.)

Then Dan spends some time leading the discussion about Twitter.

I take over and talking about blogging as a personal knowledge management tool. You can get some sense of what I am going to say if you read Why I Blog.

Eugene then focuses on online professional networking. (He hates the term social networking.) He makes a case why it is particularly useful for in-house counsel.

We end with a discrete set of takeaways for the audience.

I plan to present two takeaways. First, listen to what people are saying about you and your company. Set up a Google news search and a Google blog search for your name and your company’s name. Second, use a blog as a personal knowledge management tool.

Vanessa has a great 20 minute action plan.