Harold Jarche's Public Library

Narrating your work

In 2009, Dave Winer wrote about “Narrating your work” - the practice of providing a brief, running commentary on your work as you do it.

Later, in an extremely helpful article entitled “Do’s and Don’ts for your work’s social platform”, Andrew McAfee also encouraged people to narrate their work:

“Talk both about work in progress (the projects you’re in the middle of, how they’re coming, what you’re learning, and so on), and finished goods (the projects, reports, presentations, etc. you’ve executed). This lets others discover what you know and what you’re good at. It also makes you easier to find, and so increases the chances you can be a helpful colleague to someone. Finally, it builds your personal reputation and ‘brand.’”

Confused about what to write? Simply post about what you’re working on every day. Who you’re meeting with. The research you’re doing. Articles you find relevant. Lessons you learned. Mistakes you made.

PKM

David Snowden's landmark blog post in 2008 was an important event in developing a common understanding of Knowledge Management. By introducing his 7 principles, David reminded us that Knowledge is a difficult, personal attribute, not easy of recall, nor of extraction, nor of codification. These principles are widely quoted, often (sadly) without the commentary found in the original article, which adds considerably to the understanding of the principles.

I would like to offer a few addenda to these principles from my own experience, many of which were implicit in the original blog post. The original principles are in bold italic, my addenda in plain italic, and my commentary in plan text below.
Knowledge can only be volunteered, it cannot be conscripted, but it can be requested. 
This first principle is a vital reminder that the disclosure of knowledge is a voluntary act, but I have met people who take this as meaning that the instigation therefore must come from the knowledge-holder. This isn't the case - as principle 3 shows, there are triggers and circumstances that can deeply influence the knowledge-holder to be forthcoming - to share or volunteer rather than hoard. A sincere honest request will do this - extensive peer pressure will also have a strong effect.
We only know what we know when we need to know it, but recall can be triggered.
In his original commentary, David explains ways in which recall can be triggered, and many effective Knowledge Management practices are based on ways of triggering recall. Group dialogue, storytelling and analysis, interview techniques such as role-playing responses to situations, can all be used as ways of triggering the deep knowledge, and making this conscious.
In the context of real need few people will withhold their knowledge, and also in other cases where they feel sharing will "make a difference".
I strongly resonate with this principle and believe it to be absolutely true. It is also based on the concept that Pull beats Push as a stimulus for knowledge sharing. However I am not sure that it always has to be "real need", so long as there is an "acknowledged customer" with whom the knowledge sharer can relate, real interest in, and appreciation of, what the sharer has to offer, and belief that sharing will "make a difference". I have seen many teams, workers or experts share openly and generously, with no real immediate need, but rather a belief that this knowledge will be re-used to help others in similar circumstances. The corollary to this, of course, is that if they feel it won't make a difference, and that their contribution will end up in an information junkyard, then they won't bother.
Everything is fragmented.
I have nothing to add to this one. Everything is fragmented, knowledge is dispersed, and effective knowledge management approaches need to recognise this.
Tolerated failure imprints learning better than success, yet repeated failure is stupid, and success breeds success.
There's a lot been written in this blog about the approach to mistakes, and about the role of failure in KM. Individuals learn well from failure, but failure can be very costly. Sincere failure in pursuit of risky goals is fine if treated as a learning opportunity, making the same mistake twice just proves that learning is not happening. Also it is as important to learn from the team that won the deal, as from the team that lost the deal. It is the shining examples, the instances of "positive deviance" which often provide the greatest leap forward in understanding. In our Bird Island exercise, all the participants want to know the secret of the 3 metre tower, and they make their biggest leap in performance once they can copy components of that successful design. Then once they have built their >3m tower, they look at it and think "Wow - I did that, using Knowledge from others". They had to "fail" (build a <1m tower) before they were open to learning, but that combination of failure AND success was crucial. The failure prepared them to learn from the success.
The way we know things is not the way we report we know things.
Absolutely.
We always know more than we can say, and we will always say more than we can write down, but good facilitated processes can help with both these steps.
I completely agree with principle number 7, and the principle that value and content are lost in a) making knowledge conscious, and b) making knowledge explicit. There will always be that loss, but there are ways to reduce that loss to some. These ways always involve investment of resource and time, but always add value compared to the default "write down what you know" approach.

PKM KM

Chris Brogan blogged recently about his decision to close his Linkedin account. This got me thinking, yet again, about whether I should do the same.

I have been in Linked in for nine years, having been user number 1400 or so out of 100 million. It is useful for keeping up to date with the people I know's changes of circumstance but little more.

I keep trying to get involved in the various Linkedin groups I am a member of but a few things drive me away.

The first is the interface which throws away nearly thirty years of experience with online forums and either doesn't do, or does badly, most of the basics of online discussions.

The second is the feeling that it is slipping into the Ecademy nightmare of desperate out of work consultants pouncing on corporate folks like piranhas seeing meat. Many otherwise interesting threads end up either spammy or "me too".

Ironically the third thing that drives me away is the thing that I suspect makes it appealing to others. It is too safe and too corporate. It feels bland and lifeless. Despite having no great affection for Facebook I spend more time in there because at least the discussions are more free flowing and lively.

Unlike Chris I am going to keep my account, and make the most of having a self updating address book, but it is a shame it never became more for me.

socialmedia social networks linkedin

First find the ingre­di­ents  (inven­tio):

Fresh and juicy Argu­ments
Piquant and sharp Counter-arguments
Tooth­some Ideas
Scrump­tious Examples
Sweet Anec­dotes
Spicy Sto­ries
Mouth water­ing Savory metaphors
Pep­pery Data
Gus­ta­tory Images

Arrange the ingre­di­ents in log­i­cal order, by impor­tance and oppor­tu­nity (dis­po­si­tio)

Then, dress up these ideas and embell­ish them with style (elo­cu­tio)

Make sure you make them tasty and mem­o­rable (memo­ria)

Finally, serve and deliver with art of grace, dig­nity, ges­ture, mod­u­la­tion of voice and face (actio).

presentations

Scaling the vast helix of white that swirls around the library’s central atrium, I accosted a staffer who was preoccupied with asking children to please take off their shoes before jumping on the furniture. When I despaired at the measly number of books in the literature section, she explained, with diplomatic care, that I was missing the point. “Our jobs are becoming more about helping newcomers with their language skills, or helping people access government services,” she explained. “We’re kind of social workers, actually.” Her fuzzy job description reflects a new reality for libraries, which have become much more than staid warehouses of content managed by shushing greybeards.

Libraries like Surrey’s City Centre are right to do away with their stacks; the need for the books they have been collecting over the past few centuries has diminished. The culprit is all around us: that nebulous Cloud, the virtual place where movies, music, and books come from when you download them. It includes web-based email like Gmail and services like Google Docs or YouSendIt, and it replaces physical media with free-floating content. But as books go the way of clay tablets and papyrus scrolls, libraries are thriving.

Library2.0

Here's a list we made a while ago, in conjunction with Adel Al-Terkait, of the different mechanisms by which a community of practice can add value to an organisation. No doubt you can think of more!

Solve problems for each other 
Learning before 
Learning during 
Learning after Benchmark performance with each other 
Exchanging resources 
Collaborating on purchasing (buying things that any one member could not justify) 
Collaborating on contracts (using the purchasing power of the community) 
Cooperating on trials and pilots 
Sharing results of studies 
Exchanging equipment (re-use old equipment, share spares) 
Warning of risks 
Mentoring and coaching each other 
Building and maintaining documented Best Practices 
Developing checklists and templates 
Identifying knowledge retention issues 
Identifying training gaps and collaborating on training provision 
Innovation – new products, services or opportunities

cop's

Repair Cafes Counter Consumerism with Fixer Movement
By Kelly McCartney
05.14.12, 6:41am Comments (0)
   
All too many of us are ever-eager to upgrade to the latest and greatest whatever. Whether they be computers, washing machines, or clothes, if something goes wrong or next next arrives, we're on to the next purchase.

Part of it, too, is that we don't actually know how to repair our stuff. And our world is set up so it's dramatically easier to cut and run than sit and fix. And so our landfills overflow with slightly damaged goods...a less-than-convenient truth that threatens our economic and environmental health.

This maybe changing. In The Netherlands, mom and former journalist Martine Postma stumbled onto an idea that tacks the word "repair" onto the familiar green mantra, "reduce, re-use, recycle". The result is community-based Repair Cafes where folks come together to fix their broken items. What started as a few neighbors in Amsterdam helping each other out has, two years later, become a much bigger deal with 30 groups springing up around the country.


Young girls mend items at a Repair Cafe, proving that anyone and everyone can participate. Photo credit: Repair Cafe. 

To support the regular gatherings, the Repair Cafe Foundation was established and has raised around $525,000 from the Dutch government, foundations, and individual donors. That sum covers the Foundation's staffing, marketing, and a mobile Repair Cafe. As Postma surmised, “Sustainability discussions are often about ideals, about what could be. After a certain number of workshops on how to grow your own mushrooms, people get tired. This is very hands on, very concrete. It’s about doing something together, in the here and now.”

Cradle-to-cradle architect William McDonough, whose work also inspired Postma, observed, “What happened with planned obsolescence is that it became mindless — just throw it away and don’t think about it. The value of the Repair Cafe is that people are going back into a relationship with the material things around them.”

rensack commons

Your network can be too connected. When I talk with managers about the networks that John and I have mapped, and how their structures are (often) not very good for information sharing, their first inclination it to try to connect everyone up with everyone else.
This is not a good idea. When they say this, I reply with: “Imagine if you had to read every single email sent and received by every other person in your organisation. That’s what you get when you connect everyone up.”

Most interpersonal networks work best when they have somewhere between 3 and 10% of the total number of connections that they could have if everyone was connected to everyone. This leads to the best structures for sharing information, which is critical in getting your new ideas to spread.

Strong Networks are Diverse. There’s no point in connecting up only with people that think the same way that you do. If you do this, you’ll just keep getting the same old ideas. You need to build links to people that are interested in different things that you are, to people that know different people than you do, and to people that view the world through a different lens than you do. That’s the best way to generate innovative new ideas.
Connecting people that aren’t already connected to each other is very powerful. Check out this more detailed discussion of this idea. The basic principle is that if you build the network by connecting people to each other, you make the network stronger. You give up a little bit of power, because if they stay unconnected you can act as a broker. In exchange, you gain reputation and social capital.
Again, this helps you get your own ideas to spread.

network social networks

A new brand of DIY self-sufficiency is spreading across The Netherlands. Skilled craftswomen, mechanics, seamstresses, and handypersons are banding together to resist disposable consumer culture. It is the rise of the Repair Cafe, a place where neighbors get together to extend the life of their material belongings. “Fixers” mend clothes, restore furniture, rehabilitate electrical appliances, and enjoy each other’s company while industriously toiling away. The first cafe was founded by Martine Postma in Amsterdam in October of 2009. Today, there are 20 fully operational Repair Cafes, and 50 more in the planning stages.

rensack commons

Twice a year the heads of BBC’s digital services brief partners and suppliers on how BBC Online and Red Button will work with them in the months ahead. At the broadcaster’s ‘Spring Briefing‘ today the BBC released research on how the UK population interacts with digital media.

The reserach considers digital media interaction, from sharing links and photos to writing blogs. It turns out that the old 1% rule, which said that more people will lurk in a virtual community than actively participate, is old news and that now, more than 10% are getting online to contribute and interact.

The UK is not a wallflower when it comes to online participation, according to the study, 77% of the online population is now active in some way. But that still means that nearly a quarter of the UK are lurkers.

Ease of use, ubiquity of devices and improved user experience is bound to contribute to the amount of people who get online and take part in activities.

Interestingly the BBC’s research says that lurkers are not necessarily people who are digitally illiterate or unable to gain access. The study results say that 11% of passive web consumers today in the UK are early adopters who choose not to participate. Maybe the sheer volume and noise of life online is putting them off.

The study was led by Holly Goodier, Head of Audiences for BBC Future Media who says on the  BBC Internet blog, “Digital participation now is best characterised through the lens of choice. These are the decisions we take about whether, when, with whom and around what, we will participate. Because participation is now much more about who we are, than what we have, or our digital skill.”

The BBC is using this research to create a new model to look at digital activity and is calling it ‘The Participation Choice’.



In the graphic above, ‘initiation’ is distinguished from reaction because it includes activities that are triggers to other people’s participation. So that’s things like uploading photos, starting a discussion and creating groups.

The ‘easy reaction’ group is the closest to passive, they tend to have fewer devices, but they do participate. They respond largely to the activity of others. This includes replying, ‘liking’ and rating, all activities where there’s little effort, exposure or risk.

The Participation Choice is a synthesis of primary and secondary research conducted over the past 18 months. The data published today are all taken from the most recent, large scale survey of 7,500 UK adults – representative of the UK online population.

Social activity and the growth of devices attached to the Internet means that we are changing our habits. It’s not so surprising that the old 1% rule’s time has passed with social media taking up so much room in our lives online.

The BBC has access to a huge audience in order to collect data about user habits. No doubt this research will influence the corporations forthcoming online moves as well as informing others as to how they might harness the latest interaction habits.

socialmedia

(1) Provide significant funding for face-to-face events. CoPs are based on relationships and trust, and relationships and trust are cemented through meeting. The core team of the CoP, and as many extended CoP members as possible, should meet; once at Community Launch, and then on a regular basis (ideally annually)

(2) Ensure community activities address business issues. This is the Number 2 factor from Warwick, but for me would be the number one factor. I know you can set up CoPs for sharing recipes, for Bike groups, for Wine Appreciation, but people are professionals - they know that work-time is for work things, and they are much more likely to devote serious attention to business-centred CoPs. By all means start with a social focus for your CoPs, but transition over time to a business focus once the "community experience" has been introduced..

(3) Provide CoP leader training. CoP leader, or CoP facilitator, is a key role, and it requires skills and awareness.

(4) Ensure CoP leaders are given sufficient time for their role. "Sufficient time" depends on the size of the CoP. Over about 600 - 100 members, this becomes a full time role (see stats)

(5) Ensure high levels of sponsor expectation. Expectation, not management. CoPs must self manage, but the expectations can be set by the sponsor. This 5th success factor is contrary to some KM lore - that any Management influence will kill a CoP. However this is not what the Warwick/KIN survey found. They found that an engaged, supportive sponsor with high levels of expectation is a condition of CoP success.

(6) Engage members in developing good practice. That's primary purpose #1 of a CoP - for the members to exchange practice knowledge, and look for ideas and solutions that will improve their own practice. It doesn't initially have to be codified into Best Practice, but that CoP will probably move in that direction over time.

(7) Improve the usefulness of Community Tools provided. They need to be useful, sure, but they also need to be Usable and Used. Which is not the same as "high tec" or "functionality rich".

(8) Ensure there are clearly stated goals. These come from the Community Charter - they are set by the members. They are influenced by the Sponsor expectation, but the goals are set by the community itself. These can be concrete goals - I know of many CoPs who have said the equivalent of "You know, if we all worked together, I bet we could shave 20% off the cost of this activity".

(9) Promote CoPs ability to help employee’s solve daily work challenges. That's also primary purpose #1 of a CoP - for the members to get solutions to their problems. That's the WIIFM for the members (the "What's in it for me"). Without number 9, your CoP will wither and die as the members move away. Without a WIIFM, a CoP becomes a drain on time; with a WIIFM, a CoP is a time-saver.

10). This one was not in the Warwick list, but for me is important. Create a sense of Identity - of belonging. CoPs work  in the long term through loyalty and belonging; a sense of belonging to a professional group, and a loyalty to your fellow practitioners that will drive you to answer their questions, share your knowledge, and trust their answers.

cop's

KM practitioners are often criticised for running initiatives that cannot easily be assessed in traditional business terms, such as return on investment. However, in this case the results were almost immediate and quantifiable.

The KM team could point to a steady increase in the customer satisfaction figures in the months after the community system was put in place, increasing from 69 per cent to 76 per cent. This was a remarkable achievement in such a short space of time and primarily attributed, in the company, to the change in coaching style.

Other internal figures also improved including first-time fix rates, speed to answer and queue size.

However, we did not simply stop there. An interview technique was deployed based on a method documented by KM consultants Skyrme1 to capture the relationship between the improved knowledge flow and how it had influenced corporate key performance indicators (KPIs).

The results are mapped out in the benefits tree illustration. The community style approach helped coaches to properly understand their role; they understand what the customers need to know. They are sharing ideas with each other, transferring their improved understanding across the call centre and validating to ensure that change has the desired impact. This is helping staff to reach their potential more quickly, speeding up problem solving and these proven approaches are also being shared across the company much more easily than before.

The organisation has also benefited from a concomitant reduction in staff turnover, which is a major challenge in call centres the world over. The initiative has improved morale because staff feel better able to serve the customers, and single contact resolution rates – the number of calls dealt with successfully first time – have increased. The customers are receiving better service, they feel that they are getting a more responsive and empathetic response from the representatives and they feel more satisfied with Orange as a result.

ROI KM

In a globally connected world, isolation is a choice. If you want to face the turbulence ahead by yourself, go ahead. But that's probably not your best option.
You always have the opportunity to connect. The choice doesn’t disappear. 
To build networks, close triangles. You know George and you know Nancy, but they do not know each other. Introduce them with a short e-mail. 
Closing triangles is a powerful routine to strengthen a community or region. If you closed five triangles a month, you would close 60 a year. If a 100 people in your community followed your lead, you would have 6,000 new connections in a year. 
Open, loosely connected networks can be guided strategically. That’s how open source software development works. 
Strategic Doing is a simple discipline to form complex collaborations, manage them toward measurable outcomes, and adjust along the way.
Strategic Doing generates “link and leverage” collaborations across organizational and political boundaries.
With Strategic Doing, we follow simple rules to link, leverage and align our assets, so we can do far more with what we have. 
Strategic Doing teaches you how to build complex collaborations quickly and keep them on track with measurable outcomes.
Traditional approaches to strategy -- strategic planning -- can be made more agile by combining these approaches with Strategic Doing. We are not living in an “either/or” world anymore.  If you are stuck, try “both/and”. 
Strategic planning has difficulty keeping up with the pace of change we face. We need to do our strategic thinking differently. 
In a complex world, our strategy is emergent. We learn and shape our strategy as we do. 
With collaboration, the soft stuff is the hard stuff. We need simple rules to deal with the hard stuff.
Strategic Doing takes time to develop. It involves building new, collective habits of thinking and doing. Remember how hard it is for you to form a new habit. Now multiply that by dozens of people. 
The core skill of authentic connection is the ability to listen. Strategic Doing starts by listening to each other and learning what assets we have to share. 
Opportunities are defined by shared value. Through collaboration, we can create something that individually we cannot create on our own. It’s the 1 + 1 =3 (or 5 or 10). 
Most people underestimate the challenge of collaboration. It’s an on-going commitment to transparency, authenticity, deep thinking and action. 
Collaboration is more than exchanging e-mails. It's more than facial recognition. 
Fear undercuts our capacity to connect. The reality is that we are driving down a foggy road at 60 miles an hour looking for the next curve. No one can predict what lies ahead. Fear is a reasonable emotion under our circumstances, but it doesn’t help us much.
The purpose of talking about our fears is to shrink them to a manageable size. Then we can move ahead. 
Soreheads pull things apart. It's relatively easy to do. Not much brainpower is required. 
Regional development poses the most complex collaboration challenges we face in our economy. Consider the difficulties. We are addressing highly complex challenges in an open network. Nobody can tell anyone else what to do. We normally do not have a strong history of working together. Standard rules fair dealing do not necessarily apply. We may not know whom to trust. Our skill levels vary, and we each carry some emotional baggage that influences what we see and hear. Is it any wonder that regions have difficulty coming together?
Sustainability, adaptation and resilience are closely connected ideas. By building trusted networks in our regions, we are expanding our collective capacity to adjust to the next big shock that’s coming. 
The core question of civic leadership is simple: What kind of place do we want to leave for our children and grandchildren?
Strengthening our linkages among us is our best approach to deal with uncertainty. It's not a new idea. That's why we buy insurance.
Strategic Doing guides conversations. It is not "top down" or "bottom up", because we are dealing with networks, and there are no tops or bottoms to a network. We are combining open participation with leadership guidance. 
For too long, we have treated civility as an adornment to our democracy. Far from it. If we do not follow some basic rules of civility, we cannot do the complex thinking together that our democracy commands.
Strategy answers two questions: Where are we going? and How will we get there? Strategic Doing answers these 2 questions by breaking them apart into even simpler steps. 
When people start to think regionally, they often worry too much about protecting their boundaries. Regional strategies don't work if too many people fall into this trap. Regional strategies work best when we connect our core strengths across organizational and political lines.
Build your region out from a core of “a willing network”. Worry less about boundaries. As you strengthen the cores of your region -- and connect them -- your boundaries will expand. 
The first distance we have to travel to build regional collaboration is not very far. It's the distance between our ears. 
Exploring our assets begins a collaboration. We need to find opportunities for mutual benefit. These opportunities arise when we take our shared assets and connect them in new and different ways.
Enduring collaborations are forged by the hard work of defining measurable outcomes and then moving these outcomes into action with simple steps, simple commitments. 
Visions can work to align and guide an organization. Yet, they do not work all that well in open, loosely connected networks, where no one can tell anyone else what to do. People in our networks are practical. They need clear outcomes if they are going to commit their time and resources. Vision statements often do not provide that clarity.
Within a network, translating a vision or an opportunity into an outcome involves deep thinking about what success should look like. We're trying to describe a complex, multidimensional reality somewhere in the future. It's not easy.  
To move people in a network, they need to see pragmatic, measurable outcomes in their own mind's eye. It's only then that they trust the words enough to decide whether they will take action.
Strategic Doing is a process of fast cycle experimentation to figure out what works.
We need to transform our regional economies to meet the new realities of global competition and environmental sustainability. On top of that, our economy is aging, and that trend creates its own set of challenges.
These challenges are unprecedented in our lifetime. If we rely on the same old patterns of thinking and doing, we are driving into the future looking in the rearview mirror.
Our private foundations represent one of the major competitive assets of our economy. Yet, they have been curiously ineffective in their investment strategies for regional development. It's ironic, but foundations may not be our fastest learners. 
The federal government has been hobbled by silo thinking, a legacy of our industrial economy. Among federal agencies, the level of sophisticated collaboration is slow to develop. This is odd. Collaboration at the federal level should be quick to form. After all, federal workers only have to walk across the street to meet. In our regions, civic leaders often have to drive for hours.
Officials in the federal government often come to our regions with good intentions. Typically, they drop a load of tools on the table, expecting us to collaborate. What they don't understand is that their tools are not up to the task. Think of it this way. We are working on electronic transmissions, and they are handing us rusty pliers. It's nobody's fault. Most federal programs were designed 30, 40 or 50 years ago, and they were not designed to work together. Today, we need different policies, not old policies wrapped loosely together. 
Strategies in complex, evolving regional economies emerge as we translate ideas in action and learn what works. Strategic Doing produces agile strategies that enable us to “run to daylight”. 
We each have networks we can mobilize. These networks vary in size, but let's assume an average of 50 people in a personal network. That means when we come together in a small group, we can  have an impact far greater than what we see. We are really designing strategies for a network 50 times the size of the people in the room.
Regional development practitioners have a lot in common with molecular biologists. We're both trying to define complex networks we cannot see.
We are moving away from the economy in which business and civic organizations operated hierarchically.  These hierarchies work well to manage stable routines in stable times. But hierarchies do not learn or adjust quickly. They cannot keep up with the rate of change we face today.
A new economy based on networks is emerging. Our children and grandchildren will inherit this economy. How much of our left-over junk are they going to have to deal with?
Embarking on the journey of Strategic Doing does not mean starting over. Strategic Doing takes a region's current strategic thinking and moves it to the next level. How? By translating ideas into action quickly so we can learn what works.
We can measure the capacity of our network to do complex work by the number of trusted relationships in the network.
In the network world, metrics play a different role. Traditionally, metrics focused on control. Are our subordinates following our plan? In the network world, metrics play a new role. They speed our learning. In fact, we cannot learn much without them.
In the industrial world, to develop speed you go fast. In the network world, to develop speed, you need to go slowly at first to accelerate later. Intentionally building trusting relationships takes time. As a trusted network develops, you end up going faster than you ever thought possible.

rensack commons

Socialization
Sharing tacit knowledge through face-to-face communication or shared experience. Informal social intercourse and teaching by practical examples. An example is an apprenticeship.
Externalization
Trying to convert tacit knowledge to explicit knowledge by developing concepts and models. In this phase tacit knowledge is converted to understandable and interpretable form, so it can be also used by others. Externalized and theoretical knowledge is a base for creating new knowledge.
Combination
Compiling externalized explicit knowledge to broader entities and concept systems. When knowledge is in explicit form it can be combined with the knowledge that has been filed earlier. In this phase knowledge is also analyzed and organized.
Internalization
Internalization means understanding explicit knowledge. It happens when explicit knowledge transforms to tacit and becomes a part of individual’s basic information. Cycle continues now in the spiral of knowledge back to socialization when individual shares his tacit knowledge silently. This is how amount of knowledge grows and the previous conceptions might change.

KM PKM

"Just three years ago, Halliburton ESG noted that electronic technicians were required on 80 per cent of fracturing jobs to ensure that the electronics performed flawlessly. Technicians were difficult resources to hire and train to meet the demand of customers at each well site. Halliburton’s knowledge-management group facilitated the creation of a small team of electronic technicians for a three-month period in late 2001 to help understand the business needs and design a solution that would improve pumping job-service quality, reduce non-productive time and decrease the need for electronic technicians to intervene at individual well sites.  
"Together, the electronic technicians and KM group were able to design a knowledge-management solution. Essentially, electronic technicians needed to be connected to experts and to each other so that the experience of the entire group could be used to troubleshoot and solve problems, rather than relying on the limited knowledge of one individual isolated at a customer’s well site. The group therefore developed a collaborative, problem-solving community to provide 24/7 peer-to-peer training, troubleshooting and support.  
"The team defined the community and processes required for the technicians to discuss issues and share good practices. The group developed an easy-to-use portal interface, which was designed around a collaboration tool that allows the community to share its knowledge and get answers to questions. The interface also provides access to vital documents and contact information for leading experts on various pieces of hardware to ensure immediate answers to urgent technical questions. The community was launched in December 2001 and today is a thriving knowledge-sharing network of more than 200 users in numerous locations around the world. Interestingly, the number of users is greater than the actual number of electronic technicians within the community.  
"In 2003, individual instances of knowledge sharing generated, in one way or another, over $1.4m for Halliburton. In addition, electronic technicians report time savings of approximately 20 per cent due to the community. This has allowed the company to meet the demands of business growth without employing additional technicians. The technicians it currently has are also better trained and more effective than ever. They have reduced the number of repeat repairs, measured through SAP work orders, from 30 per cent to virtually zero".

cop's collaboration KM

DESIGNERS AND FARMERS AT DESIGNMARCH 2012
SPARK design space presents Designers and Farmers at the DesignMarch 2012.

The Designers and Farmers Project is a pioneering project where two professions are led together to create a unique product. The project’s main objective is to develop regional foods based on highest quality, traceability and cultural relevance. The novelty of the project comes from the collaboration of one of the oldest profession in Iceland, farming, with one of the youngest, product design. The aim is to add value to the farmers´ raw material by means of good design and product development

rensack

Public Media for Public Understanding
EXPLORE SHALE
An exploration of natural gas drilling
and development in the Marcellus Shale.
Learn More about this Project

hydrofracturing student_resources

Welcome to FracFocus, the hydraulic fracturing chemical registry website. This website is a joint project of the Ground Water Protection Council and the Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission.

On this site you can search for information about the chemicals used in the hydraulic fracturing of oil and gas wells. You will also find educational materials designed to help you put this information in perspective.

hydrofracturing

But the study, using computer modeling, concluded that natural faults and fractures in the Marcellus, exacerbated by the effects of fracking itself, could allow chemicals to reach the surface in as little as "just a few years."

"Simply put, [the rock layers] are not impermeable," said the study's author, Tom Myers, an independent hydrogeologist whose clients include the federal government and environmental groups.

"The Marcellus shale is being fracked into a very high permeability," he said. "Fluids could move from most any injection process."

The research for the study was paid for by Catskill Mountainkeeper and the Park Foundation, two upstate New York organizations that have opposed gas drilling and fracking in the Marcellus.

hydrofracturing

For me, it’s quite simple: knowledge is not tangible and is certainly not a commodity. And the noun ‘knowledge’ itself sometimes leads to delusional assumptions about what knowledge is. I find it more fruitful to think of knowledge as two different things:

Knowledge is a latent capacity that we call upon to combine information available with various insights we have from past experiences, and use it in a given context.
Knowledge is also the collection of insights that we have in ourselves, based on information, emotions and intuitions we have. It is in that collection of insights that we tap to use our ‘knowledge capacity’ or our ‘capacity to know’.

PKM KM knowledge