KMUK 2011

Although I’m no longer in the same office, I know that the Ark conference team is abuzz in the build-up to KMUK 2011 and the second annual KMUK Awards. Regarding the latter, I’ve had a sneaky peek at the entries and I’m sure that the judges will be making some very difficult decisions ahead of the ceremony. The quality of applications has been outstanding – and I hope that some of the organisations that have submitted their success stories will be willing to share them in these pages at a later date.

The conference itself will have been and gone by time many of you read this, so I hope that you will have found the event informative and exciting. As well as the fact that the producers have a knack for attracting those who we would affectionately refer to as KM heavyweights, the event just has a great energy. And it’s always a fantastic opportunity to catch up with old friends and meet new faces.

And that is the beauty of KM – and ultimately why it has survived its own demise, in the eyes of many. There is a good balance between old hands and newbies, bolstered by a plethora of shiny new technological tools, which make the job so much easier.

Some people may not be 100 per cent on the case with social media yet, but they’re more than likely to be all over the cultural side of things – from an individual and organisational perspective.

It will be interesting to see what has changed since KMUK 2010 and how the KM landscape develops from this year’s conference over the coming 12 months. I’m sure that you’ll all be involved in the evolution.

Moving on, quite literally, after seven years with Ark Group (now Wilmington), this will be my last issue as editor of Inside Knowledge, as I will be leaving to explore some new challenges. It’s been a pleasure working with all of you who have contributed to the magazine on my watch and I hope that your good work continues. With a bit of luck, I’ll be seeing many of you on Twitter and LinkedIn…

Features

Learning from the edge Free
Knowledge professionals must be strategic to their businesses or face extinction. That’s the current mantra. But what do strategically significant leaders require to thrive in today’s volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) world? Who are the role models KM professionals can learn from? From my experience those who have operated at senior leaderships levels in the elite Special Forces represent the benchmark.

KM is dead! Free
Ask yourself, why does KM exist in the first place? You will probably arrive at the conclusion that it is in response to the demands of the knowledge economy, one that drives knowledge intensive organisations to adapt and to become more dynamic. What is it that enables the dynamic capability of a knowledge intensive organisation?

White spots and black holes Free
Even big multi-nationals are no longer capable of retaining all the internal expertise they require. The increasing popularity of flexible working, virtual teams and collaborative working also present their own challenges. Knowledge economy is the talk of the town but few know what it really is, how it affects their organisation, or whether it is a necessity. Perhaps it is an intermediate result, rather than a real objective.

Quality control Free
The organisation’s information quality journey began in 2002 when Russo began tracking error rates in the data that Tele-Tech Services provides to its customers to see if they could actually measure accuracy rather than just claiming it. The initial findings were good, with accuracy rates (calculated from the number of errors detected by the quality control process divided by the number of files) running at 99.75 per cent.

Regulars

Stuff management Free
A few years back, I was discussing knowledge management (KM) with a knowledge manager I knew. I explained how difficult it was, at a practical level, to separate knowledge from information. In any form of document, information and explicit knowledge are intertwined and it makes no useful sense to try to distinguish the two.