My goal moving forward will to blog more frequently here (that should be easy!), to share insights that I’m working on for the upcoming Midwest KM Symposium, as well as to share the products of my dissertation on critical success factors for KM which will be wrapped up this fall.

In the meantime, I’ve started tweeting.  My tweets can be found embedded into this site, or you can find me here: http://twitter.com/curtisaconley

• Approach career opportunities with the idea of “fit” in mind.  How can you answer the questions:
  • What are they trying to achieve with this position?
  • How can I make the critical difference in this role?
  • How can I best communicate this?
• When discussing previous experience that wasn’t 100% focused on KM, show how the skills/responsibilities relate to or are KM (e.g., knowledge sharing, capture, etc.)
• On the other hand, where organizations are looking for a KM role that isn’t actually branded as KM (more on this below), describe your experience and skills in their terms
• Focus your resume on impact statements
• Organizations are often looking for people who have “been there, done that” and not those who are new to the particular skillset they’re looking for - particularly in the realm of technology.  For those KMers who are looking to expand their skills, volunteering at organizations who need the particular skillset you’re trying to develop is a great opportunity to gain experience and prove that you have actually been there, and done that

Job search strategies were also discussed and tended to hammer home the key points below:

• Create a database of personal contacts, let them know what you’re looking for
• Network, network, network (at event such as KM Chicago —- PLUG!)
• “If you’re not on LinkedIn, you might as well not even be trying”
• Set up saved searches on vertical job search engine sites, such as www.indeed.com and www.simplyhired.com

To the last point above, and what I mentioned earlier, not all KM roles are identified as such.  Many use similar terms to describe the same ends, or may only be KM-ish in nature, but may still be an excellent fit for you.  With that in mind, I captured a list of these similar terms that were thrown around during the meeting.  So if you’re stuck on what to search for, or other ways to describe what you’ve done, try using some of these keywords:

Informatics, process control, content management, knowledge management, knowledge manager, information management, web 2.0, web analytics, market intelligence, competitive intelligence, online community moderation, community management, communities of practice, social media, organizational change, adoption, taxonomy, collaboration, learning management, organizational learning, learning organizations, competency development, training, distance learning, distance education, informal learning, expert mapping, knowledge transfer, innovation, optimization, optimize processes, business improvement, knowledge integration, systems integration, records management, communications

And, if there are any keywords that we might have missed, feel free to let me know in the comments.

Here’s today’s big news in fewer than 140 characters: Social networking is now more popular than e-mail.

That’s the official word from a new round of Nielsen research, which shows “member communities” such as Twitter and Facebook have overtaken personal e-mail to become the fourth-most-popular way people spend time online (after search, portals and software applications).

This made me think about my own use of email outside of work. Just taking a quick scan of my email I can make the following generalizations:

• 5% - Email conversations that couldn’t (yet) be done via a different medium (e.g., Dissertation work, emails from family and friends not using social networking sites)
• 10% - Automated billing confirmations, Amazon/eBay/iTunes “Thank you for buying” emails
• 85% - Notifications from Facebook, LinkedIn and other social networking websites

Interestingly, almost all of the online conversations that I have now happen within the confines of these social networking sites. And it’s no wonder. Using Facebook as an example, all of those conversations are much more contextual than email. Conversations happen around groups, events, photos, posted items, etc. It’s a much richer user experience than email and there really hasn’t been any added complexity with the increase in functionality we see with most things in our lives these days.

Looking at my own emailing behaviors, and that of my peers, I have to wonder - what does the future hold for email? I find myself using it less and less for personal communications (that 5% figure above), and increasingly as a collection point for the myriad of notifications that I receive (95%). If I were to look back in time 3-5 years, these numbers would be drastically different. Looking at the Nielsen summary, it’s safe to say this trend is likely to continue.

So what then for email? My guess would be that there will be less time focused on refining authoring tools for users, and more attention given to the integration, classification, storage and findability of notifications/alerts. Whatever the trend is, I’ll wager that we’ll see it in Google Labs before too long…

In the next few months I hope to be able to share a full summary of my dissertation.  In the meantime, if you have any questions about this presentation or my findings, please feel free to ask!

Also, if I’ve managed to flood your feed reader with lots of old posts in the process, I do apologize!

Other than that, things should be back to normal and I can get back to posting regularly now that I don’t have to do so by hacking my blogging platform…

Ideally I would be staying on Joomla as it is a great CMS all around; however, it’s blogging capabilities/support still leave much to be desired. I say this as I am updating this post via a hack, as the blogging component installed has encountered an unknown error and prevented me from posting updates legitimately for quite some time…

Please bear with me in the meantime while I transition this site and all of it’s content.? Additionally, please check back in a few days for an update to the RSS feed, as I am assured by others that it will break in the transition. In the meantime, enjoy Downtown Naperville, IL in the middle of a snowstorm. Taken 01/13/09.

Knowledge Retention: How to Keep Knowledge from Walking out the Door

Tuesday, Oct. 7, 2008
Union League Club, 65 W. Jackson Blvd, Chicago?

“In years gone by the physical plant and equipment were the assets to be guarded. Now, increasingly, our most valuable assets walk out the door at five o’clock every day. Though the workers leave the machines and computers behind when they go home, they take the experience and skill-sets with them. If they don’t come back, we’re in deep trouble.” (Source)?

How do organizations identify and deal with capturing and retaining knowledge from employees who are retiring or leaving? Join SLA Illinois and KM Chicago members for an exploration of this important issue and how information professionals can play a relevant role within their organizations.

Lunch Panel

Three KM practitioners will discuss their experiences, followed by a question and discussion session. Bring your questions and comments on this topic!

• Curtis Conley is a knowledge management professional and doctoral candidate at Northern Illinois University. Curtis’ KM experience in professional service firms has included the implementation of tools and processes targeting knowledge retention, capture, sharing and reuse. His dissertation and research focuses on the factors critical for the success of KM initiatives in organizations.
• Laura Claggett is the manager of Knowledge & Library Services at UOP LLC - a petrochemical technology company headquartered in Des Plaines, IL. Her team of knowledge management professionals works on knowledge retention of technical experts, mentoring, technology mapping, social network analysis and document management. Laura has an MLS from the University of Illinois, an MBA from Dominican University, and is an adjunct faculty at Dominican University’s GSLIS.
• Rich Doody is currently a manager within the Knowledge Management group at PepsiCo in Chicago. He was formerly the Knowledge Management Program Leader at Kraft Foods and has extensive experience in proprietary knowledge retention approaches with scientific and technical knowledge. He holds a bachelor of science degree in electrical engineering from the Illinois Institute of Technology.

Afternoon Workshop

Facilitator: Kathy Hagen

In order to meet the challenges of today’s competitive environment, organizations must be able to access and use the accumulated experience of their employees. Experienced employees are retiring and changing positions at unprecedented rates. What is your organization doing to make sure that this wealth of knowledge is not walking out the door? This interactive half-day session will focus on identifying critical knowledge, defining knowledge risks and developing a knowledge transfer plan.

Before starting her own business, Kathy held positions that combined knowledge management, process improvement, change management, and information technology in the life sciences, manufacturing, and retail industries. Kathy worked with Deloitte as a Senior Manager heading the Intellectual Capital Practice and served as the Assistant Director of Exploratory Development Informatics and Knowledge Management at Pfizer Pharmaceuticals in Groton, Connecticut. Prior to Pfizer, Kathy Hagen was the principal leading the Global Knowledge Management Practice for Health Care at Computer Science Corporation. Kathy serves on the Leadership Team for the Twin Cities Knowledge Management Forum. She teaches Knowledge Transfer at the Minnesota State College and University System and is a guest lecturer at St. Thomas University Graduate School of Business. For more information, see http://www.klhagen.com/ .

Catching up on some of my RSS feeds, here are a few that have really caught my attention recently that I thought I would share here:

• RSS Bankruptcy is discussed over at LawyerKM .? This appeals VERY much to me at the moment!
• Steve Dale discusses Identifying Community of Practice Needs
• Andrew Gent on The Four Paradoxes of KM

My literature review was fairly extensive and the list of CSFs for KM that I proposed had 46 different factors which were, in other studies on CSFs for KM, determined to be critical for the success of KM.? My gut told me, “46?? Really?? They’re all critical?”? So, my thought was that by including them all in my study, the ones that truly were critical would float to the top and there would be a clear mark of demarcation between the critical factors and the nice to have factors.? While this did happen to some extent, it wasn’t quite as clear as I had hoped.

On top of this all, I also asked participants to identify any critical factors that were not identified in the study.? In addition to the 46 already identified from the literature, participants suggested an additional 83 factors which they also felt were critical, for a total of 129 CSFs for KM.? Obviously, I think we need to work on clearly defining not just the factors themselves, but what we mean when we say something is critical.? If all 129 factors are critical, then really none of them are.

This may just be an issue with survey research since so much of the context around each of the factors gets lost.? And as has been discussed on the ActKM forum recently, I’m sure that more than a few folks out there may have wanted to respond “it depends” to a lot of the factors presented.? The good news is that this study clearly paves a path for a follow up qualitative study on CSFs for KM - which brings me to some of the original questions I had about the interrelatedness of CSFs for KM.? Also good news (I suppose) is that I’ll have plenty to write about in the limitations section of my study. Hooray!

Paul McDowall posts a ton of great articles at The Interdepartmental Knowledge Management Forum (IKMF).? Join the group and take a look at the archive of fantastic links – there is something in there for everyone.? Here are a few great examples of recent content that Paul has posted that I’ve especially enjoyed:

• 45 minute audio stream discussing the Army’s current efforts in Knowledge Management and how it relates Boots on the Ground
• Really interesting article titled: Knowledge management for agricultural innovation: lessons from networking efforts in the Bolivian Agricultural Technology System
• Article discussing KM at IKEA , and how critical knowledge transfer between employees can be for IKEA

Boris Jaeger also does a fantastic job of posting links to fresh KM news and articles, among many other things, at Knowledge Management News and Resources .? This site also has an added layer of value in that quite a bit of the posts come from German sources which is fantastic because otherwise there would have been quite a few good reads that I’d have missed out on simply because I don’t speak German (unless of course you count Rammstein lyrics).? The English title is also posted and whenever interested in the article it is easy enough to run the content through a German-English translation site.? Examples of some recent favorites posted:

• Something that may interest some of my readers, there is a call for chapters for a book titled: Cultural Implications of Knowledge Sharing, Management and Transfer: Identifying Competitive Advantage - the description on the site goes into more depth and it seems to be a very interesting project
• An interesting and quick read titled: The Leaving Employee: Knowledge Management for Surviving and Thriving

Have I missed any other sites or communities that also post frequent links to articles about/related to knowledge management?