Posted by Denham on April 16, 2000 at 12:08:13:

Attended the week long Common Knowledge seminar hosted by Caucus Systems to promote Nancy Dixon's new book. Here is my AAR (After Action Review)

More than 400 participants from 40 countries signed up for this exciting interactive, asynchronous, virtual event. The seminar space was divided into 3 separate areas:
1) An open space 'cafe' where participants introduced themselves and were able to host discussions around topics that they wished to explore. Emergent topics included: knowledge transfer using patterns, ecology / management / engineering, KM & business intelligence, what are you reading? and a quiz. I always enjoy these participant spaces for their variety and novelty.

2) In the main conversation space were facilitated and directed discussions around Nancy's book covering: Making a match, looking at the characteristics of recipient, type of knowledge and nature of the task. Exploring knowledge disributed across the orgnaization, where the discussion was about knowledge metaphors, illustrated with some excellent graphics. Warranting knowledge produced some lively discussion on the role of relationships, trust and explicit scoring systems. Consider this was a fictitious case study around a high tech, multinational telecom with larger differences between product life cycles. There was an opportunity to submit solutions via e-mail before the seminar started which helped to seed this topic. Also included were company representatives from BP, Ford, Buckman and Lockheed-Martin who explained their approaches which were studied in this book and answered on-line questions.

3) Caucus Systems had their own space where they were able to demonstate the integration of their 'conversation engine' with streaming meltimedia, Office 2000, a telephone bridge and show applications related to distance learning, project management & co-ordination, XML enhancements and language translation. There is power in having conversations as the hub in a KM tool.

Also included was a media center, bookstore and reference center, FAQ and helpdesk. The archive will be available for reading for a month (requires registration).

Summary
Common knowledge was an interesting and worthwhile event, I gained new insights into ways to enable knowledge sharing, met many new people, had interesting discussions around different approaches to sharing information, meaning, understanding and knowledge. In the end I believe the participants all gained some insights into the issues and opportunities associated with knowledge transfer. It was interesting to see the different views around the role and importance of information, context and models of knowledge itself. I came away with the distinct feeling that knowledge transfer is indeed enhanced through active engagement, conversation, helped by having a tool which is optimized and focussed on dialog and needs a community. I was sorry to see the event end.

• Common Knowledge seminar archive

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