The first speaker of the day is Helen Baxter, the Managing Director from Mohawk Media. Helen has been involved in “content” for a long time … as a writer, as a new media lecturer, as an ecommunities producer, as an Editor of Knowledge Board 01.

Helen is presenting using Mind Meister, not PowerPoint. Helen’s map is available for viewing Content is Free.

About KnowledgeBoard
Knowledge Board was a three year project funded by the EC to define knowledge management strategies in the EU. They had 60 editors, and Helen managed it from New Zealand. They won a couple of awards (“Best of the Web”, Havard Business School 2002; “Best User Experience”, International Information Industry Awards 2003).

Why did we win these awards?
– We had a clear information architecture
– We were very content rich
– There was active participation by members in the community
– After time, we started special interest groups (SIGs); and these were multi-lingual.
– We took an iterative process to improvement … the Kaizen philosophy, needs-based, be adaptable, and listen and re-act

Major Trends
Some major changes going on:
– from brochure sites to blogs
– from Intranets to communities
– from portals to knowledge centers
– from one-way to two-way knowledge flows
– from controlled areas to open areas
– toward creating conversations
– toward facilitating knowledge flows
– from formal to informal (no more corporate speak in conversations; natural voices important)
– towards making content timely and relevant
– from content “management” to Web 2.0 (collaboration, communication, community)
– toward dis-economies of scale … our small NZ organizations are very able to adapt. 150 people / individuals is the magic number for a sticky, engaged community. After that it is too difficult to maintain relationships. (This is very similar to Tom Peter’s “200” idea in … Liberation Management?)

Changes in Organizations
Helen believes we’re moving into an era of seeing the “corporation” as a “community”, not as a “structure”. You’ll need to include partners and suppliers in this.
– Content, community and collaboration are the three key phrases.
– The optimal system is where people in an organization know who to go to for an answer.
– We’ve moving into an era of “pull” based communication, not “push”. Eg, the technology of RSS provides a subscribable-way of pulling what you want/need. You can have everything coming to you if it’s relevant.
– Beware of the new laws around sending email to outside people (eg, spam laws)
– Support natural communication styles, in whatever way they find most relevant. There are big generational issues too … the new hires, perhaps TXT is better. Email is for “old people”. We need to incorporate these ideas into our communications plan.
– The technology is here to support people, not the other way around.
– Manage the outcomes / the work, not the process. Manage the work, not the workers. Particularly in distributed teams, a focus on outcomes is critical, not how much time people spend in front of their screens.

Knowledge Networks in Organizations
Helens’ view of knowledge in the organization:
– A good KM system should enable people to find out who knows what, how to get to them, when they are accessible, where to go to find them … mapping out the knowlege of the organization. Turing it from tacit information (in their heads) into explicit information (surfaced and available)
– How do we get people to share knowledge, when knowledge is our safety net? The organization thinks it can extract the knowledge and get rid of the workers, but it doesn’t work.
– In one KM project Helen was involved in, they kept the system simple. They had a knowledge officer – to champion the initiative. Their enthusiam and passion will really help drive it. You’ve got to be seen to act (“what’s in it for me?”, says the individual). You need to be seen to giving credit to people for brilliant ideas. Everyone in the organization ha to buy into the iterative improvement process.
– On cleaners … if they see things that can be improved, “come and tell us”. The organizations that have done this, have seen remarkable ideas and savings.
– What we’re aiming for is full transparency … where everyone knows what’s going on all the time. This is the end goal. The intranet should give a snapshot of what’s going on right now. And then you can hone in and view specific projects.
– Simplicity is really key. Don’t make things to complex. If there are too many steps in a publishing process, people won’t do it. And per comments … if you don’t respond, people won’t keep making comments.
– In the early days of a community, there’s a big job in getting the community off the ground (find good content, encourage contributions, find an editor to look outside the organization and pull information in, etc.). Over time, the community should become self-supporting.
– It’s really a good idea to have a “spam list” … where people can forward funny things on to their friends and colleagues. This is the social glue, this is the new digital watercooler. Helen has seen this kind of idea pulling people together … greater connection between people.
– Intrinsic motivation … provide carrots, not sticks. Give them tools that are really relevant and timely and help their jobs, they will use them.

What Kind Of Tools Can We Use?
In a recent project in Wellington, for a day long workshop, they used a variety of tools:
– A project wiki … for “internal” usage … for collaboration
– Blogs … for “external” usage … for announcements
– Project management tools … a space where tasks can be assigned to people, and others can check in and see whether they’ve been completed.
– Not a fan of email for work like this. Email is a very important tool in business, but email lists can be a great time waster. “Carbon copy” is too easy to overload people — “lazy knowledge management”. Information can end up in email silos. A project wiki is a much better idea for project work — it’s open, transparent, it’s all archivable, all changes are captured, it’s very hands-off.
– Asynchronous and synchronous tools … for two different types of communication. Online meetings provide a way for bringing everyone together at the same time.
– Tagging and searching are very key. Helen finds Drupal very good for this. Tagging is very helpful … tag clouds are great. Difference between taxonomy and folksonomy … good to have a combination of both (see my article on this if you want more).
– As an example of a wiki, see the Wellington LOOP wiki. You have to register to edit.

Conclusion
– Let your staff decide your content.
– Support staff, don’t dictate. Focus on the outcomes, not on the process.
– Make it timely and relevant
– Have an open source attitude … learn / hack / share / collaborate, aim for the best, be user driven, and step aside (let people manage their own systems). It may be a big leap of faith, but go for it!
– Find out what staff need, and built it around them.

Questions
1. (Dorje) RSS in the business … how many people have staff using RSS in the business?
(Show of hands) about 60% of the audience said yes
(Helen) Recently did a survey, and very few people know about it. We need to do more education on this. Google Reader is great. If you are looking at RSS for external content, Helen recommends partial feeds, so that people come back to the site to read the full content. Don’t use full feed.

2. (Dorje) “Be seen to act” … I’ve worked in Japan, but working there, it doesn’t actually mean “act”. It’s more about impressions than reality.
(Helen) Right … you actually have to do things.

3. (Dorje) On the Mohawk site, you have three channels. Does this work by tagging with the channel tag, or does it work another way?
(Helen) I’ve set up the taxonomy, and on the top bar, I link to one of the tags.

4. (Julian) What tool are you using?
(Helen) MindMeister … really excellent tool. It’s online. It’s collaborative (multiple people at once). Little German company doing great work. There are free and paid for services.
(Helen) You’ve got to use mind mapping internally. It’s awesome!

5. (Dave) You have some good philosophies and ideas, it is important to note that the audience you need to convince is our CEOs, not us. It all needs to be aligned to productivity.
(Helen) I absolutely agree. This is part of defining your outcomes collaboratively, with important stakeholders in the business.

6. (Marie) On the idea box, I feel like I’ve been given an idea box, but the CEOs aren’t opening it. How do I break through this barrier?
(Helen) You have to do a lot of translation across different audiences. Need to open the idea box, and put it into a business case that the top management people will understand. It has to be outcomes and benefits; they won’t be interested in “making people’s lives better”. Tailor your pitch accordingly.

7. (Ken) Where do you start? What’s a good starting point?
(Helen) You need a concerted effort … but the key thing is to find the key people. Work with them, and build it around them. Find the real evangelists, and work with them.
(Helen) Another thing to do is to run scenarios around each of the groups and audiences. Focus on outcomes. Get the group people in, go through it with them … big push, keep the momentum going.
(Helen) Run “knowledge cafes” every month … and publish the outcomes. You’ll pick up more people over time. It’s like pushing a rock up the hill at the start, but once it’s over the lip, things will get a lot easier.
(Helen) Need to make KM “part of their job”, not something additional and extra.

8. In our company, we tried opening things up so people could talk freely. Introduced a blog. “Corporate” didn’t like it, and shut it down. Where are the internal organizational examples that I can take back to argue the case with “corporate”? Any case studies available?
(Helen) Go and talk to the Drupal community, and ask them. They’ll have case studies.
(Dorje) Register for Kiwi Intranets, and ask them about internal case studies.