Passion, Curiosity, Learning

If you have never read the book "Hackers" (Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution) by Steven Levy I highly recommend it.  Originally published in 1984 it describes the passion and insatiable curiosity of the pioneers of the personal computer.

[amtap amazon:asin=0141000511]

Now, 25 years on, Levy revisits the "hackers" and how they have changed the world.  Lest you think otherwise, a hacker is someone good, not a rogue criminal as used by the news media.

http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/04/ff_hackers/

"...hacking’s values aren’t threatened by business — they have conquered business. Seat-of-the-pants problem-solving. Decentralized decision making. Emphasizing quality of work over quality of wardrobe. These are all hacker ideals, and they have all infiltrated the working world."

The same values described in the quote above from Steven Levy embody the same purity, freshness and altruistic vision that the early Knowledge Management community embodied.  KM, just like the term Hacker was misappropriated and exploited to sell product.  It is OK to make money via KM, but when the outcome becomes all about money and not value creation, that is where I believe a line has been crossed.

As practicioners of KM we should constantly be learning.  Our passion and curiosity should drive us to be leaders within our organizations, to help make connections that generate and add value personally and professionally.

 

Happy at Work?

I found the TechCrunch guest post by Vivek Wadhwa - How To Be Happy At Work... to be very enlightening.

Being happy with your work does make a person more productive.  Vivek gives some great advice about looking at the things that are right about your job and not the things that are wrong with it.

Below are a couple of great quotes and things that are truth:

"When workers achieve arbejdsglæd, the business benefits from higher productivity, because happy people achieve better results; higher quality, because happy employees care about quality; lower absenteeism, because people actually want to go to work; and less stress and burnout, because happy people are less susceptible to stress."

"...those who choose to view life as a learning opportunity to take responsibility for their own actions are also the most confident and the happiest."

Creativity Intelligence - CQ

An emerging school of thought is around Creativity Intelligence or CQ.  NussbaumOnDesign had an interesting post about CQ recently that I recommend you read.

There appears to have been a dumbing down of corporate intelligence.  No, people and corporations are not dumb.  What I've seen and experienced is the propensity to try and bring organizational structures and strictures to a common framework.  Often this accomplishes little and actually brings everyone down to the lowest common denominator.  This reinforces and does the opposite of what is intended.  People aren't encouraged to do more then their job requires.  It gets to the point where there is little or no passion around being creative, learning and applying knowledge.  What company's need to do is encourage creativity, not stifle it through HR policies.

One of my pet peeves is the way Human Resource organization in the U.S.A. seem to have accomplished the dumbing down of corporate life through standardization.  The goals were admirable, but the results are a homogeneous blah.    The fallacy of fairness I like to call it.  We hear that "we need to treat everyone fairly" and so HR implemented grade bands, and midpoints, and uniform review processes.  Yet no where do they take into account IQ or even CQ.  There is no flexibility there is no diversity of thought or action.

European Identity Conference 2010

http://www.kuppingercole.com/events/eic2010/agenda

Munich Germany

European Identity Conference (EIC) is the place to meet with enterprise technologists, thought leaders and experts to learn about, discuss and shape the market in most significant technology topics such as Identity Management, Governance, Risk Management and Compliance (GRC) and Cloud Computing.

KM World 2010

www.kmworld.com/kmw10

November 16 to 18 2010 at the Renaissance Washington, D.C. Hotel

The Experts Conference

The Experts Conference - Los Angelese, CA

Welcome to The Experts Conference (TEC) 2010! For the 9th consecutive year, the TEC team will deliver expert-led, 400-level training on vital Microsoft technologies. In addition to its highly-acclaimed training on Microsoft Directory & Identity technologies, TEC 2010 will bring back a full agenda of Exchange training, staging the world’s leading authorities on Microsoft's powerful messaging platform. And, this year, for the first time ever, we are pleased to introduce an entirely new TEC for SharePoint training conference!

KMI Certified Knowledge Manager Training 5-day workshop

KMI Certified Knowledge Manager Training 5-day workshop, 19 – 23 April 2010, Basel, Switzerland

Interactive 5 day workshop supported by extensive eLearning program

Workshop Leaders: Barry Hardy, Beat Knechtli, Pavel Kraus, Michael
Wyrsch, Stephan Bohr, Douglas Weidner

Topics:
Knowledge Management (KM) Concepts, KM Practices, Business Case, Strategy, Program Planning, KM Frameworks
KM & Organisational Culture & Development, Change Management for KM Programs, Leadership and Competencies for KM
Knowledge Assessment, Metrics, Enterprise Knowledge Management, Process-oriented Knowledge Management, Knowledge Mapping
Benchmarking, Expertise Location, Search, Personal Knowledge Management, Web 2.0, Communities, Collaboration

Instructors
Pavel Kraus, President, Swiss Knowledge Management Forum and Partner, aht'intermediation
Beat Knechtli, Director, Chief Knowledge Officer, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) Zurich
Michael Wyrsch, Vice President and Leader Knowledge Management Competence Center, Credit Suisse
Stephan Bohr, Global Knowledge Management Leader Advisory (EMEA), PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC)
Barry Hardy, PhD, Director, Community of Practice & Research Activities, Douglas Connect
Douglas Weidner, President, International Knowledge Management Institute

More Information: http://www.douglasconnect.com/html/knowledge.htm

Program Brochure (pdf):
http://douglasconnect.com/files/KMTrainingBrochure.PDF

Contact: Dr. Barry Hardy, email: kmls -(at)- douglasconnect.com,
+41 61 851 0170