The last couple months have been keeping me busy and my blogging has suffered.
I am somewhat disappointed to have let it slide but I have been having so much fun offline… and this is helping to relieve the guilt 
I will return to blogging shortly!!
Canada's Youth Summit Team - October 2001
For anyone who spent time writing a master’s thesis, you will understand my feelings of joy. I recently published an excerpt of my thesis in a book called: Young people, education, and sustainable development - Exploring principles, perspectives, and praxis.
In 2003, I wrote my master’s thesis on Canada’s Youth Summit Team. This was a select group of diverse, geographically representative youth helping Canada’s government and young people prepare for the World Summit on Sustainable Development (2002).
After two years of volunteering on the project with the United Nation’s Association in Canada and then researching and writing a thesis about the experience, I am pleased that others might share and learn from my reflections.
The book will be launched at the forthcoming 12th General Conference of the Association of African Universities (AAU) in Abuja, Nigeria from May 4 – 9, 2009 and the 5th World Congress on Environmental Education (WEEC 5) from May 10-14, 2009 in Montreal, Canada.
This short comedy act “Everything’s amazing, nobody’s happy” is amazing. We really do take technology for granted!
Well worth the 4 minutes!
If you are having a hard time keeping up with changes in technology, information, life…welcome to the club. This short video from YouTube posts numbers to tell us exactly what is taking place on planet Earth. It’s amazing how information is moving faster than ever and how that influences our lives. Well worth the five minutes to view!!
I often try and create conversation in my work as I truly believe that is how knowledge is shared. Conversations are filled with stories and many great leaders use these stories to influence change.
Steve Jobs gave a speech at a Stanford University convocation and it’s posted on YouTube. He used three distinct stories that had great lessons to get his message across. These stories were personal, told with I and very real.
Storytelling is powerful and this little clip clearly demonstrates that. Try it!
Have you ever felt that technology and the internet are always one step ahead? Over the last few days I have dipped my toe in new waters and discovered a world of internet collaboration options. I have linked my blog content to a larger site that houses many bloggers all writing on a similar topic. It is like a clearinghouse for information on Communities and Network Connections.
As a participant I was asked to post a few things on my blog to help the searching and keyword capabilities. After some technical difficulties, I managed to upload my new features – check out the key words option as it is quite cool. You can see on the right side of my blog that it picks up words I use a lot and links them to blog entries on the subject. These are grouped on the Communities and Network Connections site which is bringing together content from all different blogs.
I am interested to see how this social experiment plays out. I am not sure about how it will actually ‘build community’ yet but I already found interesting information in the blogs sitting together by topic areas on the main site. Thanks to Nancy White for inviting me to play. Learning lots already!!
It’s interesting to think about how knowledge networks develop. My understanding is that people or organizations with a common interest come together over a shared purpose. If the sole purpose of the network is to share knowledge, there needs to be a demand and supply of knowledge. Participants need to be interested in each other’s experiences and lessons to offer. To be really valuable, the knowledge needs to be real, personable and something others can identify with. Anyone who uses Facebook understands these concepts.
I am helping to establish a regional network of learning around a shared topic of interest and am finding it more difficult than I thought. Possible hurdles include:
So what can I do? As I work to improve this network I think the first step is to put faces to all participating organizations in the network. Contacts needs to be made and efforts to engage each contact in how the network can fulfill their needs should be a priority. Another step is to reconfigure the membership so that there is more interest in the actual participants and the knowledge they have to share. Once people start taking action on the subject matter and are in need of information, the network might self actualize. I will try these ideas before resorting to the obvious action of reducing expectations about participation and commitment of members.
If anyone has experience to share on how they have managed to engage a ‘disengaged’ network, please share with me – thanks!
Last night I learned about different home heating options such as biomass, fossil fuels and geoexhange (moving heat from the ground into buildings). It was a great evening of learning from an expert as well as my neighbours. It was part of a monthly series of discussion nights I organize called Green Drinks.
Green Drinks in my small town is about getting together over drinks, learning more about an environmental or social topic and stimulating conversation. I try and find a resource person to kick off the discussion and provoke us to think beyond what we might know. The fun is really in meeting new people and hearing their thoughts.
Last night we held the evening as a conversation café where we had three rounds of conversation after a fifteen minute introduction by our speaker. People rotated through tables with one person remaining at each table throughout to act as a host and share what the people in the earlier rounds had to say. After thirty minutes everyone gathered together in a bigger conversation to ask other questions and share a bit about what their tables spoke about.
I use Conversation Café techniques in my work but was hesitant to try it in an informal, casual setting. It was certainly a more structured green drinks than normal but when asked if they liked the format, there was an overwhelming amount of support to keep it up. I am coming to the conclusion that forced networking techniques from the KM world are great tools for both inside and outside the workplace….even in small rural communities where you think everyone already knows each other!
“This stand changes the neighbourhood.” “People stop and talk to each other.”
These are some of the words I heard at a Christmas tree stand in the upper east side of Manhattan last week. The simple stand is a true symbol of knowledge sharing in this NY neighbourhood.
For eleven months of the year, people come and go on this urban block but rarely have time to stop and chat. The stand appears Thanksgiving weekend and lasts until Christmas Eve. During the month, thousands of locals stop in at the stand to talk about politics, the economy, religion and their lives. They bring food, drink and other snacks as gifts to the sellers who live on the street during this time. They are happy to share, to give and to have someone listen.
Often a few folks gather together and it turns into a group conversation. People note that this doesn’t happen any other time of the year. The stand creates a reason for people to stop and check in. They like it and wait for this time of year when they know the trees will go up, the boys will be back and they can enjoy their neighbourhood the way one imagines a neighbourhood should be. This was what it was like before we got too busy to get to know one another, to listen, to share and to give.
My Knowledge Management lens is broadening. What the water cooler does for an office, the Christmas tree stand does for this East side neighbourhood.
