Archive for the 'Thursday Afternoon Meetings' Category

Knowledge Management as a Lever of Cultural Change: a Case Study of a Global NGO

Published by lynda on July 27, 2010 in Thursday Afternoon Meetings. 0 Comments

Thursday, August 19, 2010, 4:00 - 6:00 p.m., Microsoft, 201 Jones Rd., Sixth Floor, Waltham, MA 02451. Directions.

SPEAKER: Margi Olson, Principal Consultant, Mansys Consulting

TOPIC: World Vision is a global Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) with 40,000 employees operating in 90 countries worldwide.  Their superordinate goal is “building a better world for our children”.  They are best known in the US for their child sponsorship programs.  They have extensive programs throughout the world in areas of expertise such as health and nutrition, poverty and justice for children, anti-trafficking, conflict sensitivity, and many others.  A key determinant of their success is getting the right experts to the right place in a timely manner, while utilizing donated revenue as efficiently and effectively as possible.

Margi will discuss a major organizational intervention to implement a global network of experts for effective  deployment in developing countries.  Although she will discuss the processes and systems to support this network, the major focus of the talk will be on utilizing knowledge management as a lever for cultural change.  She will describe the vision of the organization to operate as a non-hierarchical partnership, and the role of knowledge management to support that vision.

BIOGRAPHY: Margi Olson’s passion is understanding what makes enterprises prosper with that illusive combination of leadership, business process, skills and technology. From 2002 until 2007, Margi was Dean of Business, Bentley University, in Waltham.  She came to Bentley after 12 years of strategic change roles both as an executive (Lend Lease) and a consultant (Lotus / IBM and DMR).  Previously, she was a professor at the Stern School of Business at New York University.  Margi currently works as a  knowledge management consultant for World Vision, a global NGO operating in 90 countries.

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Knowledge Management in China: A Tale of Two Companies

Published by lynda on July 1, 2010 in Thursday Afternoon Meetings. 1 Comment

Thursday, July 15, 2010, 4:00 - 6:00 p.m., Microsoft, 201 Jones Rd., Sixth Floor, Waltham, MA 02451. Directions.

SPEAKER: Wei Zhang, Associate Professor, College of Management, Univ. of Mass, Boston

TOPIC: While knowledge management has been popular among US companies, Chinese companies have not practiced it until recently. In this presentation, Dr. Zhang will discuss knowledge management practices in two Chinese companies that he has recently visited. Both companies are quite successful, but they differ from each other greatly in almost every aspect of their knowledge management practices. He will compare-and-contrast their practices and also explore the role culture plays in their knowledge management practices. [Partial Slide Deck]

BIOGRAPHY: Wei Zhang earned his doctorate in management information systems from Boston University. His research interests include knowledge management, cultural issues in Information Systems, and Information Systems Education. Dr. Zhang has published in journals such as Journal of Association for Information Systems, Social Work, Communications of the Association for Information Systems, and Journal of Information Systems Education.

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Performance Enhancing: Learning + Knowledge = ?

Published by lynda on May 30, 2010 in Thursday Afternoon Meetings. 1 Comment

Thursday, June 17, 2010, 4:00 - 6:00 p.m., Microsoft, 201 Jones Rd., Sixth Floor, Waltham, MA 02451. Directions.

SPEAKER: Matt Moore, Innotecture, Director

TOPIC: Senior managers in organizations say they want to do things better – whether they call it learning or innovation or continuous improvement. Movements such as Performance Improvement, Training & Development, Organizational Learning & Knowledge Management have all emerged over the last few decades to meet this professed need.

  • What can these movements learn from each other?
  • What factors enable this cooperation or impede it?
  • And why do organizations find it so hard to do things better consistently?

Participating in this event will enable you to…

  • use some institutional, practical & theoretical resources from disciplines outside KM;
  • identify the learning & knowledge maturity level of your organization;
  • identify opportunities to improve your KM operation.

BIOGRAPHY: Matt is Chair of the New South Wales KM Forum in Australia, lectures in eLearning Design at University of Technology Sydney and is a director of Innotecture. Matt’s previous roles have covered knowledge management, training & development and corporate communications at organizations such as PwC, IBM, Oracle and the Australian Securities and Investments Commission.

Matt has just published Performance Enhancing, his first book. It is an e-book that examines the links between training & development, knowledge management, organizational learning and performance improvement from a practical perspective. To get a feel for the contents of the book, please read the original article.

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Taking Twitter to the Next Level

Published by lynda on April 20, 2010 in Thursday Afternoon Meetings. 0 Comments

Thursday, May 20, 2010, 4:00 - 6:00 p.m., Microsoft, 201 Jones Rd., Sixth Floor, Waltham, MA 02451. Directions.

SPEAKER: Rachel Levy,  Marketing and Social Media Consultant, Rachel Levy Consulting

TOPIC: If you’ve been using Twitter for a little while, but want to take it to the next level, this presentation is for you!  Rachel will cover these topics, with plenty of time for questions throughout the presentation:
•    Twitter’s external applications
•    Growing your following
•    Syndicating you tweets outside of Twitter
•    Managing your time on Twitter
•    Twitter success stories
•    Twitter lists

PRESENTATION

READINGS and Other Links:

Catone, Josh. Twitter for Beginners: 5 Steps for Better Tweeting. Mashable; the social media guide, 07/20/2009, 2p.
Ferraro, Nicole. Twitter Tests Business Toolkit by Nicole Ferraro on Internet Evolution, 5/11/2010
Lynch, C.G. How and Why to Launch a Business Presence on Twitter. CIO, 03/12/2009, 1p.
Miller, Claire Cain. Twitter Serves Up Ideas From Its Followers. NY Times, 10/26/2009, 2p.

To Cross-post or not to cross-post
How to Cross-post your social media updates
Why you shouldn’t use Twitter

BIOGRAPHY: Rachel Levy has worked in marketing for the past 10 years at companies such as Abbott Laboratories, Kraft Foods and Jim Beam Brands. Most recently, she was Director of Marketing at the Jewish Community Centers of Greater Boston, where she launched three websites. Since leaving the JCC, she has immersed herself in the social media/networking world and consults full time in marketing and social media at her company Rachel Levy Consulting. Her clients include consumer products, consumer services, B2B and pharmaceuticals.  She also runs a website called WebinarListings, a site that is a directory of current online seminars in many areas of interest.  Rachel lives in Brookline with her yellow lab Stella.

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KM – Has the Torch been Passed to a New Generation?

Published by lynda on February 28, 2010 in Thursday Afternoon Meetings. 0 Comments

Thursday, March 18, 2010, 4:00 - 6:00 p.m., Microsoft, 201 Jones Rd., Sixth Floor, Waltham, MA 02451. Directions.

SPEAKER: Carl Frappaolo, Principal and co-founder, Information Architected

TOPIC: Carl is contemplating our future in the KM community with this provocative opening for our March meeting

KM was the solution du jour of the business and IT world circa 1995. That’s 15 years ago – a millennium in cyber-years. Much has changed. Some even state that KM is dead. One analyst recently stated that KM was not even possible until now (it wasn’t me.) I am not one of those, but admit that the formal business practice of KM has morphed.

Over the past decade, KM has given birth to many children.  These include Enterprise 2.0, Web 2.0, Social Computing, Social Networking and emergent software. Each has its own following and impact on the workplace. So one must ask, “Has the torch been passed to a new generation?”  Are the methodologies and efforts of yesterday’s knowledge managers obsolete? Are efforts better spent focused on these current practices? For the record – I say “no,” KM is more necessary than ever. I will explain “why.“

PRESENTATION

READINGS

BIOGRAPHY: Carl Frappaolo is globally recognized as a thought leader, entrepreneur, speaker, strategy advisor, and prolific author. He founded 3 companies and has consulted with the who’s who of the corporate and public sectors on innovation, information, process and knowledge management. He is the co-founder of Information Architected. Prior, Carl was VP and founder of the Market Intelligence unit of AIIM and a founder of Delphi Group.  His blog is at TakingAIIM.com. You can join his networks at LinkedIn and Facebook, and follow him on Twitter @carlfrappaolo.

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Finding Knowledge Assets: How Web search behavior can be applied to the Enterprise Intranet

Published by lynda on February 10, 2010 in Thursday Afternoon Meetings. 1 Comment

Thursday, February 18, 2010, 4:00 - 6:00 p.m., Microsoft, 201 Jones Rd., Sixth Floor, Waltham, MA 02451. Directions.

SPEAKER: Mark Sprague, Principal, Msprague.com

TOPIC: Human Search Behavior must be studied to effectively prepare content for maximum findability.

Preparing content so that it can be found easily on the intranet requires the understanding and interactions of three disciplines augmented by a fourth (understanding how people find and consume content). Though clearly in a symbiotic relationship, three disciplines: Content management, Search Engines and Search Engine Optimization (SEO), are often dealt with as if they are stand-alone activities.

This is what happens:

  1. Content can be developed or re-purposed without understanding how it will be positioned within a website.
  2. Websites can be designed and developed without a coherent initial search strategy – SEO experts are brought in after the site is completed to optimize the best that they can.  Sites that grow organically and change frequently over time present challenges as well.
  3. Content experts can know about search, but often don’t really understand in any depth how search relevancy works, and how it impacts their content in search results.

Join us for this discussion about how understanding search behavior can influence the information architecture of your intranet with all the implications for how it affects sharing content and knowledge expertise. Mark will share some techniques and practices for getting more out of search. PRESENTATION NOTES

RELATED ARTICLE: Giving Customers What They Want: A Search Behavior Analysis

Jun 25, 2010 at 10:03am ET by Mark Sprague

BIOGRAPHY: Mark Sprague is an information and software products visionary with a passion for the customer/user experience. He has generated many value-added products and services in new niches in everything from Social Networks, Social Media, Search Engines, Auto-Classification tools, Entertainment Titles, Education Applications, Business Applications, Web Services, and Usability Analysis Newsletters. He has recently been consulting in Enterprise Search, SEO, Content Strategies, Mobile Applications and Social Networking. Mark founded the Internet search engine Northernlight.com in 1995, notable for its early use of clustering and auto-categorizing Web search results.

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Additional Readings:

Hearst, Marti. Search User Interfaces. Cambridge University Press, 2009  ISBN: 9780521113793

McDaniel, Clay. 13 Essential Social-Media ‘Listening Tools’. MarketingProfs, 05/19/2009, 1p.
1. Google Alerts; 2. Technorati; 3. Jodange; 4. Trendrr; 5. Lexicon; 6. Monitter 7. Tweetburner; 8. Twendz; 9. TruCast; 10. and 11. Radian6 and Cision Radian6; 12. Techrigy; 13. Collective Intellect

Mullan, Eileen. Searching for Answers at ESS East. EContent Magazine, 05/19/2009, 1p.  …
Miles Kehoe, a founder and president of New Idea Engineering, Inc., explained that the blame for a company’s search problems may lie with the implementation. “Maybe it is not the technology, it may be your methodology,” Kehoe says. “Search is not a fire and forget technology.”

A Twofer: Making a Successful KM Manager + Snapshots of the CES Show in Las Vegas

Published by lynda on January 12, 2010 in Thursday Afternoon Meetings. 0 Comments

Thursday, January 21, 2010, 4:00 - 6:00 p.m., Microsoft, 201 Jones Rd., Sixth Floor, Waltham, MA 02451. Directions.

SPEAKER: Larry Chait, Managing Director, Chait & Associates and Lynda Moulton, Principal, LWM Technology Services

TOPIC:

This workshop will cover the key elements for making a successful KM leader and give participants a guide to finding coursework to help them fill gaps in their own education or for people they supervise.

We’ll wrap up with one of Larry’s famous thumbnail collections: highlights of the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, last week.

Boston KM Forum receives a fair amount of interest from other KM communities of practice from across the U.S. and around the world. The two most frequent comments and inquiries we receive are from those seeking information about our programs or links to presentations, and questions about where there are educational programs that feature knowledge management. PRESENTATION

Our community of practice in the Boston area has attracted over a thousand attendees to one or more of our programs spanning seven years; their backgrounds reflect the myriad components that make a KM manager or KM champion. They come from disciplines as diverse as information science, computational linguistics, IT/computer science, communications, business management, operations research analysis, informatics, etc. Everyone is concerned with aspects of fostering and leveraging the purposeful exchange of knowledge in their organization or in their consulting practices. No one in our community has a degree in “knowledge management,” but that could change.

Larry Chait has lead a major KM initiative for an international professional service firm and understands the key ingredients for sharp and effective contributors and leaders in this area. Both he and Lynda Moulton have taught at the graduate level, courses related to KM and information management. Larry is an expert in process and people management, while Lynda has more experience with managing content and knowledge assets for specific user needs. While both have worked with hundreds of technology tools that support KM, they champion the human and social mechanisms that make KM work. Coursework can contribute but personal/professional attributes are also important.

BIOGRAPHIES: Prior to launching Chait & Associates, Larry Chait was a Corporate Vice President of Arthur D. Little, Inc. He built ADL’s internal, global Knowledge Management function and served as the firm’s first Chief Knowledge Officer. In that role, he oversaw the design, development, and implementation of the firm’s multi-million-dollar KM initiative. In his earlier consulting role at ADL, Larry led major engagements in change management, process improvement, and strategic IT planning for domestic and international clients ranging from start-ups to the Global 100. Larry has also authored 20 articles published in the US and abroad, lectured in MBA and post-graduate programs in five universities, and spoken at over 40 conferences on topics including knowledge management, process improvement, and the management of change. He is currently President of The Boston KM Forum, a community of practitioners that offers over 25 KM-knowledge-sharing events each year.

Lynda Moulton consults at LWM Technology Services on knowledge management strategies for enterprises with a focus on search, taxonomies, and ontologies for managing content behind the firewall. She has over 30 years of experience with search and content technologies. Lynda is also an analyst and consultant for the Gilbane Group, blogging on search. Her early career included information specialist work at Union Carbide and Arthur D. Little. In 1980 she founded Comstow Information Services a software company that developed BiblioTech®, a VAX/VMS application for enterprise content management. Lynda helps lead the Boston Knowledge Management Forum, and is a contributor to InternetEvolution’s ThinkerNet blog. She is widely published and a frequent speaker at conferences and seminars. Recent case work, typical project assignments and writings can be found at http://www.lwmtechnology.com.

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Deliver Us from Web 2.0 Content Chaos: Activity, Attraction and Personal Knowledge Create the Awareness Engine

Published by lynda on November 20, 2009 in Thursday Afternoon Meetings. 2 Comments

Thursday, Dec. 17, 2009, 4:00 - 6:00 p.m., Microsoft, 201 Jones Rd., Sixth Floor, Waltham, MA 02451. Directions. 

SPEAKER: Thierry Hubert and Bill Ives, Darwin Ecosystem LLC

TOPIC:  The presentation will share with the audience a practical application of chaos theory for creating knowledge focal points from the chaotic mess of content resources distributed across the Web. Using a couple of examples, one from the Internet where socially generated content is exploding, and one from the enterprise where social tools are also contributing their own content bloat, Thierry will discuss the ideas that are driving a new product idea. The examples will illustrate how activity can make information more discoverable, and easier to explore through various visualization techniques. These techniques open the door for more self-discovery through intuitive recognition of patterns. They will help the explorer to find relationships among content objects and people that would not have been found using traditional search methods. PRESENTATION

BIOGRAPHY: Thierry Hubert has over 20 years experience in Knowledge Management, Collaboration Technologies and online Social Networks.  He is the co-founder of Darwin Ecosystem, a company currently building a next generation awareness engine based on emergence ranking from chaos theory principles.  While working for Price Waterhouse, Lotus Development Corporation and IBM, he helped create and pioneer some of the first recognized collaborative, knowledge management and enterprise 2.0 solutions for Fortune 500 companies.  His experience and passion for solving information consumption overload, in the increasingly chaotic and unstructured Web 2.0 communication flow, has lead him to embrace the chaos theory as a foundation for awareness, discovery and serendipity.

Bill Ives leads the social media efforts at Darwin Ecosystem. He has served for over 25 years in leadership positions as a consultant in learning, knowledge management, other business applications of emerging technologies, and most recently with social media such as blogs and Twitter. He has worked with US Fortune 500 companies in a range of industries, along with a number of leading European firms. He is also currently working with a variety of firms and individuals helping them with their blogging and Twitter strategies. Bill contributes to two blogs on enterprise 2.0: FastForward and the Appgap, as well as his own Portals and KM blog and the new Darwin Discovery Engine Blog.

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Social Networking Technologies - Challenges for Product Development & Effective Integration into the Enterprise

Published by lynda on October 23, 2009 in Thursday Afternoon Meetings. 0 Comments

Thursday, November 19, 4:00 - 6:00 p.m., Microsoft, 201 Jones Rd., Sixth Floor, Waltham, MA 02451. Directions. 

SPEAKER: Chris Poulin, Managing Partner, Patterns and Predictions

TOPIC: The deep integration of social networking tools is deceptively complex to execute well. Effective incorporation into products requires a clear integration strategy. At the same time, incorporating social networking into enterprise IT operations has its own internal challenges.

A recent case study of  a Fortune 500 client’s needs will describe our proposed solution set,  the integration challenges, and lessons learned. The knowledge gained will be carried over to a discussion of a new cutting-edge analytics project (under development), that illustrates the unique challenges of designing high performance social networks. Finally, the discussion will conclude with specific recommendations for those planning or implementing social networking integration projects of any size or depth.

BIOGRAPHY: Chris Poulin is Managing Partner of Patterns and Predictions (predictive analytics) & Poulin Holdings (web/network services.)  His most recent projects have been in integration of analytics and social networking. Research affiliations include Dartmouth College in machine learning and Umass in high performance computing (HPC). He was previously the Chief Architect and VP of Advanced Technology for a commercial entity (Viziant) a provider of  Search/KM. He is a patent holding inventor in Federated Web and Information Retrieval systems.

Readings

Clark, Robert. Culture, Not Tech, Slows Social Nets at Work. Computerworld/PCWorld, 04/05/2009, 1p. “The takeout? If you’re planning a social networking project at your organization, make haste slowly — you’re way ahead of your colleagues.”

Conry-Murray, Andrew. Enterprise Social Networking Pay Off? Information Week, 03/23/2009, pp. 23- 29. “Five best practices for social networking in business: 1. Test the waters 2. Set modest expectations 3. Don’t let fear strangle growth 4. Resist exclusivity 5. Don’t forget about search”

Reid, Carolina. Should Business Embrace Social Networking? EContent Magazine, 06/15/2009, 3p.

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Getting the Most KM Bang-for-your-(information technology) bucks

Published by lynda on October 6, 2009 in Thursday Afternoon Meetings. 0 Comments

Thursday, Oct. 15, 2009, 4:00 - 6:00 p.m., Microsoft, 201 Jones Rd., Sixth Floor, Waltham, MA 02451. Directions. 

SPEAKERS: Simon Trussler,  Senior VP, and Anna Gilpatric, Content Coordinator - Health Dialog

TOPIC: In the current economy it’s more important than ever to get the highest ROI possible on your knowledge management endeavors. This presentation will show how Health Dialog is using SharePoint for low-investment, high-impact knowledge management, as well as identifying out-of-the-box features and simple add-ons any company can use to get the highest return on its  KM investment.

BIOGRAPHY: Simon Trussler has led Health Dialog University, the firm’s training and knowledge management function, since early 2007, and also works in the international business development group.  Prior to joining Health Dialog, he led the global KM function for Boston Consulting Group for 12 years, and was a previously a partner in BCG’s consulting practice in Europe.  He has MA and PhD degrees from Cambridge University.

Anna Gilpatric is the Content Coordinator Health Dialog University. Anna graduated from the University of Maine in 2008 with a B.A. in English and a minor in Business Administration. In 2008 Anna started working for Health Dialog University, coordinating their knowledge management initiatives. Anna is also the company’s designated internal SharePoint trainer.

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