KMTALK ASIA

When I entered into the conference room, I was surprised! Everyone in the room was  juggling tennis balls, trying to catch 2/3 balls at a time. Ron Young was giving the instruction on how to do it but most of the participants failed to follow him. It was fun though. Juggling could be a good (mental and physical) exercise in a conference that deals with some heavy topics like impact measurement of KM, competencies, or role of professional associations in skill development.

I am talking about the KM Singapore conference that was just held on Nov 1, at the Singapore Polytechnic Graduates Guild Clubhouse. The conference was organized by iKMS (Information and Knowledge Management Society of Singapore) and participated by 60 participants from various countries of Asia & Europe. Amongst others, the conference was brightened by the active presence of David Gurteen, Waltruat Ritter, Ron Young, Eric Tsui, Raksha Sukhia and Patrick Lambe.

Patrick presented about the level of professional developments in KM in various countries in Asia and compared that with Singapore. Les Hales President of the Hong Kong Knowledge Management Society, Professor Jann Hidajat Tjakraatmadja President of the KM Society of Indonesia and myself presented the country reports on KM activities and trends in Hong Kong, Indonesia and Malaysia. It is found that Hong Kong is doing well in KM, whereas Indonesia needs strong commitment from the Government.

Ron Young, Chief Knowledge Officer for Knowledge Management Online and author of the book Knowledge Asset Management gave his key note speech on KM Competency, where he emphasized that only knowledge on KM will not make a person competent, he needs to have enough successful implementation experiences in KM.

Participants attended the workshop on KM competency, where Patrick presented the various types of roles a KM practitioner should play with some cute cartoon archetypes. The roles include- Transformer, The Saint, Evangelist, Digger, etc etc.

Eight cases were presented during the Case Study Café session and each participant had the chance to listen to 3 cases in depth with the presenter in their tables. At the end of the sessions with the participants, the case presenters debriefed the audience about what was discussed and if any new ideas came out.

Another round of table discussion was held on the role of KM practitioners in the Professional Associations for personal and professional development. Many ideas came out such as- professional associations ( i.e. iKMS) should develop standards on KM (but the standards have to be customized according to the culture and practices of the country), people should join the associations and share their success and failure stories, people should help each other in personal development as KM is still a new field, associations can give KM execellence awards to the organizations successfully implemented KM. 

Informal networks can play an important role in personal skill development in KM. Patrick suggested that KMers should form some buddy network like we have in Malaysia. People share their failure stories more with their buddies rather than in formal meeting/seminar. Community blogs like KMtalk.Blog is also a good example on how people can collaborate and discuss various pertaining issues on KM implementation.  

So, join our KM Malaysia Yahoogroups soon and meet us everytime we organize the KM buddy gathering in KL.