Social Media or KM / KM or Social Media

I sat in earlier on a session on the Future of KM. There are three very different people on the panel. I’ve been listening with half an ear. This means what I write may have nothing to do with the context of the session. However, part of the reason we come to events like this is to spark other thoughts and tangents.

So far today I’ve not heard the word “flows”, I don’t hear “lifestreaming” I still feel what I am hearing is that knowledge is to be managed, moved, manipulated. Plus I just heard Dave Pollard say that SARS, 9/11, Katrina etc were all failures of classic knowledge management. I can’t quite put my finger on why KM isn’t learning and moving forward more quickly. It suggests to me that there remains a bigger problem.

Individuals are increasingly using personal tools, blogs, wikis, social networks, mobile phone, etc. As they move into this realm publicly they create more information about themselves. I’m increasingly seeing these tools being put to use by marketing / PR. KM seems to be missing these social media implications. Thus adoption of these tools is not being driven by the need to manage knowledge. Rather it’s driven by responding faster, being more adaptive, building on what others do, opening up systems so they can find that they need just in time. It’s a learning centric approach. I see it when I go to blogging sessions and talk to people there. The difference is they are believers.

I have a feeling I wrote something about this last year. I did. I wrote a post on use it first then talk to me. I wrote in that post about Flock and said “the social browser” why isn’t it commented on. This year I’m fairly certain I won’t hear a word about Chrome. I summed up that post with the following.

There is no KM2.0 model today. Perhaps that is the way it should be. Fragmented. Fragments certainly fit with Dave Snowden’s theories. Maybe we should just throw out the concept and go back to me, you, and us? When you use these tools everyday it’s easy to forget that the rest of the world isn’t quite there yet. Sharing and creating the stories of what could be.. I think that is exciting.

I had listed a year ago Facebook API, and tried initiating some Twitter activity. Today Twitter is more visible although most I’ve spoken to want to run a mile from it.  Although I’d be pressing forward recommending that the future is now emerging with the social iPhone, and the app environment that it is now creating. That’s where you can accelerate your learning. Note many of the successful iPhone apps were generated off the Facebook learnings which were obvious a year ago. At each phase or evolution of social media learnings are being aggregated. Being successful requires more of the person and their understanding to be successful. This is not just about dollars. Today I look at the iPhone which is now rapidly creating location based opportunities that will redefine business interactions.

I’m thinking more and more that the social media experts are likely to usurp or overturn many KM practices in time. The fact that SAP, Oracle and IBM are today all working with Twitter like updates is at least encouraging. Maybe they can still sell a knowledge platform?

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