NGO workshop in Brussels

Last week I've visited a great day of presentations and conversations in Brussels. Olaf Brugman hosted a workshop on knowledge sharing for NGO's.

Five of those presentations I'd like to mention here, although I take it the proceedings will become available at the KnowledgeBoard NGO Special Interest Group as well.

The one to kick off the day was Verna Allee. You can read impressions of her presentation (and others) from John Moore at the Roundourhouse weblog, Martin Roell at the E-business Consultant Weblog, and Olaf Brugman at the Knowledge Bridge.

If you ever get the chance to talk to Verna, grab it. (She'll be in Amsterdam at the KM in Europe conference next week) She extremely eloquently stated that knowledge management is mostly about manageing through a knowledge lens. The people I just mentioned have worked out their notes very well, and as I haven't got them with me, as I'm writing this from London enjoying a weeks vacation, I'll stick to just two observations I made. (Or read Lee Bryant on Verna Allee's keynote on KM in Europe)

The first is her great use of mapping flows of intangible between organisations and other stakeholders/people in their network. It also showed quite nicely how such a map is so much richer than one just showing the official relationships, and the flows of tangibles (deliverables, commodities and money) between them. Bottle-necks and opportunities just jump you in the face looking at these maps. Finding win-win approaches this way can become a routine excercise.

The second, which resonated immensely with me, was her emphasis of innovation as a social issue. Way to often innovation is presented as focussed on technological progress, or reinventing the production lines with efficiency as a result. What this approach lacks is that it does not look at the organisation this all takes place in. How about innovating your social and organisational structures? That is what KM to me means mostly. Of course this is the scary bit, because it means REAL change of you and the environment you work in. But as it probably is unavoidable in the end anyway there is an awful lot to gain by making change a conscious effort. Innovation is not technological, it's social.

Nico van den Oudenhoven was up next with a courageous account of how to use emotions to make sense of the information overflow we find ourselves in these days. Also I liked his introduction of the notion of "optimal ignorance", by which to find the balance of being in the know and deliberate choice of what not to know. Emotions as a filtering process is of course very much how we go about things, but to acknowledge that and explicitly work with it is something else. For a start it releaves you of the need to rationalise your gut-feeling based decisions afterwards :)

John Moore gave us a hugely entertaining after lunch wake-up session on trust. Although I am pretty familiar with his approach to trust and authenticity, it was good to hear him explain it another time. His attitude that trust is not about reducing risks, but is the risk you take to find out who the trustworthy contacts are clearly solves the paradox I came across last year when I stated that if I trust someone I actually need less trust.

Miguel Cornejo, whom I met for the first time but was familiar with from Knowledge Board, introduced us to his view on communities of practice. Very expiring to hear how he applied this approach not to communities of professionals, but to connect hiv-infected people, their families and friends, their doctors and a host of organisations, including government, and giving them all a voice and access to information in an environment tailored to their needs. Without central control, without people deciding what the needs of others are. Inspiring to see the emphasis here on community, and not on (professional) practice. Miguel thus lives the technologists dream: to make technology really enrich people's lives. He muttered something on the other presenters all being optimists but I suspect he is one too, and one doing something about it as well.

Geert Kobus was the one to wrap up the day for us, with explaining the difficulties with crossing the differences between languages. If anything he deepened the problem Olaf and I wrote about earlier this week. It's not about merely translating from one language to another. There is also the real possibility of concepts being different or even absent from one language to another. The language trap he promised us to learn to avoid, is even bigger than we thought. But we're more aware of it now, and that is a good thing.

Part of the group met for drinks and dinner afterwards, where my partner joined us. Thanks to Olaf for organising this event, and thanks to all present for making it such a worthwile day to spend in Brussels.