Knowledge Management

Today in many circles the mention of knowledge management conjures up fears of complex IT systems (often equated with failure) or a new initiative (often associated with vague requirements). How do you develop a knowledge management program that incorporates the essence of organizational learning and knowledge sharing without new tools or systems? The Johnson Space Center has embarked on such a quest to define a program that leverages the wealth of knowledge of 50 years of human space flight not only for today's workforce but also for generations to come.

In this free April 11 EDUCAUSE Live! web seminar, Knowledge Sharing: Some Myths and Ideas, and a Little IT, presenter Jean E. Engle, Chief Knowledge Officer, NASA/Johnson Space Center, will share her thoughts on the effective development of knowledge management programs.

This is a summary of the EDUCAUSE Southwest Regional Opening General Session, February 20, 2008

Knowledge Sharing: Some Myths and Ideas, and a Little IT

Jean E. Engle

Chief Knowledge Officer,

NASA/Johnson Space Center

MS. Engle was the NASA Johnson Space Center CIO until she recently accepted the challenge of becoming one of the few Chief Knowledge Officers in the government.  She noted that there are many differences between the two roles. 

She provided background information about NASA and JSC.  Many do not realize that NASA has multiple centers around the country.  These all began as competitors rather than partners but this has changed over the years.  Engle described the passion in the community for their work.

This 12 minute podcast features an interview with Jean Engle, Chief Knowledge Officer for NASA at the Johnson Space Center. She delivered the opening keynote speech at the EDUCAUSE 2008 Southwest Regional Conference entitled, "Knowledge Sharing: Some Myths and Ideas, and a Little IT".

Ms. Engle joined the Johnson Space Center as a cooperative education student in 1984. She earned a B.A. in Mathematics in 1987, and an M.B.A in 1993 from the University of Houston, Clear Lake. She has served in a variety of increasingly responsible division and directorate staff positions and has been a member of the CIO Office since its inception in 1994. Over the last several years, she has led JSC’s involvement in a number of Agencywide and Centerwide Information Technology standards and security efforts.

Thanks to everyone who gave me feedback on project communication tools!  As
we have been researching tools and recommendations, the institutional needs
for these systems has started growing.  In addition to project management we
are wondering about how collaboration tools can also meet communication
needs within our department:

• as a repository for documentation (how to install...)
• to provide an overview of what is going on in the department (this
• week...this month)
• as a place where all the bits of information can be brought together into
• a big snapshot

I have no expectations that technology will provide us with the sole
solution to improving communication and workflow, but I¹d really like to
hear more ideas and stories about how other institutions are effectively
using collaboration applications.  We narrowed down our list of possible
solutions to four:  mediaWiki, drupal, typepad and Teams.

And since drupal consolidates many kinds of content (wiki, blog, RSS, etc.)
we felt that it was the product most worth looking at.  Yeah...simple,
right? 

For the past two weeks I've been trying to identify and assess web based applications that would meet several needs within the broad umbrella of project communication/management:

• provide a quick overview of what's happening on a given project
• have a component that could be used for documentation
• be multi-layered (a public component available without login; a private component for authenticated users only)
• provide distribution components (RSS...)
• standards based
• has a simple and easy-to-use interface
• hosted externally or internally
• provide multiple views of content (via tagging, grouping...)

I've been surprised at how hard it has been to find an application that meets many of these needs. 

I've been playing with SharePoint for a few months but feel that the learning curve to make it an effective and organic tool is significant.  Basecamp is a bit too simple.  I entertained the idea (suggested by our brilliant Director of Administrative Systems, Ted Simpson) of using Educause Connect (but it lacks the overview and cohesive functions we're looking for).
A straight-up wiki application might be the closest thing I've found; yet something is missing (perhaps the calendar/overview features).  I have the feeling that the solution is much simpler and more obvious than is apparent to me.

How does decision making occur within Communities of Practice? Or, to make the question more specific, how do professional communities engage in collaborative decision-making, and how does that process contribute to the functioning and the effectiveness of the community in question? How do groups of people, working together, decide that a particular innovation is worth pursuing?

These are some of the research questions that are emerging from my current work, and from the various projects that our evaluation group is pursuing at CARET. Increasingly, I'm finding that I want to learn more about theories and concepts of knowledge creation. And I want to start to think about how to reconfigure my own diverse academic support and research projects within this broader theoretical framework.

How do I define "innovation" here? In terms of communities of practice, by "innovation" I mean a change in professional practice: for example, adoption, adaptation, or abandonment. How does someone within a particular CoP decide to adopt a new practice? Can we identify conditions under which individual innovations in practice reliably transfer to the community at large?

Corante's Symposium on Social Architecture is about to begin and I can't wait. 

Last evening we toured a Degas exhibit.  Hearing the docent speak of draft drawings as leaving trails of information about a master's work raised all sorts of imagery in my head ... wikis, knowledge management, etc. 

Further, in thinking about the range of works that Degas provided for us made me think of issues of digital preservation.  I wonder if parallels could be made of physical preservation of art ... drawings vs. pastel work vs. paintings vs. sculpture ... media/medium ... at risk works, etc.  Perhaps someone has already done that.  If you had to come up with an example of a digital work that could serve as a contemporary of a piece in an at risk media (like a charcole sketch on newsprint perhaps; or maybe one example of one with a little more durability ... a photo on resin coated paper), what would it be? 

What can we learn from the art world's efforts to preserve the physical works of authorship?

They also have a blog setup for coverage of the event. 
http://www.corante.com/events/ssa/blog.php

This 30 minute recording with Alfred Essa, Executive Director of the .LRN Consortium, gathers his thoughts on open source, blogs, podcasts, java, .LRN and a range of other topics.

-- Typed up and spell checked in StarOffice 7 after being inspired by Scott McNealy's speech.

Tuesday October 18, 2005 I attended two of the pre-conference seminars.

Seminar 8A: Knowledge Management and Leadership: Do we know what we know?

Jerry and George we very informative and I feel I know a little more background and history of the struggle to organize, share and create knowledge. We also talked about the difference between information and knowledge.

One thought provoking key concept for me was from Voeller's Circle of Knowledge. “Knowledge Management is focused on augmenting or enhancing the completeness of a participant's ability to interpret information within a context.”

What's implied here is that without context, information is not knowledge. Makes my mind ache just thinking about it, I'm having a Zen poetry moment.

We also touched on the idea that until Human Resources(HR) and performance management buy's into the idea that there is value in sharing knowledge we will continue to see the hoarding of knowledge instead.

I'm interesting in two main topics:
1) Sharing knowledge, how do I convince people it's worth trying.

2) "Off the shelf" knowledge base products vs. a mature home grown php/my sql system we use at the 8help support center at The Ohio University.