Monday, May 17, 2010

Aa..ha!'s Sixth Birthday....

Aa..ha! is celebrating her sixth birthday, friends! :-) 6 years of non-stop nonsense! I don't believe it. :-) Wonder how long this is going to last. Perhaps, God forbid, till I start feeling I have no more energy to learn or share. 


Ever since Twitter stormed the Web 2.0 world, people have almost stopped ranting and raving about blogs and blogging. But I believe there are some of us who couldn't stop blogging come what may, though the frequency of blog posts may decrease based on the blogger's addiction to Twitter-based sharing and learning. 


Coming back to the earth-shattering topic of my blog's sixth year in blogosphere, on this totally meaningless occasion, I'd like to share something charming and musical to make up for all the babbling in the past. 


1) A song that I rediscovered and have been humming for many weeks now (and which I recently learned to play on the Guitar as well)




Pukarta Chala Hoon Mein .mp3
Found at bee mp3 search engine



Song: Hindi Film Music. Music by O.P. Nayyar and sung by Mohammad Rafi 


Here's a scary proposition if you've not already got the shivers thinking about the long life of this blog. I think I should try and play a couple of good songs on the Guitar, record them using my clumsy tools and share them here when I feel murderous enough. Heh Heh.


It would be very uncharacteristic of me if I don't wind up this post with some introspective notes. Blogging has brought me enormous amount of knowledge, some brilliant and wise friends, a little bit of fame and plenty of happiness and satisfaction. :-) Three cheers to blogging!

Friday, May 14, 2010

The Power of Social Networks

Fascinating and Insightful. Some of it though is obvious. Don't miss it if you are a KMer.
The hidden influence of social networks - Share Ideas, Happiness, Tackle Challenges....


Wednesday, May 12, 2010

A KM Project, Employee Engagement, MBA in KM, Collaboration Skills

I feel like I've been neglecting myself. Not a single blog post since April 23rd! Gasp! I am almost sure this has not happened before. I've earlier remained silent for a week +/- a few days, but this time the silence has lasted more than 20 days!! Though, I am aware that the silence is totally explainable and justified. I've been absorbed in the development and implementation of a new KM & Collaboration application that I conceived 6 months back. Yet again, it becomes crystal clear to me that...




And also....one must be lucky to have a great team if not a perfect team. If the team isn't world class, then it's only passion and perseverance that keeps it going.




Aside: So, my blog posts are beginning to look different now, I realize. Mostly made up of sporadic twitter moments later connected and weaved together in a clumsy manner. Uh? ;-)


Anyway, getting back to the project, I am hoping I will have an opportunity to present it at an appropriate conference and see what the rest of the KM crowd thinks. I have positioned the tool as a personal knowledge management and cognitive networking application within the org. The tool automatically bubbles up knowledge assets relevant to the employee from various sources within the organization and also allows them to connect with and view their colleagues' knowledge profiles. 


***********************
Once we were through with the first release, I immediately jumped into phase 2 of the project plan but, as expected, some other entities do not want to keep running at the same speed. So, I'm trying to relax and slow down a bit for a while. But all said and done, I truly believe that....




***********************


Last week, I came across this interesting consulting organization called Engage for Change. (Thanks to my Twitter circle) Their values and approaches resonate with me and intrigue me. It would be wonderful to watch them go about one of their projects, help organizations engage with their employees and implement the concepts of 'Distributed Leadership'. Such projects are enormously more complex and satisfying than a business strategy formulation project.




***********************


In other news, I think this will fit into one of the top slots in my list of regrets - My missing Nanyang's MBA in KM - though there is absolutely nothing I could have done about it because this course did not exist when I graduated. 



I was looking up the current MBA curriculum in various B-Schools when I bumped into Nanyang's MBA in KM. Slurp. But doing this now would be absurd. Too late. Had I seen this after 2-3 years of corporate experience, it may have been a good idea to pursue it. After all, my entry into KM was an overnight incident and was influenced by my need to find a worthwhile job rather than any specific desire to get into KM. It was destiny that brought me into KM and, luckily, I just happened to get fascinated by the subject once I was introduced to it.

*****************

HT to @DavidGurteen

Finally, check out this wonderful video on the importance of prototyping and quick collaboration skills for a team's success. Collaboration skills are increasingly important in today's global environment and I think KM initiatives need to be well supported by training programs on collaboration and team-work.