Spikkin, speerin and a fly piece

Last Thursday I did a wee turn at the Scottish Knowledge Management Network (SKMN) meeting, which took place at the rather plush Subsea 7 offices in Westhill (Aberdeen).

I’d been at the ancestral pile in Aberdeenshire for the previous five days and had gone a bit native, so I called my slot ‘spikkin, speerin and a fly piece’. For the non-Doric speakers, that roughly translates to ‘talking, questioning and a cup of tea and a biscuit/cake/sandwich’ – which I thought summed up the day nicely.

When Mike McLean (Improvement Service) asked if I’d do a slot at the meeting, I asked him what he’d like me to talk about. An update on ScotGovCamp and something about my information literacy activities, he said. But rather than do separate presentations, I thought about common themes to link the two and then tried to tie them up nicely with a knowledge management bow…

…and basically what that boils down to is me and what I do on a daily basis…

...that being three things: communities, collaboration and conversation. I could talk about all three all day, but decided to concentrate on the third. The main point of my presentation summed up by David Weinberger in the Cluetrain Manifesto: “business is a conversation...and ‘knowledge workers’ are simply those people whose job consists of having interesting conversations”. My slides are available on Slideshare.

In the spirit of GovCamp, I wanted the session to be a conversation so I tried not to spend too much time talking before asking:

• is conversation important within and between organisations important? 
• do you have interesting conversations?
• if not, why not? 

leading us into an interesting conversation about conversation ;-).

Find out more

• about ScotGovCamp
• about UKGovCamp
• about the information literacy CoP

The rest of the day

I’m not going to write in detail about the other presentations as that will be done better  elsewhere, but the main points I picked up were:

• Let people learn and share their way not yours. [Dave Briggs]
• A knowledge management strategy can make a corporate re-organisation less painful. And Sharepoint can be useful :-) [Annie Robertson]
• Faced with the dual drivers of continuous improvement and financial stringency, we need more than ever to lead and manage the use of knowledge as an asset, to improve quality of care, create innovative solutions, and maximise use of existing resource. (NHS Education for Scotland and the Scottish Social Services Council are holding a series of Social Innovation events to “co-create” Knowledge Management Action Plans for Health and Social Services Organisations. Looking forward to hearing more about these.) [Annette Thain]
• Jamie Kirk is going places (initially to North America in late May to study apps for government). [Jamie Kirk]
• Before encouraging others to share we have to show willingness to share with each other. [David Friel]
• The Knowledge Hub (KHub) is coming and will be fab. Join the KHub CoP if you want to find out more [Mike McLean]

Thanks are due to Subsea 7, and Annie Robertson in particular, for hosting the meeting and for admitting that sometimes the private sector can learn from the public sector :-).

What the IL have I been up to?

I’ve been really bad recently at keeping up with developments in information literacy. And to contributing to the information literacy community. The odd thing will pop up in Google Reader or my Twitter stream that I’ll skim over and highlight in the information literacy community of practice or tweet using the #infolit hashtag. But it’s intermittent and a bit half hearted.

So  I’m doing a bit of cramming now to get up to speed in advance of CILIPS ‘Information literacy: what’s it all about?’ event at the Mitchell Library in Glasgow on 20 January – at which Jenny Foreman and I are delivering a workshop.

If you’re not already signed up to attend, you should – not least because our workshop will be ace. There’s a great line up in addition to me and Jenny:

• Christine Irving will be chairing
• Debbi Boden (Director of Library Services at Glasgow Caledonian University and chair of  CILIP’s Information Literacy Group) will give an overview of information literacy
•  Ian Watson and Michelle Drumm from IRISS will talk about their information literacy programme for the social services
• Dr Audrey Sutton will present on information literacy in education

As to the workshop, I don’t want to give too much away yet...but it'll be based on the social media game – developed by David Wilcox – which you may have seen in action. It’ll be the first time we’ve tried it, but I think it’ll work. If it does, we’ll do a full write up and put all the materials in the community of practice. If it doesn’t, we’ll flee the country.

And in other news, there have been developments recently regarding a new home for the Scottish Information Literacy Framework. I hope to bring you more details shortly...

 

Ten Tweasons To Tweet

This may surprise some people, but I wasn't an early adopter of Twitter. Like many folk, I didn't 'get it'. I remember having a conversation with a colleague a couple of years ago, he telling me how great Twitter was, and me just thinking 'eh?'

I can't remember what prompted me to sign up in the end. But I took to it pretty quickly. I'll admit, initially, I treated it as a bit of a numbers game - I remember getting quite absurdly excited when I got my 100th follower :-). I got past that though and Twitter is a genuinely useful work tool for me. As I recently commented to a colleague (on Yammer as it happens) it's probably where I get most of my information these days.

My job is partly about encouraging others to use social media, so it is important that I can articulate that usefulness. So here goes...10 reasons why Twitter helps me do my job, and (hopefully) do it well. (NB. this is very much a personal perspective - why I tweet – my reasons may not resonate with everyone.)

1. I get information from Twitter faster than I get it anywhere else. Not so very long ago, I found out that the Scottish Government publications contract had changed (a couple of days before this information appeared on our Intranet). It's not a replacement for other sources of information, but complements the current awareness tools I use - RSS feeds, journal alerts etc. I follow people who have similar roles/interests and I know that they'll tweet stuff which is relevant to me.

2. Having said that, I follow a wide range of people in an attempt to keep my perspective from becoming too narrow! Twitter is a great way of getting exposure to a range of views and opinions.

3. Twitter allows me to vary my level of awareness of issues. I'm interested in lots of things, but to different degrees. Twitter allows me to maintain a general awareness of what's going on in lots of different areas, but also facilitates routes into those issues that I need to have a deeper understanding of.

4. It's a great professional development tool. My CPD framework requires me to have an understanding of all aspects of librarianship, and to keep up to date with developments in the field. I follow librarians and information professionals from all over the world. Even what may seem the most mundane comment (someone griping about a Library Management System for example) can provide a useful insight into their role. As I no longer work in a traditional library role, I find this really valuable.

5. I could leave it at that – using Twitter as just another information source. But I'd be missing out on the most powerful aspect of Twitter – the ability to engage with fellow tweeters. I've had conversations with people I would never have 'met' otherwise. I’ve chatted to Pat Kane, Ian Rankin and Sarah Brown in recent weeks...but enough name dropping...I don’t follow many celebs on Twitter - they're often not very interesting :-).

6. So, Twitter lets me punch above my weight. I work in a very bureaucratic and hierarchical organisation (is there a more bureaucratic and hierarchical organisation?!) and I’m pretty near the bottom of the food chain. I spend a lot of time at work being frustrated at my inability to bring about any change – or even to have a conversation with someone who can. There’s no hierarchy on Twitter – just lots of people who want to get things done.

7. And I like sharing information. I'm a librarian. I can't help it! I'll tweet links that I know will be of interest to the folk who follow me. If I'm working on something that may be relevant to my followers, I'll tweet about that – and get instant feedback on it. I may also post on Yammer, on LinkedIn, or on the relevant Communities of Practice, depending on what the information is and who I think it’d be of interest to. But it'll get the greatest exposure on Twitter – and what I do is of interest beyond my organisation.

8. I've written before about the limits of traditional conferences and Twitter is a great way of following events. I can't go to every conference I'd like to (in fact, attendance at any external event is increasingly difficult). By keeping an eye on the relevant hashtags, it's possible to follow several events all happening at the same time without leaving my chair. (NB It's always interesting to see how similar the issues being discussed at these events are - even if outwardly the focus is very different.) Sometimes it's possible to actively participate in an event via Twitter - asking the panel a question, for example.

9. I can react instantly to content. For example, I don't have as much time to comment on blog posts as I'd like. If someone posts a link to their latest blog post, I can send them a quick comment via Twitter – and maybe spark off a conversation.

10. I'm not very good at old skool networking. I find it really difficult approaching people at events. In addition to the fairly obvious networking potential of Twitter, it's also great for getting to 'know' people before you meet them in person. Having a laugh about someone’s avatar (usually mine!) is a great ice breaker

So that’s my ten. Any other good reasons to tweet? Or, reasons not to?