Bye-bye blog

After working on this blog for a few years, I then moved to shared blog, The Giraffe, where I write with lots of colleagues on the subject of (surprise, surprise) knowledge management for development. I also run the blog of the great Dutch rock band, The Specific Gravity of Rock.

Littlest things...

Yesterday Leah and I were due to go to Vredenburg in Utrecht to see Lily Allen perform. We had been so looking forward to it and we were soooo disappointed and sad when she was forced to cancell. This link will take you to a Youtube video of one of her nicest songs Littlest things...

Capacity building for networking

The September 2006 issue of the Knowledge Management for Development Journal (Vol. 2, issue 2) is now online. It is on the subject of capacity building for networking. Although I say so myself (I'm co-Chief Editor of the e-jounal with Julie Freguson and Lucie Lamoureux so I'm not exactly unbiased...), I think it's really another great issue, including some really interesting papers, case studies and stories. We also included our first 'Letter to the Editors' which discussed one of last year's issues on the subject culture.

When I was surfing earlier today, I came accorss the a blog entry by Alex Steffen on yet another issue which I thought was quite fun:

Leapfrogging through local wisdom: Knowledge Management for Development
On a bit of a lark, I spent my morning off reading the latest issue of the Knowledge Management for Development Journal. Yes, this proves that I am a terrible, probably incurable geek, but the Journal itself taught me a ton about where development, technology and the future are colliding.

The boat of knowledge....

Yesterday evening I went to the information and knowledge managment (IKM) 'borrel' in The Hague. This was the third one - they take place every three months or so - and it is always a great opportunity to find out what colleagues are up to and to make plans for future work. It is also usually very 'gezellig' - and this one was no exception...

One of the really nice things we were talking about yesterday was the common intention to try to hold the annual KM4Dev meeting in the Netherlands in 2007. We were ambitiously talking about a multi-centre, roaming meeting - visiting different institutions by boat. I'm not sure how practicable that is with hindsight but it did seem a really good idea at the time.

For those of you who don't know, a 'borrel' is a great Dutch institution involving after work drinks and, if you're very lucky, is also involves 'flametjes' which are very spicy small spring rolls. 'Gezellig' can be roughly translated as cosy and fun.

River of life

Just got back from the KM4Dev annual meeting which was held at IDS in Brighton, UK. Don't have time just now to go into all the great things I learnt there but just wanted to link to this one thing, a podcast of the first day. Isn't podcasting wonderful? Congratulations to George for putting this together! More to follow soon here on the fabulous (podcast) knowledge sharing picnic...

Blogs: weapons of crass discussion?

Can't resist quickly sharing this article Corporate blogs: weapons of crass discussion? by Paul Chin as I'm always looking for evidence of the institutional value of blogs - probably because I'm not totally convinced of this myself. Chin argues:

As blogs matured, however, organizations of all sizes saw the advantages in using them for marketing and branding purposes. But do they have any practical internal application on corporate intranets? The answer is yes -- but they have to be used properly and responsibly.

I'm indebted to Giulio Quaggiotto for alerting me to this article as part of a post to the KM4Dev online community - as usual, a source of interest and inspiration!

Knowledge for policy: policy for knowledge

I've been wandering around for a few weeks with a copy of the report Kennis voor belied: beleid voor kennis, produced by the Dutch Advisory Council for Science and Technology Policy (AWT), in my rucksack. Frankly, I think it's dynamite!

This report was published in May 2005 under the title which translates as 'Knowledge for policy: policy for knowledge.' In this report, the Advisory Council argues that policy creation and implementation of the Dutch government would be improved if these processes of policy creation and implementation were supported by trustworthy, varied and independent knowledge. It is convinced that to obtain knowledge for policymaking, policy for knowledge is needed. Government departments need to have a knowledge policy which:

• Integrates diverse perspectives or countervailing knowledge
• Should be based on trustworthy, varied and public knowledge
• Applies knowledge in a transparaent manner

If the government underestimates the importance of knowledge for supporting policy, the Advisory Council argues that it runs the following risks:

• generating inadequate ploicy
• policy failure as a result of unexpected, dramatic developments
• insufficient preparation for the future
• damage to its reputation

When knowledge policy does not function effectively, the Advisory Council argues that the following problems appear in the civil service practice: an overload of knowledge and information; fragmentation of knowledge domaines; and more attention to process than to actual content.

I found this report fascinating and applicable to much wider areas than policy alone. Also thought it was very interesting that commentators on Dutch policy are looking at policy in the UK for reference and comparison.