eel-learning

Gurteen Knowledge Cafes

The other day I attended a day’s session led by David Gurteen on his ‘Gurteen Knowledge Cafes’ concept. David is an international speaker in the Knowledge Management area, and I first met him with Jay Cross and Charles Jennings on a meeting about social learning.

 

So what’s a Knowledge Café? First of all the ‘café’ bit is incidental, other than to emphasise informality and its birth as an adaptation of the ‘World Café’ concept to the business world. In fact David said the model is that of a chat in a pub after a meeting, when the real conversation happens, but ‘knowledge pub’ might not go down too well in many parts of the world!

 

It’s a structure to enable a group of 20-30 people to examine a single topic or question in a way that allows participants to meet and exchange views in shifting groups, but removes the barriers to conversation inherent in the way such meetings are typically held. For example, the normal requirement of  ‘syndicate groups’ to elect a scribe and report back to the wider group is removed (to everyone’s relief). Flipcharts are banned! A typical session is structured for 90m to 2 hours and discussion takes place in various small groups and in the large group of everyone.

 

I’ve seen other attempts to structure meetings to provide more focus than the default free-for-all or ‘chair plus agenda’ ways, from de Bono’s famous ‘thinking hats’ concept to a faintly embarrassing one based on native American traditions. While they seek to remove waffling and domination by individuals by setting up a form of role-play, the Knowledge Café takes the opposite approach of aiming to remove obstacles rather than putting in a structure which can take on as much importance (and debate) as the topic.

 

It’s actually nothing very dramatic at all, and therein lies its appeal. You come away thinking  ‘ yes, this makes sense and I could easily run this. ‘.  Gurteen recognises that some aspects of his approach will be controversial in business: for example the insistence on no formal ‘outputs’ – the benefits are tacit and therefore not available for objective measurement. He has arguments to support this position and it led our group to a wider discussion of the largely spurious nature of attempts at forecasting and measuring ROI in the fields of learning, development and knowledge management. Some managers will not be convinced by this very liberal approach but as in so many areas, it just takes one conspicuous good result to mark an approach as a Good Idea.

 More about David Gurteen and his approach

Management secrets of Darth Vader

Actually some of these tips are old hat to some managers I've seen.

I remember when I worked for a building society in England, I sent my manager an email criticising some of the convoluted language in a memo that had gone out a couple of days after we'd been exhorted to use plain English.

She told me the next day that BD, her manager wanted to see me. Now.

I went to BD's plush office and it was pure theatre.  He stood with his back to me, framed in his window overlooking, well, the car park. He said 'I heard you weren't happy with the memo that went out yesterday.  That's a shame considering ...'  BD turned to face me ' ... that I wrote it'.

After I'd got over my shock (at his cheek, not his reprimand) I explained what I thought was wrong with the memo. He relaxed but we parted with him rather patronisingly saying he'd run any future memos past me. If the expression 'yeah, right' had been current at the time I'd have thought it.  I heard later he was an amateur actor. Maybe he thought he was drawing on the Dark Side.

Where to work

Tony Karrer suggested some of my deliberations in the previous entry may be relevant to the Learning Circuits Big Question this month.

The question, and the article 101 reasons to be freelance, also prompted me to appreciate my current position. I have the relative security (all security is relative, hence the discussion that prompted the last post!) of a salaried position, but a lot of the benefits of working freelance: working from home, in a 'distributed' team, with a role that blends strategic direction for eLearning, instructional design, straightforward web design and hands-on coding. I love the variety. I'm also spared the routine meetings that come with being based in an office. The team of which I'm a member is seen as a group of mavericks and innovators, but our managers have the skill to ensure our contribution is recognised and, occasionally, to rein us in. It's like a company within a company, and we're all serious about learning how to do this well as we go along.

My learning - what should I learn?

Following a conversation in my team of 'what would you do if it all went belly up next week' I had think about what skills I should be developing.  My employer is quite generous and encouraging about self-directed learning and would probably help.  But what to study?

Various colleagues and websites I've looked at suggest as an elearning professional I should know about

°    Flash
°    HTML
°    XML
°    CSS
°    Javascript
°    SQL
°    Databases in general
°    SCORM
°    .net
°    ASP .net
°    game development
°    PHP
etc etc

8 Random Facts

Clive Shepherd has invited me to take on this meme of eight random facts.

1. Post these rules before you give your facts.
2. List 8 random facts about yourself.
3. At the end of your post, choose (tag) 8 people and list their names, linking to them.
4. Leave a comment on their blog, letting them know they've been tagged.

Here they are:

1. I can't ride a bike.
2. I once had a Supercar pilot's licence signed by Mike Mercury, convincing me that the puppet show Supercar was based on real people.
3. I was briefly detained in an Egyptian army camp in the desert.
4. I have webbed feet but am a crap swimmer.
5. I have mingled with rock superstardom: I tripped over a member of the Kinks (not Ray) who was drunk and comatose after a gig at Edinburgh University.
6. I come from Ayr 'Wham ne'er a toun surpasses, for honest men and bonnie lassies' (Burns)
7. I was adopted at birth and now have good relationships with both my birth parents.
8. I've never been Chancellor of the Exchequer. It was just a collective delusion.

Clive has already tagged almost everyone I 'know' on the elearning blog circuit so I'll post this in my other blog with the various music friends I'm tagging.