The key activity that enables knowledge sharing? Social connection.

Not so with David Gurteen’s presentation on Knowledge Cafes. Once he had defined the form, discussed the dynamics, and enumerated some ground rules, the impromptu knowledge cafe began. Even though we were in a large-ish room with auditorium seating and had to change groupings of 4-5 people three times in 40 minutes, the session was a humming success. Lots of knowledge sharing goin’ on.

“When minds meet, they don’t just exchange facts; they transform them” —Theodore Zeldin

You can read more about the knowledge cafe process and even watch a video on Gurteen’s website, but you just have to experience it to really get it.

On Sunday, I attended a session titled “Mapping Knowledge and Knowledge Flows”. The instructor taught some techniques for mapping organizational and social networks. One of my aha moments was that a social network chart that maps communication may look VERY different than your org chart.

So far, the highlights for me have been Dave Snowden’s talk on knowledge sharing. I highly encourage everyone to check out the podcast of his talk when it becomes available on his website, cognitive-edge.com. I know I’ll be listening to it again to capture some of those concepts I missed. One of my takeaways was that knowledge is contextual and humans best share knowledge using narrative (essentially stories). I don’t want to do a disservice to the rich and complex ideas he was talking about so I recommend reading his articles, and listening to his talk.

I also attended a great breakfast session on building partnerships titled “Building Bridges, Creating Partnerships”. Of particular interest for me was the value of virtual teams and partnerships. The slides from the presentation will be available later here: dysartjones.com.

Both Betha and I attended a session about knowledge cafes. We’re trying to learn as much as we can before the WebJunction world cafe at ALA on library 2.0.

So spoke Vint Cerf, “father of the Internet” and keynote speaker at the opening session of SLA 2008. Cerf responded with wit and intellect to perceptive questions from his interviewer Charlie Rose. Given the title of Internet Evangelist at Google, Cerf figured he’d better have a religion, so he calls himself Geek Orthodox.

Future-facing ideas and endeavors:

• Mobile computing will expand the reach of the Internet and lower the barriers to access.
• The key to the huge success of the Internet is its openness—something to be vigilantly defended against attack.
• The Interplanetary Internet is Cerf’s effort to standardize network protocols for data transmission across the solar system.
• His Internet Cafe Project intends to provide Internet access to people in remote locations around the world. With solar-powered systems connected by satellite, the cafes are meant to be run as for-profit businesses.

Just listening to Vint Cerf is a mental exercise—illuminating and exciting.