[afro-nets] E-Conference "Knowledge Management: Worth the effort?!"

[Madeleine Anne Decker <omsdoc@oms-mz.org>]

E-Conference "Knowledge Management: Worth the effort?!"
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Information and knowledge have become key factors in our daily
work. They are main ingredients of what we do and how we do
things. While performing our daily activities we develop new
knowledge through experience and insight. We engage in informa-
tion and knowledge exchange with others: implicitly through con-
versations and dialogues, more explicitly through e-mail, let-
ters and publications or in hybrid forms, like seminars and
training events.

Drowning in information, thirsty for knowledge

Yet, despite of - or maybe due to the abundance of - all these
activities, we struggle with the management of it. In particu-
lar, the extraction of meaningful and relevant knowledge from
the wealth of information seems to be a main challenge. We are
drowning in information, but we remain thirsty for knowledge.

Knowledge to do what

When people propose a new knowledge management solution, the key
question to always ask is: 'Knowledge to do what?'. Knowledge
does not come cheap, and managing knowledge often takes signifi-
cant resources. There are one-off investments for systems and
structures and they can be a first barrier for implementation.
But the biggest investment is time. Time from people to create,
capture, systematise, organise, distribute, apply, learn from
and maintain knowledge. Time that cannot be spend on something
else. When people have to make choices on how to spend their
time, they will spend it on what they believe will yield the
highest return, or what is the most critical. Knowledge is not
the goal of knowledge management. It is what knowledge enables
you or the organisation to do with it. Knowledge will make you
act.

Connect and learn from each other

The 'Knowledge to do what?' is to connect participants together
and to learn from each other what works and what does not work
when it comes to knowledge management in our sector. A key chal-
lenge for us all will be to keep it practical and to stay away
from too much theoretical contemplation. Consider the conference
as a marketplace, where you may gain most by bringing something
to the table, a question or an answer, a thought or a solution.
At the end of the four weeks we hope that the participants will
act more confidently on knowledge management.

Partners in Nepal, Bangladesh and Zimbabwe are organising off-
line KM workshops. The next item reports on the constraints
identified in Nepal.

For more information and registration, see
http://www.irc.nl/kmwatsan
or
e-mail Cor Dietvorst, mailto:dietvorst@irc.nl

--
FWD by
Madeleine Anne Decker
Documentation Officer
WHO Mozambique
mailto:omsdoc@oms-mz.org