Are you new to knowledge management? Want to learn about all the possibilities for making your organization smarter, more collaborative, innovative, and productive? Join our expert knowledge manager to gain insights and ideas for building a robust KM program in your organization—even if it is called by another name! This workshop highlights a range of potential enterprise KM activities being used in real organizations and shares how these activities are impacting the bottom line. It shows real KM practices and discusses various tools and techniques to give those new to KM a vision of what is possible in the enterprise.

Text analytics is becoming essential to any field that tries to utilize unstructured text, and yet confusion remains distinguishing it from text mining, the type of applications that can be built with text analytics, and best practices. This workshop, based on the speaker’s recent book, covers the entire field of text analytics including:

• The core capabilities of text mining, entity and fact extraction, auto-categorization, and sentiment analysis.
• The advanced techniques of machine and deep learning and how text analytics can make AI smarter.
• How to make the business case and how to set up the right people and content resources.
• An evaluation process to select the right text analytics software for your organization.
• An iterative development process that combines entity and fact extraction with categorization and sentiment analysis to add depth and intelligence to all the components.
• The range of types of applications that can be built with text analytics, from search to business intelligence to new uses of social media and AI.

The workshop utilizes exercises in auto-categorization, data extraction, machine learning, and sentiment analysis to deepen the participants’ appreciation for the practical process of building text analytics applications and, at the same time, exemplifies some of the key theoretical issues.

Transforming your organization into an enterprise of the future entails risk. Yet you can’t afford not to change. This workshop gives you tools, techniques, and practices for clearing your path to transformation by identifying and addressing the risks and opportunities you are likely to encounter, especially during turbulent times characterized by uncertainty, ambiguity, and surprise. Benefit from a methodology that has evolved over the past 30 years and has been successfully applied in more than 50 private companies, government agencies, civil society organizations, and industry associations. Just as a financial audit ensures that processes are in place to provide accurate information concerning the fiscal status of an organization, a futures risk/opportunity audit improves your organization’s systemic capacity to identify and rapidly adapt to perceived risks and/or opportunities that may emerge in your competitive environment. Key outcomes include a strategic road map for increasing organizational agility to succeed even in turbulent times; enhanced strategic planning based on evidence that long-, mid-, and near-term challenges receive needed attention; improved strategic decision-making that considers possibly disruptive issues, rather than being based on narrowly defined or generally accepted versions of a probable future; an employee development program which includes knowledge-intensive skills such as complex thinking and systemic foresight; and many insights and good practices. Get what you need to transform your organization into an enterprise of the future.

Principles become powerful when experience transforms them from abstract concepts into familiar and useful tools. Rather than simply lecturing on KM principles, this workshop consists of three activities designed to let participants experience their use of KM principles in action. Participants leave with a deeper understanding of how simple principles can be used to guide their KM programs. After being introduced to key KM principles, attendees practice applying them, using both competition and collaboration in exercises they can easily replicate in their own training programs. Get experience in applying principles to improve performance; observe how unspoken barriers impede learning; learn new techniques to improve your KM program; and learn to recognize explicit KM indicators that hide in plain sight.

Expert knowledge is difficult to capture and transfer effectively, because it involves deeply embedded skills that an expert may not be consciously aware of using and may not understand how to share. The challenge this poses is how to capture and transfer that knowledge among co-workers and external partners who need to work together on critical, high-stakes projects. Without effective knowledge transfer strategies, these valuable lessons learned and best practices are often lost. This knowledge is essential to the success of the mission, especially in emergency situations such as responses to natural disaster events that are time-critical. This master class-style workshop is based on case studies of more than 200 top-level executives, engineers, and scientists at Fortune 500 companies, the military, and multiple government agencies. It discusses knowledge transfer and flow strategies and focuses on the challenges you bring from your organization. The workshop combines the power of an SME along with skilled colleagues from other organizations to offer effective processes for enhancing knowledge flow at all levels of organizations, both internally and externally. By working through your challenges, this workshop covers the impact of internal versus external parties on knowledge transfer, as well as maintaining knowledge flow when organizations are geographically dispersed. Best practices and tools are shared for capturing key knowledge, analyzing and documenting that knowledge, and multiple methods to transfer that key knowledge.

In this highly interactive workshop, attendees learn how “doctors of collaboration” diagnose key collaboration diseases and what remedial action they prescribe to bring each collaboration back into good health. Using a series of case studies from a variety of for-profit and nonprofit organizations to identify common collaboration challenges and a range of possible solutions to try in your own workplace, attendees gain lots of insights and ideas to take back to your practice. Attendees are welcome to bring their own examples of collaboration challenges to diagnose and discuss. Get ready, the doctor is in!

In response to a manager’s query about how to plan products, Alan Kay famously remarked, “The best way to predict the future is to invent it.” His answer invokes a paradox at the heart of design: We can’t know the future, yet it’s what we design for. If we hope to practice design successfully in an era of rapid change, we must get better at planning. To start, we must let go of “the plan” and embrace a dynamic way of planning that’s social, tangible, agile, and reflective. Engaging our colleagues and communities to align use cases, prototypes, and road maps with culture, governance, and process is critical, so in order to design sustainable programs, services, software, and experiences, we also need to design the context. Topics discussed include the relationships between planning, information architecture, and organizations; integrating planning with agile, lean, and design-thinking practices; tools and methods for individuals, teams, and cross-functional collaborations; roles involved; and how to plan while implementing, improvising, and learning. This interactive workshop shares a collaborative series of dynamic “planning together” exercises that invite us all to share stories, solve problems, and invent better pathways for strategic design.

Office 365 has become “the 800 pound gorilla” in many enterprise digital workplaces. Microsoft continues to innovate across the platform, but KM and digital workplace leaders typically struggle to gain full value from the platform. In this workshop, get a critical analysis on what Office 365 is ‘platform good’ at and where it is lagging. Learn when, where, and how you need to supplement native services with alternatives. Real Story Group analysts share results of their latest independent research, what they’re hearing from customers, and what the prognosis is for technology buyers under pressure.

Digital transformation efforts often stall due to lack of adoption. The technology is the easy part; helping people adapt takes time. People tackle growing knowledge work complexity using more technology, but with pre-Internet mental models, organizational structures, and leadership practice. Knowledge workers can master techniques to work more autonomously, discover and repurpose knowledge, and develop and gain value from engaging in networks. Leadership changes when individuals and leaders convene, align, and empower networks inside and outside of organizations. Network reputation and influence rather than control are hallmarks of leadership practice. This engaging workshop brings four important concepts and practices together to help practitioners, teams, and organizations thrive in a networked era. It includes exercises, activities and covers techniques for personal knowledge mastery (PKM), narrating work, initiating and supporting communities of practice, and enabling networked leadership. Organizations and structures that let all people cooperate and collaborate get work done. Organizations based on diversity, learning, and trust are better prepared to hack uncertainty and hedge risks. Innovation is not so much about having ideas as it is about making connections. Techniques shared in this workshop help make better connections.

Congratulations! You’ve just been given the responsibility for search at your organization! Perhaps there is a new initiative to improve search, or perhaps the previous search manager mysteriously disappeared; in any case, you’ve discovered that search is a deceptively tricky domain, and that the expectations of many of your stakeholders are difficult to meet or even to define. This workshop provides an orientation and exposure to the key issues, effective processes, and technology—independent of what brand of search engine you use. It provides lay-of-the-land information and approaches to get you off to a good start. Topics include getting started and where to find practical guidance in search management; kinds of tasks and roles involved in managing search; building a cross-functional team; assessing the current state of search; establishing a vision and creating a findability strategy; getting stakeholders together and constructively involved; discovering and managing expectations; top misconceptions about search and how to educate your organization; top five and next five tools and techniques for improving search; updates and improvements; and measuring search: KPIs, tools, and techniques for internal search engine optimization. If you have been in the search manager’s role for a while but feel like you are missing a grounding in successful practices and management techniques, this workshop is still useful.

Teams are now the unit of learning within organizations. That is where problems are solved and innovation occurs. But if team members don’t feel safe to openly say what they see happening or what is working and not working, then learning doesn’t take place and improvements are fewer. Organizations depend on employee knowledge to boost current and future performance. Yet, there is solid evidence that in team or group settings, employees too often choose silence over challenging ideas. They refrain from offering their own ideas that, if heard, could significantly increase the group’s effectiveness. In this workshop, Nancy Dixon identifies steps that a team leader can take to make team conversations safe and productive.

This workshop, by a KM pioneer and popular KMWorld speaker, focuses on how to build a successful KM strategy and revitalize knowledge sharing within your organization. Dave Snowden, our engaging workshop leader, takes participants through a step-by-step approach to rethinking the role of the KM function within an organization. It includes creating a decision/information flow map to understand the natural flows of knowledge; defining micro-projects that directly link to the decision support needs of senior executives; mapping the current flow paths for knowledge within the organization; and finding natural ways to manage the knowledge of the aging workforce as well as the IT-enabled apprenticeship. Using real-world examples, Snowden shares winning strategies and insights to rejuvenate your knowledge-sharing practices. Always fresh and filled with interesting stories, this workshop continues to stand out with our audience!

Go where most cannot—behind the wall of many organizations to peek at their leading-edge intranets and digital workspaces. Modern intranets are no longer restricted to just corporate communications and content. They play a much stronger role in meeting staff and business needs. Meanwhile, new digital workplaces and spaces are being propelled into existence with the adoption of modern platforms such as Office 365, Workplace by Facebook, and others. While intranets and digital workplaces are evolving at a rapid pace, they remain hidden away behind the firewall, where it’s hard for teams to see what other leading organizations are doing. This workshop shares worldwide examples across five fundamental purposes: content, communications, culture, collaboration, and business activity. Register for this exclusive behind-the-firewall look at leading-edge solutions, and bring your hardest intranet questions to our experienced workshop leader!

Knowledge doesn’t manage itself. No matter how far AI evolves, knowledge, whether human or digital, will always need human curation. Knowledge curation is one of the least-understood aspects of KM. Yet given the accelerated growth of both explicit and hidden knowledge, especially in large datasets, knowledge curation is more critical than ever. There is no shortage of tools and techniques for building knowledgebases and repositories, yet the question remains, “How do I design, build, and maintain a body of knowledge that’s easily accessible by myself and others?” This workshop helps you to gain an understanding of the three main pillars of knowledge curation: 1) knowledge capture and transfer; 2) governance, including roles and responsibilities, assurance, performance monitoring, and incentives; and 3) architecture, including the tools, platforms, and processes for putting it all together. Some key elements include how to determine what knowledge is worth capturing and in what form; reconcile different world views, mental models, and learning modalities, especially among mentors and mentees; determine which tools and approaches are appropriate for different types of knowledge; integrate the various tools and approaches into a single system; vet knowledge and keep it up-to-date; and make knowledge flow and grow, from a single individual to an entire community of experts and practitioners. Join our experienced KM expert and take home an initial plan for setting up and implementing a world-class knowledge curation program for your organization.

KM is an action-oriented domain built on collaboration, trust, and multidisciplinary teams. Successful KM implementations support leadership efforts to create, transfer, exchange, share, and so much more. Through these actions, many organizations have successfully moved toward the near utopian knowledge environment. This collaborative and interactive workshop focuses on how to engage people to achieve organizational objectives, explores a number of action-oriented activities that support learning, overcoming ego, knowledge sharing, and team development. Learn how to put the action back in KM with topics like these: applying the team development process, collaborative decision making, establishing and achieving team goals, and applying knowledge-sharing techniques.

KM practices at Shell are well-proven to be working for many problem-solving cases and replication of good practices. The KM success stories, totaling more than $300 million, are generally categorized as continuous improvement cases. However, Shell has much bigger qualitative and quantitative expectations from KM practices, and this requires developing new scenarios for the future of knowledge management. Participants learn to apply the scenario-building skills developed at Shell. Willem Manders explains the changing context of the workforce and business environment, how to identify the driving forces and, by using a broad set of key drivers, to depict future KM scenarios. He covers many aspects from decision support, drive for innovation, crowdsourcing, changing organization culture, and liquid workforce to how KM can be an enabling force in these dynamics. Get a number of potential scenarios for the future of KM which can be used to build and test KM strategies within your community or organization.

Have you ever built a slick KM solution or collaboration tool that no one uses? We have and survived to tell the tale. New knowledge-sharing processes can fail if the resistance to change is greater than the ability to bridge the gap between the new process and the target people. Without a meaningful understanding of “What’s in it for me?” employees don’t readily contribute to knowledge-sharing circles. And because they don’t immediately see the value of sharing, contributing content in more formal environments is often done as an afterthought. Engagement strategies that include effective communication tactics entice users to try something new and help remove barriers to adoption. This engagement workshop focuses on how to identify and select appropriate engagement strategies based on target audiences and desired results. It includes playing the KM experiential learning game, The Journey to the Lost Gold of Atlantis. The primary goal of the game from a KM perspective is to create “aha” moments where each individual sees how his or her behavior either enables or hinders the flow of knowledge and ultimately the impact this has on how the company makes money or the ROI. With help from workshop leaders, get your executive and employee km engagement strategy to use in your organization to improve engagement.

*Participants are requested to bring their own device in the form of a phone, laptop, or tablet to maximize the engagement experience.

This exciting and interactive workshop discusses what you need to know to get ready for the future that is already here. It discusses the different kinds of AI and their use cases, looks at some cool tools, and talks about how you would choose a vendor and or tool to work in your organization and KM program.

Are you overwhelmed with the different possibilities of features and capabilities in Office 365 and wondering how to get started? If so, this workshop is for you! Take a look at how Office 365 can help enable your knowledge management objectives by looking at its key capabilities and how they support KM outcomes. Learn what is possible and practical with Office 365, and explore strategies to ensure that you are successful.

Creating value from KM initiatives depends entirely on user adoption by changing behaviors and beliefs. Learning and knowledge initiatives benefit from classical change management efforts using the transformation road maps common to IT implementations. But real knowledge sharing requires cultural changes that can only be catalyzed through entrepreneurial engagement at all levels of the organization. Any change effort is delicate, and KM programs are especially vulnerable because knowledge sharing can only be voluntary. A design-thinking approach can tap into the initiative and innovation latent in every employee. This update of a popular and practical workshop combines both the coordinating and catalyzing perspectives with real-world experience and advice. Learn the basic components of any successful change program; practice assessing and addressing challenges and opportunities in your organization; and tap into the latest thinking in organizational change. Come prepared to discuss your own unique situations and learn from your peers in facilitated, interactive discussions and exercises.

Search is one of the most powerful and useful workloads in SharePoint, and is used by everyone; but too often it fails—largely due to poor understanding of how to apply it and deploy it well. This workshop focuses on the search capabilities of SharePoint 2013, SharePoint 2016, and SharePoint Online and how to match them to a variety of search needs and strategies. Attendees get tips and tricks they can apply immediately. We share effective techniques in the context of case studies and practical tips. Attendees gain an understanding of how to apply SharePoint search capabilities successfully, as well as what pitfalls to avoid. Bring your search challenges to work through them in a “clinic” format. In the process, we cover the key capabilities of SharePoint search and how to apply them successfully. If you are willing to show your system to other attendees, contact the instructor to work through some issues ahead of time and use them as examples.

We’re told that if we don’t fail occasionally, we aren’t being adventurous enough. Regardless, most of us prefer not to fail. And, if we do fail, we prefer not to talk about it. However, this all-too-common approach to failure deprives us of valuable insights and growth. This workshop discusses and practices some more productive and less painful ways of approaching failure. It explores proven ways to learn from both deliberately imagined failure and actual failure. It includes such techniques as after action reviews, and how to throw a failure party.