Impressions from my first ALT Conference

Instead of taking the nap that I should be taking (considering that I have only slept 4 hours for the past 2 nights), I thought I'd write a short blog entry with some impressions of my first ever attendance at an ALT-Conference.

Lunch with @kathrinder @timbuckteeth and Emmadw on Day 1 of #ALTC2010

1. Firstly, I've finally met - in the flesh - some of the tweeps that I feel I've known for ages.
2. Secondly, I find the Twitter backchannel increasingly important at a conference. For instance, it allowed me to deduce that @daveowhite's talk - that I didn't attend - should have been the opening keynote. I also got to know new tweeps through the backchannel - and made a separate Twitter list for them. It's s become a crucial instrument in my networking at a conference.
3. The Crowdvine social application that ALT uses for planning the conference and getting to know people is definitely an asset. I found out that some old friends (Sally) and colleagues (Judith) were also attending the conference, and was able to arrange a meet even before getting my hands on the list of attendants.
4. Oh yes, remind me never to stay at a Hall of Residence again. Cheap, but bleak and depressing and the atmosphere of a prison.

That's all for now (too tired). I'll report on the things I learned at a later stage.

Twitter and the Library School: an anecdote about knowledge management

I've blogged before about how I think it is very positive that the chairman of my university - Theo Bovens - uses Twitter to inform the world about his daily activities. Yesterday, I experienced just how relevant such small pieces of information can be. Allow me to expand a bit.


Part 1 - Our chairman is a very active person, who not only chairs the board of the Open University of The Netherlands, but is member of the socio-economic council of The Netherlands, politically active in our region, and member of a number of other boards. In his quest for political backup for Lifelong Learning in The Netherlands, he participates in symposia and conferences, often presenting his arguments in keynotes and contributions. On his Twitter account, he often mentions his schedule for the coming day, and gives short impressions of the new things he has learned during a working day.

Part 2 - One of the projects that I am currently working on is the foundation of a Dutch Library School, a project in which the Open University and the Association of Public Libraries are co-creating a school that intends to offer library professionals an intensive learning programme on the crossroads of Tradition, Innovation and Culture, with the aim of building the innovation capacity of the whole library sector. Last week, the first group of students and their coaches - including Rob Bruijnzeels, Marlies Bitter and myself - spent an intensive working/walking week in Italy, where we drafted the first design of the Library School. During this week, we discovered that the public library sector and the public educational sector are currently experiencing similar transformations in the knowledge society, and we acquired some new insights.

Part 3 - Yesterday, Theo twittered about attending a symposium in Maastricht about the future of the public libraries in The Netherlands. This triggered my attention, so I checked out the website of the symposium and found out that Theo would contribute with a presentation about the role of education in the future of the public libraries. After checking with my colleagues, we felt that it was necessary to update Theo on the latest insights from our working week in Italy, so we got in touch with his secretary, wrote a short information update for Theo, and had a very short briefing meeting.

Now, you may ask: Where is the knowledge management in this?

• Firstly, although Theo was aware of our Library School project at a management level and had included the project in his presentation, he was not - and could not have been - aware of the new insights that we had picked up in our recent activities. With the multitude of projects that are ongoing within an organisation, the chairperson can not - and should not - be updated on all the current issues and insights. - By the way, I think it is therefore that Theo stopped following me on Twitter: just too much information. You must know the phenomenon.
  
• Secondly, our organisation is not so large that it can afford a giant support staff that can do the knowledge work for the chairperson. The weekly board meetings are mainly about making decisions, and not so much about gathering updates on relevant projects.
• Thirdly, our Intranet is used actively at the Open University, but usually only mentions important milestones, such as new projects starting up, or the intermediary or final results of a project, but never the ongoing issues - again, that would be just too much information. From the information that we distribute, Theo's support staff could not have guessed that there were fresh insights that could have an impact on the Open University's message at this symposium.

The novelty about Twitter and knowledge management lies in the fact that the responsibility for knowledge management can now be reversed. It is not only the top manager or his support staff that is responsible for gathering information. Every employee needs to actively scan the internal and external environment for information that may have tactical or strategic impact on the organisation, and then take the responsibility to inform the organisation. Because Theo uses Twitter to announce his plans for the day, I was triggered to provide him with up-to-date information, and maybe contribute to the tactical or strategic goals of the university.

Reflection on a twittering chairperson

In his most recent (Dutch) blogpost, Theo Bovens - the chairman of the board of the Open University of The Netherlands - notes that he is getting more and more reactions on the fact that he is using Twitter actively. He wonders how he should interpret and use this new channel of communication: "Who needs this, and why?" He is also considering whether he should continue using it. Here's my two-cents worth contribution to his question:

Theo started using Twitter during his heroic opening of the OUNL's 25th academic year, where he completed a marathon across The Netherlands and Flanders and opened the academic year for 25 people in just 36 hours, but has continued using it since then. During the same marathon, Theo acted as an exemplary mobile citizen by uploading photos and writing blogposts in the car on the road. This feat in itself deserves international attention in my view. This is "Teach as you preach" in its purest form.Now what makes Theo's tweets interesting from my perspective as an employee of the OUNL?

• Firstly, it is interesting to see the different circles that he moves in, politically, economically and regionally. It provides a degree of insight into the workings of the contexts that surround a small - somewhat rebellious and nontraditional - university. It shows what it takes to keep the mission and goals of our university on the agendas of the decision makers at the different levels of gouvernment and funding in The Netherlands and Flanders. In other words, it augments my understanding of the university, its strategy and tactics and as such his tweets are an important professional asset for me, as I contribute to the digital environment of our organisation, and need to take a wide contextual perspective.

• Secondly, Theo's tweets also cover his more private interests and activities. Now, you may wonder why this should be important for me as an employee. In my view, these tweets add a degree of 'familiarity', which make Theo into a real person, and not just a hierarchical entity. This insight into his personal life helps build a level of trust that surpasses the brief chance face-to-face encounters in the hallways of the University. This does not, however, deduce from the distance that -in my view- needs to remain between an employer and an employee.

This brings me to what I see as the added value of microblogging in a professional knowledge-intensive environment, something I have labelled 'virtual familiarity'. Let me illustrate this with an example. I have been following a number of colleagues from the British Open University on Twitter, such as @mweller, @gconole, @sclater and others. I have briefly met Martin (Weller) and Niall (Sclater) on occasion, but I have not yet had the pleasure of meeting Grainne (Conole) in person. Due to the fact that I follow her on Twitter, she has become more than just a colleague who writes good papers and does interesting research; she has become a person whom I have had online communications with (more similar to a real communication than through blogging and commenting), whom I have shared the occasional joke with, etc. When I now meet her at a future conference or workshop, it will be like meeting a close colleague whom I have worked with for years.

This happened to me in June at the ICDE World Conference in Maastricht, when I met Maarten @maasbrenn, a Norwegian colleague that I had been following for some time. It felt like bumping into an old acquaintance, even though we had not formally met before, and we were able to start sharing insights and opinions about the conference immediately. We started our own little backchannel at the conference, and met for coffees in between sessions, just as I did with my OUNL colleagues, and with a similar degree of familiarity.

Now, is it important to be 'virtually familiar' with the people in your professional knowledge network? From my personal perspective, it is extremely important, especially in a context characterised by increasing distance. A large group of students at the Open University have problems with the impersonal and distant aspect of distance learning (note that another group actually appreciates those aspects). In my view, microblogging can help make distance education and knowledge sharing/creation more personal and more social.