Wednesday, August 31, 2011

LibCafé - SABC Media Libraries first Knowledge Café

The SABC Media Libraries had their first Knowledge Café called LibCafé yesterday.
It is identified by the hashtag #LibCafe on Twitter.
The theme was: "Diving into social media"

The question that was explored extensively is: "What do I need to start using social media?"

The photos are uploaded on Picasa: https://picasaweb.google.com/SABCMediaLibraries/LibCafe30August2011#

Manti Grobler facilitated the Knowledge Café, which helped us immensely with her advanced experience in the Knowledge Management tool of business learning.
Manti Grobler explaining what a Knowledge Café is

I will be posting about the outcomes and experiences of the day!

We got some very valuable feedback from the participants in how to take social media forward in the SABC Media Libraries.


Blog post by Karen du Toit, SABC Radio Archives.

Friday, August 19, 2011

Paper.li - a great tool for link building, content curation and social networking

Today's SABCMediaLib.li
Paper.li is a curation tool that publishes daily on-line newspapers automatically generated by predetermined keywords and hashtags from Twitter and Facebook, as well as from RSS feeds.

The SABC Media Libraries started their own newspaper SABCMediaLib.li a month ago.
The results are very positive:

  • After a month Paper.li is already the biggest referring URL for our blog.
  • As referring site it comes third after Google.com and Google.co.za.
  • We have gotten a lot of RTs and mentions on Twitter because of the Twitter update every day on the SABC Media Libraries twitter account: SABCMediaLib
  • The online newspaper has brought a daily stream of recent events, thoughts and content in the arena of libraries and archives (keywords and hashtags that were selected) that would have gone by unnoticed.
  • We are connecting with thought leaders in their fields of expertise by following and retweeting some of the valuable content.
  • It does not acquire any effort on our part after it has been set up. The set-up takes about 20 minutes. From there it is only an editorial function required when unsuitable content is displayed. In this month it has only happened once that I had to delete three "adult content" articles from the paper. 
I have seen some dissenting views about paper.li, but I find the content to be extremely valuable with regards a certain niche topic. If you consider that it is an automatic process, it makes it all the more commendable. 

The most important factor seems to be the initial five selection criteria. They are the most important to ensure good quality content making its way to the newspaper. When you are not happy with the content being generated, you can also go and change your criteria. The next update of the newspaper will generate the new selection criteria results. 

We have a Knowledge Café #LibCafe upcoming in two weeks' time, and for that purpose we have started another Paper.li newspaper. The topic covers Knowledge Management and Knowledge Cafés.

What are your thoughts on Paper.li?

Blog post by Karen du Toit, Afrikaans Archivist in the SABC Radio Archives.


Thursday, August 18, 2011

Experience of a Knowledge Café at KMUK11 #KCafe

WordItOut word cloud of Knowledge Café quotes
A most recent Knowledge Café which was facilitated by David Gurteen. #KCafe @DavidGurteen

Some of the quotes that came out in the Knowledge Café presentation:

Business is a conversation
Conversation is a meeting of minds
KM is about understanding
Dialogue
Conversation is our most effective KM tool
Conversation is a learning technology
                                                                                      (see the WordItOut word cloud above)


Gerald Meinert wrote about his experience of the Knowledge Café in a blog post, which can be read here:
One step beyond: KMUK11 - Knowledge Cafe: Having a cafe after the desert makes some sense, and the second good news: this time it was not in the virtual coffee-corner...


Our own Knowledge Café called LibCafé is upcoming on 30 August, and we are busy preparing the presentations and formulating the questions. Our topic will focus around social media in the SABC Media Libraries.

Do any of you have practical advice?
How do we get to a question that will spark the most debate?

Thursday, August 11, 2011

Twitter Twub: #libcafe

Twitter Twub: #libcafe

The SABC Media Libraries are planning their very first Knowledge Café!  We are so exited!  Check out the link to see what is happening!

Friday, August 5, 2011

The Knowledge Café via David Gurteen - start of our LibCafe

#LibCafe on Storify 
The SABC Media Libraries are planning a Knowledge Café at the end of August. We were introduced to the concept by Manti Grobler at the recent Information and Knowledge Management Conference 2011.

See the recent post The Knowledge Café to address a PowerPoint aversion where I try to conceptualize my own understanding of the Knowledge Café.

We have already started to use the hashtag #LibCafe on Twitter for our Knowledge Cafe.

A Twitter Fountain is also embedded on the SABC Media Libraries blog flowing with the hashtag #LibCafe.

The SABC Media Libraries Knowledge Cafe "story" is also being curated in Storify: http://storify.com/sabcmedialib/libcafe


David Gurteen is a worldwide Knowledge Management guru. He has been using the Knowledge Café for years to use conversation in business to stimulate a learning environment. We are using his insights extensively in our research into a Knowledge Café.

A quote from David Gurteen's work:

One way of energizing an organization to take real advantage of conversation and consequent tangible business benefits is the use of Knowledge Cafés. A Knowledge Café is an effective vehicle for opening up conversations and discussions that lead to a deeper understanding of the business world that is turn leads to improved decision making, new ways of working and innovation.

A Knowledge Café is a tool that is used to share tacit knowledge. It can be used within teams, Communities of Practice or across silos to question entrenched assumptions, to help facilitate learning from others and gain a deeper collective understanding of a subject – through conversation. - http://www.gurteen.com/gurteen/gurteen.nsf/id/kcafe
 Read more: Knowledge Café, by David Gurteen


Related post:
The Knowledge Café to address a PowerPoint aversion


Post by Karen du Toit, Afrikaans Archivist in the SABC Radio Archives