I laugh and I share knowledge
I've been meaning to write about Patrick Lambe's pair of posts on knowledge sharing and now have motivation from recent posts by Sharon Richardson and Euan Semple.
Patrick has What is knowledge sharing (and this from February) and Why do we share knowledge, based on a recent discussion at a Information and Knowledge Management Society (iKMS) meeting in Singapore. I like Patrick's efforts at making some of the why behind knowledge sharing. His list of basic explanations of how knowledge sharing happens is: accidental, habitual, copying others, experimental, reflexive, and whimsical. As to what it is, Patrick suggests that sharing is not just the opposite of hoarding, it can be many other things as well (at least 49 things in fact).
This leads to Euan and Sharon's discussion of one element of knowledge sharing: humor and personality. Euan wants to make A serious point about levity. Sharon writes that We're only human. In both, they make the case for the importance of letting personality show through in our human endeavors. They also talk about the other side of this: the corporate life is geared around eliminating personality, which is rather frustrating to those who see the value in "just being me."
As related in these posts, I was also subject to a "don't laugh so loud" admonition in my early days of work - from my father, at whose company i was working for the summer. It wasn't proper to be heard down the hallway.
What does humor and personality have to do with knowledge sharing? If you subscribe to the belief that knowledge sharing is all about getting people together, then it seems we would want people to share themselves and those things in which they get engaged. And isn't it this common connection that is being exploited by the vast interest in social networking?
2 Comment(s)
said:
Interesting insight, Duane. The idea of critical mass comes up in the discussion of many kinds of community: there must be a critical mass of participants before the community moves. But I wonder about the upper limit (towards your concern): if there are too many active participants in the community, everything appears to be noise.
Thanks!
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When i went to the "49 Ways to Share Knowledge" my first reaction was "Wow"! This kind of thinking (and your post) throws into sharp contrast how the IT addiction leads people astray about what knowledge management really comes down to (my opinion): people and not databases, neural networks, and semantic webs.
Your post also made me think about how popular, and perhaps necessary, 'critical massification' seems for information, knowledge and even economic management. I call it 'Wal-Mart-ificiation' and i see it in not only the big-box stores but in big-box evangelical churches, big-box websites (My Space, Technorati), big-box corporations (Boeing, Comcast). Big Box approaches seem to bring together or aggregrate huge numbers of potential connections, social/consumer-producer/knowledge-seeker-creator.