KM4DEV workshop 2007 - peer learning as its best

I have just spent three days of intensive discussions with interesting people from around the world, who work in different areas of knowledge management for development (KM4DEV). Besides of some sessions, the three day event had an open sharing and learning approach by leaving it up to the participants to fill in the agenda. The concept seemed a bit confusing in the start, but turned out to be very creative and inspiring.

So here is some feedback of things I found especially interesting from the workshop:

• Web2.0 and knowledge management The workshop itself was the best example of how important face to face contact is and how it opens many venues for learning. The collaborative web nevertheless, gains great importance all in the knowledge management field. Many people are involved in an online knowledge sharing or are planning on building a new generation of sharing and learning platforms. Interesting to me, however, is that wikis were seen quite skeptical and rather complicated. The linkages between tagging, RSS, Blog, wiki and social bookmarking were discussed, but only some organizations have started to integrate them.
• Graphic facilitationNancy White gave a great session about how graphical facilitation opens new avenues for expression, reduces complexity and helps to give a picture of a process or constellation. It really encourages me to do more in visualization even though I am not very talented in drawing. Micheline Chartrand also made a nice post on that session.
• Styles of presentation There was not a single power point presentation during the workshop, nevertheless there were funny and inspiring presentations: A lot of of drawings, different kinds of performances such as singing and acting, and videos such as the one for social bookmarking. It is of course just a copy of the great RSS in plain English video.