I would like to ask for your perspectives on what you consider important for your country to be competent – as considered from intellectual capital, or knowledge, points of view.

One perspective is that for a country to be competent is to be able to provide security and make it possible for its citizens to have acceptable quality of life, livelihoods, freedoms, and other aspects – now, and in the future.  It might mean having good governance, maintaining peaceful relations with the international community and within the nation itself, effective industries, knowledgeable workforce, and being able to participate equitably in the global economy.

My answer

• An ideation culture, enforced by social pressure, upbringing and nature which is based on obligation, not selfish atomism
• A specific education, training and development programme capable of creating a cadre of trans-disciplinary agents able to synthesis across difference fields of study and application.
• A system of governance which is based on evolving precedence (using the above referenced culture) rather than statue based and other idealisic forms.
• A radical rethink of democracy. Any society that elects its judges is by nature a barbarian one. Democracy needs to connect people at each level of election so that there is knowledge of the person involved.
• A programme that forces all young people to spend three years of national service (one year post puberty, two years before university) in at least three alien and disruptive cultures (ideally renewed every ten years).
• Free, open, funded access to health and education based on need or ability, abolition of private provision of either service, thus forcing the powerful to upgrade the universal.

I hold the reasons for these to be self-evident, but am happy to defend them

One of the sessions was a panel of three speakers talking about their experience. This is where the Sharepoint issue came up. BT were open about using it for a short term out of the box collaboration tool, but for anything long term they shifted to other tools including their own wiki. Pfizer had set up a successful WIki then had to face an IT department who thought they could do everything with Sharepoint! That story set up a ditting session, another neat example was one person wanted to introuce a wiki but was banned as it would compete with the intranet. Pfizer found a way round that, the wiki was started on a box under a scientsts desk You don't need an IT department to set it up. It grew and by the time IT became aware of it, but they couldnt say no as it was already delivering business value.

Another good answer, asked by the floor for a recipe the response was: I don't really know we left it with the commnunity that needed it we changed tools and technology three times. That's a great example of safe-fail evolution rather than the over designed linear systems we see all the time. It's all about what people have chosen to do, not what they have been told to do. Pragmatic cynicism rules OK! All in all a good session, more like this would be useful.

I then missed a session for a meeting but came in on the end of a more conventional presentation where storytelling consultants were helping managers explain and justify their KPIs (I always get depressed about that). Then we got another vendor presentation, well it came across like that. All the slides were about the wonders of Sharepoint, with boxes, arrows, the the commentary was a lot better (one official one real). That was when we heard about the CEO who didn't like Facebook. Another lovely Sharepoint description: Ugly duckling or beuatiful swan I don;t know its certainly expensive. Shortly followed by This thing is a monster, difficult to deal with until we had reachitected it

Overall however it was a presentation about what they hope will happen in the future rather than what they had done. I've seen too many early days presentations in over a decade of KM conferences to take anything like that seriously. We got compensation next with Bonnie talking about her work at ERM. A very flattering comment linking me with Brenda Dervin which left a warm glow for the rest of the day. Bonnie (she hasn't updated her practitioner page, so I have linked to shame her into doing so) has used Sharepoint, but realised its restrictions. Got the basics up and running and now moving on to seeing knowledge as a flow. I was impressed with the way that she had got partners to engage with employees within the system and also with client stories. All good stuff. I stayed to the end and then made a dash for the station, but missed the train by three minutes so had a hour in Paddington which is not the best end to a day!

I will pick up on day two of the conference with a blog tomorrow. And just for the record I am going to start getting firm about future keynotes, 40 minutes is not enough time to allow for the presentation of novel ideas and/or allow for questions. For those who want a longer exposition of the same themes then KM Asia (another ARK event) allowed a proper length of time and a lot of the same material can be found here.

The one thing I do know is that when you let the main speaker slots be occupied by vendors who simply pitch their products you are on a slippery slope to perdition. Larry Prusak and I used to keep explaining this to IBM who wanted us to simply present IBM products when we spoke. We used to point out (i) that we had been invited to speak not IBM and (ii) the best way to sell is for your keynote speakers to say interesting things, not deliver the corporate slide set. I remember telling one executive that the next time I used slides I would comply, but failed to tell him that in those days I never used slides.

I had an inkling of this when the invitation to speak came through. It started off as a would you speak email and I said yes if its a keynote. I have learnt to check these things. The answer was interesting, I was told that the keynote slots were all reserved for vendors. As it happened not all the slots were sold so I got invited, but unusually was given the subject and summary that had been researched and was not allowed to change it. Now this doesn't worry me, I'll keep within the broad area of the topic but I will modify it on the day. Now I don;t blame the organisers for this (although KM Asia and KM Australia seem less prone). The vendors in effect pay for the event, and I know they are always told to bring case studies rather than promotional pitches, but in practice we get the sales pitches. The trouble is if you allow this, fewer people turn up (and the conferences with the exception of KM World and APQC have suffered a significant decline in numbers).

There are some things you can do which improve these things. KM Australia has a sort of speaker pen (its the sheep sheering culture) where you sit and make yourself available to delegates. That works well. These days any conference should have power points and free wifi and encourage conference blogging. I had to find one of four plugs at the back of the hall and balance Myfanwy on my lap, not to mention paying €20 (its a french hotel) for access. KM World this year will be the centre of a narrative learning process (watch for my announcement on this as I'm leading it) which will start two months before the event itself. Using unconference techniques in part, or open space all work in various ways to improve things.

Either way to the conference itself. On day one the first keynote was from HSBC and knowing Larry Campbell from a fascinating lunch last year I am sure it was interesting. I missed the morning and arrived just before lunch and survived two vendor presentations that bracketed the event by writing my political blog of earlier today while keeping the odd note here! I only heard the tale end of Lexus but after lunch the presentation from Mondeca has semantic in every bullet point on slide one (I jest not) and thereafter it was all about the semantic web as the solution to the problem of life the user and everything. By the way, after the semantic web we get the ubiquitous web! Other than that it was the sort of talk about Taxonomies and ontology that you can hear for free if you invite the vendor in to sell to you, or let them come to your stand. Given their client list it would have been oh so impressive if a couple of executives from those clients had turned up to give the presentation.

After that it perked up a bit. Tony Quinlin of Narrate emphasised the human aspect at last, talking about the use of anecdote circles and future backwards, how to handle the ageing workforce and like issues. Well spoken, a nice attack on best practice as preventing improvement (which was heavily tweeted).

We then moved on to Richard McDermott who I've know for years, populariser of Communities of Practice (CoP) and it's still his main theme. A Warwick University sponsored research programme underpins his presentation. He argues that every organisation has to balance operations, customer focus and learning. CoPs own learning and this contribute to the firm. He is really going back to basics (or rather the 90s) here. Suggesting that back then we thought that it was the informal nature of these which worked. Argues that things have now changed, or so his research shows. Originally information connectivity was novel, now people are subject to data glut and its difficult to know where you are or what you should pay attention to. His theme now is all about people being overwealmed so their participation in communities fell off because it was voluntary. Using the tragedy of the commons and a focus on individual learning now to make a point. I suspect he's working towards a corporatist perspective. Moves on to suggest five questions that should be asked: (i) does the community matter, (ii) who is minding the store, (iii) staff have to be pressurised to participate, (iv) CoPs should be integrated to the organisation and (v) Communities should have a formal function, such as saving money etc.

One of the things that always worries be about KM research is that it is context free. Now the above are conclusions from current research, at the end of the KM life cycle. Organisations still running CoPs are likely to have formalised them into complements to process, and as those are the only ones to survive its nor surprising that the above conclusions are made - this is especially true if you interview the KM function. I'd be interested to see some field ethnography here. If you give people targets and appraisals that make them participate in communities, then they will. We had the same in IBM, but the real knowledge transfer took place in informal networks, the formal systems had (with some honourable exceptions) lots of compliance and the KM practice reported success to researchers and executives alike. The reality was very different.

With the odd exception the whole thing seems to be going back to the 1990s, its about information management (with KM as a subset), search engines, automation, very traditional and formal approaches to CoPs. None of this stuff worked back then, do people really think that doing it again and harder will achieve the result?

The day finishes with a panel. This is a lot of fun, good questions from the audience, lots of interaction and I wasn't enjoying myself too much to take notes. The first question was good though, which one technique would you implement?. My response was remove corporate IT restrictions on the use of social computing tools. I'll pick up on that in my opening keynote tomorrow.

Now I am not saying we are on the brink of concentration camps being set up across Europe, but we are in danger of an attitude to anything which is other based on scapegoating and avoidance of responsibility which is a major danger. A commentator on the BBC last night suggested that when you are in a crisis you look for people offering simple solutions. With regret I think that's all too true, and messages of hatred are all to simple, but the consequences are unspeakable.

Now I should confess here that for the first time in my life (and I have never missed any election since I was old enough to vote) I did not vote for the Labour Party in the European Election. If I lived in Wales I would have voted for Plaid Cymru but as I live in England I went for the Green Party (although I voted for Labour in the council election). Now for me this was a major decision. At the age of 11 I stood as Labour Party candidate in the Primary School mock election of 1963 (and won). On election day my bike transferred records of who had voted from the polling stations to Party HQ so that the knockers up could be sent out to drag out the vote. I graduated from that to canvassing, manning the poll stations and then to the role of Party Secretary in a General Election for a constituency. At University I was a member of NOLS (the National Organisation of Labour Students) and a contemporary of many members of the current government. Charles Clarke was President of the NUS and three of us sat him down over an Indian Meal in Lancaster during a major occupation to explain how he had become a lackey of the ruling class, Gordon Brown and others were at the Durham conference where we tried and failed to break the Trotskyite infiltration. At the Manchester conference three years later I led the withdrawal of delegates which prevented a quorum being formed: we had done the count and the Trots looked likely to carry the day. My mother was a Labour Councillor and more or less ran the Labour Party and the NUT in North-East Wales, I went on CND marches in my pram as a baby,, somewhere there is a picture of me on Bertrand Russel's knee. Uncles died in the International Brigade during the Spanish Civil War. The one thing my mother kept from my University days was the letter expelling me for revolutionary activity.

I say all this just to emphasise how big a decision it was to change my vote, although I left the Labour Party over a decade ago. I am afraid that Blair and the neo-stalinist control was a step too ar from me. I was starting to be (and am now fully) convinced that nation states of the size of the UK, Germany and France were counter productive to the European project. Small culturally cohesive groups within wider political groupings able to handle finance and defence is I am convinced the way to go.

Now the why of all this is not simple, but I think it is worth while noting the following:

• The Labour and Conservative cabinets of the pre-Thatcher period were diverse in nature and the Prime Minster was not all powerful. The Labour Cabinet of 1963 was an intellectual powerhouse of double-firsts with diverse political backgrounds. Heath had similar diversity and equivalent levels of dissent.
• We have been through the longest period on British History with a stable party structure. If you look at the history of British Politics up to WWII then parties reform and reset as MPs have more autonomy. Since 1945 the two major parties have dominated, and anyone wanting a career in politics is forced to choose one, and then accept the discipline of the Whips (for international readers this is not a modern day manifestation of the cat'o'nine tails but rather those members of the Party responsible for making sure MPs vote to instructions.
• We have had two thirteen year periods of government, one Conservative under Thatcher, one Labour under Blair. Both Leaders have taken us to war, both are arguably guilty of war crimes. Neither tolerated dissent and both used the power of patronage to exercise absolute control. I don't often feel sorry for the Queen (I am a convinced republican), but you have to feel some sympathy for what has been done in her name. Those periods have created a lack of independence, a lack of judgement and a lack of moral fibre; an old fashioned concept but one which is apt.
• The popular vote is determined not by voters making their minds up based on any thought process, but rather is determined by the dominant narrative of the popular press. Both Thatcher and Blair understood this and the Editor of the Daily Mail in effect had power disproportionate to democracy. Opinion Polls and rapid dissemination of information have exaggerated this, rather than reducing it. We have the foolishness of crowds, and we have poor shepherds which makes it worse.
• Politicians when I was young (sorry but one is allowed to say that form time to time), had to be able to hold an audience for an hour or so in a packed hall, or on the back of lorry in the market square. That meant they had to understand their subject, to be able to adjust. Now we have the sound bite generation, where the manner of presentation is more important than its subject.
• The only people who survive in politics these days are those who have an immaculate sexual history and who can master blandness over conviction. None of the great Prime Ministers of the past would survive the scrutiny of the press today. No one in their right mind with any gumption would accept the risks of this, or for that matter the pay. Populism means we don't pay MPs enough, so we get expenses used as a substitute. Such systems lead as to abuse as has become all too evident in the last month or so. This is not to excuse charging the tax payer to dredge your moat, or the fraud of claiming for interest payments on loads already paid off, but it does explain how it comes about.   

So what do you do? Well there are some basics that I think would make a difference. If I was in a position of power in the Labour Party at the moment I think I would:

• Brown should announce that he will resign as Prime Minster at the end of the year and declare an election date in the Spring. That allows a successor to be elected and put in place to run the election campaign, while we carry on the process of Government.
• A radical constitutional change should be put in place now, create a clear choice. That would include multi-member constituencies before the General Election. That means that where I live in rural Wiltshire there would be a chance of an MP representing my views, rather than my vote being pointless as it is at the moment. We live in one of the ten safest Tory seats in the country.
• We should abolish the House of Lords, increase the power of an elected second chamber and also parliamentary committees. Get rid of the system of honours with all the perniciousness of patronage. Link the second chamber to local councils, the universities, churches and NGOs so we increase non party based participation in government.
• Abolish opinion polls in the three months leading up to an election. They bias the vote as people like to back a winner
• Place the national press under the same legal requirements for balance as the BBC are subject to
• Pay MPs a sensible wage and ban them from taking ALL secondary employment of whatever nature. Continue those wages for two years after they loose their seats, but maintain the ban on other employment. It won't get rid of temptation but it will reduce it.
• Auditable expenses, receipts on line and why not convert a government building in Whitehall to an apartment hotel? Much better than secondary homes. Make parliamentary hours longer, but for few days. force MPs back into their constituencies for longer periods around the weekend, use video-conferencing.
• One third of Cabinet Posts to be elected by the Parliamentary Party - it works in opposition why not in government?
• Make voting compulsory. The Australians fine you if you don't vote - great idea lets go for it

On reflection I might change some of those, but the one thing I am convinced of is the need for clear change, and for an agenda which prevents the continuation of current perverted structures in a blue rather than a red coating. Oh, and we should reinstate Clause IV!

Instant communication is a wonderful thing, seeing her reactions to some of the racism she encountered on entry to the hotel ("Watch those abbos in the park") and being able to respond straight away is a privilege. She will join me in Broken Hill in August when I am out, but in the meantime not only is the inevitable worry of protracted absence removed, but I have the privilege of hearing her thoughts and reactions on what is a voyage of discovery. I didn't manage to persuade her to do a travel blog, but I may act as a proxy from time to time!

I will be loading the above picture later (our cottage garden here in Wiltshire) and telling some stories about it later. To participate click here.

Now I've been involved in software development for many years, this will be the third application product I have taken to market from scratch, although the first time with my financial future at stake! You learn through that process, and I was reflecting on that learning on the train home this evening. For what its worth I've summarised that below, in no particular order!

Now I am sure there are more, but that will do. One of the things you see when you adopt this approach is that as you reach the end of the process you have more capability than you originally designed. We already have one company looking to use our frameworks to develop their new product. They save time and effort (and also have integration to our survey and KM tools), we gain proof of something we hoped for, but now know that we have achieved, namely that SenseMaker™ V3.0 provides an integration architecture for social computing in an organisational context.

• There is a Starbucks in the Vatican but none in Italy
• More people were killed in making Saving Private Ryan than died in the Normandy landings
• If a penguin stays dry for three days, it turns red
• Muesli is more carcinogenic than Coco Pops
• The memory of an average pocket calculator equals that of 100 million earthworms

Half back, switch back, kickback, the spinner weaving the pattern of the match is a sublime description of the scrum half Turn like a key in the game's lock, I dreamt I opened a door in the sky captures the romance of the fly half. the poet then describes her desire to "consecrated the centres with a sense of urgency and power" and does this wonderfully: as the ghosted stream become rivers in spate. For the wings we are talking about the mystery of evasion and speed, sinew and nerve, to quick to far. We reach an end now, Still but less often there is time to look up and catch an idea as it falls demonstrates the presence of the full back for whom time's egg spins on its axis.

A dragon with 15 hearts .....

For those of you in the UK with access to the BBC iPlayer I can strongly recommend this wonderful narrative from the greatest living operatic bass Bryn Terfel. He revisits the places of his youth in North Wales, a journey that takes him from his family farm in the foothills of Snowdonia to the summit itself. He does this by way of Caernarfon Castle, Bardsey Island, Portmeirion and the slate mines. At each location he sings, even taking a Grand Piano to the summit of Yr Wyddfa (to give Snowdon its proper name) and the chapel on Bardsey Island. The section on the island (pictured) is especially moving, not least for me as my parents ashes were scattered into the sound that divides that Island from the Llyn Peninsular. It was a major centre of the Celtic Church, a place of pilgrimage to which three visits were the equivalent to one trip to Rome. Given the ferocity of the currents that surround the island a one for one might have more reflected the hardships of the journey! The Caban of the slate workers with their educated discussion is also worth of note. A moving, poetical and lyrical journey. I've rediscovered and written about my own journeys and the memories that those bring so it was fascinating to witness Bryn's. The more so, as all the places he visited were also places of my own childhood and early adult life. Watch it while you can, the stupidity of the BBC means that it will disappear shortly and those of you outside of the UK will not be able to see it at all.

Details and booking here, and there is an option to get access post the event itself. Also if anyone is interested in tomorrow's session on SenseMaker™, it filled up but there have been two cancelations for the morning, First come first served for them, email me if are interested. 1000-1300 Near Portland Place. That one is free!

To all to have expressed concern, I'm almost there with getting my workload back to the point where I can start blogging again, just one remaining software issue and one client report then things stabilise and I will follow up on the government blog and others.