On The Train, Jan 15, 2008

Since I was going to Renaissance attending an IBM KM Blueprint Workshop I got down at KL Sentral this morning. It was around 0715 when I got there and way too early to go to Renaissance. So I decided to have breakfast at KL Sentral. After awhile on indecision and moving up and down I settled for Mc D simply because of the coffee and muffin. I sat the at McD reading while having breakfast and my eyes could not escape looking at long distance train travelers arriving with their bags and what not. I saw two person actually carrying two big ‘kuali’, could be ‘kawah’, going down to the Komuter platform. When I looked at these I suddenly became excited and wished I could take the next train out of KL. I knew I could not do that but there always a possibility in weeks to come.

After a while I uprooted myself out of the McD and walked to the Putra LRT entrance. I did not realize it before but this was what I witnessed. When I arrived at the platform going downtown as usual I saw two nice long lines on each sides of every entrance to the oncoming train. I continued to read while standing behind one of the lines as I knew I was about three trains away before there would be space for me to board in. Whenever the train comes I just moved along the line without taking my eyes of the book that I was reading. However when I sense that I was moving closer to the edge I looked up and I saw commuters were alighting from the train that just arrived. Nothing amazing there but what amazed me was when I looked closely there were these two lines on each sides and the commuters came out in the middle. It was exactly like a two-line VIP welcoming parties. If all, at least most, of the out boarding commuters smile it would be really neat.

My other observation of this Putra train was when I was standing reading on the moving train. Of course the train was packed and more commuters that were standing were putting one hand up to hang on to something and in front of my nose was a Chinese lady’s hand smelling onion. I did not know whether Body Shop has come up with new fragrance but it was definitely onions. The lesson learned here was if you were boarding a pack train make sure you wash your hands properly. Especially if you just came out of a restroom LOL.

David Gurteen was at the workshop and the first person that I met after registration was him. We chatted catching up on each other for a while until others arrived. As for the workshop proper in attendance were old mates Riduan and Yazid from the SC and others that I have met before. David started the workshop given the current perspective of KM. Mainly historically from Techno-centric KM, to People-centric KM and Blended as it is perceived today. Since the workshop was fully sponsored by IBM, David also embarked of the social tools of Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0 and eventually KM 2.0 that he summarized as mostly Conversation. Looking at Web 2,0 it can be loosely said that KM 2.0 tools available today comprises of;

• Social tagging
• Social networking
• Blogs & Wiki
• Instant Messaging
• RSS Feeds & Readers
• Blogs

To be exact of the tools that we took for granted today are Facebook,, MySpace, Friendsters, You Tube, Flikcr, Fotopages, Google widgets like Google Reader, Blogspots and others. The rest of the morning IBMers took us through the landscape of these specific tools.

I agree that it is Blended today but we have to be very careful not to be too gung-ho about it as at the end of the day it has to meet business needs. This to different organizations could mean different things of which would mean different approach and strategy to achieve the bottom lines.

After lunch was David’s Knowledge Café and the topic of the discussion was stated as ‘The barriers of implementation social tools in our organisation’. However, because of the composition of the audience it became a little bit of KM implementation issues or barriers conversation. In essence a lot of the participants see KM from technology perspective and looking for the best approach to start the ball rolling. My advice was it is not necessary to push for holistic and big bang approach if they find it difficult but to concentrate on a smaller scope where at least success rate is better.

I went back to the office for a late evening meeting and eventually went home later then before. The rest of the journey home was totally me and my laptop.