I’ve been participating in the on-line Social Learning programme these past three weeks, facilitated by Harold Jarche.  One of the weekly assignments set by Harold was for the delegates to articulate what we have learnt about Personal Knowledge Management and how we would explain it to others, in the form of a brief “elevator pitch”. This is mine:

What is ”Personal Knowledge Management”?

1. There is a desire to develop more effective knowledge sharing and a culture of collaboration in most organisations, but little recognition of what this means in terms of staff development and overcoming barriers to change.
2. The enormous growth of social media tools and social/professional networks over the past few years has created new opportunities and new challenges for people and organisations that want to embrace this dynamic world of social interaction and fluid knowledge flows.
3. However, it is not widely recognised that collaboration and knowledge sharing are skills and practices that rarely get taught – and indeed, can they be taught?
4. It’s something we may learn on the job in a hit or miss fashion; some people are natural at it, others struggle to understand it.
5. Part of the answer is to revert to how we learnt as a child, always experimenting, trying out new tools, finding the ones that we enjoy using and becoming proficient in their use.
6. It’s also about how we connect and engage, how we establish trust with and between people we may never meet face to face.
7. Through sharing knowledge and learning from others we become more knowledgeable about ourselves and the world we live in, and equipped to build a better life for ourselves and a safe and sustainable environment for our children.

 http://www.jarche.com/2012/08/pkm-is-not-a-technology/