Boston conference June 2009

The Common Ground conference 'Knowledge, Management and Change in Organizations' at Northeastern University, Boston, in late June, was most interesting, and a great opportunity to meet up with knowledge professionals in North America. Also great staying in Boston, then having a short holiday in New York City - my partner's first visit to New York, and our first US trip post Obama - first since 2003, in fact.

I don't think I addressed the issue I wanted to, really, but subsequently I have concluded that knowledge brokering needs to develop as a subject with a specific curriculum for a professional qualification. That would make knowledge brokers to develop more systematically as professionals.

My next job - a mystery story

I'm looking for a new job as a knowledge broker, and see it as a mystery story - I don't know what my next job will be. That's the mystery, and it's an exciting time.

I would be prepared to work elsewhere than West Yorkshire in England, and seriously would consider work in New Zealand, where I grew up and revisit every couple of years.

Boston in June

Boston in June- my partner Heather and I will both present papers at a Common Ground conference in Boston Massachusetts in late June, which will be fun. It's the same group who organised the conference I attended last August in Cambridge (U.K), and this time I'm asking if it's possible to teach knowledge brokering through biography. It seems to me that the personal experience of what works and what doesn't is very useful in learning about brokering as an activity. Happy Australia Day :-)

Back on the blog...magazines and books

Back on the blog...I am giving this blog another chance, though I've never been very good at keeping it up, and abandoned it last year for another one, which never got going either.

This morning on the train I read some of Tom Kelley and Jonathan Littman's 'The Ten Faces of Innovation', which is a terrific book. It's not the only inovation book I'm into just now, as Curtis Carlson & William Wilmot's 'Innovation: the Five Disciplines for Creating What Customers Want' is on my chair, in my bag, by my bed, on the dining table - wherever I go except under the shower.

At Leeds Station I called by W H Smith's and came out with the February 09 issues of 'net', 'New Yorker', 'Time', 'Total Politics', and 'Vanity Fair'. Some have stuff on Obama, VF promises to uncover the "darkest secrets" of the Bush White House, and net covers trends in web design and search - all vital stuff for Roger the knowledge broker.

Currently, I'm writing a short overview of ethnography for one of our programmes (CIHM), the 'immersion visit' to Johannesburg. Tomorrow I begin an elective module on qualitiative methods for my Masters course, so all told I'm a busy bee, really. Could do with some sunshine, couldn't we all?