On 7 Oct 2022, at 9:12 PM, Gavin Chait <whythawk@...> wrote:

Dear community members, 

 

My https://openlocal.uk open data project has just finished and I am looking for new opportunities.

 

I am a data scientist leading knowledge management on data-driven software services, and managing teams implementing market intelligence and innovation projects globally. If you have budget for only one person to build, fix or manage your organisation knowledge and data management process, including technology and psychosociology, then I can do that for you.

 

I have lead national open data infrastructure development projects globally, with a special focus on Africa, with national government and intergovernmental organisations, like the World Bank. While at the Open Knowledge Foundation, I led the development team for CKAN which is the most popular open source data publication platform, and at GE Healthcare I developed and led implementation of their $1.2 million integrated global enterprise market knowledge and data management system. I am a contributor to the SIKM global knowledge management leaders forum, including speaking on data probity in knowledge management.

 

I have a genuine commitment to the ethical use of data and technology, and of the critical importance of knowledge discoverability in social and economic development.

 

I have dual British/South African citizenship, a French carte de sejour, and I speak English, Afrikaans and am learning French.

 

My CV (pdf): https://1drv.ms/b/s!Ahf3lolNNvOlnMl0iL-mTWDZl2lTZQ?e=SvGRdg

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gavinchait/

 

Summary profile:

 

• Knowledge management, research & technology for development leadership:
• Collaboratively engaging global stakeholders in project commissioning, planning & implementation,
• Leading knowledge management & open data innovation to support information discovery,
• Effectively communicating complex information in workshops, presentations and written reports.
• Project & team management:
• Recruiting, managing, and collaborating with globally distributed & diverse teams of 2 to 200 people,
• Leading individual and organisation change management, professional development, & mentorship,
• Ensuring appropriate project management, including Agile and/or Scrum methodology.
• Innovative data, software & product development:
• Synthesizing ambiguous briefs into development roadmaps, through to prototyping, build & launch,
• Researching and developing information sources, and ensuring ethical and auditable data curation,
• Coding in Python & JavaScript/TypeScript, analysis with Numpy & Pandas, visualisation in Matplotlib & D3, storage in PostGIS & Neo4j, apps in FastAPI/Django & Nuxt/Vue, plus Git/GitHub & Docker.

 

Please contact me direct, and you are welcome to forward my details as well.

 

Thanks and regards

 

Gavin

 

---

Gavin Chait 

gchait@...

 

On 7 Oct 2022, at 5:35 PM, Robert M. Taylor via groups.io <Robertmartintaylor@...> wrote:

This does interest me. I have a view that KM is it's own functional area, but I can at least share the headlines of my experience of different reporting lines as Head of KM.

• CEO/Managing Partner - two or three times. What I find in common is the laser focus on just do one thing. Of course, I'm always across lots of things but in both cases they were very much making the direct connection of KM to one of their priorities at a time and looking for progress in just that one area. Overall enjoyed these experiences.
• Operations Director - twice. Neither one had KM in their top priorities. One led to me and KM being cut pretty quickly, the other was a holding pattern.
• HR Director - utterly hopeless. HR nowadays tends to have two sides - the Talent side and HR process side and this director was firmly in the second camp. No interest at all. Curiously, I got on well and did some pretty good work with her team helping them iron-out processes with KM support.
• Marketing Director - twice. Once was the best experience because she totally devoted herself to KM, and was great as a leader, and my role was as KM expert/PM. The other was more of a holding pattern.
• IT Director twice - Neither was very good. Second - quite liked him and understood him and thought we had made a good connection. Decided he didn't want to do KM and shut the shop (which somehow he was able to do, despite KM having priority work with business customers).

What I want to say about all of these in general, looking across these experiences, they are three or so cases:

1. They absolutely champion you, guide you, open doors and unblock things, whilst acknowledging you're the KM lead and expert. Only once as above. A rarity.
2. They bend you to their purpose. They don't really buy in to the KM purpose and have other priorities, but so long as they can fit you into what they're really focused on, it works, sometimes better (sometimes really quite well), sometimes worse.
3. They're not really interested and will ignore/dump you and KM any time.

You can probably tell which case is which from my experiences as listed! I do want to add as well that I was aware what was going on and have always spent a considerable amount of focus on stakeholder management as a result. You have to.

You can't tell just because they tell you how vital KM is tha they really believe or don't. You should pay attention to what they really focus on. We're a young profession not yet recognised as distinct. There's something about our work that is cross-cutting and doesn't fit a matrix or hierarchy very well. If you can't get a reporting line that really will champion KM you at least need one that will value you for something and let you get on with the rest.
Mostly, I find as KM lead I have more contacts with more people at various levels and am more involved with the actual craft and knowledge of how the work is done than how it is controlled - whereas the latter is much more the focus of many execs who have forgotten or never knew how the actual work of the company is actually done by its people.

As others have said, CKO didn't really catch on in terms of a main board or operating board top head.

Interesting data, Nick, an especially the discussion on getting a balance of skills - however, I think the effects could be read in two directions:

On 5 Oct 2022, at 6:36 PM, Nick Milton <nick.milton@...> wrote:

A side-issue from this question is, what effect does partnering with another discipline affect the direction your KM program takes?

 

This is something I try to explore in this blog post, based on 2020 survey data. 

http://www.nickmilton.com/2020/06/the-issues-of-combining-km-with-another.html

 

The main conclusion, if the patterns in the data are real and not just noise, is that the choice of a partner discipline for KM may affect your KM program. For example;

 

Partnering with Learning and Development may result in a balanced KM team, an effective set of tacit knowledge approaches, and good synthesised knowledge, but may leave your documents in a more poorly managed state.

 

Partnering with IM may result in a team with a bias to IM skills rather than to facilitation skills, and less effective tacit components within the KM program. You may end up with a better organised and tagged set of documents, but with less attention to knowledge synthesis.

 

Partnering with Innovation may lead to a focus on change management skills and organisational skills, effective CoPs and Best Practices, but not so good at Retention and Lesson Learning.

 

Other combinations can be read from the graphs included

 

Nick Milton
Knoco Ltd

Hi All,

I was wondering what others experience or have learned as a best practice (if that really can exist given organizations or often so different) in terms of the reporting structure for knowledge management.

Overall I have experienced KM having no greater level than Director and reporting into either a Digital/IT department or local Business Unit Leader dedicated, and sometimes rotating.

I will share my experiences: 

Thank you,
Sandra 

On Oct 4, 2022, at 2:11 AM, Pierre Maraninchi via groups.io <mara@...> wrote:



Happy to help too if needed.
I’ve helped small and large organizations design and implement KCS in various industries.

He can reach out to me directly if he wants to

/Pierre