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07.26.07
Knowledge Management - Where Are The Bees?
 By
Luis Suarez
As I have just mentioned in a previous weblog post, this article is a follow up from the one I have shared earlier on, detailing some of the highlights from the trip to Somers, NY, to attend IBM's Collaboration 2.0 conference event that took place last week.
It is another story. And probably a little bit longer than expected, this time around from something that happened on my way to JFK from Madrid and which I will remember for years to come! That is how inspirational it was, indeed. Read on...
To begin with, things got off to a lovely start when I was seated by the emergency exit. Lots of room and space to open up my notebook and do some serious catchup on stuff I have meant to read for quite some time now. Nice! Next to me, a gentleman in the mid-50s, perhaps, very quiet and very familiar with being on a plane. Very good!
We took off and, like it usually happens, specially in those long flights where you are going to be stuck for several endless hours, my next-seat neighbour and myself started up some casual conversation, probably, as a result of both of us wanting to be polite to one another. Remember, being stuck on a seat for 7 hours and 45 minutes is not that very pleasant, is it? Even more if you are travelling on economy.
Anyway. "What do you do for a living?" - He asked. "Me? Well, I work with computers" (Yes, I know, I always start with that one liner. I guess I don't want to put people off right away saying that I do Knowledge Management. In the past, more than once, I got weird looks from people when I used to say that, so initially I tend to leave it as vague as I can). "How about you?" -I continued. "I am a beekeeper" -he replied.
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WOW! "That surely is interesting! So, you really are a beekeeper, eh?" -I commented back, to which he replied he surely was. All of his life, after having learned the job from his father and his grand-father. Goodness! How cool is that? I got to sit next to someone who has been doing something that I have found truly fascinating for a number of years, but that I never got around finding out some more about it, specially given the recent news about those lovely creatures disappearing in the millions out of the blue in several countries. And growing...
Of course, he right away got my full attention and I think he enjoyed it as well getting all of my attention, while we embarked in one of the most incredible conversations I can remember about one subject that surely I didn't know anything about, but he had enough patience to explain to me all of the inside-outs of how it actually works. Yes, indeed, fascinating is the word that would certainly describe most of what I have learned during that conversation. Too much to describe it over here, I am sure. Perhaps at some other time. Here is though a link to an article (Spanish-only, unfortunately) that would provide you some more background on the nature of some of the conversations we had.
Continue reading this article
About
the Author:
Luis Suarez has been working in the fields of Knowledge Management,
collaboration, communities, and learning for the past seven years, and is
heavily involved in social computing and its adoption within the enterprise.
Luis shares his insights on important KM issues of today through The Knowledge Management Blog
and ELSUA.NET, and is an active
participant in the ITtoolbox blogging
community.
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