Knowledge Cafe

On 5th week Friday, in our university a knowledge café was organized. It’s my first knowledge café and really experience was too good. In our class, our professors Mr.Aboubaker A. Moteleb and Mr. Mark Woodman explained how knowledge café was going on and also gave example of Gurteen knowledge café. So basically knowledge café is one kind of activity for a group of people to have an open, creative conversation on a topic which has been given to gain more clear understanding of the subject and the issues involved by expressing your ideas and also gaining others’ view about that particular topic.

Knowledge cafes involve a group of people sitting into smaller round table groups of 5-6 people, in order to engage in discussion on a specific topic, as you can see it in right hand side picture.

After a predetermined amount of time like as we had been given 1 minute, all but one of the participants at each table will move to a new table and discusses about that given topic. One person from each group writes crucial points about the topic from discussion. Then choose most important 3 points and explain why they are necessary. As in our knowledge café our professors gave us the topic that gives most 3 worst things without knowledge management in organization learning reversing. So according to our group (group 4) we gave most 3 worst things are: 1) No information flow (communication flow)
2) No improvement or performance
3) No systems or Tools
According to Group 1 the most 3 worst things are:
1) No communication between people
2) Not allow people to explain their ideas
3) No documentation of procedures at all
According to Group 2,
1) No communication strategy
· Intranets
· Internet
2) No learning and development
3) No identification of required knowledge
And according to last group which is Group 3,
1) No socialization
2) No systems ( No storage documentation)
3) No training and development
So, all groups thought that no communication is one of the worst things without knowledge management.
So my point of view, 3 worst things are:
1) No Information Flow(community flow)
If KM is not there then information does not flow from one person to another person in terms of communication. As people do not share their ideas with others by thinking that whatever they think is crucial in case of urgent.
2) No improvement
If KM does not exist means knowledge is not shared then there is not proper management of knowledge of individuals which can be helpful to improve the business of organization.
3) No systems or tools
Knowledge is not shared and KM is not existed then systems and tools in which KM is required are worthless.
So according to me, knowledge café is a very good idea to share your ideas with others. And you can gain knowledge through listen to others, learn from them and understand the ideas. From knowledge café you can create some new, wonderful ideas which are worthwhile for your organization to improve business.

References

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_Cafe

http://www.gurteen.com/gurteen/gurteen.nsf/id/kcafes