Presentation about the importance of conversation given at the Scottish Knowledge Management Network meeting held at the Subsea7 offices in Aberdeen on 3 February 2011.

3. ’ Representations within the brain’…and the knowledge ‘this is how you do that’ is twice removed from the audience: First by the ability of the knower to map what he does into his own brain, and then by his ability to cast it in a language common with the audience. Joel Mokyr

4. For all our knowledge, we have no idea what we're talking about. We don't understand what's going on in our business, our market, and our world. KM shouldn’t be about helping us to know more. It should be about helping us to understand. So, how do we understand things? It's through stories that we understand how the world works. David Weinberger, The Cluetrain Manifesto

5. Conversation is a meeting of minds with different memories and habits. When minds meet, they don't just exchange facts: they transform them, reshape them, draw different implications from them, engage in new trains of thought. Conversation doesn't just reshuffle the cards: it creates new cards. Theodore Zeldin, Conversation

6. Business is a conversation…and… ‘knowledge workers' are simply those people whose job consists of having interesting conversations. David Weinberger The Cluetrain Manifesto

7. What do we get from conversation that we can't get any other way? Cross, R. and Sproull, L. Cross and Sproull interviewed project managers to explore what they learned through the conversations they chose to have. They had access to first-rate company repositories of best practices, case examples, reusable work products, methodologies and tools, discussion forums and expertise databases. Overwhelmingly they preferred to take the issue they were wrestling with to a colleague.

8. Imagine how much knowledge we would gain if we did enter every conversation anticipating that we would gain ‘more than an answer.’ Cross, R. and Sproull, L. Answers Meta-knowledge Problem reformation Validation Legitmizing

9. debate or dialogue? “ A mechanistic and unproductive exchange between people seeking to defend their own views against one another” “ A frank exchange of ideas or views on a specific issue in an effort to attain mutual understanding”

11. UKGovCamp is the movement of self-organised unconferences for government types with an interest in how the public sector uses technology.

14. The kind of conversation I’m interested in is one in which you start with a willingness to emerge a slightly different person. Theodore Zeldin Photo: Nicola Osborne

16. Social constructivism extends constructivism into social settings, wherein groups construct knowledge for one another, collaboratively creating a small culture of shared artifacts with shared meanings. When one is immersed within a culture like this, one is learning all the time about how to be a part of that culture, on many levels.

19. An information literacy stance takes a critical perspective on knowledge and information with a focus more on questions and process than on ready answers. This… perspective entails identifying assumptions implicit in problems, questioning the given or even asking ‘what if not’ questions, working collaboratively, and with an awareness of the ethical and social dimensions of information. Ellusive Literacies blog