Navigating the Chaos: Unveiling the Comedy of Knowledge Management Workshops

I recently took a deep dive into some workshops from a Knowledge Management conference.

Having read the above sentence, one of two things is happening for you right now:

1. Your eyes have lit up with glee at the thought of talking about knowledge management.
2. Your eyes have glazed over, you’re stifling a yawn and you’re wondering why I’m talking about such a boring topic.

If you’re number one, yeah!

If you’re number two, hang in there with me for a sec.

Knowledge management (KM for short).

If the term is new to you and with the number two above in mind, Knowledge Management is described, thanks to ChatGPT from the perspective of a comedian as:

Knowledge management is like having a massive brain dump, but instead of forgetting everything, you actually remember where you put stuff. 

It’s like organizing a chaotic comedy show, making sure every joke is in its right place, so you don’t accidentally tell a knock-knock joke in the middle of a funeral sketch.

It’s all about wrangling information and making sure it’s not lost in the shuffle, so everyone can laugh at the right punchline, at the right time.

Now back to that KM conference whose workshop PowerPoint decks and PDFs I recently dove into.

Imagine yourself six months out from having attended the conference and you’re looking for that really great speaker’s notes about that really great topic.

Only you forgot the speaker’s name.  

And you don’t remember the session number.

Yet that’s how the PowerPoint and PDF workshop resources are labeled for this Knowledge Management conference.

You’re not to blame if you’ve had trouble finding your past notes if even a KM conference can’t make naming workshop resources convenient and therefore easy for your future self to find. 

Enter facepalm.

We have so far to go in terms of removing the roadblocks to learning … if even a knowledge management conference makes it hard.

Imagine the future you – would 2033peterson.pwpt make any sense to you?

I’m guessing not.

Yet something like petersAIandKM.pwpt might be getting closer (name of speaker, plus AI standing for artificial intelligence and KM for Knowledge Management).

The next time you’re sharing learning resources, whether it’s a PowerPoint or a PDF, take a second to imagine your learners in the future and think about how you can name your resources to make them easily findable.

Even if you’re not going to share the resources, think of future you looking for them when you’re naming the files.

Make it easy.  Make it convenient.

Pro tip 1:

Between you and me, I giggled when reading some of the PowerPoint decks that had their speaker notes included.  In one of them, the speaker notes were very detailed and included things like “breathe” and “click” – presumably to encourage the person to show the next slide.

While I’m all for putting things in your PowerPoint speaker notes that help you relax when giving a presentation, if they’re kinda personal, you may want to delete them when sharing your deck.  Just saying.

Pro tip 2:

Many of the workshop PDFs and PowerPOints I reviewed were huge, honking files.  File storage space is an issue. And digital access is an issue.  Not everyone has access to the bandwidth to download huge files. 

Do yourself and everyone else a favour by shrinking your file size before sharing.  Use a tool like ILovePdf.com to do just that, easily and quickly.

Then take a moment to think about how you can improve how you name your resources.  Your future self, as well as the people you’ll share them with, will thank you.

Now go on and learn, laugh, and lead

Learn

• Take a moment to think about how you can make your file names easy, convenient, and memorable for future you.

Laugh

• Talking about terrible presentations, it cannot possibly get worse than my spoof of an example. For your viewing pleasure….

Lead

• Speaking of learning, interested in learning how to Ban Boring Online Meetings. Check out my online course.

P.S.

• Click here to see all my upcoming workshops for the year including Work-Life Balance and Effective Online Presentations (the latter two are for UN staff only but if you’re interested in scheduling them for your own non-UN team, let me know.  Let’s talk!)