Your blogs - Michael Norton

Building an online group / community is no easy task. It requires a lot of effort, patience, and dedication. However, one of the most important decisions that you need to make when starting an online group is the number of group facilitators that you will have.  While it may be tempting to start on your own, there are several reasons why you should always start with at least three.  ... See more

We have all gone through this phase during the first lockdown about how great it was to have our meetings virtually. But as time has progressed, there seem to be virtual meetings for everything, even though sometimes an email could have been sent instead.  Then there are follow up meetings that have been set up because the people who make the decisions are not part of the conversation... See more

When you go to most events you get a lovely happy sheet at the end or emailed to you after the event.  Most of them are tick box based.  But does that really help if your hosting the event.  One of the stand out things that any community can do is run an event.  If your lucky to be able to do it, it can really set your community on a strong path.  But you will also want to do it again.... See more

I had the pleasure of attending the latest Henley Forum Event in November where the key theme of the day being Accelerating innovation 3 great sessions during the day allowed us to explore more about innovation, hear about Knowledge Campaigns and take part in a hackathon without coding. Innovating Together   The day kicked out with Nancy Kinder on how you can enhance ideation and... See more

Last week I had the pleasure of attending the APM Knowledge SIG Conference called 4 leaps forward.  And a big thank you to everyone that came along. 4 key elements in the Knowledge Management world have finally come together to make Knowledge Management a recognised profession.  Hopefully, this will make it a bit easier for me in the future to explain what I do. ISO Knowledge... See more

I’m an avid fan of LinkedIn. As a professional social networking tool across all sectors, it has been amazing in the way you can connect with professionals in your area of work.  And for that, it is the “go to” place. One of the key aspects that I liked about LinkedIn was the Groups.  You could find well run groups around your topic area, ask questions, gain insights etc.  What... See more

With the imminent arrival of the ISO Standard for Knowledge Management, I started to gather a range of content that I have come across from different people, much more in the know than I am on the subject, before the deluge of people trying to sell you products and services that they say will make you ISO compliant but in reality will probably make no difference.   What could the ISO... See more

  Last week I had the pleasure of attending the Henley Forum event on Advancing Knowledgeable Practice. One of the great session put on was based on the Room 101 concept.  Our host for the session was Tim Andrews with the panel consisting of Chris Collison, Cora Newell and James Brown.           Over 3 sessions each one of the panelists would present... See more

Getting the results you want from your group message doesn’t have to be a huge endeavor. These six steps will give it a bit of a wow factor and save you time. Step 1 - Decide What Type of message You’re Creating Start by defining your objectives and determining what type of message will meet them. Do you want to inform members about recent activity in your online group? Would you like to... See more

Navigating a new organisational environment or online community can be challenging, particularly when the structure is unclear. My initial experience when starting at a district council highlighted this. A corridor with unmarked green doors presented a daily uncertainty. Behind one might be a bustling workspace, while another could lead to an empty room or a storage closet. As a new staff... See more

This is the first time we have done something like this and I found it very useful. A big thank you to Mike, Fiona, Ailie, Kyriacos and Dimple. Apologies if I have missed anything obvious. How did it go? Using a phone conference call and asking people who are joining the call to provide the questions beforehand was useful. This let us set an outline agenda that we could easily add to. We... See more

We know that face to face events are a great way of bringing people together. Lots of knowledge and experience will get shared at these events. But for many people that attend a face to face event, it stops there. And this was our topic in our latest online chat in the Online Facilitators Community on the Knowledge Hub where we discussed How do you maintain momentum after a face-to-face event? ... See more

This means that every member of your group has the ability to amend the wiki content if they desire. While the potential for mischief exists, wikis can be surprisingly robust, open-ended and collaborative for groups. Plus you also have a complete history of who made the changes and you can compare different version or roll back to earlier version. You probably won’t need to use those... See more

If you have ever hosted a webinar for a large group of people then you know about that time slot that starts about 10 minutes before the start time.  For me, It’s the time of nervousness. In my head I am thinking will people turn up; will they have problems logging in and as the host, you must make the decision on how you will start. A lot of webinar platforms allow people to say... See more

Monday the 22nd January marks Community Manager Appreciation Day otherwise known as #CMAD on twitter and we wanted to thank all the hard-working community facilitators.  We know it’s not an easy job and the work and effort you put into to make your group successful should be applauded   Whether it’s bringing in the next big thing, finding the missing piece of the puzzle,... See more

As a Facilitator of any online group or community, you need to know what’s going on. If you don’t keep on top of what’s happening anything could happen. You could miss something important, you may start to lose members as they feel no one is responding to them. Then there is the worst case scenario, that someone adds something that is inappropriate to the group, which could cause no... See more

Building an online community is easy, right?  You just press a few buttons on some great new bit of technology and everything happens for you. Everyone is doing it.  Hundreds of thousands of online communities are springing up everywhere due to the enhancement of technology and our use of social media. But there is a wasteland of inactive online communities out there, that had so... See more

If you're free on the 10th of January between 12:30am and 1:30pm and have an interest in Knowledge Management and Project Management then put aside some time and book your place. Judy Payne a member of the ISO working group that has drafted the standard will introduce and cover the following points: What is the status of the standard? Why is the standard needed? What are the key... See more

Growing your group, refreshing your member and keeping everyone in the loop as to what is going on is essential to continued activity and engagement in your online community. Blogging can be a great tool to help you do this. But how do you get started? How do you plan and review blogs and what different styles can you use?   Let’s start with the basic As you always have to quote... See more