ServiceNow’s Knowledge event is over for another year and they’re already planning the next one. The combined user conference/sales event gathered 2000 people in the recently reopened Hyatt Regency in New Orleans. A stunning venue, it was branded ServiceNow and completely overrun with IT people.

As far as events go, it was well-run with an excited, enthusiastic vibe. With a good-sized representation of prospects, I thought it was interesting though, that there wasn’t a clear session track for those guys and the Innovation of the Year award wasn’t given the kind of attention I’d expect at an event like this. Practitioners and administrators, on the other hand, were well catered to with labs and a great array of breakout sessions. It was sometimes hard to choose sessions and I know there were at least two or three that I now regret not seeing.

ServiceNow’s Knowledge12 event is well and truly underway, and it’s not even officially opened yet. The number of people here is staggering. That’s just the people that have been here for pre-conference training. The rest of the delegates will have been arriving today in time for tomorrow’s opening breakfast. Two thousand people are expected to attend.

I read an interesting post recently, by James Dellow, about the relationship of our physical work environments and our work habits. He points out that the availability of wifi has enabled the concept of activity based working (ABW). This is where an organisation provides no permanent desks for employees, but rather allows people to sit in project-based groups. The work environment is far more fluid and some organisations even provide fewer desks than staff, encouraging them to work from home. On the surface, that sounds pretty great. The business saves money, and the employees have the freedoms and flexibility they’ve been wishing for.

I’m excited to be supporting this Sunday’s Trampoline Day in Sydney. This is its fourth year, the first one in Sydney, and it promises to be a great event. It’s been running twice a year in Melbourne only, until now.

What’s an unconference? It’s like a regular conference, but there’s no set theme and no set speakers. It relies on the attendees to participate and volunteer to run a 20 minute session in whatever way they choose, and on whatever topic they choose. There are four or five sessions running concurrently and attendees are free to roam from one to the other, whenever they like.

If you’re in Sydney, come along; it’s free. If there are tickets still available, you can get them here. You might even see a casual 20 minutes from me.

The Yammer tour kicked off yesterday in Sydney. It comes to Melbourne tomorrow. It was certainly a well-patronised event and it was great to see so many people taking interest in what has become a new communication paradigm. I haven’t had much to do with Yammer. I have a login and just little old me in the Home network, but fortunately, Yammer created a network for everyone who had registered to attend the event. So, I had a chance to dive in a see how things really worked in there.

I was one of the guest speakers at a seminar on Thursday. The NSW branch of the itSMF held their first quarterly seminar for 2012 and the theme was Knowledge is Power. It was a terrific lineup and a full house. The Q&A panel, following the two presentations, yielded some great questions, many of which, I expected to hear. There was one, however, that I completely fudged my answer to, even though I was prepared for it—it’s the one obstacle knowledge wonks face all the time. I thought I’d take this opportunity to explain why I blew it and also to answer it again, in writing.

To paraphrase the question: aren’t we knowledge-managing our way out of a job; and therefore, shouldn’t I be anxious about sharing knowledge?

I came up to Sydney on Tuesday to attend my first NSW KM Forum evening. These events are held on the last Tuesday of each month, only go for around two hours and have been running for about six years. If you’re a knowledge wonk, it’s a great little networking opportunity. If you’re interested in knowledge management and are trying to improve it in your organisation, it’s well worth attending. The forum members are from a wide range of industries and all willing to share with and learn from others.

Just about every business has to make IT changes at some point that are going to impact customers. There’s a good way to do it and a bad way to do it. The bad way is to do it whenever you want and put out the fires if/when they happen. If I had a dollar every time something screwy happened in my career because of that, I’d have about forty bucks. So, I’m not a millionaire, but it’s still Not Good.

Here’s my tips for good change management that will get you well on your way.

As Facebook approaches IPO and Twitter becomes part of the general media landscape, corporate-sanctioned social media tools are slowly seeping into the workplace. Once you’ve made the cultural shift of getting people using tools like Yammer, it’s not much of a leap from being one of the cool kids to becoming another confused one.

People are starting to wonder how to blend the structured environment of a knowledge base with the more chaotic and time-sensitive social channel, or whether they must choose one over the other. Well, you can run both and frankly, you should.

A knowledge base is only as good as the information it contains. I think incorrect, out-of-date, and confusing articles are more common than most people would like to admit. Stay flush with your knowledge base currency by regularly reviewing existing articles. If you notice anything wrong with an article while you’re busy doing or looking for something else, flag it when you see it, so you can review it when you have time. If you’re following KCS methodology, articles will be in draft—ready for review—before being published. Just like any good writer has an editor, it’s good quality control to have a peer review your article for inconsistencies, anyway, before pushing the self-destruct publish button.