Venkat

I would have to go back and review all the sources cited to be sure, but I don’t remember any of them presenting sound empirical evidence to support statements like “[Gen-Xers] are fundamentally pragmatic, as opposed to visionary/world-changing”; “[Boomers] reluctantly ‘sold out,’ went all establishment, and when they finally got those Vice-President titles and a chance to set the agenda, they revived the ideology of their counter-cultural youth and made it corporate policy.”; “Boomers don’t really get or like engineering and organizational complexity”; “No Gen X’er or Millenial would dare to reduce the complexity of real-world social engineering to a fixed “charter” or presume to nominate any work process as “best.”” (I bet there are many that would – and if we stop striving to share best practices what does that bode for performance improvement?); or “…the doctrinaire vacuity of typical Boomer manifestos…”

Of course let’s suppose that all these age-based labels are accurate. The audiences at KM conferences are from across the spectrum of ages. And the vast majority of them see a natural relation between KM and SM. If there truly is some fixed KM mindset that is diametrically opposed to SM media, I must be too dim to see it.

And one last note on stereotyping. While I fall into all sorts of classifications (GenXer, male, white, Capricorn, right-handed, western-educated, right-handed, married, last child, scientist, atheist, etc.), I would fault anyone that believes they can explain my behavior based on any of those categories. Worse yet would be to stereotype anyone in one of those categories based on only meeting a few.

Generational analysis seeks to link cultural events that shape the formative stages of people’s lives with their behavior. If you actually read the article, you would realize there is no ageism — I was summarizing research that talks about values of 4 generations and how they inform behavior. I point out many ‘generation characteristic’ features not just for Boomers, but also X’ers and Millenials.

You CAN in fact judge me by one post. I stand by that post as representative of my views, and I was NOT having a bad day. You are presuming to own the moral ground here and are benevolently trying to give me a ‘way out’ I don’t need it.

What you should perhaps think about is this: is your investment in KM so close to your heart that you cannot read nuance, and tell the difference between ageism and other unfounded biases and research? Do you really think people would have written entire books about generational attitudes without thought? Not just Salkowitz, but many more. Read Don Tapscott’s latest, “Grown Up Digital” to see the amount of research and care that has gone into this body of literature.

Venkat

And please do not assume that my thoughts on social media in the enterprise reflect my view of social media in general. Of course I do not “deny the creativity of an entire technological trend.” I’ve spent years trumpeting the importance of social media as a transformative power in our society. But when you discuss it in the context of KM, you are entering the realm of performance improvement within the enterprise. I do believe that, in that realm, social media actualizes the type of collaboration, networking, and knowledge sharing that KM professionals have been seeking for decades.

Again, I don’t understand how you can “merely chronicle a war” that does not seem to exist. Perhaps we have just met radically different KM professionals in our work. I agree with Michael Novak’s comment, “Venkat seems to be confusing Knowledge Management with something else — but I’m not sure what.” The vast majority of the KM folks I know welcome social media and the way it allows people to network and share tacit knowledge.

As for reasonable disagreement on your post, I will say that agree with “Online Communities are not USENET V3.0″ and I partially agree with “KM is about ideology, SM is about the fun of building.” For the later I think that the “fun” of SM applied withing the enterprise helps us reach the ideals of KM. Your remaining eight dimensions were based on stereotyping individuals based on their age and then assuming the traits of each stereotyped class were universally established. I find that assumption to be in error. And since all eight are social commentaries based errant stereotypes, there is really no reasonable way to respond other than pointing out the fallacy of their construct.

I merely chronicled a war. You, on the other hand, seem to have become what you most fear: you are starting a war against my (imagined) ageism.

Where YOU stand is starkly clear though: “Social media actualizes the idealism of KM. In the workshops I deliver on Enterprise 2.0, I often refer to it as “KM 1.53” It is just intellectually dishonest to deny the creativity of an entire technological trend and pretend that it does no more than ‘actualize’ something else.

Venkat