W1. KM 101

Monday, November 6: 9:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.

Are you new to knowledge management? Want to learn about all the possibilities for making your organization smarter, more collaborative, innovative, and productive? Join our expert knowledge manager to gain insights and ideas for building a robust KM program in your organization—even if it is called by another name! This workshop highlights a range of potential enterprise KM activities being used in real organizations and shares how these activities are impacting the bottom line. It shows real KM practices and discusses various tools and techniques to give those new to KM a vision of what is possible in the enterprise.

W2. Maximizing Effectiveness, Efficiency & Innovation of Knowledge-Intensive Activities

Monday, November 6: 9:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.

Led by experienced KM practitioners, this workshop focuses on KM fundamentals, principles and concepts, specifically how to enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of planning, problem solving, decision making, collaboration, continuity, innovation, and learning in any organization. They discuss using knowledge repositories/forums on SharePoint to maximize learning, innovation, and to support the decision-making cycle, mission, and vision; using online meetings and chat to enhance KM activities; KM tools to use as enablers such as SharePoint, online meetings, chat, OneNote, lessons learned/AARs, etc.; transforming knowledge-intensive activities into a knowledge process with related goals and objectives to support decision making; new knowledge creation (innovation), learning, and elearning tips; strategic knowledge gap analysis and knowledge audits; KM failures; applying KM as part of your daily business processes; and more. Gain insights, techniques, and best practices for making your daily business process more innovative, effective, and efficient using KM.

W3. Improving Internal & External Knowledge Sharing

Monday, November 6: 9:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.

Expert knowledge is difficult to capture and transfer effectively because it involves deeply embedded skills that an expert may not be consciously aware of using and may not understand how to share. The challenge this poses is how to capture and transfer that knowledge among coworkers and external partners who need to work together on critical, high-stakes projects. Without effective knowledge transfer strategies, these valuable lessons learned and best practices are often lost. This is especially difficult with experts in niche specialties, when parties are geographically dispersed, and when the people who need the knowledge work in different organizations. The knowledge in each of these situations can be easily lost, yet it is knowledge essential to the success of the mission, especially in emergency situations such as responses to natural disaster events that are time-critical. Based on case studies of more than 200 top-level executives, engineers, and scientists at Fortune 500 companies; the military; and multiple government agencies, this workshop begins by offering a background of knowledge transfer and flow strategies and then offers effective processes for enhancing knowledge flow at all levels of organizations—both internally and externally. It covers the impact of internal vs. external parties on knowledge transfer, as well as maintaining knowledge flow when organizations are geographically dispersed. Best practices and tools are shared for capturing key knowledge, analyzing and documenting that knowledge, and multiple methods to transfer that key knowledge. The workshop provides an open forum for addressing individual challenges that participants are facing.

W4. Getting Good Evidence for a KM Plan

Monday, November 6: 9:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.

A good deal of knowledge use in organizations is not directly observable: It happens in interactions between people and is embedded in processes, tools, and artifacts. People are not necessarily good witnesses to their own knowledge needs. This workshop addresses the question of what counts for evidence in KM planning and measurement and evaluates the strengths and weaknesses of different methods for gathering insight into KM gaps, needs and opportunities, to use in planning interventions and evaluating outcomes. It looks at examples, input from a global survey of knowledge managers on KM assessment methods, and ways you can create KM plans for the future.

W5. Search Managers Boot Camp

Monday, November 6: 9:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.

Congratulations! You’ve just been given the responsibility for search at your organization! Perhaps there is a new initiative to improve search, or perhaps the previous search manager mysteriously disappeared; in any case, you’ve discovered that search is a deceptively tricky domain, and that the expectations of many of your stakeholders are difficult to meet or even to define. This workshop provides an orientation and exposure to the key issues, effective processes, and technology—independent of what brand of search engine you use. It provides lay-of-the-land information and approaches to get you off to a good start. Topics include getting started and where to find practical guidance in search management; kinds of tasks and roles involved in managing search; building a cross-functional team; assessing the current state of search; establishing a vision and creating a findability strategy; getting stakeholders together and constructively involved; discovering and managing expectations; top misconceptions about search and how to educate your organization; top five and next five tools and techniques for improving search; updates and improvements; and measuring search: KPIs, tools, and techniques for internal search engine optimization. If you have been in the search manager’s role for a while but feel like you are missing a grounding in successful practices and management techniques, this workshop is still useful.

W6. Designing Collaboration for Success

Monday, November 6: 9:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.

Effective collaboration is the key for any organization that seeks to be highly functioning. Leading effective collaboration is a critical 21st-century skill. Yet collaboration is much misunderstood. Too often, senior management believes collaboration to be primarily about people being able to “play nicely with each other.” But effective collaboration requires much more than good social skills. It requires good design. Learn how to design an effective collaboration effort and how to lead it to success. The workshop covers the structural components and people processes of good collaboration, as well as the facilitation techniques that help collaborators work more effectively with each other. Get lots of tips and insights from our experienced practitioner!

W7. KM Learning Labs

Monday, November 6: 9:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.

The Knowledge Management Office of The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. has developed fun and interactive games to promote and educate large groups of employees about KM concepts. These interactive games are shared with employees at annual events called Learning Labs. After the games are developed and deployed at the Learning Lab events, they are reused by incorporating them into smaller KM introductory courses provided for new employees on a quarterly basis. The objective of this workshop is to describe and explain the development of KM Learning Lab games, and then to have the workshop participants actually experience one of the games called, KM Saves Time—The Case of the Perpetual Motion Tire, a game inspired by the classic board game, Clue. After the game is played by all workshop participants, an opportunity for questions and comments is provided.

W8. Exclusive Look at the Best of Leading Edge Intranets

Monday, November 6: 9:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.

Modern intranets are no longer restricted to just corporate communications and content. They play a much stronger role in meeting staff and business needs. While intranets are evolving at a rapid pace, they remain hidden away behind the firewall. It’s therefore hard for intranet and digital workplace teams to see what other leading organizations are doing. This workshop shares worldwide examples across five fundamental purposes: content, communications, culture, collaboration, and social activity. Register for this exclusive behind- the-firewall look at leading-edge intranets, and bring your hardest intranet questions to our experienced workshop leader!

W9. Office 365 Strategies for Maximizing KM Outcomes

Monday, November 6: 9:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.

Are you overwhelmed with the different possibilities of features and capabilities in Office 365 and wondering how to get started? If so, this workshop is definitely for you! Take a look at how Office 365 can help enable your knowledge management objectives by looking at the key capabilities and how they support business outcomes. Find out about the key tools available in Office 365 and explore deployment and adoption strategies so that you can ensure that you are successful—from planning to rollout to governance and adoption and everything in between. Get a good understanding of how you can plan your Office 365 deployment to maximize your KM objectives and a framework that you can apply when you get back to the office.

W10. Building & Curating Bodies of Knowledge

Monday, November 6: 9:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.

Knowledge doesn’t manage itself. No matter how far AI evolves, knowledge, whether human or digital, will always need human curation. Knowledge curation is one of the least understood aspects of KM. Yet given the accelerated growth of both explicit and hidden knowledge, especially in large datasets, knowledge curation is more critical than ever. You’ve seen no shortage of tools and techniques for building knowledge bases and repositories. Yet the question remains, “How do I design, build, and maintain a body of knowledge that’s easily accessible by myself and others?” This workshop helps to do just that. Gain an understanding of the four main pillars of knowledge curation: 1) the source of the knowledge (you and other subject matter experts); 2) the knowledge itself; 3) the people receiving the knowledge; and 4) the platform and process for putting it all together. Some key elements include how to: determine what knowledge is worth capturing and in what form; reconcile different world views, mental models, and learning modalities, especially among mentors and mentees; determine which tools and approaches are appropriate for different types of knowledge; integrate the various tools and approaches into a single system; vet knowledge and keep it up-to-date; and make knowledge flow and grow, from a single individual to an entire community of experts and practitioners. Join our experienced KM expert and take home an initial plan for setting up and implementing a knowledge curation program for your organization.

W11. Practical Ways to Demonstrate the Value of KM

Monday, November 6: 9:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.

Most organizations that practice knowledge management (KM) make some effort to measure the health of their programs by using activity measures to assess how many employees use KM approaches and tools, how often they use them, and how satisfied they are. Organizations with more mature KM programs, however, go beyond simply tracking activity. A more sophisticated approach, called value path measurement, involves evaluating how KM activities influence business processes and outcomes. In other words, is participation translating into results? Tracing links between knowledge sharing and key cost, quality, and efficiency metrics goes a long way toward proving that KM is a value-added business process that yields a positive ROI. This interactive workshop gives participants tools and techniques to define the value path for their KM programs and approaches. It begins with a brief overview of the importance of measuring the impact of KM—why it matters—then moves through a series of activities to define the value path and identify the business measures that support the value path.

W12. KM Strategy

Monday, November 6: 1:30 p.m. - 4:30 p.m.

This workshop, by a KM pioneer and popular KMWorld speaker, focuses on how to build a successful KM strategy and revitalize knowledge sharing within your organization. Dave Snowden, our engaging workshop leader, takes participants through a step-by-step approach to rethinking the role of the KM function within an organization. It includes creating a decision/information flow map to understand the natural flows of knowledge; defining micro-projects that directly link to the decision support needs of senior executives; mapping the current flow paths for knowledge within the organization; and finding natural ways to manage the knowledge of the aging workforce as well as the IT-enabled apprenticeship. Using real-world examples, Snowden shares winning strategies and insights to rejuvenate your knowledge-sharing practices.

W13. Innovation Communities: Putting KM at the Center of Strategy

Monday, November 6: 1:30 p.m. - 4:30 p.m.

Innovation communities are a KM technique focused on the development of strategy and the implementation of business model innovation. This workshop illustrates how these communities can be used to accelerate innovation, derisk change, and greatly improve employee engagement. Learn: why strategy development and business model innovation are knowledge challenges, why networked approaches are so well-suited to KM practice in today’s VUCA environment (volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous.), and explore case studies on how organizations that have used innovation communities to create effective conversations between senior management and staff focused on business model improvement. Develop an innovation community blueprint for your own organization and learn how to sell it to decision makers. From our experienced practitioner, gain theory, case studies, and practical tools for using and explaining the impact of innovation communities. If you’ve always felt that KM should be used to spark and sustain business model innovation, this workshop is for you.

*Participants are requested to bring their own device in the form of a phone, laptop, or tablet to maximize the engagement experience. 

W14. Taking Knowledge Transfer to the Next Level

Monday, November 6: 1:30 p.m. - 4:30 p.m.

We are well into the long-anticipated wave of retirements and accompanying efforts to transfer critical knowledge before it goes out the door. A fair amount of knowledge, in the form of lessons learned stories, checklists, rules, and formulas, has already been transferred. While useful, these approaches work primarily at the surface level, addressing what to do only in specific situations. Such methods have proven to be ineffective in complex, rapidly changing environments. This workshop draws upon a growing body of research in cognitive neuroscience, backed by more than a decade of field experience in transferring knowledge at a deep structure level. It focuses on identifying and operating on the underlying thought and decision processes that went into building the knowledge in the first place. Experience the six steps of deep learning: thinking, observing, enumerating, expressing, assessing, and adjusting. Increase your powers of observation by viewing situations from multiple perspectives. Connect the dots and see the big picture. Break detrimental learning habits that are holding you and your team back. Build and grow your personal body of knowledge and improve your ability to communicate what you’ve learned so others may benefit. In addition to the worksheets and handouts, receive a complimentary copy of the book: Deep Learning Manual: The Knowledge Explorer’s Guide to Self-Discovery in Education, Work, and Life.

W15. Building a Text Analytics Platform

Monday, November 6: 1:30 p.m. - 4:30 p.m.

Analytics to Overcome Information Overload, Get Real Value From Social Media, and Add Big(ger) Text to Big Data Text analytics (text mining, noun phrase extraction, auto-categorization, auto-summarization, and social media or sentiment analysis) is becoming essential to any field that utilizes or tries to understand unstructured text. To develop both practical applications and deeper research results requires the development of a text analytics platform that incorporates the integration of all of these techniques. This workshop, based on a recent book, takes attendees through the entire process of creating a text analytics platform including basic analytics techniques from deep learning/machine learning, rule building and how to integrate them using a modular approach, making the business case and the people and content resources needed, an evaluation process to select the right text analytics software for your organization, an iterative development process that combines entity and fact extraction with categorization, and sentiment analysis to add depth and intelligence to all the components. It uses case studies to illustrate these processes and shares the range of applications that can be built with text analytics, from advanced expertise applications to new uses of social media.

W16. Search Clinic: Understanding, Applying, & Fixing SharePoint Search

Monday, November 6: 1:30 p.m. - 4:30 p.m.

Search is one of the most powerful and useful workloads in SharePoint, and is used by everyone; but too often it fails—largely due to poor understanding of how to apply it and deploy it well. This workshop focuses on the search capabilities of SharePoint 2013, SharePoint 2016, and SharePoint Online and how to match them to a variety of search needs and strategies. Attendees get tips and tricks they can apply immediately. We share effective techniques in the context of case studies and practical tips. Attendees gain an understanding of how to apply SharePoint search capabilities successfully, as well as what pitfalls to avoid. Bring your search challenges to work through them in a “clinic” format. In the process, we cover the key capabilities of SharePoint search and how to apply them successfully. If you are willing to show your system to other attendees, contact the instructor to work through some issues ahead of time and use them as examples.

W17. Creative Techniques for Facilitating Change

Monday, November 6: 1:30 p.m. - 4:30 p.m.

Change management is a critical people process for any organization that seeks to excel. Unfortunately, good change management is hard to find. Most of us have been on the receiving end of at least one unnecessarily painful change management process. Yet it does not need to be this way! In this workshop, basically a field guide for agents of change, learn ways of leading a change effort that take less of a toll on the people and processes involved. Filled with tips and practical techniques, participants learn how to be more effective agents of change in the field.

W18. Engagement Strategies for KM Adoption: Games Help!

Monday, November 6: 1:30 p.m. - 4:30 p.m.

Have you ever built a slick KM solution or collaboration tool that no one uses? We have and survived to tell the tale. New knowledge-sharing processes can fail if the resistance to change is greater than the ability to bridge the gap between the new process and the target people. Without a meaningful understanding of “What’s in it for me?” employees don’t readily contribute to knowledge-sharing circles. And because they don’t immediately see the value of sharing, contributing content in more formal environments is often done as an afterthought. Engagement strategies that include effective communication tactics entice users to try something new and help remove barriers to adoption. This engagement workshop focuses on how to identify and select appropriate engagement strategies based on target audiences and desired results. It includes playing the KM Experiential Learning Game, The Journey to the Lost Gold of Atlantis. The primary goal of the game from a KM perspective is to create “aha” moments where each individual sees how his or her behavior either enables or hinders the flow of knowledge and ultimately the impact this has on how the company makes money or the ROI. With help from workshop leaders, get your Executive and Employee KM Engagement Strategy to use in your organization to improve engagement.

*Participants are requested to bring their own device in the form of a phone, laptop, or tablet to maximize the engagement experience. 

W19. Organizational Change Management: Hacking Behavior for KM Success

Monday, November 6: 1:30 p.m. - 4:30 p.m.

Creating value from learning and knowledge initiatives depends entirely on user adoption by changing behaviors and beliefs. As complex social systems, human organizations cannot be programmed—they can only be hacked. KM initiatives can benefit from coordinated change management efforts using the transformation road maps common to IT implementations. But real knowledge sharing requires cultural changes that can only be catalyzed through deeper engagement at all levels of the organization. Any change effort is delicate, and KM programs are especially vulnerable because knowledge sharing can only be voluntary. This popular and practical workshop combines both the coordinating and catalyzing perspectives with real-world experience and advice. Learn the basic components of any successful change program; practice assessing and addressing challenges and opportunities in your organization; and look ahead to the latest thinking in organizational change. Come prepared to discuss your own unique situations and learn from your peers in facilitated, interactive discussions and exercises.

W20. Design Thinking & KM: From Ideas to Action

Monday, November 6: 1:30 p.m. - 4:30 p.m.

This workshop is for those who want to improve user experience, enhance services, expand brand loyalty, and grow revenue. It teaches the audience how to change organizational problems into innovative solutions through a human-centered design approach called design thinking. It covers transitioning through the phases of inspiration, ideation, and implementation; establishing an agile approach to fail fast to succeed sooner; and the importance of customer journey map design that shows your client where they are today to where they need to be in the future. Get insights to inspire innovation, learn to produce high-quality products and services through a human-centered approach, and understand how focusing on the user establishes an enviable competitive advantage.

W21. Knowledge Fast Flow: Maximize Innovation & Collaboration

Monday, November 6: 1:30 p.m. - 4:30 p.m.

The speed that information and idea flows into and through an organization is critical to its survival in our volatile and digitally-transforming world. In this interactive workshop, learn how to bring a slow-moving, zombie-like organization back to life. The workshop leader is an innovative KM practitioner and thought leader who has literally written the book on building smarter organizations. Practical takeaways include how to tell if your organization is in trouble, what to do to accelerate the speed of communication, the value of visual management, and how to make large-scale changes by starting small. Full of tips and techniques, come get lots of tricks to try in your organization!

W22. Communication: Ways to Improve for Good KM

Monday, November 6: 1:30 p.m. - 4:30 p.m.

Communication is the only way anything gets done. How come we are not better at it? In a post-Trump, post-truth world, being cautious is the least-safe option. Robust engagement with stakeholders, staff, and the public and getting your story out there confidently, early, and appropriately is the best way to be safe and protect your reputation. But in most cases the outside is going faster than the inside, and this needs to change. To do so requires being increasingly agile and effective at communicating with each other. The barriers to this are partly technological but primarily cultural and behavioral. It is therefore those cultural and behavioral aspects of communicating in a connected world on which Semple focuses. Join the former BBC CKO and author as he shares tools and techniques for improving communication in your organization. He illustrates these with real-world examples of how organizations are improving their communication and excelling at sharing knowledge within their enterprise.

W23. Increasing Team Innovation Capacity [CANCELLED]

Monday, November 6: 1:30 p.m. - 4:30 p.m.

The Forge is a Belgian consulting firm that supports teams in increasing their innovative capacity. We talk of an innovative culture if the team succeeds in offering an environment that stimulates its members to ideate and design new processes and products as answers to new and old problems. For the past 3 decades, lots of scientific research has been done on these issues. How can we build that culture—this stimulating environment? The Forge has translated this knowledge in handy tools and techniques that you can use in your team, but the key finding is that it is the quality of team and corporate communication that is the engine of innovation. This workshop is based on an award-winning work practice for knowledge workers, called adaptive or collaborative case management, which fundamentally changes how virtual teams work with information—creating a context in which they “extremely work out loud.” This process combined with principles for the increase of team innovation capacity, prompted joint experiments focusing on the innovation capacity of virtual teams using the collaborative case practice. Get the findings of this research and apply it in your own team.

Enterprise Solutions Showcase Grand Opening Reception

Monday, November 6: 5:00 p.m. - 6:30 p.m.

Open to all conference attendees, speakers, and exhibitors.

Keynote - People & Tech: The Future of Knowledge Sharing

Tuesday, November 7: 8:45 a.m. - 9:45 a.m.

People are at the core of knowledge-sharing—the key to high-functioning organizations. In John Seely Brown’s words, “We participate, therefore we are.” New and emerging technology can only enhance learning, sharing, and decision making to create successful organizations. Join our inspiring and knowledgeable speaker as he shares his view of the future of people and tech working together to share knowledge and create winning organizations.

Keynote - Text Analytics for Non-Experts

Tuesday, November 7: 9:45 a.m. - 10:00 a.m.

At past KMWorld/Taxonomy Bootcamp events, practitioners who are attempting to get started with auto- categorization projects have voiced a common set of frustrations. This talk explores text analytics and auto- categorization from a design and user-experience perspective. It outlines a manifesto for demystifying text analytics and for simplifying the process of auto-categorization. The manifesto is aimed at a constituency of content owners and taxonomists and hopes to help them take ownership of the categorization process so they can better control the search and discovery experience for their end users.

Enhancing the User Experience

Tuesday, November 7: 10:45 a.m. - 11:30 a.m.

Think it’s scary that Google collects huge amounts of data on everyone all the time? For sure! Yet by collecting and analyzing data from users, Findwise has created a personalized experience for a number of high-profile customers. Stenström and Andersson review the five key perspectives needed for a state-of-the-art enterprise search solution by exploring real-life scenarios. Get over being scared and learn to optimize user data. Going one step further, the user experience even outside search can be improved based on the indexed data. The search index then becomes the foundation for applications that empower collaboration and ease the daily work. Christian Gross discusses the advantages on the user experience of selected search based applications which Raytion implemented in the past year.

Making Search Optimization Effective, Repeatable, and Scalable

Tuesday, November 7: 11:45 a.m. - 12:30 p.m.

Deloitte has established a virtual Search Optimization Center team to tackle the hard problems of findability inside the enterprise. Romero shows the success of a "site health report" as applied to Deloitte's intranets. He shares the evolution of Deloitte's ability to identify tangible, precise, and impactful problems and focuses on the ever-evolving tools and techniques and advanced analytics used to identify problem areas proactively. But wait, there's more. Technology is only one element; education of content managers has also been a success story. Kamran Khan, CEO of Search Technologies, now part of Accenture Analytics, discusses the convergence of search and big data analytics to extract knowledge and business value.

Managing Large-Scale Search

Tuesday, November 7: 1:45 p.m. - 2:30 p.m.

The volume and variety of enterprise content continues to expand at a great rate. The cost of discarding information may now be higher than the cost of keeping it, given that you can search across hundreds of millions—or more—of items. Thus, approaches to search need to shift. This session outlines the practices—and the mindset—that come with scale, using some real-life examples plus a bit of current theory. Are you ready to embrace large-scale search?

The Cloud & Search

Tuesday, November 7: 2:45 p.m. - 3:30 p.m.

Cloud technologies are evolving at an enormous pace. A plethora of options, ranging from Infrastructure as a Service to Platform as a Service to end user ready Software as a Service, confront decision makers. Search-related cloud offerings include established technology vendors, niche players, and cloud products from Amazon and Microsoft. Klatt gives an independent overview of some of these options and advice on when to use which approach. His scenarios are both internal and public-facing, while Selvaraj gives pointers on how to set up a zero downtime, auto-scaling, and fully managed enterprise search solution on AWS.

AI, Bots, & Enterprise Search

Tuesday, November 7: 4:15 p.m. - 5:00 p.m.

With artificial intelligence (AI) and bots factoring heavily on the minds of many enterprises, common sense about providing quality information access within the enterprise can often get lost in the hype cycle. What AI and machine learning techniques are ready for the enterprise? Are bots just another input mechanism for enterprise search, or are they a paradigm shift in how users ask questions? Ingersoll presents use cases on where machine learning and bot technology shine, where the trusty ol’ search box still reigns, and how the three can be effectively combined into a modern search architecture. Onix will address how cognitive search represents business value and how to generate the business case.

Networking Reception in the Enterprise Solutions Showcase sponsored by Search Technologies

Tuesday, November 7: 5:00 p.m. - 6:00 p.m.

Stop by the showcase after a full day of stimulating conference sessions to mix and mingle with other conference attendees, speakers, and our conference sponsors.

Keynote - Wow, Woo, Win: KM for Customer Delight

Wednesday, November 8: 8:30 a.m. - 9:30 a.m.

Our popular writers, speakers, and authors of Wow, Woo, Win: Service Design, Strategy & the Art of Customer Delight look at how customer experience and service design can enhance knowledge sharing and success in organizations. They discuss the importance of designing your organization around service and offer clear, practical strategies based on the idea that the design of services is markedly different than manufacturing. Our speakers share with you how to create “Aha” moments when the customer makes a positive judgment and how to avoid “Ow” moments. They provide tips on how you and customers create a bank of trust, fueled by knowledge of each other’s skills and preferences.

Keynote - Relevance Maturity Model: Revolutionizing With AI-Powered Search

Wednesday, November 8: 9:30 a.m. - 9:45 a.m.

Everyone who engages with your organization is in search of something, whether it’s products, services, people, or support. Too much of their time is spent sifting through useless information. New advances in machine learning and AI technology, combined with contextual search, are finally bringing relevance to every interaction and are making knowledge management a key driver of real business results. See real-world examples of the impact that increased maturity has made on innovative companies. Learn actionable steps to increase the relevance of your organization and start positively impacting your bottom line.

Keynote - Energizing Communities of Practice

Wednesday, November 8: 9:45 a.m. - 10:00 a.m.

Communities of practice are a great way to develop expertise and innovation around specific interests. By infusing intelligence into many experiences and demonstrating some recent advances in Office 365 you’ll see how to leverage tacit and explicit knowledge in different ways as well as reuse and build upon the work of others. Our speaker has extensive experience in enterprise collaboration systems and currently leads intelligent search and discovery for Microsoft 365.  Expect lots of tips & examples for improving your KM initiatives.

The Ticking Clock on GDPR Compliance

Wednesday, November 8: 10:45 a.m. - 11:30 a.m.

Businesses that aren’t prepared for the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which rolls out next year, are in for a big shock. Hefty fines for non-compliance have the potential to affect an organization’s bottom line and overall reputation. Learn your company’s role and responsibilities in the transfer and storage of data, key questions to ask current or prospective cloud partners to ensure compliance, the importance of data location in relation to data privacy, and how to protect data that’s not only stored but also on the move.

The Many Flavors of Search & Discovery

Wednesday, November 8: 11:45 a.m. - 12:30 p.m.

The technologies and implementations of enterprise search and discover are ever changing. From how search works to what users expect to securing data, there are more flavors of search and discovery than there are of ice cream. Our experienced panel discusses what you need to know to keep up with the newest flavors of search while not forgetting how good a plain vanilla cone can be.

Your Search Platform Is Talking to You: Are You Listening?

Wednesday, November 8: 1:30 p.m. - 2:15 p.m.

Every time someone visits your website, they leave behind a gold mine of information that you can use to make your search better, improve your content, and get into your visitors’ heads. What’s the source of this gold mine? It’s your search platform logs, the signals you can set up and track, and, to a lesser extent, your web server logs. And if you’re using tools like Spark or Hadoop, you can integrate that information and improve your search even more.

Governing for Exceptional Search Capabilities

Wednesday, November 8: 2:30 p.m. - 3:15 p.m.

Consistently producing the right experience that is regulatory- compliant and aligned with a solid business case may be more important than search optimization, algorithms, Big Data, and other search aspects. Podnar focuses on the policies and standards required to deliver search results and a customer experience that is aligned with business objectives but also meets the regulator and legal requirements that drive the business. You can have them both.

Modernizing Enterprise Search for a New Customer Experience

The evolution of search technologies is changing the ways consumers expect to interact with businesses. Major players like Google and Amazon set consumers' expectations for what a great search & discovery looks like. How can businesses keep up and leverage available technology advances to create a more conversational and natural search experience? Maxime Prades, VP of Product at Algolia, a hosted Search API, will dive into how enterprises are modernizing their legacy search infrastructure and improving search performance, relevancy and experiences.

Solving Site Search

Wednesday, November 8: 4:00 p.m. - 5:00 p.m.

Two site search specialists share their knowledge from different perspectives. At SAS, a site search revamp taught Warner some valuable lessons. She advocates concentrating on some less-talked-about elements of search that are beyond the search engine, such as content, metadata, user search behavior, analytics, and accountability. Verizon’s Baumgartel sees new players entering the site search market, particularly in the ecommerce domain. He gives an overview and shows strategies on how to navigate the market.

Keynote - KM Buy-In: Proven Practices

Thursday, November 9: 8:45 a.m. - 9:45 a.m.

For a KM initiative to be successful, knowledge managers must secure the support of senior leaders before implementation. Early top management buy-in results in funding, resources, advocacy, usage, broad organizational support, and success—the program yields its expected benefits, KM is spoken of and written about positively by leaders, stakeholders, and users. Hear from our longtime KM practitioner about proven practices illustrated by real-world examples for securing resources, active participation, and ongoing advocacy from top leadership. Get lots of tips for leading an effective, sustainable KM program that is seen as essential to the success of companies in different industries, of different sizes, and with different cultures.

Keynote - Beyond the Box: How Search Is Driving Data Access in a Hybrid World

Thursday, November 9: 9:45 a.m. - 10:00 a.m.

For more than a decade, search technology has been used as the primary access point to the mountains of knowledge and data sitting behind an organization’s firewall. As environments evolve to account for private and public clouds, search is evolving beyond just the box to an API for human information. Will Hayes explores that evolution and talks about how search technologies and professionals play a key role in the enterprise cloud migration strategy.

Search as Your Digital Assistant

Thursday, November 9: 10:15 a.m. - 11:00 a.m.

All around us we see natural language processing (NLP) being integrated into our daily lives. Just look at Siri, Alexa, and Google Home. How can we bring NLP into the enterprise? Nelson explains how techniques and mechanisms of NLP can let us understand search queries more deeply, thus not only improving search but also providing an entirely new way for humans to interact with the corporation when answering questions.

Cognitive Computing Meets Search

Thursday, November 9: 11:15 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.

You say content search, I say content find—that’s the essence of the promise of cognitive computing. Applying this advanced technology in a meaningful way to enterprise search proves that today’s content-rich organization must be able to seamlessly commingle disparate sources and information and enable end users to search, navigate, and discover from a single, secure location. Bell looks forward to creating an Enterprise Find Engine.

Attendee Luncheon & Keynote - Cognitive Search & Analytics: What It Is & Why You Should Care

Thursday, November 9: 12:00 p.m. - 1:00 p.m.

If you are a believer in the data-driven organization (or even just curious) and have ever wondered what could happen if you cleverly combined the power of data collection, indexing, text mining, search, and machine learning into a unified platform and applied it within the enterprise, this talk is for you! Come learn about the state of cognitive search and analytics technology and how it is enabling great companies across a wide swath of industries to amplify mission-critical expertise within their business in a surprisingly short amount of time. Our speaker illustrates the technology in action with real-world examples.

PANEL: Mobile & Personalized Search: Tailoring the User Experience

Thursday, November 9: 1:00 p.m. - 1:45 p.m.

Who doesn’t search from a mobile device these days? The ubiquity of mobile poses interesting dilemmas for those implementing enterprise search and discovery. Fried has pulled together panelists who discuss what works and what doesn’t along with outlining best practices and future trends.

Making Secured Content Discoverable in SharePoint

Thursday, November 9: 2:00 p.m. - 2:45 p.m.

How do you let your users discover content they can’t see? How would someone know to ask for permission to access something they don’t know exists? Out of the box, SharePoint will only show search results for content they’re authorized to view. By leveraging standard security and search features of the SharePoint platform, combined with Cryptzone’s Security Sheriff enhancements and some custom code, technical research librarians were able to overcome this limitation.

More Content, More Problems: Content Strategy to the Rescue

Thursday, November 9: 3:00 p.m. - 3:45 p.m.

While Ubisoft in no way suffers from a lack of content, connecting users to the “right” document proved challenging. While waiting for a search engine overhaul, Ubisoft engaged its enterprise content management team. Smith helped develop a strategy to harmonize content, metadata, and customized search scopes to maximize relevance and minimize noise. Smith shares potential pitfalls, lessons learned, and Ubisoft’s return on investment.

Keynote - Creating Unified Views of Data With Semantic Graphs

Thursday, November 9: 4:00 p.m. - 4:15 p.m.

In recent years, document-centric search over information has been extended with the use of graphbased content and data models. The implementation of semantic knowledge graphs in enterprises is not only improving search in a traditional sense, but opens up a path of integrating all types of data sources in a most agile way. Linked data technologies have matured in recent years and can now be used as the basis for numerous critical tasks in enterprise information management. Hilger discusses how standards-based graph databases can be used for information integration, document classification, data analytics, and information visualization tasks. He shares how a semantic knowledge graph can be used to develop analytics applications on top of enterprise data lakes and illustrates how a large pharmaceutical company makes use of graph-based technologies to gain new insights into its research work from unified views and semantic search over heterogeneous data sources.

Closing Keynote - KM in the Age of Digital Transformation: Magic Sauce for a Successful Future

Thursday, November 9: 4:15 p.m. - 5:00 p.m.

At the cross-section of innovation, open data, and education, our speaker, a former government KM practitioner, shares her thoughts about the challenges and opportunities for organizations and communities in the coming years. She discusses empowering members of our communities and improving services using new tech like AI, machine learning, virtual and augmented reality, Internet of Things, predictive analytics, gamification, and more. How will people interact and share knowledge over the next decade? Are we moving toward anticipatory knowledge delivery (just enough, just in time, just for me), being in the flow of work at the teachable moment, establishing trust in a virtual environment, and learning from peer-to-peer marketplaces like Airbnb and Uber? Our longtime KM practitioner shares her insights about the evolving digital transformation of every part of our world and hints at the magic sauce we need for a successful future!