This session summarizes how two very different government organizations used very different approaches to achieve the same goal — using KM collaborative tools to streamline agency operations. Speakers share their experiences in developing viable business cases, obtaining management support, their biggest challenges in launching their KM tools, and their return on investment in streamlining agency operations. They discuss their plans for improving their programs and moving forward to further optimize government operations. Take home tips and techniques to use in your organization.

Learn how to advance your KM implementation to the next level and increase the business value of existing KM efforts. Tracy Conn & Kathy Valderrama discuss the critical success factors for success, utilizing existing business problems to showcase value of knowledge-sharing, recognizing the synergies between collaboration and learning, ideas for sustaining communities of practice, and tips for measuring the success of knowledge-sharing initiatives. Hear about the lessons learned from the World Bank Group speakers in its KM journey during the last 15 years as well as its new knowledge agenda and strategy for “Open Data, Open Knowledge, Open Bank.” The speakers also discuss their own social collaboration tools, using competitions to spur innovation internally and externally and how open data enables anyone to find and make visible facts relevant to development.

Organizations that invest the most in their KM programs to promote participation and measure that participation most rigorously are achieving a financial ROI of two dollars for every dollar spent per participating employee, a healthy ROI. Lemons discusses how KM practitioners can drive successful engagement, adoption and participation, including tricks to speed up the rate at which employees use and contribute to collaboration and social networking.  Many enterprises will lose, in the course of the next few years, a large part of their working force (an estimated 76 million Baby Boomers) while a new generation of employees will arrive. Steps can be taken to avoid losing the organizational expertise of retired employees and to ensure knowledge transfer to new employees. Malaison explains the 10 essential stages involved in creating the memory of an enterprise using 2.0 tools in order to transmit critical expertise.

American Outcomes Management (AOM), a leader in home infusion/IV therapy services, needed a solution that allowed its field nurses, independent of their location, to access patient charts and wanted to reduce the cost of a paper environment. Today, AOM utilizes the Apple iPad, document management software and an e-forms program to streamline its day-to-day business operations. Hear how AOM improved organization, streamlined patient chart maintenance and billing efficiency, and gave nurses time to concentrate on patient care. Brad Teed shares tips for records managers using SharePoint 2010 as well as best practices.

Cindy Gordon shares research on the latest collaboration, social, mobile and immersive virtual business trends and supports it with examples of leading practices and lessons learned from enterprise companies such as RIM, IBM, Microsoft, Vale Inco, WellsFargo, and more. Take away practical insights on both strategy and implementation to support your global knowledge management and collaboration/social needs.

To manage business operations — let alone innovate — amid frequent restructurings, outsourcings, and retirements, leaders must quickly capitalize on hidden know-how that lives inside our teams, processes, and experts. Katrina Pugh discusses a facilitated process, Knowledge Jam, where conversation is at the center of knowledge transfer.  Together, knowledge-seekers and knowledge-originators draw out the context and reasoning behind their know-how, so that they can apply knowledge quickly. A conversationculture begins to shift us from transaction to discovery.  As a result, organizations improve operations, accelerate new product development, and produce productive action out of their social media initiatives.

You don't want to miss this closing session!  In this "Panel Challenge" the moderator presents some tough questions for panel members, based on the experiences and practical issues encountered by one Government Agency (U.S Army CASCOM) during its ongoing  implementation of Knowledge Management (KM), specifically from the  vantage point of different stakeholders. The session approaches KM from  individual users' perspectives, whether it be a young Soldier, employee,  middle manager, or senior leader, each having different expectations and  requirements from a KM program. Uniqueness aside, all organizations share fundamentally common challenges in successfully launching KM  programs, but when viewed from the individual user and stakeholder perspective it's clear KM is not one tool, but a tool box of different  techniques and technologies. While the challenges pointed out in this  session are examples from a single DOD organization, they are shared by  all, and this discussion provides an opportunity for planting seeds of innovation and creativity in overcoming obstacles and challenges with KM  implementations.