I neglected to post it earlier, but there is a two-week discussion with Edna Pascher on Strategic Renewal at AOK. It got off to a slow start, but in the course of two days generated 50 messages around several discussion threads. If you are all interested in where knowledge management is going, please sign up for AOK and join the conversation for next week (it's free!).
An example is one of Edna Pascher's observations in her opening material that knowledge work is volunteer work. AOK: Preparing for Conversations with Edna Pasher
... We have to understand that knowledge work is actually all volunteer work. You can make people come to work on time and leave on time, but they have to choose to contribute the best of their brain work. They have to choose to please a client, to help a colleague, to share their lessons learnt from their mistakes with their team. This is the challenge of KM.
With this in mind, the focus of knowledge management has nothing to do with building massive repositories of documents or best practices or annual reports. KM has to do with helping smart people do interesting work; with building the culture that encourages them to help their neighbor or to reflect on how they are working and think that it could be even better. The technology-project-of-the-moment may serve as a valuable resource for these people, but it is how they work that knowledge management can really benefit.