~200 Words provided to KMWorld Magazine

Below is the text that I provided for Hugh McKellar about KMers

Last November at the KMWorld conference in San Jose a new community was born. While most online communities require email reminders to keep members informed of recent activity, KMers works exclusively through Twitter. It helps to answer the question, “why should I use twitter”.

Every Tuesday at 12pm ET experienced and newbie KMers meet to discuss a facet of Knowledge Management selected by the community. The chat encompasses an hour and is usually broken into four 15 minute probing questions around which the community shares thoughts, questions, and best practices.

The website (http://KMers.org) is custom built on the Drupal platform and is a model for how asynchronous online communities can be consistently re-invigorated by synchronous activity. Even those who haven’t yet found value from Twitter can watch the chat at http://KMers.org/chat. Joining is as simple as signing up for a Twitter account and logging in.

Recent topics include
• How do you market KM in organisations?
• KM and Google Wave
• Monitoring, Assessing KM
• Personal Knowledge Management
• Knowledge for Innovation
• Lead by Example and Model Desired Behaviors

Robert Swanwick (@swanwick on Twitter) and Johan Lammers (@weknowmore) are continuing to improve the site in order to best support the community during and between chats. Contact them directly with questions or comments.