An Arabian Experience

Earlier this month, Patrick and I travelled to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia to conduct a workshop for the Islamic Development Bank. The gentleman who invited us, Naguib Chowdhury, blogged about his thoughts regarding the workshop here

Like him, I too entered into it with preconceptions about the workshop. I imagined that running a workshop in the Middle East would be very different from running one in Asia. In many ways, they are. For example, you need to be more attuned to religious, cultural and gender sensibilities there. But at the end of the day, what makes a workshop work is not just what you but also what the participants bring to it. And I have to say that I was both humbled and jazzed by a room full of smart, eloquent people eager to share and learn from each other. Despite the 17-hr door-to-door journey, I’m already looking forward to the next workshop with them.

2 Comments so far

same here… I’m looking forward to the next workshop
i really like the style of running such a workshop
on behave of the team I would like to thank both Patrick and Edgar for the great jb they did

Posted on June 21, 2009 at 02:24 PM | Comment permalink

I concur with all, it was a superb knowledge sharing environment. Thumbs up for all the stakeholders: trainers, participants as well as organizers.
Reminiscing (technically speaking- doing one of the core functions of KM, REMEMBERING!)I came up with the following. Do you remember colleagues:

1. From point of sharing at larger scale, KM is not natural; human beings are not good at large scales.
2. Corporate memory is like blood steam. It has to keep circulating. Storing and keeping it alone do not suffice.
3. Defining K and KM is like asking fish to define water. We breath it, act it and live in it.
4. There is no universal or best way of doing KM.

Posted on June 22, 2009 at 08:12 PM | Comment permalink

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