Report of actKM conference

• Six annual actKM conference 2005, held 26-27 October in Canberra, Australia. The conference theme was: managing knowledge for better performance. Participants were mainly from Australia. Over two session days the following topics were covered:
  · Knowledge, productivity & performance – what does it all mean?
  · Creating the knowledge environment for better organizational performance
  · Knowledge, productivity & performance in teams
  · Enabling individual knowledge worker productivity & performance – what works & what doesn’t
  The conference was divided to 3 different sections: papers, workshops and research forum. The actKM Research Forum was held for the second time at this year's actKMAnnual Conference. Six doctoral candidates at various stages of thecandidacy, including one recent graduate, presented some very interestingpapers on their research topic and findings. I presented my paper at research forum. My topic was: “The implications of knowledge management for the library and information professions”. The research forum directors were tasked with selecting the best paper, They decided to award the prize jointly to:
• Monica Kennedy, PhD Candidate, University of Canberra, ExploringExperiences of Learning and Knowing at Work: findings from a publicsector case study
• Dr Michelle Mau, DBA Graduate, Southern Cross University, MappingInformation Flows in an Australian Public Sector
  
  LIS professionals in actKM conference
  For me as a student with the LIS background investigating the phenomenon of knowledge management in the LIS environment as my PhD project, the most interesting aspect of the conference was the great participation of librarians in the conference as speakers or participants. Mentioning all names is far that the scope of this short report. But two famous and influencing people from the LIS background were Nerida Hart and Patrik Lambe. Nerida Hart was member of conference committee team and ran 2 workshops with her colleagues entitled: “Australian Public Service KM community of practice” and “Why organizations don’t get best value from their knowledge and information resources: an emergent causal examination”. Nerida has worked in libraries since 1973. She is currently Director of the Knowledge and Information Services Section, Family and Community Services Library. Patrick Lambe and his colleagues presented a paper in the conference. Patrick Lambe is the Founder and Principal Consultant of Straits Knowledge, a Singapore-based research and consulting firm that focuses on how Asian organisations use their knowledge. He has a Master's degree in Information Studies from the University of London, and is currently Vice President of the Singapore Information and Knowledge Management Society. Patrick has worked in several academic and special libraries in the UK.