The Gurteen Perspective

The Knowledge: David Gurteen He’s the king of knowledge cafés. The model of knowledge sharing. The architect of the world’s most friendly knowledge website. Host to online discussion forums. Author of a monthly newsletter, now in its eighth year, with a subscription list of 15,000 people in 154 countries. He is one of the world’s most respected knowledge experts. Yet he is unassuming, not ‘authoritative’. Always open to other points of view. He is the David among KM Goliaths. Before David Gurteen became all that, he logged over 30 years in high technology industries as a professional software development manager and in the late ’80s worked for Lotus Development as ‘International Czar,’ responsible for ensuring that Lotus products were designed for the global marketplace. “This was one of the most rewarding and fun times of my career, as my job was really all about knowledge sharing and working with people,” he says. “It was also a KM role though, of course, the term was not used in those days. ” In 1993 he left Lotus and founded Gurteen Knowledge where he started out working as a Lotus Notes consultant. Lotus Notes was one of the first collaborative application development platforms that allowed users to communicate, coordinate and collaborate on a global scale. What he learnt developing such applications was that the real barriers to knowledge sharing and collaboration had little to do with the technology but more to do with the attitudes and behaviours of the people. Then in the mid-to-late ’90s with the birth of the commercial web and knowledge management (KM), he found a more natural home in KM and this led to the creation of his website, the publication of his knowledge letter and the formation of the Gurteen Knowledge Community with the purpose of accelerating people’s understanding of the need for new ways of seeing the word and of working. This has been his focus ever since. Knowledge community The Gurteen Knowledge Community is for people who are committed to making a difference, people who wish to share and learn from each other and who strive to see the world differently, think differently and act differently. Gurteen says the members are inclined to action, see themselves as thought-leaders and change activists, recognise the importance of understanding through dialogue and conversation, have a passion for learning, are open minded and non-judgmental by nature, and value diversity and cultural differences. People join the community to come together to take action, to explore new ways of working, to improve their understanding of the world, to meet like-minded people (and not so like minded), to share knowledge and to learn, to gain new and different perspectives and to give/gain support and motivation from other members. Membership is free and the only ‘obligation’ is to receive the free monthly newsletter. Members of the community are entitled to attend Gurteen Knowledge Café, meetings which are held regularly in London, along with the regional communities in Liverpool, Bristol, New York City, Zurich and Adelaide. Open cafés are held in various cities throughout the world – wherever he happens to be on business. This last 12 months alone have seen open cafés in Norway, Dubai, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Phoenix (US) and Sydney. “This is a huge part of who I am and what I’m about,” Gurteen says. “Whenever I visit a country on business, I mail my community and ask who would like to host an open Gurteen Knowledge Café. ” There are also knowledge cafés at conferences, and internally for organisations, plus knowledge café workshops where he teaches others how to run a café. David Gurteen The Knowledge