Tips on hosting knowledge-sharing events at KMWorld 2023

Due to its wild popularity, many organizations are finding themselves throwing AI at anything that sticks—or, more accurately, anything it might “make better.” The push for AI has left out a critical piece of the enterprise equation: human engagement and culture. People are at the heart of any organization, actively creating a culture that (hopefully) incites innovation, collaboration, and productivity.

In 2022, Technip Energies hosted an extremely successful event, designed around exchanging human experience and intelligence, which brought about high levels of engagement and learning for the company. This instance of successful in-person connection serves as an exemplary moment of nurturing human-centered culture, where intelligence—and not of the artificial variety—drove positive KM outcomes.

Luis Rodriguez, manager of knowledge management, Technip Energies, led KMWorld 2023’s session, “Humans Connect as AI Surges!” to share tips and lessons learned from the Technology Day (previously Expertise Day) event, offering insights on uniting humans and AI in effort to drive engagement and learning.

To preface his session, Rodriguez stated, “artificial intelligence isn’t really artificial. It’s coming from humans and our intelligence; it’s all real.”

Technip Energies is a company accelerating the energy transition, taking pride in solving real-world energy problems. With a large workforce underpinned by a small—but robust—knowledge management sector, the KM practitioners operating in the company saw an opportunity for connection.

Founded on bridging the gap between people, technology, and knowledge, Technology Day was developed to help experts and apprentices connect and share their experiences.

“We had to make a case for it,” explained Rodgriguez. He described that the case for Technology Day was to:

• Connect experts and employees
• Enable engagement
• Provide network opportunities
• Promote a learning organization
• Support ESG working groups

Technology Day was born from already proven practices—including Engineer’s Week Houston, Expertise Day Paris, and Tech. Newsletter India—that started as a global webinar. Over time, it grew with budgets and approvals, as well as engaging with various company roles that further chose to volunteer for the event.

Rodriguez stressed the importance of executive buy-in for a connection event like Technology Day. Selling the idea, as well as its value, is a foundational step in driving an event.

“Sponsorship is huge,” said Rodriguez. “You can’t do anything without executive sponsorship.”

Atop executive buy-in, Technip leveraged several tools—such as MS Team and Channels, XLeap brainstorm tool, the company intranet, and enterprise wiki—to execute the event successfully. A well-organized event will become a successful one, according to Rodriguez.

With all of these components in play, Technip was able to transform Technology Day as an in-person event, broadening its efficacy.

At Technology Day, they offer:

• Technical presentations and expert panels
• Engineering and technology booths/showcases
• Recognition of experts
• Catering (coffee, breakfast, lunch, etc.) to keep up engagement

At Technology Day 2022, Rodriguez reminisced, saying how “cool it was to see so many people sharing knowledge.”

To capture its value, Technip facilitated a retrospective session using crowdsourcing software (XLeap), further justifying future events.

As it rapidly grew in success, Technip made several changes to the event, including:

• Global webinars moved to the day before the event
• Additional locations
• Tracked learning hours
• Increased budgets
• Inventor recognition ceremonies

KMWorld returned to the J.W. Marriott in Washington D.C. on November 6-9, with pre-conference workshops held on November 6.

KMWorld 2023 is a part of a unique program of five co-located conferences, which also includes Enterprise Search & Discovery, Enterprise AI World, Taxonomy Boot Camp, and Text Analytics Forum.