We were so pleased to welcome folks to the Consortium for Service Innovation’s first ever virtual Member Summit last month. While we wish we could have met in person, we were thrilled that the community and connections we’ve come to count on translated into virtual space!
“If one is mentally out of breath all the time from dealing with the present, there is no energy for imagining the future.”
-Elise Boulding, Sociologist, from The Clock of the Long Now
Our aim, as always, was to create some time to explore and imagine a future state. The agenda was designed to include a mix of presentations and time for participant interaction.
Congratulations to Laurel Poertner, pictured left above, for being designated a Consortium Innovator for her many contributions to the Consortium’s thinking!
With the move to virtual, we experimented with some new opportunities for engagement including a dedicated Slack Workspace the Zoom chat window. The Slack Workspace became a fun mix of channels including #kcsnerd and #coffeetalk, as well as a way to exchange ideas and discuss items related to any number of topics. During presentations, presenters designated colleagues in the Zoom chat who could answer questions and offer additional dialogue with participants. This created dynamic interactions during presentations which would be very hard to replicate standing on a stage.
Another benefit of a virtual event: we were able to record Summit presentations! Consortium for Service Innovation members can find recordings and slide decks on the Member Summit 2020 page in the wiki.
Day One
Summit discussions began with an exploration of the Consortium’s current thinking around the idea that value must be co-created. What if we designed interactions around the idea that channel success and channel value creation are not necessarily the same thing?
We heard from many of our brave and curious member companies over the course of the Summit, including on day one:
- Supporting our Healthcare Heroes: KCS during COVID-19 at athenahealth – Kachina Miller, athenahealth.
- Architecting an Intelligent Swarming framework that transforms your business – Monique Cadena and Paula Boucher, Akamai.
Day Two
Day two was a full day of Open Space, a facilitation technique that capitalizes on the collective experience and interests of those present. It is a very effective method for problem solving or defining opportunities when the outcome is not known. The group identified 16 topics covering a wide range of problems or questions including:
- How should support leaders be thinking differently about their business?
- KCS in the age of automation
- Nuts and Bolts of Intelligent Swarming
Each topic was discussed in a breakout session; notes from each session can be found in the wiki.
Day Three
Day three included concurrent sessions featuring member experiences:
- Badging Program for sustaining KCS activities – Romain Garcia, PTC
- A Human First approach to the organizational network – Laurel Poertner, F5
- Finding the FLOW: identifying the perfect balance between skill, challenge and employee motivation – Ludwig Heil, Poly
- Quantifying the impacts of KCS – Nathan Chandler and Royce Abel, Autodesk
We also had a conversation with Bit Rambusch, VP eService and Knowledge Management at Dell Technologies, about effectively communicating across a large enterprise. Bit emphasized the importance of speaking to your audience, understanding your stakeholders, and ensuring the why (“what’s in it for me”) is clear and consistent.
In closing, Amy Dotson from Sage, Christina Roosen from Akamai, and Arnfinn Austefjord from the Consortium shared the work done by over 25 Consortium members and their companies this past year on Understanding Success by Channel. An attempt to understand the value that knowledge provides to the organization, the work has started with a focus on self-service measures but will expand as member companies continue to test the measures. The paper is available to the public here; let us know what you think!
Thanks so much to everyone who made the first virtual member summit a success!
For a more detailed event recap, check out the recording below. Members can find Summit recordings and slide decks on the Member Summit 2020 page in the wiki.