While there are a number of ways to engage in knowledge sharing one of the most powerful ones are of course the Brown Bag Session.
Brown bag seminars are generally offered to update the researching community about ongoing research. Usually held by schools and universities and governmental institutions, they involve lectures, presentations, or talks by researchers, mostly professors about their ongoing research. Professors may visit from other universities to talk about their research.
Brown bag seminars normally run an hour or two. Originally they were scheduled around lunchtime and participants were encouraged to bring their own lunch in a bag, explaining how the practice got its name. - Wikipedia
Why do this?
While there is no doubt that formalized learning, like training, contribute heavily towards professional growth within an organization, however, the single biggest learning tool at our disposal is on-the-job learning. This allows people to leverage existing processes to create a structure around the way they work while enabling a level of flexibility and creativity. The benefits of this approach would lead to new ways of successfully capturing, storing and sharing of tacit knowledge. Eventually leading to changes being made to existing processes, introducing new ones and in some cases doing away with the old.
Face-to-Face sessions are always important when it comes to knowledge sharing, this is because there is only so much knowledge a document can impart. Creating a platform that allows people to engage with one another is a very powerful tool.
How would you do this?
At the start of every project team members should be encouraged to present thoughts and ideas based on their previous experience and allow other team members to ask questions.
Some benefits of this approach are:
- Allows the project manager to get a better understanding of his team and figure out where best to user them
- Allowing team members to get to know one another
- Creating a platform that enables team members to showcase their knowledge and expertise
- Ensuring that knowledge and Best Practices from previous projects are re-used.