• People are knowledge-sharers by nature.
• Until now, there has been a huge difference between the quality of interaction possible in the real world and the virtual world. For online communities, its’ all about bandwidth. And bandwidth is expanding. As this happens, the virtual world will move closer to the real world in quality of experience.
• Communities of Practice: A group of peers with a common sense of purpose who agree to work together, to share knowledge, to achieve common ends.
• Trust is essential for the creation of a community of practice.
• Knowledge sharing in a virtual community will not work if it is seen as an additional responsibility. It should be integrated into the basic function and tools.
• Why is this important? Because we’re drowning in information. At the same time, as jobs are more complex, we need faster better informed decisions.
• Good communication requires good knowledge sharing.
• E-mail is a terrible collaboration tool. Knowledge sharing has to be absolutely easy and not and add-on.
• Setting up and nurturing online collaboration is a long and winding journey.
• The new social media tools have brought knowledge sharing to our doorstep.
• What’s hot? MySpace.com; Cyworld.com; flickr.com; del.icio.us; digg.com; youtube.com; tagworld.com.
• These social media tools make it easy and fun for people to express themselves online. They ease knowledge publishing and searching for it.

After his initial remarks, Gerstner engaged the audience in a community forming exercise. Lot’s of noise. Initial chaos. Laughter. People getting to know others who five minutes ago were strangers. Order emerging. At the end of the process, groups had formed a variety of communities, each using a range of collaborative tools. An interesting exercise that brought people together and stimulated conversation.