Welcome to the Smarter by Design Podcast!

Hey, I'm Chris Parsons. I'm the founder and CEO of Knowledge Architecture, and welcome to the Smarter by Design podcast. So last year I started a newsletter called Smarter by Design, and the focus was to look at how leading AEC firms are integrating knowledge management, learning and development, and AI to build smarter, more adaptable practices. And I've been enjoying writing that newsletter so much that decided to turn it into a podcast as well. And the reason why is I've been in AEC since about 2002, and I've seen kind of really three eras of knowledge management in my tenure here. I saw us move from that digitization of knowledge from binders and file folders and cabinets into things like intranets and databases and networked systems. And then I saw, and this is when we started the company, you know, kind of 2008, 2009 era. I saw this change where social technology and knowledge sharing technology, inspired by tools like Facebook and LinkedIn and Twitter, moved inside the business and let us share lessons learned and ask questions and get answers across offices and markets and different disciplines. And a couple Years ago, when ChatGPT and AI really broke out, it became obvious to us that there was this new wave of knowledge and learning management coming along. Knowledge and Learning Management 3.0, driven by AI. And it was just going to change everything on how we capture knowledge, on how we retrieve knowledge, on our ability to deliver and drive knowledge into the flow of work. And so that got me writing a lot about what I was seeing. We work with well over 150 AEC firms at this point, running our synthesis platform. We run events, we do webinars, we're on podcasts. We run an annual conference for the industry called K Connect. And. And we're just seeing all these stories about how people are reimagining the way that they're building learning organizations. I've been calling it Designing Modern Learning Organizations. And how do we take advantage of AI to take our knowledge and learning management efforts to the next level? And so that really has this energy, has me wanting to just spend more time sharing what I'm hearing from folks. So one of the great joys in my job getting to produce our annual conference and now writing a newsletter and building products, is I spend a lot of time one on one or one on two, or maybe in a small group, really going deep into people's hopes and dreams for knowledge and learning management in AEC or what they think AI can do for them. I learn about their experiments, I learn about their failures, I learn about their processes. And their best practices. I learn about the cultures of their firm. And yes, those things end up in products, or those things end up in newsletter issues, or those things end up on stage as K Connect talks. But the part that I've always said, it's like I'll get off a call with somebody, I'm like, I wish we could have just recorded that and shared that, that interaction, that thing that happens on the way to doing the thing, on the way to giving the presentation. We have to figure out like, what's the story here? What are you thinking is going to work? Like, not just polished finished stories, but really thinking through these kind of changes out loud. And, and to me, that always felt like that would make for a good product for people to want to watch or want to listen to or want to read. I've been a fan of podcasts for so long that I've wanted to do this. I wanted to have a podcast for Knowledge Architecture, but more to the point, a podcast that serves the knowledge and learning community within aec. I've wanted to do it for a long time and now's the time. So we're very excited to be here, to be doing this. I'm going to be bringing on people to the show who, if you've been in the community for a while, you're a client of ours or a friend of Knowledge Architecture. You will know a lot of these names and faces in the companies. We'll also bring on some new voices who are doing some really interesting work around knowledge and learning management and AI. We'll bring in people from outside of aec, from academia or other industries, thought leaders who are trying to figure out what this next era, you know, what the future of knowledge and learning management look like. And we are excited to have you if you're new to joining our community. So if this is your entry into knowledge management, Learning management and aec, your entry point into Knowledge Architecture and the KA community, welcome. I'm glad you're here. You're going to learn a lot of interesting things from a lot of interesting people and I'm excited to have the ability to go deep and share those behind the scenes stories with you. One of the things that I always say is that I was a theater kid growing up in middle school and in high school and in college. And yes, it's true, I did love the performance at the end, but I even more loved from day one auditioning and getting the script and figuring out the blocking and memorizing the lines and getting all the rhythms down. And figuring out how that was going to work. Like that process. Same way for me. I love to eat, sure, But I like cooking even more. And I hope that on Smarter by Design, from a podcast perspective, it will be more that. It will be more like the rehearsal before the thing, or it will be more like the background interviews I'm doing in order to write a newsletter or the interviews I'm doing for research to help design a product. I want to bring you into these new trends and these new opportunities in these new practices as they're emerging and in real time. And so one of the reasons I really wanted to do the Smarter by Design podcast is to give more of that kind of, hey, I hear a cool thing this week. I can hop on and interview somebody in two weeks and get that idea into the community faster. So I hope that sounds interesting to you. If it does, welcome. You're in the right place. I encourage you to subscribe on YouTube, on Spotify, Apple Podcasts. Wherever you get your podcasts, you can go to our website@knowledge architecture.com smarter and you can subscribe to our email newsletter. So welcome to the Smarter by Design podcast. The last thing I'll say is that the whole idea of Smarter by Design is that we think AEC firms should put as much effort and their design skill into designing their firms as they put into designing bridges, buildings, infrastructure. And that's what this show is about, is about firms in the AEC industry who are really designing and dreaming and building these practices that become modern learning organizations. So welcome. Thanks for listening and enjoy the podcast.