[Upcoming Event] PKM Summit in Utrecht, Netherlands
Something becomes truly official when a group of dedicated enthusiasts decides to pay to congregate in the same room to geek out. For the European Personal Knowledge Management, this time has come.
March 22-23 will be blessed with what Digital Fitness (the organiser) markets as the first European PKM Summit. Although I'm not sure this claim is fully justified, this is the first time such an event has a professional website, a solid panel of Key Opinion Leaders (KOLs), and a steep, though strange, price tag of €209.83. That said, it’s a fraction of the Knowledge Summit Dublin happening in June 2024.
Note: I learned about this event from , who could easily be a panel speaker for one of the editions. I could envision him sharing what he did in the book "Personal Knowledge Graphs", which I recently reviewed. But the summit organisers could be forgiven for favouring PKM projects that are a tad more mainstream than , which is his brainchild. I’m sure you’ll meet him there.
The Program
The fact that best-selling authors and worldwide popular influencers are speakers at the event, which is limited to 200 physical seats, shows that the official PKM community is still in its infancy and is relatively niche. Knowledge management has existed for hundreds of years and still only attracts a few individuals. It makes me wonder if it'll ever become as mainstream as yoga.
The program mixes Personal Knowledge Management’s “créme de la créme” and the local rising stars (The Netherlands/Germany). Although it might feel like a roster of “fillers, " I'm often pleasantly surprised by the quality of talks those flying under the radar give. I was once such a dark horse at a TEDx event.
If you're not planning to attend, you'll still find this newsletter issue interesting, as it might put some more obscure names on the list of relevant individuals to follow. We’ll start with the giants and progress to less-marketed ones.
Tiago Forte
Organise Your Digital Life and Unlock Your Creative Potential. [Online]
At the time of writing,
is about as high as one can climb in the PKM food chain. He's a best-selling author with many self- and traditionally-published books. His biggest hit is, of course, "Building a Second Brain". Although its release resulted in a ~80% reduction in his online productivity class attendance, it permanently secured him a venerable place on the PKM/GTD Olympus. It’s a seminal, category-defining book any serious knowledge engineer should have as a tabletop staple, along with others I’ve recommended.
I expect the lion's share of the ticket price to be dedicated to having him give a mind-you virtual fireside chat with
. I'm not sure he'll be sharing exclusive wisdom there, at least not for dedicated PKM-ers who studied his work as if it were a Bible. But his presence on the event's roster undoubtedly propels it to the ranks of "the place to be".Nick Milo
Being effective at managing knowledge is a superpower—and linking your thinking supercharges it.
The close second is
, the or (LYT) framework creator. Nick and Tiago are no strangers. They’ve cross-interviewed each other on their respective internet real estate, as influencers tend to do to spread awareness.LYT is a noteworthy approach that requires you to be much more disciplined with your setup and what he calls "Note-Making". It’s a solid approach that might be up your alley.
His avatar on the program list does not have the “online” tag, which makes me think I could have been wrong about the underlying event cost distribution.
Anne-Laure Le Cunff
Knowledge sharing is the key to collective growth and development. [Online]
is a neuroscientist, writer and entrepreneur who used to work for Google. She has an exciting collection of YouTube videos I would recommend. She'll also be interviewed online with during the event. If there's one chance to hear something unique, that's to put two of these giants in the same virtual conference room and throw unexpected questions at them to see how they'll react.Nicole Van Der Hoeven
The fastest, most rewarding way to learn is to do it in public.
Nicole Van Der Hoeven is well known for her awesomely geeky Obsidian YouTube videos. I'm jealous and in awe when I see how much this lady accomplishes in life and how structured her approach to all her projects (and gaming) is. I've learned a lot from her content, and she was seminal to my gradual sinking into the Obsidian black hole.
This promises to be one of the most exciting talks of the event. She'll be talking about writing books as open-source projects or, as she calls it, "Writing in Public". I know of only a handful of authors courageous enough to disclose their writing early in the process as if a book was a startup’s MVP (Minimum Viable Product).
One of them is
who writes his draft on Substack through the publication. Every two weeks, you have a new chapter you can enjoy. People love “The Making Of”s.She and I also groom our respective digital gardens, adhering to
‘s famous maxim, “working with the garage door up”.I think this approach resonates with Nicole because of her engineering background. Open-source and #buildinpublic hashtag are standard in our environment. I also discovered a tangent Twitter hashtag, #writeinpublic, under which indie authors similarly share their work in progress.
In China, subscribing to a book written in real-time is a thing. It’s not uncommon for enraged fans to threaten the author for slacking and not delivering the promised following chapters on time. Now, that’s what I call traction!
Zsolt Vinczián
The MindSET Shift: Visualizing the Future of PKM with Obsidian-Excalidraw.
Zsolt Vinczián is the mastermind behind blockbuster Obsidian plugins, ExcaliDraw and ExcaliBrain. Like the powerhouse of a plugin, DataView, this is one of the paramount extensions of Obsidian. As you can see, many people are on the panel because of Obsidian, which is understandable given the popularity of this Tool for Thought (TfT).
Beth McClelland
PKM is for life, not just for productivity.
Beth McClelland writes an excellent PKMBeth Newsletter, a fantastic resource similar to this newsletter. I couldn’t agree more with the title of her presentation. I could have included this publication here, but we use different distribution channels. Nevertheless, check it out.
Harold Jarche
Work is learning. Learning is the work. [Online]
Harold Jarche is a Canadian organisational consultant who helps individuals and companies deal with increasing amounts of semantically connected data. He's a prolific speaker who deserves his spot on the summit roster. He'll be joining online for obvious reasons.
Ernst-Jan Pfauth
Thinking Dividends: How making notes can change your life.
is a writer and podcaster. For some, his topics might sound a tad "new age"-y (intentional living, gratitude). But, I know many got into PKM through the journaling practice. So, for this audience, the talk could be spot on. He also publishes a newsletter, talks about media, and is transitioning into the AI sphere.Bart Verheijen
None of us is as smart as all of us.
The similarity between Bart Verheijen’s path and mine is striking. Although I can’t brag about 15 years of PKMing (or can I?), his efforts in using information connection to help businesses and science overlap with my daily bread and butter. It's such a shame he’ll be sharing his timeslot with
(and, I guess, as a consequence, ?). His background will make his workshop very interesting, I’m sure.He founded the Dutch Knowledge Management Network, which started in 2019. I’m honoured to be part of it.
Marieke Van Vliet
Fully human, empowered by technology.
has a Substack publication in Dutch (The Brain Palace), the name of the company she founded. We share an IT Business Analysis background and an affinity for connected notes. I can’t help but notice a reference to “The Memory Palace” technique used by memory athletes. Very clever.Peter Joosten
Futureproof organizations: PKM as the missing link.
is my kind of crowd. Not only is he into PKM, but also practices biohacking, which is another one of my interests only a few know about.The title of his speech summarises the information management problems companies have been going through for a while now. Like him, I dedicate much of my energy to helping professionals solve information overload issues and turning collected dots into connected ones.
Peter writes a bio-futuristic newsletter called
. Goosebumps.David Lohner
Curiosity lights the spark of learning, PKM turns it into a blaze.
David Lohner will give a joint talk with Stefan Siegel as they’re developing Note Lab, a solution that, by the look of the website, leverages Wikilinks to “develop ideas through evidence-informed note-making“. My initial sentiment is that Niklas Luhman’s Zettelkasten made a full circle coming back home, but, this time flavoured by
’s “Note-Making” and modern Wikilinking, the prolific German sociologist would have killed for.Dr. Stefan T. Siegel
Effective Note-making: Beyond Myths, Powered by Evidence.
The strange thing about how the program has been presented on the website is that people who’ll be giving joined talks title them differently. I might not be fully grasping it. SEO? As mentioned, Dr Stefan T. Siegel will join David Lohner on stage to discuss note-making and connecting ideas in academia. And that joined workshop is titled “Evidence-Informed Note-Making: Debunking Myths about Knowledge Management” in the “hidden” timetable. Go figure.
Astrid Van De Nieuwenhof
A good system is in line with your processes, not the other way around.
If the summit felt like it was sponsored by Obsidian so far, Astrid Van De Nieuwenhof is there to debunk this conspiracy theory. She’ll engage in a push-pull exercise with
during the “Are you team #notion or team #obsidian?” session.I’ve been witnessing mild TfT (Tools for Thought) wars similar in their ridicule to Mac vs Windows for a while now. This session is supposed to re-install some political correctness. God help us all.
Michel Vos
Get your shit together
Michel Vos wrote a book titled the same way his summit talk is. Unfortunately, there's not much information on him on the website, so I reached out to learn more, though the title of his speech sums it all up very eloquently.
Conclusion
You can find the timetable in the making here.
As always, with these events, you’ll have to make difficult choices picking your poison. Many workshops will be running in parallel. Besides all the speakers mentioned above, you’ll also get to hear from the organisers and other individuals such as Ton Zijlstra, Chris Aldrich, Dieter Van den Heede, Marie Poulin and, I’d imagine Digital Fitness’ Mark Meinema and Martijn Aslander.
If I were nearby, I’d gladly attend the meetup.
Should you?
I guess it depends on your proximity and your PKM-miles. If you’re still a PKM virgin, I’m sure this event will be a well of exciting insights. If, however, you’re an advanced practitioner with a customised multi-tool note-making setup, you might treat it more like a networking event.
Grab one of these 200 chairs and take literature notes with [[your cult’s note-taking app]].
Hey thanks for the mention and kind encouraging coverage! I've actually been able to grab an open spot and will present SEN on Friday afternoon🤩
Wow, thanks for the mention! I am looking forward to meet you and talk further 🙏