Jakub Nabrdalik

I am a software developer with 13 years of professional experience in IT, as an architect, programmer, designer, analyst, project leader, team leader, project manager, and even as a development department manager. I care about Software Craftsmanship and Domain Design. Practicing Test-driven development and Pair programming since 2005.

Creating a knowledge-sharing culture

In 2005 I have joined a company where the boss successfully implemented culture of having a lecture/workshop every week, given by our own people to our own people. Not an easy task, when all you have is around 15 developers, and it take some serious free time to prepare. But it worked very well in the end.
Since then, I've tried to build this kind of culture, where sharing knowledge by giving internal talks/workshop is completely natural, in 3 different companies.
Outcomes? When I started at one of those companies, nobody would talk at any internal or public events, people would not even join or be aware of local technology user groups. When I was leaving, 20% of speakers from the biggest Warsaw Java conference, would come from our company.
Creating such a culture is not rocket science, but I may have a few tips of what worked and what didn't. And perhaps even a few thoughts on why.
This is a case study of trying to build knowledge sharing culture in 3 different companies.

Slides Video