Vol. 6 No.1 - January 2005
A lot of water has flowed under the proverbial bridge since the last newsletter. It’s almost to the point that I don’t quite know where to start. The lack of a consistent publishing schedule is not due to a lack of interest in KM, quite the contrary; I feel that KM is more necessary than ever before.
The short story is that I took time off from everything due to a family member’s health situation, and just focused some time and attention on my own family. In my absence the KM News web site has been updated but no newsletters were published.
In getting back into publishing mode, I’ve made an executive decision. The newsletters won’t look the same as they used to. The face of the internet has changed radically since I first began KM News in 1998, so it’s time for at least a small change to KM News.
Thanks for you patience and I hope the wait was worth it!
Brad Hoyt
Editor, Knowledge Management News
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KM News is once again pleased to endorse the Braintrust International conference. As a KM News subscriber you can receive a 15% discount of the standard fee (see above).
*** General Stuff ***
There are several new events and technologies you’ll want to check on the KM News website.
*** Commentary ***
The discipline of KM isn’t talked about much anymore; in fact it is almost taboo to bring up the subject. The general consensus seems to be that KM is dead. It is not. What we’ve seen over the last 2 plus years is the wheat being separated from the chaff. KM has mostly disappeared from the vendor and public facing enterprise vocabulary. Fair enough. I can understand that KM was over hyped by clueless marketing people at clueless technology companies and everyone is tired of it. That doesn’t make the true discipline of KM any less relevant. In fact KM is alive and well within many (most?) organizations. It goes by another name - a rose by any other name is still a rose. Some of those names include the terms “content”, “portal”, or “intelligence”. That is perfectly acceptable and even desired; because it has brought the focus back to the unchanging fact that KM is a discipline and not a technology. It is a discipline that should be a core part of all business processes.
If you’ve taken the time to look through the KM News web site, you know that I’ve been looking for the convergence of several disciplines and technologies over the last year or two or three. I’m not prepared to say that 2005 is the year of CONVERGENCE, but it could very well be. What is it I believe is converging — Information and Identity Management. Keep in mind that I take a holistic view and place KM within the larger Information Management realm. The combining of Information Management with Identity Management makes inter and intra organizational interaction possible in a secure, reliable, and effective manner. The addition of identity also brings the added dimension of context into play.
I’ve described KM for a long, long time as “connecting people to people and people to information to create a competitive advantage.” The common denominator is people, and people need to have a digital identity to make this connectedness a reality. Identity is not just your name or other unique identifier it also must contain attributes about your interests, your skills, experiences and expertise, and in the context of an organization your role and associated access to information.
*** Conference Notes ***
I had the opportunity to attended the Digital Identity World Conference in October (www.digitalidentityworld.com). It was an excellent conference and I’d recommend attending the upcoming event (see the KM News Events page). I’ve been interested in directory services and identity management since my first exposure to Lotus Notes 1.0. The interest has not always been top of mind, but it has existed. Digital ID World was an opportunity for me to see if the IdM crowd really “gets it”. They get part of the equation, but clearly they are more focused on figuring out what Identity Management means than figuring out exactly how it provides the foundation for context and presence within information management. All in all it was a very informative conference but I had this incredible sense of Déjàvu. Maybe I’m just one of those people that are destined to be ahead of the adoption curve.
*** Event I’ll be Speaking At ***
I will be discussing KM and Mulgrew from eSelf in two webinars later this month (19 & 26 January). If you want to know more about Mulgrew and how your organization can benefit from this technology you should plan to attend.
*** Interesting News ***
Identity Meets BI
Hmm, maybe convergence is happening afterall…
