TFPL Connect: Supporting the Hillsborough Independent Panel

TFPL Connect events are always quick to fill and so I am always quick to get by booking request in. I was especially keen to attend this one as it covered a ground-breaking real-world example.

The topic was the Information Management work behind the Hillsborough Independent Panel who issued their report on the disaster in September 2012. Our guide was Jan Parry who led their IM work.

To help us understand the context of the work that the panel was asked to Jan gave us a summary of the history of the Hillsborough incident and the responses to it.

Not surprisingly the Hillsborough story was quiet harrowing and there was a very solemn mood in the room. It almost seemed disrespectful to take note. What was clear was that some obvious mistakes were made before, during and after the incident. The famous decision to open the gates may have been one of the bigger errors but it was by no means the big only one in a depressingly long list.

The Hillsborough Independent Panel was established by the Labour Government in January 2010 to "oversee the release of documents related to the 1989 Hillsborough football disaster". It was not the panel's role to recommend or judge but to provide the information so that others could.

Collecting the information was a Herculean task involving many agencies including more than one Police Force, health services, coroners, football authorities, local councils and, of course, the families.

The panel knew that there was a lot of documentation from the previous enquiries and they managed to uncover a lot more, even rescuing some from a skip.

The next task was to catalogue each piece so that it could be put in the appropriate places in the story. This enabled the story to be presented by time, by place, by organisation, by victim etc.

All of these documents were scanned and the originals returned. They were then redacted where necessary and published, or disclosed in the terminology of the Panel. There are over 300,000 documents on the Panel's website.

The discovery, cataloguing and disclosure of the documents was a worthy endeavour and I would like to see this approach adopted in other investigations, e.g. Jimmy Savile, Howard Shipman or Bloody Sunday. This neutral approach to getting to the truth reminded me of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission established by South Africa which has been copied by other post-conflict countries.

The Panel had relied heavily on the goodwill of all of the agencies involved to provide the documents required and any future similar investigation would probably require a change in the law to force compliance.

The Panel also came up with recommendations on how agencies like the police and coroners should keep their records.

Despite the cause of the inquiry, hearing about the working of the Panel was an interesting and positive experience. The careful and dispassionate examination and ordering of the documents was a major achievement.

Jan Parry told the story clearly and fully making this an exceptional talk, and not just for Information Management professionals.

After the talk there was the usual networking eased with wine. I found plenty of people to talk to and plenty of things to talk about and was one of the last to leave.

TFPL Connect events are (usually) very good and this one was one of the very best. It was a most satisfactory evening on all counts.

TFPL Connect: What a difference a web makes

I had various reasons for wanting to go to this TFPL Connect meeting.

I had missed some TFPL Connect events for various reasons, the subject matter interested me and the speaker Dame Wendy Hall and I studied Maths at Southampton University around the same time, we were not in the same year but I think we overlapped.

At first I was wait-listed, as were lots of other people, but I was saved when the high demand caused TFPL to move the event to a bigger venue so that more people, people like me, could attend.

We were in the Grand Connaught Rooms which made it an easy walk for me down from Kings Cross. That's my excuse for being the first person there. That also meant that I was the first to tuck in to the sparkling wine and nibbles that I was not expecting to see until after the talk.

The pre-talk drinks included the usual networking and I spoke to several people that I knew. Some of them claimed that this was their first TFPL event, this surprised me as I had known them for so long and I had assumed that everybody in the LIKE and Gurteen circles also went to TFPL events.

After the small talk we were politely ushered in to the conference room for the main talk.

Wendy Hall took us through a brief history of the internet, which has only had a brief history. She spent a bit of time, understandably on the start of the story. Understandably because she has worked with Tim Berners-Lee for some years (not quite from the beginning) and understandably because getting the initial architecture right was key to its rapid adoption and growth.

For the mid-life of the internet, Wendy used this familiar chart and teased out some key points from it, especially the relationships between the developments.

For example, Google could only exist once there were sufficient pages on the internet and enough people reading them to warrant a search engine and for there to be enough links between the pages for their algorithm to work. Similarly the (relatively) recent rise of applications like Facebook and Twitter has needed the increased bandwidth and mobile capabilities.

The growth in the internet is now driven by individuals. It is ordinary people who are uploading photos, swapping links and writing comments.

Wendy then told us something about her current work and her expectations for the future.

The next step is linked data, rather than linked pages and while corporates led on publishing documents it is government agencies that are leading on open data.

In the UK, these initiatives are spearheaded by the Open Data Institute founded by, that man again, Sir Tim Berners-Lee and Professor Nigel Shadbolt, also of Southampton University. I saw him talk on the semantic web at the Royal Society and was not convinced then. I'm still not convinced.

Massive Open On-line Courses (MOOCS) have the possibility to reform education by making good quality courses widely available at low cost.

Wendy would like to build a Web Observatory to explore and map the web. We have built it but we do not know much about how it behaves.

Wendy spoke for the best part of an hour and then took several questions. It was a good talk and the questions took us in to some interesting areas of speculation, such as what might happen with the increasing amount of personal data that is being collected on us all.

I would have preferred to have spent more time talking about the future but the background is important and not everybody there had lived through it.

After the talk there was more networking and more drinks to go with it, possibly more than was strictly necessary, and some very nice canapés too. I spoke to lots of people including several that I had not met before. As always, these conversations were an important part of the evening.

Having been the first to arrive I was among the last to leave which is proof enough of how much I loved the event.

TFPL has gone though several changes in the years that I have known them, including three owners and more offices than that, but they have kept the KM community that started, for me, with the Bath Club going all that time. Long may they do so.

TFPL Connect International 2012

The last TFPL Connect event in another good year gave us a personal perspective on the changing balance of power in communication and information delivery.

But first we had an introduction from TFPL supremo Darron Chapman which gave us his view of some current trends. He also reminded us that we lost Angela Abell earlier in the year. She was a regular at TFPL events and I spoke to her many times.

Our guide for the main part of the evening was Jonathan Charles, former BBC reporter and now Director of Communications at the EBRD.

His main message was to compare and contrast his two roles and to explain how in both he tried to be a trusted source of the truth.

What follows is a mix of his comments and my reactions to them.

There used to be very few sources but they were all reliable in 1987 (25 years ago). The only people who provided the news were qualified journalists working for reputable organisations.

Now information is faster and there is more of it, more sources, but reliability is less.

In the news we are reading the first draft of history, but it will change over time when it, and its implications, is understood better. Nobody in Spain has forgotten which side people were on during the Franco regime.

The digital revolution needs trusted guides - such as the BBC. Corporate communications now better funded than journalism and is placed to fill this role, if the job is done properly.

We were shown a video of work done by the EBRD in Slovakia. I felt that we were only being told part of the story, in particular the children looked very white.

Is it really a more complex world than 25 years ago or do we just understand more about the complexity?

Can you only be trusted by being safe? By that I mean sticking to facts that are easily verifiable and lack a complex context. What is the truth about Syria?

Are the BBC really to be trusted? There have been many times when I have found it to be outrageously biased in favour of "the establishment".

Information is always seen through the somebody's biased eyes. Perhaps we should be honest and recognised our own biases, rather looking fr an absolute truth that does not exist? Are trusted guides just myths?

I think we can trust guides by making allowances for their bias when this is obvious but the BBC pretends not to have one.

As usual at TFPL Connect the main session was followed by an long networking session slightly charmed with wine and nibbles. A good group of people go to TFPL Connect and the conversations always flow widely and easily. That is why I go whenever I can.

TFPL Connect: KIM for social responsibility

TFPL Connect is one of those events that I am always quick to book. It may be more uneven in quality than LIKE but it is never poor, there are only a few each year, they are always oversubscribed and I always enjoy them.

One of the things that I like about TFPL Connect is that the sessions usually look at business issues and how Knowledge and Information Management (KIM) can help to address those, i.e. they are looking for solutions to problems, whereas a lot of the KIM debate is based on techniques and technologies, i.e. solutions looking for a problem to solve.

And that was the case this time where we looked at the needs of companies that want to take a social perspective of what they do.

First up was Stuart Jackson, Actis, a private equity fund with the mantra "The Positive Power of Capital" (PPC).

Broadly speaking this means that they try to do social good with the investments they make, as well as turning a profit.

Actis use their intranet to explain PPC to their employees.

TED-like videos have proven to be the most effective for delivering education content.

Getting people to blog has been difficult (an experience that I've shared at Logica) due to the cultural change required, sharing is not just OK it is expected.

There has been good use of Speed Dating to match employees with skills to offer with to social organisations looking for help. This enables the people to match their attitudes and aspirations too.

Our second speaker was Nick Temple of Social Enterprise UK who gave us insights in to how social businesses operate.

These are for-profit organisations (i.e. not charities) but they serve a social purpose and direct their profits to this.

They get their income from trade rather than donations. Big Issue is probably the most obvious example.

Social Enterprises tend to be small and local and networking with similar organisations is an intrinsic part of the way that they operate, either to work together on specific projects or to take learning from one project to another.

After a brief Q&A session we were asked to consider the question "what is the question?" on our tables. I'm not sure that everybody understood the subtleties of that question (i.e. they did not agree with me on it!)  but the questions that came from our table were, What can we do to help (e.g. what useful skills do we have)?, What help is needed? and Who defines what a social objective is?

After the main session was the equally important networking that effortlessly filled the next hour and a half or so during which bodies are kept going with wine and peanuts.

KM is all about conversations and the room was full of them. I had many with lots of different people as we all moved professionally around the room.

Gradually the people drifted away with me one of the very last to leave, as usual, due to having an easy journey home.

This journey was made even easier by the re-opening that day of Blackfriars tube station that had been closed for a couple of years for substantial rebuilding. The news did not seem to have spread very far and the station was almost empty. A refreshingly quiet end to stimulating evening.

TFPL Connect: Achieving Prosperity

The last TFPL Connect event of the year was a little different from the usual and was the better for it.

It was billed as "Achieving Prosperity, how to grow with what you have" and promised an entertaining but insightful look at best practice for making a difference through utilising the soft skills of negotiation, and that is a pretty fair description of what we got.

We got it in the Crowne Plaza City hotel, a familiar haunt for TFPL events as it is close to their former offices in Blackfriars (TFPL are on their third office since I came across them).

The familiar venue was balanced by the unfamiliar format. Gone was the usual panel of speakers and instead we had just one.

Nick Davies of The Really Great Training Company was our guide for the evening and he delivered a lucid, flowing, insightful and entertaining talk on the 4 - 6 - 2 of persuasion.

And as you can see from the photo, he did this without the overused crutch of a PowerPoint presentation.

First we had the 4 mistakes that people make: being too tough, being too logical, treating it as a once-off (rather than part of a relationship) and trying to satisfy (stated) wants rather than (unspoken) needs.

These fail because buying is an emotional decision made by people. The success of the John Lewis Christmas ad is a case in point and an example that most of us are familiar with are making a major purchase like a house or car on emotion (it has character) and then trying to justify it on logic afterwards (it's close to a good school).

The 6 things you can do to influence the decision are to provide social proof (other people are doing it), show authority, sell scarcity (this offer is only available to you, exploit their consistency (once they have bought a little of something it is easier to sell them some more, e.g. increasing a standing order to a charity), be likeable (a hard one to fake but people only but from people they like) and offer them something first so that they offer something back in reciprocity.

And finally, the 2 things you need to build above all else are creditability and trust.

We had a short Q&A session at the end and I asked one about the Dark Side of faking interest in the buyer's interests and the steps some companies go to to find out what those interests are.

Then it was an extended session of wine, nibbles and networking. I managed to spend some time talking to various people I know from these and similar events and had some really good conversations. KM people know the value of conversations and allow plenty of time and space for them.

This was an excellent evening and I am now eagerly awaiting details of the TFPL Connect programme for 2012.

Harnessing the power of networks

June's TFPL Connect meeting was on the very relevant and useful subject of harnessing the power of networks so it's no surprise that the large room was packed.

We were treated to two complimentary but different talks on networking.

First up we heard the story of the UK Competitive Intelligence Forum (UK CIF) from Julia Hordle. This is a network for CI professionals that has grown from scratch over the last few years.

The two things that contributed to this successful growth were the policy of giving value before receiving and strong leadership. This may seem obvious but it was good to hear this from a real case study.

Jemima Gibbons followed up by giving five tips on how we can all make the best use of our own networks.

1. Understand your own network by using tools like LinkedIn Maps or Facebook FriendWheel.
2. Identify the key influencers in your subject areas by using things like Technorati, Klout and Peer Index.
3. Share stuff, e.g. RT, comment on blogs and reply to tweets.
4. Find your story, be clear about what you want to stay and why.
5. Listen to what is going on (Google alerts, market sentiment, etc.) and join the conversation.

As with the first talk this was given with the authority of experience.

As always with TFPL Connect events, the conversations continued for quite a while continued eased by a little wine and I was able to have some good conversations with some regulars and also some new people. Business cards were swapped and LinkedIn connections made.

Because of the topic covered, the people covering it and the space allowed for other conversations this was an excellent evening and one of the best TFPL Connect events yet.

TFPL Connect: Cash is tight, KIM is core

The final TFPL Connect event for 2010 looked at the impact of the current economic climate with presentations from consulting firms and a business school.

But first the preliminaries.

There were some changes from previous events. The new venue was the Grand Connaught Rooms, which I suspect most consultants have been to at some time. I think this was my third or fourth event there.

The bigger change was the new tfpl logo. I rather liked the previous orange block which was both striking and simple. This new one looks a little washed out to me and also too busy with the name fighting for contention with the artwork and two strap-lines.

Some things don't change though and the pre-talk networking was most welcome. The champagne helped too.

TFPL Connect is somewhat dated relying still on the presentation format, rather than group collaboration, but they do attract some good speakers so I can put up with being talked at. And by "good" here I mean people who have real knowledge of the subject in hand and have something useful to say about it.

The talk by Philip Weinberg of McKinsey gave some interesting insights on how they position and use KM within the company but more interesting were the glimpses of life within the company with comments like it is not necessary to always work late in the office, you can go home and work from there.

Jane McKenzie of Henley Business School presented some analysis of KM adoption which showed no great changes over the last three years and the private sector being much more enthusiastic about collaboration than the public sector.

The view presented of Enterprise 2.0 was more gimmicky than useful with concepts like the Agile Archipelago in the Anthropocene Era (seriously!).

There were some nuggets in the presentations but the relentless being talked to got to me and my interest waned at times. It's partially because of this that it has taken me over a month to pull together my few thoughts from the event.

So not the best TFPL Connect event but, overall, good enough to make me want to come back for more.

Moving forward with Depaul

Back in June I was very pleased to be involved in the initial work that TFPL have been doing with homeless charity Depaul and last week I was equally pleased to be involved again. So much so that I made the trek in to the City of London for the meeting even though I was enjoying a week's holiday at the time.

The evening started with an update on progress from two TFPL consultants who have been working with Depual. They presented a view of an organisation that relies heavily on the skills, dedication and goodwill of a few people.

It's also an organisation that does a lot of good work, has a strong sense of it's mission (i.e. the six areas of need it needs to address to help people to recover their lives) but which is still prepared to ask for help when it sees the need.

After a couple of months of work, those areas of need had been crystallised down to branding, fund-raising, case studies and volunteering and we organised ourselves in to four groups to address these.

I chose the branding workshop because of my recent experience with this at Logica and at The Mount/King's Oak.

We had a wide-ranging discussion at our table, as you would probably expect, and I'll do my usual unfair thing and pick out just a few points from the notes that I took at the time.

Homelessness has dropped off the media radar as an issue and most people probably think that the problem has been solved. The biggest issue Depaul has, therefore, is in raising the profile of the problem rather than how they try to solve it.

Depaul need to be clear on their mission (and I think they are) which is to take a holistic view in addressing individuals' needs. In contrast, Crisis is more an emergency fix and Shelter more of a political campaign.

The view of the customer is key. The brand needs to speak to their needs and to compete against options like a no-hassle night in the cells.

The all-tables wrap-up session allowed some  cross-fertilisation of ideas and provided a fitting end to the evening. Closing conversations with the Depaul people there suggested that they found the evening valuable and, in the end, that's what really mattered.

The work over and still buzzing with intellectual adrenaline we headed to the nearest pub for more conversations and a gentle warm down for our weary brains.

This is exactly the sort of thing that I like to do on my holidays.

TFPL Connect: The brand of Me

The third of this year's TFPL Connect events had the intriguing title of Unlocking the Value of You and used that banner to explore how individuals can help their organisations and been seen to do so.

First up Rosemary Nunn, the proud owner of the job title Group Head of Business Transformation and Knowledge Management at EC Harris LLP, described a model she had developed that links different types of knowledge to business objectives - a useful way to demonstrate the value of Knowledge Management.

This provoked me to realise that my current employer kills rather than encourages ideas from staff.

This was followed by Dave Tullett, Director Leadership and Innovation Centre at Heidrick and Struggles, who expanded on this by giving guidance on what we as individuals can do to demonstrate our own contribution and stand out from the crowd.

One of the ideas that came from this was using Wordle on your CV to see which words come to the fore. I can endorse this as it worked well for me when I tried it last year.

Other good ideas included coming up with your own short mission statement that explains how you help your organisation and thinking of three words that define your personal brand.

The thoughtful and useful talk was followed by the customary wine-fuelled networking where I was pleased to have some good conversations with some KM regulars and also some new people.

I'm very grateful to TFPL for another stimulating, fun, invigorating and useful evening. I think it's meant to be work but it does not feel like it.

Connecting our knowledge to make a difference

The recent TFPL Connect event was very different in that it was trying to make a real difference to people's lives. Adding a good cause to an already healthy mix made the evening immensely rewarding in several ways.

The good cause was Depaul UK, a charity that helps young people who are homeless, vulnerable and disadvantaged.

We were given an introduction to the charity's work, and the role of Knowledge Management in this, by its CEO Paul Marriott. From this it became clear that Depaul, like many charities, are based almost entirely on knowledge, in their case the knowledge how to help young people to find accommodation, get a job, stay safe, be healthy, learn skills, be an active member of their community, etc. etc.

This points to one of their problems, simply accumulating, validating, sharing and updating this knowledge. The difficulty is magnified by their geographic spread, fairly high turnover of staff (and volunteers) and the need to respect client confidentiality.

The introduction over, Paul set us six challenges and each table then spent the next forty minutes or address one of these. Some slight structure was added to the process in that we had a simple template form to fill in that captured our ideas and identified the possible barriers and benefits. I found that this structure helped as I had come out of some table discussions previously having had a fun conversation but with nothing tangible to take away.

The time simply flew past and we were soon in the plenary session where we shared some of the key ideas from each table with the whole group.

But the story does not end there. TFPL are taking the output from each table and will be working with Depaul to produce a report of the event with specific recommendations in it. Hopefully some of the things we discussed will help to make a difference to some young people's lives.

I am looking forward to the report to see all the ideas that were generated but the one thought that grabbed me at the time was the possible use of ultra-low tech to help the young people to help themselves. For example, each centre could maintain a simple book or file where they could share tips such as where is the cheapest place to buy bread, who has offers on at the moment or anything else that they feel is worth sharing. If this was built on web2.0 technology we'd call it a wiki.

After the main session came the familiar wine, nibbles and many more conversations as networks were grown and strengthened.

I finally left around 10pm happy, invigorated and looking forward to the next stage of the story. An excellent evening indeed.

Today's ideas about tomorrows KIM

The latest TFPL Connect event carried the intriguing title "Rhetoric, fashion or fact: today's ideas about tomorrows KIM" and it proved to be an intriguing event.

The fun started just after I arrived at the venue as the next person to arrive was a former colleague, and a friendly one too, from the London Borough of Lambeth who I had not seen since leaving there just over three years ago. It was good to catch up on the news and gossip and to also have my decision to leave vindicated as those left behind have faced redundancies, pay cuts and reorganisations.

But back to the event.

The format was similar to last time with some subtle, and useful, changes. The three panellists spoke for ten minutes each on the topic, we then had discussions at our tables before an open session at the end where our comments and questions were put to the panellists.

As always with a panel, it is the quality of the panellists that counts and this one scored a reasonable 2 out of 3 (the last panel was 0 out of 3).

The two good speakers (i.e. the ones I liked) spoke about the personal experiences of implementing Knowledge Management systems and cultures within their organisations (Birmingham City Council and The Manufacturers' Organisation). The third gave a theoretical view of the trends and future direction of KM which seemed to end with him predicting futures that have already happened.

The main message that bubbled to the surface from both the panellists and our table discussion was the need to get some of the Information Management basics right (even if they are not labelled as such). Skills around filing (classification, retention, etc.) and retrieval (search terms, taxonomies and provenance) are still important and need to be taught.

The evening ended nicely, as usual, with more conversations with the delegates, panellists and organisers over a glass or two of wine. You could argue that an evening spent discussing Knowledge Management is doing work in my personal time but when the evenings are as stimulating and entertaining as this one then that's my time well spent.

Conversations and canapes

I enjoy developing my Knowledge Management/consulting knowledge and contacts and the best way that I have found to do this at informal evening gatherings organised by Gurteen, TFPL and LIKE.

Due to unfortunate circumstances I was unable to get to the last two TFPL Connect events so I was quick off the mark to book my place on the latest one held in some luxury at the Crowne Plaza hotel close to their Blackfriars offices.

Networking is a key part of these gatherings, the key part actually, so I arrived early to start the mixing. The champagne was an unexpected pleasure but was not actually needed to get the connections and conversations flowing.

After the brief prelude we went into the conference room for the panel discussion on all matters relating to Records / Information / Knowledge Management. I normally sit quietly at these sort of events and let the information sink in and ferment before coming to any sort of conclusion but I surprised myself by making a comment on the very first question.

I suspect that this may have been because I took an early dislike to the line that the panellists were taking that seemed routed in the last century. The second comment I made in my notebook was "not a clue". This became crystal clear on the final, lighter, question on the user of Twitter which all three panellists confessed to not using to the shocked amazement of the audience who vigorously leaped to its defence.

United by the last question, we returned to the reception area to resume the conversations fuelled by some more drinks and some welcome canapés. The socialising went on for a couple of hours and the time whizzed by in a whirl or welcomes, words and wine.

Simply a fabulously interesting and fun evening and I can hardly wait for the next one in February.

The five ages of technology

The second TFPL Connect event was titled "The future of work - technology" and looked at how technology will impact the how, when and where of work in the future.

As usual for me, the learning points from the event will slowly simmer with everything else that I have learnt to form unexpected relationships that bubble to the surface years later to provide useful insights to a specific issue that I am working on.

The two notes to myself that I made during the event are the result of the same process.

In my working life I have gone through four ages of technology and can see that we are entering a fifth:

1. No technology; my career in IT started by writing programs on paper
2. Work technology; I had computers in the office to do basic tasks like word processing and to run applications like time recording
3. Work technology at home; I got a PC to do the sort of things at home that I did at work, e.g. write letters and send emails
4. Home technology; now I use more technology at home than I do at work with sophisticated web applications (Facebook, Blogger, etc.) and cool hardware like my iPod touch.
5. Home technology at work; people increasingly want to use the tools they use at home to communicate and collaborate at work where the current tools are (generally) much less effective.
   

The other note was quite different and was about choice. We increasingly have more choice over when we work, where we work and how we work (e.g. face-to-face, email, IM, voice, etc. etc.) and we need to think carefully about what is best for any given situation but we also need to respect people who have made different, but equally valid, choices.

First TFPL Connect meeting

TFPL Connect is a training / collaborating / networking event that builds on the success of their Bath Club and brings together people working in the public and commercial sectors.

The first event, held at the RSA (Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures & Commerce) just off The Strand in Central London, covered the people aspects of working life in the future.

The discussion was led by Matilda Venter of PwC who presented the findings from their recent research project Managing tomorrow's people. This included some scenario planing around company organization (fragmentation v integration) and employee teaming (collectivism v individualism), which produces three possible models; Small is beautiful, Companies care and Corporate is king.

Four panellists from The Information Commissioner's Office, NHS Direct, Lovells LLP and Ashridge Management College then gave their perspectives on the three scenarios before opening the floor to discussion - which is the soul of these events.

These discussions were wide-ranging and insightful but given the complexity of the dialogue it is pointless to try and summarize what was said but I suspect that all of us filed several ideas into our grey matter where they can mix with others before surfacing later on to be applied to a business problem.

The discussions got even wider when after the main session we went down into the vaults (pictures) to carry on networking over a few glasses of wine and some nibbles (the beetroot pure was fab!). I managed to spend some time with several of the speakers as well as some friends from the Bath Club.

Overall it was an excellent event and I hope to be able to go to the other two planned for this year that will be looking at future working live from the perspectives of technology and communication.

The TFPL Bath Club has ceased to be

The Bath Club, organized by TFPL, has been my favorite work-related event over the last few years. Building on TFPL's work and contacts with information and knowledge managers in the public sector, we have had a number of excellent speakers and the opportunity to follow-up the main events with further discussions over wine, biscuits and some rather wonderful cheeses (I must find out what that one with the red fruit in it is!). So it is sad for me that the Bath Club meeting this week was the last one.

But hopefully this sadness is eclipsed by the joy at the creation of the new TFPL Connect events that combines various TFPL activities into one event (as the old demarcations mean a lot less these days) that lasts a whole afternoon, rather than squeezing into a small late afternoon/early evening slot.

The Bath Club was very good and TFPL Connect promises to be even better.

Ideopolis

Went to an interesting Bath Club meeting entitled "What makes a successful city in the knowledge economy?" by Alexandra Jones, Associate Director, The Work Foundation which presented findings from their Ideopolis: Knowledge-City Regions research.

The key findings from the research were: Knowledge is more than science and technology; City-regions matter –real economic geography; Large cities matter; Knowledge drives economic success…but not necessarily quality of life; Not every city can or should become a knowledge city.

What may be a little surprising about this is that cities still lead economic activity, and larger cities more so, even though new technologies enable knowledge workers to work almost anywhere, including in rural areas and while on the move. The reason for this is the traditional strengths of cities, e.g. access to housing, leisure and other people.

As usual, what makes the Bath Club such a good event is not the presentation (though Alex Jones really knew her stuff) but the open discussion that follows it and then the conversations over cheese and wine that comes after that.

Ended the evening having a long and detailed discussion on business transformation in town planning with a well known consultant in that area who also happens to live and work in Lambeth.

Knowledge Management (KM)

Knowledge Management (KM) has been an interest of mine since work at IBM around ten years ago alongside the KM practice and it just struck me immediately as being "right"; though what KM actually is is a difficult thing to pin down. For me it's about getting the right information to the right people at the right time and this can be done directly (e.g. by making the information easily available over an intranet or internet) or indirectly (e.g. by providing the time and space for people to interact so that they can share their knowledge).

Taking this definition of KM means that it covers a wide range of topics covering all aspects of technology and sociology. Initially KM was technology led (largely thanks to the IT suppliers) and focused on things like intranets, search engines, directories of skills and interests, etc. This approach proved to be of limited value except in a few simple cases (e.g. electronic libraries of case law) and the more recently the focus has moved towards the people end of things which is more challenging, more effective and more interesting.

My involvement in KM these days mostly involves going to events like the Gurteen KM Cafes and the TFPL Bath Club. Both of these events are always stimulating and provide interesting new insights. And the company of my fellow KMers is a treat too.