Information Research Weblog

I had an interesting morning, this morning (apart from traffic problems). I'd been invited to participate at a debate at an internal research conference at Leeds Metropolitan University, so I tooled up the motorway (hence the traffic problems) to participate in a debate on 'knowledge management' with Frank Land (Professor Emeritus, London School of Economics) and Tony Bryant (Professor of Information Management, Leeds M.U.). I was there simply to restate my 'nonsense of km' position, while Frank was more concerned with the ethical issues of km, although proposing that, while km was a somewhat dubious concept, we could think of the historical 'management of knowledge' as something with a greater validity. My objection to that was that this is fine when debating the issues with lay persons and 'knowledge' practitioners, but that the information systems discipline needs firmer definition of its concepts. I think we played a draw, and at least the audience seemed to enjoy it. :-)

The idea of the debate arose out of an invitation to me from Frank to participate in a session at the HICSS Conference in Hawaii - unfortunately, much as I would like to revisit the Big Island, I lack the institutional support necessary to get me there. (LSE is rather more generous to its Emeriti than the U of Sheffield!) So, as a substitute, the debate was video-filmed and will be shown before the relevant session at HICSS - those of you who are attending can watch out for me :-)