I finally met Jane Dysart at the recent FASTforward09 conference and she graciously asked if I would like to join the group of bloggers she’s assembled here for the conference blog. I’m immensely flattered to be included in this group.

i started blogging about KM at McGee’s Musings while I was teaching the subject at the Kellogg School at Northwestern in 2001. To the best of my knowledge, I was the first person to incorporate blogging into a KM course, although I wouldn’t say the experiment was an unqualified success. My involvement in the field goes back to the early 1990s when I was part of the group at Ernst & Young’s Center for Information Technology and Strategy along with Tom Davenport and Larry Prusak. We tried to take a balanced position about the then nascent field of knowledge management between technology and organization. The technophiles had bigger marketing budgets and were willing to make grander promises. That’s unfortunate.

I also spent time as the CKO for Diamond Management & Technology Consultants. Today I consult with organizations about issues that I think fall under the umbrella of knowledge work and knowledge management. i still think the organizational dimension ultimately is more powerful than the technological. Not surprisingly, I’m a fan of Dave Snowden’s work and thinking. The place where I start these days, and where I plan to start with my posts here, is a wise observation from John Gall in his wonderful book Systemantics (now available as The Systems Bible):

A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that works.
                                         John Gall