InfoMatters

We hosted a lively talk this week from William (Bill) Anderson, formerly a researcher at Xerox, now chief of Praxis 101, on the potential of the ‘Net to advance scientific discourse and data sharing through peer production and commentary. He raised fascinating questions about the potential for ‘citizen scientists’ to engage in the process of research, the roadblocks to participation, and the general reaction of scientific communities to open access and engagement. His talk sparked one of the liveliest discussions among the audience that we’ve seen this year at our iForum series and it’s clear that many of us have very strong views on the problems and prospects. The local Daily Texan covered the talk in advance and this attracted a diverse group of attendees, many of them surely first-timers at a School of Information talk. We encourage this, as the issues we deal with are impacting everyone.

A couple of issues that dominated discussion revolved around the apparent elitism of science which is seen as discouraging participation from ‘amateurs’. I am less convinced of this. I believe most scientists and scholars encourage discussion and are quick to engage, but lack the time to deal with people who themselves lack sufficient knowledge to talk appropriately about certain topics. Discussion forums that treat opinion as equivalent to data push intelligent discourse aside quickly, resulting in the setting up of more controlled groups where membership is limited to those who can discriminate. This is necessary, not elitist, in most cases for reasons of effort and sanity.

A further issue related to the ability, given big science’s reliance of massive technological investment, of citizens to engage in any process. That is true enough if we anticipate a return to Victorian-era innovators working out the secrets of medicine in their studies, but there are examples of shared computing resources being put to targeted use or the ability of large numbers of people to play with huge data sets generated by some of these technologically-driven experiments. I would add that the process of discovery should not be limited to the individual level so literally, and that distributed discourse on research might enable a culture or society to play with ideas in a manner that yields insights which would not emerge were a scientific team working in relative isolation in their labs.

All told, a lively session and lots of food for thought. Bill blogs through his company site.

I spent last week at the Society for Competitive Intelligence Professionals’ (SCIP) Annual Conference in San Diego. Now talk about a group with identity problems. However, unlike certain other info-professions, these folks are quite happy with ambiguity. The conference also seems to have some money since they waived registration costs for speakers, have real food for lunch rolled into the costs, and the exhibition space offered more freebies to attendees than even seasoned ALA-attendees could carry. Clearly there is a cultural difference at work in this conference. Unlike many others I attend, the sessions here were much more interactive and people spoke succinctly and to the point. In a lunch time session entitled “What happens next?”, a group of us were called on to answer a series of questions, some prepared, some new, and the moderator managed to keep all participants on point and on time. There was no occasion to feel one voice dominated or one person had not given any thought to his or her answers. Now if this had been an academic group, you can only imagine, but the SCIP folks seem fast thinking, direct, and time conscious. The product of this session will find its way in to Competitive Intelligence magazine in due course.

A session on Appropriate Theory for CI, led by France Bouthillier, provoked further interesting exchanges, mostly by audience members who claimed not to be too bothered if CI was a field or not, or if it had any theoretical basis, or if it even had a future in academia. At least, that was the tone at the start of the discussion but it became clearer as the session progressed that people did care but had perhaps not felt the need to address these concerns head on. The audience here seemed to be a mix of people with degrees in business or LIS but there were also pharmaceutical engineers, English literature majors and IT professionals in fine voice. No easy resolution was attained but the door has been opened and more than a few participants seemed eager to walk through and continue this conversation.

So just what is competitive intelligence? Even these participants could not agree but rather than get heated about it, they seemed to enjoy the fact. As Cormac Ryan said from the floor” “We all seem to be in violent agreement on this”.

I spent the weekend in Norman, OK, serving as a guest speaker at the SLIS annual alumni event there (nice idea!). I used the occasion to present the case for moving beyond the fault lines of typical LIS discourse (you know, paper versus digital, the traditional versus the technological etc.) so that LIS educators and professionals might actually engage with the big questions facing us in society (the emerging cyberinfrastructure, challenges to access, disintermediation, the imminent arrival of the rest of the world onto ‘our’ Internet etc.). I enjoyed the event and received enough push back from questions and comments to know that there are others out there who feel something similar. I enjoyed the trip and met lots of smart, motivated students which gives me confidence in the future. I was also (almost) convinced by Suliman Hawamdeh, a faculty member at OU, that I was really talking about Knowledge Management. Since I’ve always struggled to understand KM, it’s engaging to think that I’ve been doing it all along I am heading to the Society for Competitive Intelligence Professionals’ conference next week, mostly to try and understand better how this group deals with information, and am getting a similar response from these people, namely, the ideas and views I push about LIS education happen to be central to their world too. Now that’s refreshing — outsiders welcomed into the field with encouragement to share ideas. Nobody in KN or CI seems to care too much about my credentials, my accreditation or my commitment to certain words. Now try that on some of the LIS discussion lists.