Per the BI perspectives, I recall when we mistakenly presumed that ‘everyone’ would want access to BI tools. In the end almost ‘no one’ wanted the tools — just the results. I trained several ’service bureas’ (collections of tool jockeys who took ‘orders’ for reports).

For as much as such tools have been simplified over the years, I believe that FAST has the right idea — direct access to the data on a ’search’ basis is really the appropriate ‘nibble’ model that matches real behaviors.

I love Don’s reference to ‘collective or networked intelligence’. That’s way more meaningful than KM, because it’s far more tool agnostic, more adaptive and less controlled (ala. “managed”). I don’t even think I’d have problem with a term like “Knowledge Evolution”,
“Knowledge Ecosystem” (per Don’s reference) or even “Knowledge Garden” (ala. the whole premise for Child Garden — Kindergarten). Even Don reinforces the ‘death’ of KM and the reasons for it.

His reference to ’social revolution’ also reinforces FAST theme for ‘user revolution’ — this networked evolution is providing the means for such revolutions.

Doh! There he was reinforcing the significance of relationships…”meeting consumer demands through innovation”.

His comments and reflections as to the plethora of data and the interest in evaluating it is also reinforced by the growth of the practitioners around Web Analytics (albeit one channel of specific analytics).

He also brings out a key reason for a lot of it: making decisions — not collecting the data or analyzing it — but using it for another purpose (somewhat antithetical to the main focus of KM).

Also found the comment made that “IT should be an enabler” enlightening. I’ve used the reference to 2.0 not being about technology but technology enabling 2.0 — but I”ve never really extended the reference to IT as a whole. It isn’t a brilliant observation, just one that needs deeper consideration.

I have been seeing this in particular with clients that are Risk Managers and need to harness their “informal networks” and in areas of the public sector where decisions are made in a collaborative fashion that involves policy analysts, researchers, the public, etc. Its really taking off!