Conference   2007

Patrick Lambe is President of the Information and Knowledge Management Society based in Singapore, and Founding Partner of Straits Knowledge, a research and consulting firm specialising in information and knowledge management. His new book is Organising Knowledge: Taxonomies, Knowledge and Organisation Effectiveness (Chandos, 2007). One of Asia’s most respected knowledge management practitioners, Patrick was originally trained in Library Science. He arrived in KM via a second career in training and development, and has been based in Singapore for 16 years. Patrick is also an Adjunct Professor in KM at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University.

About Keynote Speech

Information management grew out of the early 20th century need to impose discipline and consistency on rapidly scaling enterprises in an industrialising world. It helps enterprises coordinate on large scales, and at great distances. It helps them manage their risks and opportunities. It has survived with varying success the impact of email, the internet and messaging, and the arrival of its younger cousins in knowledge management.

What does the arrival of web 2.0 technologies mean for the discipline of managing information in the enterprise, given that these new technologies are almost self-consciously undisciplined? What does the proliferation of numerous small scale social tools mean for the large integrated information engines we have struggled to put in place? What is required of the information management professional in this new set of changes?