Hidden Gems

As part of my New Year resolutions I am trying to ensure that I become less of a hoarder. I am trying to balance ‘that might be useful sometime in the future’ with the ‘do I really need to keep that?’ As part of that campaign the proceedings of the 3rd Annual Conference, Knowledge Management for the Oil, Gas and Power (OGP) Sectors came to my attention. Now I have to say that the proceedings failed the first test; does that look good on the office bookshelf? The book has a pale blue, very plain cover, sort of thing you would find in a university research library. It doesn’t scream, ‘this is a book containing profound wisdom’ at you. But it does contain a paper by me so scores high on the ego charts (only kidding). Even then the title of the paper isn’t exactly inspirational eg In-depth Case Study: Sustainable organisational learning…global reach, local look and feel’. So should I keep it or consign it to the bin? Well I am going to keep it because if found a paper in it about using refinery process control systems to capture and retain ‘process knowledge’. We could have a long discussion about whether is this ‘true knowledge’ or ‘data’ but to be honest it doesn’t really matter what title you use, the key for me is ‘will it help the guys operating the plant do so in a safer, more efficient manner?’ Do you have any old conference proceedings sitting on your office shelf that perhaps might contain hidden gems, might be worth a look sometime soon? Knoco Ltd