Yes, it was an earthquake - just north of here outside San Jose registering at 5.6. Several of us were enjoying a fantastic evening program on Gaming & Gadgets when a slight jolt got some of our attention. Cindy Hill knew immediately that an earthquake had occurred. I’ve been checking the Recent Earthquake site regularly and it shows all the earthquakes of the past week. You have to see this! There have been 23 earthquakes TODAY. Now granted, most of these earthquakes are between 1.6 and 2.1, but holy caroly. The map shows 482 earthquakes in the past week!!! This place is definitely rockin’ — and it isn’t just this great conference.

Way back in 1999 the Cluetrain Manifesto started many of us thinking about the impact technologies were having on our interactions with our customers, and within our organizations. But really, there have only been a handful of people looking at how organizations will change - and how they’ll work from a practical standpoint. Andrew McAfee at Harvard, Tom Davenport at Babson, David Snowden at Cognetive Edge and Jon Husband at Wirearchy are looking at how organizational structures will evolve. Wirearchy is a term coined by Husband meaning “a dynamic two-way flow of power and authority based on information, knowledge, trust and credibility, enabled by interconnected people and technology”. What a great concept — really the transformation of hierarchies in the wired world. We spend an incredible amount of time, money and expertise integrating technologies into our work processes and organizations, and yet minimal time on how the organization’s structure, culture, performance measures and rewards need to adjust to this integration.

Husband’s October 24th blog has podcast with Dave Snowden to coincide with Snowden’s article in Nov 2007 Harvard Business Review. If you’re working with knowledge management and can’t make it to KMWorld to hear Snowden, you can listen to the interview for 20 minutes (worth the time).

We’ve long been proponents of Harvard Business Review; for me it is must reading. The November 2007 issue has 2 must reads for information professionals. The Forethought Conversation is with Lynne Brindley, CEO of the British Library. The first information professional and the first female to hold this position, Lynne has “overseen a major shift in its mision and culture.” With her “corporate-style senior team” she has aligned the Library’s strategy with that of its funders — the British government — supporting entrepreneurship, small - medium businesses and what’s referred to as “creative industries.” As Lynne says, “it made sense, strategically to serve those communities and to change the perception of the library from quite a formidable institution to a place that said, “come in - we have real value for you.”" Worth reading - and it’s free, so click on that link. A recognized expert in knowledge management, Lynne is also a member of University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Knowledge Trust, established to shape a critical role for 21st and 22nd century knowledge professionals. That’s another site we should all be checking out. Sigh….but where’s the time?
Ok - no moaning. We have to make the time to at least scan these items, so while you’re at it, scan the other HBR article by David Snowden,”A Leader’s Framework for Decision-making”. David is well known in the km sphere and will be speaking and teaching at KMWorld 2007 November 5 - 8th. A founder of Cognitive Edge, his work on knowledge sharing and transfer, and the knowledge underpinnings (or not) of decision-making are incredibly thought-provoking….that, yes, we need to keep track of! Sigh…..

Google is definitely into experimentation, green practices, and employee support. I saw people taking their dogs into their office (no cats!), and running them on the green spaces between buildings. I saw people dropping off their cleaning, doing laundry, exercising, playing pool, working alone and in groups. On their large campus (including a number of old Silicon Graphics buildings), Google installed a number of soloar panels which creates enough power to support 1000 California homes and is the largest corporate installation in the US. Above is picture labelling their hydroponic garden experiment, overseen by the culinary staff, which grows many herbs, lettuces, etc. The large pumpkins were missing and one can only guess what happened to them with Hallowe’en coming up! I asked one of the chefs if he had fun, and he replied, “It’s like winning the chef lotto”!

Well, my visit yesterday to Google was fantastic. A tour, a feast in Charlie’s Cafe (the first and largest of the wonderful Google Cafeteria’s), and, best of all, active discussions with Google gurus on a number of topics — Google Scholar, Book Search/Library Program, public sector initiatives, and my fav, YouTube! Google Book Search, a free way to publicize your books, now includes 27 libraries and 10,000 publishers; and through Library Search and the 25 international union catalog partners plus OCLC’s WorldCat, you can find where a physical copy of a book can be found. Their plans to improve book users experience include more comprehensive search, more languages, and more features for users and publishers. Google Scholar, the single place to search scholarly material, now includes 1400 (mostly academic) libraries. Google works with all the major link resolvers to make this happen. They also work with aggregators, like Ebsco & Gale, to connect large consortiums. This service is open to all libraries and there is not cost. If you want to enable your aggregator, email Google — scholar-library(at)google.com. And if you don’t have a link resolver, Ex Libris offers a free one which works with Google Scholar.

Have you seen the management bloggers from the Harvard Business School? Included are Larry Prusak, writer and former executive director, Institute for Knowledge Management; Tom Davenport, KM guru, with his latest post on evidence-based advice; Gary Hamel (his Competing for the Future is one of my favs) and lots of writers on the topics of leadership, marketing, coaching, and more.

It’s always refreshing and exciting to hear a government official speak so passionately about libraries. I was so impressed with The Honourable Ray Danyluk when he spoke at the The Alberta Library’s Netspeed 2007 in Calgary last week. Imagine a minister asking for the library portfolio from another government department! Danyluk is very much into communities, from hundred year farms and libraries of the same age, to those in larger commuhnities. He has visited many, many libraries and is impressed by their services and enthusiam. His message to librarians was to get out of our libraries and invite those in government and community leaders to see the library’s services what they do for the community. Great talk!

Just discovered a series of videos on YouTube from the Univeristy of North Carolina — interviews (rather long ones) with the Dean, Jose-Marie Griffiths, professor Joanne Marshall, and an impromtu lecture by Danah Boyd . Danah is currenly working on a PhD at the University of California’s Berkley School of Information and is also a social media researcher at Yahoo Research Berkeley. She has done work on digital publics, designing culturally adoptive software, and lots more. Danah has been intrigued by social networking since her teens. She has studied computer science, studied at MIT (visualizing social networking online), studied youth and teens, and has lots to say about social networking. She is a very animated and passionate speaker(one I’ve been trying to get for a few years!). She had lots of great comments in her interview, including, “Hanging out online is mainstream culture.” She has done lots of interesting research in the social space and in this interview had lots to say about MySpace, Facebook and Friendster. Danah’s blog.

What a great book title for a publication from publisher Information Today. Edited by Rachel Singer Gordon, Information Tomorrow: Reflectgions on Technology & the Future of Public & Academic Libraries, brings together a number of authors many of whom will be speaking at Internet Librarian, Oct 29-31, Monterey CA. Stephen Abram wrote the foreward, Megan Fox writes about the Mobile Age, John Blyberg writes about the 21st century ILS, Joe Janes writes about Google, Michael Stephens writes about Libraries & the Read/Write Web, David Lee King writes about building library web sites, Jenny Levine writes about Library 2.0, Meredith Farkas writes about training librarians for the future, Alane Wilson looks at where libraries should be focused in the future, and virtual worlds and Second Life are discussed by Lori Bell, Tom Peters and Rhonda Trueman. Bring your copy of Information Tomorrow and have the authors sign it at Internet Librarian!

Isn’t this great? I believe Pavarotti is singing today for the good friend I, and others, lost yesterday. Pavarotti knew that Has, as he was called, had a Masters of Fine Arts and loved to sing and perform.