I was listening to the comments of Bill O'Brien, an interim CEO for The Waiting List Practice, which publishes information on medical training, at the recent InfoToday 2003 conference as he took on some of the Knowledge Management presenters. I asked him to send me his thoughts about the conference from a CEO's perspective, and he mailed back the following very interesting notes:

- I got the sense that this community is looking for an identity in the business community. It is looking for ways to legitimize itself.
-The idea of so many presenters dismissing the ROI as �answering the wrong question� is particularly alarming and as a CEO I can assure you that I am not interested in their question of it doesn�t roll up to mine.
- I got the sense that this field has become a �club� in which the 2 o�clock presenter is legitimizing the findings of the 3 o�clock presenter and visa versa.
-One particular presenter spoke about how CoPs had added so much value and then as a toss aside comment mentioned that her job might be in jeopardy due to funding cut backs. CEOs are looking for critical path projects and if that is the plight of her �value added� project I am totally confused.
- I have the sense that knowledge management is dead. The value inherent in Knowledge Management is probably already manifesting itself in so many different ways in hundreds of companies. In other words, the idea of KM having some sort of standard will never be realized and that�s probably a good thing.
-Finally, I think the Social Network technologies have a big potential future as the collaboration tools used in complex projects, like in the Product Lifecycle Management space, begin to commoditize; causing the next question to evolve naturally which is �is anybody actually sharing any information in the way that we had hoped when we architected the HW/SW solution in the first place?�.

Thanks, Bill, it helps to see things from a CEO's point of view!