Self-Signifying Data

** Event rescheduled to March 24, 2010 **

The Digitally-supported Brain

Those ISKO UK members who attended Dave Snowden’s memorable seminar in April 2009 – Human-machine symbiosis for data interpretation – may remember what I remember as a collective gestalt. ‘Self-signifying data’ was the phrase, I believe, and it proved more memorable for many even than Dave’s ‘Blanket Octopodes’ (see Dave’s slide set for an explanation.

Why raise this again now? Well, because ISKO UK member Jan Wyllie and business partner Simon Eaton, have for some time been developing a web site/application based on those very principles of self-signifying data described by Dave Snowden. Their Open Intelligence initiative draws on years of experience in Content Analysis, brought up-to-date through Web 2.0 technology. And it’s highly relevant to KO professionals, because KO technologies – categorisation and taxonomies – are at the heart of the Open Intelligence approach.

If making systematic inferences from communications flows using faceted taxonomies, using content analysis techniques to turn the tables on the knowledge glut, or increasing the value and productivity of work groups because they will be working with a much higher level of common knowledge rings a bell for you, then consider attending Jan Wyllie’s one-day Ark Group Masterclass Content analysis: Using taxonomies to improve collaboration. It’s to be held on 10 February 2010, in London, and will feature “the first public showing of the all new Open Intelligence software dedicated to making the social networking experience of creating collaborative intelligence, an engaging, as well as a valuable and productive use of a community’s knowledge working time.”

Further details of this important and pioneering effort are available on the Open Intelligence web site, where you can also book your place.