It was 20 years ago today…

Twenty years ago, a dot-com software development manager (me) and a publishing director (Judi Vernau) decided to form Metataxis. We both felt that this intriguing new discipline of “Information Architecture” was something that had promise for the future, and was something we could do well at given our backgrounds. 

Twenty years later we are still here with both Metataxis UK and Metataxis NZ. Along the way, Metataxis has had, and still has some fantastically talented individuals, who’ve delivered endless value to our clients in information architecture and information management. 

But enough of the self-congratulations! In a series of posts over the coming weeks, I’ll be looking back at how information management has changed over the last 20 years. I’ll even make some predictions about the next 20 years. Watch this space…

Workshopping the Future of Information and Knowledge Management

The future is uncertain – it cannot be predicted. However this does not mean we should not be identifying and analysing current developments that point to potential paradigm shifts in how we create, manage and use information and knowledge. These developments fall across the political, economic, social, technological, legal and environmental spectrum.

Analysing these developments by identify the driving forces will help us consider the future trends we are likely to encounter and the future we would like to create. By having structured and thoughtful speculation about the future, we can begin to prepare for whatever future may arrive. It is one of the important keys to business preparedness.

Noeleen Schenk from Metataxis and Sheila Moorcroft from Realising your Future will be holding a series of invitation-only workshops over the next two months as structured and facilitated conversations to explore the developments and identify the likely trends shaping and changing the generation and application of knowledge and information in strategy and research.

The aim of the workshops will be to:

  • Identify predetermined elements (i.e. will persist in any scenario)
  • Identify the driving forces (i.e. forcing the pace of change such as increased global competition)
  • Decide which are current trends (i.e. current events that are variable)

The outputs of the workshop will be a series of trends which we will then survey participants to assess the impact / likelihood – possibly also an indicative timeframe or other measures for each of the trends, in terms of their relevance and implications for IKM in the next 5-10 years.

The findings will be more widely circulated next year.