Past events
LIKE 32 Thursday 26 January
Future of history: digital preservation
Chaired by Lena Roland, with Adrian Brown, Parliament Archives
As we marked the passing of another year, LIKE turned its focus to the “Future of history” and current approaches to digital conservation.
LIKE Christmas Party Thursday 8 December
LIKE Christmas Party
Kindly sponsored by Prenax
Festive fun to end 2011 with Mingle Bells Bingo and a wonderful dinner.
LIKE 31 Thursday 24 November
Information literacy: fit for the workplace?
Chaired by Dr Susie Andretta, London Metropolitan
This panel discussion drew on the experience of LIKE members to explore Information literacy in the workplace and discover whether, in the second decade of the 21st Century, it’s really enough to get us by. Chaired by Dr Susie Andretta, we heard presentations from Caroline De Brun, Rachel Adams and Adjoa Boateng: from the fields of Health, Legal and Higher Education information services.
Presentation notes from Caroline de Brun on health information literacy
Presentation notes from Adjoa Boateng on information literacy in Higher Education
LIKE 30 Thursday 27 October
Knowledge transfer: making it stick
Gary Colet, Warwick University Business School
Gary is the facilitator for the Knowledge Retention and Transfer special interest group at the Knowledge and Innovation Network, Warwick University Business School. In a highly interactive LIKE 30, Gary Colet led us on an exploration of proven techniques for identifying knowledge 'domains,' elicitation, and working with donors and recipients.
LIKE 29
Ooops! A slight counting error meant we jumped straight to LIKE 30 and missed out number 29.
LIKE 28 Thursday 27 September & 6 October
Connecting information with innovation
John Davies, TFPL
Our autumn season got off to an exclusively topical start, when LIKE hosted the first discussion of insights uncovered in TFPL’s latest report, Connecting Information with Innovation. The survey examined knowledge and information management skills and roles across a range of participating organisations. The findings were presented by and one of the report’s authors, John Davies.
LIKE 27 Thursday 28 July
Guided walk: King's Cross
Rachel Kolsky
This year we explored the fascinating area around King's Cross. We explored the newly renovated station and with our tour guide, Rachel Kolsky, unlocked the secrets to the surrounding area's history. Once London's most notorious red light district this area has undergone a startling transformation. From the beautifully renovated St Pancras station and hotel, to the vibrant King's Place.
The walk was preceded by a tour of the Guardian's offices courtesy of Richard Nelsson.
Go London Tours - our tour guide for the evening
LIKE 26 Thursday 30 June
Information Architects
Martin Belam
Telling people that you are an "Information Architect" is a lousy introduction at parties, but it is a discipline that underpins the digital experiences that most of us increasingly have in our day-to-day lives. In this talk Martin looked back at how he came to describe himself as an "Information Architect", and explained why it has such an affinity and so many practitioners who come from a library and information science background. And why you might want to become one.
LIKE 25 Thursday 26 May
Return on Investment
Caroline Brazier
Caroline Brazier, the newly appointed Director of Scholarship & Collections at the British Library, spoke at LIKE about how the British Library balances the current challenges of budget cuts with increasing expectations on the Library's leading role in supporting Britain in the digital information age. She discussed the British Library's vision and strategy for continuing to achieve its ambitious programme with ever decreasing funding, and how it argues its return on funding investment. She posed some challenging questions to LIKE, including, "How would you spend £100million each year to ensure UK citizens had the best access to knowledge and information."
LIKE 24 Tuesday 19 April
Human Library
Linda Constable
The Human Library is a way of helping people to have a conversation with others who they might never get to speak to. It’s a device for exploring different experiences and cultures, and for challenging stereotypes and prejudices. The idea is that people – readers - can ‘borrow’ a person, or ‘book’, for a conversation, just as they would borrow a book from a library. In the first part of the evening Linda provided more details about the Human Library - how it started and developed in the UK – what it feels like to take part – how to organise an event. This was followed by a mini Human Library event with everybody having the opportunity to be a Reader or a Book.
LIKE 23 Thursday 31 March
Information in the palm of your hand: the evolution of mobile information access
Mark Needham, Andrew Swaine - chaired by Jennifer Smith
Mobile devices have become computers in their own right, with an astonishing amount of processing ability and bandwidth. More than 1.2 billion people carry handsets capable of accessing, using and publishing rich information.
Yet organisations still limit their employees' ability to access information on the go, publishers still insist on valuable information only being accessible from within their customer's offices, and user interface and connectivity issues can still leave even the most devoted smart phone user frustrated.
To help us understand the potential, and the limitations, of mobile access to information, we discussed the tipping points in the evolution of mobile devices; how on-the-go access to information first became possible, then cost-effective, and ultimately ubiquitous. Ultimately, we asked do we have to choose between convenient, on-demand access to AN answer, or inconvenient access to THE RIGHT information?
LIKE 22 Thursday 24 February
What is Knowledge Management - really?
Virginia Henry, Matt Walsh, Linda Woodcraft, James Andrews, Katharine Schopflin, Matthew Rees
Some say it's been around for ages, others that it's an "emerging discipline", and some say KM is history! A few of these commentators actually know what KM is. But no-one knows better than practitioners. For LIKE 22, Knowledge Managers working in a high-profile national charity, central government, a global international consulting firm and an influential professional organisation told it LIKE it really is.
LIKE 21 Thursday 27 January
Information blackholes
Hanna Kazerani
Hanna is a passionate advocate of information governance and shared her experience on taming, deduplicating and organising terrabytes of information.
LIKE 20 Thursday 25 November
The Spirit of LIKE, the Spirit of Christmas (Networking with Santa!)
Lesley Robinson - chaired by Virginia Henry
Lesley Robinson has never applied for a job in her illustrious working life. All of her roles - from running the specialist recruitment agency, TFPL, to running KPMG's transformation programme and consulting for lots of big city firms - have been acquired by recommendation. Her career is a testimony to the power of effective networking. Lesley shared her tips for effective networking with the group including a festively-themed skill swap.
LIKE 19 Thursday 28 October
LIKE Health: making the leap to Open Source
Choosing and implementing Open Source software at the King's Fund Information and Library Service
Ray Philips - chaired by Hanna Lewin
In the Autumn of 2009, The King's Fund Information and Library Service's support contract for their Library Management System (LMS) came up for renewal. They were confronted with an opportunity which required a quick decision: to cancel our contract and become one of few UK libraries using the open source LMS, Koha, or to stick with SirsiDynix for another year and ruminate on the options. They went for Koha. Ray Phillips, Head of Information Services and Matthew Hale, Online Services Librarian, explained some of the strategic reasons behind that decision.
LIKE 18 Thursday 30 September
21st Century Info Pros
Talk led by Luisa Jefford, Director of Public Sector Recruitment at TFPL on the myriad of skills required of Information Professionals and the roles currently available.
LIKE Masterclass Thursday 21 September
Chris Collison KM Masterclass
Following on from his February No More Consultants talk at LIKE, we were delighted to welcome back Chris Collison for a full day Masterclass to explore and experience these knowledge management techniques in more depth.
LIKE 17 Thursday 26 August
LIKE Posh Picnic
LIKE 16 Thursday 29 July
Guided tour of London's Square Mile
LIKE 15 Thursday 24 June
Civil rights in the digital world with Glyn Wintle - Open Rights Group
Glyn Wintle is a computer programer who frequently gives talks about the Open Rights Group. He makes a living from technical consulting, programming and security work.
Glyn's talk covered all the areas in which the Open Rights Group are involved from the Digital Economy Bill, to the BBC breaking your TV, to Knitting, to the goverment breaking Wikipedia, to copyright and Digital Rights Management.
The Open Rights Group exists to preserve and promote your rights in the digital age. Founded in 2005 by 1,000 digital activists, ORG has become the UK’s leading voice defending freedom of expression, privacy, innovation, consumer rights and creativity on the net.
LIKE 14 Thursday 27 May
LIKE Dinner with Susie Andretta
Transliteracy: In the world of ubiquitous computing are we all competent ‘transliterati’?
Hear our VoxPop of reactions to Susie Andretta's talk
LIKE 13 Wednesday 28 April
LIKE Dinner with James Lappin
A file for our times: reimagining records for the real time world
In the 20th century the 'file' was a ubiquitous information tool within the organisation, the main (or only) source of information about a particular project, case, or piece of work.
The records management profession responded to the coming of the internet and the networked office by attempting to replicate the hard copy file in the digital environment. This was to be done by means of a 'records folder' which would ideally reside in corporate fileplan sitting on an electronic document and records management system (EDRMS).
James explored the reasons why the 'records folder' has not entered our language or permeated our organisational culture to anything like the same extent that the hard copy file did all those years ago. If the records folder hasn't worked, what would work?
James presented us with two questions for discussion: What types of records do 21st century knowledge workers want to read? and What types of systems or standards would be needed to support the capture and management of those records?
LIKE 12 Thurs 25 March
LIKE Dinner with Chris Collison
No more consultants
Chris talked about his recently published book, No more consultants, co-authored with Geoff Parcell. In their book, Chris and Geoff argue that automatically reaching for external consultants to solve a problem misses the opportunity to use the expertise held within the organisation.
Hear our VoxPop of reactions to Chris Collison's talk
Report by Jennifer Smith posted on CILIP Update's blog
LIKE 11 Thurs 25 February
LIKE Dinner with Fran Alexander - Taxonomy Manager, BBC
Taxonomies in an open world
How can we use knowledge systems like taxonomies to create common ground so that we understand each other and share information effectively? At the same time how can we make knowledge systems flexible enough so that we can all use terms we want to use?
LIKE 10 Thursday 28 January
LIKE Dinner with Liz Scott-Wilson, Carol Scott and Virginia Henry
Knowing me, knowing you: information behaviour & culture change
Do professional traits influence information behaviour? A knowledge specialist interviewed a social worker and an engineer about how they see their world, their work and their knowledge and records.
Report from Virginia Henry
LIKE 9 Thursday 3 December
LIKE Dinner with special guest Cerys Hearsey
Tales from the SharePoint trenches
Cerys Hearsey is Metataxis' Sharepoint and Information Architecture expert.
Report from Virginia Henry
LIKE 8 Thursday 29 October
LIKE Dinner with special guest Tim Buckley-Owen
From Walled Garden to Amazon Jungle: orienteering in the new information landscape
Tim Buckley-Owen lead the discussion on the changing information landscape and what it means for all of us. Tim is an independent information industry commentator, with over 35 years’ experience in the information profession. He has previously worked for CILIP, the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council, and the Library and Information Commission. He's author of "Success at the Enquiry Desk," currently in it's fifth edition, and has written for all the major information industry publications. Tim's vast experience and critical eye give him an expert perspective on the information industry. We were delighted he agreed to join us for dinner and share his views and concerns on orienteering the new information landscape.
With 18 attendees at LIKE 8, from an excellent mix of professional backgrounds and experience, we enjoyed a really good discussion on the changing information landscape. After dinner we asked some LIKE members about themselves and their experience of the evening.
PLAY MP3 Hear what attendees at LIKE 8 had to say about the evening.
LIKE 7 Monday 14 September
Tim Berners Lee
A visit to the Science Museum to hear Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web.
LIKE 6 Thursday 30 July
Books etc.
1. What's on your bookshelf?
What books have you found most useful in your professional life and would recommend to others in the LIKE group?
2. Workplace bookclubs
Just an excuse for a glass of chardonnay and a gossip, or a useful tool for breaking down barriers and increasing learning in the workplace?
Topic proposed by Jennifer Smith.
LIKE 5 Thursday 25 June
Return on investment
How do you prove the value and ROI of KM? In these tough economic times, demonstrating the value and return on investment of KM is crucial. What are the challenges? What measures can be put in place to achieve this?
LIKE 4 Thursday 28 May
Storytelling and knowledge sharing
What is the role of storytelling in knowledge sharing? What associations does the word ‘story’ conjure up with you; pyjamas or pin striped suit?
Storytelling is as old as humankind, but what makes a good story and what makes storytelling such a powerful tool in knowledge sharing?
Topic proposed by Marja Kingma.
Visual storytelling: An exploration of ‘Telling Tales’ at the V&A by Marja Kingma
LIKE 3 Thursday 30 April
Knowledge and Recession
How the lack of knowledge caused it - and how the application of knowledge could restore confidence.
Topic proposed by Roger Williams.
Wisdom of crowds
Does the wisdom of crowds replace experts and, if not, when should one be used and not the other?
Topic proposed by Matthew Rees.
LIKE 2 Thursday 26 March
The Economic Crisis and the Age of Uncertainty - a debate with Don Tapscott at the RSA
LIKE 1 Thursday 26 February 2009
The starting point. The four founding members met and laid the foundations of LIKE.