THE WELCH COMPANY
440 Davis Court #1602
San Francisco, CA 94111-2496
415 781 5700


March 29, 2000

03 00050 61 01032901



Mr. Jack Park
jackpark@thinkalong.com
Street address
Palo Alto, CA Zip

Subject:   Peer Review on KM in POIMS

Dear Jack,

Confirming our telecon today, I look forward to getting comments on analysis of the KM movement set out in POIMS (about 15 paragraphs), requested previously in a letter to Pat Lincoln, with a copy to you on March 21. I haven't heard from Pat, nor from anyone else, so you are not alone in not having enough time to address this.

We have discussed KM quite a bit over the past year. I used the SDS record of our discussions to pull together ideas setting out opportunity that is being overlooked. The danger is that since others do not have experience using SDS, we are as two ships passing in the night. Pat Lincoln sounded similarly frustrated the other day when we left the meeting with Curt Carlson, saying emphatically that it should be possible to explain improving alphabet technology. He came up with a fairly good explanation that linked literacy with gaining control over lower levels of organic structure in the microcosm of human intelligence. But, it is not clear to me that anyone can ever "get it," as Andy Grove says, without first getting experience using SDS.

None-the-less, the opportunity for advancement is significant, and the need for solving information overload is growing, as problems mount that drive down earnings and stock prices, causing new waves of downsizing to appear on the horizon.

I called today about raising pilot testing during Doug's presentation at SRI in order to struggle toward people gaining experience needed to foster a culture of knowledge that replaces current practice of foraging on endless information from meetings, calls, email, etc. I asked about getting notes of Doug's talk, because investing information grows intellectual capital. This is a stronger strategy than allowing information to flow by like water under the bridge.

Sincerely,

THE WELCH COMPANY



Rod Welch
rowelch@attglobal.net


Copy to:

  1. Pat Lincoln
  2. Doug Engelbart