To all,

I give a brief introduction to myself.

You might think of me as a bridge. At least I feel like one, because I have never had both feet planted on the same shore. I hold the Doctor of Science in Engineering Administration, and my academic studies range from Electrical Engineering (undergrad) to knowledge engineering (doctoral research).

On the academic shoreline, I am the Director of Executive Programs for the Department of Engineering Management and Systems Engineering at The George Washington University. We offer accelerated Masters and Doctoral degrees to working professionals ranging from small project team leads to CEOs, generals and admirals. My sole focus is to help these industry and government leaders take what they learn in the classroom and directly apply it to their organizations. Engineering on one shoreline, management on the other.

On the commercial side, I have a consulting practice in information systems and knowledge management. Our clients include the US Government and companies throughout the US and Canada. In essence, we take the best theories in KM and show clients how to apply them. Theory on one shoreline, application on the other.

As I moved from electrical engineering to knowledge engineering to knowledge management, I found most of the approaches lacking. Reductionism, determinism and empiricism, coupled with brute force computation, comprised most of the toolset for dealing with complex problems. The engineering management texts taught me to think objectively, statistically and efficiently, never subjectively or intuitively. I needed a bridge.

That bridge came when I met Drs. Paul Prueitt and Ed Finn and we formed the BCN Group, Inc. Most scientific institutions are so entrenched in their "religion" that it is extremely difficult to explore questions such as about the earth becoming a self-aware organism. But this is exactly the type of question that we need to address if we are to advance beyond an information-centric economy to an enlightened civilization built upon knowledge.

Sadly, most of the knowledge management approaches being touted today have little to do with managing knowledge. Rather, they are very much focused on managing information overload using reductionist, statistical approaches. Many participants at a recent KM conference proclaimed that knowledge exists only inside people's heads and can't be managed. Therefore, they would put their emphasis on getting the right information to the right people at the right time, etc., etc., etc.

Well, at least they all chant the same mantra !

In order to manage knowledge the right way, we need to deeply explore realms such as neuropsychology, cognition, consciousness, cosmology, ultrastructure, semiotics and linguistics, to name a few. We need a laboratory to pull these ideas out of the minds of the caretakers of this knowledge and apply them to seemingly intractable problems (there's a bridge in there somewhere).

The glass bead game can serve as a virtual laboratory from which we can launch these explorations. It may well be the beginning of a new way to manage knowledge - using the collective mind to solve intractable problems and to make new discoveries.

I wish to participate on the basis of building an environment for "knowledge management done right." We only need a few pioneers to get started. If it doesn't work, I volunteer to print and distribute the T-shirts. However, I can only see this getting better.

The bead game, by its very nature, can only continue to evolve and improve. I say, "Let the games begin!"

-Art