Keynote Speakers

Prof. Eric Tsui, Associate Director (Business Development)

Knowledge Management Research Centre - Dept.of Industrial & Systems Engineering
Hong Kong Polytechnic University

Professor of Knowledge Management of the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering of The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Prof. Tsui was formerly Chief Research Officer, Asia Pacific, in Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC) (2000-5). He joined CSC in 1989 after years of academic research in automated knowledge acquisition, natural language processing, case-based reasoning and knowledge engineering tools. His research was supported by grants and scholarships from Arthur Young, Rank Xerox, CSC, Graphic Directions, and the Australian Research Council. He was also a gratis visitor to Microsoft Research in February, 2000. Between August 2000 and January 2005, he assumed the roles of Innovation Manager at Australian Mutual Provident (AMP) and Maybank, two strategic outsourcing accounts at CSC in the Asia Pacific region. Eric was responsible for strategic research, knowledge brokering (between CSC and the clients), innovation management and university-industry collaborations. During his tenure at CSC, he had made significant contributions to CSC's expert systems products, applied research, Portal community leadership, and innovation programs. Eric has designed and delivered many KM and Portals workshops for government departments including CSTDI, Health, Land Registry, OGCIO and EPD.

 Knowledge Management Research Centre Website

Prof. Jaques Steyn, Head, School of Information Technology, Director, International Development Informatics Association

Monash South Africa

Dr Jacques Steyn is Head of the School of Information Technology, Monash South Africa, and Director of the International Development Informatics Association. He traces his South African ancestry back to 1688. As well as researching Classical Greek at the University of Cape Town, Jacques has a strong interest in Music Informatics, with a strong emphasis on Web technologies. He has taught at the University of South Africa in Pretoria.

He was consultant to some of the largest e-commerce products developed in South Africa, such as at Standard Bank. He briefly managed the first South African Multimedia degree as Associate Professor at the University of Pretoria. He is presently Editor in Chief of a four volume book set Development Informatics and Regional Information Technologies: Theory, Practice and the Digital Divide (to be published by IGI).

He has performed in many different music styles from the blues, musicals, and cabaret to rock and classical opera, and plays several instruments, including keyboards and guitar. He was singer/dancer in the musical production of Mame, performed at the Johannesburg Civic Theatre, and member of PACT's performance of Wagner's Flying Dutchman.

Abstract

A sober (or somber) view of KM

Some core concepts of standard Knowledge Management ideology are soberly unpacked and scrutinized, and their implications for knowledge as power considered. A wide range of assumptions are highlighted, ranging from dichotomies such as individual knowledge (or neurological?) or community (or social?) knowledge, container knowledge (as in Plato) or process knowledge (in the sense of the process philosophy of Whitehead, and not in the sense of managed process), and the synchronicity or diachronicity of knowledge (following de Saussure) to notions of knowledge as a commodity and product, and value and ideology. If knowledge resides in brains, it is strange that in KM literature there is a conspicious absence of discussion of brain neurology, cognitive memory models, and communication and linguistic theory. If knowledge is social, there are implications for intellectual property righths.

In dominant KM literature knowledge is typically used in the Platonic sense of an ontological being that can be captured in ICT systems. Approaches to KM are furthermore methodological and programmatic, despite references to post-positivist authors. The bulk of KM literature focuses on organisational practice and operational management, assuming corporatism and the classic Adam Smithian capitalist and market models as the dominant (even only) economic models. Even knowledge communities are defined with reference to employment, and not with reference to the supposedly mundane knowledge of entertainment or hobbies.

And among community knowledge workers, there is an effort to preserve knowledge. A sombre would be, taking evolutionary species as metaphor for the life of knowledge, that most knowledge is bound to become extinct, despite our best efforts to preserve it.