Meeting KM friends - varied background

My wife and I met two friends from the KM world for brunch this morning. Noreen Kelly is a communications specialist who has recently decided that this job market needs her to be a freelance specialist. Noreen and I are both e-zine writers for the Association of Knowledge Work (AOK), and she introduced me to the local chapter of KMPro. Noreen's background ranges from content management to organizational learning to librarianship.

Noreen also introduced me to Ben Wechsler, and today was our first meeting. Ben's currently doing a variety of things with a company in Chicago and has a widely varied background. He's done business development, software development, project management, and is an accomplished musician. Oh, and he roasts his own coffee. What's not to like? And that is what I learned over a conversation this morning.

The main reason for our meeting was simply because Noreen knew that we would get along. I found it amazing that there were four people sitting around the table, each of us with widely varied backgrounds, yet with common interests in this area called knowledge management. Ben even tried to tease out an idea he has about the knowledge embedded in music. Interesting conversation that even included reference to Douglas Adams' Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, and I even remembered someone who is creating music from pictures.