LIKE21 Event - Detect, prevent and reverse information blackholes

Thursday evening saw me arriving at the Crown Tavern in Clerkenwell withouth any cash on me, retracing my steps back to Farringdon to find a cash machine, and finally arriving as Hannah Kazerani was in full flow describing her experiences as a consultant advising organisations on their information management.

The long walk was well worth the effort, as Hannah is an engaging speaker and the situations she described had everyone in the room nodding in recognition.  She told how one utility company where she did an information audit turned out to have 32million documents stored which were duplicates!  It seemed common practice for computer outsourcing companies to routinely tell their clients they needed to increase their document storage by 40% year on year - whereas Hannah's experience was that this varied from 20 to 45%.

We weren't allowed to escape with simply listening to Hannah's entertaining anecdotes, however.  She got us all to put our thinking caps on and to work in groups to consider several questions (apologies to Hannah for paraphrasing her carefully thought out questions):

• What eight topic headings would you have for an Information Governance project?
• How would you engage successfully with IT colleagues?
• How would you go about a Sharepoint implementation?

Unsurprisingly beer and cake were mentioned as techniques to engage with IT, while topics for Information Governance included information audits, taxonomies, retention/disposal plans and training. 

By this time the food was arriving, and a hot meal and wine accompanied by a load buzz of conversation was certainly a very welcome end to an altogether enjoyable evening.

- Nicola Franklin