Information Overload Research Group launched!

Quite off topic, but how exciting! After months of preparation, the group I co-founded is now alive and kicking!

The Information Overload Research Group (IORG) is a non-profit association of researchers interested in solving theglobal problem of Information Overload. It prides itself on bringing together key people from industry, academia, consultancies and software vendors who bring their diverse points of view to bear on the problem – thereby creating a collaboration that far exceeds what each can do alone.

So, I’m in New York City now (quite a city, that!) and yesterday we’ve held a wonderful conference at the Penn Club where we formally announced and launched our group, and delighted in meeting some scores of like-minded researchers and practitioners, and listening to some fascinating lectures. Jonathan Spira of Basex , my fellow director on the IORG board, gave a perspective on the nature and extent of the problem; Mark Hurst, author of Bit Literacy, shared his approach to attaining an empty Inbox; Maggie Jackson lectured and then signed her new book, Distracted; and Prof. David Levy of the university of Washington spoke of his research into the phenomenon of ” No Time to Think”, giving us a scary historical perspective into the degradation of Contemplative Scholarship in academia in recent times.

There were also two panels, one to discuss what corporations were doing about it all (that was where I spoke) and one for visionary vendors who presented amazing new products they’re introducing.

I usually blog about my work elsewhere, but I thought I’d share this!