An observation: most of my best ideas come to me during business trips. Ideas that then lead to major projects or products, ideas that are worth a lot – they tend to materialize in a plane, or behind the wheel of a rental car, or in a hotel room far from home. In fact, this is not just me – I hear similar stories from many other knowledge workers and managers. (more…)

IORG isn’t the only group of people interested in the problem of information overload.  Here’s a glimpse at some of the other stuff going on in the IO world.

On the academic side, a workshop on enhanced messaging was held at AAAI 2008 with a bunch of interesting presentations.  In the media, there have been a flurry of articles revolving around the problem of information overload that I’ve been informally collecting on this FriendFeed page (where anyone is welcome to submit links and comments).

We’re working on an updated and upgraded version of our IORG resource center to collect links to research papers, articles, and much more information around IO.  And the business world is starting to take notice as well, with industry conferences like Defrag springing up to address IO topics (full disclosure – I’m speaking at Defrag and know the organizers).

It’s great to see so much activity around this problem!

An interesting article in the BBC News magazine recently afforded us a rare glimpse into the problem as seen from the perspective of two politicians – no less than Barack Obama and British opposition leader David Cameron.

Personally I always thought that senior leaders of nations have licked Information Overload. After all, one can’t imagine that the President of the United States slaves for hours each day over a flooded email inbox… he must have a dozen aides summarizing the news and distilling for their chief a beautifully short list of what he really needs to know… (more…)

In an article called “Information Overload is Killing You and Your Productivity,” CIO.com’s Thomas Wailgum cites a new report from The Burton Group. It says information overload has ramped up in IT organizations — with predictable effects. Says Wailgum: “The cumulative response from the CIO community to all of this info-insanity is: ‘Stop the world! I need to get off!'”

The report is called “The ‘Too Much Information’ Age: What CIOs Can Do About It.” It’s available to paid subscribers of The Burton Group.

(more…)

(By Jonathan Spira) Despite the fact that there are 56 million of us out there, people continue to struggle both with the definition of a knowledge worker as well as with self-identification.

If we are going to solve the problems of the knowledge economy, such as Information Overload, we need to be more comfortable with the concept of knowledge work.

In a casual setting, such as a pub, a factory worker would have no problem introducing himself saying “I’m a factory worker.” But could you picture a knowledge worker making a similar introduction, saying “Hi, I’m a knowledge worker”? (For the purposes of this discussion, we will consider the term “information worker” to have the same meaning as “knowledge worker.”) (more…)

Instant messaging tools like AIM or ICQ allow users to text each other in real time, and to exchange quick messages. Can you imagine something more disruptive than a text message that appears on your screen while you are trying to concentrate? Well, a recent paper by Garrett & Danziger (http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol13/issue1/garrett.html) will make you think again. The paper, published in one of the top peer-reviewed academic journals dealing with online communication, the Journal of Computer Mediated Communication, finds that IM users actually report that they experience fewer interruptions than non-IM users. Moreover, it looks like IM users are actually more effective online communicators. (more…)

The Information Overload Research Group. Quite a mouthful. So what is it all about? Well, the About Page has a good overview of what the group, this website, and this blog are all about.

But what are the members of this group doing here – and why? (more…)