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Reducing Information Pollution
Reducing Information Pollution
The Information Overload Research Group’s Overloaded 2012 un-conference, a lively one-day gathering of information overload crusaders from a diversity of domains, was a complete success. Two dozen attendees spanning academic, industry, consulting, analyst and public sector backgrounds came together, exchanged research results, viewpoints and opinions, and formed friendships and plans for future cooperation.
We heard two interesting keynotes: Prof. David Levy of the University of Washington spoke about “Educating for Acceleration and Overload”, and Jonathan Spira, IORG’s VP of research and CEO of Basex, shared new research findings on Information Overload.
This kind of informal meeting of like minds is clearly working, and we plan to hold similar events once or twice a year in various locations. If you missed this one, we hope to see you in the next!
On June 27, 2011, IORG hosted five authors of books about Information Overload for a fascinating “Literary Salon” online event, where they discussed their reasons for writing their books and the issues and solutions that they find most significant.
The authors are Dave Crenshaw (author of The Myth of Multitasking), Daniel Forrester (author of Consider), Maggie Jackson (author of Distracted), William Powers (author of Hamlet’s BlackBerry), and Jonathan Spira (author of Overload! How Too Much Information Is Hazardous To Your Organization).
You can read a summary of the event here and download a full audio recording here.
Enjoy!
The New York Post recently cited IORG in an insightful article about information overload and a sidebar focused on fixing the problem. In “Going Under: Information overload is drowning office workers,” author Chris Erikson paints an accurate picture of the typical information worker who’s being “interrupted and over-informed to death.”
Quoted within the article, IORG VP of Research Jonathan Spira noted, “If I had to paraphrase in one sentence what we hear in worker surveys, it’d be, ‘I’m drowning in a sea of information.’” IORG President Nathan Zeldes weighed in with the underwater metaphor, too, saying “The tidal wave of data is drowning us.”
It’s no wonder that people think in terms of an oceanic deluge when they talk about information overload. It knocks us off our feet and leaves us feeling out of our element. It makes us expend extra energy just to move forward. And there’s no way to ignore the new environment that surrounds us.
But even while the problem is washing over us, the answers are down to earth.
As Erikson reports in his side story, “Cut the Glut,” we each have a role in battling information overload for ourselves, our co-workers, our partners and others. And because we’re each contributing the flood of information ourselves, our first step is to turn off the faucet.
How would you describe the effect of information overload in your day-to-day work?
The possibility that social networking tools will take a bite out of email in organizations suffering from IO has been discussed for a while, and some forward-thinking companies have been seeing progress in this direction. But the news from France last week takes this to a new level: the CEO of IT services firm Atos Origin, an international 49,000 employee corporation, has declared that he plans to make the company Email-free in 3 years. The intent is to replace all internal email with alternative comm channels using the new crop of social networking and collaboration tools. Read about it here (thanks to IORG member Pascal Frion for pointing this out to me).
Given our own tagline of “reducing information pollution”, IORG members will be delighted to hear CEO Thierry Breton stating that “We are producing data on a massive scale that is fast polluting our working environments and also encroaching into our personal lives … We are taking action now to reverse this trend, just as organizations took measures to reduce environmental pollution after the industrial revolution.”
So will this succeed? We have three years to find out, but given the strong leadership shown by the man at the top, I’m betting they can at least come close. I’m also expecting to see more of this happening in other companies, but Atos Origin will remain the first large organization to take this leap. Let’s wish them success!
IORG is proud to greet 2011 with an updated look. We’ve introduced our new logo and launched our reorganized website – but more importantly, we’ve renewed our determination to help the world fight information overload in all its forms.
Want to get involved? We welcome you. Want to receive updates? We’ll be happy to keep you informed (and of course, we won’t overload your inbox!). Please feel free to dive in and explore – and to join the crusade.
Who knows – with a bit of good fortune and a whole lot of work, perhaps we’ll all soon be saying “Information overload? That’s so last year.”
I’ve been engaged in the battle on Information Overload since 1995, when it exploded across Intel – where I was Computing Productivity manager at the time – with the now familiar devastation to people’s effectiveness and quality of life. In the 15 years since then I’ve driven a variety of solution efforts at various companies; I’ve communicated with scores of like minded professionals fighting IO around the world, exchanging and developing new solutions; and I’ve had the pleasure of co-founding the Information Overload Research Group with some of them. With all this activity, and the introspection a new year calls for, the question comes to mind: are we winning or losing?
At one level, it would seem we’re certainly not winning: Information Overload remains a rampant issue, affecting Knowledge Workers in organizations of every kind across the globe. If anything, it is worse than it was in 1995; certainly the estimates of the cost to Industry, as calculated by Basex, are rising with the years. And the arrival of new communications channels – Facebook, for one – only adds opportunities for overload. In the face of this rising flood of comms, it might seem that we’re engaged in a Sisyphean task, destined to forever try to solve a problem that will just get worse.
And yet, a better metaphor would be the labors of Hercules. Indeed, resolving Information Overload is a Herculean task, not only because of the extent of the issue but also because of its complexity: we humans depend on communications by our very nature as a social animal, and our modern business world could not survive without the very email, telephony and internet channels that we complain about. This isn’t a problem to be eradicated; it is a question of optimization, of striking the correct balance between too much and too little communication, of modifying the culture of groups and the behavior of individuals ever so carefully… and in this battle, we are making progress. The overload may be rising, but more slowly than it would have absent our efforts. In the nineties people were suffering from IO but organizations were mostly in denial or ignorance about it; people willing to take action were few and far between. Today there is a widespread recognition of this problem, and a growing number of companies are taking serious steps to mitigate it. Methodologies are researched and published, software solutions are developed and marketed, books and articles are increasing in number… and success stories are slowly accumulating. IO has moved from being a problem individual workers complain about in private to one that employers are working to solve in the open. We’ve come a long way…
And of course, we have our own Information Overload Research Group – which is poised to extend its activity and influence in 2011. We may still have those stables to clean and many monsters to slay… but remember: Hercules did complete the mission in the end (and get the rewards).
Have a happy and successful 2011!
From Ian Price:
On Tuesday, I was invited to be part of the expert panel discussion that launched the three-day summit on Information Overload run by v3.co.uk (previously known us vnnunet).
Given the nature of the audience, the summit as a whole has a technical emphasis and is sponsored by IBM. Having said that, there was a willingness on the panel I took part in to discuss the behavioural issues as well. If you have an hour to spare, you can watch the discussion here.
There is a wealth of other video debates and articles on v3’s site which is particularly rich in technical aspects of information overload such as storage and data centres. A comment article by Ian Williams, however, is a good expression of the view – which I share – that this is more about management than anything else.
From Ian Price:
The issue of information overload is getting increasing media coverage in the UK although it is still some way behind the US.
Next week, V3.co.uk (formerly vnu.net), part of Incisive Media, is taking the lead by hosting a three-day summit. It is opening the event with a live web TV panel discussion on Tuesday November 10th at 11am. I will be on the panel along with representatives from other companies including IBM, The National Computing Centre and Freeform Dynamics.
If you would like to find out more about the event or register, please follow the link below:
mediazone.brighttalk.com/event/INCITWEEKCOMPUTING/29539ed932-3161-intro
When I tell friends and colleagues that I’m on the board of the Information Overload Research Group – “You know, that organization that got started on the Microsoft campus a couple of years ago” – they often say something like, “That sounds interesting. So what does IORG do?”
For an organization ramped up by a handful of volunteers, we’ve accomplished a fair amount. We . . .
· Incorporated, wrote bylaws and elected a board.
· Started a web site, a blog and an e-newsletter.
· Organized a successful conference in New York and are programming a second one in Palo Alto in September.
· Held two all-member teleseminars.
· Designed a corporate sponsorship program.
· Added vice presidents for marketing and membership.
· Started assembling what we hope will be the world’s most comprehensive repository of research relating to information overload.
But the underlying question is, “What will we be when we grow up?” Our mission statement provides the roadmap:
We work together to understand, publicize and solve the information overload problem. We do this by (1) defining and building awareness of information overload, (2) facilitating and funding collaboration and advanced research aimed at shaping solutions and establishing best practices, and (3) serving as a resource center where we share information and resources, offer guidance and connections, and help make the business case for fighting information overload.
The trick, of course, is how we do each of those. Here’s what I hope to see:
· We’ll enlarge our tent when it comes to thinking about information overload. We’ve been focused primarily on IO as it affects business productivity and quality of life for knowledge workers. But the effects in other segments of life also are profound. I’d like to see us really dig into information overload as it relates to politics, government and public policy (in democracies and non-democracies); journalism, news consumption and media brands; marketing, advertising and retailing; academia (and, potentially, K-12 education); medicine and law; the military services; and other endeavors where IO is a significant factor. Also worth examining: How cultural forces and search-engine optimization both contribute to the quantities of “content” constantly being created.
· We’ll get more creative about generating resources for research projects. Facilitating and funding research is central to why we exist. Funding requires income – and more members would help in this regard. But truly promoting the right kind of research will require serving as a catalyst for connecting researchers with funding sources. IORG could also collect contributions and/or funnel corporate dollars to specific research projects. We need to work on a more concrete plan.
· We’ll become even more effective at getting what’s already being learned into the hands of individuals, companies and organizations that can use it to forge useful solutions. Excellent work is being done in this field (and areas that are closely related). I don’t want to hear, “Well, if you guys know so much about this, why does the problem continue to get worse?” We need to help corporations, universities and other major players understand that a) information overload is a demonstrable drain on their effectiveness, b) research and tools exist to improve the situation, and c) measurable ROI comes from paying attention to a and b. Perhaps we should think in terms of getting better at “sales” – selling the idea that IO isn’t a law of physics (such as gravity), but something that can and should be managed.
Bottom line: If we choose the right initiatives and pursue them passionately, we have the potential to make information overload a temporary problem.
If you have ideas on how IORG can become more effective – and better serve the world – we’d love to hear them.
Bill Boyd, ABC, is a director of the Information Overload Research Group and director of strategic communications consulting at Group Health Cooperative in Seattle.
Overloaded 2012 a success – more events planned in future!
Feb. 26, 2012
The Information Overload Research Group’s Overloaded 2012 un-conference, a lively one-day gathering of information overload crusaders from a diversity of domains, was a complete success. Two dozen attendees spanning academic, industry, consulting, analyst and public sector backgrounds came together, exchanged research results, viewpoints and opinions, and formed friendships and plans for future cooperation. We heard [...]
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