"Clint" appears to be one Lachlan M. MacKinnon who, in November 2005, had been recently appointed a professor of information and knowledge engineering at the University of Abertay, Dundee.

l.mackinnon@abertay.ac.uk

+44 (0)1382 308601

There's a picture of him here: http://www.abertay.ac.uk/Schools/CAT/
in a nice bright red jacket.

I found several possibilities when I googled the name but decided not to guess. However if you are correct and have chosen to "name names" so be it. To me the mental image which arose from the various comments was and will remain Clint

What a great wikipedia story!

Great story on the 'weirdness' that is Wikipedia. Will keep an interested eye on the KM entry.

Good to see you blogging David.

Thanks for taking up the cause David.

This entry certainly serves as a 'living' example of a knowledge common. My hope is it does not follow the tried and trusted route towards "Tragedy of the commons".

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/162/3859/1243

Well, I used Google to start off, then ZoomInfo. Then followed up on links given. Then made what I consider to be an intelligent guess. It *has* to be him.

And, by the way, the information I supplied is all available from various parts of the university website. ie public domain.

Comment by a virgin to wikipedia/talk (that was, me an hour ago) - it's fascinating: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Knowledge_management . In a way, it's just text: many words about meanings of words. Très post-moderne. At the same time, it's so very human. I went to other talk sites, and I must admit, that reading wikipedia talk sites could become addictive. Drama. Emotions. Passion. Questions about right and wrong, good and bad, alliances and schools of thought. Fascinating.

Fascinating story, Dave ! Thanks for sharing it with us over here. I can certainly imagine (And sympathise with) the frustration you have gone through while attempting to help improve the KM article in Wikipedia and to be honest I am just wondering what would actually have happened it other less known KM gurus would have ventured into making some further updates. I guess that is perhaps a serious indication as to why most KM people just don't bother... Or do they ?

Good point Luis - they would have been swamped by the "author". This is what worries be about the wikipedia, its too easy for a strong personality with time on their hands to define "truth" even if for the best of all possible intentions.

I have just read through the wikipedia entry on KM mentioned in this blog, and I had to smile at a most telling entry by Lachlan M. MacKinnon in response to the accusation from one entry

"..surprised you hadn't heard of Snowden.."

His reply being

"...I did a google on his name ...he must travel a lot!..I had encountered Mark McElroy's writing and heard he was 'the complexity / knowledge management guy' but I guess there can be more than one of them!"

Duh! (Miaow!)

Yes, that is also what worries me a bit, Dave, specially from the point of view where it is folks like him higher up in their ivory towers with the illusion they are "in control" the ones who are killing Wikipedia's value quite rapidly. If only they would realise what they are doing and stop doing that! Jozefa's comments are just another proof of that mentality. Grrr (I wonder if they would ever learn...)

A great story. I like to think of it as the Humpty Dumpty to Alice approach (referred to in the 2002 paper "The nonsense of knowledge management" by T.D. Wilson) that "When I use a word" ... "it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less".

Incidently, related to googling your name, I still get a big laugh at conferences when I say that if you enter 'God' and 'storytelling' into Google image search that it comes up with your photo.

I tried it Ron, and checked all ten pages before I decided that its a story (a good one though)

I've had some interesting wikipedia experiences recently too.

One thing it illustrates is that pure un-moderated "competitive democracy" is not the most progressive from of evolution for ideas.

Wikipedia will be OK for establishing working definitions of stable, genuinely non-contentious stuff, but no good for ideas in flux and development. Different camps are essential for nurture of ideas.

Offspring born directly into tooth and claw competition perish never to influnece progress of the species - in this case "Snowdenian KM". Evolution of species need segregation and isolation as well as exposure. Nurture as well as nature.

Regards
Ian

Keep up the great work on your blog. Best wishes WaltDe

Wikipedia article about wikipedia edit wars:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Lamest_edit_wars
( found it at boingboing today)

Hi all,

I surfed here from the Wikipedia page on Cynefin.

Just to clear Professor Lachlan M Mackinnon's name in the KM community, I should mention that he has been pointed at incorrectly - I am the Lauchlan Mackinnon that Dave was labelling by a pseudonym (thanks Dave, I appreciate the courtesy).

In passing, I would like to raise what I think is an interesting point: Dave noted that from what I read of his work, I concluded that he did not take a particular point of view attributed to him in relation to tacit knowledge, and Dave pertinently responded that "I think I have some valid opinion as what what I think." But, a fair number of postmodern / continental philosophers might think that an alternative point of view is equally valid. In art, for example, there are a fair number of artists whose works are interpreted in a different sense than the author may have intended them - and that understanding is equally valid. Perhaps a similar case may be made for science, for example in Quantum Mechanics - the theory might be interpreted in a different (and valid) way than its founders thought of it. Perhaps this is also possible for the work of Dave Snowden - that someone else may have interpreted the work (and perhaps quite validly) in a different light and perspective than Dave intended it, and (validly) formed a different understanding of what "Dave Snowden was saying"?

I don't want to push the point, because my "assessment" of what Dave Snowden was saying in a specific regard was based on the few article links I was pointed to, but I do not think that I was *necessarily* wrong in making such a claim. Indeed, when we discussed the issue in question further on the wikipedia talk page, it seemed to me that we arrived at a conclusion that reconciled both perspectives.

Anyway, for now I take Dave's point, with good humour. :)

BTW Dave, I was surfing here to learn a little more about your KM school of thought at Cynefin - if you hget the chance to update the Wikipedia page with some information on your framework, I would be interested.

Rgds

Lauchlan Mackinnon

Thanks for coming out Lauchlan and with humour. I wasn't sure if David T had got the name right or not so held back from any comment (although I have been told off line that several of the Professor's students decided it must be (or may be should be) him.
The sins of post-modernism are many and various - including allowing people to say that other people do not mean what they say they mean. But yes it is possible to interpret material as part of a body of knowledge .
On the Wikipedia - I am planning to drop in a history of KM para or two next week by taking some material from a paper I am writing.

Sorry for your time.... Why i can't see images on this resource?
My Browser is: Opera.
Thank you.

****RESPONSE
Well it displays in Saffari, Firefox and the browser from the company in Sattle.
Sounds like its something in Opera or in your configuration. Anyone out there who can help?

Two years later, the problem remains. I have had the exact same experience a few days back.

My thanks to Lauchlan MacKinnon for sparing me the task of trying to clear my name. However, it occurs to me that those of you who wish to rant about the inaccuracy of Wikipedia, and the failings of those of us high up in our ivory towers who pollute the purity of such environments, should, at the very least, get your facts right on a publicly-read blog! In fact, "it has to be him" proves to be false, and I have no idea if Dave Snowden has been speaking to any of my former students off-line, but it seems that rather than admit fault he finds it better to malign by implication. Of course, the old-fashioned approach of dropping me an email about this, perhaps out of common courtesy, before making unsubstantiated claims about my involvement seems to have been missed out of the current blog etiquette?

Perhaps next time some of you will give a little thought before rushing blindly into the fray, particularly since you were talking about Knowledge Management.

Best wishes,

Lachlan.

Lachlan I think you are being a little sensitive here. Firstly when this blog was posted my Technorati rating was around 2 - early days. I made no comment on the identity (respecting WIkipedia) until after your namesake had "come out" so your suggestion of unsubstantiated claims does not really stand up. The coincidence of names and subjects does I think excuse Tebo's assumption that it was you and the whole think was cleared up quickly. I'd suggest taking a similar relaxed attitude to your namesake here.
Incidentally, and the coincidence just seems too much, but are you Harvey the rabbit?

Ah, I love intellectual discourse!