One of the aims of my KTP project, which ends today, was to look at knowledge management systems for small teams. Every day we’re exposed, through email, tweets, blog posts, news and research, to hundreds of snippets of information. But how do we get hold of them when we need them?

Knowledge management is a process that can be put in place to store, keep, retrieve and share knowledge in a useful way. When developing knowledge management it is useful to put a system in place where those who wish to share knowledge and collaborate can access, files, thoughts and ideas in a central organised location. The creation of such a system can be very costly, even using off the shelf technologies.

We set out to create a cost effective system, a prototype, to test the usefulness of knoweldge management across a small team at my placement (and which included the team at BCU).

Wikis and collaborative google docs could be used in this way, but they are quite hard work – ideally we need something that is easy to add to and something which is easy to search. We looked to Evernote for the answer.

Why we chose Evernote

• Evernote can be used across a number of platforms – it has native apps for Mac, PC, Android, and iOS, plus a web interface which makes it as near as universal as we will get.
• In Evernote you can easily clip articles and paste them to a shared notebook for others to see.
• It has text recognition software built in so images and scans with text can be searched.
• Content can be tagged and have meta data applied, greatly helping search and allowing data to be gathered easily into groups.
• We can do all this on a shoestring: one premium account costs $45 – that account can share a notebook with all the members of the team. Team members can use a free account to access the shared notebook, contributing and retrieving information from a communal database.

It is certainly in my opinion worth trying out Evernote for knowledge management within an organisation.  It’s easy to use and could provide a company with competative advantage against others, after all, knowledge is a valuable asset.

During my visit to SXSWi I found myself attending the following panels which all touched on the notion of singularity in different ways:

• Robot Panelists, AI and the Future of Identity
• Wall-E or Terminator: Predicting the Rise of AI
• 3D Printing: Not Everyone Will Be Excited
• PolySocial Reality and the Enspirited World

I wont profess to being an expert on the subject after only attending four panel discussions (so I might not get everything right in this blog post), but it is an area which interests me greatly and it was wonderful to attend panels at SXSWi that discussed it.

For those who don’t know (in layman’s terms), the notion of singularity is best described as a moment where AI becomes more intelligent than us, and in some versions of this the machine will be able to replicate itself with modifications to make it better in some way.

So within the realms of the 3D printer, a printer is currently being programmed to replicate itself totally. Once it’s done that, the replica may be able to reproduce itself but ‘better’.

Moving from singularity to the event horizon, the event horizon is a point in the development of machines when their is a point of no return.

The panel Robot Panelists, AI and the Future of Identity in my opinion showed the first signs of ‘humanity’ in AI through Bina48.

Bina48 is a animatronic torso that has been created to simulate a human. Bina48 can ‘talk’ and answer questions quite beautifully, is quite charismatic when doing so and can be a little scary. Bina48 has been created using a ‘mind file’ taken from a human Bina and can recognise speech though a speech recognition system, she then constructs full sentences and answers.

Bina48 was one of the highlights of SXSWi for me and if you get a chance I would recommend looking her up online. Seeing her might make you wonder if the event horizon is near.

This year I went to South by South West Interactive (SXSWi), for the first time and found the whole experience fascinating and exhausting.

When I was planning on going I was a little nervous about travelling and being in Texas on my own. Not something that now I should have worried about.

Before I bought my ticket for SXSWi there were several meetings to discus possible funding that was available from UK Trade and Investment (UKTI), along with networking with those people who were interested in going. As time drew closer to SXSW less and less people came to these networking events until it was only the delegates that had their tickets and were going.

The Birmingham contingent itself is made up of mostly people who have been to SXSW before and who are more than happy to help and give advice before and during the conference, which helps to promote a great community feel about attending. Once in Texas (on the first morning over breakfast), numbers and twitter handles were swapped so that everyone could stay in contact and no one was left feeling as if they were on their own.  Every night (once the conference had ended for the evening), individuals and groups of Birmingham delegates kept in touch via twitter and text and ended up eating dinner and networking together which certainly helped to create a friendly community feel.

During SXSWi the UKTI created an event where some lucky companies were able to present themselves to people attending SXSWi. These mission companies can be found on the Chinwag site here. During this event Birmingham was well represented and it was great to see the products that the people who I had been spending time with were doing via demonstration. This was a very useful event to attend as it allowed for the Birmingham contingent to connect with others from the UK who we had not been too closely in contact with before, see their products and forum other useful links and networks.

Chinwag also held two events; The Great British Tea Party and The Great British Breakfast which brought together attendees from across the UK for a networking opportunity.

Overall I found the community feel of the Birmingham contingent really helpful, friendly and supportive with regards to my SXSWi experience.  I would recommend that anyone who is planning on attending SXSW 2013 should make sure they get to know who’s going from Birmingham before traveling to the conference so they can share their knowledge with you.

After going once, I hope to go to SXSWi again, and if I do I’m already looking forward to sharing my knowledge with anyone new attending.