Over a short period of time recently, I received three requests-all of a similar nature-that got me thinking. The first request came from Ed Cady, a member of our editorial advisory board. Ed was looking for several years’ worth of back issues of the magazine-dating back to the days before the publication was owned by PennWell and even to the days before it was called Connector Specifier-for research purposes.
While the issues were in his possession, I received another, very similar call from a gentleman in Florida who had similar objectives: To look for references to a specific technology dating back to the late 1980s.
Then I got the third call, from an individual who was looking for the most recent version of something you’ll find in this issue: Our annual Buyer’s Guide (see page 25). An easy one, I thought. He doesn’t need 20 years’ worth of information; he just wants a single issue that we put out less than a year ago. That issue must have been quite popular, because it sure was hard to find one around the office.
Shortly thereafter, I spoke to Ed Cady again. This time, our conversation covered a few topics, one of which was the logistics for the return of the archives he had used. Within that discussion, Ed pointed out something that had also occurred to me (needless to say I felt smart for having the same thought he had; also needless to say that will never happen again). He commented about the relative rarity of having such a complete volume of information, in printed-on-paper form, available.
I see three cultural trends, none of which is a revelation in and of itself, converging to spell the end of comprehensive, hard-copy documentation of a great deal of information. Trend number one is our increasingly digitized world. Many of you either receive your Connector Specifier subscription via e-mail, or don’t subscribe at all and are reading this on our website. Add to that the fact that my network administrator yells at me at exactly 1:00 every morning because my mailbox is over its size limit. I’m sure that I am very much in the majority, receiving hoards of information via e-mail that I could not possibly sift through. Even if my job was to read e-mail all day, I’m not sure I could actually read all that I get. What I am sure of is that many of you can relate.
Trend number two is that we live in a drive-through, disposable society in more ways than just our dining habits. Trade publications like this one exist with the purpose of keeping its readers current on technologies and applications. Key word there is “current.” Old news is, quite simply, old news. And despite the fact that today your computer is more capable than ever of storing huge amounts of information, it’s easier for many simply to hit the “delete” button after reading.
Trend number three is an old saw by now, but is perhaps more poignant than ever. The days of workers spending their entire careers with a single company are going, going, just about gone. You might find an exception here or there. But how many 30- or 40-somethings of today do you think will spend the next 20, 25, or 30 years with the company that employs them now? And here’s where it gets tricky. When an engineer leaves a company after putting in 15 or 20 years, does that engineer’s intelligence leave with her or him? Unfortunately, it does if there is no thorough written documentation capturing that intelligence. The patents will stay behind, sure. But the methods and creativity that led to the development of those patents may be gone for good.
The concern here is far deeper than whether you’ll keep or throw away this and any other publication you receive on a regular basis. Somewhere along the line, I learned that information becomes knowledge and knowledge becomes intelligence.
What are you doing to retain the intelligence your company so greatly depends on?
Patrick McLaughlin
Editor-in-Chief
patrick@pennwell.com
