Thanks very much, Mara, and let me quickly say that pretty much everything I know about these subjects I learnt from the people on this panel. And they really taught me a lot. And of course, John Seely Brown and Larry Prusak were also selected last year as being among the ten most admired knowledge leaders in the world. Some say that Larry invented knowledge management. Others would say John invented knowledge management. I don’t know who is right. But between them, knowledge management did get invented.

 THE PURPOSE OF THE SYMPOSIUM

    Actually, when we started talking with Mara and Mitzi, about this, we were talking about knowledge and how important knowledge was going to be, but as the

    And then I remembered Albert Einstein, who said, “If at first an idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it.” (Laughter) This is certainly an idea that stretches us, and one that we thought was worth giving a shot. And to deal with it, we do have some fairly mainstream folks with us here tonight. Larry Prusak … and John Seely Brown… and Katalina Groh… 

THE SPECIAL GROUPS IN THE AUDIENCE HERE TONIGHT

      We also thought we should have some friends in the audience. So the Special Libraries Association is here in force, and I would like on behalf of the Smithsonian Associates to acknowledge the presence of the Knowledge Champions Institute from the Special Libraries Association, headquartered here in Washington DC. It’s an international association of information professionals and committed to putting knowledge to work. So welcome to you all.

       We also have a number of members from the Listserve, Storytelling in Business, and they all have met each other electronically, but have not met each other physically, and they were trying to figure out a way that they could meet. So a number of them are here tonight, and Madelyn Blair, who is sitting in the front here, she is handing out green ribbons. So they are wearing green. And if you just happen to be wearing green, and someone comes up to you and accosts you and says, “You must be part of the Listserve”, well then you can say, “No, I’m just wearing green.” (Laughter) But that’s the official color of the storytelling Listserve. And thanks very much for coming and being part of the friendly audience tonight.

THE WEBSITE

       We have also tried to give a preview of what we might cover, and also make some of the more systematic material available. So we did put together this website, and tried to get postcards to those who registered early enough. It’s at:
 www.creatingthe21stcentury.org
And I saw from the traffic after I sent out the postcards, that a lot of you did in fact visit the website. So I hope it was helpful in getting a preview of what this is about, and we hope to have more discussion on there as it moves forward. It obviously covers a lot of ground that we can’t cover in the time available in this day and a half. Given the scale of the topic we are dealing with, we are clearly just scratching the surface.

WHAT WE MIGHT ACCOMPLISH

     What do we hope to achieve here? Well, the truth is that we don’t have the answer as to what the 21st Century is going to be about. We don’t have any lock on knowledge. We don’t have a solution. We are trying to put in front of you what John might call “idea sparkers”, thoughts that are probing, and playful, and provocative, and even now and then, a trifle profound. 

      We want to put some ideas in front of you, not so much in terms of solving problems, but rather in terms of, as Katalina’s video might say, radiating possibility.
We’ll mainly be telling you stories and hoping that these stories spark in you a whole set of new stories as to what this century will be about.

THE STRUCTURE OF THE PROGRAM TONIGHT

     This evening is really going to be in three segments. 

      The first half hour segment or so is really a few words of introduction from each of the speakers in which they’ll tell us, well, actually I’m not sure what they’re going to tell us, since they won’t tell me what they’re going to tell us. So we’ll hear in a minute what they really are going to tell us! (laughter). 

      And then we’re going to hear one of Katalina’s videos, The Art of Possibility, with Ben Zander. 

      And then we’re going to use that as a way to bring the audience into the whole discussion. We’re going to ask you to tell your story. Anything in your life that resonates with the story that you’ve just seen and heard.. So that will be the third half-hour. And we’ll try to finish promptly at eight o’clock.

      So without further ado, let me ask Larry to say whatever he’s going to say.