Editor’s note: Margaret Ostrander, a web communications specialist at Thomson Reuters, attended the 2009 Special Libraries Association (SLA) Annual Conference and was recently named one of SLA’s “Rising Stars.”
Colin Powell is a master storyteller. Listening to him speak at the opening session of SLA in Washington, D.C. brought to life the kinds of narratives that could only come from someone with Powell’s impressive resume. While some were mainly entertaining – such as the ritual for boarding his plane as Secretary of State, complete with red carpet and diet soda delivered on a silver platter – others brought to life issues for us as special librarians to consider.
The visual of an embassy office where computers were more commonly used as coat racks during some of Powell’s government service led to his assertion that while he had “changed hardware [and] software, then, I had to change the brainware.”
This was after his purchase of 44,251 computers to upgrade into the modern information age. Beyond that, though, “Successful organizations are those that move at transactional speed, at the speed of light”. To achieve this kind of transactional model, iterative, transactional content updates must replace fixed, monthly content updates, for example. We as information professionals can continually push our parent organizations to strive for information at “the speed of light.”
Powell’s travels to the Soviet Union brought him face to face with Mikhail Gorbachev. Suddenly, an adversarial relationship that had held fast for decades was beginning to change, and change rapidly. Powell credits the opening of free flow of information and ideas within the Soviet Union as an instigating factor for such massive change, culminating in the dissolution of the Iron Curtain.
When change happens, and when is it not?, we as information professionals must remember to think about the level of openness of information, and who can access it – as transparency and access to information can profoundly shape and affect any major change process within our parent organizations.
Powell touched on numerous other topics, including the importance of specialized information resources, globalization, the criticality of education in the U.S., and his recipe for leadership.
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