Someone angrily wrote in a Yahoo! Group concerning the content for their "KM Certification" courses – "I'm uncomfortable with having to sit and be lectured about a supposed need to release the content of intellectual property for the supposed purpose of having something evaluated so that it can then be accepted???" However, KM certifying agencies ARE comfortable with asking people to go to some classroom, sit for a week, pay thousands, to be lectured on “intellectual property for the supposed purpose of having something evaluated so that it can then be accepted…” There is an insidious problem in KM of ‘garbage collection.’ It is taking everything-under-the-sun and calling it KM. Brint, of course, is the worst and it is an utterly useless offering. Certification hacks and other dilettantes grab everything and try to call it KM. See: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/act-km/message/6520 Wholesale KM aggregation is a very harmful practice. It is particularly bad KM! Alternatively, for example, a standard dictionary has about 90K entries. Wikipedia has about 300K entries. http://en.wikipedia.org/ Wikipedia and open source is feared because ‘certifiers’ can’t monetize their own, narrow view of KM. They can’t use their sacred terminology as a weapon to drive fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD). They can’t use FUD to drive prospects for there questionable, pedantic offerings. ‘Certifiers’ would be well served by unpacking there so-called IP and really focusing on advancement of KM. Also, 2005 is an important year in KM. It marks 10-years since KM was violently hijacked by the technology vendors. Back in ’95, every content application, portal, community, database and collaboration company was KM. It sounded great for their glossy marketing brochures, but nearly killed KM. 10 years hence, KM is facing another mortal enemy: certification. This is not from fresh-faced MBAs in the product marketing dept, but from within. This too shall pass. | 
