Monday 4th October 2004 at Chandos Room, The George Inter-Continental Hotel, 19-21 George Street, Edinburgh
Review of the evening, written by Lorna Turnbull, BA (Hons) Business Information Management Napier University
The George Hotel was the venue for the Scottish Information Network meeting on Monday 4th October. Many people made it from around the country to enjoy a warm welcome, learn about topics on information ethics and e-mail policy within organisations, and network with fellow information professionals. The evening’s sponsors, Perfect Information, supplied much-appreciated resources for the event. These included refreshments, name badges and goody bags.
Jonathan Gordon-Till from Oxford Business Intelligence succeeded in setting the context for the evening’s official business by first explaining Greek ethical theory, and its relevance to Information Management. Case study examples were used to demonstrate the different types of bogus information. These included the story of Swiss Killer Bananas and the dangers of rogue information, and the PlayStation2 box swindle: the box alone was advertised, sold, on E-bay for hundreds of dollars. This was used by Jonathan as an example of misleading sales tactics. To demonstrate the topic of information ethics in relation to organisations, it seemed appropriate to use a case study involving name badges, especially since all participants at the event were wearing one. Competitive intelligence may be gained by individuals who hide their identity. For example, by removing the form of identification at a trade show, an individual is not necessarily lying about who he or she is, but just concealing it from view. The discussion as to whether this was ethical or not ethical raised much debate.
Research Consultant Zoë Kelleher from Parallel56 discussed e-mail security and the role of the Information Professional. E-mail is taken for granted within organisations, yet often issues related to its security as a medium are overlooked. Discussions on the business interest versus personal rights developed with reference, for example, to the personal use of e-mail in the workplace. This led the audience to consider the importance of the adoption of organisational e-mail policies, and end-user training as part of their deployment.
At the end of the evening, many stayed and lingered beside the food and wine, getting to know a little more about the faces matching the name badges, as well as looking forward to the next meeting to be held in Glasgow on November 15th, to be organised by Scottish Enterprise.
By the way, if you were there and missed out on the chocolate biscuits, it’s simply because I ate them all.
