I attended the inaugural IORG conference in New York City a couple of weeks ago.

IORG – the Information Overload Research Group was founded earlier this year by a group of industry experts and research analysts to address the growing concern of continued information overload, the negative impact on worker productivity and the resulting “burn-out” of today’s knowledge workers.

I have covered this important issue in previous blog posts and it is refreshing to see that now some of the world’s leading companies and universities are dedicating resources to study the effects of information overload.

The groups goal is to share information, develop best practices and contribute to the creation of solutions to the problem as outlined in the mission statement:

“We work together to build awareness of the world’s greatest challenge to productivity, conduct research, help define best practices, contribute to the creation of solutions, share information and resources, offer guidance and facilitation, and help make the business case for fighting information overload.”

The conference started with a gala dinner, which was a great way to exchange observations, real-world experiences and new ideas with fellow attendees. The next day consisted of presentations from industry experts, and panel discussions. Jonathan Spira, the CEO of Basex, set the tone by sharing some of the hard numbers and facts in his keynote presentation. Basex estimates the annual cost of interruptions for knowledge workers at $650 billion in the United States alone.

For more details, please check out Jared Goralnick’s blog, which has an excellent summary of the event.

I am looking forward to future IORG events and as a member, Permessa is committed to contribute to the group’s mission.

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