I spent last week at the Society for Competitive Intelligence Professionals’ (SCIP) Annual Conference in San Diego. Now talk about a group with identity problems. However, unlike certain other info-professions, these folks are quite happy with ambiguity. The conference also seems to have some money since they waived registration costs for speakers, have real food for lunch rolled into the costs, and the exhibition space offered more freebies to attendees than even seasoned ALA-attendees could carry. Clearly there is a cultural difference at work in this conference. Unlike many others I attend, the sessions here were much more interactive and people spoke succinctly and to the point. In a lunch time session entitled “What happens next?”, a group of us were called on to answer a series of questions, some prepared, some new, and the moderator managed to keep all participants on point and on time. There was no occasion to feel one voice dominated or one person had not given any thought to his or her answers. Now if this had been an academic group, you can only imagine, but the SCIP folks seem fast thinking, direct, and time conscious. The product of this session will find its way in to Competitive Intelligence magazine in due course.
A session on Appropriate Theory for CI, led by France Bouthillier, provoked further interesting exchanges, mostly by audience members who claimed not to be too bothered if CI was a field or not, or if it had any theoretical basis, or if it even had a future in academia. At least, that was the tone at the start of the discussion but it became clearer as the session progressed that people did care but had perhaps not felt the need to address these concerns head on. The audience here seemed to be a mix of people with degrees in business or LIS but there were also pharmaceutical engineers, English literature majors and IT professionals in fine voice. No easy resolution was attained but the door has been opened and more than a few participants seemed eager to walk through and continue this conversation.
So just what is competitive intelligence? Even these participants could not agree but rather than get heated about it, they seemed to enjoy the fact. As Cormac Ryan said from the floor” “We all seem to be in violent agreement on this”.