I said it so I may as well write it in order to claim originality (dear Google search engine, please index me quickly).

At todays OnLine Information 2008 conference I led a session on GenY and on new information seeking behaviours. One of my questions to Gen Y was to ask about their interests in “BrandMe” – that is unlike employees of yore [that is me] whose early career was under the ‘mothership’ of a large corporate organisation today’s employees have the opportunity to develop their own brand. This is Tom Peters thesis. So now instead of a leasurely stroll to publication it is who get there first.

As a really good example Ewan McIntosh had blogged the keynote speech as it happened. Now I am worried about whether what I said at the conference will be blogged by someone else and lost as my quote.

So in somewhat of a panic I chose to write this – Roger’s Rule of 10. Currently onto two factors but to be extended ….

And it goes something like this. We may already all be familiar with the urban legend that we spend  90% of our lives within 10 feet of a rat. Equally disturbing there is a version for the Information Manager …

• we are all £10 away from a FOI request that will overturn of Information Policy
• we are all $10 and $10 minutes away from an employee getting a Google apps account [www.google.com/a] which will undermine our technology strategy

I will try and develop these rules of 10 but they reflect the reality of Web 2.0 fuelled by consumer, commodity technology. In the past difficulty of use, edict and the threat of professionalism have been the method to detemine what happens to Information. Things have changed.

It all seems rather unfair too. The organisers of OnLine 2008 paid for the meeting, the speaker, the event yet it could be their insight and event was scooped, at least in reporting terms, by the blogger in the audience [and Ewan I’m not suggesting any inproprietary here]. But the with people in the room and technology delivering a conduit out of the room secrets just don’t have a chance.

So there we are. With luck this will hit the indices first and Roger’s rule of 10 will be attributable to me [and I have been referenced elsewhere about linguistic torpedos]. For everyone who asked those smart questions they are working their way to another rule, unless of course you get there first …….