A great friend of mine has started blogging, let me revise that, he has started publicly blogging. He has been blogging behind the firewall for sometime I believe.

Mike Kelly, whom I have known for many years now, has a blog at The Eniac Papers, his premise is the ability to share "Tribal" knowledge among the community. A phrase he may not have coined but I first heard from him!

We met and first worked together at what was then First Union Bank in Raleigh North Carolina. I still recall the first time I heard Mike mention his concept of Tribal Knowledge. He had come to ask about some arcane data in a monster lookup table. When I explained what the particular data he needed was and what to use for a where clause to retrieve it he was a little non-plussed.

He looked at me with his trademark "frown of BS happening here" look. And said as near as I can recall something along the lines of "And I was supposed to know this how? Should I wait for some tribal drum signal or did someone think it might be nice to actually document this somewhere?"

Mike has always been a share the news kind of guy. We have exchanged countless emails that contain nothing more than a link to something we think the other should see or know about. I am glad to see he is blogging now and a wider audience will benefit from his experience and considerable insight.

Cheers,

Robert Porter