Celebrating potential and success—
KM Promise and Reality

As the editor of this publication, objectivity is part of my job, so each year as I begin this process, I figure judging the KM Promise and KM Reality nominations shouldn’t pose any significant challenges. But along with the other judges I admit to certain biases—certain elements of KM technology interest me more than others. It’s good that none of us went into this alone and that we worked through our prejudices by adhering to the criteria we established for the awards. Just as we did last year at this time, we’ll award two prizes at the KMWorld conference to members of the knowledge management community—one to a vendor for KM Promise, and the other to a practitionerfor KM Reality. And, just as it has been since we first launched the award program in 2001, it is especially difficult to select only two "winners" from the scores of impressive nominations. It’s only proper that we acknowledge the best of them: the finalists.

For KM Promise, the award is given to the organization that delivers the promise to its customers of providing innovative technology solutions for implementing and integrating knowledge management practices into its business processes. The KM Reality award-winning organization demonstrates how it goes beyond simply delivering technology to working with clients to ensure that both the technology and knowledge processes are embedded to facilitate innovation and enhance performance.

Space prohibits us from getting into the kind of detail we would like, so keep your eyes on KMWorld.com, where we’ll post the full nominations.