 RETAINING EXPERT KNOWLEDGE What to Keep in an Age of Information Overload by Peggy Salvatore, read by Catherine Fenton. Preface RETAINING EXPERT KNOWLEDGE blends two self-published books and goes beyond them to explore the future of capturing and transferring expertise. The scope of the first book, Working with SMEs, gathering and organizing content from subject matter experts, simply established a methodology and best practices for interviewing subject matter experts to capture their knowledge for training programs. It assumed organizations knew exactly the critical knowledge they needed to capture and the people who were carrying around the most important information. However, a few questions arose from ensuing discussions about subject matter expertise that begged to be answered. Are we talking to the right subject matter experts? What knowledge should organizations capture? What knowledge needs to be captured immediately as opposed to eventually? If we have limited resources or limited time, which experts are most important to speak with first? In light of these questions, it became clear the issue of identifying the right expert is entirely separate and, in fact, as I spoke with people about the idea, I discovered it is actually a more critical problem. That led to the second book, Finding Your SMEs Capturing Knowledge from Retiring Subject Matter Experts Before They Leave. Here's why. This decade from 2010 to 2020 will see the largest recorded exit of talented and knowledgeable workers from your organizations as baby boomers head for sunny golf courses and extended vacations to enjoy the fruits of lifetimes of labor. In their wake, they leave their former employers understaffed and, even scarier, under-informed. In fact, I will go out on a limb here to suggest that we are currently undergoing the largest transfer of knowledge in human history. From the turn of the 20th to the turn of the 21st centuries, humankind experienced the greatest leaps and technological advances in recorded history. From horse-drawn buggies to space travel, human intelligence and creativity catapulted us from a plodding, linear existence to soaring exponential possibilities. Books like Alvin Toffler's Future Shock first chronicled this geometric explosion of knowledge while Peter Diamandis's book Sample Complete. Ready to continue?