Preview - Online Information Conference 2005 - One high-powered line-up. The IWR team looks forward to what could be one of the best Online Information conferences in years - everything from cutting-edge sessions on wikis and desktop search, to a renewed focus on business information.

Preparations for this year's Online Information Conference, which runs in parallel with the annual Online Information show, are well-advanced, with one of the best keynote speaker lists in years.

Among the big name speakers scheduled for the 2005 event are David Weinberger, co-author of The Cluetrain Manifesto, Suranga Chandratillake, founder of innovative search company Blinkx, and Jimmy Wales, president of the Wikimedia Foundation.

Weinberger is considered one of the world's most influential thinkers on the future of the internet, and his opening keynote address for the 30th annual conference (29 November - 1 December) is likely to be standing-room only.

A philosopher by training, Weinberger holds a PhD from the University of Toronto, and currently serves as a fellow at the prestigious Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard. He is also an avid blogger, and was an advisor to Howard Dean's internet-savvy 2004 presidential campaign.

The Cluetrain Manifesto set corporate America abuzz at the turn of the millennium by taking the position that the internet enabled conversations among consumers, which enabled markets to get smarter faster than companies could keep up.

Explaining the title of his keynote address ('The new shape of knowledge - everything is miscellaneous'), Weinberger says: "The digitising of information, by cutting the bonds of the physical, is changing the basic principles by which we organise knowledge. We are going from comprehensive trees to piles of leaves. This is bringing about a fundamental change for informational professionals.

"Not only do they have to keep up to date with new techniques for organising information, but their customers have new expectations about the role information professionals play. Users expect to be able to be treated