The phrase Personal Information Management or PIM refers not so much to an established field of inquiry as it does to a gnawing, nagging need. It’s a need we all share but that we each must meet in our own individual, idiosyncratic ways. Now is a good time to take stock of PIM as a need and as a field of inquiry with special focus on the ways in which computing technology can help. The panel will address the following questions: * What is PIM as a field of inquiry? What should it encompass? * In what ways has computing technology helped? In what ways has it hurt? * Panelists are encouraged to bring and read their own favorite samples from the sometimes breathless predictions of twenty years back. Some dreams have come true. Others have not. Some may now seem wildly off base. Why? What can we learn from this going forward? * What have we learned in the past twenty years through the study of PIM? What do we know through empirical inquiry? What have we learned through tool prototyping? * What don’t we know? What should we be finding out?
