Jason O’Donnell

Knowledge Strategy & Digital Transformation Leader | Quixotic thinker

A bon vivant, a boulevardier, a man about the ‘virtual town’; of various passions and pursuits who contradicts himself and contains multitudes.

Professionally, I work on knowledge strategy — the discipline underneath post-sales customer success, enterprise support, content strategy, Knowledge-Centered Service (KCS), and, these days, every AI initiative your company is betting on. Every AI answer is built on the knowledge beneath it; every AI initiative is a knowledge initiative wearing a trench coat. I’ve spent 20+ years on the disciplines that keep that knowledge true — capture, structure, governance, and the measurement that makes it all speak the language budgets are written in. You can find my digital credentials on my Credly page.

You can find pointers to my online presences at www.acdntlpoet.com or in the footer of this blog. Follow me in whatever channel you’re most comfortable, if you’re so inclined. I use the AcdntlPoet alias across most all of my accounts.

Most of my content and everything you would need to know about me can be found on my main websites:

• Here, in blog form at www.waywardcelt.com/blog, where I write about knowledge strategy, context management, and whatever else demands an ellipsis…
• on my whiskies tasting group site at www.3DrunkenCelts.com
• or, for the professional doctrine, at contextkeeping.com

I am a Knowledge-Centered Services (KCS) subject matter expert, certified in KCS v6 Practices and Fundamentals. I am very active in the Consortium for Service Innovation’s community, where I have hosted a number of roundtable discussions and presentations across multiple knowledge management topics.

In 2026 I wrote the operating model down. Contextkeeping is my published doctrine for knowledge operations in the AI era: a KCS-aligned governance loop where AI drafts, humans approve, and both humans and machines consume — plus an open article standard, Machine-Ready Knowledge, and a measurement model that retires deflection in favor of cost per answer. I also run its reference implementation myself: a git-backed system of record with validation gates and metadata-aware retrieval. I don’t theorize about AI-ready knowledge; I ship it.

I am currently the Senior Manager, Digital Transformation, Knowledge Management at Lam Research — the sole

 workstream lead for Knowledge Management within Lam’s digital transformation portfolio, which is to say: the strategy seat for how a global semiconductor leader captures, governs, and delivers what it knows. I own the enterprise KM strategy — next-generation architecture, governance model, taxonomy, and platform requirements — direct a matrixed team of ten technical architects, subject-matter experts, and business stakeholders, and tie the transformation investment to measurable business outcomes, all while keeping global knowledge operations running through the redesign.

Before Lam, I led the Global Knowledge Base team for a moment at Percepta, a BPO focused on customer success across multiple industries, where I moved the team toward focused, just-in-time content for our customers. Before that I built and led the KCS program at Autodesk end to end — team, roadmap, OKRs, dashboards, automation — and spent more than a decade at IBM: first as the Social Business Program Manager for IBM Rational and Watson IoT Support, where the blog I co-authored grew to 60M+ views and held the #2 spot on IBM developerWorks year over year until dW shut down at the end of 2019; then as the Support Content Strategist in the IBM Center for Support Excellence, helping lead knowledge-centered culture change across a 25,000-engineer support organization.

The through-line in all of it: I do my best work with an ambiguous, cross-functional, enterprise-scale mandate — defining and guiding the strategy for how an organization captures, governs, and delivers what it knows, in a place where leadership treats knowledge as a strategic asset and AI needs a foundation that actually holds.

I am also a wine and whiskies enthusiast. As part of my love for the dram I am deeply involved as one of the co-founders of the 3 Drunken Celts‘ tasting group. Starting in 1999, my involvement with the 3DC grew my knowledge of the whiskies and spirits industry, providing opportunities to build some exceptional relationships along the way. That road led directly to creating my own expressions in 2012 as a co-owner / chief distiller of Tualatin Valley Distilling, LLC, a nano craft distillery in Hillsboro, Oregon focused on American whiskies as well as historically researched and recreated botanical spirits like Absinthe and the very academically driven Morewood’s Usquebaugh. At the time we were the smallest legal production distillery in Oregon, and likely also the smallest in the entire United States.

Today I am an owner-operator of Big Bottom Distilling, the award-winning brand that originally helped TVD get off the ground. My business partners and I brought the brand back home and relaunched its product lines, and I run my side of it the way I run everything: strategy, P&L, brand, compliance, and all things digital — including the production and TTB-reporting software I built myself — as a zero-debt, self-sustaining operation. The gins and the rye are pouring; the bourbon is coming home.

I ride a motorcycle for fun and transport. I’m on a constant journey to discover my identity. I work hard and play harder. I am obdurate, sardonic, and heavily opinionated… except when I’m not. I wantonly abuse ellipses and have a deep love for Strunk & White, CMOS, and the serial comma.

I have quixotic ideas and strive to be the greater fool.