This is the old ChiefTech blog...

Moving this blog to Posterous

2009-06-29T23:04:00.004+10:00

"I've been thinking about migrating my original blog off of blogger and on to something like a hosted Wordpress site or something similar. Since moving to a Mac in March, I've also found that blogging without Windows Live Writer just isn't the same either ;-) But then I find myself getting caught up on what theme to use, different widgets and all that complication... and all I really want is something clean and simple (I'm sure most of you only read my RSS feed anyway) where I share news, ideas and other things I've found and have the odd conversation too. I had discovered Posterous a while ago and thought it looked interesting, but then did nothing about it. So, here I am now! Welcome to my new blog."

If you subscribe to my Feedburner RSS feed, I'm pointing that at my new Posterous' feed already.

Us Now Sydney on 9th July

2009-06-29T10:22:00.003+10:00

I know I'm repeating myself, but just a reminder that if you live in Sydney and either haven't watched the Us Now documentary yet or simply would like the chance to discuss it further, then join us on the evening of Thursday 9th July at the Australian Technology Park* for a special community screening.

Its a free event, but you do need to register - and of course, don't forget to tell your friends about it. We're using #usnowsydney as our hashtag.
*We only confirmed this new venue over the weekend and it means we've increased our capacity from 30 to 100 people! :-)

Tags: usnow, usnowsydney, government 2.0

If it isn't broken, why fix it? (New patterns in government)

2009-06-23T09:24:00.004+10:00

These are the slides from my PublicSphere presentation yesterday:

If it isn't broken, why fix it?

View more Microsoft Word documents from James Dellow.

BTW There is a great column in the UK's Independent newspaper by Headshift's Lee Bryant about "rebooting Britain" that reflects some of the points I made around the need to understand the potential for Government 2.0 from a different viewpoint, which naturally drives us towards a different approach to the way government and the community work together.

UPDATE: You'll find more notes about my presentation on the Headshift Australasia blog. Video recordings from the event are now available too.

Tags: Gov2.0, Government 2.0, PublicSphere, Australia, Canberra, Headshift, Lee Bryant, Presentation

Intranets and social computing - first mover disadvantage?

2009-06-12T09:53:00.003+10:00

As you may know, in the past I worked at Ernst & Young in their Centre for Business Knowledge, the group who are responsible for the “KWeb” intranet. Outside of the top tier accounting firms (who have always understood they are involved in knowledge work), I’ve yet to find any large organisations with such a cohesive or advanced intranet, so I like to track public case studies and articles about Ernst & Young’s intranet and knowledge management program to see how it is progressing since I left in 2004.

Anyway, I was interested to read on the Intranet Benchmarking Forum’s blog that they had recently attended a leadership conference to provide a briefing on:

“the latest trends amongst advance intranets and to parlay that information into a strategic roadmap for a next-generation intranet.”

Alas, we don’t hear much about the audience’s reaction to these trends. I wonder how well E&Y’s intranet does benchmark against those trends, because there wasn’t really a lot there that struck me as new. I must admit this actually irritates me slightly - and I’ll apologies if there is a touch of arrogance here - but it really is time that the intranet industry takes a long hard look at itself and admits that its not really a case that some organisations are facing a set of new trends, they are really just catching up with innovation in other organisations that’s been taking place over the last decade or more.

Lets look at this apparently emerging issue about the “conflict between the desire to open up will be tempered by risk management and control”, as by its very nature the KWeb intranet is an open system that runs primarily on user-generated content. While I worked there, E&Y had hundreds of unmoderated, unfiltered discussion forums and thousands of project team databases. I don’t recall any major incidents, although I do remember some of the conversations about e-commerce getting quite heated! The only moderation processes that did exist was for the minority of ‘highly filtered’ knowledgebases, like PowerPacks - however, this moderation was for content quality.

Fast forwarding to the present day, this is only appearing to be a trend now in other less progressive organisations as Web-based collaboration tools (like SharePoint) have started to muscle into the traditional intranet space (e.g. static pages of content pushed at users to eagerly consume).

But its not a trend pointing to the future, its an indicator that you are lagging behind in how you imagine what an intranet should be. On the other hand I suspect Ernst & Young and those like it aren't lacking vision, but they may be struggling to take advantage of new Web 2.0 inspired enterprise technologies because of what’s in place already.

Another former employer, CSC, is a large organisation and presents another interesting case study from this point of view. They have a well established extranet, rather than an intranet, with a portal as a primary front end to multiple Web-based systems and sub-sites. However, while they are in the process of adopting social computing tools they face the challenge of integrating them into that existing Web 1.0-style extranet infrastructure.

I've seen similar situations in other large organisations I've worked with, particulary those that already valued collaboration and that had already deployed first generation Web-based collaboration tools.

From this I think there are in fact two key positions to understand:

Progressive, early adopter organisations may now be at a disadvantage at a technology level, because they have lots of expensive legacy infrastructure to deal with - however, the culture is much better prepared to adopt a social computing-based intranet, so you can use that to your advantage. Luckily social computing can help make that transition in a cost effective way.
Laggard organisations (and smaller organisations that never had access to enterprise groupware in the first place) have a temporary advantage to get ahead of the original early adopters if they can get past the cultural and business political issues that stop them from introducing new collaboration and social computing-based intranets. Its a lot harder to bootstrap culture change, but with a bit of effort you can fly under the radar at the technology level with social computing if you try. But fundamentally, you have to reinvent what the intranet means to your organisation in order to move forward.

So, what’s your organisation - an original early adopter or are a laggard?

Tags: intranets, extranet, trends, social computing, enterprise social computing, Intranet Benchmarking Forum, Ernst & Young, CSC

My Enterprise 2.0 Experts Profile on Enterprise2Open

2009-06-09T09:43:00.002+10:00

Martin Koser (aka Frogpond) has posted an experts profile about me on the Enterprise2Open blog. It covers my views on:

The core concept of the Enterprise 2.0 idea;
The potential of the Enterprise 2.0;
Challenges, threads and issues.

Tags: Enterprise 2.0, profile, James Dellow, Chieftech

Would the Slow Wide Web still be revolutionary?

2009-06-07T13:31:00.004+10:00

Its quite interesting watching someone use some 50 year old IT equipment to connect to the Web - the amazing thing is that it still works and in this case we see words from Wikipedia appear on a text-based browser slowly transmitted as a final step over an antique modem:

But if the Internet was restricted this way today - delivered at the speed of this antique modem - would something like Wikipedia have been able to have such a revolutionary impact as it has today? I wonder.

Tags: antique modem, old technology, Internet, WorldWideWeb

Is this the shape of the Wave?

2009-06-07T12:58:00.003+10:00

Having cut my collaboration and knowledge management teeth in a heavily Lotus Notes orientated environment, but also at a time when the Web was making its first attempt at coming to power (i.e. the dot com boom) I really want to listen to what someone like Ray Ozzie has to say, but find it hard to take his views as a credible perspective.

For example, there is perhaps a ring of truth about his comments about the overstated potential for Google Wave, reported in the FT's TechBlog:

“Wave is just too big and complex a system. Google’s engineers had no choice but to take this approach given the grandeur of their vision, but in the process they have come up with something that will fail to get adopted in the fabric of the Web.”

I mean, I think Gmail is the best email application ever. Full stop. I love the Ninja theme :-)

But while it might set the benchmark for email user interfaces, functionality and even changed our view about email quotas, it hasn’t changed the underlying architecture of email.

Google Wave is much more ambitious. But in the long tail of Web innovation, for every uber-developer at Google there is an army of part-time coders tweaking and hacking away at their own vision of next generation [insert application type here]. And in between there are plenty of vendors trying to get a of the corporate wallet share with their own Web-like, but Web 2.0-not products.

Still, I don’t see much from Ozzie these days. I don’t see him online experiencing Web 2.0 much either. The people at Google on the other hand are accessible, active and living Web 2.0.

Maybe its just a changing of guard? People like Ray Ozzie and others I’ve admired like Tom Davenport have helped prepare me for the emergence of Web 2.0 and I don’t want to forget that. But its now up to the new innovators, like Google and many others, who live and work in the Web to actually take us to that next stage.

Regardless of what things like Wave, Twitter, Yahoo! Pipes and all the other wonderful things we've seen emerge eventually become, they will shape the future, if not entirely redefine it in the ways we thought. I think the bigger question about Wave isn't about the technology, but if we are *all* actually ready for this kind of real-time collaboration?

Tags: Google, Google Wave, Ray Ozzie, Tom Davenport, Web 2.0, Real-Time Collaboration

Taking Government 2.0 to Sydney (BarCampSydney#5, Us Now Sydney and the NSW KM Forum)

2009-06-06T12:31:00.005+10:00

On the 22nd June, Sen. Kate Lundy kicks off a Public Sphere event in Canberra that for me is going to be a fortnight or so of Government 2.0 related events in my part of the world. Quite deliberately I’ve been championing a few ideas to bring that Public Sphere conversation in Canberra to Sydney - as result a few events are forming up that should give us that opportunity:

We’re encouraging people interested in Government 2.0 to come along and meet up at BarCampSydney#5 on Saturday 27th June (what I’m calling the “#bcs5gov20” stream!);
We’re screening the Us Now movie in Sydney on Thursday 9th June;~~planning on screening the Us Now movie in Sydney;~~ and
I’m hosting a Conversation Cafe on Government 2.0 at the New South Wales Knowledge Management Forum on the 30th June ~~(full details still to come)~~.

Part of my reason for wanting to bring this Government 2.0 conversation to Sydney is so that people outside of the Federal government sector, such as those working at NSW state and local government level, the local not-profit-sector and other public institutions, can also be involved.

I think its worth explaining a bit about BarCampSydney#5, as we are really piggy backing on the (un)organising efforts of the BarCampSydney crew. However the timing with this next BarCampSydney and the Canberra PublicSphere is too good an opportunity to miss out on! So a big thank you to BarCampSydney for incorporating us into their planning.

This BarCampSydney is also being tagged as the Recession Edition or “the BarCamp we had to have”... a really relevant topic for Government 2.0, as government and other community organisations are both being expected to engage more, but in the current financial environment they need to do more with less. Practicing what we preach, coming together at a BarCamp is a great way to share knowledge and brainstorm solutions.

So, sign up for BarCampSydney#5 and let me know who you are so we make sure we get everyone who wants to talk about Gov 2.0 together on the day. You can introduce yourself here in the comments or join one of the networks for the Aussie Gov 2.0 community (Gov2.0Australia discussion, the Australian community on GovLoop and the Gov2.0Australia Ning group) and say hello there.

BTW If you’re in Australia but can’t make it to any of the Gov 2.0 related events in Canberra or Sydney, why not consider hosting a meet up or something similar yourself? One easy ideas is to simply download the Us Now documentary (or order the DVD version online if you want to project it on to a big screen) and get some people together to discuss!

Tags: Gov2.0, Government 2.0, Australia, Public Sphere, Canberra, BarCamp, bcs5gov20, Us Now Moive, Us Now Sydney, NSW KM Forum

Public Sphere #2 - Government 2.0

2009-05-31T22:43:00.001+10:00

I've posted my suggested presentation for Sen. Kate Lundy's 2nd Public Sphere in Canberra on the 22nd June. You can either join us in person or remotely, so in the style of BarCamp why don't put your hand up and add to the conversation?
Tags: Public Sphere, publicsphere, Kate Lundy, Government 2.0, Gov2.0, Canberra

I got the, don’t take the Web 2.0 out of Web 2.0 blues

2009-05-26T19:37:00.002+10:00

To me, discussing Web 2.0 in an abstract way without reference to technology is an odd thing to do.

I should premise this statement that in IMHO, no technology exists in a vacuum. However, my viewpoint has been influenced by systems thinking and socio-technical systems theory. In this complex view of the world, technology is as much related to its environment as what we might traditionally think of as the separate social or organisational parts.

So for me, Web 2.0 has never just been about the technology. And its why I get little confused when I hear people talking about Web 2.0 and related themes, like Government 2.0, in an abstract way that attempts to push the technology into the background. Neither the social or technical parts of the system take priority, because they are related.

However, on one level this desire to push the technology of Web 2.0 into the background can be understood by observing how the meaning of ‘2.0’ has changed over time. While Tim O’Reilly might have assigned quite a specific meaning to Web 2.0, the only commonality left in how we all use it now is that “two do oh” might be best described as short hand for ‘paradigm shift’ (and yeah, its quickly become past its marketing sell by date).

Listening to people to discuss the meaning of Government 2.0 for example, I can see how it can be either read as Web 2.0 in Government or as a broader paradigm shift in our approach to Government (or perhaps somewhere in between). There is no right or wrong answer here of course... its always about how people use it and interpret meaning.

But even if we stick with a meaning that is closer to the original, I can also see that there are a number of good reasons why people want to down play the technology - for example:

As part of the change process for adopting Web 2.0, its better to talk about the organisational benefits and social outcomes first, and introduce the technology later;
So that Web 2.0 can be conceptualised and discussed in a broader organisational or social context, e.g. Human Resource Management or Open Government.

However, I sense there are others that simply believe ‘people’ are a more important factor than ‘technology’ (the get the people right and the technology will follow theory - as bad as the other side of the coin, build it and they will come theory) or that it is easier to work at an abstracted level that is focused on manifest behaviours and outcomes (the Web as a black box theory of social media).

The trouble with abstracting the technology out of Web 2.0 for those reasons only becomes a problem when you try to take action on strategies or plans based on those assumptions. Unfortunately if this wasn’t the case, we wouldn’t see failed examples of social media and social computing out there (and I suspect its one reason why there is storm brewing for reductionist social media consultants).

So, what can we do to bridge this gap between not getting technical but appreciating the relationship with the technology? Here are three suggestions:

Talk in patterns, not specific tools or platforms;
Use real life examples and stories to demonstrate the technology, but explain the outcomes and benefits of that particular technology (but be careful never to pitch them as ‘solutions’); and
Let people learn by doing - let them use social software to solve a real problem.

Don't hide Web 2.0 away like some embarrassment. Eventually, that skeleton in the closet will get out, and its not going to be pretty (I’m talking about, selling the idea of ‘participation’ but then simply pointing them at Wikipedia and telling them to just go do it).

Tags: Web 2.0, systems thinking, socio-technical systems theory, technology, perspectives, social media, social media consulting, social computing

An open invitation to share your knowledge with the ICTI community

2009-05-22T07:22:00.003+10:00

On Wednesday night this week we held the official launch of ICT Illawarra (ICTI), an information and communication technology cluster for the Illawarra region in southern New South Wales, Australia. This was an important first milestone for ICTI and we were all quite excited as we were expecting up to 60-70 people to attend the launch - an absolutely fantastic turn out for an event like this in a small city like Wollongong:

The University of Wollongong Vice-Chancellor Gerard Sutton and I (as the president of the ICTI association) gave a brief introduction and then handed over firstly to the Hon. David Campbell (NSW Minister for Transport and Minister for the Illawarra) and then our key note speaker, Bob Hayward from CSC.

Bob is a very experience IT entrepreneur who was recently appointed as Chief Technology & Innovation Officer APJ at CSC. He is also on the AIIA board and is the co-founder of AsiaOnline. Bob’s presentation was received very well - so a big public thank you to him for taking the time to help us with the launch.

I know the audience for this blog spans many geographies, but if you happen to be in Wollongong or know someone in the area, please remember that you would be most welcome to join us at any of our networking meetings in the future - dates for this year are already locked in.

We actually have some ideas for future meetings based the ICTI board’s own experiences with alternative meeting formats, such as BarCamp and Growth Town. So for those of you who live and work outside of the South Coast area, if you have some knowledge, ideas or opportunities you are willing to share we have a group of motivated ICT businesses that would love to meet you.

Tags: ICT Illawarra, ICTI, University of Wollongong, Bob Hayward, CSC, Event, Launch

Want to watch and discuss the Us Now movie in Sydney? Register your interest

2009-05-20T10:31:00.001+10:00

I've created a wiki page to gather names of people interested in getting together to watch and discuss the Us Now movie in Sydney. Please login and add your name to the list to register your interest. If we get enough people, then we'll work out when (soon) and where (central Sydney I expect)!
Tags: UsNow, Us Now movie, Sydney, Meetup

Consuming conversations and information - guess what, we have choice

2009-05-18T23:44:00.001+10:00

If you missed it, Lee wrote a great response to what (to be frank) was a pretty dumb post from Steve Gillmor about the death of RSS (again). I think the majority of people interested in this stuff understand that RSS is an essential part of the plumbing, but I think what Gillmor really missed was that just because he uses it one way that doesn't mean that's how everyone else wants to use it (a point central to Lee's argument) or will in fact end up using it as these social techologies continue to evolve and become more broadly adopted. The wonderful thing about RSS of course is that it doesn't matter how people access it - we have a common'ish enough protocol in RSS (and other standards) to help us join data, information and all these wonderful social tools together. Choice is great isn't it?

Tags: Lee Bryant, Steve Gillmor, Twitter, RSS, Enterprise RSS, social computing, mashups, protocols

Time for an upgrade? Wiki 2.0

2009-05-18T23:01:00.004+10:00

It probably won't come as any surprise to hear that I agree with this point made by Gil Yehuda in a recent post* about the take up and maturity of Enterprise 2.0:

"For me at least, having a wiki, forum, blogs, etc. on the intranet and using a wiki, forum, blog effectively to improve the transparency and productivity of collaboration are very different indicators of progress."

I'm just waiting for other people to 'get it' that not only does simply installing the odd social computing application mean very little, but they can also be used in very different ways - a while ago I called this the grey area problem. It doesn't mean using social computing tools this way is useful or beneficial, its just not really what we imagined Enterprsie 2.0 would be like.

Similarly, Yehuda also points to a new wiki case study on Boxes and Arrows, where Matthew C. Clarke draws distinction between public, team and enterprise wikis. Yehuda chips in his two cents worth again and puts forwards an alternative break down of:

"1. enterprise-wide transparency 2. departmental-wide unity 3. team-wide coordination 4. project-wide activity (which may or may not be the same as team) 5. individual productivity enhancement tools (profile, streams, bookmarks, etc.)".

These are nice break downs, even if some what two-dimensional, but I'll support any kind of thinking that takes us beyond thinking that a wiki is a wiki is a wiki. What I mean is that its a combination what (is the tool), how (are they using it) and who (is using it).

Clarke also makes a good point about wikis disappearing:

"I predict that Wikis will disappear over the next 5 to 10 years. This is not because they will fail but precisely because they will succeed. The best technologies disappear from view because they become so common-place that nobody notices them. Wiki-style functionality will become embedded within other software – within portals, web design tools, word processors, and content management systems. Our children may not learn the word “Wiki,” but they will be surprised when we tell them that there was a time when you couldn't just edit a web page to build the content collaboratively."

Really what he is saying that wiki will become more of a verb and less a noun. However, again I'm not sure its good enough to add wiki-like page editing functionality to an information tool and expect it to behave like a social computing tool suddenly (if that's your intent). I think what's more interesting is the evolution of enterprise wikis, as they add other types of social computing features. Other social computing platforms may also threaten these wiki-based solutions by adding the capability to manage pages and documents. But in the race to be all things to all people, I really hope that the social computing technology thought leaders don't lose their way.

Hmm. Wiki 2.0 anyone?

*Hat tip to Greg Lloyd on the Social Media Today blog.

UPDATE: Nice response post from Mark Gould.

Tags: enterprise 2.0, adoption, social computing, enterprise social computing, wikis, Gil Yehuda, Matthew C. Clarke

Don't just spend less on IT, spend smart

2009-05-15T09:15:00.002+10:00

Last Friday, writing for the Australian Financial Review (AFR) (“Anxious CIOs keep tight hold of the purse strings”, 8/5/09, p.53), Mark Jones reported on what he called “a dramatic downturn in corporate and government IT spending.”

Mark included some quotes from a recent interview with Fiona Balfour, former Qantas and Telstra CIO, and Steve Hodgkinson, research director at Ovum, for his The Scoop podcast. However, listening to the podcast its not just simply a case of no spending. Instead, as Mark hints at in the headline for his article, these IT commentators suggest that its more about tightening controls on how and where money is spent. In practice, they say, this means organisations need to revise their plans to suit the new financial environment by focusing on delivering business outcomes (although you have to wonder what they were doing before, then?) and controlling the complexity of their IT systems.

Personally, when ever I hear talk about ‘standardisation’ and ‘out of the box’ I immediately think of the impact on end-users (or if you want to take a more hard nosed perspective, lets call it a negative outcome for group and individual productivity). While this won’t show up on the business case or the IT budget, I have no doubt that it will come down to people to fill the gaps in these apparently economically sound solutions. This means email volumes will continue to grow, more spreadsheet-based applications will appear and in the worst cases - where users are left with no options to ‘hack’ their solutions together - these systems will actually fail to meet their objective. And along the way, you’ll probably end up with a bunch of frustrated and ultimately unproductive people. Some of those unhappy people will be your customers too.

At the end of the podcast, Hodgkinson suggests enterprises look at the Web 2.0 cloud computing model and bring that approach inside the firewall, in terms of ideas like light touch, self-provisioning, etc. Unfortunately, Mark didn’t have time explore this line of thought but I think an enterprise Web 2.0 inspired approach is the counter balance to the problems a tightly constrained IT system will create.

This will require a little bit of out of the box thinking (dare I say it, ‘innovation’). This doesn’t mean you need to rip out your ERP system and replace it with Facebook. If this is what you think, then you really are missing the point. Its actually about enhancing and augmenting complex transactional systems with lightweight solutions so that the productivity gap I describe above can be managed as an above the line item in terms of:

Supporting conversational collaboration (to help with problem solving and dealing with the bumps rigid transactional systems create or have been designed to support);
Enhancing information management, by adding social networking and social information discovery layers; and
Leverage data and information from underlying transactional systems into these social computing layers.

If you happen to be a CEO reading this and your CIO gives a business case or plan based on constraint and control, make sure you ask them what’s their strategy for helping staff and customers deal with the rigid, narrow systems they are proposing. Maybe that great TCO isn’t so attractive after all?

Tags: AFR, Australian Financial Review, Mark Jones, Fiona Balfour, Steve Hodgkinson, IT, Budgets, Productivity, Web 2.0, Enterprise Web 2.0, Enterprise Social Computing

Can you help - where did all the old laptops go?

2009-05-14T21:10:00.002+10:00

As you might be aware, I spent a couple of days at Connecting Up Australia 2009 this week (you can read my notes from day 1 and day 2 over on the HOZ blog). I spoke briefly, between sessions, with Richard Stubbs from the Victorian-based Beyond Disability Inc. who:

"assist wheelchair school children ( Wheelie Kids programme) and the housebound mobility disabled (through "Housebound & Elderly Citizens Online") and their carers to have access to the Internet so they can be better informed about advocacy, home help and in house care, professional services, living skills, support groups, chat groups, online education and leisure."

Unfortunately, as Richard explained during the conference, they are finding it increasingly difficult to source the additional donated laptops that they need for their programs. They wrote this on their Website back at the end of last year:

"BDI's first laptop to NSW has gone to a 13-year-old disabled girl. TAD NSW informed us by phone that they no longer have their computer loans scheme and TAD NSW has the same issues as Beyond Disability in sourcing these disappearing laptops. Where do they go?"

It appears that as more organisations have moved to leasing, it means that rather than donating these laptops to organisations like BDI at the end of their corporate working lives, they are instead being sold or auctioned off as second hand laptops. This is causing them real problems, on top of the costs and challenges of finding other suitable computing peripherals that they already have to deal with.

So, can anyone out there help BDI or provide some assistance with finding companies that are willing to donate old laptops?

Tags: Beyond Disability Inc., non-profit, laptops, donations

ICTI is green for go on the 20th May

2009-05-05T13:15:00.001+10:00

This has been quite literally years in the making... however, the ICT Illawarra (ICTI) cluster (follow on Twitter) is holding its official launch event on the 20th May at the University of Wollonong's Innovation Campus. See the ICTI's events page for more detail.

If you know of anyone running an ICT-related business (including areas such as digital media, for example), someone who wants to start an ICT business or who runs an ICT intensive business, please help to spread the word. We know that Wollongong-based businesses do a lot of work outside the region, so if you're based in Sydney, Canberra or beyond, you are most welcome to attend to.

We're also quite excited to have CSC's Chief Technology and Innovation, Bob Hayward (follow him on Twitter), as our key note for the evening.

We're also looking for lucky door prizes and etc, and I hear that Google might be coming to the party in that respect. However, if you can help out in some way I would love to hear from you.

BTW The reason I'm telling you all of this is that I'm currently the president of ICTI.

Tags: ICTI, ICT Illawrra, Illawarra, Wollongong, ICT, IT, cluster, meeting, networking, Bob Hayward, Google, University of Wollongong, Innovation Campus

Conferences in May and June

2009-04-30T11:43:00.002+10:00

I know I said I probably wouldn't be cross posting from the Headshift Australasia blog, but I thought you might be interested in two events where I'm presenting over the next few months:

Connecting Up 2009 - 11th-12th May, Sydney
Web 2.0 in Government Conference 2009 - 24th June, Sydney

More details over on the HOZ blog. PS Also, have you heard about Senator Kate Lundy's first 'Public Sphere' next week?

Tags: events, conferences, headshift, publicsphere

Keeping the Enterprise RSS Dream Alive

2009-04-24T09:19:00.002+10:00

Today, it is one year since we held the global Enterprise RSS Day of Action - with the help from many people, including vendors like Attensa and Newsgator, the aim was to raise awareness of this critical element of back end plumbing for Enterprise 2.0. I'm not going to make a big deal about the day of action today or suggest we hold another one (unless you really want too!). But, if you missed it the first time around, have a look around my blog or search the Web for further coverage.

Things finally came to head earlier this year when ReadWriteWeb posted what many thought was a premature obituary for Enterprise RSS. You can see my response post here. I still don't think Enterprise RSS is dead - personally I couldn't live without my RSS reader. But its more than that: when ever I feel overloaded by email, every time I subscribe to a search result or mashup something using Yahoo! Pipes, I imagine what the future enterprise could be like if only we had the same access to Enterprise RSS as we do email in the workplace.

BTW Don't forget to check out Newsgator's new whitepaper on the ROI of Enterprise Social Computing.

Tags: Enterprise 2.0, RSS, Enterprise RSS, Enterprise RSS Day of Action, ReadWriteWeb, Attensa, Newsgator, Yahoo! Pipes

Adding RSS and Twitter feeds to local council Websites only takes a few minutes!

2009-04-21T15:53:00.003+10:00

I was talking about this the other day. Now I don't want to pick on Wollongong City Council (WCC) specifically, but as they are my local council I just thought I would demonstrate how easy it is to start Web 2.0'ifying local council Websites if people put their minds to it. Currently there are no RSS feeds on the WCC Website, but luckily the back end is all SharePoint and it does natively support RSS (thank goodness).

The low hanging fruit on the WCC Website are their media releases... so here we go:

Firstly, by pushing the native SharePoint RSS feed through Yahoo Pipes and Feedburner I can clean up the feed a little and it generally makes performance better IMHO - from this I get a nice clean RSS feed.

The next step is to push though the RSS feed out via Twitter (since that's all the rage at the moment). So, we create a Twitter account for them and a tool like RSS To Twitter.

Now, we just sit back and wait for some news to appear... :-)

Of course there is a whole bunch of useful information that could be pushed out if it was available in the right format, for example geographic information. And yes it would be better if we didn't need to use a bunch of 3rd parties tools to mash it together, but then again this is Web 2.0 in action and none of this is mission critical stuff.

BTW Wollongong City Council are more than welcome to all these bits and pieces if they want them.

Tags: government 2.0, gov2.0, local government, local councils, Australia, RSS, news, feeds, Twitter, Yahoo! Pipes, Feedburner, RSS To Twitter, mashups, Web 2.0

On the HOZ blog: Get enterprise wiki software for just a few bucks

2009-04-21T09:23:00.002+10:00

Over on the Headshift Australasia blog, find out how to get a 5 user license for Confluence for just US$5! PS This will probably be the last time I routinely cross-post a link to the Headshift Australasia blog. Remember, you can subscribe to the feed for the HOZ blog here.

Tags: headshift, blog, atlassian, confluence, wiki, enterprise wiki

Story week is coming: Anecdote, Sparknow and Innotecture

2009-04-18T13:37:00.002+10:00

This should be interesting:

"Anecdote, Sparknow and Innotecture [aka Engineers without Fears] have been working together for a little while now to find out a bit more about what stories have influence and impact. We've found quite a difference in views, even among ourselves. So we're inviting our combined readership and their networks (and their networks) to participate in Story Week (starting May 4th) Over 5 days we're going to show you 5 stories from different people in different formats, intended for very different audiences and settings. You're going to tell us how you respond to them. We'll tell you what you collectively told us. We'll all learn something in the process. Oh, and it will be fun, too. Watch this space..."

Tags: Stories, Story Telling, Knowledge Management, Matt Moore, Anecdote, Innotecture

There goes the neighbourhood? Twitter, celebrities and all that

2009-04-18T08:44:00.003+10:00

There really should be rules about blogging about Twitter (or if we want to speak more generically, micro-blogging). Navel gazing makes for boring blogging. But luckily, there are no rules for how people have to use social media... which is my point:

The only rules are the individual 'game' rules (not just the terms of service, but how the tool actually works in practice) that exist for each social media part. Privacy controls for example are a game rule that people can have direct input into. But one of the most important game rules in any social media application is how you 'friend' people. Some social media applications are strict, whilst others are open.

I think it fair to say that one of Twitter's failings is the simplistic privacy controls and follow/follower management. If a user's Twitter account is public, then you can follow them. As the person being followed, you are left to your own devices to determine if you want to follow back. With this model, and in the worse cases thanks to a little bit of social engineering Internet marketing, you can easily end up with with people - like celebrities, Internet marketers, news providers - who follow a handful of people themselves but have tens of thousands and even millions of followers. While its questionable in most cases how much social capital they actually add to the Twittersphere as long they don't bring Twitter down because of the volumes of traffic they generate, who really cares?

But we also have to accept these game rule deficiencies in Twitter are also a major strength. It allows people to easily connect with each other - if you think a person looks interesting or said something interesting, then follow them. It has also allowed a whole ecosystem of third party hacks and applications to grow around it (I previously shared my idea for checking a Twitter user's authenticity).

Ultimately, if you don't like what someone is doing or saying on Twitter then you the user still have the ultimate social networking anti-pattern defense - you can unfollow. And in the worse cases block.

Of course if you are out there trying to use social media tools like Twitter to engage with people for business or other reasons, then in the absence of fixed general social media rules it is critical that you understand the norms that are evolving in reaction to the particular game rules for each social media part. Just like any social group, these norms will continue to evolve even if the underlying game rules don't as the usage of that particular social media part grows or matures. (BTW this is also one reason why you should never hire a social media consultancy or service provider to help you, unless they use this stuff themselves).

It is interesting to consider that even Twitter's own definition of spam is an evolving one too:

"Spam: You may not use the Twitter service for the purpose of spamming anyone. What constitutes “spamming” will evolve as we respond to new tricks and tactics by spammers."

Me personally, I switched off the option to receive a notification when someone follows me as it was just too hard to sort the expletive deleted Internet marketers from the genuine users (alas, I'm not aware of any celebs ever following me!). These days if you want to get my attention on Twitter you'll need to actually talk to me in a meaningful way. And, for the record I don't expect anything less back.

As Twitter goes mainstream how are you managing followers? And are you following any celebrities (and did they follow back)?

Tags: Twitter, microblogging, rules, marketing, celebrities

Down and Out in a Pizza Chain

2009-04-16T09:38:00.003+10:00

A well known pizza chain is the lastest organisation to suffer from a "social media quake" of sorts (check out the view from Twitter) - on this occasion, a couple of employees uploaded to YouTube a series of (what they claim to be) prank videos showing them doing disgusting things during food preparation. The company responded with its own YouTube announcement and the employees have now been fired and may face legal or criminal action.

Its very easy to blame social media for causing so much damage to this company's brand:

"The opportunities and freedom of the internet is wonderful. But it also comes with the risk of anyone with a camera and an internet link to cause a lot of damage"

But this whole episode actually reminds me of this quote from George Orwell's Down and Out in Paris and London, from the time he was working in a hotel kitchen - he describes the filthy conditions behind the scenes:

"It was amusing to look round the filthy little scullery and think that only a double door was between us and the dining-room. There sat the customers in all their splendour--spotless table-cloths, bowls of flowers, mirrors and gilt cornices and painted cherubim; and here, just a few feet away, we in our disgusting filth. For it really was disgusting filth. There was no time to sweep the floor till evening, and we slithered about in a compound of soapy water, lettuce-leaves, torn paper and trampled food. A dozen waiters with their coats off, showing their sweaty armpits, sat at the table mixing salads and sticking their thumbs into the cream pots. The room had a dirty, mixed smell of food and sweat. Everywhere in the cupboards, behind the piles of crockery, were squalid stores of food that the waiters had stolen. There were only two sinks, and no washing basin, and it was nothing unusual for a waiter to wash his face in the water in which clean crockery was rinsing. But the customers saw nothing of this. There were a coco-nut mat and a mirror outside the dining-room door, and the waiters used to preen themselves up and go in looking the picture of cleanliness."

Thanks to the modern food and health regulations that didn't exist in Orwell's time, I don't think that pizza chain in question is any better or worse than any other similar commercial take away operation. But lets not kid ourselves. Do you think you really know what happens behind the scenes in any organisation? But is it worse that we know about it or worse that it happens at all?

Tags: pizza, YouTube, socia media quake, George Orwell, disgusting, filthy, transparency

On the HOZ blog: We can't live without it, so lets rethink television advertising

2009-04-15T21:59:00.002+10:00

Another post over on the Headshift Australasia blog, this time talking about the future of television advertising. Would love to hear your views on this topic!

Tags: headshift blog

Is collaboration bad, really?

2009-04-13T21:35:00.002+10:00

In a HBR article (and discussed in an interview for CIO mag), Morten Hansen argues that some internal collaboration can be bad for organisations.

He puts forward a relatively simple equation that weighs the projected return on the results of the collaboration against the opportunity cost and direct costs of collaboration as the basis for a managerial decision making aid - in effect you can calculate the “collaboration premium” to determine if its worth proceeding. As you might guess from the provocative title, in Hansen’s view the cost of collaboration often doesn’t add up.

On closer reading, I found Hansen really only talking about a specific level of organisational collaboration - specifically project-based collaboration between business units, where there is a defined beginning and end to the initiative (e.g. writing proposals, creating a new product line). In this context Hansen’s examples really simply point at the root causes for failure - that is, internal politics, organisational structures and management systems (both technical and organisational) are all factors that can create barriers to effective collaboration. In other words, if people in your organisation are pulling in different directions, then collaboration is going to be difficult. No kidding?

In doing this he also neglects a whole level of strategic collaboration above this formal business unit project-collaboration and emergent social networking or tactical collaboration below. It also ignores the benefits of collaboration to ongoing operational processes that span internal boundaries. Unfortunately, my concern is that this paper might convince some managers to block all kinds of collaboration without a quantifiable short-term business case.

In this sense the article is particularly disappointing because it fails to look at the bigger picture of collaboration in organisations. For example, he describes a solution for bad collaboration in one organisation as the appointment of a manager with “a broad personal network within the company”. However, its this very kind of beneficial below the line informal collaboration that Hansen omits from his discussion and risks blocking

He also confirms that while the experienced teams they evaluated found the cost of collaborating on proposals provided no direct benefit, “novice teams at the firm actually benefited from exchanging ideas with their peers.” So shouldn’t we factor in the total organisational costs and benefits of collaboration when evaluating a single project?

The other issue that Hansen fails to address with his collaboration premium calculation is the benefit of both experience and systems that can help to reduce the cost of collaboration - which is exactly why some of us are excited for the potential of social computing to contribute to collaboration and knowledge management in large or distributed organisations. Unfortunately, as Clay Shirky discusses in his book, the return on investment of social computing is hard for organisations to see.

At a high level Hansen is right when he calls for cultivating the right kind of collaboration, but by then encouraging managers to add up the pros and cons of each project in isolation sends the wrong message.

Tags: Harvard Business Review, HBR, Morten T. Hansen, collaboration, Clay Shirky, social computing

I'm in Adelaide (Tuesday 7th) and Perth (Wednesday 8th) this week

2009-04-06T22:19:00.001+10:00

I don't get out west that often, but I just thought I would mention that I will be in Adelaide (Tuesday 7th) and Perth (Wednesday 8th) over the next few days. I have full days, but have time to talk about Headshift, government 2.0, social computing, social media, collaboration and even knowledge management over a beer in the evening if anyone is interested. Just drop me a line or give me a call - I'll be staying in central Adelaide and Perth.
Tags: chieftech, adelaide, perth, beer, travelling, on the road

Rules of engagement for our new online society

2009-04-03T20:47:00.005+11:00

I don't think we should be surprised to be getting mixed message about the value of being online. On one hand some (Australian as it happens) recent research suggests that:

"people who use the Internet for personal reasons at work are about 9 percent more productive that those who do not."

Meanwhile, we have had a run of more scare stories locally about people getting sacked over online behaviour, in particular negative comments about their employers or their jobs.

I have to say, searching around some of the social networking sites it wasn't that hard to find examples of things, in the current environment, that could get people into trouble based on those reports. I am actually surprised by the number of people who either don't know or don't care about privacy settings on social networking sites (even people who might catch the media's attention right now - perhaps they aren't looking that carefully?).

Of course, one day, hopefully sooner rather than later, and the vast majority will realise that the cluetrain was right. But even then I suspect a little common sense will still apply. I think the younger generation is going to be a lot more savvy about navigating the norms and values of a hyperlinked society. They at least are getting exposed to educational material like this:

Only say online what you would say face to face

Hat tip to Mark Woolley for the video - there are more on his original post.

Still, I can't help thinking organisations should be more worried about what their customers and other people are saying about them because, unfortunately, in most cases you can't sack them..

Tags: internet, society, employment, sacked, social networking, privacy, The Cluetain Manifesto, Facebook, YouTube, Mark Woolley

My first post to the new Headshift Australasia blog

2009-04-02T21:21:00.002+11:00

This is still my blog, but Headshift Australasia has a blog too now (with an RSS feed here). If you enjoyed my slides from BarCamp, you'll enjoy my first post over at our Headshift blog, where I go into a bit more detail about the thinking behind my presentation.

Well, what are you waiting for? Get over there and comment already :-)

Tags: headshift blog

Pictures from Barcamp Canberra

2009-03-30T15:57:00.005+11:00

There is a stream of pics tagged with barcampcanberra2 on flickr, including a couple of me...

and

Tags: BarCamp, BarCampCanberra2, bcc2, photos, chieftech

Barcamp Canberra: A Gov 2.0 Postcard from Headshift, London

2009-03-28T14:27:00.004+11:00

My slides from #barcampcanberra...

A Gov 2.0 Postcard from Headshift, London

View more presentations from James Dellow.

Lots of discussion today about running a Gov 2.0 barcamp in Canberra - so keep your ears open for details.

UPDATE: For those that want to dig a little deeper with the examples I used, here are some links to sites mentioned in my presentation:

Kevin Rudd's Twitter feed;
OpenAustralia.org (+ a full transcript of Senator John Faulkner's speech);
Demos' The Collaborative State (you can download the book);
Patient Opinion;
Social Innovation Camp;
Do the Green Thing; and
Headshift.

Tags: bcc2, barcampcanberra, government 2.0, gov2.0, government, australia, uk, headshift

Using Twitter as a benchmark for Australian local government use of social media

2009-03-27T09:29:00.007+11:00

Tomorrow is #barcampcanberra and I’ll be getting up early to drive down from Wollongong for the day. I’m planning to talk about something Gov 2.0 flavoured and have been thinking about where Australia is compared to the rest of the world. For example, while at Barcamp in Canberra this week, over in the US a Government 2.0 Barcamp is taking place - they ended up capping this event at 500 people.

Now, I don’t believe Twitter is the beginning and end of social computing, but it does provide an interesting benchmark for comparison. Lets consider the UK and Australia:

Local authorities in the UK on Twitter = 90 out of 468 (approx. 20%)

versus

Local councils in Australia on Twitter = 3 out of 677 (less than 1%).

Those 3 councils I’m aware of are the City of Sydney, Mosman and Wyong. There may be a few more, but let face it - we would need to pull a lot out the hat to match the UK's efforts to date.

Now, when you look at the combined 10,000 or so followers the UK councils have attracted so far in the context of the UK's total population, you might be tempted to argue that Twitter isn’t actually having much of an impact. However, two points need to be considered:

Firstly, Twitter isn’t a numbers game - considering the low barrier of entry for establishing a Twitter presence, it provides an excellent return on investment compared to other hit and miss broadcast communication approaches - its not a passive communication tool as information is getting specifically to those that want it. Some of those Twitter followers will be acting as information brokers, so news and other information will be passed on through other information channels, including both the traditional media and other social media.

Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, it is a sign of UK councils have far greater willingness to experiment with social media as new ways of communicating and engaging with the communities they represent.

It would be unfair of me to bash Australian local government over the head with Twitter. There are lots of reasons why government as a whole in Australia isn’t experimenting with social computing to the same degree as the UK (and the US, Canada, etc). And, as I mentioned earlier, there is more to using social computing in government than Twitter. For example, look at HeadShift’s Commission for Rural Communities case study:

“The Commission for Rural Communities ensures that governmental policies reflect the real needs of people living and working in rural England... [they] faced the challenge of uniting groups and individuals based in very different places.”

Sounds like the kind of challenge we face in this wide brown land, right?

So, if at least four Aussie councils have now done it, what’s stopping the others from at least sticking a toe in the water and start investigating the possibilities? Well, to help on that front here are some Twitter focused tips:

Create a personal account to learn about the medium. There are a stack of local government related organisations already on Twitter you can follow;
Use a tool like TwitterLocal to find people twittering from your local area; and
Start working on getting an RSS feed on your council Website - there are tools that will make it easy to automagically post updates to Twitter (plus you’ll kill two birds with one stone by also providing your community with the option to follow news via your RSS feed).

If you work in local government in Australia I would love to know more about what’s stopping you from experimenting with social media and social computing.

BTW This wasn't a scientific survey of Twitter use! My rough calculation of the number of local authorities in the UK is based on data from local.gov.uk and Wikipedia. For Australia, I used a figure from the Australian Local Government Association. I also used data for Twitter from the Local Government Engagement Online Research Blog and twitter.com/uklocalcouncils. Also, if I’ve missed out an Aussie council on Twitter, please let me know.

UPDATE: Care of the Stap isi blog, here are examples of a few more Aussie local councils on Twitter - City of Bayswater (toe in the water, but not twittering as yet), Mitcham Council, and Toowoomba Council.

Tags: Benchmarking, Government 2.0, Barcamp, Barcamp Canberra, Twitter, local government, councils, US, UK, Australia, TwitterLocal, RSS

SharePoint and Enterprise 2.0

2009-03-21T08:46:00.002+11:00

Like anyone who works in the enterprise social computing space, Thomas Vander Wal's post about SharePoint was essential reading. He concludes:

"What is clear out of all of this is SharePoint has value, but it is not a viable platform to be considered for when thinking of enterprise 2.0. SharePoint only is viable as a cog of a much larger implementation with higher costs. It is also very clear Microsoft’s marketing is to be commended for seeding the enterprise world of the value of social software platform in the enterprise and the real value it can bring. Ironically, or maybe true to form, Microsoft’s product does not live up to their marketing, but it has helped to greatly enhance the marketplace for products that actually do live up to the hype and deliver even more value."

However, the responses have been just as interesting, like Mike Gotta, Michael Sampson, Oliver Marks, Dion Hinchcliffe, and Todd Stephens (Sharepoint versus the World, Sharepoint Bites Back and Another Sharepoint Myth Debunked).

And what about me? What do I think?

I have to say that there is certainly a ring of truth about Vander Wal's analysis, but... I'm not entirely convinced about the basis of his arguments.

The test for Enterprise 2.0 isn't cost or a list features, although we do expect it to be built using Web technologies and ease of use is important. However, even in those cases Web-based doesn't just mean Web browser based and I would claim 'ease of use' is in the eye of the beholder. No, the measure of SharePoint's Enterprise 2.0 worthiness is in how it is used and how users are allowed to use it. And there is where, from looking at the SharePoint product suite and my experiences in the field, that I have a problem with SharePoint.

Out of the box, there are trade offs in SharePoint that make it a passable document-collaboration tool, but in doing this it is structured in such a way that it also silos and constrains users and information. Beyond document-collaboration, other potentially interesting portal features, like the Business Data Catalogue, require the intervention of administrators and visionary IT management. So its a user-driven environment only within certain limits.

I'm also not convinced that SharePoint has heralded the era of Enterprise 2.0. What is has done is provided a low barrier of entry to a Collaboration capability that has been lacking in the majority of organisations and in that respect it has opened the door to Intranet 2.0, but in most cases SharePoint is deployed in a way that is very far removed from Enterprise 2.0. At this point we do start to find that the complexity in the SharePoint suite and its technical and information architecture become a barrier to using it as a platform for Enterprise 2.0 in the future - and its here Vander Wal's arguments start to play out. Unfortunately IT professionals only have themselves to blame if they deploy SharePoint haphazardly and get bitten by it later!

Still, there are off the shelf options that can help enrich SharePoint as a social computing tool - ReadWriteWeb covered a few of them last year - but even with these in place you will only have affected one part of your overall information workplace. That is, you've added some social features to your intranet (and they might have an impact), but you haven't really evolved into Enterprise 2.0.

So, being pragmatic, what can we do about SharePoint to make it as Enterprise 2.0 friendly as possible?

Implement strong foundations for Enterprise 2.0'ness - Plan your infrastructure well and implement the right governance model so you have a platform where open information access is encouraged ('access' means you can also find information and know about it, not just have the rights to see it) and agile development practices can be used to help quickly meet new business requirements, but all under controlled conditions (because a wild SharePoint isn't good for anyone);
Have a realistic budget - Accept the fact that you will need some additional Webparts and third-party extensions to achieve the first goal - and budget for it from the beginning; and
Remember the big picture - In the process of doing all this, don't forget to also focus on people, process and content and not just the technology.

And if all this sound too hard, well perhaps SharePoint isn't the right choice for your organisation after all.

Tags: SharePoint, MOSS, Microsoft, Enterprise 2.0, Intranet 2.0, enterprise social computing, Thomas Vander Wal

A simple trust mechanism for Twitter?

2009-03-20T18:02:00.003+11:00

How do you know that a Twitter account represents the person or organisation that they say they are? Just a thought, and this might sound complicated, but I think this could be an easy, workable solution.

In the Twitter account you provide a Web link.
On that related Website you include some metadata or a specific page (a bit like the way browsers detect RSS or other embedded microformats) that includes the Twitter account ID.
People can then add little authentication routines into their Twitter apps that check if the Website listed confirms ownership of the Twitter account back.

Obviously it wouldn’t have to be mandatory (I mean, we still want Twitter to be fun!).

What do you think - could this work?

Alternatively, a great business model for Twitter could be to offer premium accounts that are “validated” by Twitter as authentic.

Tags: twitter, trust, online identity

data.gov.au

2009-03-20T10:38:00.002+11:00

Alas, data.gov.au doesn't really exist but it is at least an idea in the US. Craig provides some commentary in the Australian context and explains that "In Australia we even go to the extent of copyrighting government data." That's not a good starting point but of course we have to accept that here in Australia, our history, geography and the origins of government are quite different from the US. Having said that, while we can't avoid what happened in the past, it doesn't mean things can't change. Craig goes on to draw comparisons to the Wikipedia story:

"As history has recorded, countries that remove barriers to the free flow of ideas and information develop faster, are economically more successful and their people enjoy higher standards of living. Fostering innovation directly leads to national success. So in a world where some countries make data freely available, how do other nations continue to compete? To draw an analogy from the publishing world, Wikipedia disrupted the business model for Encyclopedia Britannica. By providing free 'crowd-sourced' information of greater depth and about the same accuracy as a highly expensive product, Britannica has been struggling to survive for years... In other words, you cannot beat openness with secrecy - the only way to remain successful is to step towards openness yourself."

Like it not, change is coming to government around the world and Australia can't bury its head the sand.

Tags: government, government 2.0, web 2.0, australia, craig thomler

2009 Intranet Innovation Awards

2009-03-17T19:46:00.003+11:00

My, doesn't time fly. Alex Manchester nudged me the other day and asked if I could help get the word out about Step Two Design's 2009 Intranet Innovation Awards. Now in its third year, the aim of the awards are to:

"celebrate new ideas and innovative approaches to the design and delivery of intranets. The goal is to find these ideas (whether large or small), and to share them with the wider community."

Since this is an Aussie initiative, I'm more than happy to spread the word. You'll find more details on Alex's blog. To date I think the awards have thrown up some interesting winners that reflect great examples of the state of the art, but I'm still waiting for something really innovative in the intranet space - maybe this is the year?

Perhaps part of the challenge here is throwing off the baggage associated with the word "intranet"... what do you think? What does intranet innovation mean to you?

PS You'll find details of some of Headshift's own innovation with intranets on the Projects page.

Tags: step two designs, alex manchester, headshift, innovation, intranet innovation awards

Observations from E2EF 2009

2009-03-11T16:46:00.001+11:00

I was busy busy twittering on the day, but realised I had neglected to post anything post-conference about Ross' Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum a few weeks ago.

So what did I learn? Firstly, my main take away was that I noticed a big change this year from people asking what is Enterprise 2.0 to how do I do Enterprise 2.0. My second take away was an observation that while the IT and Marketing communities have been sharing experiences with using social computing, there isn't enough sharing between those groups and the Learning and Development sector who are another significant group that are using the same tools.

I really enjoyed hearing JP's address, although I think some people were disappointed that it wasn't some kind of high energy key note motivational thing. Personally I admire him for his achievements, passion, ideals and his thoughtful and well written blog posts, not the buzz. Bear in mind also that JP joined us via videoconference and it was pretty late in the UK.

I also think Brad Howarth made a good attempt to integrate the background Twitter stream into his panel discussion :-)

I also ran a series of mini-workshop on implementing wikis... and the one common issue that came up time and time again that people wanted to discuss was how to encourage more participation. Luckily my mini-workshop actually addressed this in part by asking participants to think more critically about their objectives and how that matched to both how their use of their wiki software and their expectations of how staff would use it. In one instance it sounded like the wiki was really being used just as a simple Web Content Management System (WCMS), so you can't really expect high levels of collaboration, conversation and contribution. However, to highlight my earlier point, at least no one asked what is a wiki!

If you are interested I've uploaded the slides from my handout, however they are based on my original (and apparently popular) Intranet 2.0 slides:

Implementing Wikis In The Enterprise

View more presentations from chieftech.

Anyway, a big hat tip to Ross for pulling off another great event, including ensuring we all had power and wifi available. Other conference and event people, please take note!

Technorati Tags: Enterprise 2.0,Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum,Ross Dawson,JP Ragaswami,Brad Howarth,Wikis,Intranet 2.0,Learning & Development,Marketing,Information Technology

Handover your brand, but empower staff at the same time

2009-03-11T12:20:00.001+11:00

Kate has posted a summary of her panel session at AdTech about handing over your brand to consumers and writes:

"The consensus was that brands are out of our hands to a certain extent anyhow, so it is better to engage on your own terms and start a conversation with consumers. And listening was seen as a critical starting point to the dialogue."

In a similar conversation with Anne Bartlett-Bragg yesterday, I was reminded of an old business book from 1992 by Karl Albrecht called The Only Thing That Matters. Reflective of the time it was written, this is a book about adopting a Total Quality Service approach to business. However, it it prefaced with an attitude that resonates with Kate's comments:

"We're learning to understand what goes on in the minds of our customers, and not to substitute our own arrogant hypotheses about what the customer presumably want"

But what is even more interesting is that later in the book it introduces some ideas for aligning quality objectives, measurement approach and employee empowerment... think about that for a moment. At its most sophisticated level, Albrecht's approach calls for a combination of:

A business focus on managing customer perceptions;
Using customer sensing to listen to customers ("There is no way you can accurately gauge the mental, emotional, or subjective reactions of customers over a period of time without asking them to express themselves to you"); and
Employee empowerment through well-formed and well-oriented discretion to take action.

This suggests to me that it isn't enough just to listen to customers.

In fact you need to back up the listening process with employees who are empowered to respond - but this isn't just about being able to respond back into social networks when someone says something bad, it actually means empowering them to take action beyond just building relationships with customers that include:

Adding to the customer experience;
Breaking down communication silos;
Problem solving;
Continuous product and service improvement; and
Product and service innovation.

And this in my mind calls for engaging and empowering staff with social computing tools inside the firewall too, not just listening to social media chatter on the outside.

Some might suggest that you don't need to build that social computing infrastructure internally as this is the role for a community manager. But I suspect if a community manager represents the end of the line for engagement with customers then, well, we might see a lot of talk but not a lot of action from the rest of the organisation... which will ultimately bite you in that external social media space.

I wonder what Albrecht would think about applying new social computing technology to his old ideas? How about you?

Technorati Tags: listening,social media,advertising,branding,social computing,empoyees,empowerment,enteprise 2.0,enterprise social computing,Karl Albrecht,Kate Carruthers,Anne Bartlett-Bragg,AdTech

Design considerations for a generic activity stream desktop tool

2009-03-08T10:54:00.001+11:00

I was just reading fellow Headshift'er Jon Mel's overview of Social Text's new Signals and Desktop extensions (also cross posted on his own blog) - basically it provides support for microblogging (the "Signals" part) along with a nifty desktop widget ("Desktop") for monitoring them and the activity stream of things you are watching on the wiki.

This reminded me that I was only just reading about a similar desktop tool (in the sense its another Rich Internet Application-based widget) for Alfresco. Now, without getting under the hood of the thing myself, I'm assuming that its essentially just a customised RSS feed widget - a bit like Snackr - designed to work with a secure feed for a particular URL pattern suited to a single application. Of course this is a just a one-way view of activity.

In theory then, there should be no reason why any modern Web 2.0 influenced messaging, wiki, collaboration or Web content management system couldn't all offer the same style of desktop applications. So this morning I was thinking about what if we were to build a generic desktop activity stream application, what design considerations might we need to think about?

Do we support a single microblogging APIs, just RSS/ATOM or multiple methods?
Should it also help out as an email and calendaring notifier, and instant messaging widget (like the Google Talk Labs Edition)? Maybe also the ability to start a voice or video call with someone.
Should we provide support for multiple user or enterprise defined channels (like the way Social Text separate "Signals" messages and other activity) or a single combined activity feed?
Should you be able to taken action on the stream without opening the Web-browser interface? And should we be able to book mark and tag items from the stream for future reference?
Do you aggregate all the activity data in a central place or on the user's desktop?
Do we develop our activity widget as a traditional fat client application or build it as a Rich Internet Application (e.g. Adobe AIR)?

Personally, I think the first three points might depend on user and organisational requirements. However, for the last two I think it would make sense to provide a cross-platform tool and to centralise feed and activity data for users that use different devices to access their stream. Of course in attempting the design a generic tool the whole design starts to sound quite complicated, but it shouldn't if we keep to open standards and make it extendable (this deals with the first three points more elegantly). It would also be nice to perhaps think of this as the next generation messaging tool that has the potential to finally push the old email client into the background where it belongs.

What do you think? Would you like a desktop activity stream tool like this in your workplace or would you prefer a vendor specific widget? What other design considerations or user requirements can you think of?

Technorati Tags: Social Text,Alfresco,Jon Mel,Design Considerations,Activity Stream,RSS,Feeds,RIA,Rich Internet Application

Satisficing strategies and the impact of Web 2.0 on intranets

2009-03-07T08:47:00.001+11:00

Dick Stenmark is an Associate Professor of Informatics at the IT University of Göteborg, Sweden. You might have seen him referenced in my Intranet 2.0 presentation and also in one of my lists of recommended reading.

I noticed a couple of new (dated 2008) conference papers from Stenmark:

In the email paper, this is the paragraph that initially jumped out at me:

"Previous research has shown that employees are primarily concerned with accomplishing their tasks, and therefore employ satisficing strategies when using information systems, rather than on trying to become proficient with the tools at hand (Carroll and Rosson, 1987). It has therefore been suggested that only when we stop studying individual tool in great detail and instead look at what the user is trying to achieve can we begin to understand the bigger picture (Jones et al., 2001)."

Nothing new here, but it articulates well a theme that is central to my own approach to the use of information technology in the workplace.

In the other paper, Stenmark reviews the discussion around what is Web 2.0 ("the concept is not about technology per se, but about a shifting understanding of the user’s role") and considers how organisations might respond to it. However, he observes that:

"corporate employees demand a frequently updated intranet, but the distributed nature that is inscribed in Web technology is partly put out of play by stiff editing policies. Web 2.0 technology can lower the threshold for participation but it will not affect the policies in place – these have to be replaced separately. The literature on intranet management almost unanimously and unreflectively argues in favour of aligned, rigid, and highly standardised information infrastructures tightly administered by top management. This is at odds with social media and Web 2.0 and a new generation of literature is needed to guide the manager 2.0."

There are no answers to this problem in this paper, but thinking about the points raised in the email paper, surely part of the solution is to realise that employees don't work in neat information silos and its time we gave them human centred information systems instead. And for once, thanks to Web 2.0 (what ever that might really mean) we actually have widely available technologies to do this with low barriers to entry. What do you think?

Technorati Tags: Dick Stenmark,Email,Satisfice,Information Workplace,Information Management,Collaboration,Web 2.0,Enterprise 2.0,intranets,Technology in the Workplace

Press Release: Headshift appoints James Dellow and ramps up Enterprise 2.0 capabilities

2009-03-03T14:33:00.001+11:00

I know you all know this, but for the record here is the official press release about my new role at Headshift:

HEADSHIFT APPOINTS JAMES DELLOW AND RAMPS UP ENTERPRISE 2.0 CAPABILITIES

News Summary

3 March 2009

Headshift, a leading enterprise social computing consultancy has expanded its local team with the addition of Senior Business & Technical Consultant James Dellow.

Dellow is a well regarded information management consultant and influential Enterprise 2.0 blogger. He will support Headshift’s clients on the technical side of their social software implementations as well as provide expertise on the organisational aspects of these projects.

According to Anne Bartlett-Bragg, Managing Director of Headshift Australasia, Dellow brings extensive experience working with large organisations to implement web 2.0 technologies.

“There is significant interest from large organisations looking at ways to meet their business objectives by harnessing web 2.0 tools, in particular, the strategic integration of social networks both inside firewalls. Naturally, the larger the organisation, the more complex a social software implementation is without the right expertise.

James understands the often complex technical considerations that large organisations must take into account, plus the ‘people and process’ aspects to a project. He has a rare combination of skills and we’re exceptionally lucky to have him on board.”

Despite the current economic conditions, Headshift Australasia continues to see interest from organisations who want to capitalise on the rapidly emerging usability and benefits that enterprise social computing offers.

“Headshift are one of the few global organisations that truly understand web 2.0 and social technologies and how they can be best applied to meet business objectives. They have a wide range of both internationally and local case studies that highlight how the power of social software can add quantifiable value, said Dellow.

“My role is to work with organisations to help them find a balance between working with their current IT system and implementing new and powerful social computing tools which provides significant benefits to corporations their staff and/or clients. I’m really looking forward to the challenge.”

"Professional areas of focus for Dellow include enterprise social computing strategies, understanding the value of emerging Web 2.0 technologies like RSS, and the creation of user-centered information workplaces."

Dellow has worked in consulting roles with a wide range of government, professional services and blue chip companies such as AMP, ASIC, BHP Billiton, BlueScope Steel, CSC, Ernst & Young, and Rio Tinto. He also completed a Master of Business & Technology (MBT) at UNSW in 2005.

James Dellow’s blog can be found at http://chieftech.blogspot.com

You read more about Headshift on their Website of course and if you want to contact me, while I do have a new Headshift email address, don't worry as my old contact details still work.

Technorati Tags: Headshift,James Dellow,Anne Bartlett-Bragg,Press Release

From next week, you'll find me at Headshift

2009-02-24T12:06:00.001+11:00

I'm here at the Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum today and I think this makes a very appropriate moment to let you know that as of next week I will working with Anne Barlett-Bragg at Headshift here in Australia. :-)

So who are Headshift?

"Headshift is Europe's leading enterprise social computing consultancy. We have over 5 years' experience in designing, implementing and growing next generation social software solutions. Based in London, we also operate in New York, Paris, Sydney, Rome and Zurich to serve the needs of international companies and local markets alike. Our team contains some of the best and most innovative minds in this exciting new field, and we have a strong network around the world that helps us locate additional expertise when we need it.

Our enterprise practice delivers smarter, simpler, more social IT solutions internally within large enterprises, knowledge intensive firms, government and third sector organisations."

Anne launched the Australian Headshift operation last year, and obviously our aim is to be the leading enterprise social computing consultancy here in Australia.

I have to tell you that I'm really excited about this new role and hopefully, if you already know me, you'll agree this is a great fit. I'm looking forward to telling you more about Headshift and my new role in coming weeks.

Technorati Tags: Headshift,Anne Bartlett-Bragg,Social Computing Consulting

Collaboration on intranets

2009-02-10T22:14:00.001+11:00

In the last couple of months I've been working on number of different projects - with one major piece of contract work keeping me busy in Canberra right now - and while each has a different start and finish point, there has been a common theme in each related to the overlap of intranets (as we traditionally think of them) and collaboration.

Now, don't get too excited. I hesitate to re-brand this space as Intranet 2.0 or Enterprise 2.0 because its simply not as clear cut or as straight forward as that (after all, that's why I'm involved). But there is no doubt that Web 2.0 is in some way influencing both what is possible and what people think is possible. The net result is a growing acceptance that intranets aren't just places where you look for information but they are places where you can actually do work too. So collaboration doesn't have to be something else or something different from the rest of the intranet, instead it is something that is either part of or has a clear fit with the overall intranet.

Still, every organisation is a little different. Even if collaboration on the intranet sounds like a good idea to people, there are always barriers that can get in the way of such a vision. Some of these barriers are justifiable, others are simply a fact of circumstance and occasionally because people are just stuck in old ways of thinking. But regardless, the process of change and our ability to work within any constraints while still providing an improvement to the state of the information workplace in an organisation is always more important than subscribing to a prescriptive model of pure enterprise social computing. Otherwise if we always aim for social computing perfection we might as well give up and go home.

What do you think? Is your intranet become more collaborative?

Technorati Tags: intranets,collaboration,Intranet 2.0,Enterprise 2.0,enterprise social computing

Don't forget the Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum on Tuesday 24th February

2009-02-05T23:11:00.001+11:00

I'm down in Canberra right now, but apparently the first meeting of the NSW KM Forum attracted over thirty people to hear Ross Dawson talk about implementing Enterprise 2.0 in the real world. If like me you couldn't be there in person, Ross has kindly shared his slides online.

I mention this in part as a reminder that this was a warm up for the Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum on Tuesday 24th February. Along with some of my favourite Enterprise 2.0 peers, I'll be there helping to run a mini-workshop as part of the Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum.

BTW the night before Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum, the NSW KM Forum will be holding an interactive session on online communities.

Technorati Tags: Enterprise 2.0,Ross Dawson,Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum,NSW KM Forum,Knowledge Management

Innovative uses of technology to help people in trouble

2009-02-02T19:49:00.001+11:00

I've always been interested in how people use technology for unintended (but positive) purposes. Two such stories I noticed over the Christmas break included some examples of technologies that were used to help people who had found themselves in a spot of trouble.

In the first, a Toyota Prius was used as a power generator during a three day snow storm blackout:

"The power lines were down, the neighborhood dark, but John Sweeney’s house was glowing with lights and his wife was watching television.

During an ice storm last week Sweeney, of Harvard, Mass., powered his house by hooking it up to his Toyota Prius. The Prius, a hybrid vehicle, starts the gasoline-burning mode of its engine every 30 minutes to recharge the battery with an internal generator. In turn, Sweeney ran his refrigerator and freezer, wood stove fan, lights and television off the car’s battery."

In the second example, an MP3 player used as torch by tourists stuck on a Swiss mountain - a spokesman for the mountain rescue service explained that:

"The two winter sports enthusiasts were found by the crew of the Rega helicopter shortly after midnight - thanks to the faint light of their MP3 player"

Did the designers imagine this use case for the technology they developed? Maybe in these examples its possible they did think about alternative uses, but I doubt very much that they became part of the design brief or marketing plan. On one hand this kind of innovation is amazing - particularly if its saves a life - but of course, it can be dangerous too. I use my mobile phone as torch all the time, but I'm not sure it would be a good idea for me to play around with connecting my car as a power source for my house!

To what unintended purposes are people in your organisation applying the technologies they have on hand to solve problems I wonder? Probably more than we think.

Technorati Tags: Technology in the Workplace,Toyota Prius,MP3 Player

Wait, we've got a pulse - Enterprise RSS

2009-01-16T08:34:00.002+11:00

Have you noticed the sudden resurgence of interest in Enterprise RSS in the blogosphere following the ReadWriteWeb's obituary post? Some notable posts include Suw Charman-Anderson, Mike Gotta (and follow up post), Anu Gupta, and Neville Hobson (and don't forget all the great comments). I would also love to hear Andrew McAfee's and Dion Hinchcliffe's thoughts on this topic, but nothing as yet.

Of course everyone has a slightly different opinion on why it has or hasn't died and a couple of key themes coming out of this discussion include:

Its not just about the terminology, although as an industry I still see some confusion about the term Enterprise RSS itself as meaning either the use of RSS for external marketing and communication purposes or the provision of feed infrastructure inside the firewall (if you don't understand what I mean, check out my slideshare deck on this).
The adoption of enterprise class RSS readers isn't an indicator of demand for Enterprise RSS - I agree with this observation and in fact part of the argument for Enterprise RSS is that enterprise users will need integrated access to feeds across multiple tools and channels, not just through a single desktop reader.
There is some concern that there aren't enough Enterprise RSS vendors out there and the big suite vendors don't have have any comprehensive offerings in this space - I would add that there isn't a comprehensive open source offering in this space either.
The type of technology that Enterprise RSS represents, the speed of change in enterprise IT, the widget approach to enterprise social computing and the politics of new software acquisition in large companies make it a hard and slow sell - for this reason, I really think Enterprise RSS needs enterprise IT champions behind it, but unfortunately I find that the IT people I meet either completely understand it or are blissfully ignorant (actually, it reminds me a lot about the attitude towards enterprise search - those that don't know any better think its easy).

On balance I think the general feeling out there is that Enterprise RSS does has a future, but how soon and in what form it will be realised isn't clear. In fact the only thing that will kill Enterprise RSS is the death of RSS and ATOM based syndication itself. You can read my own thoughts about what happens to Enterprise RSS moving forward and the dilemma of understanding how it can add value in this article from Image and Data Manager magazine.

Technorati Tags: Enterprise RSS,ReadWriteWeb,Suw Charman-Anderson,Mike Gotta,Anu Gupta,Neville Hobson,Andrew McAfee,Dion Hinchcliffe

Bridges, Change and Technology

2009-01-10T09:54:00.001+11:00

As we all know, the pace of technology change is unstoppable and this weekend marks a historic moment for the Sydney Harbour Bridge as it goes completely cashless this weekend. The Sydney Morning Herald has recorded the stories of the human toll collectors in words, pictures and audio - one of the last operators has spent the last 24 years collecting bridge tolls.

If you are interested in this kind of thing there is a great 1970s short film on YouTube all about Sydney's public transport from the Film Australia Library, called Ticket to Sydney:

We might not be able to stop change, but I appreciate the role of technology in helping us to capture but also now share these kinds of social history records.

Technorati Tags: Sydney,Sydney Harbour Bridge,Technology,History,Social Change,Film Library Australia,Public Transport

Happy New Year!

2009-01-01T08:48:00.001+11:00

Living in Australia, I crossed into 2009 many hours ago. For those of you still in 2008 I can tell you that this morning at least, its looking pretty good over on this side.

Of course, this is also a reminder for me about the limitations of all this wonderful communication and collaboration technology we have - we can compress distance, but alas not time. Luckily that didn't worry me too much on this New Years Eve - it was time I spent with friends in the same place at the same time. And I hope you too had (or will have!) the chance to enjoy New Years Eve in real time with friends and family.

Happy New Year (and belated Christmas greetings) everyone!

UPDATE: A related story about two virtual Australian NYE parties... interesting that they run for "24 hours to cover worldwide timezones".

Technorati Tags: New Year

Office Suite lock-in: The same today as it was yesterday

2008-12-23T16:51:00.001+11:00

In CIO magazine online, Rich Levin writes that:

"Today there's a bumper crop of worthy Office alternatives... None of this has been missed by Microsoft, which debuted a revamped Office Professional 2007 last year in an effort to clearly differentiate its cash cow from the bulging mass of Office me-toos, and now is promising a new version that's cloud-enabled. But the new Office user experience, "the Ribbon," is likely responsible for driving once-devoted users into the arms of alternatives."

I've always thought the interface changes for Office 2007 was a stroke of genius by Microsoft, but I guess we will never know if this was genuine attempt to improve and innovate, or just pointed-headed marketing strategy to block the copy cats.

Levin goes on to suggest a bunch of word processing/office suite alternatives, which includes the obvious ones like Open Office, Google Docs and Zoho but also:

ThinkFree - I reviewed back in 2007 and like it, but was then disappointed to find Bigpond cut a deal to redirect Australian users to their own white label version. I'm not a Bigpond customer anymore, so I can access the ThinkFree Web-site again!
Adobe's Flash-based Buzzword was a new one for me, but after a brief play I found that while it had pretty interface, as an application it only offers very basic functionality and unfortunately it is quite slow (over my connection at least).
I did laugh at the 'classic' menus plugin for Office 2007, if you really can't get your head around the ribbon (its really not that hard!).

I also saw today talk of a Windows version of KOffice, but it looks a long way off.

Still, I think the scope of the examples are quite limited. Into this mix I would also add WYSIWYG editors in Web-applications, like Wikis. Not that I would rate them as particularly mature at this stage, but as Sam Lawrence has proposed in the past, the office suite concept itself is stuck in the old siloed productivity paradigm.

And what about outlining and note taking tools like Treepad and Evernote. All offer rich text editing capabilities. Actually, in this area I think Windows Live Writer (a thick-client blog editor) excels beyond any other Web-based text editor I've seen.

All this got me thinking today that even in this world of Web 2.0, compatible file formats just don't seem to be enough. I wonder when will we see a better separation of data from the editing applications we use, so it becomes a question of which tool do you use when and where, rather than which do you use full stop. Even for me, the wiki paradigm is limited because it still requires me to go *there* to work.

How are using Office alternatives to get work done?

Technorati Tags: CIO magazine,word processing,office suites,Microsoft Office,Microsoft Word,Open Office,Googles Docs,Zoho,ThinkFree,Buzzword,Office 2007,Sam Lawrence,Wikis,Treepad,Evernote,Windows Live Writer,Web 2.0,KOffice

Where next for Enterprise RSS in 2009

2008-12-18T23:12:00.000+11:00

Looking back on his own predictions about the RSS space, G. Oliver Young notes:

"KnowNow went out of business completely; NewsGator shifted focus and now leads with its Social Sites for SharePoint offering, while its Enterprise Server catches much less attention; and Attensa has been very quiet this year. In other words, all is not well in the enterprise RSS space...

...I’m concerned there is something more fundamental going wrong here. At the end of the day enterprise RSS is predicated on the notion that shoving all communications through email is too inefficient and must be augmented with other communications channels. Is it possible that people simply don’t feel that pain strongly enough to invest the time and effort to learn to use RSS?* And that every wiki feed will eventually dump right into email because that is what people really want?"

I'm actually encouraged by what I've seen in the last 6 months around Enterprise RSS adoption (in terms of growing awareness and interest at least), but I won't argue that it isn't a slow up hill battle. However, while I think Young is right about the user perception of RSS (a point I've discussed with many people) I think the place where leadership is really needed is within enterprise IT departments.

This need for leadership is reflected in Young's other comments that,

"[Businesses] know they have a problem, but instead of investing in RSS many bought other products like wikis, blogs, and social networking tools.'

For me the absence of Enterprise RSS (and perhaps along with other key infrastructure, like Enterprise Search and social tagging tools) in environments where we find wikis, blogs and social networking tools is a sign of tactical or immature implementations of enterprise social computing. We are just at the beginning of this journey.

Of course this isn't a sure sign that existing Enterprise RSS solutions will continue in their current forms. But what I am sure about is that if we really want to bring Web 2.0 inside the firewall, then we need Enterprise RSS functionality in that mix. And that's because the 9X email problem isn't just a barrier for Enterprise RSS adoption, but a barrier for Enterprise 2.0 itself.

In this respect, I can actually see many opportunities for integrating Enterprise RSS features into Enterprise Search solutions or into existing portal platforms (actually, Confluence is a great example of a feed friendly wiki platform - both to create and consume). And why doesn't Microsoft Exchange play a greater role in supporting sophisticated Enterprise RSS capabilities? I suppose in a way this is exactly what Newsgator are doing for the Microsoft suite.

So, Enterprise RSS is here to stay.

BTW Don't forget to check out my Enterprise RSS article, where I introduce the concept of the Enterprise RSS Value Chain to help you understand where Enterprise RSS can add value.

Actually, as a quick vote - have you or your organisation evaluated Enterprise RSS or thought about it seriously during the last year? Or is it something you plan to look at in 2009?

Technorati Tags: RSS,Enterprise RSS,G. Oliver Young,Enterprise RSS Value Chain,Intranet 2.0,Enterprise 2.0,enterprise social computing,wikis,blogs,social networking,Newsgator,Attensa,Enterprise Search,Portals,Confluence,Microsoft Exchance

What are Collaborative Patterns?

2008-12-18T20:44:00.001+11:00

I googled the phrase "Collaborative Patterns" and was mildly disappointed to find my own blog post came up as the top result - after all I was looking for other people's ideas on this topic! :-)

Now, according to Wikipedia, the concept of pattern language itself originates in civil and architectural design but it has also been applied in software development - e.g. the Portland Pattern Repository. A pattern is typically a single problem, documented with its best solution, in a single design pattern. Each pattern has a name, a descriptive entry of the problem and solution, and some cross-references to other patterns, much like a dictionary entry.

In the context of collaboration, I think the idea of collaborative patterns are particularly relevant because my feeling is that we actually do know what does and doesn't make collaboration work. However, the technology continues to evolve so fast that it is all too easy to get caught up in the new functionality and forgetting what we already know.

Also, these technology-agnostic pattern solutions to collaboration problems are helpful because, as is typical with user-driven collaborative tools, there are many different ways to apply these tools to actually implement the solution in practice. For example:

Through agreed protocols and shared practices (for example, a simple 'workflow' built using folder structures or naming conventions);
Through non-programmatic customisation, which may also include templated and repeatable approaches; and
Through actual custom development of the base solutions.

During the life and investment in a particular collaborative technology or set of collaborative technologies all three approaches may be utilised at any one time. In fact, a protocol may be the basis for a template customisation, which might eventually be hard coded into the solution over time.

So what are these actual collaborative patterns? Well, I might need a little help from you all to define them - a good starting point might be the technology-specific set of patterns for wikis.

Technorati Tags: collaboration,collaborative patterns,pattern language

How many people does it take to implement an information management project?

2008-12-17T12:58:00.001+11:00

This is neither a joke or a trick question!

People are often surprised at the level of effort required and different specialists needed for information management projects in medium-sized organisations and upwards. From the current edition of Image & Data Manager magazine (I also have an article in it) is the example of an Australian property development company with 750 staff that implemented a document management system with the following project team:

Project Manager - 60% full time;
Information Manager - full time;
Change Manager - 50% full time for 6 months;
Classification Specialist - 2 months full time; and
DMS Administrator - full time for 6 months.

In addition they also mention a mobile training team that went from site to site and that also provided on-site support as people were learning the new system. And of course beyond the core project group there were a number of stakeholder groups that provided input into the project.

The whole initiative elapsed over a year, with the first six months spent on just developing the strategy and business case before product selection.

That actually all sounds about right based on my own experience.

One of my other rules of thumb is that it is as much about the number of documents and number of staff as it is the number of locations, departments and unique work groups involved that determine the overall complexity of an information management project. This also assumes you have all the right IT infrastructure in place before you start!

Anyway, next time someone questions why your project is looking so resource intensive, here is an example you can show them.

However, have your experiences been the same?

Technorati Tags: project management,information management,case studies

The complete Enterprise RSS Value Chain article

2008-12-16T23:19:00.001+11:00

Back in late September I mentioned I was working on an article about Enterprise RSS. To be fair to Image & Data Manager magazine subscribers I normally wait a little while before uploading a copy of the article to my online archive. However, as the published version needed to be edited down considerably due to space this time, I thought I would upload a version that combined it with the extra sections now. This includes a section that describes the Enterprise RSS Value Chain concept and connects it with the examples I provide, so I think it adds some value to the published version.

The combined article also profiles two very different Enterprise RSS solutions (Newsgator and Xenos) and some case studies, including the now 'classic' Wallem shipping example from Attensa.

As usual, let me know what you think.

Technorati Tags: RSS,Enterprise RSS,Enterprise RSS Value Chain,Newsgator,Xenos,Attensa

Looking for feedback about securing Enterprise RSS news feeds

2008-12-12T11:40:00.003+11:00

~~Samuel~~ Peter Verhoeven (care of Samuel's blog) is looking for feedback about securing RSS news feeds:

"Last months we evaluated two Enterprise RSS solutions: Attensa Feed Server (AFS) from Attensa and NewsGator Enterprise Server (NGES) from NewsGator, to replace our self-made Enterprise RSS solution.

Both products are missing an essential feature for us, namely good support of “secured feeds” and options to share “secured feeds” with employees with the same permissions."

Both these system offer methods for securing feeds, but not in a way that suits his business requirements. Any ideas anyone?

Update: Some related posts here and here.

Technorati Tags: Enterprise RSS,RSS,Attensa,Newsgator

Not cops, but CoPs. Let YouTube explain...

2008-12-11T15:27:00.001+11:00

Kim writes:

"Once again, I find myself in need of explaining CoPs (communities of practice) to people I’m working with... Anyway, I trawled through YouTube to see what I could find in the way of organisations and CoPs or people explaining CoPs."

Check out some useful video resources to help you explain CoPs.

Technorati Tags: Kim Sbarcea,Knowledge Management,KM,CoPs,Communities of Practice,YouTube

Notes about MySourceMatrix

2008-12-11T15:03:00.001+11:00

A few weeks ago I attended a half-day seminar on the MySourceMatrix Web Content Management System (WCMS). Better late than never, here are some of my notes from the presentation.

Firstly, I think we should point out that unlike other free open source WCMS (such as Drupal), MySourceMatrix really operates as a commercial open source product through Squiz.net, which they describe as follows:

"MySource Matrix is offered as ‘Supported Open Source’ whereby Squiz provides an application warranty, and product support under an Service Level Agreement, underpinned by an extensive range of available professional services."

There are a number of benefits with this approach that combine the protection of a commercial product with the ability to get under the hood of the product and contribute to its development. It also encourages a demand driven approach to improving the system and the kind of transparent and collaborative support environment that is generally associated with the open source movement. Incidentally, Squiz.net recently announced that they had "re-licensed its MySource Matrix tool under the popular GNU General Public License (GPL), nearly two years after facing criticism the software's previous licence wasn't 'open' enough". But if you want access to all the bells and whistles you do need to subscribe to the supported version. So, while I don't think you should approach this simply as a free product this doesn't mean there isn't any value in the Squiz.net model.

Now that we've got that out of the way, lets focus on what it actually does. The MySourceMatrix is pitched against other commercial WCMS like Red Dot, Interwoven and Vignette. With out me saying it, this hints at the fact that MySourceMatrix is a flexible and sophisticated WCMS with a mature and polished content management interface for site administrators. And naturally in a platform pitched at this level it meets requirements that are particularly important to government departments, like work flow, accessibility standards, content archiving and metadata. Probably the one key difference from its main competitors is that it only runs on Linux servers and either a PostgreSQL or Oracle as its primary database.

However, and this was a key point in the seminar, to get the most out of MySourceMatrix you need to focus on fully leveraging its capabilities in content reuse, templates and some features that I personally really like around remote content, data sources and asset listing-based programming. You can do a lot with MySourceMatrix to build interactive and dynamic content with requiring any actual development. For example, this can be used to aggregate different types of content across a system to make:

A staff directory;
An image library;
A document library;
A single page that summarises the content of your site;
An RSS feed; and
A product selection page for shopping.

Really describing this in words doesn't really do this capability justice - I would recommend that if you are thinking of short listing MySourceMatrix as a solution you arrange a demo of this functionality to understand better what you might be able to do with it.

Talking of RSS, one of the other important areas that I'm interested in is of course is Web 2.0 and Intranet 2.0. MySourceMatrix claims to support features such as social networking, mashUps and blogging etc through a combination of native capabilities, 3rd party solutions or the data and asset listing functionality I described above. Unfortunately we didn't really any of this demonstrated on the day, but incidentally, the Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy Website uses MySourceMatrix and you can check out the blogging functionality there on the Digital Economy blog. Craig Thomler wasn't too impressed with it as a blogging platfrom, as was APC. However, many of those criticisms are as much about how the blog is being used rather than the tool itself. We also have to remember that MySourceMatrix is a broad WCMS, not a social computing suite.

Technorati Tags: MySourceMatrix,Squiz.net,Web Content Management Systems

Its never just about picking the best information technology

2008-12-10T10:41:00.001+11:00

Reporting on the experiences of a Geekcorps' volunteer on using open source software with poor communities in Africa, Jeremy Allison from the ZDnet blogs shares an important lesson about information technology adoption:

"The local 'computer support person' resented a solution that was so easy to use that it undermined the power and prestige they received by being the person to consult when a Windows computer had problems."

Hmm. Sound familiar? Analysing the story further, he concludes:

"Sometimes, technical excellence isn’t enough. Linux and Open Source software can fail badly in the real world not because of technical issues, but because of economic issues."

But I'm not here to bash Linux, because I think the same can be said about selecting from commercial information technology options too.

In an organisation, the types of factors at play in this process can include:

Financial - the CFO likes vendor Y better because they will let us finance the software and pay it off over three years;
Political - if we support solution B, rather than the better solution A, our department or team will be in a stronger position; and
Social - we like the people at company X.

And when we role into implementation, variations of these same themes pop up time and time again at department, team and also at an individual level. So, just because a particular tool works in one organisation or situation, it doesn't automatically mean it will work elsewhere.

Technorati Tags: information technology,solution selection process,management,Geekcorps,Jeremy Allison

What are your netbook requirements?

2008-12-09T08:53:00.001+11:00

Too much spare time and money on his hands? Larry Dignam from ZDNet bought a netbook, but he doesn't like the keyboard and doesn't know what he is going to do with it...

Personally one of the key features I looked for when I purchased a netbook was the size of the keyboard because I knew I would be using it to type everything from blog posts to email to reports.

Other than the Acer Aspire One, which I ended up purchasing, I found the keyboards on all the 8.9 inch screen model netbooks I looked at far too uncomfortable to type with. The Aspire One keyboard is slightly bigger than similar models, however the keyboards on the 10 inch screen models, like the ASUS EEE 1000 range, are naturally much better.

In this respect I think the use case for the smaller models (unless its for a child with smaller fingers) is as a Web-access device - effectively giving you a bigger screen than a PDA or smart phone. This may also determine if you need Windows OS or not. The Linux models can run more effectively on solid state drives so you end up with a quieter, cooler and more energy efficient machine. On the other hand, all the netbooks come with plenty of ports to add keyboard, mouse and full size screen as an alternative approach to dealing with the keyboard size when you are back at home or in the office.

But what ever you option you pick, ultimately one of the major benefits of a netbook is that you will be carrying around a much smaller and lighter machine, which is great for commuters and frequent travellers.

Also, these shouldn't be treated as low power machines. The main issue of using a netbook as a laptop replacement is that some applications and Web apps don't scale to a smaller screen very well (or don't provide enough options to tweak the interface). On the entertainment front I've also found that while the display quality on my Aspire One is very good, the speakers are pretty average - but to be honest, if I'm listening to music I use headphones anyway. Also, the mobile computing orientated graphics and CPU chips do limit their use for 3D multi player gaming! Otherwise I've been able to install and use everything I had on a full sized laptop.

BTW I had some initial problems with my Aspire One, but I updated the BIOS and other than continuing to use a1ctl for fan control, I haven't had any other problems with the wifi so far.

Note: The image above isn't my Aspire One, but gives you an idea of the keyboard size.

Technorati Tags: netbooks,Acer,Aspire One,ASUS,EEE PC,Larry Dignam,ZDnet

Thoughts from the panel discussion at eLearning08 yesterday

2008-12-05T09:53:00.001+11:00

I had the pleasure of participating in a panel discussion with Ryan Tracey from AMP and Catherine Eibner at eLearning08 yesterday, courtesy of Kate Carruthers who chaired the panel discussion.

As part of the panel discussion we also had the chance to get out into the audience and chat with people as they were brainstorming the key educational issues they faced, inspired by our initial panel discussion. I had talked earlier about the convergence of technology between different domains (I don't come from an e-learning background, but we are all starting to use the same tools for communication and collaboration) - as I got out into the crowd I heard this reflected in two key issues that are common across educational and business domains:

Technology can't solve every educational problem; and
Don't blame the technology if it fails, as its only as good as its fit for purpose and how well you use it.

People in the room also highlighted the issue of keeping up with technology developments and the impact of different levels of IT literacy in their students. My point was that we shouldn't assume issues with IT literacy is just a generational divide and the panel agreed that this is also an issue in the workplace, both in terms of training and rolling out new systems. And to keep up with the pace of change, the panel's recommendation was to embrace the ideas of Web 2.0 and to tap into the wisdom of the crowds, rather than trying to do everything on your own.

Unfortunately I didn't have the chance to hang around and talk for long due to some conflicting appointments, but it would have been interesting to discuss further the commonality between the problems educators are grappling with around the use of new technologies and those I am seeing in the workplace.

BTW I was also impressed with the way the conference organisers had embedded the use of social media tools into the even, such as a flickr photo stream and Twitter. The nice thing is that the Twitter stream was running in the background on a big screen at the back of the stage so everyone could see the comments and I believe I heard mention of a 'Twitter booth' so that anyone could send a tweet.

Technorati Tags: eLearning08,Education,Technology in the Workplace,IT Literacy,Social Media,Web 2.0,Kate Carruthers,Ryan Tracey,Catherine Eibner

Book Review: Seamless Teamwork

2008-12-03T16:39:00.001+11:00

I mentioned Michael Sampson's new book the other day and he was kind enough to send me a review copy to a look at. Seamless Teamwork is a book about using Microsoft SharePoint and other related Microsoft tools for virtual teams. When it comes to collaboration, this book fills one of the major gaps I've seen first hand in most organisations I've come across - and that is the availability of guidelines on how to actually use the technologies you have available. The need for guidelines is a general concept, but at some point you need to get specific and this is exactly what this book does for SharePoint users.

I'm really excited about this book - not because I'm using SharePoint to collaborate right now, but because I like the way Michael uses a story and weaves a combination of practical SharePoint how-to's with some useful concepts around collaboration theory and process. Read this book improve how you collaborate with SharePoint now, but even as SharePoint evolves or if you start using another platform you'll still have some useful concept to use. Some of the key concepts are the Five Phases Project Life Cycle Model (on page 20) that drives the structure of the book and the Seamless Teamwork approach (on page 86), which is built around the idea that collaboration consists of:

Doing the Work;
Coordinating the Work; and
Sharing the Context.

I should also add that Michael clearly outlines all the individual steps you need to follow to configure SharePoint for your project based on these concepts - even down to how you close down and archive your project (no one ever talks about that step in practical terms!) He also talks about using other technologies, such as Groove, OneNote, SharedView and Live Meeting.

You can of course follows the steps in Michael's book to the letter - and it really is a recipe book in that sense, rather than coffee table reading. However, I think you'll get even more value if you do treat it as a recipe and adjust to taste. Ok, enough with the metaphors, what I mean is:

Experiment with the process described in the book and see what works best for your projects;
As you experiment, start to develop your own 'guidelines';
Configure and optimise your SharePoint configuration to help automate the setup of project spaces based on your custom guidelines - e.g. templates; and
Think about how you can extend your guidelines to include the other technologies you might have available.

Now because this book is neither conceptual or a technical bible (which is why it fills such an important knowledge gap), I think there are a few different people who will benefit for taking a look:

Obviously, anyone who has been asked to collaborate using SharePoint is going to find this book valuable;
Anyone thinking of implementing SharePoint for project collaboration - it will help you to evaluate how SharePoint out of the box might fit your requirements;
People in IT departments should read this book to understand how people in their organisations might want to use SharePoint in practice and how to maximise the investment in Microsoft's technologies; and

Ironically, I also think that anyone using other project collaboration tools may also find it useful - not only is this a good example of what 'guidelines' should look like, you can also compare options, use cases and also learn the terminology and expectations that other people using your collaboration tool might have after using SharePoint.

BTW If you buy the book you will also get access to some free additional chapters on Sponsors and Stakeholders (available now) and Beyond Seamless Teamwork (available by the end of the year).

Overall, this book should be on your essential reading list if you are using SharePoint for collaboration.

(And if you aren't using SharePoint, beat your vendor over the head and find out why no one has written a book like this for your collaboration tool.)

Technorati Tags: Michael Sampson,Seamless Teamwork,Microsoft SharePoint,Collaboration,Virtual Teams,Project Management,Book Review

Register now for the Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum 2009

2008-12-03T09:45:00.001+11:00

Ross Dawson has asked me and a bunch of leading E2.0 people to participate in the next Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum, being held in Sydney early next year. Personally I'm really looking forward to hearing from JP Ragaswami, who will be talking via videoconference about 'The Future of Enterprise Technology'. I've been following JP's blog for sometime now - he is the kind of CIO I wish was working in every organisation.

I attended this event last time and it comes highly recommended.

Register now and get a $100 discount. The first 25 attendees to register will also receive a free copy of Ross' Living Networks book!

Technorati Tags: Enterprise 2.0,Ross Dawson,Future Exploration Network,Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum,JP Ragaswami,Events,2009

Jetstar airline's new intranet

2008-12-02T08:37:00.001+11:00

Its nice to see an intranet success story getting coverage in the mainstream IT news, particular as it reflects the trend of extending the reach of intranets beyond the desk:

"Early last year [Jetstar airlines] began reviewing the role of its corporate intranet.

It became clear that if the intranet was going to work it needed the capacity to serve what is one of the most mobile workforces that exists, flight crews and pilots, without compromising security."

However, the claims of "100 participation" are, um, interesting to say the least. It all depends on how you measure the outcome ;-)

There is also a lot of emphasis in the article on the replacement of the legacy intranet, running on a Linux server, with a commercial intranet suite solution (Intranet Dashboard, not Microsoft SharePoint!). Their CIO comments about the old intranet that "any time we needed to change a page we had to get someone to recode it", which makes me think they simply didn't have a Web Content Management System (WCMS) in place - hardly the fault of the operating system the Web server is running on.

As a benchmark, Jetstar spent $350,000 on their new intranet.

Technorati Tags: Jetstar,intranets,case study,Intranet Dashboard

From the SocialText blog: Company-wide deployments are very different from departmental ones

2008-12-01T12:25:00.001+11:00

Over on the SocialText blog, Michael Idinopulos talks about the difference between deploying individual social computing tools to teams and departments with rolling out social computing suites to an entire enterprise:

"Company-wide deployments are very different from departmental ones. It's like campaigning for the U.S. presidency: you're not really running one national campaign, you're running 50 state campaigns...or 5,000 regional campaigns. Each of those campaigns has its own local leadership, demographic profile, issues, and economics."

He puts forward six steps (of course):

Encourage a broad range of use cases.
Recruit energetic champions across the organization.
Launch the tools with hands-on experiences for new users.
Route repeated activities through social software.
Integrate with existing systems of record.
Leverage public communities.

I'm not a fan of these simplistic approaches, and suite versus ecosystem of Web 2.0 is a discussion for another day, but overall the sentiment that enterprise-wide deployments are different rings true with my ideas about Intranet 2.0.

Technorati Tags: Social Text,Enterprise Social Computing,Intranet 2.0

ChiefTech rides again

2008-12-01T10:28:00.001+11:00

Some of you who follow me closely might have noticed that a few weeks ago I went freelance again. Blame the doom and gloom of current financial crisis. Enough said? Anyway, I haven't mentioned it until now as for the moment I've dusted off the covers of Chief Technology Solutions and have been working on a couple of small consulting projects. But right now I'm open to offers of both long term roles (either contract or permanent would be given serious consideration) and also any immediate short-term consulting engagements.

What can I help with? Check out my LinkedIn profile for a start. My professional background includes a experience with a range of government, professional services and blue chip companies, such as AMP, ASIC, BHP Billiton, BlueScope Steel, CSC, Ernst & Young, and Rio Tinto. I also completed a Master of Business & Technology (MBT) at UNSW in 2005.

I work in a range of information management, social media and knowledge management areas, including:

Intranets and Portals (including SharePoint);
Collaboration, Blogs and Wikis (e.g. Confluence);
Document Management Systems (including Documentum and Interwoven);
Organisational change management for technology projects; and
I'm also a well regarded workshop facilitator!

If you would like to discuss further, feel free to give me a call as I would love to hear from you.

Technorati Tags: James Dellow,Chief Technology Solutions,Consulting,Contracting,Information Management,Social Media,Knowledge Management

Control scales, but the nature of control changes

2008-11-29T09:36:00.001+11:00

David Weinberger writes that with a few exceptions, control doesn’t scale and social media makes social control even harder – a point Clay Shirky also makes, although he highlights that its as much about the medium as it is the message.

In my mind the development and relationship of information and communication technology (ICT) to control is also a story about the span and speed of that control. Without ICT we would be stuck managing at the speed of the fastest horse, boat or semaphore message and adding up the payroll using an abacus or slide rule.

And like management, control in itself isn’t a bad thing – for example, look at the use of social media during disasters in recent years – just the motives behind it. If anything, social media shows that control *does* scale, but in a way that doesn’t require either the efficiencies that are part of a traditional organisational structure or centralised leadership. Sounds like something right out of complexity science don't you think?

Technorati Tags: David Weinberger,Clay Shirky,Organisations,Management,Span of Control,Complexity Science

Day two at OSNBC 2008

2008-11-26T11:05:00.001+11:00

I missed the morning of day two at Online Social Networking and Business Collaboration (I was attending a seminar on MySource Matrix) but ended up sharing lunch with two Government 2.0 innovators from the speakers line up, Phillip Bower from Centrelink and Dheeraj Chowdhury from the NSW Department of Education (see below).

Here is a summary of two sessions from the afternoon:

Paul Salvati, Smart Service Queensland

Due to the demographic profile of Queensland’s population, they need to engage with a sparse population across a large geographic area. They investigated the use of YouTube and MySpace as a way to engage with young people, but ended up picking Second Life. They built an island with a public landing area, but the majority of the space is private and accessible only by invitation. During 2007 the held a forum in Second Life to gather feedback on how they might use the space and in April 2008 they held a virtual youth forum to celebrate Youth Week.

Feedback from these forums showed that the vast majority of the young people involved found it easy to participate, most felt involved with the discussion and that they found it as good or better than a traditional workshop. The benefits from using Second Life were found to be:

Convenience;
It was a non-intimidating workshop experience;
The chat feature gave participants a history of the conversation taking place and the process of chatting provided the opportunity for considered input (but will the availability of voice in Second Life devalue this?);
People thought it was a fun and interactive experience, but they wondered if this might be reduced overtime once people get past the novelty factor;
The ease of supply of objects that assist meeting facilitation (since they are virtual!); and
Automatic capture of a transcripts from the event (for the organiser – however, see my point about voice support above).

However, they also identified some issues with using Second Life and these included reliability (I think this was a more general statement about using a hosted solution), ‘griefing’, lagging, legal implications, content moderation, system requirements (in terms of the user’s computer performance), maturity of user’s collaboration skills, and accessibility for people with disabilities.

Overall it sounds like there are some real opportunities to use immersive environments like Second Life, but Salvati thinks there are still some barriers to overcome before it becomes mainstream. It was also a reasonably low cost pilot – other than the time and effort of the people involved, they invested less than $1000 in building their island.

Dheeraj Chowdhury, NSW Department of Education

Dheeraj works in the department’s Centre for Learning Innovation. It provides teaching and educational resources for teachers, students and parents, with a key online presence at TaLe. They are very interested in providing interactive methods for engaging with their community of users – for example, the TaLe site hosts ‘Professional Learning Communities’. Murder under the Microscope is an example of a collaborative online educational game they developed.

He shared his ideas about implementing social networking – key points were:

Actively seek out the right open source tools;
Once you’ve selected a tool, move fast and be agile;
Focus on developing frameworks and platforms;
Engage quickly (a idea taken from Google);
Enable self expression;
Let them browse the social graph;
Proactively drive communication; and
Include buttons to ‘add this’ and ‘rate this’ everywhere.

But, don’t forget, “what’s the fuel? Engagement with the audience”.

I actually think Dheeraj has more ideas in his head than he could explain in such a short session – so I’m glad I had the chance to talk to him over lunch!

He also talked about his experience of implementing social bookmarking with Scuttle – using only a viral adoption approach,they deployed the solution in just 2 weeks and at a cost of less than $5,000.

Technorati Tags: Online Social Networking and Business Collaboration 2008,Phillip Bower,Centrelink,Paul Salvati,Smart Service Queensland,Second Life,Dheeraj Chowdhury,NSW Department of Education,Open Source,Scuttle

Day one at OSNBC 2008

2008-11-26T10:17:00.001+11:00

As promised, here are some notes on some selected sessions from day 1 of Online Social Networking and Business Collaboration:

Richard Kimber from Friendster and Rebekah Horne from MySpace

Deep within these two key note presentations (once you got past the promotion of the particular social networking sites that Richard Kimber and Rebekah Horne represented) I picked up a few ideas in respect to the role and application of social networking tools inside organisations:

On the Web, social networking site are becoming “social portals” – however, people probably only have a capacity for using 2-3 different social networks. Statistics on membership show that there is little overlap between different public social networking sites.
Different public social networking sites are successful in specific geographies. Also, different cultures use social networking sites in different ways – for example, in the west authentic social networking is the norm, but is less typical in north Asia.
Mobile access to public social networking is gradually growing in importance.

I think there are some interesting implications for people trying to deploy social networking tools inside organisations, particularly with the reference to portals – an area that continues to produce mixed results in the enterprise. Horne also discussed their success with the MySpace Road Tour and I think that this might also provide an interesting model for the success of social media and social networking inside organisations too – and that is you still need to link the online world back to the real world.

Horne also shared a list of Six Social Network user archetypes (based on research by MySpace in the UK):

Essentialists (38%) - People who use social networking sites to stay in touch with friends and family;
Transumers (28%) - People who follow the lead of others and join groups connected to their interests;
Connectors (10%) - People who revel in passing on information and links whenever they come across something they find interesting;
Collaborators (5%) - People who use social networking sites to create events;
Scene Breaking (5%) - People who hunt down media (bands, blogs, video) online and share that through the site; and
Netrepreneurs (4%) - People who accessed the sites for the sole purpose of making money.

I also learnt that MySpace is a well established and profitable company… (sorry, that’s a bit of an in-conference joke)

Paul Slakey from Google

This was a refreshing change of gear from the key note presentations on social networking sites, although the bulk of Paul Slakey’s presentation was really ‘Google Apps 101’. He described some of the business benefits of Google Apps as:

Low cost solution (e.g. $3,785 per user per year for implementing a traditional office suite versus $87 for Google Apps);
Scalability; and
Continuous product innovation.

I would also add to that list, accessibility where ever a Web-connection is available. Google Apps in particular is also revolutionary in the way it gives smaller organisations access to the types of integrated collaboration tools that in the past only larger companies have had access to.

Having said all that, Slakey doesn’t believe that hosted applications will replace all traditional applications – instead they will continue to co-exist. But looking at that idea more critically, I do wonder then if organisations will really save money with hosted apps – either they’ll end up with both or Microsoft Office will be evolve into a niche product that will be priced as a specialist ‘power tool’. Really to get the full cost saving you’ll also need to migrate all that macro programming in Microsoft Excel and Word into the cloud.

One other interesting point was that Slakey sees an emerging role for an ecosystem of providers that will help organisations both to migrate data to Google Apps (e.g. email accounts, calendars and data etc) and also help them to develop the new practices and skills needed for cloud-based collaboration.

Chris Knowles from Heinz Australia

I saw Chris Knowles present last year at the Intranets ‘07 conference, so this was a bit of an update for me really on what he has been doing more recently in this space. Heinz have implemented internal blogs and a wiki, an extranet blog and an external social networking site for customers. He explained that the internal tools used simple software options that didn’t need database infrastructure, while the extranet and external social network used cheap hosted solutions.

He is a very relaxed presenter and happy to share as much about what has worked at Heinz, as he was about what didn’t work. For example, internal blogging has been more successful than their wiki. However in the process of promoting their new blogging platform to Heinz’s mobile sales staff as an improvement to their intranet, Knowles found he couldn’t assume that people actually even knew what the intranet was! He also told us that he had been asked on a couple of occasions to remove comments.

Some of his tips include:

Start simple;
Remove any disincentives and make sure you have the right incentives to participate;
Expect to fail – label everything as a ‘beta’;
Use working groups to help guide future development of the tools; and
Don’t stop evangelising, encouraging and educating.

I also get the impression that in the process of rolling out these different social media tools, Knowles has been prepared to ‘eat his own dog food’ and use the same tools to support how they are used. However, overall I was left wondering if there was any deliberate strategy or plan behind the different initiatives. Also, how much of the long standing knowledge we have about managing Web-forums applies to the situation at Heinz?

Jeremy Mitchell from Telstra

The key point in Jeremy Mitchell’s story of Telstra’s Now We Are Talking site was the importance of getting high level support so you can be as transparent as possible.

Ok. That’s enough about day 1. I’ll blog another post about day 2 next.

Technorati Tags: Online Social Networking and Business Collaboration 2008,Richard Kimber,Friendster,Rebekah Horne,MySpace,Paul Slakey,Google,Chris Knowles,Heinz,Jeremy Mitchell,Telstra,Now We Are Talking

The last few days

2008-11-26T07:48:00.001+11:00

Phew! Well, the last couple of days have been a process of absorbing a lot of information and ideas from attending the Online Social Networking and Business Collaboration conference, a half-day seminar about the MySource Matrix commercial open source Web CMS and also the last formal NSW KM Forum meeting of the year.

I have some notes from the conference to share (day 1 and day 2) and also a write up about MySource Matrix in separate posts to come later….

In the meantime, just a quick mention about the NSW KM Forum meeting, which featured Matt Moore and Serena Joyner – I don’t have any notes to share, but Matt’s slide are already available online and Serena used this video from Step Two’s Intranet Innovation awards as part of her presentation.

Technorati Tags: Online Social Networking and Business Collaboration World 2008,MySource Matrix,NSW KM Forum,Matt Moore,Serena Joyner

At Online Social Networking and Business Collaboration World 2008

2008-11-24T11:44:00.001+11:00

I’m attending Online Social Networking and Business Collaboration World 2008 in Sydney today but unfortunately a lack of easy access to power and wifi at the venue is limiting my ability to blog and twitter (the hash tag is #osnbc). However, I know that there has been a lot of chatter on the back channel – so far we have had a lot of advertising and few insights. Of course I’m mixing with a crowd of marketers so I’m sure some people would find this interesting. I’m looking forward to the business stream sessions later this afternoon.

I’ll blog more when I can.

Technorati Tags: Online Social Networking and Business Collaboration World 2008,Events,Sydney

Elcom Technologies IntranetManager.NET launch

2008-11-22T09:07:00.001+11:00

I had heard that Sydney-based content management software company, Elcom Technologies, were launching a new intranet package called IntranetManager.NET, but I’m not sure how I managed to miss the launch event.

Anyway, as Anthony Milner from Elcom Technologies explains, IntranetManager.NET is based on their Community Manager product:

“For some time at Elcom we’ve deployed our Content Management product, Community Manager, as an Intranet. It has excellent content management, document management, forms, corporate phone book, blogs, wikis, workflow and enterprise search features making it an ideal intranet software choice for a mid-sized to enterprise level businesses. In fact it’s capability as an intranet search engine alone would make it a great choice for an enterprise federated search solution.

We’ve recently taken a close look at the marketing of our product offerings and came to a conclusion that companies that were looking for intranet software or intranet search engines had no idea that Community Manager provided this functionality out of the box. So we’ve been promoting the not so obvious and decided to make it a little more obvious. So what did we do, we launched a new product, it’s called, wait for it….drum roll….Intranet Manager (tada).”

ITWire also have an interview with Orica, who were a case study for IntranetManager.NET at the launch and @trib has shared his presentation slides and notes. So there you go - with all this stuff online, its almost as good as being there! ;-)

Technorati Tags: intranets,Elcom Technologies,Orica,case study,Stephen Collins

Hacking my Acer Aspire One

2008-11-20T22:59:00.002+11:00

OK. Now that I’ve had a bit of time to settle in with my new Acer Aspire One, I thought I might contribute back by sharing some of the major issues I’ve found (and beyond the fun tweaks, like installing the Zune theme because I find the colour scheme easier than the standard Windows theme and RocketDock to help with application switching and launching).

So far the key issues have been fan noise and the wifi device disappearing:

I started with AA1FanControl to reduce how much the fan was working, but about to try a1ctl.
For the moment, I’ve followed some advice to disable the Power Save Mode in the Atheros AR5007EG WLAN adaptor (via Device Manager) as this appears to be a common problem with this model ‘disappearing’ after it goes to sleep to save power, but I will have to wait and see if that makes a difference. The wifi connection comes back eventually, but I would prefer if it didn’t disappear at all! UPDATE: I’ve also installed the Atheros Client Utility to see if that helps.

UPDATE 23/11/08: On the Wifi front, neither the client utility made no difference or disabling power save mod so I’ve ditched them for the moment. The best way to fix at the moment appears to be a complete power off and start up again (rather than a simple restart from Windows)! :-(

BTW Overall this little laptop does run quite warm, but I don’t think any more than any other laptop I’ve used before. It does appear to to be cooler running off the battery, so maybe there is room for improvement. Then again it could just be my imagination. :-)

What I also haven’t done yet is attempt a BIOS update, which requires a spare USB thumb drive that you need to make bootable. I’m also a little unclear about the benefits and which version to try (still researching about version 3305 and 3307).

Technorati Tags: Acer,Aspire One,Hacking,Fan,Wifi,BIOS,RocketDock,AA1FanControl,a1ctl

Ingredients for brainstorming in Second Life

2008-11-20T22:52:00.001+11:00

Some practical tips from ThinkBalm for hosting a brainstorming session in an immersive environment – these are the ‘ingredients’ you’ll need:

A problem that can be moved toward resolution with brainstorming
A (virtual) room full of smart people
One hour minimum
A 3D mind mapping tool
Some mechanism for displaying participants’ real names with their avatars
Private 3D space in which to meet
Voice and text chat tools
An interactive polling tool (optional)

There is nothing unique in the brainstorming process itself, but there are some useful tips here about using Second Life (and similar environments) as the medium for your brainstorming meeting.

Technorati Tags: ThinkBalm,Immersive Internet,Second Life,Virtual Meetings,Brainstorming

Social Hardware

2008-11-20T08:27:00.002+11:00

I’ve been a bit quiet this week for a couple of reasons… and one of those reasons is the distraction of getting a new a bit of technology in the shape of an Acer Aspire One netbook.

Now, this post isn’t intended to be a review. But for those of you interested in that sort of thing, I picked the Aspire One over some of the alternatives, like the EEE, primarily because I think the keyboard is a little better (compared to the EEE 900 series). I’m running with the Windows XP (150) version, although I was very tempted to pick the hard drive-less Linux (110) version (there is something elegant about no moving parts). However, while overall I’m very happy with the Aspire One, it is by no means perfect so I’ve been busy tweaking it to my satisfaction.

Luckily to help me in my quest there is plenty of bottom up support from the global Aspire One community, found in blogs, forums and free software – none of it Acer sponsored of course, but all adding tremendous value. This kind of community support for a product is really quite typical now and in fact I would be worried to find a product like the Aspire One or even the EEE where it didn’t exist (a bit like eating at an empty restaurant). This very much reflects the dynamics of participation described by Clay Shirky in his book, Here Comes Everybody because on its own, Acer could never directly manage that level of engagement itself. All it has to do of course is get out of the way and let it happen.

However, another thought did occur to me. Is the hardware itself getting more “social” too? My new netbook doesn’t have built in 3G, but its coming and is already available in some of the higher end laptops. Webcams are almost a standard feature on laptops of all sizes too now. And I was able to add Bluetooth support easily to my Aspire One with a tiny Bluetooth USB dongle. Social hardware, maybe?

Ironically the biggest limitation I’ve found with this netbook is really with the software itself – in a way, this new generation of mini-computers is stuck in limbo – the power of full size computer, missing software that is optimised to a 9 inch screen. This isn’t just Windows either, it affects some Web-based apps too. Still, I’m sure with enough community support the software can only get better. Meanwhile the computer manufacturers can stick to what they are good at – making the hardware more and more social.

Technorati Tags: Acer,Aspire One,EEE,Clay Shirky,Here Comes Everybody,3G,Bluetooth,USB,Windows,Social Hardware

John Tropea: Are you really doing Enterprise 2.0?

2008-11-16T09:57:00.001+11:00

John adds to the Enterprise 2.0 conversation, pulling in a number of different threads related to my Intranet 2.0 article – he says:

“To spread and evolve know-how, percolate emergence, create autonomous behaviours, and social productivity, we need the conditions for these things to happen.”

And lists five conditions:

Network Effects
Participation
Self Interest
Ease of Use
Transparency/Support/Bottom-up

Technorati Tags: John Tropea,LibraryClips,Enterprise 2.0,Intranet 2.0

Reflecting on BarCampSydney4

2008-11-16T09:16:00.001+11:00

I went to BarCamp Sydney 4 yesterday (that’s me in the photo during a speed networking session) and had a great time meeting lots of people I know only through twitter and a whole bunch of other new people.

I really enjoyed all the presentations I attended. As this was my first barcamp, part of the fun for me was also simply soaking up the atmosphere. In the morning I stepped to the call for participation and talked a little about my ideas on Intranet 2.0, however now that I understand the format I’ll be a little better prepared next time!

There were three particular stand out presentations for me:

The discussion on what is a community manager, with Scott Drummond from Sports Hydrant;
The introduction by Pia Waugh to the OLPC, which is simply an amazing bit of industrial and computing design; and
Kevin Garber (from Spellr.us) who shared his experiences with mixing in the San Francisco tech “ecosystem” (by sharing his story, Garber is helping other local startups).

Also, it was great to see people who are passionate about developing the local tech community and also campaigning against the proposed internet filter.

Finally, a hat tip to Phil Evans from Evanscorp for the lift and the company on the trip to and from Sydney.

Technorati Tags: barcampsydney4,barcamp,Intranet 2.0,Scott Drummond,SportsHydrant,Pia Waugh,OLPC,Kevin Garber,Spellr.us,Silicon Beach Australia,nocleanfeed,Phil Evans,Evanscorp

Book Review: Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky

2008-11-12T09:59:00.001+11:00

I must admit I was a little dubious about this book, worried that this would just be an another evangelical soapbox about Web 2.0. But I should have had more faith in Shirky – Here Comes Everybody turned out to be more and so much better than I expected.

(For those of you who don’t know him, Clay Shirky is a US-based consultant, educator, and writer on the social and economic effects of Internet technologies. He is recognised for coming up with the particular phrase, social software, back in 2002 to describe the software of participation we see in Web 2.0. So, he has all the right credentials to write about this subject.)

After starting with a story about a lost mobile phone, Shirky goes on to explain that while that’s a good example of social software at work:

“This is not to say that corporations and government are going to wither away. Though some of the early utopianism around new communication tools suggested that we were heading into some sort of post hierarchical paradise, that’s not what’s happening now, and it’s not what’s going to happen… Instead, what has happened is that most of the relative advantages of those institutions have disappeared”

In the next chapter he provides some grounding in that explanation with reference to the Coase theorem, social networks and the limits of traditional efficiencies that come out of organisational structures. This is where everything begins to fall into place. He explains the impact of social software this way:

“Think of these activities as lying under a Coasean floor; they are valuable to someone but too expensive to be taken on in any institutional way, because the basic and unsheddable costs of being an institution in the first place make those activities not worth pursuing.”

This alone has important implications for the whole debate about return on investment (ROI) and enterprise social computing. However there is more and Shirky is able to provide yet more convincing layers of argument and examples of how the impact of this plays out in real life, including our relationship to technology, the media and human behaviour. I won’t describe them here, as the fun part of the book is the observations he makes about these various examples.

One other interesting part of this book was a description about audience size and conversational patterns, with particular reference to blogs. Firstly, this model reminds me of Figallo’s model for online communities that I have been using for years. But secondly this describes the death of the blogosphere we have been discussing recently. Effectively Shirky says that some Weblogs have such a large audience that they can only operate in a broadcast mode, but as the audience size drops loose conversation and then tighter conversation is possible. Having said that, I would have liked to have seen more discussion about this in relation to the fractal nature of social networks in organisations as I believe that is a key issue in understanding where, how and why enterprise social computing can or doesn’t work. It also makes me curious about the long term success of enterprise social computing tools, like micro blogging, in large organisations if they attempt to retrofit usage back into the organisational structure.

Finally, Shirky does actually give us some rules, if not a recipe, for using social tools successfully:

“Every story in this book relies on a successful fusion of a plausible promise, an effective tool, and an acceptable bargain with the users”

On the tools side in particular he also says:

“There is no such thing as a generically good tool; there are only tools good for particular jobs [but]when you improve the available tools, you expand the number of plausible promises in the world.”

and

“new tools are not always better. New tools, in fact, start with a huge social disadvantage, which is that most people don’t use them, and whenever you have a limited pool from which potential members can be drawn, you limit the social effects.”

There are many interesting things to think about in this book, but my summary here really doesn’t do it justice as the stories and examples that go with these theories are equally important.

Overall, this book neither over hypes or provides (easy) answers to the opportunities that Web 2.0 and enterprise social computing (“Enterprise 2.0”) present. What it will do is provide you with some solid background knowledge on why social software is impacting society and the business that is grounded in ideas that, to me at least, make a lot of sense.

Here Comes Everybody comes with a definite buy recommendation from me.

Photograph courtesy of and copyright James Duncan Davidson.

Technorati Tags: Clay Shirky,Here Comes Everybody,Book Review,Social Software,Web 2.0,Enterprise social computing,Enterprise 2.0,Intranet 2.0

Flattening The Information Landscape with Really Simply Services

2008-11-11T07:47:00.001+11:00

In an interesting whitepaper, Flattening The Information Landscape [PDF], RSSBus explain how their products can help to provide “Really Simply Services”:

“…in case you are thinking that RSSBus is nothing more than RSS feed generation, that’s definitely not the case. RSSBus allows for input parameters and it can pipe the output of one connector as the input to the next, so it can be used to build advanced information processing systems.

In short, RSSBus combines the best features of SOAP web services and RSS Feeds to provide what we call ‘Really Simple Services’”

RSSBus is providing a important tool to use in the Enterprise RSS Value Chain (I’ll explain more in an Image & Data Manager magazine article coming before the end of the year), but rather than focusing on news feed content it delivers one of the Ten Things I want from Enterprise RSS, a Yahoo! Pipes for the Enterprise.

This video highlights this:

I think this also highlights the dangers of reducing the Enterprise RSS concept to simply news feeds (which we know is an idea that is more palatable to the average user) when there is so much more potential, as the Wallem case study also demonstrates.

Hat tip to Lee White.

Technorati Tags: Enterprise RSS,Enterprise RSS Value Chain,RSS,RSSBus,Wallem

Communities of Practice at Rio Tinto

2008-11-11T07:08:00.001+11:00

Watch this to understand the value of Communities in Practice in the mining industry:

“See how involvement in communities of practice, is helping Rio Tinto people share expertise and collaborate across the group”

Note: the original video is posted on the Rio Tinto Website, but the version above is from YouTube.

Technorati Tags: Knowledge Management,Communities of Practice,Rio Tinto,Video

Australasian Virtual Worlds Workshop 2008 - November 28/29

2008-11-10T23:36:00.001+11:00

At the end of the month, Swinburne University is hosting the Australasian Virtual Worlds Workshop 2008:

“The Australasian Virtual Worlds Workshop is an event for Australasian researchers, educators and business people involved in virtual worlds, to meet and discuss topics related to virtual worlds.

The aim of this workshop is to build local capacity and virtual world expertise that connects with global expertise.

…

The workshop discussions will be mixed reality events held both at Swinburne and in Second Life to facilitate local and international participation.”

Technorati Tags: Swinburne University,Australasian Virtual Worlds Workshop,Conference,Second Life

Blogging is about different viewpoints

2008-11-09T08:44:00.001+11:00

More about the death of blogging.

When JP talks about the bigger picture of blogging, he manages to interweave a discussion about the US presidential elections, the social history of colonial cities, the quality of discourse in the 1960s and The Cluetrain Manifesto.

But Euan just says:

“Over the seven plus years I have been blogging various people have declared the activity dead, defined it more ways than I can remember and made various pronouncements about how I should be doing it.

Me - I just ignore them all, keep doing something I love, in my own way, and am having as much fun with it as I ever did.”

But I think the point is that both of them are right.

Technorati Tags: blogging,JP Rangaswami,Euan Semple

Books Reviews and Recommended Reading

2008-11-08T18:18:00.002+11:00

This is a page linking to different books I’ve reviewed or simply recommend you take a look at, plus some other reading lists…

Books (most recent mentions first):

Book Review: Seamless Teamwork (I also mentioned it here earlier - Seamless Teamwork using Microsoft SharePoint);
Book Review: Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky;
Book Review: Enterprise 2.0 Implementation;
The Complete Lean Enterprise (mentioned in my post The Lean Information Workplace);
Empire of Blue Water (mentioned in my post Pirates of the Enterprise 2.0);
Book Review: Wikipatterns;
Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software and Being Digital (both mentioned in my post Emergence and Being Digital);
A Computer Called LEO (mentioned in my post The Circle of Computing Life);
Book Review: The Hamster Revolution;
The Victorian Internet (mentioned in my post End of the road for the dot-dash world);
Longitude : The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time and The Surgeon of Crowthorne (mentioned in my post Christmas reading for 2005);
Knowledge Management in Theory and Practice (mentioned in New KM book by Dr Kimiz Dalkir);
The Conductive Organization: Building Beyond Sustainability (mentioned in my post Conductive organisations: Moving beyond automation to optimal collaboration);
Book Review: Remote Control;
Implementation: Making Workplace Innovation and Technical Change Happen and Changing Gears: The Strategic Implementation of Technology (mentioned in my post Cracking the code of IT change); and
Book Review: What's the Big Idea?

Using sociotechnical systems theory to help manage change

2008-11-08T08:57:00.001+11:00

A lot of my thinking is informed by the sociotechnical systems theory perspective, including organisational theorists such as Karl Weick. I’ve used a simply model from Weick’s earlier work of ‘sociotechnical fit’ to understand the impact of a system change on people and systems.

In this model you break the change into two system aspects – the social and the technical. Then break each aspect into the job, work group and organisational view. By analysing the change from each of these components you can look for mismatch between the changes in the social and technical aspects. Obviously there is a little be more to understanding and applying the definitions of these components, but hopefully you get the basic idea.

For example, in one project I identified through this process that while most of the change was at an organisational level (across both the social and technical aspects), it presented the following opportunity and challenge at other levels:

At the workgroup level, it introduced the opportunity to improve the relationship between one business group and another through role clarity.
But at a job level, while one stakeholder’s job would be enriched by the new process (more knowledge work because of reduced effort to manage transactions), another previously unrecognised ancillary stakeholder group would need to learn new skills that might not directly enrich their roles (at least without further investigation to understand the pros and cons of the change).

I like the way a relatively simply model like this can help to reveal unforeseen issues by helping us to explore the different perspectives of a system change. Of course, the more complex the change, the more important it is to inject a diverse range of viewpoints into a model like this to make sure nothing is missed (i.e. you don’t know what you don’t know).

Technorati Tags: change management,sociotechnical systems theory,Karl Weick

Blogging isn’t dead, but the Blogosphere is

2008-11-08T08:08:00.001+11:00

From Wired last month, they advise:

“Thinking about launching your own blog? Here's some friendly advice: Don't. And if you've already got one, pull the plug.”

And from the The Economist more recently:

“Gone, in other words, is any sense that blogging as a technology is revolutionary, subversive or otherwise exalted, and this upsets some of its pioneers. Confirmed, however, is the idea that blogging is useful and versatile.”

Actually, the main point of both these articles is that blogging technology has changed the Web medium as a whole (by allowing greater participation on news sites and the like, we assume for the better) but meanwhile the A-list bloggers have themselves for the most part morphed into professional publishing and money making organisations, while other new Web communication mechanisms, like microblogging (e.g. Twitter) and activity streams (e.g. Facebook), have emerged to grab the blog author and blog reader’s attention.

But I think Nicholas Carr is the one that really fixes on what has really changed:

“When we used to talk about blogging, the stress was on the style. Today, what blogs have in common is mainly just the underlying technology – the ‘publishing platform’ - and that makes it difficult to talk meaningfully about a ‘blogosphere.’”

I’ve recently made similar arguments about blogging, that relate back to a theme I described a while a go as the grey area between using social software as social software and using them for achieving other information management objectives. I believe there is a lesson in the rise and fall of the Blogosphere across the whole of the social computing spectrum, not just blogging.

But getting back to the issue of the death of blogging, personally I’m with Tim Bray - while admitting he is blogging less because of Twitter, he says:

“having to stop writing would hurt me terribly, and if the other contributors of essayists and remarks were to fall silent, that of course would hurt me infinitely more.

It would greatly impoverish the world. Fortunately, it won’t happen.”

I agree. The Blogosphere might be dead, but blogging isn’t.

Technorati Tags: Blogging,Blogosphere,Wired,The Economist,Nicholas Carr,Social Software,Social Computing,Tim Bray

The nature of intranets is changing

2008-11-07T11:04:00.001+11:00

(Just to demonstrate that I haven’t lost the faith entirely, I decided to rework the introduction of The Intranet Imperative that I wrote back in 1995)

The Intranet 2.0 Imperative

The nature of intranets is changing.

Intranets and the World Wide Web may share a common heritage, but over time the application of the same Web technologies inside organisations have taken a divergent path. Some might argue that, quite rightly, intranets have ignored the bubble of hype and successfully weathered the information dangers that have plagued the Intranet. But with hindsight, the dot com boom and bust period can be seen not as a failure for the World Wide Web, but as part of a progressive wave of technology innovation that is slowly, but surely changing society and business.

Today that current wave of change is called Web 2.0 and through our own daily experience using this new World Wide Web it is influencing our expectations of what an intranet is and how an intranet should work. As a result, the safe traditionalist view of intranets, one that concentrates on perfecting static content built around fixed information architecture is becoming out of step with growing demand for more dynamic user-driven Web-spaces that connect users to useful people, places and things.

In time this demand for new capabilities and functionality will change intranets for the better. It will expand their scope beyond a narrow focus on publishing content into something that will play a pivotal role in defining the shape of our future information workplaces. But like all change, this transition from the traditional view of intranets to this new ‘Intranet 2.0’ will be hard for many organisations.

What is ideally needed is a roadmap to help guide the evolution of intranets safely through this change; but if we recognise that these are indeed waves of innovation and the outcome is hard to predict then what is really needed is a guide or set of patterns to build on, not a prescriptive set of steps.

And this is what this blog and the conversations around it represent – not concrete answers, but dialogue and ideas to inform our thinking as we embark on this exciting journey together.

Technorati Tags: Web 2.0,The Intranet Imperative,Intranet 2.0,intranets,Enterprise 2.0,social media,enterprise social computing,information workplace

Time to take a deep two-oh breath

2008-11-07T10:55:00.001+11:00

I really enjoyed reading this interview with Tim O’Reilly. I was only saying recently that the predictions of the demise of Web 2.0 (and everything related) are coming from those who are looking at this wave of change from standing with in it, rather than looking back at what has happened before and to quote just one part from this interview:

“‘Over time, people have come to equate Web 2.0 with a small, lightweight start-up funded by advertising,’ O'Reilly said. ‘That became the popular definition of Web 2.0, and people have taken potshots at it.’

If you think that's all there is to Web 2.0, if you think the game is really over, then you're going to miss out on the even bigger transformation that lies ahead.”

Looking inside organisations I think the same can also be said about equating Enterprise 2.0 to blogs and wikis. If you think that this is all Enterprise 2.0 is about, how disappointing – you are going to miss on that bigger transformation O’Reilly is talking about, which will effect society and business.

So, it is indeed time to take a deep breath and look at the bigger picture. Personally I hope to refresh this blog a little and expand beyond the narrow focus it has had recently.

To be honest, I’m growing a little tired of social media peddlers with their diet plan strategies for transforming organisations – you know the kind of thing, those throw out your management theory and just follow our “seven steps to success” pieces. In practice the results vary and never last. Some of them I fear have never even seen inside a large enterprise, because for as many instant enterprise social computing success stories I hear about, I come across mediocre attempts of the build it and they will come strategy. Viral adoption can happen – I’ve been involved with it first hand, but the environment has to be right (both from a technology and an organisational perspective).

For example, I came across a global organisation this year where people had taken a ground up approach to installing a range of social media tools, many based on open source tools. They had an example of all the popular social media tools you can think of installed. Great, right? Unfortunately my impression of what I saw was that it lacked cohesion, the tools had poor usability (probably because people didn’t have formal funding to work on them) and to be honest most people didn’t even know they were there. This doesn’t mean there isn’t potential - I was excited about the possibilities but disappointed about the apparently random and misguided application.

I’m sorry if this sounds overly critical. I’m genuinely excited by the opportunities ahead of us, but my training and work experience is all about critical thinking that informs pragmatic implementation. So, I just can’t help myself ;-)

Technorati Tags: Tim O'Reilly,Web 2.0,Enterprise 2.0,Intranet 2.0,enterprise social computing,snake oil,social media,critical thinking

Some reports on microblogging

2008-11-06T08:31:00.001+11:00

While I’ve seen some analysts are talking down microblogging (aka Twitter et al and the new army of enterprise solutions), I’ve also noticed a few reports appear recently looking specifically at this space:

There is a free Enterprise Microsharing Report from Pistachio Consulting; and
O'Reilly Radar have just published, Twitter and the Micro-Messaging Revolution: Communication, Connections, and Immediacy--140 Characters at a Time and promises to explain. But you’ll have to pay for that one.

I’m sure there are others. Of course, what’s equally important is stories from the field, such as Jeremy on Yammer and Nathan on his internal microblogging at Janssen-Cilag. There are more examples out there is you go looking, although many are focused on marketing with microblogging.

Technorati Tags: microblogging,analyst reports,enterprise social computing,social media,Twitter,Jammer

Seamless Teamwork using Microsoft SharePoint

2008-11-05T12:51:00.001+11:00

Michael Sampson’s new book on Seamless Teamwork using Microsoft SharePoint is now available. What’s it all about?

“Seamless Teamwork helps people in collaborative teams envision how to accomplish their work using Microsoft SharePoint. The purpose of the book is to demonstrate how SharePoint can be used to support team collaboration, innovation and the carrying out of daily business activities.

The book is organized around the idea of someone getting a new project to lead at their place of work, and then examines how SharePoint supports the execution of that project. While the book focuses specifically on this fictional project, the main ideas and issues faced by the users will be experienced generally by all SharePoint users. Thus you can take the main ideas and apply them to your projects.

Seamless Teamwork is aimed at people in business teams who are using SharePoint. It is not a complex IT book, although IT people will benefit from its insight into how people can use SharePoint.”

I haven’t read it myself, but Michael has been writing some smart things about using SharePoint for collaboration for some time now, so I’m sure its worth a look.

Technorati Tags: Michael Sampson,SharePoint,Collaboration

Should you blow up your old intranet?

2008-11-05T07:48:00.001+11:00

Nina Platt likes this alternative intranet 2.0 implementation advice from Chris McGrath, who is one of those smart guys at ThoughtFarmer, where he suggests the first step is to blow up your existing intranet – McGrath writes:

“Step 1: Blow up the old intranet.

Why? It's irrelevant to employees' day-to-day job. The cumbersome updating process alienates people. It's out of date and usage is dismal.

How? Find the intranet server, get to a command prompt, and type >rm -rf * (that's a server admin joke...) Alternatively, unplug it. Seriously, it's not worth trying to fix; you've got to start over.”

I think we all know where he is coming from - If you’ve ever been faced with a terrible intranet as an end-user, I’m sure you would love to see it blown up. However, while we might *think* about it, I’m not sure this is a good strategy in the long run. Blowing up your current intranet encourages that design once, fixed in stone mentality around intranets that got us into this mess in the first place. It could also be organisational political suicide. Also, which part of the intranet and its existing content are going to blow up?

I would prefer to see a transition and even co-existence, with the view of getting users and management stakeholders used to the idea of another Web 2.0 idea, the continuous beta.

BTW Along those lines, check out this article, The Search for the Perfect Intranet.

Technorati Tags: Nina Platt,Thought Farmer,Chris McGrath,intranets,Intranet 2.0

Erica Driver: Predicting the immersive internet

2008-11-04T08:43:00.001+11:00

Ex-Forrester Analyst, Erica Driver, writes about the potential for the immersive Internet (or metaverses, if you like):

“Today, it's hard to imagine being able to get our jobs done without the Web. Within five years, the same will be true of the immersive Internet.”

She includes a couple of examples from Accenture, Michelin Group and Microsoft to demonstrate the benefits of the immersive Internet (e.g. reduce travel and event costs) and some tips to get started with immersive Web-applications. However, I found her last bit of advice interesting:

“It is not surprising that this short list of recommendations is similar to advice I've given to information and knowledge management professionals over the past decade regarding enterprise collaboration strategies. Tools like instant messaging, team collaboration and social networking have changed the way many of us work. Now the immersive Internet is coming from the fringes to become the newest wave of technology change to hit the workforce. Draw on lessons you've learned from introducing collaboration tools into your organization.”

This is probably true – an immersive environment enhances and augments how with interact with people and information, but does it change how we collaborate? Driver makes the point that there are some new skills to learn, but I wonder what other effects it might have, like the emergence of transitory leadership styles in the workplace?

BTW I’ve previously blogged about the potential for enterprise metaverses and also in the online version of my Intranet 2.0 article (they are an alternative Intranet 2.0 strategy).

Technorati Tags: metaverses,immersive internet,transitory leadership,collaboration technologies,collaboration,intranet 2.0,Erica Driver

A brief guide to successful virtual teams

2008-11-03T17:06:00.001+11:00

More from my personal archives… I’ve hinted at these ideas before, but here is more comprehensive overview.

While it might not be recognised, in many organisations collaborating together as part of a virtual project team or a remote workgroup (where the staff are not co-located with each other, including tele-workers) is a normal fact of working life.

For example, even in a large organisation people may find themselves working virtually even if they are based in the same place, because they have little or no face-to-face interaction with the people they are working with. Virtual teams and remote workgroups can also form between business partners or even with customers. If you spend the majority of your working day working closely with a group of people using technology for communication, then the chances are you are working virtually.

A note on terminology: Unfortunately, the terminology of virtual teams is a little clumsy – but for want of a better word that we can all agree on, I will stick with it here but feel free to use what ever term you feel most comfortable with.

I believe there are three key challenges for virtual teams and remote workgroups:

Willingness - Getting the right balance between necessity and opportunity that creates a willingness to work this way;
Technology - Having the right collaboration tools and technology available; and
Skills - Ensuring people have the skills and capacity to work as a leader or part of a virtual team or remote workgroup.

Unfortunately, most organisations only ever focus on point 2 (the technology) and often use a stick approach with point 1 (creating willingness), so that people are forced to collaborate due to circumstance beyond their control. Incidentally, Web 2.0 technologies can help with point 2, but can’t fix points 1 or 3 alone.

There are a number of specific management issues with virtual teams that include:

Communication;
Time management;
Oversight;
Leadership and motivation;
Dealing with conflict; and
Performance management.

But hang on – doesn’t this all sound familiar? If you were thinking that these are the same issues that affect traditional co-located teams and workgroups, you are right! So, what’s the difference with virtual teams?

In co-located teams, work practices and business culture for how people are managed, how people communicate and how people work together are typically implicit and assumed. However, in a virtual team we must surface these practices and norms through explicit and deliberate management.

To explain further, in traditional teams and workgroups, the workspace is defined by the physical proximity with a shared physical environment. Virtual teams and workgroups are defined by how they environment they use to communicate and share information. But remember, technology is only important to virtual teams because it enables communication.

Of course, another issue is that many people may find themselves as part of both a physical and one or more virtual teams, adding to the management complexity of the situation.

In addition to the three key challenges I described above, I believe there are three remote workspace hygiene factors you need to consider to maintain a healthy virtual working environment – they are:

Control – managers need to have some system of control and similarly staff need to have clear expectations, roles and responsibilities assigned;
Physical resources – people need access to the physical resources they need to do their job (and not just technology resources either); and
Communications – clear, regular and explicit communication systems need to be in place.

Fail to provide these minimum “hygiene” factors and your virtual team is likely to run into trouble fairly soon. Unfortunately in a virtual team, you may not be aware that things are failing until it is too late.

These are some specific workspace considerations to think about that relate to these “hygiene” factors:

What information and knowledge needs to be shared?
How would each person prefer to receive information and interact with other people?
How will people coordinate the work or outcomes that need to be achieved?
How will you deal with disagreements or conflict?
How will you reward success and recognise achievements?

Now that you understand some of the management issues of virtual teams and remote workgroups, what are the steps you should work through when starting a new virtual team or refreshing an existing remote workgroup?

Identify all participants and stakeholders;
Identify expected outputs (i.e. goals, objective, processes etc);
Acquire infrastructure and resources;
Socialise and establish a group communication plan, protocols, roles and responsibilities;
Managing training and development needs; and
Review and refresh periodically.

Lets focus on a couple of aspects of this process – technology selection and the group communication plan:

Some tips on selecting technology to support virtual teams:

No single technology is essential to the success of a remote team or workgroup – technology is only important because it enables communication in virtual workspaces;
Consider both where and how people work with their information and communication needs;
Know when and when not to use technology to communicate; and
Don’t forget to provide training and support on the tools you select.

And finally, some tips on the group communication plan:

Use a combination of communication models – pick the method and content that match the needs of your virtual workspace.
Allow opportunities for “socialisation” and trust building (the newer Web 2.0 social computing tools are excellent for this purpose);
Be practical and considerate of team members other work commitments and other personal issues; and
Don’t forget to build in time for informal 1-to-1 communication outside the group communication plan.

Follow this model and the tips provided here and you are long way to implementing and sustaining healthy and happy virtual teams and remote workgroups. However, feel free to give me a call if you need further assistance with managing virtual teams or setting up the supporting resources and infrastructure.

Technorati Tags: virtual teams,remote workgroups,collaboration

Tips on collecting data for social network analysis (SNA)

2008-11-03T15:28:00.001+11:00

As a healthy but slight change from recent topics, I was going through some old notes and thought it might be worthwhile sharing some tips with you about collecting data for Social Network Analysis (SNA). You might also like to check out my article about social networks, titled Small World!

Just as brief overview, Social Network Analysis (SNA) is a tool that provides a technique for analysing informal networks. SNA is an interesting Knowledge Management (KM) "technology" since it provides one of the few methods for making knowledge activities in an organisation visible through the analysis of relationships between people. However, while the concept of SNA has only become a hot topic in KM recently, it is not a new idea and has origins in social research from back in the 1930's and 1940's. It is the availability of off the shelf SNA software and improvements in desktop computing power that have made it feasible to conduct outside of an academic research setting.

One of the key benefits of applying computing power to SNA is the ability to visualise networks and manipulate these visualisations in real-time. The analysis of social networks using this approach may reveal new insights that might have missed through statistical analysis alone. In the context of KM, SNA acts as a diagnostic gap-analysis tool for social networks in organisations. Broadly speaking, the benefits of interventions based on SNA should include:

Promoting greater collaboration within groups or teams;
Encouraging boundary spanning communication; and
Enabling information to flow where bottlenecks or breakdown previously existed.

So that’s what its all about, but what is the problem with collecting data for SNA?

While the results of an SNA project are focused on the intangible connections between people (and there is a lot of focus on this fun part), the process of collecting data for SNA is actually similar in fashion to data mining and it requires a bit of planning to do it effectively. Now, methodologies from data mining can be used as a point of reference to provide a basic process for SNA:

Selection.
Pre-processing.
Transformation.
Data Mining.
Interpretation/Evaluation.

Now, building further on the leading practices in data mining, issues for SNA are also similar and of primary concern to SNA projects are the following issues:

Scope - the dataset size and dimensionality;
Analysis Process – How will users interact with the results of the SNA study;
Missing data – unlike statistical analysis, you need to maximise the response rate, else the reported patterns may be misleading;
Understanding the network patterns – have we really understand what we are seeing;
Integration - between the survey tool, the SNA tool(s) used and other data that needs to be incorporated into the results; and
Privacy and security – this goes without saying, and some stakeholder management may be required depending the circumstances.

Putting aside issues around interpretation in steps 4 and 5 (which is an art, more than a science – see my other article), the most typical problems I’ve seen related to data collection in steps 1 to 3 have included:

Low response rates; and
Poor data quality.

However, while these might appear to be minor issues and something to be expected with any survey, these can have major impact the validity of the subsequent steps in the SNA process. They also significantly increase the effort (and cost) required to successfully complete an SNA project.

So, unless you are intending to gather data for SNA automatically – e.g. wiki mining – then I offer to two key tips for smoothing the data collection process:

Ensure you *really* engage with the community that will be participating in the SNA survey – you might need to offer rewards for taking part and you should allow plenty of time to follow up with people who need lots of encouragement to provide their responses, including individual follow up phone calls. However, depending on your scope, with the right effort up front you can achieve near perfect response rates – it just takes some planned effort.
Design your survey collection to maximise the quality of data – in particular you need a high degree of consistency around name data – e.g. James, Jimmy and Jack could all be the same person, but how will you know? If you intend to match SNA data to other organisational data, such as role or location, then you also need those names to match that survey data.

Good luck! Of course, let me know if you need help with your SNA project or contact my good friends over at Optimice.

Technorati Tags: data mining,data collection,Social Network Analysis,SNA,wiki mining,Optimice

I’m looking for a publisher for a book on Intranet 2.0

2008-11-03T14:04:00.001+11:00

Blogging is great fun, but you might know that I also enjoy writing more substantive articles. This is probably a bad habit I’ve picked up from the book chapter I’ve written in the past and all the writing I had to do while studying for my masters (an MBT from UNSW).

I have in my head a idea for a book on Intranet 2.0. Actually, its more than an idea – I already have a proposal drafted for a book I’m tentatively calling, the Next Generation Intranet Handbook (I’m not emotionally attached to the name!) and this is the synopsis:

Social computing tools (e.g. blogs, wikis, etc) may have appeared to have made a big splash inside the firewall, but advances in enterprise content management as well as legal and regulatory compliance drivers mean that traditional information management technologies are still alive and well. For corporate intranet and information managers, the daily reality of competing corporate and end‐user demands means that the modern intranet is neither a case of Intranet 1.0 or Intranet 2.0, but somewhere in between.

The Handbook covers all the key topics a Next Generation Intranet manager needs to understand: content management, portals, collaboration, social computing, knowledge management, enterprise search, Web‐Orientated Intranets, and unified communication and collaboration.

The Next Generation Intranet Handbook provides a guide to help corporate intranet and information managers to deal with the complexity of modern intranets by clearly outlining the processes and technologies they need to manage – from developing your plan through to selecting technology, this book will provide an essential reference for the journey ahead.

Yes, it might sound a little conservative, but lets face it there is already plenty of hype out there for free – you don’t want to buy a book when you can Google that for free.

Anyway, I’ve been asking around for advice and suggestions for contacts in the publishing industry that might be interested in such a book, but then today I thought what the heck… this is the generation of Web 2.0, why don’t I ask the crowd and see what happens?

So, I’m curious, can Web 2.0 accelerate the process of finding connections with potential publishers? I’m even open to other options of patronage, sponsorship or other methods of funding this project. Let me know what you think…. give me a call on 0414 233711 or email me at james dot dellow at chieftech com au if you want to talk seriously about this book idea.

BTW I would also love to hear your feedback on my synopsis – what would YOU like to see covered in a book about Intranet 2.0?

Technorati Tags: Intranet 2.0,intranets,book publishing

The 3 ways I expect Web 2.0 to change collaboration – and are you there yet?

2008-11-01T08:26:00.001+11:00

So, if I’m yawning a little ;-) about the current examples of collaboration inside organisations using technologies from the Web 2.0 collaboration suite (e.g. wikis), perhaps I should explain what characteristics I do expect to see?

Firstly, at high level I expect Web 2.0 to change collaboration in the following ways, listed in order of value they bring:

Make collaboration technologies more fit for purpose – Rather than a radical change to the tools we had in the past, Web 2.0 technologies, like AJAX and Rich Internet Application (RIA) approaches, are used to improve usability and accessibility – the results are tangible but in effect we are just building a better mousetrap, not introducing new modes of collaboration;
Add new functionality to existing collaboration functionality – Adding new, but incremental changes to the collaboration functionality we already have, this might include improving findability and awareness through social feedback mechanisms and content syndication to providing new ways for manipulating information, such as mashups – however, we still haven’t changed the fundamental patterns of collaboration, even if this makes it better; and
Support new models of collaboration that didn’t exist before – What the old collaboration technologies didn’t do so well is support emergent needs (Web-based tools like eRoom and Quickplace started to do this, but are still relatively inflexible compared to the Web 2.0 generation of tools), reflect the need for boundary spanning or boundary agnostics collaboration systems and enable dynamic people-to-people and conversational collaboration – however, the challenge is that while the impact should be a radical change to the patterns of collaboration, it may also be technically less tangible because it becomes more about how we use Web 2.0 technologies, rather than what they are.

You might detect that these characteristics are informed somewhat by some similar thinking to that I describe for Intranet 2.0. In fact I believe it will become increasingly difficult to distinguish between the concept of intranets and collaboration as intranets become less content publishing-centric. So, regardless of what kind of 2.0 we are talking about, when is comes to changing how we collaborate using Web 2.0 technologies my expectation is that the value and our ability to execute in practice on these characteristics will be determined by other factors in an organisation’s environment. Such as (but most likely not limited to):

Constraints of the underlying business culture, user IT literacy or business model – in some cases, if you build they won’t come, at least not without the right support and incentives;
Breadth of platforms deployed and richness of the Web 2.0 infrastructure available – Web 2.0 is not about a single tool or platform, instead it is a cloud of technologies – you will struggle to get *maximum* value from deploying a single blog or wiki (this is probably a subject for another post! In the meantime, think about the mechanics of the SLATES model).
Competitive Forces – This comes from many directions – competitors who using Web 2.0, the war for talent, changing business models, etc (think of Porter’s Five Forces model – which is also another reminder that its not the technology, but how we use it).

I believe its quite possible some organisations will struggle to get out of the starting blocks - reflecting what I’m seeing first hand and that research evidence is suggesting. Of course if you wait long enough the chances are that even if you do nothing the natural progress of software upgrades in traditional collaboration suites will see improvements and new functionality (characteristics 1 and 2) provided for you anyway. But having said that, even if the capability is installed (and it works), you may not actually use it or use it poorly due to other factors. The third characteristic is also harder to achieve, because it will take more than an upgrade.

Unfortunately its a competitive world out there and some organisations will leverage Web 2.0 well and others not so well.

That’s all for the moment. I’ll give some more specific use cases in another post that will explain how these high level characteristics play out in the collaboration space.

In the meantime, can you give me an example of organisations implementing collaboration that demonstrates the second (brand new functionality, not better functionality) or third characteristic (new patterns of collaboration)?

Technorati Tags: Web 2.0,Intranet 2.0,Enterprise 2.0,collaboration technologies,collaboration,AJAX,Rich Internet Applications,Porter's Five Forces,SLATES

The Video Effect

2008-10-31T20:10:00.001+11:00

Some new research suggests that videoconferencing is less effective because it distorts decision making but I’m not really sure if this is a good thing or a bad thing.

Perhaps this is really the effect of using videoconferencing with people who are only used to a one-way interaction with television? You know, the type of people who actually believe what television news tells them about the world.

On the other hand, will people who are now used to consuming user-generated content be more likely to avoid being mesmerised by people presenting on videoconference?

And, if we know about this problem, can we help to train and educate users to overcome it?

Technorati Tags: Collaboration,Television,Videoconferencing,Technology in the Workplace

McKinsey & Company, MISAustralia & Ross Dawson on balancing the reality of Web 2.0

2008-10-30T11:36:00.001+11:00

Not sure how I missed this from McKinsey & Company research report on Web 2.0 in business from back in July, however none the less it makes interesting reading. They report:

“that after an initial period of promise and trial, companies are coming to understand the difficulty of realizing some of Web 2.0’s benefits. Only 21 percent of the respondents say they are satisfied overall with Web 2.0 tools, while 22 percent voice clear dissatisfaction. Further, some disappointed companies have stopped using certain technologies altogether.”

However, they also conclude from the data that those companies that do feel they are getting benefits from Web 2.0 technologies, it has nothing do with size or region – there are other factors (I suspect that are organisational) at play. I was also pleased to see that RSS use is still growing, although wonder if this is sophisticated use as Enterprise RSS or simply publishing a few feeds.

Putting that into the local Australian context is this article in MISAustralia. Hat tip to Ross, who is also interviewed as part of the article, who correctly comments on his own blog that:

“The reality is that these tools are being used, primarily because they are allowing people to work more effectively. However there are real constraints for organizations in how they can be used, including security, confidentiality, and integration with existing systems.

Many organizations still need to recognize that these tools are a reality. That done, they can establish effective governance guidelines, and allow the use of these tools to develop within clear parameters, but without the rigid structure that stifles innovation. The balance is challenging to achieve, but the rewards are high.”

Naturally,I think the Intranet 2.0 strategic framework I’ve described is part of that reflection process that the people in organisations who acting as the champions for enterprise social computing and Web 2.0 need to make – they need honestly evaluate what they are really doing and make a proactive choice about where they want to go. As a word of caution, and reflecting both the McKinsey & Company report and Ross’ comments, I recently came across an organisation where they had installed but then almost switched off all their internal social computing tools. A few champions only just managed to save the day.

Technorati Tags: McKinsey & Company,Ross Dawson,MISAustralia,Intranet 2.0,Web 2.0,Enterprsie 2.0,Enterprise Social Computing,IT Governance

Larry Cannell on the influence of Web 2.0 on intranets

2008-10-30T07:09:00.001+11:00

I think Larry Cannell from the Burton Group starts off with a strong thesis in this presentation about the influence of Web 2.0 on intranets, which makes it worth looking at even if I’m a little unsure about the rest.

I like the way he describes at the impact of Web 2.0 as “spoiling” users by focusing on them, while intranets are focused on transactions. In a way you can even conceive that the communication role of intranets is transactional – e.g. come here, read this and now go away.

He also makes some good points about the tendency to over secure information in organisations. However, that particular discussion actually has value regardless of the technology – e.g. there are operational benefits even in some document management systems for opening up access to information and keeping the security model simple.

I’ve also always said that successful portals combine the information and resources that the organisation needs employees to see, with the stuff employees want to see – and its the employee wants that will act as a anchor to keep them coming back to use it. This really is where the Web 2.0 experience of usability and functionality can teach the enterprise a thing or two.

As we well know, for knowledge workers at least, work isn’t just about completing transactions. No wonder there is a fundamental mismatch between intranets and what their users need. Perhaps the simple rule for Intranet 2.0 is to treat its users as customers?

Technorati Tags: intranets,Intranet 2.0,Web 2.0,Enterprise 2.0,portals,usability,information security,information access

A practical Intranet 2.0 strategic framework

2008-10-29T10:58:00.001+11:00

You might have a detected a change in mood here on this blog in recent posts, particularly in relation to that thing we call Enterprise 2.0/enterprise social computing?

Really there isn’t a change in mood as such, but I do feel we are reaching a point where the hype around this stuff is beginning to disappear and it is time to look seriously at how we go about really putting it into productive practice (for example, Luis’ focus on freeing us from a dependency on the inbox). As Samuel Driessen comments on another recent post on this topic:

“the current tools support the old KM theory in a better way by: be more usable, easier to adopt, more social, offer more communication channels.”

I don’t actually want to get into the Knowledge Management vs Enterprise 2.0 debate again, but speaking more generally and about intranets specifically, I have to agree that we’ve simply never had it so good before. For example, just look at what Nathan has achieved here in Australia. I’m still not sure if I agree its an example of Enterprise 2.0, but that really doesn’t matter if there is a positive business outcome, which there clearly is in this case.

And here is the problem – the reality is that many organisations aren’t going to reach the idealistic goals of Enterprise 2.0, at least not yet - but you know, that is probably ok. If we are ready to shift our focus and assumptions about intranets away from static content publishing, then what we do have is some cool and exciting new (and not so new) technologies on hand that can improve the way people work with information and how they connect with each other. But in doing that, we need to avoid the risk of setting expectations too high. So how do we do that?

Well, for those of you who haven’t yet read it please take a look at my Intranet 2.0 article, which is now available for download (PDF, 185KB) – this is the unedited version and is a little longer than the one published in Image & Data Manager (IDM) magazine. It reflects my thinking on this space that has been developing over the last year or so with the objective of developing a practical Intranet 2.0 strategic framework.

As always I would love to hear your comments.

In the meantime, maybe I can find something else to blog about ;-)

Technorati Tags: intranets,next generation intranets,intranet 2.0,Enterprise 2.0,enterprise social computing,enterprise social software,stategy,knowledge management

Building a community of customers on-line

2008-10-29T07:42:00.001+11:00

I was digging through some old electronic files this morning and came across an article I wrote that was aimed at small business owners, however I’m not actually sure if it was ever published online anywhere. The file is date stamped from September 2003… which will explain why it doesn’t mention any of the current buzz words. Some of the ideas might be considered common knowledge now, but then again after the recent NAB experience with My Future Bank, you have to wonder! Read through and you’ll find a simple three step model for building trust (Encouraging, Demonstrating and Contributing). Enjoy!

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Building a community of customers on-line

What to do once your Web site has been built has been the perennial challenge for e-commerce. Selling on the Web might work for some, but on-line stores aren’t for everyone. In most cases you still need to deliver your product or service in the real world. Meanwhile Web hosting, domain names and graphic design all cost money. Should you just keep your fingers crossed and write your World Wide Web presence off as an advertising expense?

An alternative is to stop thinking about trying to sell on-line and instead to start treating your customers as an on-line community. The potential for Internet communities exists wherever Web users share something in common. What could your customers have in common? Perhaps it’s an everyday business problem, a social issue or a shared leisure activity. For example there is an accounting firm that has created a community around a free on-line footy tipping competition – it has nothing do with the services they sell but it builds goodwill with their clients.

Whatever it is, if the success of your business depends on building trust and recognition with your customers, then tapping into this social capital might help you in terms of the following:

Becoming your customer’s preferred supplier or service provider;
Getting additional referrals;
Building stronger working relationships with your customers; and
Providing a way of obtaining feedback that can generate new product ideas or sales opportunities.

Don’t use e-mail like a sledgehammer

Unfortunately some businesses that try to build a Web-based customer community take a sledgehammer approach. They gather a subscriber list and then bombard it with e-mails that don’t provide anything of value or interest. Opt-in e-mail marketing is fine if your objective is to advertise, but it is unlikely to build trust or loyalty with your customers.

In an on-line community people will volunteer themselves to be a part of it – there is no need to coerce. The members get something from participation – not the offer of a 10% discount on something they don’t want.

Building trust with an on-line community

It is important to avoid the temptation to rush the process of building trust with an on-line community. These relationships need to be nurtured over time by demonstrating a genuine interest in the community and what the participants hold in common.

Typically this process takes place over three stages:

Encouraging - Inviting new members to join;
Demonstrating - Showing commitment to the community’s interests by providing information and resources relevant to them; and
Contributing – With time your customers begin to reciprocate and will give information and resources back to you and their virtual community.

Do you really want a customer community?

If this sounds like a lot of work, well it is; no one said building an on-line customer community would be easy! However, if you think this idea would benefit your business, make sure you are willing to invest the time and effort required, and make use of the professionals who can help you to build your site, write content and plan the development of your on-line community.

A bad Web site might just waste your money, but a poor attempt at creating an on-line customer community will definitely do your business more harm than good.

Technorati Tags: online communities,social capital,social software,social media,2003