EMC's Documentum and eRoom gets a 2.0 make over with "Magellan"

For those of us that live and breath large enterprise computing AND have an interest in Enterprise Web 2.0, this is interesting - EMC's Documentum and eRoom are already widely deployed enterprise content and collaboration tools and their new proposed client platform, Magellan, could provide an alternative to Microsoft SharePoint (for collaboration) and IBM's Connections/Quickr. From the end-user perspective, Magellan will provide Web 2.0 collaboration features, such as Wikis, blogs, RSS, and tagging:

"Magellan shows a much needed change in the thinking at Documentum. One size, no longer fits all. Previous iterations of Documentum web UI’s have always started with a full featured application and then grayed out to limit features a user would not use. But what was forgotten was all these gray menu options were really a lot of clutter making the product look complex. Magellan finally changes this and creates a UI for casual users. That’s right power users have Webtop and casual users will have their own.

The user interface is clean with simple document lists to show content within a directory with only a handful of attributes presented (but these can be customized). Gone are the list of menu options that make the Webtop UI look like the old Workspace Windows client. But the system also presents Web 2.0 functionality in that a second window shows discussions on the project or individual document.

Better still the UI is not only clean but sexy. Learning from the best in UI, Magellan adds interfaces introduced by Apple for iTunes and iPod. In addition to standard thumbnail directory views, Magellan offers a browse option similar to Cover Flow. While search adds a filtering option similar to that in iTunes for finding a song based on a genre and artist."

I must admit, I never thought I would hear EMC's interfaces being described as "sexy" or inspired by Apple ;-)

Also see this post and a couple of YouTube videos from EMC World 2008.

Technorati tags: EMC, EMC World 2008, Documentum, eRoom, Magellan, Microsoft Sharepoint, IBM Connections, IBM Quickr, Web 2.0, Enterprise Web 2.0, Apple

Simon Revell at Pfizer gets Enterprise RSS

Great to see someone else getting Enterprise RSS - in an interview in ComputerWorld, Simon Revell, Pfizer's manager of enterprise 2.0 technology, talks about the value of RSS:

"Pfizer is about to go live with an enterprise RSS suite for its R & D employees, he added.

'RSS has huge potential,' he noted. 'Even if you ignore doing any of the other things in this space in the enterprise ...RSS has a role to play. We have a whole bunch of content inside of Pfizer that we want to expose. We have a lot of internal Web sites, Internet sites and apps. And anyone in any role has to touch quite a few of them in their work. The newest version of [Microsoft's] SharePoint is completely RSS enabled so ... every single piece of SharePoint can be exposed. Users can see when folks are reading content.'

In addition, unlike email where people can get bogged down by correspondence they don't really want or need to read, RSS allows people more control over what content they consume and how they consume it, he added.

'[The enterprise RSS suite] is a social solution very similar to BlogLines where you can see what other people are subscribing to and how they react to it," he added. 'That fuels the social aspect of it.'"

Pfizer already have an established wiki ("Pfizerpedia") and are also looking social networking.

Technorati tags: Simon Revell, Pfizer, Enterprise RSS, RSS, Enterprise 2.0, SharePoint, Wiki, Social Networking

Pirates of the Enterprise 2.0

I've just finished reading Empire of Blue Water by Stephan Talty, which is a book about 17th-century pirates in the Caribbean and their impact on the history of the New World and Europe. Central to this story was Henry Morgan, a pirate in the service of the English crown, who with his volunteer army was able to consistently out manoeuvre the Spanish who were constrained by their rigid centralised culture and government.

I've also just been reading an article from the May edition of Harvard Business Review about leadership in massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs), titled Leadership's Online Labs. There are some interesting parallels between the two, particularly the descriptions of the democratic and transitory leaderships styles and structures within both the games and pirate culture that provide mechanisms for motivating people.

At a stretch we might even compare these parallels with the bigger story of Enterprise 2.0. However, we might not want to take this story too far - in the end, Morgan was a loyalist and eventually became part of the establishment and hunted later hunted down his peers who wouldn't renounce their pirate ways.

His lifestyle of hard drinking also contributed to his early death - perhaps too much social media will be bad for us too?

(Thinking about Enterprise 2.0 and pirates I'm also reminded of Monty Python's short film The Crimson Permanent Assurance, but I digress...)

Technorati tags: Empire of Blue Water, Stephen Talty, Pirates, Henry Morgan, MMORPGs, Harvard Business Review, HBR, Enteprise 2.0, Monty Python

More conversations about Enterprise RSS

Following the Enterprise RSS Day of Action, the conversation about Enterprise RSS continued to ripple across the blogosphere:

• Yuriy Krylov provided a detailed overview of RSS and the value of Enterprise RSS to organisations - he concludes, "Centralized, enterprise-class RSS infrastructure is an enabler of more than news consumption. Social, asynchronous feedback loops are critical aspects of collaboration and are made possible by investing in RSS as infrastructure."
• James MacLennan described the impact of RSS-ifying internal project system and Dennis McDonald discussed why "it is not a “slam dunk” that all IT staff will have an immediate affinity for benefiting from the efficient information flow and improved collaboration and innovation potential that RSS supports." (also see Oscar Berg's thoughts on Jim MacLennan's post).
• Jeff Nolan reflects on the future of RSS building on the areas where Newsgator is seeing success with RSS but notes "enterprise users are the last to benefit from these advances because they are dependent upon IT. It will happen but the use cases we have to build to will be specific and in some cases tedious in an effort to get a flywheel spinning that elevates RSS in the enterprise to a strategic focus."

However, what is starting to grab my attention right now are some separate but related conversations about the future of the office productivity suite, eliminating email and activity streaming. But more on all that in another post.

Technorati tags: RSS, Enterprise RSS, Enterprise RSS Day of Action, Yuriy Krylov, James MacLennan, Dennis McDonald, Oscar Berg, Jeff Nolan, Newsgator

Social Productivity: A strategic choice or Web 2.0 revolution?

A few weeks or so ago, Sam Lawrence via Twitter pointed me to a post he made at the end of last year about how office suite software (i.e. word processing, presentations, spreadsheets etc) hasn't changed in over 20 years but that:

"Traditional office software features are being absorbed into browsers and OSes. The next level of digital office work is shifting from a disjointed file exchange work model to one that's much more connected, contextual and collaborative. In the old model, users create documents in isolation and exchange them with other isolated users--all insulated from and out of sync with the bigger picture of relevant interpersonal activity. In the new collaboration model, connected people understand when, what and why to engage and they do it in a unified environment. They use file-sharing only as a supplement, when and if it's necessary. We refer to this collaboration model as Social Productivity, which frames our daily work activity in the "we" vs. "me" context and then delivers new functionality to help with these connections. This more accurately mimics our work-with-others activity vs. the produce-alone-and-distribute part of our daily equation. Now we can get context at a glance, work doesn't disappear once we hit "send," and we stay connected to the efforts most important to us."

It reminded me that many years ago I heard Dale Chatwin talk about the Australian Bureau of Statistics, a government organisations, as a Lotus Notes case study. A quick search actually turned up a case study (PDF) about this particularly story, which dates back to the 1990s. It makes interesting reading in light of Sam's ideas, since this organisation did exactly what he describes as "Social Productivity" - they developed databases:

"that permit all members of a group to work inside the same database simultaneously, so that a document that is being collaboratively created does not need to be emailed around to the members of the group with each person having a separate stored copy but is kept in a central location... The central repository and shared workspace of the workgroup databases is not only a freeing tool for collaborative co-creation of knowledge it is also a vehicle for transparency and knowledge sharing, as other persons not in the workgroup can still access the workgroup's database and see the information there and the work in its current state of progress... Almost all of the information and knowledge in the ABS is held on and processed through Lotus Notes® Workgroup Databases, and almost all persons have access to almost all databases, making the entire organisation's information and knowledgebase transparent, freely accessible and available to all members at all times."

Even closer to Sam's vision, the organisation's "elimination of desktop word processors" means that for majority of users at the time the office suite was embedded as part of the Lotus Notes "browser" (i.e. the Lotus Notes client). This doesn't mean everyone was happy with the decision - reading the case study, it looks a combination of issues affected their experience:

• Functionality in the Lotus Notes text editor versus a stand alone word processor;
• Dealing with upgrades that changed the Lotus Notes interface;
• The need to collaborate and share information externally; and
• The lack of choice.

Incidentally users still had access to a separate spreadsheet application, however one user commented:

"Lotus 123 is terrible with anything to do with Excel"

A reminder that not all office suite software is the same.

Now its been a while since I last saw Dale and I'm not sure where this organisation is these days with Lotus Notes, but I recommend you read the case study and draw your own conclusions to decided if you think their strategy was a success or not. Certainly some were positive about the approach. But what is clear is that they were unique in adopting this strategy and I don't know of any other organisation that has attempted the same thing.

I wonder if they were attempting to do this now, what would be more important - the strategic decision to implement a social productivity approach or the quality of the user experience in our Web 2.0 environment. What do you think?

Technorati tags: Sam Lawrence, Jive Software, Microsoft Office, Lotus Notes, Australian Bureau of Statistics, ABS, Social Productivity, Dale Chatwin

Reflecting on the Enterprise RSS Day of Action

Just less than a week ago a few people with an eye on the big picture of Enterprise Web 2.0 joined me for a global Enterprise RSS Day of Action. I've already thanked a whole bunch of people on Twitter and tried to link to every post I could find that talked about Enterprise RSS (If I missed you, add a link to your post as a comment below). But just to be sure I wanted to say to everyone who contributed to the wiki, shared their experiences with Enterprise RSS directly with me or joined us online for the conversation about Enterprise RSS on the day... a big, big thank you!

Now, what did I learn from the day?

• People are interested in using "feeds" inside organisations, although most of the people I spoke with are only at the stage of RSS-ifying existing content and providing users with desktop RSS reader. Some are constrained by the dependency on other software deployments - either at the server (waiting for a version of their CMS or portal that supports RSS) or the desktop (waiting for an upgrade to an email client with RSS support built in). Unfortunately RSS isn't seen yet as a key part of the messaging infrastructure.
• Enterprise RSS is one of two things to most people - its either part of the Enterprise 2.0 infrastructure, what you might call "social middleware" (from Mike Gotta), or a solution to a particular business problem. I think the challenge for the business issue perspective is that it may not require Enterprise RSS infrastructure to solve it (which is typical of the first step being taken by many organisations, as described above), but without an Enterprise RSS infrastructure you don't offer the best possible user experience. In the longer term it also means that there is no platform for adding value or for meeting emerging needs as the use of RSS grows. This just means we have to be smart - to champion Enterprise RSS you need to understand the big picture, but to sell it to individuals inside an organisations (particularly the decision makers) you need to make sure you know why it might be important to them.
• If you take the time to explain what RSS and Enterprise RSS is all about, people want it. Unfortunately even people who live and breath information technology all day long aren't always across every information technology out there. During my own internal brown bag session I could see that as people understood more, they could see the opportunities for using Enterprise RSS as part of the mix with other enterprise information management solutions. In some respects, Enterprise RSS is a missing link.
• Also, in most cases you can't talk about Enterprise RSS without talking about email!

Overall, I don't think that Enterprise RSS Day of Action changed the world, but this was never the intention - I'm just pleased that we're having this conversation. However, I'm also feeling a bigger disconnect between what excites the external world of Web 2.0 and the reality inside the firewall - more on that in another post, however this post from Jeremy Thomas is one of a few out there that captures something of what I'm talking about:

"When I started I came in guns ablazing with a consultant’s mindset. “What, no data warehouse, no sweat. We’ll implement a master data management strategy and breathe life into dying data. And let me tell you about this nifty little thing called Enterprise 2.0. It’s going to revolutionize the world, man. Ever heard of SLATES?”. Sarcasm aside, people had actually heard about Enterprise 2.0 and were actually keen on the idea. But seeing things from the other side I’m starting to think Enterprise 2.0 will be overwhelming for many."

In these still early days, being an Enterprise RSS champion requires a delicate balance between being visionary and pragmatic.

BTW The Enterprise RSS Day of Action was overshadowed by other Web 2.0 related events going on around the world, but it didn't go unnoticed that Microsoft's big new Web 2.0 move, Live Mesh, is underpinned by RSS. Quite funny really to see this blog comment about Mesh:

"One of my pain point has been the lack of syncronisation of RSS feeds that I’ve read between my PC, laptop and work PC. I’m hoping Live Mesh may be the solution for this."

Hmm. And so the story of Enterprise RSS continues...

What did you do about the Enterprise RSS Day of Action or think about Enterprise RSS more generally? Add your comments and experiences below.

Technorati tags: Enterprise RSS Day of Action, Enterprise RSS, RSS, Web 2.0, Enterprise Web 2.0, email, information management, information overload, Jeremy Thomas, Mike Gotta, Microsoft, Live Mesh, Mesh, Social Middleware

From Melcrum's Internal Comms Hub: Making sense of Enterprise RSS

To coincide with the Enterprise RSS Day of Action last week, I wrote a short article for Melcrum's Internal Comms Hub, titled Making sense of Enterprise RSS. Due to some technical issues it couldn't be published as normal on the day and instead a special PDF version was posted here (my article is on pages 3-4 of the PDF).

BTW the Internal Comms Hub is a subscription site, but you can sign up for a 7-day free trial to check out the rest of the content they have available.

Technorati tags: Enterprise RSS Day of Action, Enterprise RSS, Internal Communicators, Melcrum, Internal Comms Hub, PDF

Following the sun... more on the Enterprise RSS Day of Action

As the Enterprise RSS Day of Action around the world draws to a close (its already Friday here in Australia - incidentally our ANZAC day public holiday), here are some links to some more coverage:

• Our Legal industry Enterprise RSS champion, Doug Cornelius, puts forward his argument for Enterprise RSS by asking you to "Take a look at your email inbox. If your inbox looks anything like my inbox, it is full of email from the administrative departments transmitting updated policies, events and information. Almost none of these emails are urgent or require me to take any action. So why are they clogging up my inbox, getting in the way of client communication and urgent communication?"
• Ed Brill comments, "I worry slightly about focusing on the protocol itself versus the content and delivery approach, but we can use this to move beyond RSS as a buzzword towards solution-oriented value", and also link to a useful new article about RSS in Lotus Notes (probably a good starting point for any Lotus Notes shops out there).
• Corey Lewis at the LaunchSquad (Newsgator is their client) marks the day and writes, "For anybody who deals with high volumes of information on a daily basis, RSS is an essential work tool. We'd be swamped without it, and waste many hours a week trolling through different blogs and news sources looking for the information we could have had delivered right to us. If you're not using RSS already (you admittedly may be even if you don't know it), hop on board - today's as good a day as any."
• Meanwhile over on the Newsgator blog, they remind us about their widget for "the Day of Action. If you would like to track the day's activities, you can add this widget to your start page, social networking site, or blog with one simple click."
• Scott Niesen at Attensa also blogs about their day presenting about Enterprise RSS at a chocolate factory - hmm, my kind of Enterprise RSS ;-)
• Thanks also to Jesse Wilkins for helping to spread the word.

BTW Check out links to some other posts from the day here and here.

If I've missed anyone, let me know - just comment here or drop me a line.

Technorati tags: Enterprise RSS Day of Action, Enterprise RSS, RSS, Doug Cornelius, Ed Brill, IBM, Lotus Notes, Corey Lewis, LaunchSquad, Newsgator, Widgets, Scott Niesen, Attensa, Jesse Wilkins

A few more Enterprise RSS Day of Action posts

A few more Enterprise RSS Day of Action posts:

• David Hobbie is "up to my elbows in Enterprise RSS as my firm has been evaluating various vendors and I've been making presentations to groups and individuals about RSS over the last two weeks in particular" and shares some links where he is discovering the power of RSS;
• Chris Heller from Grey Sparling Solutions blogged about using a PeopleSoft solution they provide to allow desktop RSS readers to access secure RSS feeds from PeopleSoft... they have also announced a competition for a free copy of their software - what a great idea!
• Hat tips also to Jasbinder Bains and fredscapes (in Dutch, but I presume its positive as the Dutch are pretty switched on kinds of people).

Also, while checking out who is saying what, I found this article from last September, Is Enterprise RSS the Next Killer App?, quoting Forrester Research.

PS I've also spotted a few people twittering about the day of action - so thanks for helping to spread the word.

Technorati tags: Enterprise RSS Day of Action, Enterprise RSS, David Hobbie, Chris Heller, Grey Sparling Solutions, PeopleSoft, Forrester Research, Jasbinder Bains, fredscapes

Welcome to the start of the Enterprise RSS Day of Action

This morning, a couple of things to get us started:

• Attensa shares their own 10 Things About Attensa Enterprise RSS in response to the 10 things I want!
• Doug Cornelius helps to promote the day of action, and says "I consider RSS to be the glue that holds together Web 2.0 and especially Enterprise 2.0. Blogs and wikis are great tools. But they are even more powerful when they are pushing content out through RSS feeds. It is much more efficient to have relevant content pushed to you, rather than you having to seek it out."
• Janet Johnson unpacks the debate about Enterprise 2.0 technology adoption, saying "enterprise RSS adoption is coming into fruition - but why has it taken us so many years to finally get here? Why do the folks considering enterprise RSS today have to be the 'forward thinking' ones? Because of fear" and then quoting some good advice from Martin Koser, "Don’t spend hours pondering the details and splitting hairs - actually use this stuff and find out."

I do hope you enjoy the Enterprise RSS Day of Action - it is as Martin says, a day to find out about this stuff. Now, I have to go, as I have my own brown bag presentation to prepare for later today. :-)

Technorati tags: Enterprise RSS Day of Action, Enterprise RSS, Enterprise 2.0, Attensa, Doug Cornelius, Janet Johnson, Martin Koser

Enterprise RSS in the news

As we approach the Enterprise RSS Day of Action tomorrow, just a quick round up of posts talking about Enterprise RSS:

• Lots of people are talking about Forresters' Global Enterprise Web 2.0 Market Forecast: 2007 To 2013, which I understand includes a prediction that the RSS Market is expected to grow from $78M in 2007 to $563M in 2013. Scott Niesen from Attensa disagrees with RRW's assessment that the IT department is a barrier, commenting "We are working with forward thinking IT professionals who are partnering with business teams to integrate Web 2.0 technologies to enhance existing systems and business processes. Rather than isolated projects, we are working on enterprise-wide deployments designed to deliver communication and collaboration to every member of the workforce."
• Newsgator's Enterprise RSS blog helps to promote the Enterprise RSS Day of Action, reminding us about the reason for the day - "there are still many companies just embarking on an Enterprise RSS initiative and James’ wiki will be a great resource for these companies."
• Stu Downes has also tempted you with a short webcast about RSS - I've seen his "RSS Scribble" on our CSC wiki and hopefully he'll be able to share it with the rest of you in time for the Enterprise RSS Day of Action.
• And don't forget, Charlene Li says RSS/XML is the social technology she would like to be.

Have you written a post about Enterprise RSS that I've missed? Let me know.

Technorati tags: Enterprise RSS Day of Action, Enterprise RSS, Forrester Research, RSS, Web 2.0, Scott Niesen, Attensa, ReadWriteWeb, Newsgator, Stu Downes, CSC, Charlene Li

If you could be a social technology, be RSS/XML

Charlene Li is Vice President & Principal Analyst at Forrester Research was asked, if she could be a social technology, which would she be? Charlene Li replied:

"RSS/XML. Nobody would know who I am or what my initials mean, but I make everything work together. I’d be the foundation of mashups, social applications, and widgets. Without me, the social Web would grind to a halt."

Nice reply ;-)

And remember, the Enterprise RSS Day of Action is only a day away!

Technorati tags: Charlene Li, Forrester Research, RSS, XML, Social Software, Social Computing, Enterprise RSS Day of Action, Enterprise RSS

Streaming and Batching

This is a great post from Ross Mayfield and a hat tip for the link to this NYT article (I'm a sucker for this kind of thing) that reminds us that techniques we use for managing our inboxes have nothing to do with the medium, its more about individual work practices and the efficiencies of batch processing.

Ross' point here is spot on:

"We've known for a while now that creating private spaces for collaboration can aid productivity by taking some email out of the inbox.  And more recently with wikis and the right practices, groups can agree on protocols to be more effective and adapt them rapidly... this needs discipline, but for the whole group."

This goes to the heart of what I've pitched as the solution for managing email overload in the past, where I advised:

"Only as a group can you deal with eliminating the source of the problem and develop workable protocols to help reduce the e-mail burden on each other."

In that same post I was also commenting about the potential for the use and misuse of RSS:

"I think the same lessons will apply to RSS, but there are new opportunities with this particular communication technology to help reduce information overload through a combination of more open communication styles, content filtering, and content mining... In other words, RSS could be used as a group communication technology where email is essentially peer-to-peer. In fact, using RSS in combination with email rather than as a replacement may be the best way to reduce and control information overload on both fronts.

However, on its own RSS will in no way be a magic bullet - if applied badly in organisations, people should be prepared for more of the same. In the meantime I can't wait to see how the email productivity advisors with their quick fixes evolve into RSS experts..."

(BTW I honestly didn't intend for this to be a post about RSS - let alone Enterprise RSS - but its funny how it comes back to RSS afterall!)

Of course, naturally Ross pushes the wiki perspective but I think what he suggests in his post about the interplay between streaming and batching of communication is essentially correct. At this point I can't but help think about Sam Lawrence's comments on Mike Gotta's blog that "Social software is email inside out", but that's a post for another day :-)

Technorati tags: Information Overload, Email, Social Software, Ross Mayfield, RSS, Enterprise RSS, Sam Lawrence, Mike Gotta

Enterprise RSS Day Of Action - Memes are Bubbling

Nice summary post by Janet about recent Enterprise RSS Day of Action posts on the Attensa blog. Janet says she'll be spending Thursday morning talking communication and collaboration online. Care to join her?

Technorati tags: Enterprise RSS Day of Action, Enterprise RSS, Janet Johnson, Attensa

Dion Hinchcliffe: RSS and ATOM a hallmark of WOA adoption

From Dion Hinchcliffe, discussing how Web 2.0 success stories driving WOA and informing SOA and in his of 4 things that define what WOA (Web-Oriented Architecture) will look like in the enterprise:

"A rich web of REST resources. Instead of a few point SOA services, enterprise data will be exposed through millions of granular REST resources (like the Web itself), which almost any application than can consume HTTP and XML can use. Much higher levels of syndication using RSS and ATOM will also be a hallmark of WOA adoption as it has been so successful in unleashing the Web of data on the Internet."

As we've been talking about around the Enterprise RSS Day of Action, there is a lot more to Enterprise RSS than meets the eye.

Technorati tags: Enterprise RSS Day of Action, Enterprise RSS, Dion HinchcliffeSOA, WOA, REST, RSS, Web-Oriented Architecture, Web 2.0

Unmanagement, to be or not to be?

From time to time this issue raises its misinformed head – well, IMHO anyway. One of the recent examples was this post on the Fast Forward blog by Jon Husband titled, Retrospective on KM and the Impact of Web 2.0. He writes:

“Knowledge management (KM) sometimes seems like the business buzzword that won’t go away. But that may be changing. As Web 2.0 penetrates and spreads through workplaces, will it render KM as it was once known obsolete … or not ?”

Concluding:

“While through the spread of social computing KM may be coming out of an initial identity crisis, the advent and rapid spread of what is termed Enterprise 2.0 has helped create for KM a new Identity Crisis 2.0. Today it seems clear that the new crop of collaboration tools, platforms and methods for enhanced collaboration are rapidly synthesizing and integrating fragmented or separate components of what was understood to be a KM-oriented system a few short years ago.”

His post had quite a few responses, including comments from Stephen Collins, Doug Cornelius, Dan Keldsen and Paula Thornton.

Now, I have to say that this whole KM as social computing thing is getting rather boring really and I tried my best not to get sucked into it... but here we go...

I think Jon writes some interesting stuff (on his own blog) and the issues listed in his post are worthy of reflection, but a lot of the arguments here are underpinned by mistaking information management for knowledge management. Now this isn’t to say that Web 2.0 isn’t having a huge impact on the information workplace, because it is. Social computing has also been a breath of fresh air into KM, mainly because of the disappointments caused by failed KM initiatives that were really poorly implemented information management projects.

The other part of the argument that I’m not convinced about either is that 2.0 isn’t about the technology – now I guess this depends on how you apply the “2.0” label. In my book if you use it in reference to Web 2.0 how can it not be about the technology? And McAfee’s warning about the discomfort that Enterprise 2.0 might create is clearly about the impact that social computing technologies have on existing political structures inside organisations. If of course you are using the label 2.0 to reference some other major step change either in parallel or unrelated to Web 2.0, then it may well have nothing to do with the technology…

Now the practice of Knowledge Management mostly contains tools and techniques that have been borrowed from other disciplines, many of which either don’t require technology or the technology simply plays a role as either an indirect or direct enabler. For example, Social Network Analysis (SNA) pre-dates KM by many, many decades but SNA software has made it widely accessible and practical to apply in a (Knowledge) management context. Story telling is as old as mankind, but is recognised as a management tool – you don’t need technology to tell a story, but technology might be used to record and share a story. The unique nature of KM is to bring these tools and technique together with the objective of helping people in groups (organisations or otherwise) share what they know more effectively. Like any kind of management focus area it is a deliberate act to do KM and there is nothing magical. And just like you have a quality manager, a HR manager, a finance manager, naturally you might find a knowledge manager. Social computing on the other hand is bottom-up – it’s a kind of “unmanagement” if you like.

But the important point in this discussion is that you can take the technology out of KM and still do KM. However, KM has a lot of technology enabled tools and is often applied in technology enabled environments (e.g. large, distributed organisations) so it ends up having a socio-technical impact that is focused on the computing tools. Now Web 2.0 is also all about the technology and if you are talking about applying Web 2.0 or social computing inside an organisation, then it is going to have a socio-technical impact too. This means of course that Web 2.0 tools can be used in many different ways, and not strictly as pure social computing or Enterprise 2.0 tools.

So, I can understand why people might think Enterprise 2.0 will replace or supersede KM. The real fact of the matter is that many KM people simply recognised the benefits of these tools early on and have added them under the umbrella of KM, but they don't own them.

My reflection is that perhaps what Jon should have titled his post was, Retrospective on MANAGEMENT and the Impact of Web 2.0. Or maybe a blog post on the future of unmanagement, now that would be interesting.

Technorati tags: Knowledge Management, Web 2.0, Social computing, Social software, Enterprise 2.0, wikis, blogs, Jon Husband, Fast Forward Blog, Stephen Collins, Doug Cornelius, Dan Keldsen, Paula Thornton, unmanagement, SNA, Social Network Analysis, Storytelling

From Bill French at MyST: Three enterprise RSS use cases

I'm trying all social media channels to raise awareness and encourage support for the Enterprise RSS Day of Action. Via LinkedIn Answers I've exchanged a few messages with Bill French at MyST (who were already listed on the wiki's list of vendors) - in response to some input from Jack Vinson, he made a great point about the many directions that business RSS feeds need to be shared:

"Jack makes a good point - the term "enterprise" is used in overloaded contexts frequently. RSS (itself) is also [frequently] used casually and without specific business requirements in mind.

I like to classify RSS use cases - three that are helpful include customer-facing, employee-facing (which are ideally secure), and partner-facing (which may or may not require a security context). There are others of course, but this is a good high-level starting point."

He also adds some others comments that certainly mirror some of the other conversations I've been having about Enterprise RSS in the last few weeks:

"The issue of feed source is also important - generating feeds for improved employee productivity and awareness is a relatively new and emerging science. For this use case, security and automation are two of the bigger challenges that raise some devils in the details. Is it enough to secure a feed, or does the use case require a security context for each item in the feed? (e.g., are there subscribers that see a subset of the items?)

Most enterprise applications (which contain the bulk of the content that employees might appreciate in RSS form) are unable to produce RSS easily, and even those that can seem to create a feed have not fully entertained the security issues. After all - most enterprise applications *do* have stringent security contexts for each user."

I also found this old post on the MyST site from late 2005 that made me chuckle (in a good way!), titled, Techno-terms have a habit of sticking -- Blog and RSS are simply the latest.

Technorati tags: Enterprise RSS Day of Action, Enterprise RSS, RSS, Bill French, MyST, Jack Vinson

Newsgator coverage in RRW: AideRSS and Inbox 3.0

With the Enterprise RSS Day of Action only a few days away, good to see Newsgator getting some coverage on ReadWriteWeb:

• AideRSS is now integrated with Newsgator's online reader, which (currently) filters the top 1000 subscribed blogs for popularity.
• A new version of their RSS reader for Outlook has been launched, called Inbox 3.0 - "including enhanced relevancy, attention reporting, easy subscription adding, flag synchronization and a redesigned UI".

What's interesting is that both of these announcements include features that involve elements of social filtering of content, which is of course is part of that suite of functionality available in an Enterprise RSS system that goes beyond simply RSS-ifying content and giving users an application to read feeds.

Technorati tags: Enterprise RSS Day of Action, Enterprise RSS, ReadWriteWeb, Newsgator, Outlook, AideRSS

Me, Matt and a podcast about Enterprise RSS

OK. I haven't quite got used to the idea of me being interviewed for a podcast, but I enjoyed the conversation with Matt. Of course, its all about Enterprise RSS and the Enterprise RSS Day of Action! And no, I couldn't remember what SLATES stands for either, but Matt has provided some links :-)

Technorati tags: Enterprise RSS Day of Action, Enterprise RSS, podcast, Matt Moore, SLATES

Things you want from Enterprise RSS...

As I was putting together these slides, I asked via Twitter, about the things people wanted from Enterprise RSS... these are the suggestions I heard back:

Satisfied staff, participation, sales, best customer service, informed people, engaged executives, fun, knowledge management, communication, no email, Industry, competitor, major clients, suppliers, law changes, top industry bloggers, company events, internal broadcasts, most added RSS feeds, SSO, no repeat posts, SSE, must read flag, gateways, comments, trackbacks, multiple device read tracking, hooks for ETL and reporting tools (Business Objects) to promote dashboard information reuse... and good internal data in a consumable RSS format.

Some good ideas there - and notice its mostly a combination of:

1. Outcomes (the benefits of RSS/Enterprise RSS);
2. Content (the information delivered by RSS); and
3. Functionality (of the Enterprise RSS).

This is one of the core issues about Enterprise RSS that we've been discussing around the Enterprise RSS Day of Action - to understand how the functionality of Enterprise RSS contributes to the content and how that content is consumed, and subsequently the benefits it provides.

Thanks to everyone who shared their ideas.

Technorati tags: RSS, Enterprise RSS Day of Action, Enterprise RSS, Twitter, Enterprise 2.0, Enterprise Web 2.0