21st Century Tools for Business

Next Tuesday (3rd May), as part of the Australian Innovation Festival that runs from the 28 April to 15 May, I'll be one of three technology "gurus" (their words, not mine) speaking to small business owners in the Illawarra on 21st Century Tools for Business.

My presentation is based around the idea of looking at information technology tools that are right here, right now. But as well as looking at the information technologies that I think every small business should be using, I'll also take a look at the real and present disruptive information technologies that are on the immediate horizon.

Yes, that means I'll get to talk about empowering customers with self-service technologies like self-service checkouts - they are a great way of demonstrating how technology can impact any business in any industry. However, I'll also be introducing them to other ideas such as business blogs, RSS and social software. The presentation itself will then be wrapped around some ideas such as the IT Feasibility Triangle and SMART goal planning for IT.

BTW One of the other presenters is Geoff McQueen from Internetrix, who has previously shared his thoughts on enterprise wikis on the ChiefTech blog. Geoff will be talking about how small business owners can use the tools on their desktop to better manage customer relationships.

Drive IT from the boardroom, not the backroom

Call me cynical, but its not often that I find myself agreeing with a politician ;-) However a press release from the Australian Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts, Senator Helen Coonan, telling us about new research that confirms "the level of benefit achieved from an ICT investment is largely a function of effective management" is music to my ears.

The key lessons appear to be that:

• You need clear, strategic reasons for the investment.
• You need to be knowledgeable about how ICT can best serve your organisation.
• You need clear, formal arrangements in place with ICT suppliers.
• You need to be patient and persistent in realising ICT benefits.
• You need to expect, and be positive about, organisational change.
  

The timing is great considering the current debate between cardigans and suits in IT while Standards Australia and SAI Global are promoting the publication of the new IT governance standard. BTW I've already made use of the new IT governance standard in a report to a board to help set the context for their IT decision making. I do actually think the principles and model it provides are quite good, even if you're not a director on the board.

Rojo - hosted RSS reader with unique features

Rojo is another hosted RSS reader service, however they apparently offers some unique features:

• Sharing of content between friends and colleagues;
• Tagging and commenting on stories for yourself and others; and
• Recommended feeds based your current subscription.

Also - have a look at their Introductory Tour site. It uses Jotspot, a hosted enterprise wiki that also includes some advanced functionality. For more on this look out for my article on enterprise wikis in the May/June edition of Image and Data Manager magazine.

Australian Telework Advisory committee

The recently established Australian Telework Advisory Committee (ATAC) has made a call for public submissions. Past and present teleworkers as well as people who employ teleworkers are invited to provide comment on their experiences of telework. The ATAC define telework as:

"Telework generally relies on the use of ICT to facilitate communications between remote workers and central work locations. A significant focus of this review includes the consideration of flexible working practices that are supported by broadband connectivity, including the use of high-speed Internet, multi-party videoconferencing, virtual collaboration and 3G hand-help [I think they mean hand-held?] access technologies."

While its great that they are talking to employers and teleworkers, I would have liked to have seen them also talk to people who work with teleworkers but are not managers or employers. The support and training of rank and file staff in the central work locations (to use ATAC's terminology) is also a critical factor to success.

Info-mania is bad for your IQ

Research commissioned by Hewlett Packard (HP) in the United Kingdom (UK) by Dr Glenn D Wilson has found that "The abuse of 'always-on' technology" can cause IQ to drop by 10 points! This is apparently equivalent to losing a night of sleep and has obvious implications for productivity. HP recommends that people use always on technology appropriately and learn to switch off occasionally.

That's good advice that reminds me of the idea of a techno-Sabbath (literally a day off from using technology) that has been floating around for a while. Last year I actually presented at a conference where I spoke about the issues that being always on, always connected might be creating for the workplace. It was based on a short article I wrote titled, The Future of Work: Always On, Always Connected:

"If you believe what they say, then mobile phones and wireless computing devices give people the opportunity to live the most wonderful, 'unwired life'. For business this is a world where we are constantly connected to the information systems that are increasingly critical to getting work done. No doubt we expect the industry to talk up the benefits of a wireless world but the trouble with disruptive technologies like this is that we can never be quite sure of the end result. What is clear from looking at the past is that disruptive technologies throughout the ages have changed society in surprising ways."

If you would like a copy, drop me line - contact details are on my Website.

Wines maker makes good with open source

For some reason Australian wine maker De Bortoli Wines has been getting good media coverage for the last few months on its use of open source software. Maybe they have a good PR firm behind them or perhaps its just a good open source story, which it is.

The Australian Financial Review covered them this week ( 19 Apr 2005, p.36) but you can read about them in ComputerWorld (7 Dec 2004) and also the Australian (22 Mar 2005). Going against the Citrix thin-client trend, De Bortoli are using bootable linux DVD's and USB drives so that PC's can keep working despite communication and networking problems. They are also using Firefox, Thunderbird and OpenOffice on Windows machines. Its not all smooth sailing of course and they haven't completely dumped Windows, however its still a good example of how an SME can take advantage of open source software.

Update on Mastering E-mail Overload

A few weeks ago I pointed out the continuing interest in dealing with the big problem of e-mail overload in the workplace. I ran my first short inhouse seminar yesterday and I'm currently talking to a few more organisations who have also expressed an interest in running a briefing session on this topic.

Very briefly, the Mastering E-mail Overload briefing focuses on a three step process that can move your organisation toward dealing with this growing problem:

1. Eliminating the root cause of the problem;
2. Individuals taking control of their own inbox; and
3. Communicating better with e-mail.

As a bit of background on this approach - which I think is a bit different from the usual generic "six tips for effective e-mail" we hear about - I've also now written a brand new short article, titled For better, or worse: Living with e-mail in the workplace. Please let me know via the contact details on my Website if you are interested in this article, or perhaps even a briefing session in your workplace.

BTW One interesting question that came up during yesterday's briefing session was the issue of how quickly should people reply to e-mail. The answer is that it depends. Last year I ran a workshop for small business on e-mail customer service – in some instances a business needs to reply as quickly as possible and there are strategies you can use to make this easier. Some of the responsibility also falls on the sender of the message – if you need an immediate reply make it clear in your message that this is your expectation. Or use an alternative communication channel like the telephone, instant messaging or if its an option, good old face-to-face.

Service or self-service?

I must admit to having a slight fascination with the human-computer interaction perspective of how technology is used to serve customers in supermarkets. A visit to the United Kingdom in the middle of last year gave me a chance to see how supermarkets there were experimenting with different variations of self-service checkouts. During that time a number of large chains were piloting different systems and I saw first hand how a couple of different approaches were being used by Waitrose and Sainsburys.

I asked the assistant at Sainsburys about who was using them and she commented that she had been surprised as people of all different ages were choosing to use them. This Gartner article gives some insights into why:

"Retailers generally assume self-service checkouts will be used by shoppers with few purchases, to get through the checkout quickly. In fact, this option was most popular with older people and adults with children, no matter how much they were buying. Parents thought it would be easier and faster, and some even remarked that their children could do the scanning, speeding up the checkout even further. Conversely, many older people actually want the process of shopping and checkout to be slower. They like the idea scanning goods and packing them at their own pace, rather than having to keep up with a checkout assistant."

More recently Megan Santosus has written a couple of challenging articles (Life In The Not-So-Fast Lane and The Price of Nice) in CIO magazine where she questions the value of self-service to customers. A worthwhile discussion as it highlights what I think is an important distinction between automation and empowering customers – have a look at my own short article, Empower customers with self-service, not automation (PDF, 77KB) where I suggest the following points to consider when introducing a self-service system:

• Look for bottle necks in the way you currently serve customers and aim to automate a task or process that already needs to be done;
• Keep in mind that empowering customers with a self-service system is quite different from automating a standardised process to reduce costs; and
• Try to identify how a customer will really benefit from this approach – can you answer the “what’s in it for me" question from their perspective?

BTW The myth of self-service applies equally within organisations, for example access to information can empower but form filling by knowledge workers can end up just being an unproductive distraction.

Book Review: Remote Control

Later in the year I expect to have a paper published in the International Association for Human Resource Information Management (IHRIM) journal, which discusses the link between the success of strategic HR management and the loss of social capital in what I call virtualised organisations. Through a common interest in virtual teams I was pleased to have the opportunity to review a new book that will soon to be released by the IHRIM called:

Remote Control: A Practitioner’s Guide to Managing Virtual Teams
by Gerald Falkowski and Stephen Troutman

Falkowski and Troutman, who share a background in IBM Consulting, offer Remote Control as a comprehensive and actionable “how-to” for real-life virtual teaming. They see a strong distinction between what they call remote teams (working in one or more dispersed locations) from virtual teams (remote and lacking a single chain of command). But don't let this distinction deter you from reading further – much, if not all, of the book is applicable to that grey management area between routine remote teams and true virtual teams that many of us experience.

The authors are good on their word at making this a practitioner's guide and quickly position the key conceptual theme of the book, the Virtual Team Capital Model, and then get on with the business of describing how to put it into practice. The first half of the book focuses on three key activities that Falkowski and Troutman believe are essential for a successful virtual team: Rudimentary Project Management, Elementary Team Building and Facilitation, and Some Change Management. The introduction to these concepts is then integrated with a detailed case study.

The second half of the book looks at specific issues related to virtual teams, including a chapter devoted to virtual teaming technologies. However, the primary focus is on management issues and three other co-contributors provide additional input into the book by sharing advice on trust in virtual teams, managing cultural differences and how to support virtual teams with a program management office.

I found the chapter on managing cultural differences, which is clearly written from a North American perspective, quite excellent. The sensible tips in this chapter give the rest of the book a strong level of credibility. However, the final chapter that covers the establishment of a virtual program management office is what I feel really positions this book as something quite different. Few people talk about the supporting infrastructure required to make virtual teams successful and sustainable, so a chapter on forming a virtual program management office is a welcome addition to the virtual teaming body of knowledge.

Overall I found Remote Control an unpretentious and practical guide for managing virtual teams. It includes a generous selection of checklists and as a sign that the authors really intended this to be a practitioner's guide, they are also collected together at the end of the book for easy reference.

Remote control can be ordered online from the IHRIM. Pre-order before the 1st May and get a discount! Reference: Falkowski, Gerald and Troutman, Stephen, 2005, Remote Control: A Practitioner’s Guide to Managing Virtual Teams, IHRIM Press, Austin, Texas.

BTW If this book interests you, also have a look at Knowledge Management Tools and Techniques.

Suits versus cardigans? Try the MBT

This month Computerworld magazine has picked up on the trend of IT people (the "cardigans") needing business skills, and business people (the "suits") needing IT skills. If you are a suit or a cardigan who wants to get ahead you might be interested in attending an information evening to learn about what the Master of Business and Technology (MBT) program at UNSW has to offer.

What's the MBT? "The Master of Business & Technology ( MBT ) Program is tailor-made for busy managers and professionals in technology driven environments who want to elevate their careers. MBT courses focus on business, on technology, and on the point at which they intersect. The MBT Program is designed to be undertaken part-time, in combination with full-time employment. Customise your study through MBT's flexible program structure and work with experienced class facilitators and co-participants in online or Sydney-based face-to face classes."

They have been holding information evening in recent weeks around the country and the last two are coming in Parramatta (NSW) on 20th April and Wollongong (NSW) on the 21st April. As I'm just about to complete my MBT I've been invited to speak at the Wollongong information evening on my experiences of the MBT and what it takes to complete it.

You need to RSVP if you want to attend go along to either of these remaining information evenings or you can request an information pack.

Watch Out! Cyber-criminals like to blog

Image and Data Magazine reports on a press release from Web filtering company, Websense, that warns toxic blogs are responsible for distributing Malcode and Keylogging software to unsuspecting users. I suppose it was only a question of time, and in my mind doesn't detract from the core value of blogs, but it does hightlight the immaturity of the software presently used by hosted blogging sites with this comment:

"Cyber-criminals are now taking advantage of blog sites that allow users to easily publish their own web pages at no cost. Blogs can be attractive vehicles for hackers for several reasons - blogs offer large amounts of free storage, they do not require any identity authentication to post information, and most blog hosting facilities do not provide antivirus protection for posted files."

Soft phones on steroids: Digital Dashboards

Melanie Turek, from US-based technology research firm Nemertes, has written some interesting articles and papers on range of technology issues including collaboration. One of her articles that talks about the power of "presence" in what she calls digital dashboards has been syndicated to a few publications, such as Network Fusion World and also Computerword. (The article also has some screenshots of a "digital dashboard").

I'm not so sure about calling a presence-enabled messaging application a digital dashboard, but her analysis of the importance of presence is fair:

"Presence has the potential to change the way people work - and how they communicate and collaborate with one another. Change will come slowly; the technology isn't as mature as it needs to be. The productivity gains are difficult to measure, and the cultural adjustments won't come easily from end users, but companies that adopt the new tools will be well positioned to support a dispersed workforce and leverage the benefits such an environment brings."

BTW In 2003 I wrote a short whitepaper about next generation voice over IP (VoIP). I noted then, when most people were talking up the costing savings of VoIP, that:

"It is quite interesting to compare next generation VoIP services with enhanced services that can be provided through Instant Messaging (IM) systems. IM has both the same synchronous qualities of voice combined with presence information that could also be utilised by VoIP applications. Presence is the awareness functionality in IM applications that tells you when another user is on-line and available. This provides the potential to build intelligent workflow systems that, for example, would know when a manager is on-line and available to approve an urgent request – rather than e-mailing the user, an IM agent can interact with the user to ask for the workflow approval. Simple Web services have also been built that utilise the IM interface as a way to interactively query other databases, such as a corporate address book. So it is possible that an IP Phone could dynamically interact with such a database to provide different information to the user."

Draft Corporate Blogging Guidelines

Angus McDonald in his Falkyn's Blog links to Michael Hyatt's (President and Chief Operating Officer of Thomas Nelson Publishers in the US) blog where he has published the 1st and 2nd draft of their Thomas Nelson Blogging Guidelines.

Angus comments that "What is nice about this is that Michael was smart enough to elicit comment from the readers of his Working Smart blog to ensure that the guidelines were appropriate. Thanks to their feedback what they ended up with was much more user-friendly than their first effort which was a dismal set of legalistic rules."

Ah, change management for new technology. Good idea :-)

After you read the guidelines also check out this advice from an E.M.T who works for the London Ambulance Service (linked from a comment on the Thomas Nelson guidelines).

Internet 2.0: The Information Sushi Belt

Chris Hyder, Director of Knowledge Management at the Department of the Environment and Heritage, gets a thank you for spotting this excellent BBC News article that includes an interview with Dave Winer (a co-inventor of the RSS format). Surfing RSS channels gets vividly described by the BBC reporter, Jo Twist, as:

"Like sushi restaurant conveyor belts, it delivers content to people so they can easily pick what they want to read."

An important point is also made about the average Internet user in terms of "how to explain what RSS can do to change a person's web surfing experience, and also how to avoid bamboozling people with strange-looking code and acronyms." Remember if you're reading this you may be an early adopter who gets it! It might not be as easy for everyone else.

BTW There is also a link to my two earlier posts about RSS as Content Glue and Controlling RSS. Incidentally I also discovered what RSS Reader technology the Guardian Newspaper is using (the smarts behind it is a company called Consenda - apparently using their technology, "newspapers are able to place themselves at the convergence point of traditional news publishing and blogs, while increasing average revenue per user through NewsPoint’s innovations in RSS-related targeted text, display, and classified advertising").

Agilent's Virtual Experiences

Its not often that we see an Australian business talking up the benefits of "virtual teams", but Grant Marshall, General Manager at Agilent Australia, shares his experiences in an interview in CEO Forum magazine. While Agilent have created a virtual shared service that is spread across Asia, the challenges and successes are the same for any kind of organisation that has staff working in remote teams or workgroups in Australia or overseas. Some key lessons from Agilent are:

• You need motivation to change from a traditional to virtual organisation structure;
• You need to invest in change management and training; and
• Remote managers can deliver higher levels of employee satisfaction (bet you didn't see that one coming!).

If you enjoyed this interview, also have a look at a related article that I wrote for Image and Data Manager magazine, titled Meeting of Minds.

MIT's Technology Review Looks at Sun's Blogs

Sun Microsystems is well known for the way it has embraced blogging and the April edition of MIT's Technology Review takes a look at Sun's reasons for encouraging its staff to blog in the open. According to Sun, they believe the benefits of their open approach to staff blogging are:

• The feedback they get results in better products; and
• It shows their customers they are listening.
  

Technology Review concludes that "consumer-oriented companies that abjure the blogosphere are missing out on opportunities to generate buzz, monitor customer concerns, and—perhaps most importantly—show their human side."

RSS as Corporate Content Glue

Following on from yesterday's post about RSS in the enterprise, Andrew Mitchell, Knowledge Manager at UrbisJHD, pointed out this list of ten ideas for corporate RSS feeds.

Its worth noting that their ideas are not necessarily about blogging - in fact what they are really suggesting is RSS as an alternative to other forms of push notification (e.g. e-mail or even SMS) that may help the audience to deal better with information overload or spam. The key thing to remember with RSS is that it is just another way for serving up information over the Web or an intranet - what you choose to package as RSS is really up to you.

For example, say you had a staff directory stored in a database. If you developed it the right way you might choose to deliver this information via various channels, such as part of the intranet or even via an interactive instant messenger bot. You could also create RSS channels, such as:

• New staff;
• Staff transfers;
• Staff assignments;
• Etc, etc.
  

The beauty of RSS in this instance is that you have a light weight syndication method - individual staff with a particular interest in staff movements might subscribe via their own personal RSS readers, however departmental or project sites could also filter out and display relevant changes on their own home pages.

BTW I wouldn't blame you if you are thinking this all sounds a bit like what a "portal" might do. The answer is yes, because ultimately RSS is just a very simple type of content "glue".

Nice to meet you

Today's Column 8* in the Sydney Morning Herald had a cute story from a reader about their brief laptop-to-laptop liaison on a commuter train:

"Travelling home after work by train last week, I was seated next to a fellow commuter using a laptop and headphones. Not to be outdone, I started work on my own laptop and as it booted up, a message appeared on the screen - 'another computer has been detected. Do you want to send a file?' Naturally I declined as we had barely met, but as he left the train, my companion confirmed that he was aware of our brief laptop liaison."

Column 8 then made the comparison with two dogs meeting in the park (you get the picture). A more interesting (and perhaps more tasteful) application can be found in the conference industry, where smart name badges (for example nTag and others) seek out people with similar or target profiles. Of course, this idea exists in the domain of Personal Area Networks (PANs) – also see my earlier post on RedTacton.

*Please note that the contents of Column 8 changes daily, so this story won't be there tomorrow!

Controlling Enterprise RSS

Wired reports that some newspapers in the US and UK are developing their own branded RSS readers in an attempt to retain the readership that has "bleeding" for years, and perhaps even make some revenue from selling advertising.

Considering we've had push news media before (remember PointCast?), for this to work I suspect they will need to find some way of adding value to public RSS feeds and readers. Providing less technically savvy users with a branded set of pre-selected and categorised RSS channels could be one way of doing that, as one newspaper suggests. In fact, digital news content distributor Factiva already has a limited RSS service in beta and they are also limiting their enterprise users to the "Editor's Choice" of channels

Providing users with a pre-selected list of RSS channels could also be useful within an enterprise, particularly if there are RSS channels broadcasting corporate information that everyone must know. A couple of companies in the US are beginning to tackle the needs of the emerging enterprise market for RSS:

NewsGator offers an NewsGator Enterprise. In an earlier commentary in a blog about this product, they comment that:

"We do a LOT of enterprise business with our Outlook-based product. As we've been working with these customers, we've learned a lot about their needs and issues for information distribution...and what we've been finding is that a desktop-based product alone is not exactly what they need...Imagine NewsGator Online, picked up and installed on a server behind a corporate firewall. Imagine it also (optionally) connecting with Active Directory and Exchange server. No longer would a system administrator need to go install NewsGator Outlook edition on 3000 desktops; rather, with [NewsGator Enterprise], they could install a single server, make some configuration choices, and employees will just get "more stuff" somewhere in their Exchange mailbox without having to install anything on their own machines."

A whitepaper by KnowNow, also in the US, points out four limitations of RSS as far as enterprises are concerned:

1. Lack of centralized control;
2. Increased load on infrastructure;
3. Timeliness, completeness and relevancy of information; and
   
4. Duplicate content publication.

Actually, those four issues could be equally applied to e-mail. In that respect I hope RSS helps to reduce information overload rather than contributing to it!

Techno-ethnography at Intel

Today's AFR BOSS magazine has a 2 page article on anthropologist Genevieve Bell who works for Intel and is helping them to understand better how people use technology. The article is particularly revealing in providing some examples of how national culture and lifestyle influences how we utilise technology, for example:

"What constitutes the home was one important finding from her recent fieldwork. People from Asia, Australia and Britain spend more time socialising outside the home than most Americans, who prefer to 'pull up the metaphoric drawbridge' once inside their climate-controlled houses. 'All of which has big implications for the way you use technology,' says Bell.

'Mobile phones make really good sense when a lot of your social life happens outside your home.' This could explain why 85 per cent of Australians have mobile phones compared with 60 per cent of Americans, and why they’re growing at the rate of 10 million a month in China. The Chinese send more text messages to each other in a month than Americans do in a year."

While Bell's primary interest appears to be in consumer use of technology, the same approaches can be applied to the use of technology in the workplace. If you are regular reader of my blog you'll know I have a long standing interest in this area so you might find this post about Melanie Kan's research work at UTS of interest. Earlier in the year the NSW KM Forum also heard from Dr Theresa Anderson (also from UTS) on the topic of using ethnography and storytelling in the workplace as she has an interest in how people interact and deal with electronic information.

Workplace design events at the AGSM

In January I reported on my observations from a visit to the Ark workplace in Sydney. On that theme I spotted a couple of interesting events on the AGSM Website that are coming up later in the month:

• 2005 Neil Hanson Memorial Lecture - Constructing Knowledge Networks: The Ecology of Informal Learning

and

• Organisational Ecology: uncommon workspace strategies that add value and improve performance

Taking it to the People - Applying KM in Telstra

Just a reminder that the next NSW KM Forum meeting is taking place on Thursday (7th April), with Alister Webb from Telstra's Consumer & Marketing Division talking about applying KM at Telstra. Full details can be found on the NSW KM Forum wiki.

The Sum is Greater than the Whole

Crux Cybernetics is an Australian-based software company who specialises in "collaborative business management and process knowledge tools to improve workforce performance and productivity and that significantly reduce administration overheads". They have recently launched a new portal for their TeamFrame solution where they are building a library of useful documents with particular emphasis on work and resource management, collaboration, etc.

Maarten Tentij, Managing Director of Crux Cybernetics, asked if I'd like to contribute something so I forwarded him a previously unpublished article titled, The Sum is Greater than the Whole:

"Research conducted by the University of Wollongong demonstrates that one of the primary reasons that SMEs have been slow to adopt ecommerce is a reluctance to form partnerships with other businesses. But in a global, information driven economy the ability to collaborate is a key competency that every business needs. Overseas outsourcing threatens all industries – white and blue collar alike – but local companies can still compete by embedding themselves in virtual supply chains that add value through effective business collaboration. So how do we do it?"

You can read the rest on the TeamFrame portal. If you have a topic suggestion or just want to learn more about TeamFrame I'm sure Maarten and the team at Crux would be pleased to hear from you.

Cracking the code of IT change

I follow the technology change management concepts of James Carlopio, who you may be familar with from the AFR's BOSS magazine (search on "Carlopio"), so it was great to see him quoted recently by Computerworld. He points out that:

• Those working in IT, he said, need to broaden their minds when tackling projects admitting that implementations are complex;
• Discussion, disagreement and experimentation can make a real difference and encourage end users to embrace technology changes; and
• Resistance is often the result of past failures so IT executives need to accept a degree of end user cynicism.

All great advice - the challenge is in the execution of course! For an overview of his change management process - which has origins in Rogers innovation diffusion theory - see his Innovation Implementer site. He has also written a couple of books on change management and technology:

• Implementation: Making Workplace Innovation and Technical Change Happen
• Changing Gears: The Strategic Implementation of Technology

Workplace Innovation at the ATO

Colette Woodford, Secretary actKM and Director Adept KM, is promoting an interesting event tomorrow (Tuesday 5th April) in Canberra:

What? Understanding & Applying 'Workplace Innovation' Through Design In The ATO
Who? Grant Brodie
When? Tuesday 5 April 2005, 5:30-7pm
Where? National Library of Australia - Main Conference Room 4th floor.
How much? $4 donation for wine and cheese.

Australian public sector organisations like the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) are complex, adaptive social systems that grow their capability to effectively respond to change through the knowledge they create, the processes for sharing information and knowledge, and the relationships that develop among those who work and learn in them.

The key knowledge elements of people, process, technology and content have a vital role to play in enabling organisations like the ATO to meet outcomes set by Government. This presentation draws on recent research that explores some of the factors that drive innovation in the workplace and that helps maximise the impact of information in organisations.

CollaborativeAID: Taking wikis to the next level

Last week while down in Melbourne for the day working on a client project I made time to catch up with Ashin Wimalajeewa from Self Technologies. Ash is a software methodologist and architect, and he is currently working as a contractor at a major Australian bank. (Actually "contractor" is perhaps the wrong word since he could easily fit Davenport and Prusak's definition of an idea practitioner.)

He has a created a really interesting knowledge management and project collaborative platform called CollaborativeAID. Based on the wiki paradigm, Ash has extended the idea to create a tool "that empowers all stakeholders to contribute, collaborate, learn from one another and innovate". As well a basic enterprise wiki features (e.g. access control, simple editing), CollaborativeAID also includes:

• Forms to capture and display wiki content;
• Cross referencing of content;
• Graphic content maps (e.g. a methodology map that links to relevant content); and
• Integrated project workspaces.
  

Having seen CollaborativeAID in action I was impressed by what I saw, but I have to admit wondering now what is or isn't a wiki? Perhaps someone can come up with a new name for these advanced wikis. If you have any suggestions please post them here!

More on Enterprise Blogging

Karna O'Dea attend the Blogs and Wikis for Trainers presentation and suggested this preventing Newsletter article by Dr L. Anne Clyde as some recommended general reading on enterprise blogging. Thanks Karna.

As well as providing lots of links to other articles and blogs about enterprise blogging, Dr Clyde suggests the following purposes for enterprise blogs:

• Project Management
• Competitive Intelligence
• Marketing
• Knowledge Management
• Customer Service
• Newsletters

Slides from Wednesday's AITD/ACT KM Forum presentation

If you attended my AITD/ACT KM Forum presentation on Wednesday in Canberra looking at Blogs and Wikis for Trainers and would like an electronic copy of the slides please let me know.

For everyone else: I won't be making them available for public download as I don't think the slides themselves are particularly meaningful outside the presentation and discussion we had (to understand why have a look at this). However, if you would like a copy and are willing to invest some time to talk through the slides with me then I'm more than happy to share what I know.

And don't forget that my invitation to come to your organisation to talk about just about any workplace technology issue still stands.

IM Bogeyman Strikes Again

I see that the Instant Messaging Bogeyman is back in town :-) This time its local IT analyst, Bruce McCabe, writing for the Australian. In his opinion, "The only quality that makes instant messaging interesting as a business tool can be summed up in two words: presence detection."

I'm actually a little confused about the point McCabe is trying to make. On one hand he provides examples of where IM is useful (like a widely dispersed organisation) but then gives it the thumbs down because of lost productivity (interuptions, lack of richness, slow typing).

Its a shame that he fails to mention other benefits such as:

• Integration with Webconferencing tools;
  
• Access to information through interactive IM 'bots;
  
• The ability to indicate if you are busy, away or free to talk;
  
• As a secondary real-time communication tool while you are on the phone to someone else or to support a teleconferencing and videoconferencing meeting;
  
• And so on...
  

Looking at the broader picture of IM you actually find there is more to it than just chat or presence alone.

Enterprise blogging in practice cont'd

I said I would post a few more comments about this post yesterday. One thing to add is to make sure you read both the original and follow-up posts by Coté.

Now what I say here needs to be taken in the context of what I've said previously about corporate blogging and also these comments. Like Coté I don't think we should give up on enterprise blogging, but I do think many organisations are reinventing the wheel rather than building on what we already know about getting people to collaborate with technology inside the firewall.

In my previous life as a knowledge manager at Ernst & Young I faced similar problems with helping staff to develop and maintain successful knowledgebases that were components in the firm's award winning EY/KnowledgeWeb intranet. I know from direct experience that, just like a blog, running a successful discussion forum within an organisation requires ongoing effort both to create content but also to ensure sponsorship, readership and contribution.

However, I also had to spend a lot of time explaining to people why it was important to stay within the E&Y collaborative architecture so that the majority could contribute, access and search for content. Standards like RSS are excellent on the Internet where people use different applications to create and read public blog content, however this isn't necessarily a challenge faced within the enterprise. However, RSS can create problems where another standard platform exists (unless you can integrate the two of course).

So overall I see the challenges of enterprise blogging as a knowledge management challenge. The key to success is building on what we already know about getting people, process, technology and content to all work happily together.

Alarm Clock 2.0

Continuing my theme of looking for good and innovative information technology design, the Clocky alarm clock fits into the better mouse trap category.

As reported in the Guardian, Clocky was invented by MIT Media Lab researcher, Gauri Nanda. How does it work?

"Clocky is, quite simply, for people who have trouble waking up. When the alarm clock goes off and the snooze button is pressed, Clocky will roll off the bedside table and wheel away, bumping mindlessly into objects on the floor until it eventually finds a spot to rest. Minutes later, when the alarm sounds again, the sleeper must get up out of bed and search for Clocky. This ensures that the person is fully awake before turning it off. Small wheels that are concealed by Clocky's shag enable it to move and reposition itself, and an internal processor helps it find a new hiding spot every day."

Unfortunately Clocky is only an academic research project at this time.

Enterprise blogging in practice

Thanks to Jack Vinson in the US and BlogWalk, I came across this post by an IT guy called Coté on his experiences of enterprise blogging. I don't have time to add any further comments right now, but take a look as its an interesting post for anyone thinking of implementing blogs into a corporate environment.

Human Area Networks: RedTacton

Just yesterday I was talking about the potential for P2P file sharing based on mobile hardware, rather than the Internet. Then this morning I come across an article in the Sydney Mobile Herald on something called RedTacton.

"RedTacton is a new Human Area Networking technology that uses the surface of the human body as a safe, high speed network transmission path... RedTacton uses the minute electric fieldemitted on the surface of the human body. Technically, it is completely distinct from wireless and infrared... Communication is possible using any body surfaces, such as the hands, fingers, arms, feet, face, legs or torso. RedTacton works through shoes and clothing as well."

According to the Herald, RedTacton supports "speeds of up to 2mbps – equivalent to a fast broadband data connection."

Hmm. Thinking about this, H2H (human to human) file sharing could be an interesting experience. :-)

Subscribe to the ChiefTech blog

Just to let you know that you can now subscribe to the ChiefTech blog using the Bloglet service. Great for those of you not yet RSS'd or working in a corporate environment where you can't install an RSS reader yourself. Or maybe you just want to stay in touch by e-mail!

What are you waiting for? Enter your email address here and click subscribe:

Watch out! Technology has a habit of winning

Two related stories on Google News caught my eye today. One is this report by Wired on latest from the Australian Sharman Networks court case over the Kazza P2P software. The other a report in InfoWorld on the results of recent research completed on the sharing habits of digital music and video users.

Wired comments that "it's worth remembering that technology has a habit of winning in the end... If the music industry wants to survive, it needs to think outside the box and stay out of the courtroom."

It's an interesting comment because while the research (from the Pew Internet & American Life Project) reported in InfoWorld suggests the music industries actions are having an impact on Internet P2P file sharing, millions are still using informal sharing method. These informal sharing methods including e-mail, instant messaging and hardware-2-hardware (such as from one MP3 player to another).

Now considering that late last year saw the unveiling of the Samsung SPH-V5400, the first mobile phone with a 1.5GB hard drive, it really is only a matter of time before consumers will have the capability to share music through the "layer" of their choice from a single device. I wonder how the music industry would respond to a decentralised mobile phone based P2P music sharing system using some kind of wireless mesh networking? You know it could just work in densely populated areas or perhaps workplaces, universities or schools...

Invitation - effective e-mail seminars

I know that dealing with information overload and working effectively with collaborative technologies such as e-mail, instant messaging and groupware continue to be a problem for people in many organisations. So I wasn't surprised that as a result of my posting yesterday on mastering e-mail overload I received a request from an organisation to run a lunch time briefing session for staff on this subject.

I would like to take this opportunity to extend an invitation to any other organisations out there to contact me (details can be found on my Website) if you would like a short briefing to your staff on effective e-mail or just about any other workplace technology issue you can think of.

Some other ideas for briefings include:

• Online customer service
• Writing for the Web or Intranets
  
• Empowering customers with technology
  
• Instant messaging benefits
• Getting on with groupware
• Blogging and wikis for business (also see details of my upcoming seminar in Canberra)
  
• Teleconferencing and videoconferencing best practices
• Managing remote staff and virtual teams
• The pros and cons of being always on, always connected
  
• Information security essentials for staff

As I'm always up for a challenge, if you have another idea for a briefing session just let me know!

Wicked IT Problems

Ok, let me say first that this isn't what you think...

A thread on the ACT KM forum (a knowledge management discussion group) from the last few days talking about wicked problems reminded me that I wrote a short article on wicked information technology problems:

"People often throw their arms up at computers because as much as information technology can help us, it often causes problems that are difficult or time consuming to fix. The fact is information technology is complex and full of what is known in some circles as 'wicked' problems. A wicked problem has complex origins and typically the solution will only appear when we solve the problem. In other words, wicked problems are a bit like the chicken and egg paradox – we will not know the solution to a wicked problem until we find it."

Anyway, I've republished it on my Website and you can download it here (PDF, 77KB). (Please contact me if you would like a copy of this short article)

The intended audience for this piece was small business owners and managers but it might be of interest to anyone who is struggling to understand why computer systems don't always work as they expect them and why it isn't always straight forward to fix them. One of my recommendations, other than locking down and simplifying systems, is to develop wicked problem solving skills (or find someone who has them).

Tips for Mastering E-mail Overload

The latest e-mail newsletter from Harvard Business School's Working Knowledge site highlighted a past article on mastering e-mail overload that is actually quite good.

The author, US-based professional speaker, facilitator and coach Stever Robbins, writes:

"Being at or near the top of your organization, everyone wants a piece of you. So they send you e-mail. It makes you feel important. Don't you love it? Really? Then, please take some of mine! Over 100 real e-mails come in each day. At three minutes apiece, it will take five hours just to read and respond. Let's not even think about the messages that take six minutes of work to deal with. Shudder. I'm buried in e-mail and chances are, you're not far behind. For whatever reason, everyone feels compelled to keep you "in the loop."

Fortunately, being buried alive under electronic missives forced me to develop coping strategies. Let me share some of the nonobvious ones with you. Together, maybe we can start a revolution."

It has some great practical examples comparing good and bad e-mails. BTW If you want some more tips on writing effective e-mails, drop me a line and I'll send you a copy of my own tip sheet. Contact details are on my website.

PS Did you know that HBS Working Knowledge is also available via RSS and as an AvantGo channel for your PDA?

Interactive Web Pages Changing Class Participation

elearningpost links to a story in the US's Washington Post on the emerging use of Blogs and Wikis by university students. They say about Wikis that:

"Some course sites read like journals, some like debates and some shimmy in and out of topics with music, photos and video pulling readers along... Wikis can encourage creativity, remove the limits on class time, give professors a better sense of student understanding and interest and keep students writing, thinking and questioning."

However, still suggesting there is a lot of existing know-how about collaborative technologies that can be applied to these new technologies they also comment that:

• Professors who use blogs and wikis said they have had to set ground rules early on and act quickly to stamp out problems; and
  
• They warn that as the technology goes mainstream, universities will have to think about libel and intellectual property issues.

Within the business environment we are already aware of issues relating to employees self-publishing with respect to problems with copyright, information security and inappropriate content. These same issues will need to be addressed when any kind of organisation provides or supports self-publishing through Blogs and Wikis for staff, clients or other stakeholders.

Jet fuel prices remain near record highs

News.com.au reports that near record highs for jet fuel prices mean that locally Qantas and Virgin Blue are likely to increase passenger fuel surcharges in the near future. Reducing business travel and related costs has always been a tangible motivator for remote work options and virtual teams, but it can be a false economy if implemented as a knee jerk reaction to issues such as increased fuel prices. Research and experience all show that people find it difficult to work virtually without the right support in place (what I call the collaborative infrastructure) - so if further increases to travel costs will impact on how the people in your organisation work together, start planning now to avoid greater disruption later.

What's the Big Idea?

Is interest in innovation on it's way back? A couple of people have separately raised the issue of innovation in organisations recently and coincidentally I'm currently re-reading Tom Davenport and Laurence Prusak's book, What's the Big Idea.

What's the Big Idea is essentially about how new ideas diffuse into organisations through the efforts of what they call idea practitioners. Davenport and Prusak try to demonstrate that there are no faddish management ideas, only faddish ways of adopting them.

One observation they make is that most management fads peak after about five years, but knowledge management (one of my areas of interest) is still going strong and somewhat changed for the better from it's original incarnation. As idea practioners themselves Davenport and Prusak are also quite progressive in picking up on organisational story telling, the current hot topic in KM circles (the book was published in 2003).

PowerPoint: Less is more

Shawn Callahan links us to the blog of US PowerPoint specialist (for want of a better word), Cliff Atkinson, who talks about using PowerPoint to create "a strong narrative backbone" to a presentation, rather than a death by PowerPoint experience.

There has been growing awareness over the years of the problems of what might be termed gross misuse of presentation software - for example Edward Tufte writing in Wired magazine and on ABC Radio (you'll need to scroll down). While poor presentation and information overload is bad enough, perhaps the bigger concern is the use of PowerPoint to force a viewpoint or validate an unsupported fact. In other words, because some people see it written on a PowerPoint slide they believe it to be true.

On the other hand (and I've talked before about what might be considered to be good information technology innovations) presentation software is also a great example of a user-empowering information technology (even if we suffer because of it!). Probably as they conclude on ABC Radio, just because the tool is misused doesn't mean we should abandon it altogether.

Personally I think Atkinson's advice to minimise what you put on a slide is good, but I think there are probably three good ways to use presentation software:

1. For helping to organise ideas into a linear flow or story - but the resulting slidedeck is not necessarily presented (this can be done on your own or in a group);
   
2. As a well considered presentation aid - just the right amount of information to help the presenter and the audience; and
   
3. To create diagrams, simple multimedia animations or basic e-learning modules - there are better tools for doing this, but people who are familiar with presentation software can often easily put things together for themselves.
   

PS Did you know that Abraham Lincoln used PowerPoint as early as 1863? It was news to me :-)

The Australian newspaper - special KM edition today

If you can get hold of a copy, today's Australian newspaper has a special edition covering Knowledge Management. They quote Dr Laurence Prusak, a managing principal with IBM Consulting and former principal in Ernst and Young's* centre for business innovation:

"An unintended consequence of ubiquitous and transparent computing is the premium value of knowledge that cannot be digitised, codified, or easily distributed...The value of the cognitive skills (such as judgment, design, leadership, better decisions, persuasiveness, wit, innovation, aesthetics, and humor) becomes more than ever before. "

It also includes some interviews and articles from local members of the NSW KM Forum (I'm a member of the coordinating committee).

However, while it's great to see KM get some profile in the media, I think the Australian was a little lazy in pointing readers to KMWorld's 100 Companies that Matter in Knowledge Management 2005 rather than coming up with some local case studies.

I actually think that perhaps the AFR's Boss Magazine has covered KM much better in the past (try searching the site for "knowledge management" and "intellectual property").

*PS For some further reading on E&Y's approach to KM have a look at the links here on my main Website.

Update: Matt Moore has pointed out that Larry isn't with IBM anymore as was reported in the Australian. Matt's with IBM Consulting so I guess he should know! I found a more recent version of Larry's bio on this conference site.

More comments on Wikis in the Enterprise

I recently asked a few people in the industry for comments on the use of wikis in the enterprise for a forthcoming article.

Unfortunately, Geoff McQueen from Internetrix, an Internet-based marketing and management software solutions business, didn't quite make my editorial deadline (he has a good excuse - he was out racing cars for charity). However, since he took the time to give me some feedback, I thought I'd post it here in full and unedited:

"Wikis, blogging and instant messaging have all found a demand in the corporate arena. Through experiences 'outside' in private life, innovative users are aware that these tools can improve their productivity at work, and the challenge is to reconcile corporate priorities with innovative user demands, particularly when the users feel that policies are holding them back from being the best they can be.

Like many of the 'generalist' technology toolsets, the flexibility of Wikis is also their greatest drawback in a corporate environment. Because they are a quick and simple platform designed to be as flexible as possible, they’re also prone to messy and inconsistent application due to being 'user driven'. At the opposite end of the scale are the corporate, technology driven solutions offered by vendors, where an often unrepresentative sample of the organisation makes a corporate level commitment to a platform that fails.

One approach that can pay solid dividends is to encourage 'user driven' adoption of flexible and generally unacceptable systems for a defined time period. Organisations can take advantage of the change management benefits of having users – lots of users – pursue a new way of working, and through this process, word of mouth, peer pressure and other psych principles can drive adoption, with the clear understanding that the actual technical mechanics of the system will change once users have 'found their feet'.

As a result, Wikis could best be seen in a corporate environment as a trial, a way to let users set the terms of engagement while accepting that corporate prerogatives – security, ubiquity and sustainability – will gradually take effect within a defined time period. You can even get your most avid contributors, who’ve demonstrated their passion, to form the basis of your evaluation committee when you do decide to go to a corporate/vendor solution."

Ray Ozzie off to Microsoft

Ray Ozzie, creator of Lotus Notes, founder of Groove Networks, and dare I say a founding father of groupware, is joining Microsoft as the company's chief technology officer! Reports around the world, like this one in ComputerWorld, describe it as a move by Microsoft to fill a gap in it's current collaborative offerings.

According to Groove's own press release on the matter, "Ozzie will assume the role of chief technical officer, reporting to Bill Gates, Microsoft founder, chairman and chief software architect, with responsibility for influencing corporatewide communication and collaboration offerings and associated platform infrastructure. Ozzie also will continue his work with the Groove team, which will be part of Microsoft's Information Worker Group."

It's going to be very interesting to see what impact Groove's expertise will have on Microsoft's collaborative tools.

Use it or lose it now available for download

Use it or lose it, the article I gave a preview of last month, is now available for download from my archive of Image and Data Manager (IDM) magazine columns. It was originally published in the Jan/Feb 2005 edition of IDM and discusses the link between usability, measuring results and success with technology.

I've been told that my critical review of corporate Wiki technology will be out in the next edition of IDM. Stay tuned, as hopefully it should ruffle a few feathers!

Knowledge Management Tools and Techniques

Just to let you know that I've created a new page on my main Website that provides an overview of the chapter I contributed to the recently published book, Knowledge Management Tools and Techniques. This chapter combines my experiences of using IBM Lotus Quickplace (aka Team Workplace) at Ernst & Young with some research I completed as part of my masters (which I'm due to complete soon). It also draws on the classic Tom Davenport case study on E&Y. If you would like to know more, just drop me a line.

Blog Discovery Tools

My friend, Brian Bailey from Gadens Lawyers, continues to fuel my current focus on blogging (sorry everyone, normal service will be resumed soon) by pointing me in the direction of this article on specialised blog search engines here on the Search Engine Watch site. I quite like the visual neighborhood tool on the Blogstreet site.

These specialised search tools are really useful considering our need to "keeping found things found". Also, related to search, Brian himself wrote this short article on How much knowledge is enough? The role of satisfice in decision-making.

PS I had some nice feedback from Ellen R. Cohn on my post about life blogging. Ellen is one of the authors behind a paper I linked from that post. I'll add a further response to Ellen's comments when I get a chance as she makes a good point about IT innovation and the gap between IT professionals and the academic world.

Wireless Time Management

Amanda Horne is a Canberra-based consultant and mentor, who helps organisations to develop thriving, positive people and positive workplace cultures. In her recent newsletter she talks about Managing Time or Managing ‘You’ (PDF file). She makes a great point about some of her clients who have an over expectation that getting a palm pilot will solve all their time management problems. While Amanda then goes on to give some tips on 'You' management (rather than time or thing management!), her point reminds me of a short e-zine article I wrote about the people challenges of being always on, always connected:

"If you believe what they say, then mobile phones and wireless computing devices give people the opportunity to live the most wonderful, “unwired life”. For business this is a world where we are constantly connected to the information systems that are increasingly critical to getting work done. No doubt we expect the industry to talk up the benefits of a wireless world, but the trouble with disruptive technologies like this is that we can never be quite sure of the end result. What is clear from looking at the past is that disruptive technologies through out the ages have changed society in surprising ways."

You can download this short article here (PDF, 73KB). This later turned into a presentation at Going Virtual 2004.

New Economy Customer Service Revisited

Yesterday was a busy day as I attended a Telstra breakfast in Wollongong where we had the unusual pleasure of hearing from Michael Ossipoff, Director, Enterprise Capability at Telstra.

I say unusual because I spoke to Michael before his presentation and it isn't very often I meet someone in my adopted home town who has heard of Dave Snowden and even fellow KM consultant Shawn Callahan! Incidentally I now realise that we were both speakers at Corporate Portal World last year (small world, eh?). Unfortunately Michael wasn't speaking about KM. Instead he was there to evangelise about Internet Protocol (IP) based telecommunications networks to local SMEs, so still an interesting presentation from my perspective. While this was obviously a marketing effort for Telstra, the use of video testimonials by real businesses was a great way to help people understand how technology can be applied in practice. So a thumbs up for the effort.

Later in the evening I headed up to Sydney to attend a function at UNSW from students and alumni in the Master of Business & Technology program (I'm just completing my last unit in my masters at the moment). The speaker was Bill Price, Former Vice-President of Global Customer Service for Amazon.com. Bill actually worked for a while at McKinsey & Company with Tom Peters. He has a great customer service philosophy along the lines of trying to make it as easy as possible for customers to do business with companies and to avoid what he calls "dumb contacts" and empowering customer service staff to fix problems.

What have these two presenters got in common? Well, the simplicity of IP based telecommunications (from the users point of view) may renew interest in e-business. However, organisations will need to be more considerate of customer service again. Amazon is a great example of a company that empowers customers with it's systems but also knows how to make things right when they go wrong. PS I talked a little about this the other day in reference to Flight Centre.

Life Blogging

Sorry if I sound a little self-obsessed with blogs and wikis etc at the moment, but as I'll be writing and presenting around this topic later in the month this is top of mind at the moment.

One nice convergent idea I came across is life blogging (aka life caching). Nokia have a software tool called Lifeblog that helps people to keep chronological record of messages and photos captured via their mobile phone. This isn't really news since the BBC covered this back in March 2004 and from there I discovered that Microsoft have an earlier research project known as MyLifeBits, an "experiment in lifetime storage".

In a way the idea of a Life Blogs and MyLifeBits sounds very similar to the idea of electronic student portfolios from the world of education that I had already heard of. I discovered some interesting articles around this subject linked from the UK site, e-Learning Centre, including one titled Beyond the Electronic Portfolio: A Lifetime Personal Web Space.

Keeping Found Things Found

There is lots of excitement about the idea of desktop search, with probably Google Desktop leading the way in this space. However search only represents one part of human information gathering behaviour.
Earlier in February the Seattle Times in the US reported on the work of a University of Washington research group, called Keeping Found Things Found. They appear to be looking beyond just the technology and asking how people manage the information they find. According to this report while they think desktop search is helping people to deal with information overload their fieldwork observations shows that people still "expressed a desire to organize their information, even if it could be easily found through search tools". Typically this appears to mean putting things into folders or some kind of hierarchical structure.
Having observed this behaviour first hand in the work place when designing intranets and shared workspaces for virtual teams etc, I wonder if this has something to do with the (or at least the perception of) confidence and context a folder or hierarchy provides pieces of information? And underlying this might even be a basic, but very human, mistrust of technology.

Blogs & Wikis for Trainers, Canberra, 30 Mar 05

Details of the seminar on blogs and wikis I'll be running for the Australian Institute of Training and Development (AITD) in Canberra on the 30 March are now available. I'll be covering:

• • Blogs and wikis explained, including live demonstrations:
• • The value of using blogs and wikis as e-learning tools;
• • What information technology you need to host a blog or wiki;
• • Other issues related to using blogs and wikis in organisations; and
• • How to get started with your own blog.

If you can't make this event but are interested in implementing blogs, wikis or any other type of collaborative technology in your organisation, please visit my Website at www.chieftech.com.au to make contact. I'm happy to present at other industry forums, provide in house seminars or scope a more detailed consulting project depending on your needs.

Flying into a tangled web

An article in the Australian Financial Review about Flight Centre, titled Flying into a tangled web (5 March 2005), caught my attention this weekend. Others, like the Australian, had already covered Flight Centre's disappointing results but the AFR made a link to the impact of the Internet and discount fares on their performance.

This story caught my eye because I remember reading this case study on Flight Centre's use of thin client computing that apparently cut their IT costs by 40%. At the time I thought this looked like a good strategic decision, but it appears that despite saving money related to the expansion of their physical stores they subsequently found themselves having to catch up in terms of their systems and online store front. In August last year they announced they had acquired some additional e-commerce capabilities and range of other internal IT projects, although from what has been reported more recently it doesn't look like this has all been smooth sailing for them.

While it looks like Flight Centre are big enough to ride through this in the long term, it serves as a good reminder that the results of a good IT strategy aren't always just about controlling costs or simply making organisations more efficient. I made a similar point in this short article I wrote last year for an e-zine, Empower customers with self-service, not automation (PDF, 77KB).

Blogging and E-Learning

Later in March I'll be presenting to a group in Canberra (ACT, Australia) on the role of Blogs and Wikis in learning as well as providing some practical demonstrations of how this technology works. I was asked to find some pre-presentation reading materials related to blogging and e-learning, so I thought I would share them here too:

• Blogging to Learn

• Content Delivery in the 'Blogosphere'

• The Coming Collision between Automated Instruction and Social Constructivism

• Inside the ivory tower

This one isn't about blogging but looks at the related role of Wikis in e-learning:

• WikiWebs – Back to Basics

Australian Innovation Showcase 2005

Unfortunately I can't make this event myself, but the Australian Centre for Advanced Computing and Communications (aka ac3) is hosting a showcase at the Australian Technology Park tomorrow morning. It's a chance to hear about a range of innovative software products from companies who you may not be that familiar with - for example Crux Cybernetics, DocBanq and Grouputer and others. Having attended an earlier ac3 breakfast and as I know some of the people behind these companies, I can say it's worth attending to see what they have to offer.

Use it or lose it

I've written a few times for Image and Data Manager (aka IDM) magazine now and in the recently published Jan/Feb 2005 edition you'll find my latest article, Use it or lose it.

In this article I investigate the relationship between usability, measuring results and success with technology. For the article I interviewed Tony Biddle, a consultant from UsabilityOne, and spoke with Kevin O'Donnell from the Australian Institute for Project Management. I worked with Kevin at Ernst & Young for a while and he has applied his content management skills to improve usage of the AIPM Website - a great example that shows getting good usage isn't always about having the coolest site, but about getting users to the information and resources they need.

BTW You can find an archive of past articles on my Website and my most recent article will be added in due course. Look out for a critical review of Wiki technology in a future edition of IDM.

The Right Mind-set for Managing IT

I was researching something else when I came across this great Harvard Business Review article from 1998, titled "The Right Mind-set for Managing Information Technology". It compares western and Japanese approaches to managing IT.

What I like about this article is that first they identify five common business and technology problems:

1. IT investments aren't linked to business strategy;
2. Payoff from IT investments isn't enough;
3. Too much technology for technology's sake;
4. Poor relationships between users and IT specialists; and
   
5. System designs don't consider user preferences and work habits.

Sound familiar? Then then analyse and compare the way western and Japanese managers frame IT. In summary they suggest that the Japanese have better practical outcomes with IT because they use strategic instinct to identify appropriate technology that are designed around how humans work. They measure on performance improvement and encourage organizational bonding between IT and users by colocating and rotating staff.

The authors claim that one outcome of the Japanese approach is that IT spending is focused on incremental continuous improvement - fast forward to 2004 and this is very similar to an argument that Leigh Moyle (from Intranetworks) and I put forward in this article we wrote for Image and Data Manager magazine, called "The Search for the Perfect Intranet". The point around design reminds me of the point may by Tom Davenport in another HBR article, titled "Saving IT's Soul: Human-Centered Information Management".

Even if you don't accept the comparison or the analysis, the idea of reflecting on the mind-set we use to plan, design and manage information technology is a useful one.

Digital Pen and Paper

Considering I was only just talking about the design qualities of the ol'Bic biro yesterday, I noticed today that there is a lot of excitement at the moment about new "digital pen and paper" from HP and Nokia. Apparently this is a real bonus for organisations that need to fill out lots of forms - the information can be captured on paper and digital format at the same time so it can be transferred into a database.

According to this report in ARNnet each pen costs US$199, but rest assured that if you happen to lose one it can be deactivated. Maybe I'm missing something, but surely the types of environment (and users) that might use this solution are probably the type that are going to lose a lot of pens? (this is just based on my own experiences of course...)

What is Good Design?

The Design Museum in London, UK, recently asked visitors to nominate suggestions for the best low-cost innovation ("Under a Tenner" - pdf of the media release). The most popular choice was the humble Bic ballpoint pen according to a report in the UK's Daily Telegraph. According to the Telegraph, the biro was extolled in the exhibition by Fernando and Humberto Campana, a pair of Brazilian furniture designers, who described it as "practical and easy to find, ergonomy while writing."

I wonder what people would have suggested if they were asked to nominate the best information technology innovations? Someone who might have an opinion on this is Donald Norman - he has a list of well designed products (not all IT related) that he considers to have "special positive characteristic worthy of comment". In particular I like the reference to Goggle's non-error messages. Predictably Apple's iPod is also listed... but I guess being popular, not clever, is what this is all about.

Beware the Instant Messaging Bogeymen

I couldn't help but react to this post in excited utterances about the risks of instant messaging (IM) for the legal industry. I commented that:

"Oh dear, I had thought the days of the IM bogeymen were just a distant memory. The instant messaging phenomenon might be new to the legal industry but else where it has already taken off and in fact the compliance tools already exist. While Whitfield and Thompson focus on the risks of chat they fail to mention the benefits of "presence" provided by IM and how IM bots can provide alternative interfaces into other databases and systems. By the way, the key lesson from other industries is that if legal firms ignore IM and fail to implement corporate solutions, users will find their own."

Maybe I was bit tough, but IM is often misrepresented. True, it isn't appropriate in all circumstances (just like any kind of information technology) but to evaluate IM you need to look at range of benefits it provides including chat, presence and integration with other systems within the broader context of the organisation where it is being used. There I've said it and now I feel much better :-)