Pizza, salad and a side of blogging

We had a great first get together of our very informal enterprise blogging and social software interest group yesterday. Over some excellent pizzas and salads at GPO Sydney we talked about our experiences and interests in this area. In particular there was a lot of discussion about the barriers to greater adoption of these technologies by corporate Australia, such as:

• Technophobia - there is a lot of tech jargon floating around and overlapping terms (e.g. RSS, XML, feeds, etc) that puts people off
• Overstated bad publicity about public Weblogs damaging the reputation of blogs generally
• Lack of awareness of the value, benefits and drivers for businesses adopting these social technologies

However despite all this, our feeling is that as Australia typically lags behind the US by a few years we predict that the time is right for this to change in 2006.

In the meantime we're all looking forward to meeting up again next year to keep this conversation going and to hopefully flush out some local success stories. So if you're in an Australian organisation that's blogging or using a wiki etc internally and are prepared to tell your story, get in touch and we'll invite you to lunch with us next year.

PS Both Trevor Cook and Ross Dawson both joined us for lunch and you can check out their predictions and comments. Unfortunately Frank Arrigo couldn't make it but has still added to our online conversation.

Tags: corporate blogging, enterprise social software, GPO sydney

Another E&Y KM Case Study

I know that a lot of people stumble on to my blog and Website from search engines because they are looking for case studies on Ernst & Young's (E&Y) approach to knowledge management. Well, you might be interested in the new case study (PDF) from Factiva on how they have integrated their electronic news resources into KWeb, E&Y's global knowledge intranet.

The case study I'm pleased to say is written from the perspective of the Australian E&Y practice and features Brigitte Wharton, the local Knowledge Deployment Manager.

PS Some of Factiva's other case studies and whitepapers are also worth a look.

Tags: Ernst & Young, Factiva, knowledge management

Social network technologies

The last edition of Image & Data Manager (IDM) magazine for the year arrived during the week and if you're a subscriber look out for my article on social network technologies (Small world!, pp.56-57). If you're not very familiar with this kind of thing, it provides an introduction to the application of social network concepts to the business world, including networking sites, business blogs and social network analysis (SNA) software.

As usual I'll post a copy of this article in my IDM archive at a later date.

Talking of networks and networking, Matt Moore has helped to get a few us together for an informal lunch this coming Tuesday to chew the fat on the use of social software within the enterprise in Australia. We're hear a lot more about blogging and social media outside the firewall, so we hope to uncover the state of play inside the firewall.

Tags: enterprise social softwae, social networks, social network analysis

Making Project Management Education Happen – On Line!

I completed my Master of Business & Technology (MBT) at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) this year and here is a great case study (PDF) that explores the teaching and learning approaches used in the course and the benefits of the Project Management facilitators working as a community of practice in the MBT program. This paper also contains a good example of a virtual team charter, used to set expectations, allocate roles and define communications channels. The role of the facilitator's community of practice also fits in with my own ideas about a "collaborative ecology", that builds on Evaristo and Munkvold's collaborative infrastructure.

BTW Educational settings are a great place to find leading practice virtual teams in action - I suspect because the objective is learning, participants are less likely to skip recommended steps and activities than when operating in business context.

Tags: virtual teams, project management, master of business & technology

Getting from hypertext to hypermedia

I haven't visited Jon Udell's blog for a while, so it was a happy chance that his most recent post deals with an issue I've been waiting for someone to tackle - how to hyperlink multimedia like we already do with hypertext. What's the point you might ask? Well, to quote Udell:

"In my earlier experiments with MP3 sound bites I showed how seemingly-opaque and statically-served audio files can be made link-addressable, and can therefore be quoted from in situ. Composing on-the-fly remixes is one of the nice benefits that fall out of this approach, but the larger goal is to bring the social effects we see at work in the textual blogosophere into the realm of audio. Linking and quotation drive discovery and shared discourse, but media formats, players, and hosting environments are notoriously hostile to linking and quotation, and I'd really like to see that change."

Udell takes advantage of Google Video's switch from VLC to Flash a couple of months ago to experiment with arbitrary clipping. However, I think concept rather than the technique is important - particularly his idea that:

• Every media player should also be, at least potentially, an authoring tool as well.
• Every piece of published media content should afford, at least potentially, a canonical address - indeed, a whole family of them.

Yes, yes, yes I say!

Tags: social software, hypermedia

IT Trends - laptops, wireless and skills

Gartner have identified six (more?) IT trends that will have significant impact on people, business and the IT industry. To be honest three trends caught my attention:

• By 2008, 10 percent of companies will require employee-purchased notebooks.
• By 2010, 30 percent of U.S. homes will use only cellular or Internet telephony.
• The job market for IT specialists will shrink 40 percent by 2010.

The first two points just reinforce some of the issues that many others, including myself (e.g. The Intranet Imperative and In The Know And On the Move), have been raising about the impact of consumer driven innovation on business IT. Of course, its going to be interesting to see how IT departments in large organisations deal with the move from SOEs to wireless and diverse operating environments (WDOEs?). Or is it just easier to go thin-client?

However there is an interesting local link in respect to the last point as a group of local business representatives recently had a meeting to discuss the future IT skills requirements of Australian industry. Victoria Police chief information officer Valda Berzins apparently commented that despite the public perception of there being no jobs in IT, there are growing opportunities in Australia for people with technical and business IT skills.

Tags: Gartner, technology in the workplace

HR self-service and virtual social capital

Quite a while ago I mentioned that I had a new article being published in the IHRIM Journal. Following an unexpected delay in the printing of the July/August 2005 issue of the journal, I'm pleased to say that it has how been published. The article, titled HR Self-Service: Empowering Staff while Creating Social Capital in Virtualized Organizations, discusses the need for HR managers to develop "virtual" social capital in organisations where self-service HR has implemented.

In the introduction I say:

"Human resources self-service is perhaps one of the most indisputable HR information management success stories. While in other industries, users and project sponsors alike bemoan failed IT projects, organizations deploying HR self-service systems report high levels of employee satisfaction and a fast return on investment. This successful virtualization of HR services has also coincided with the change of emphasis in the HR profession – from personnel administration to strategic human resource management (HRM). There is, in fact, a strong suggestion that HR self-service is a key enabler of strategic HRM, since it has allowed HR transactional processes to be automated and, in some cases, re-engineered. But as we rush towards implementing second and third wave employee and manager self-service systems, is there now a risk that the potent combination of self-service and strategic HR management is too much of a good thing?

Thomas A. Kochan has criticized the strategic HR management approach for creating what he calls a ”crisis of trust” in the HR profession. While on one hand I agree that there is a need for organizations to modernize HR processes, I also believe that it is possible that the virtualization of HR service delivery has actually contributed to the relationship breakdown between HR professionals and other stakeholders. Surely it was only to be expected that there was a risk of HR professionals becoming isolated when they served the majority of staff from behind self-service systems? After all, people, networks and communities make the social capital in organizations, not computer systems."

If you have trouble getting hold of a copy of this article, let me know and I'll see what I can do.

Tags: employee self-service, social capital, virtual organizations

Throw off your BlackBerries and unite with a Wiki

Enterprise social software must be really going mainstream when we start hearing about corporate execs smashing their BlackBerry's in frustration and converting to more collaborative tools! According to BusinessWeek magazine, people are getting sick of information overload caused by email. As a result they suggest the importance of email as the collaboration tool of choice is fading "in favor of other software tools that function as real-time virtual workspaces":

• Private workplace wikis (searchable, archivable sites that allow a dedicated group of people to comment on and edit one another's work in real time);
• Blogs (chronicles of thoughts and interests);
• Instant Messenger (which enables users to see who is online and thus chat with them immediately rather than send an e-mail and wait for a response);
• RSS (really simple syndication, which lets people subscribe to the information they need); and
• More elaborate forms of groupware (e.g. Sharepoint, eRoom, Quickplace), that allow workers to create Web sites for teams' use on projects.

Its intersting to note how they include what I would think of as traditional groupware and collaboration tools in this mix with social software.

Thanks to Ross Dawson for picking up on this story.

Tags: enterprise social software, social software, technology in the workplace

Tom, Larry & Don get into blogging

I've just discovered that Tom Davenport along with Larry Prusak and Don Cohen have a group blog, called The Babson Knowledge Blog. Collectively they've only made a dozen or so posts since they started at the end of September, but each is worth reading.

BTW If you have trouble subscribing to the atom feed on their blog, try this hidden RSS 2.0 feed instead.

Tags: don cohen, larry prusak, tom davenport

Before social software there was...

...Lotus Notes. Ok, I know, I know, I keep going on about it. But if you want to know where we are going, you should also know where we have been.

While IBM's official history is a good place to start, I also recommend going back a bit further and reading about its origins in the PLATO system which has some insights about the future if you look. What I particularly enjoy about the story of PLATO and Lotus Notes is that:

• Like social software, "Notes" originally appeared out of the PLATO system in response to an evolving demand for functionality, rather than a planned design case (i.e. users didn't know what they wanted until they started to use it).
• The PLATO system provided an integrated same time/different time communication environment - something we are only beginning to see in many so called "modern" groupware or social software tools.

Of course Lotus Notes has some downsides (sorry, "features"!) so its interesting to consider these as social software tools are increasingly used within corporate IT environments - e.g. the flexibility and power in Lotus Notes can result in usability, scalability, duplication and information overload problems.

More recently also have a look at this summary of a panel discussion at Lotusphere 2005. Here Ray Ozzie talks about his concept of a "meshed" information environment. Jack Vinson has also posted a summary of an interview with Ozzie in the November 2005 issue of ACM Queue. Ozzie apparently points out "that large companies are at a disadvantage with respect to flexibility in software. New collaborative technologies are coming out, and individuals and small enterprises are using the new technology to good effect".

Tags: Lotus Notes, Ray Ozzie, social software

Innovation in new economy knowledge networks

The timing of this BRW article about sharing knowledge and innovation through networks is pretty good, considering we've just had a conference on that same topic. Quoting from a chapter in Innovation and Imagination at Work (Innovation in the networked world), they list four attributes of "New-economy knowledge":

• Speed - Information is increasing at an exponential rate and becoming obsolete more quickly.
• Cut-through - Gaining access to relevant and constantly updated information is of prime importance for continuous innovation.
• Sharing - Organisations trying to increase the diversity of their knowledge by doing everything themselves will suffer from information overload.
• Networks - New networks let companies expand their database of contacts.

If this interests you, also have a look at 5 principles for high-performance collaboration.

Tags: collaboration, knowledge management, innovation

Thanks Ozzie, for Simple Sharing Extensions

Ray Ozzie's new blog itself is a little disappointing, but the announcement in his second post about the launch by Microsoft of an open extension to RSS, called Simple Sharing Extensions (SSE), is already sending out a few shockwaves around the blogosphere and other parts of the IT industry who are riding the Web 2.0 and social software wave.

According to the spec, what SSE does is to allow us to create "loosely-cooperating apps" that use:

• RSS as the basis for item sharing – that is, the bi-directional, asynchronous replication of new and changed items amongst two or more cross-subscribed feeds.


• OPML as the basis for outline sharing – that is, the bi-directional, asynchronous replication of outlines, such as RSS aggregators subscription lists.

In other words, what SSE will do is allow multi-directional synchronisation of data and objects across multiple applications. BTW If this sounds familiar, Ozzie points out the heritage of the SSE concept with the multi-directional synchronisation found in Lotus Notes.

The big difference of course is that while Notes is proprietary, SSE is an open standard and Microsoft have released it under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. And if what many of us are thinking is right, then we should expect to see quite quickly a whole range of new applications that get mashed together to take advantage of the SSE standard, in the same way the RSS has taken off.

Yes, this is pretty cool :-)

Tags: Ray Ozzie, Simple Sharing Extensions, SSE

Blogging for intelligence at Sensis

Yesterday afternoon I presented the last session of day 1 at the Ark Group's Knowledge and Innovation conference, held in Sydney. I have to say that the levels of awareness and deep understanding of what social software is all about by people in this space remains mixed. For some the idea of blogs and wikis are quite new, while other have started to experiment. Either way it makes it hard to talk usefully on this subject in the space of only 45 minutes (I'm still waiting for someone to hold a decent conference on Web 2.0 and social software here in Australia!).

It was interesting to observe that while one organisation, Sensis (part of Telstra), has tried blogging as part of a competitive intelligence KM initiative, the outcome was to use that success as a proof of concept that resulted in a new content management system, rather than greater use of blogging.

Incidentally, in this instance Sensis used Blogger as their blogging platform for a CI community of practice - you can take a look a two examples, Sensis Classifieds News Service and Sensis CI News Service - beta version. However, when you look at the detail really they are just using these blogs to manually aggregate content that members of the community spot out on the Web. That is, there isn't much conversation or reflective learning going on.

Anyway, at least this is some proof that some Aussie organisations are looking at blogging for internal use rather than just external communications or marketing.

Tags: corporate blogging, social software, Sensis

Industry Update Extra: The Future Of Collaboration, a webinar with David Coleman

It has been quite a while since my last industry update, however I thought you might be interested to know that Grouputer (Update No. 5) are co-sponsoring a special free webinar on "The Future Of Collaboration: An Analyst's View" with David Coleman, Founder and Managing Director, Collaborative Strategies, San Francisco:

"Is your collaboration strategy on the right track? Are you making the right investments? How is the market converging? Find out how you stack up against the latest trends in a burgeoning marketplace. According to this senior analyst, collaboration technologies are evolving rapidly, and forming a 'perfect wave' that is radically changing the market and creating a new world of 'on-demand' collaboration."

Date - Wednesday 30 November, 2005
Time - 10am - 10.45am (Australian Eastern Daylight Time)
Where - Your computer (You need IE6+ AND a telephone connection to participate.)
Cost - Free of charge - you need to register.

Previous Industry Updates:
Update No.1: Pivot Software
Update No.2: Objectify
Update No.3: GMB Research
Update No.4: TeamFrame from Crux Cybernetics
Update No.5: GrouputerNet from Grouputer Solutions
Update No.6: DocBanq

Tags: ChiefTech Industry Updates, Collaboration

Peter Drucker, dies aged 95

I haven't read much news online over the weekend, so it was a bit of a shock to find out tonight that Peter Drucker, has died aged 95. Nicholas Carr says this:

"I had almost come to believe that Peter Drucker was immortal, but sadly it's not so. He died earlier today, at 95. Drucker was one of the great writers on business and management, who over the course of 70 years tirelessly championed the dignity and the intelligence of workers. In his 1946 book Concept of the Corporation, he made an eloquent case against mindless bureaucracy, arguing that managers should give workers the power to make decisions and take the initiative. A radical thought then, it's become the common wisdom today, though few businesses actually live up to Drucker's ideal."

Tags: Peter Drucker

The Art of Mashing

Ok, it might be a little clunky but this version of Risk (the strategy board game) implemented using Google Maps just says we do it because we can...

Tags: google maps, mashing

Myth busting collaboration best practices

Thanks to Jack Vinson for bringing these real world lessons on collaboration from non-profit research organisation, MITRE, to my attention. Back in the February 2000 (yes, that's right - five years ago) edition of their technology journal, The Edge Perspectives, they critically challenged six hypothetical guidelines:

• The organization's culture must naturally support collaboration.
• Exhaustive requirement analysis is needed to ensure success.
• You need broad high-level management support.
• The information technology (IT) infrastructure must be accommodating.
• Build it and they will come.
• You need a lot of money to deploy collaboration technologies.

One of their conclusions is quite interesting (particulary with reference to my other blog post today): "Collaborative systems are disruptive by their very nature... In large organizations, it is the IT support elements that sometimes are most committed to the status quo, and surprisingly not the line organizations they support. Perhaps this is because IT elements do not themselves perform core mission functions and they can often miss the potential value that such disruptive technologies can provide."

Tags: collaboration, virtual teams

Corporate Australia: Bloggers are not welcome

According to recent stories in Computerworld and the Sydney Morning Herald, corporate bloggers are perceived as both time wasters and a security risk. One local analyst, quoted by Computerworld, also claims that they are only being used as "grey area" information management tools in IT departments.

My own observation is that blogs and other social software tools are being used by larger organisations in Australia, its just that we don't hear them talking about it. In fact IT departments may be the last place you see them being used. The real innovators in this space in Australia appear to be in the traditional media and education sectors.

Tags: business blogs, corporate blogs, social software, technology in the workplace

Mind your presentation

During the last week or so I've been playing with some different outliner and mind mapping software to use as group facilitation and presentation support tools.

One particular tool, Mind Manager, really caught my attention because it offers an alternative presentation approach to Death by PowerPoint. Basically you can use Mind Manager to structure and gather together the points and information related to your presentation - including pictures, text, documents and even spreadsheets. Then using Mind Manager's "Presentation Mode" you can use your mind map as the presentation.

The nice thing about Presentation Mode is that your audience can see the whole of what you are presenting at the beginning and it is easy to jump backwards and forwards to different points. The effect is quite different to the linear approach in a typical slide-by-slide presentation that we've become so familiar with!

Other tools I've looked at are Treepad (an outliner - the interface works well, but it would be nice if it stored data in XML rather than its own weird format!) and FreeMind (a nice open source mind mapping tool, however it lacks Mind Manager's Presentation Mode).

BTW If you're looking for an outliner tool, Wikipedia has a good list of commercial, freeware and open source options under it's outliner definition.

Tags: outliners, PowerPoint

From Web 2.0 to Human 2.0

Web 2.0 might be hot today, by some people are already thinking further to the future. Tech futurist Ray Kurzweil in an article reprinted from the New Scientist in yesterday's Sydney Morning Herald fast forwards us to 2040 where he predicts Human 2.0 will emerge.

"we'll have both the hardware and software to recreate human intelligence by the end of the 2020s. We'll be able to improve these methods and harness the speed, memory and knowledge-sharing ability of machines... By the mid 2040s, the non-biological portion of our intelligence will be billions of times more capable than the biological portion."

Even if some of what he says comes true, the next 20-30 years are going to be very interesting...

PS Also check out his new book, Singularity.

Tags: Human 2.0, Ray Kurzweil

Can you trust Wikipedia?

For those of us that have been hanging around "content management" in one form or another it comes as no surprise that some people, like Nicholas Carr (The law of the wiki and Trouble in Wiki Land) might be questioning the quality of Wikipedia content. Afterall, producing quality content needs time and resources regardless of the technology used to produce and publish it.

The UK's Guardian newspaper even goes as far as getting some experts to review a few Wikipedia entries. Still, this misses the point a little - if these "experts" have found something wrong, the idea is that they should change it...

This may of course be where social software of the Wikipedia type falls down since it depends on participation, including the provision of time and resources. What do you think?

Tags: wikipedia

OpenOffice 2.0 launched (or so I'm told...)

I've been an OpenOffice user for at least 18 months, but I'm pleased to see that OpenOffice 2.0 has now been released. The beta releases have shown that its something worth waiting for, but if you're trying to download it right now from the OpenOffice site, you may you may need to wait a bit longer! I think it may be victim of its own success at the moment.

In the meantime you can read about it at various places online. New features includes better interoperability with MS Office, a new database module, advanced XML capabilities and native support for the OpenDocument format.

UPDATE 25 Oct 05: I can get to the site now!

Tags: openoffice

BlackBuried defined

Linked from Euan Semple's blog and originally posted here:

BlackBuried : adjective : The act of instantaneously and superficially reading the content of recently arrived email on a BlackBerry or other type of handheld email device while engaged in some other activity, and thereafter neglecting to go back to read the email more fully at a more conventient time, rendering the email thread otherwise lost.

ex "Yeah, I think I remember seeing that email, mate, but I think I may have I BlackBuried it, sorry!"

Tags: information overload, technology in the workplace

New tag cloud on the ChiefTech Blog

Inspired by Jack Vinson's efforts, I've added my own Tag Cloud to the blog using www.tagcloud.com. To view it you'll need to scroll down the left hand side of the page. If it works well I'll probably move it a little higher up the page but at the time of posting I'm still waiting for the tag cloud to start generating!

UPDATE 19 Oct 05: I've removed the Tag Cloud at the moment because its not working... stay tuned.

ANOTHER UPDATE 25 Oct 05: OK, as if by magic my Tag Cloud has started working. Scroll down to see it on the right hand side. Remember it will only show recent posts.

Tags: tag cloud

Web 2.0 - from commerce to people

I've been meaning to post something on Web 2.0 during the last week, but to be honest the topic is getting plenty of coverage out in the blogosphere and other media. Wired has a good summary of the recent Web 2.0 Conference in the US to get you started.

One thing that has been causing quite a bit of conversation is Tim O'Reilly's "Web2MemeMap" and online article, What Is Web 2.0.

Tags: Tim O'Reilly, web 2.0

Slides from knowledge sharing technologies - pitfalls and risks at UTS

Last night I tag teamed with Cris Townley to present a guest lecture to a UTS MBA class on managing knowledge. My presentation covered the pitfalls and risks associated with knowledge sharing technologies - the slides are available to download (PDF, 241KB).

BTW Because I try to avoid Death by PowerPoint don't expect to find everything I said and what the class discussed in these slides - I suggest you check out these case studies on Ernst & Young to supplement the slides. We also made good use of some cartoons to point out both the challenges and hype associated with KM technologies. I also highlighted how the typical data -> information -> knowledge paradigm is a flawed concept that can result in knowledge sharing technology failure.

Any questions? Add a comment!

Tags: knowledge management

Consumer tech seeping into corporate IT

This is something I've been talking about a lot this year (most recently in my last IDM article about mobile knowledge management) so its satisfying to see a big analyst firm like Gartner - as reported in Computerworld - now saying the same thing that I've long suspected - corporate IT needs to keep an eye on the consumer technology innovation.

According to Gartner there are five key reasons for keeping an eye on consumer technology:

• Consumer technology impacts employees;
• It can provide clear cost advantages over traditional corporate hardware and software;
• Potential employees will know all about it;
• Customers will already be using it; and
• If you try to stop your employees using consumer technology for work, it will backfire.
  

Tags: business and technology, social software

VoIP - Security Reality Check

Here is a bit of a wake up call from CIO magazine, who warn us that "CIOs ready to take the plunge with VoIP need to understand that data firewalls alone won't protect them." They recommend:

• Encypting VoIP traffic;
• Avoid soft-phones;
• Seperate voice and data traffic;
• Install a VoIP firewall; and
• (The one we often forget about) Ensure physical security.

Don't say you've not been warned!

Tags: voip

Two events this week...

There are two equally interesting events this week, one in Wollongong (NSW) and another in Sydney:

IT Governance with Graeme Philipson
ACS South Coast Chapter Meeting, Wednesday, 5th October, 2005
"IT Governance is an integral part of Corporate Governance, which is at the forefront of most organisations' minds nowadays. But too many people regard governance and compliance as a burden, and ignore the opportunities it offers. It Governance in particular can be used as a means to fulfil the ultimate aim of the IT function - to align IT with business strategies, and ultimate to greatly improve the performance of both the IT department and the organisation." Event and registration details can be found on the ACS website.

Getting People To Talk To Each Other and Knowledge Management Made Easy?
NSW KM Forum, Thursday 6th October, 2005
Featuring Marcus Gibson (Lend Lease Corporation) and Steven Layer (Weblogics) with Lauren Allen (HLA Envirosciences). Free to attend, but you need to RSVP.

Unfortunately due to other commitments I won't be able to attend (again!).

Tags: it governance, knowledge management

The Write Stuff

Nancy White provided a review of Writely, a Web-based word processing application, so I thought I'd sign up and give it a go. As well as giving people the power to collaborate on a document you can also post directly to blogger. Signing up for an account is nice and quick, so why not give it go.

My only complaint is that it was a little slow, but that may be the fault of my slow Aussie broadband connection. Also, a non-US spellchecker would be nice too ;-)

Tags: writely

Are you mashing?

If you're interested in social software, then the idea of "mashing" or "mash-up" is an important concept to understand. The Economist provides an introduction and discussion of the future direction in social software mashing. They explain mashing as:

"The term mash-up is borrowed from the world of music, where it refers to the unauthorised combination of the vocal from one song with the musical backing of another, usually from a completely different genre. Web mash-ups do the same sort of thing, combining websites to produce useful hybrid sites and illustrating the internet's underlying philosophy: that open standards allow and promote unexpected forms of innovation."

I've mentioned a number of examples of social software mash-ups on this blog, including:

• The Katrine Information Map
• Foundcity

Tags: mash-up, social software

Dazed and confused about IT jargon

A survey by a UK recruitment firm reports that "Over two thirds (67%) of office workers feel 'bewildered' and 'inadequate' due to not understanding IT professionals' 'tech jargon'". Apparently the use of analogies is the most effective way of helping people who are not IT literate grasp how technology works.

Tags: technology in the workplace

The BBC's low-tech KM

A few months ago I posted a brief blog about Euan Semple from the BBC. Semple continues to attract interest (such as on excited utterances) with his knowledge management work at the BBC. His approach, which is apparently making good use of blogs and wikis, is described in this new short article by David Weinberger in KMWorld.

PS Also, have a look at this interesting argument/conversation linked from Semple's own blog about blogging and marketing. Also worth reading, from another BBC blogger Tom Coates, is his related response "to the rhetoric of weblog marketing".

Tags: euan semple, knowledge management, social software

Knowledge and Innovation - 21st-23rd Nov. in Sydney

I'll be presenting at the Ark Group's Knowledge and Innovation conference in November on the use of collaborative tools in facilitating innovation in the corporate environment, including:

• Understanding the role of collaboration tools;
• Examining the different forms of social software; and
• The future of collaboration tools: blogs, wikis and instant messaging.

The conference also includes two half-day workshops - one from David Rymer (former Director of Know-How at Minter Ellison) and another by Optimice. As part of the conference, Optimce will also be using their Accelerated Networking approach help people network more effectively.

Tags: innovation, knowledge management

More from Tom: Why Office Design Matters

Following on from Tom Davenport's special presentation for the NSW KM Forum, you can read an excerpt from his new book on the HBS Working Knowledge site that discusses his thoughts on the link between the physical work environment and knowledge worker performance.

Davenport comments that while there "is a good deal said about this topic, but not much know about it". His own argument on the subject focuses on the observation that while knowledge workers prefer closed offices, they seem to communicate better in open ones.

If you enjoyed this, you might also enjoy some of Davenport's CIO magazine columns, such as Serenity Now!, Putting It All Together Again and Withering Heights.

PS While you're on the HBSWK site, also have a look at another article in the same edition that looks at the future impact pervasive high(er) speed broadband access is going to have.

Tags: knowledge management, tom davenport

In the Know And On The Move

My July/August Image and Data Magazine article, In the Know And On The Move, is now available for download from my IDM article archive page.

"It has been said that knowledge knows no boundaries. But as knowledge workers begin to access technologies like personal area networks, wireless broadband, Voice over IP and 3G, can we finally say the same about knowledge management and make it truly mobile?"

Tags: mobile knowledge management, mobile social software

The VoIP Advantage

Technology analyst and Supernova organiser, Kevin Werbach, has been writing for a while about the impact of wireless and VoIP technology.

I like the ideas in his VoIP-for-dummies article from this month’s Harvard Business Review, titled Using VoIP to Compete. It reflects my own thoughts on VoIP that the long-term value of VoIP won’t be about cheap long distance calls, but will be about using next generation networks for competitive advantage.

Werbach provides a good overview of VoIP from a business perspective and explains why he believes that unlike earlier telecommunications innovations, like the telegraph, VoIP “will become more strategically overtime”.

Tags: voip, business & technology

Tom Davenport on Thinking for A Living this Wednesday

Thanks to the efforts of Matt Moore, one of my favourite gurus Tom Davenport (who is in Australia to present a master class) will be speaking about Thinking for A Living to the NSW KM Forum on Wednesday 14th September (yes, that's this Wednesday). There is no ticket cost but we will be collecting for the Red Cross Hurricane Katrina appeal ($15 for an employed person would be appropriate). Visit the forum's Website for full details and how to RSVP.

Unfortunately, I won't be able to make it :-(

Tags: tom davenport

Board of IT

A few months ago HP and Aussie law firm Mallesons Stephen Jacques released the results of an independent survey on IT governance of 155 large organisations. From this survey they concluded that in many cases IT strategies are not regarded as an integral part of business strategies because of the separation of the overall corporate governance strategy.

An MSJ partner commented:

"This lack of alignment between corporate governance and IT governance policies is surprising. Technology underpins the day-to-day operations of almost every significant business in Australia and is also essential to creating financial statements on which the market relies. Ensuring business continuity and the integrity of financial statements should be key elements of all corporate and IT governance policies and on the agenda for directors, CEOs and CFOs of all listed Australian companies. This is another instance where complying with legal obligations should result in a positive business outcome."

Good point but what interested me more was that apparently 78% thought that time costs and resources were the biggest barrier to compliance. Could it be what they are really saying is that they don’t really understand IT enough to manage it at a board level?

Tags: IT governance

Katrina Information Map

Hurricane Katrina has unfortunately given social software the chance to step up again and help out during a major disaster. The Katrina Information Map is a particularly good example of how social software hackers (in the old school sense) can quickly build a useful tool. The Katrina Information Map has been described by Wired as "a giant visual 'wiki' page" that uses Google Maps to help people affected by Hurricane Katrina who have or are trying to find information about the status of specific locations affected by the storm.

What's even more interesting is the speed in which this tool was built. The programmer, Greg Stoll, told Wired magazine that "I had some existing code for putting markers on the map from an XML file, so adding the extra functionality took about an hour and a half. I spent another hour or two on Wednesday just making sure it was working."

However, he also comments that "I trust the information from FEMA and the government a lot more than just the aggregation of information anyone can enter. But it is pretty cool, and it does show the power of the internet, the kind of collaborative effort that can put together a lot of information in a very short time."

Tags: social software

Understanding the Human Impact of Business IT

I find people either love or hate the work of research firms and the like, but if you can stay the distance Diane Morell, from Gartner has some interesting things to say in a report (published in the ACS's Information Age magazine) on The Human Impact Of Business IT.

There are some similarities between Morello's conclusions and many of the issues I've raised in this blog (such as the Intranet Imperative), other articles, as well as presentations I've made on topics on things such as social software, e-mail overload and the always on, always connected technology. Now its nice to see someone wrap this up into an argument that warns business they will undercut half the value of their IT investments if they fail to reform themselves.

I particularly like the observation she makes that "Consumers do battle with spam, pop-ups, identity theft and technical problems for which they lack adequate skills. Meanwhile, employees must operate within rigid standards, policies and security measures that save money for the company and tighten digital security – often at the expense of individual or team innovation."

She identifies what she call "three large disrupters":

• Thrashing (the constant and unproductive switching between systems, applications and communication channels);
• Judgement devaluation; and
• Excessive e-contact.

Morello also points to another article called The Dehumanised Employee published in CIO magazine at the end of last year that is also worth a look. You might also enjoy some of the links to other CIO magazine article related to Supermarket self-service that I blogged about in April.

Tags: business and technology, technology and business

What do you think of blogging?

Cast your vote on David Gurteen's poll - do you regularly read weblogs or do you hate them and don't know what all the fuss is about?

When I looked today more than 50% people either don't read them or don't like them. So, come on fellow bloggers and blog surfers - be quick as this is your chance to demonstrate the democratic power of the blogosphere :-)

Tags: weblogs

Mozilla Thunderbird

Its taken me a while, but an IMAP bug of some kind in Mozilla Navigator finally forced me to migrate over to Mozilla Thunderbird. Wish I'd done it sooner, because it has a nice integrated RSS News Reader.

So if you're not tied to Outlook, have a look a Thunderbird which is available as open source.

BTW I use it in combination with the Mercury Mail Transport System (developed by David Harris to complement his Pegasus Mail client, but it works equally well with Thunderbird). For small business, it works out as a very cost effective e-mail server solution if you're not ready to step up to something like Microsoft Small Business Server.

Tags: mozilla thunderbird

Mobileborgs

Great article in today's SMH that confirms what we all know already - that the 88% of Aussies aged 16-28 own a mobilephone can't imagine life without them.

However, the rest of the article is nice discussion of the impact of mobile communication on society and how this mobile or "instant" generation communicate:

"But that rapid and comprehensive uptake has had an impact on our working and personal lives. For employees, the technology provides the flexibility to work away from conventional workplaces. Punctuality is no longer a problem, as meeting times can be shifted with a brief call or text message. Dinners or dates also can be arranged - and postponed - on the run and at short notice."

One interesting comment also comes from Dr John Beaton, of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia, who says the mobile industry has yet to tackle the issue of ageing populations as users will increasingly demand handsets that are easy to use and have large buttons. Its good point - I've heard similiar complaints from an IT manager in an age care facility looking at VoIP handsets.

Tags: mobile social software

Why ChiefTech?

Ever wondered why my consulting business is called Chief Technology Solutions? MIS magazine discuss the difference perspectives on the CTO vs CIO role. They put forward four types of CTO:

• The Pilot;
• The Shaman;
• The Professor; and
• The Commando.

Personally I like the idea of the CTO being the person who is "seeking out new technologies, evaluating their impact on the business process, and selectively recommending those that can dramatically affect the business."

Tags: chief technology officer, technology and business

Lazy Marketing Is Not Compliant

Does "spam" (and I mean the electronic variety) bother you? From a business perspective we often focus on the issue of receiving spam. However the sending of spam is also an issue when your business operates in jurisdictions such as Australia where we have anti-spam laws in place.

This year I've noticed that the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) is really trying to take the enforcement of the Anti-Spam Act 2003 seriously and a number of companies have been fined, most recently a racing tips company for sending SMS. Its a timely reminder that all businesses in Australia, no matter how large or small their marketing activities, must comply with the Spam Act. Apparently since the Spam Act came into force in April 2004, the ACMA has dealt with 200 businesses who were not compliant. This is probably just the tip of the iceberg of course.

On the otherhand, while its important to comply (and really, its not hard with the right policies and systems in place) the flip side of spam is that its lazy marketing. An article in CMO magazine highlights that e-mail is really a great tool for developing 1-to-1 relationships. They conclude that:

"It's time, many experts say, for CMOs to acknowledge the potential of e-mail marketing not as a broad-stroke communications tool, but rather as a highly measurable and controlled way to foster relationships with customers."

Tags: anti-spam, marketing

Look out for knowledge on the move

If you're an Image and Data Manager magazine (IDM) subscriber look out for my lastest article titled, In the Know And On the Move that looks at mobile knowledge management:

"It has been said that knowledge knows no boundaries. But as knowledge workers begin to access technologies like personal area networks, wireless broadband, Voice over IP and 3G, can we finally say the same about knowledge management and make it truely mobile?"

This new article will be available from my Website later, but in the meantime you can download all my past IDM articles from the archive:

• Wiki - The New Facilitator?
• Use it or lose it
• The Search for the Perfect Intranet
• Meeting of Minds

Tags: Too many to mention, but maybe knowledge management

The New Knowledge Management Standard - 7th September

The New South Wales Knowledge Management Forum (NSW KM Forum) is holding a special meeting at midday on the 7th September in Sydney.

At this meeting Sue Halbwirth (Chair, Standards Australia Knowledge Management Committee and Senior Lecturer, KM, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, UTS) and Kim Sbarcea (Member, Standards Australia Knowledge Management Committee and Director Knowledge Networks, ASIC) will provide a full briefing of the content of the Standard, including key ideas such as:

• The knowledge ecosystem;
• The map-build-operationalise framework; and
• Knowledge enablers.

Tags: Australian Knowledge Management Standard, knowledge management

Keeping organisations safe from user gadgets

Following on from my blog thought piece, the Intranet Imperative, and also some of the implementation issues I raised in my recent social software presentations this CSOonline.com article outlines some of the information security issues that some of the lastest technology "gadgets" present to organisations.

Its looks at the risks created by camera phones, USB thumb drives, P2P and other Web-based services.

However one person reminds us to keep everything in perspective and says "the technology is neutral. It's not good or bad. It can be used in novel ways. But if we survived e-mail, we'll survive this evolutionary process too."

Tags: information security, intranet imperative

1 in 3 Aussie workers suffer from "tech rage"

The results of a survey of 400 office workers in Sydney and Adelaide has been picked up by many of the major Aussie newspapers (such as the Australian) that claims 1 in 3 find that modern technology is an increasing cause of major stress or "tech rage". But while its an interesting survey, do you trust a research company that doesn't appear to have a Website? O'Square Holes who are you and where are you?

However, there is probably a grain of truth in the survey results. The Australian Financial Review recently reported (Not without my BlackBerry, 5 August 2005) that always on, always connected wireless PDAs like the Blackberry are causing friction in the workplace and making it harder for people to deal with worklife balance. One user commented that "They do become a bit addictive . . . it's hard for people to give them up."

However, none of this is really new or surprising. I reported on these risks at confernces just last year and even wrote a short article where I concluded:

"Wireless is a disruptive technology with implications for business and society. Business owners and managers need to properly consider the risks and implementation problems associated with wireless tools. For society we need to discuss the impact of a wireless world where people are always on and always connected to their jobs. For some, like small business owners where the line between work and life is often blurred, the benefits could be positive but for other workers this lack of definition may cause problems." (Sorry - This short article isn't currently available online, so please e-mail me directly if you would like a copy)

So the question is, when are organisations and managers in the workplace going to start doing something about addressing this problem?

Tags: always on, always connected, tech rage, work life balance

Instant conversations are changing the face of friendship

As you know, I'm a one man campaign dedicated to challenging the misconceptions of computer-mediated collaboration tools such as Instant Messaging (IM). Well, hidden within the ITAlive section of Tuesday's Australia newspaper you'll find what I consider a fairly well balanced exploration of social IM. Three articles (all by the same journalist, but only one appears to be available online) look at:

• The pros and cons of socialising by IM;
• A case study of an IM user; and
• A look at what IM software can do beyond the "chat"” of its original ICQ incarnation.

The only disappointment - and I suspect this was never the intention - the articles don't really touch on the use of IM within a business or organisational context. The advice for users in this article is quite sensible and applicable in both a business and social context:

• IM isn't a substitute for real, face-to-face relationship but it can augment it or help where its not possible to be in the same place;
• Keep your buddy list to manageable number; and
• Make good use of your status to control when you want to talk.

There is also a nice link here to an academic article I was reading this week, titled Media Richness or Media Naturalness? Originally published in IEEE Transactions on Professionals Communication, Ned Kock revisits the assumption that "the face-to-face medium is the richest and most effective medium for reducing equivocality" and discusses what he calls the "Media Naturalness Hypothesis".

As a possible explanation of the success of text-based tools, such as e-mail and IM, Kock suggests it might be a case of maximum naturalness at the lowest possible cost with "compensatory adaptation"” overcoming the inherent limitations of these mediums (i.e. people need to put more thought and effort into their electronic communication). However, it you want to learn more I sugget you browse around the publications available from his Website.

UPDATE: Have a read of Shawn Callahan's thoughts in reaction to this post on the importance of IM to distributed communities.

Tags: instant messaging, Media Naturalness Hypothesis

Social Software: More of the same... or something really different?

If you missed my NSW KM Forum presentation in July on Social Software and are in the Wollongong area I'll be presenting again at the University of Wollongong on a similar topic of Social Software: More of the same... or something really different?.

The hour long presentation takes place at lunch time on the 10th August. Contact me by e-mail for details.

Tags: social software

Last round of ITOL funding announced

The Australian Federal Government has announced the 14th and most likely final round of ITOL (Information Technology Online) funding in a press release.

Grants of up to $200,000 per project are available under ITOL, an Australian Government initiative that fosters the take-up of collaborative e-business across a wide range of industry sectors.

Tags: ITOL

Building Vibrant Human Networks

Its been a while since a Harvard Business Review article has jumped out at me, but with a title like Collaboration Rules I couldn't really go past it without taking a look. The authors use the examples of open source and Toyota to demonstrate two examples of effective collaboration that breaks through organisational barriers. You might recall one of the authors, Phillip Evans, also co-authored Blow to Bits.

The long and short of the article is that they provide 5 principles for high-performance collaboration:

• Deploy pervasive collaborative technology;
• Keep work visible;
• Build communities of trust;
• Think modularly; and
• Encourage teaming.

In particular about the use of technology they say:

"Keep it simple and open: 'small pieces, loosely joined' in Cluetrain Manifesto coauthor David Weinberger’s felicitous phrase. Tools should work together through common standards and be as compatible as possible with those of the rest of the world. Think options not integration, adaptability not static efficiency."

They conclude that "perhaps the effectiveness of these collaborations suggests the ultimate emergence of something altogether new. Not markets. Not hierarchies. But a powerful combination of both—and a signature of the networked society."

BTW You can read an extract from this HBR article on the HBS Working Knowledge newsletter Website, although to be honest its a little confusing to read in isolation. However, for the moment it appears that you can access the full article on the HBR site.

Tags: collaboration, knowledge management, social software

Open Source halts ICT brain drain

Because of my work at the moment on helping to kick start a Wollongong ICT cluster/network at the moment, a comment piece in the Sydney Morning Herald by Jonathan Oxer caught my eye talking about how decentralised software development (aka open source) can help to strengthen local software industries.

Jonathan says "We have the brainpower available to revolutionise the local ICT industry by changing our focus from shipping boxed overseas product to developing and supporting products locally."

Tags: ICT cluster, open source

Free Steak Knives with Membership???

The Australian IT industry is experiencing an injection of membership organisations at the moment with CompTIA (as reported in ZDNet) and a new CIO Council (as reported in ComputerWorld) both setting up shop down under. Both appear to be positioned to compliment the Australian Computer Society, however how that plays out remains to be seen.

However, I had wondered why Computerworld was making such a fuss ("Free set of steak knives...and there's more!") about the new CIO Council. You would have thought that a bunch of CIO's getting together behind closed doors would reduce the value of their publications and research. But then I found at the bottom of the press release on the global CIO Council Website that:

"Launched in April 2004, the CIO Executive Council (www.cioexecutivecouncil.com) is a global, professional organization of CIOs created for the purpose of achieving lasting change within critical industry, academic, media and governmental groups. The council was founded by CXO Media Inc... CXO Media is a subsidiary of International Data Group (IDG)" and of course ComputerWorld is a publication of IDG...

Hmm. Do you think people will get free steak knives from the the world’s leading technology media, research and event company if they join the council? ;-)

Tags: Cio Council, CompTIA, Computerworld, Free Steak Knives

Reality Mining

Wired magazine has reported on an MIT research project that puts into reality some of the ideas about mobile social software that I've been writing* and blogging about (e.g. location enhanced applications). Called Reality Mining, the project captured communication, proximity, location, and activity information from 100 subjects at MIT over the course of the 2004-2005 academic year. The data was collected using special software written to run on any Nokia Symbian Series 60 mobile phone and apparently represents over 350,000 hours (more than 40 years) of continuous data on human behaviour!

In outlining the context for the research, the Reality Mining Website explains that:

"Today's social software is not very social. From standard CRM systems to Friendster.com, these services require users to be in front of a computer in order to make new acquaintances. Serendipity embeds these applications directly into everyday social settings: on the bus, around the water cooler, in a bar, at a conference."

*PS Look out for my latest article on mobile knowledge management in the July/August 2005 of Image and Data Magazine. (In the meantime check my online archive of past articles)

Tags: next generation networks, mobile social software, social software, wireless

E-mail - responsible for social laziness

Hidden in Sydney's free MX newspaper tonight was short report on an Australian survey that claims e-mail has led to social laziness in workplace with people taking little responsibility for follow-through. But it won't really come as much of a surprise to learn that people use e-mail to exacerbrate conflict and power play one person off against another...

BTW Talking of e-mail in the workplace, you can now download an article on my main Website, called For better, or worse: Living with e-mail in the workplace where I discuss the need for a organisational-wide response to dealing with information overload.

Tags: e-mail in the workplace, information overload

Industry Update No. 6: DocBanq

Last week I spent an hour with Matthew Lipscombe from DocBanq in a remote demo session where I had the chance to see their document management software in action. DocBanq provides document and records management in a straightforward fashion. This focus on simplicity is by design, as Matthew's background is in implementing larger and more complex (and costly) systems but with DocBanq they deliberately set out to design an application that that would be quick and effective to implement. DocBanq has all the key features you would expect such as:

• Access control, including group access rights;
• Version control;
• Document check-in and check-out;
• Management of both physical and electronic documents and records; and
• Allocation of document retention schedule.

DocBanq can be used in a way that meets all the relevant records management standards but smaller organisations, where the compliance overhead is less, can also use it more pragmatically as a practical solution to managing documents and records.

What makes DocBanq a little different is that is it delivered using a hosted application service provider (ASP) model and is accessed using a thin-client interface. The thin-client interface is provide by a software tool called Bullant Remote and is available as application to download or as an Active-X plugin for Internet Explorer. In comparison to a recent experience of using applications across another popular thin-client technology, I found the DocBanq client to be easy to install and very responsive. In fact I soon forgot that this was a hosted solution. You can also drag and drop between the Windows desktop and to other applications like Microsoft Outlook. And of course the other benefit of a hosted solution is that DocBanq take care of backup, with the system being mirrored across two different data centers.

One of the other attractions of DocBanq is that as a hosted solution it is very simple for organisations to setup selective remote access to their documents by their customers or other interested parties. Matthew described how in one instance an organisations uses DocBanq to give selective access to a panel of service providers. This makes is easy for the organisation to manage the flow of information to each service provider as projects are allocated to them using group access control features in DocBanq.

One of the latest new features in DocBanq is the ability to archive and import data in XML format. This allows users of DocBanq to:

• Archive redundant material electronically to physical media, say DVD, and remove it from their DocBanq account;
• Import archived material back into their DocBanq account as required with complete fidelity;
• Export and prepare material for long-term preservation in a digital preservation archive, free from any proprietary data format; and
• Import suitably prepared material from other databases and archives.

Overall I have to admit that I like DocBanq as I think its a excellent example of what a hosted application should be. And with the ease of setup and ability to export data into XML format it also represents a low risk option for both SMEs and departments within larger organistions looking for a discreet document or records management system.

You can also check out a review of DocBanq and six other document management systems by ZDNet Australia in April.

Disclaimer: Information on this site is of a general nature. Please seek advice for specific circumstances. Unless otherwise stated, please assume that I have no commercial relationship with the vendors or products discussed.

Previous Industry Updates:

Update No.1: Pivot Software
Update No.2: Objectify
Update No.3: GMB Research
Update No.4: TeamFrame from Crux Cybernetics
Update No.5: Grouputer

Tags: application service provider, ChiefTech Industry Updates, document management, records management

Special report on KM in the AFR

Did you see that today's Australian Financial Review (AFR) has a special report on Knowledge Management? The particular reason I mention it is that I was interviewed for this report and there is short quote from me in the article, titled Firms alert as bloggers get a helping hand:

"As social software tools merge and become wireless- and proximity-enabled, business applications will abound, according to James Dellow, principal consultant with Chief Technology Solutions.

For instance, by merging a professional networking site like LinkedIn with photo-sharing capabilities such as those provided by the Flickr photo-sharing site and an interactive mapping application like Google Maps, Dellow says, your professional profile could include snapshots by location of projects you have worked on."

Fellow New South Wales KM Forum committee member, James Digges from SAI Global, also gets a mention in the same article and another friend in the industry, Sue Halbwirth from UTS, is quoted in another article in the report talking about the problem of knowledge lost through staff retrenchment and retirement.

Tags: knowledge management, social software

Companies don’t blog, people blog

Care of the Full Circle Online Interaction Blog and worker bees blog an informative whitepaper by Jeaneane Sessum that discusses some key issues about business blogs. It includes Ten Rules for Starting Your Corporate Blogging Off Right:

1. Read Before You Write
2. Links Are Key
3. Don’t Use Your Own Blog to Sing the Praises of Your Company
4. Don’t Spam in Comments or Email
5. Monitor What Bloggers Are Saying About You
6. Don’t Do Denial
7. Comments—Tread Carefully
8. Set Your Employees Free (Because They Already Are)
9. Don’t Forget Traditional Marketing and PR
10. Aggregators Are Great—But Start Small

Tags: business blogs, social software

New KM book by Dr Kimiz Dalkir

The world of knowledge management (KM), which I take an interest through the New South Wales KM Forum, goes through cycles and at times even comes across as a bit faddish. At the moment the use of narrative, the application of complexity concepts and social network analysis (SNA) are the hot topics and require special skills. So it was surprising to see the publication of a new generalist book on KM, called Knowledge Management in Theory and Practice.

Dr Kimiz Dalkir's (no, I hadn't heard of her either...) new book promises to provide "a comprehensive overview of the field on knowledge management with an emphasis on translating theory into practice." It apparently contains a whole bunch of case studies, but to be honest it doesn't look like they tread any new ground. However, have a look at the table of contents and judge for yourself.

I was also a bit worried by this comment in one review of the book that said, "One reason we like this book for executives is that Dalkir gives effective summaries of key points that provide for an intelligent scan of the work if one doesn't have time to read the whole thing." And they think that's a good thing??? IMHO KM fails when stakeholders don't engage fully with the concept.

PS If you can hold on long enough a new KM Standard will soon be released in Australia...

Tags: knowledge management

Longhorn no more: Windows Vista

Microsoft have announced their official name for the next version of Windows that until now was code named Longhorn, but will now be known as "Vista".

Hmm. Well, what else can I say?

Tags: Longhorn, microsoft vista, vista, Windows Vista

Using a conversation cafe to kick start an ICT industry network

Yesterday I spent the morning helping the Illawarra Regional Development Board (IRDB) to facilitate a half-day workshop to kick-start an information and communications technology (ICT) industry cluster/network in the Illawarra (we have in mind something like the successful clusters in the Hunter and Central Coast regions of New South Wales, Australia). This has been on the local and state political agenda for a while, but yesterday was about moving from talking to action. About 35 people attended the workshop held at Wollongong Council, half representing the local ICT industry and the remainder from various local and state organisations.

I used a conversation cafe for the first half of the workshop that asked them to discuss three key questions about the cluster or network that they wanted to see created. With an emergent technique like this you can never be sure of exactly what the outcome will be, but the benefit is that it is difficult for one view or person to dominate the discussion. However feedback about the process was positive and it helped the group focus on the immediate goals of the network and next steps. In the meantime I'll be continuing to work with the IRDB to put together funding applications that will be used to resource the development of the network.

Tags: conversation cafe, ICT cluster, illawarra

Self-Service Checkouts at Big W

Sad, but true. Considering my geeky interest in retail self-service technology, I'm disappointed that I didn't hear earlier about the Retail Business Technology exhibition taking place in Sydney this week.

What's worse is that heard about it on TV Channel Nine's A Current Affair (ACA) show (honestly, I wasn't really watching it). Unfortunately you won't find a transcript on the ACA site, but what I can tell you is that their report included a visit to a Big W store which showed shoppers using self-service checkouts. However, after a quick bit of googling I discovered much to my disappointment that they've been in place since at least 2003 and more recently in Cessnock. At least Australia isn't quite as far behind the US and UK as I had previously thought.

Fujitsu was a major sponsor of the exhibition and there are a couple of related articles available - Retail: Remember how it used to be... and Why shopping might never be the same again.

Tags: self-service checkouts, technology

Key Trajectories of Social Software

Mark Daggett in his COLLCOLL blog gives his take on the key points of Social Software for the immediate to mid term future. He talks about interoperability, “Swarm Serving”, Liquid Democracy, the digital divide and wireless networks.

I particularly like his point about the digital divide where he says "The digital divide is not specifically the separation between those who have technology and those who don’t. Instead, it is the gap that exists between those who understand the emerging metaphors of information use and those who don’t."

PS In another post he also links to this bit of cool prototype tech, the Optimus keyboard. I want one too.

Tags: social software

David Weinberger: An equal and opposite reaction

I really want to stop blogging about blogging (and related subjects) so I can talk about some other information and knowledge management issues, but I just can't help myself... so I'm just going to give in to it...

A short article by David Weinberger (of Small Pieces Loosely Joined, Cluetrain Manifesto and JOHO) has appeared in KMWorld Magazine where he comments on the efforts of corporations, the media and education systems to fight against the tide of the digital revolution (which includes the social software revolution). He writes "These are fear-based reactions to the change that has already happened. The retrenchment may feel good for a moment, but it's bad policy and it will not stand."

PS I also love this honest post by Weinberger in his JOHO blog where he admits, "No, I'm not keeping up with your blog".

Tags: David Weinberger, Social Software