More comments on Enterprise 2.0

Over the weekend I finally had a chance to look over a copy of the Enterprise 2.0 article. At the same time I was also re-reading The Victorian Internet by Tom Standage. A odd combination you might think, but a good way of ensuring I don't get myself caught up too much in the hype - one of the messages in Standage's book is that technologies never quite have the "utopian" impact we think they will, but they still have an impact.

Ok. Very briefly this is what I like and don't like about McAfee's Enterprise 2.0 vision:

• His framework for enterprise social software is defined as SLATES - Search, Links, Authoring, Tags, Extensions and Signals. We could probably debate his terms and definitions, but I think he has caught enough of the essence of what makes an enterprise social software architecture different.


• He identifies the critical role of managers in facilitating the adoption of social software inside the firewall but also recognises that this may also create conflict because "These tools reduce management's ability to exert unilateral control and will be used to express some level of negativity."


• Further he also concludes that there will "significant difference in companies' abilities to exploit them. Because of the opportunities the technologies bring, these difference will matter a great deal." Or in other words, its not the technology but knowing what to do with it and how to do it that counts.
  

On the other hand I was disappointed not to see some mention about the consumer driven innovation seen in the Internet social software space and the impact this pressure will put on organisations to change their approaches to IT. Similarly, while McAfee notes that centralised intranets hinder effective search because such intranets lack the dense links that we find on the World Wide Web, he does not link this to his point about management control that he raises later. I've discussed some of these things in the Intranet Imperative last year.

Finally - and perhaps this is a little out of scope - a mention of the issues that the ideology of self-service within organisations has also created in terms of information and knowledge sharing might have added some further context to the discussion around the challenges of getting knowledge workers to use this stuff. Why would we expect everyone to contribute in the same way as their peers? Think about The Tipping Point and the different roles of Connectors, Mavens, and Salesmen.

Tags: enterprise 2.0, enterprise social software, intranet imperative

Podcasting - evolutionary or revolutionary?

I have to admit that I don't really listen to Podcasts, primarily they don't really fit my way of working but also I don't find them very interactive. The fact that Podcasts aren't really hyper-linkable yet by the masses makes them an interesting but still just a one-way content distribution system. Taking this a bit further, Steve Rubel, in his Micro Persuasion blog, asks if Podcasting is evolutionary or revolutionary?

"Podcasting is an important medium, no doubt. It changed how people listen to audio and where that content comes from. On the other hand, podcasting is not very social. It's largely unidirectional. It's about democratized distribution. In five years time podcasting will be seen as evolutionary while Wikipedia, social networking and blogging will be viewed as revolutionary because they are dialogue driven, scannable and searchable in mainstream Web search engines."

However, perhaps its just a question of time as we see tools like Podzinger emerge that let us search Podcasts and zero in on what interests us. Podzinger is google for audio data that converts speech to text so it can be indexed.

Tags: social software, hypermedia

Update on tech-etiquette challenges

Care of Lifehacker and Micro Persuasion, Christian Science Monitor discusses the latest etiquette challenges of our always on, always connected world including ipods and wireless headsets ("The first question when you greet someone in our office is, 'Are you on the phone?' They don't know, with wireless headsets.").

This article talks about a room full of publicists at a lunch forum, all tapping away at their PDAs and Blackberries rather than listening to the speaker. I remember when this used to be a common occurrence at internal meetings in organisations, but now it looks like this bad tech-behaviour is leaking outside as wireless connectivity becomes even more wide spread.

Tags: always on, always connected, tech-etiquette, technology in the workplace

Small World! now available for download

My November/December 2005 Image and Data Manager (IDM) magazine article, Small World!, is now available for download from my articles and papers archive:

"The influence of social network concepts continues to manifest themselves in many different areas of business. From understanding who knows who to viral marketing, organisations are finding legitimate uses for putting conversations and informal connections to work in the search for competitive advantage."

PS I'm in the process of reorganising my articles archive page, so you may need to scroll down to find my list of IDM articles.

Tags: image and data manager, social network analysis

Ok... Not quite the dawn?

Always good for a counterpoint, Nicholas Carr's gives his point of view on McAfee's Enterprise 2.0 article:

"Managers, professionals and other employees don't have much spare time, and the ones who have the most valuable business knowledge have the least spare time of all. (They're the ones already inundated with emails, instant messages, phone calls, and meeting requests.) Will they turn into avid bloggers and taggers and wiki-writers? It's not impossible, but it's a long way from a sure bet."

I don't disagree with Carr's assessment - KM needs to be human-centred not technology driven. In May last year I blogged about the grey area that social software exists in - there is nothing magical about social software unless people use it as social software.

Tags: enterprise 2.0, enterprise social software

The Dawn of Emergent Collaboration

Continuing on the theme of my previous post, Harvard Business School academic Andrew McAfee has a new article in the latest edition of Sloan Management Review where he argues why enterprise social software "may well supplant other communication and knowledge management systems with their superior ability to capture tacit knowledge, best practices and relevant experiences from throughout a company and make them readily available to more users."

I haven't read the full article yet, but there is some good commentary by Ross Mayfield in the Many-to-Many blog and McAfee continues the discussion on his own blog.

McAfee builds on his article to identify three trends why is Enterprise 2.0 is now an appealing reality:

• Simple, Free Platforms for Self-Expression


• Emergent Structures, Rather than Imposed Ones


• Order from Chaos

Tags: enterprise 2.0, enterprise social software, sloan management review

The art of social software inside the firewall: First, avoid the IT department

Trevor Cook, reacting to a post by Shel Holtz, weighs up the both sides of the argument about how IT departments can block the take up of social software within the firewall:

"IT departments... have to let go because we're entering the era of the user as controller. If IT departments don't let go - the HUGE productivity gains to be had from things like RSS feeds and aggregators will be lost.

OTH, I continue to be amazed by the absolute IT illiteracy of most people, even people who use computers all day seem completely incurious about how they operate...

Perhaps, if I worked in an IT dept and had to deal with this level of ignorance all day I too would be a paranoid, control freak."

So is it just ignorance or good IT managament practice? This is something I've discussed in the past. IMHO rather than rolling up the shutters, IT departments must engage with this new technology.

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

The World Is Round

Talking of information vs knowledge, Jack Vinson picks up on some commentary from Bill Brantley about a new HBR article by Laurence Prusak.

Prusak's article challenges the "conventional wisdom that the Internet has made the world flatter."

Brantley's summary tells us that "Connectivity and information technology alone are not the solution to realizing the benefits of innovation and thus countries must spend time and resources to creating knowledge" while Vinson reflects back that "Throwing a bunch of knowledge workers together via the internet does not automatically create a smart organization. Organizations still need a goal and leadership. People need to know how they should be smart and what is expected of those zillions of interactions that are possible."

Tags: HBR, Larry Prusak

Tackling one of the big KM debates - the role of IT

I'm very pleased this month to be the cover feature article in the March/April 2006 edition of Image and Data Manager (IDM) magazine. The article, titled Knowledge Management: How to separate the wheat from the chaff, tackles one of the big KM questions – what is the role of information technology in knowledge management?

Just to get you thinking here are a couple of dot points I use in the article to consider information vs knowledge:

Information

• 1st generation knowledge management was really about using information technology to enable a paradigm shift from controlling and limiting access to information to one of sharing information so that anyone who might need it could freely access it. Fundamentally this approach to knowledge management was really about employing the right information management practices to better reflect the needs of knowledge workers.


• In next-generation knowledge management, information is treated as a valuable resource for learning, providing context and providing evidence of the past.

Knowledge

• The philosophical debate about what is “knowledge” has raged for centuries. We have to accept that it is unlikely that this debate will ever be resolved and instead focus on the activity of knowledge management.


• Knowledge workers need more than just information to help them make non-routine decisions or manage non-routine activities. Next-generation knowledge management involves managing the organisational environment not only so that information can be freely shared, but to help knowledge workers learn from and connect with each other.

Let me know if you have any comments about this or the article!

BTW I’ve recently moved most of the articles I have available for download, including those previously published in IDM, to this page on my main website. You'll also find a few more related to Web and Intranets here. to here.

Tags: image and data manager magazine, knowledge management, knowledge management systems

Redesigning the KWeb

Another new'ish Ernst & Young "KWeb" (or EY/KnowledgeWeb) case study (PDF), this time documenting their recent user-centered design project to improve user satisfaction.

What's so special about this? Well, other than the fact I used to work as part of the KWeb team at Ernst & Young in Australia, check out the graph on page 6 of this case study and note that E&Y's knowledge management intranet is more than a decade old. In this time it has gone through more than 6 iterations meanwhile some organisations are still trying to get their first or second iteration off the ground.

PS You might also want to have a look at this other case study from December last year looking at how Factiva is integarated into KWeb.

Tags: ernst & young, intranets, user-centered design

The story of our quest to communicate better

I stumbled across this nice little virtual museum site from the UK, called Connected Earth:

"Connected Earth is the story of our ongoing quest to communicate better, from the first simple messages to today's sophisticated global communications.

Established by BT, Connected Earth lets you explore communications past, present and future both here online and at a network of partner museums around the UK."

For the nerds out there, also have a look at the archives section of the main BT website where you can also browse photos and film from the history of telecommunications in the UK.

Tags: british telecom, history of telecommunications

Wikis at WIN TV

I'm always on the look out for examples of Australian organisations making use of social software within the firewall, so here is one from a report by Rodney Gedda in ComputerWorld on Wollongong-based WIN Television.

This report actually talks about WIN TV's use of open source in a number of areas, but I was interested in how they are using a wiki internally to share information. According to this report WIN TV's former IT manager, James Purser, has created created three wiki-spaces - one for their production departments, one for IT and another to provide general information to users.

Tags: enterprise social software, WIN television

Email software is "socially inept"

Don't take my word for it, this comes from Marc Smith a research sociologist who works for Microsoft. He was recently interviewed by the UK's FT newspaper and while he pretty much covers old ground about email productivity, he makes a good point:

"He says e-mail software just does not give people enough help. He calls current software socially inept: 'It simply has no conception of human relationships.' His team is working on ways of making software 'socially savvy' so that it can take more of the load."

Also, check out these associated articles on enterprise social software and email.

Tags: email, information overload, marc smith, social software

When technology goes wrong

Okay, I know you may have been expecting to hear some more on CeBIT but in the meantime have a look at this great spoof Pizza ad from the American Civil Liberties Union about the potiential abuse of personal data and data mining.

Tags: aclu, pizza, data mining

CeBIT in Germany

Just spent the last 2 days at CeBIT in snowy Hanover, Germany. I'll post a bit of a summary in the next few days. However some highlights include RFID in supermrkets, GPS, and outsourcing of IT.

Tags: CeBIT, Hanover

Virtual writing on the wall

I'm currently in the UK on route to the CeBIT exhibition in Germany and noticed a great technology story in the paper yesterday about author Margaret Atwood and her virtual LongPen. She uses the LongPen to sign her books without bothering to travel to the bookshop where the signing is actually taking place!

Atwood is also the brains behind the LongPen and she created a company called Unotchit in late 2004 specifically to develop it. The LongPen reminds me a little of Nokia's Digital Pen which I'm sure could be made to do the same thing.

Tags: margaret atwood, LongPen

Are you in the inner circle?

You might expect because of my interest in knowledge management and social software that I would be an early adopter of networking tools like LinkedIn.

In fact quite the opposite - I was slow to signup exactly because my background in knowledge management tells me relationships are built on more than just loose online connections. However, I did eventually sign up but to be quite honest it was out curiosity around social networks rather than aiming to find business opportunities.

I remember then thinking it was very US-centric (not surprising). Now I've noticed an increasing number of people who are bit more local, but that I don't actually know already. In fact here are the stats from LinkedIn tonight:

* San Francisco Bay Area (11%)
* United Kingdom (10%)
* Greater New York City Area (6%)
* Netherlands (5%)
* Brazil (5%)
* Australia (4%)
* Dallas/Fort Worth Area (4%)
* Greater Boston Area (3%)
* France (3%)
* Washington D.C. Metro Area (3%)

Apart from the US, does anyone have any ideas why LinkedIn is so popular in Brazil???

BTW If you're thinking of inviting to link up with me in LinkedIn but we don't already know each other, please don't be offended if I decline the invitation.

Tags: social networks, LinkedIn

Omnidrive, made in Wollongong

I'm always happy to give ICT companies based in my adopted home town, Wollongong, a bit of support. So if you're looking for an intersting startup that plans to offer "a service that gives people the ability to store all their files online, making them available from anywhere" take a look at Omnidrive.

The two brains behind Omnidrive are Geoff McQueen, who already has a well established Web software company called Internetrix, and Nik Culbrilovic (who also has his own blog - check out his post on the The Economics of Online Storage). You can read Geoff's write up on their adventures in the US where they have been chasing some venture capital. Yes, these guys are serious!

The only thing I want to know is what kind of open API's are they going to offer so that the Web community can mash up some interfaces to Omnidrive?

Tags: omnidrive, Wollongong

Collaborative Advantage

HBS' Working Knowledge reviewed a new book on collaboration, called Collaborative Advantage: How Organizations Win by Working Together by Elizabeth Lank.

I like Lank's argument that says by collaborating companies are "creating competitive advantage that is difficult to replicate... [and it] cannot be bought, copied, or stolen; it must be created from scratch in competing organizations."

What I'm not so excited about is that she has created yet another bit of jargon, "collaborative capital"!

Tags: Elizabeth Lank, collaboration, knowledge management

G'Day from Singapore

If you are looking for me at the moment I'm currently in Singapore running a 2-day master class on enabling knowledge management with technology. Participants include people from Singapore, Thailand and Hong Kong who represent a range of industries, covering government, healthcare, resources and logistics. Its an interesting mix and I know from the comments so far on day 1 that some people are finding my approach to KM and information technology is already challenging some of their original assumptions.

In day 1 we looked at a brief history of KM, discussed some key concepts - including the Australian KM Standard, Collaborative Infrastructure and Strategy - plus a case study on Ernst & Young. Tomorrow we'll be looking at social software, some more on collaborative infrastructure and change management.

Tags: knowledge management, Singapore

More PowerPointless Wisdom

We never get tired of talking about leading practices for using PowerPoint. This Australian newspaper article has some good advice, including the 10-20-30 rule:

"a PowerPoint presentation should have 10 slides, last no more than 20 minutes, and contain no font smaller than 30 point".

Personally I actually try to present with rule of thumb of around 1 slide per 5 minutes. And occasionally I've even been known to use none ;-)

Tags: PowerPoint, Technology in the Workplace

End of the road for the dot-dash world

There have been a number of interesting reports, including this one from Wired, about the rather quiet and uneventful end to Western Union's 150 year-old historic telegram service the other day.

In the age of email and other instant communication tools this had to happen. However, its great to see that the significance of the telegraph networks in understanding the impact of information and communication technologies on society hasn't been lost - if you don't understand what I'm talking about, when you have a moment take a look at Tom Standage's book, titled The Victoria Internet.

PS For a bit of fun also have a look at the William Gibson/Bruce Sterling collaboration, The Difference Engine!

Tags: telegrams, victorian internet

Light layer of collaboration

You might remember that last year I went on a bit about the history of Lotus Notes and how it links with the current evolution of social software out on the Internet. Well, IBM are holding their annual Lotusphere conference where according to a report, IBM "showed off plans to infuse its entire collaborative software lineup with so-called social networking technology such as blogs, wikis and syndication feeds."

In the report IBM'er Duncan Mewherter - and one of the people behind a preview (released last August) of a Weblogging component that can plug into Workplace platform - is quoted as describing social software as a "light layer of collaboration". Hop over to IBM's alphaWorks for more information.

Of course the cynics will say IBM (and others) are just jumping on the bandwagon. Now while we should expect a bit of hype from the vendors, overall for enterprises I think this is a good thing.

Tags: enterprise social software, Lotus Notes

Strange, but true: Email supplements social networks

I haven't had a lot of time so far this year for blogging, or even keeping up with what else is happening out there. However, a new report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project did grab my attention today - one of its conclusions about the impact of the Internet on society is that "email
supplements, rather than replaces, the communication people have with others in their network."

Have a look - it certainly challenges the assumption that there is nothing that compares to face-to-face communication. But really my take away from this report is that technology augments and expands our abilities to communicate and maintain connections with people.

Tags: email, Pew Internet, social software

Inaccurate Web

I've had a bit of Wikipedia moment this last week while trying to research a problem with my Palm TX resetting itself. Of course one of the first things I did was check out the user forums on the topic. But if I had believed all that I read online it really would have been quite misguided.

As it turned out, the Palm TX uses a different type of memory from past models meaning there can be incompatibilities with older software, causing it to reset. And yes, I had simply moved a lot of old software from my old Palm and added some more without appreciating the consequences.

However since resetting the Palm completely (a "hard reset") and being a bit more careful with what I install it has been trouble free so far (fingers crossed).

Unfortunately the message I was getting from the forums was that the TX was a flawed piece of hardware. Eventually I discovered some support advice from Palm, but it was hard to find since I was searching for a solution based on symptons.

On the positive, there is some helpful user generated advice out there, such as some user generated compatibility lists (Palm Focus and Palm Facts) - however, even these should not be take as fact. So, the lesson is clear - social software is great, but when it comes to accurate content it still remains a case of buyer beware.

Happy new palm!

Happy new year everyone. Despite the apparent silence during my summer break (this is the southern hemisphere remember), I am actually back on the job. However, I've been a little distracted with setting up my new Palm TX.

This Palm is a long way from my first PDA, a Psion Series 3, which was followed by a disappointing experience with a Psion Series 5, and more recently of course a Palm VX. One of the big changes of course is the amount of memory and data storage available that really makes them closer to PC capabilities that an electronic organiser. However, the major change for me is that the Palm TX comes with Wifi built-in.

In theory this means I can connect to any public Wifi hotspots when I'm out and about - in fact this blog post was published via a public Wifi hotspot in Sydney CBD.

Of course theory isn't quite the same as practice... A combination of Wifi hotspot access limitations in Sydney CBD and the Palm's Web browser have a created a few challenges, but I'm getting there!

Christmas reading

Happy Christmas and best wishes to all my ChiefTech blog readers! I'm on holiday at the moment and I've taken the opportunity to do a bit of reading, including the following books:

• Longitude : The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time
• The Surgeon of Crowthorne

Both books are about the history surrounding the development of two "technologies" that today we take for granted (chronometers for plotting longitude and the Oxford English Dictionary or OED).

Longitude in particular highlights how a mix of politics, bad luck and different perspectives can impact on technology innovation - so good reading for anyone trying to innovate with information technology today. The longitude story continues even today, with the launch of the first European Galileo satellite which they hope will eventually crate an independent GPS service.

The effort of volunteers who contributed to the creation of the OED also reminds me a little of Wikipedia - I wonder how much quicker it would have been to create the first edition if the Internet and tools like wikis had been available to them? BTW You can still help contribute to the OED (an early social technology then?).

Tags: innovation, longitude, oxford english dictionary

Visual tag cloud

Care of Anecdote, 10x10 is great almost real-time information visualisation of the top 100 keywords in the world news (based on analysis of RSS feeds from Reuters World News, BBC World Edition and )New York Times International News).

It works a little like a tag cloud, but so much better. You can also click on an image in the 10x10 grid to see the recent headlines and the click through to read the article. Very cool!

The creator of 10x10, Jonathan J. Harris, also created a version of this to celebrate Yahoo's 10 year birthday.

This sort of thing would be great on a company intranet too. Anyone out there got an API we can mash?

Tags: information visualisation, Jonathan J. Harris, tag cloud

New twist in the Wikipedia debate

The debate about the quality of Wikipedia content isn't quite dead just yet with heavy weight scientific magazine, Nature, claiming that the wiki-based collaborative knowledgebase is no better or worse that the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

Andrew Mitchell also reports that information professional magazine, Online Currents, makes "the excellent point that not all print publications are error or bias free".

However, the really important point, is made by "Michael Twidale, an information scientist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, who says that Wikipedia's strongest suit is the speed at which it can updated, a factor not considered by Nature's reviewers."

So, when we criticise either social software or traditional media, what we really have to think about is what kind of information trade off are we willing to accept? For an alternative perspective, have a look at this 2004 Factiva whitepaper (PDF) that "considers the quality, availability and value of information on free Web sites, fee-based Web sites and value-added information services".

Tags: content management, Factiva, Wikipedia

A few more blogs

A few more blogs from a couple more of the people who joined us for lunch last week:

• Ben Cooper
• Andrew Mitchell

Tags: corporate blogging, enterprise social software, GPO sydney

Time, money and technology-driven productivity?

Ross Gittins writes an interesting opinion piece in today's SMH about how we're trading more of our hours for money - but at what personal cost?

Gittins talks about the oppourtunity costs associated with money and time. He makes an interesting point that we should think about from a knowledge worker and technology perspective:

"Much technological advancement, including the growing number of 'mod cons' in the home, is intended to save time. But while it raises our productivity - the amount we're able to produce or get done in an hour - it rarely leaves us with time on our hands."

Apparently compared to the 1830's, 1 hour's work today is worth 25 times what is was then but we still work as much if not more.

Tags: knowledge worker productivity, technology in the workplace

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