It is the Chicken AND egg: Enterprise 2.0

Normally I'm fan of group blogs but so far the FastForward blog (promoting a conference by the same name*) has been a little disappointing - and I should say that this is nothing against the individual bloggers as such, since I know some of them and a few are on my blogroll already. So far, for the wrong reasons, the only post that has engaged my attention is Jevon MacDonald who attempts to answer the question “who can help my company adopt some of these new ideas and technologies that we are hearing about“?

In a list of tips he proposes that:

"There are two conversations going on right now, one about Technology, and one about a Business Ideology. If technology isn’t your thing, then start moving forward with new business ideas and the right technology will emerge, and if you are pegged as a technology person then start opening up the world of low cost options to your colleagues."

James Robertson posted a follow up to Macdonald and also suggests that "Enterprise 2.0 is about taking a new perspective on the organisation, not on a set of technologies" and the first steps should be to focus on people and business needs.

To me, this is approach of one or the other is a mistake. As in the old chicken and egg problem, the trick to Enterprise 2.0 is all about dealing with both sides of the equation at the same time. For example if we look at the wiki case studies so far in this space, such as Motorola, they make it look like it is very easy to introduce enterprise social software. But a survey last year also suggested that other organisations were finding it more difficult - key take aways for me from that survey were:

• The main reason affecting the choice of a wiki clearly is the simplicity of use and implementation. The expense is only a very small factor.
• The main problem is the lack of participation of the intended users. Almost half of the participants had to deal with this problem at least temporarily. Thus the encouragement of the employees is an important item to add to the success of the wiki.

Clearly some organisations - the "early adopters" - are going to find it very easy to make the evolution to Enterprise 2.0 where there is already a good fit between the technology and business culture. For these organisations, they never even asked where to start - they just did it. But for others its going to take some work to level the ground between the two. My feeling is that if you focus on one or the other, while you'll see change, you won't necessarily end up with Enterprise 2.0 (to understand what I mean, particularly from the technology side, refer to my earlier posts about the grey area of social software, defining Enterprise 2.0 and why "super users" are the new programmers).

I also think there is an important omission in MacDonald's list of recommended reading - he includes McAfee's recent IT piece in HBR but not his original SMR Enterprise 2.0 article, which introduces the SLATES concept and starts you thinking about some of the management issues that introducing Enterprise 2.0 creates.

*PS I guess that no publicity is bad publicity...

Technorati tags: FastForward blog, Jevon Macdonald, James Robertson, Andrew McAfee, Enterprise 2.0, Enterprise Social Software, Enterprise Wikis, Motorola, Change Management, Chicken and Egg

Rapidly cruising through all sorts of variations

Brian Mulloy, CEO & Cofounder of Swivel. commented on my post about social data analysis and I think it worth pulling up in a new post an excerpt where he describes the inspiration behind their tool:

"What got us started on Swivel was the belief that our best insights into data usually happened in 'public' in a social way.
And that instead of knowing what we were looking for ahead of time, many of the best insights often came while going rapid fire (well as fast as possible in Excel at the time) from one hypothesis to the next.
That's why when you see a data set like this in Swivel you'll see that it's not about pre-configuring the visualization you think you want, but instead rapidly cruising through all sorts of variations."

Thanks for the comment, Brian - I don't think I can add much to that!

Technorati tags: Social Data Analysis, Brian Mulloy, Swivel, Web 2.0

Linden Labs - They know parody when they see it :-)

I hope this is a start of a trend - Darren Barefoot blogs about this recent experience with tech lawyers who have a sense of humour:

Yesterday I launched this one-page Second Life satire site. Today I awoke from my nap to a letter (via the comments on the announcement) from Linden Labs, the creators of Second Life. ‘Ah, well’, I though, ‘here come the lawyers’.

But no. To their enormous credit, they sent me what I can only describe as a ‘proceed and permitted’ (instead of ‘cease and desist’) letter. Here’s an excerpt:

We do not believe that reasonable people would argue as to whether the website located at http://www.getafirstlife.com/ constitutes parody – it clearly is. Linden Lab is well known among its customers and in the general business community as a company with enlightened and well-informed views regarding intellectual property rights, including the fair use doctrine, open source licensing, and other principles that support creativity and self-expression. We know parody when we see it.

Very funny!

Technorati tags: Darren Barefoot, Linden Labs, Second Life, getafirstlife, Technology Lawyers, Humour

Why "Super Users" are the new programmers

Like Rod Boothby, I've also been thinking about Jason Kolb's argument as to why users are not programmers - Kolb says:

"I think you would find that a very minimal percentage of people would count "macro writing" or any type of "programming" as part of their repetoire, and I think many of them will recoil at the thought of writing an entire application."

and Boothby responds:

"Jason's skepticism is reasonable, if you assume that customized applications require users to write procedural code. What if, however, they did not have to write code?"

I'd like to suggest, as a counterpoint to both positions, that the line between simple macro writing (or recording), "scripting" (particularly Web-based applications) and (for want of a better word) real programming is a lot smaller than it used to be. This is important because even if the tools are available to create drag and drop Web 2.0 or Enterprise 2.0 applications, it doesn't mean that every user will want to or have the analytical skill to create their own applications. However, what these new tools will do is further shift the power to develop out of the IT department and further into the hands of advanced users.

In doing this "super users" will be able to create far more powerful and wider reaching applications that they have done in the past. For example, the clever spreadsheet "macro" that they shared with a few users on the network drive will suddenly be available to everyone on the company intranet as an enterprise tool.

But this will in turn create all sorts of risks. However, as we've seen with other social software applications it is the actual social nature of Web 2.0 applications that provides a safety net for avoiding problems and continuous improvement. So here's the catch for organisations that want the kind of drag and drop programming championed by Boothby - Enterprise 2.0 is a complete package - you still have to implement the "social" bit too to get the benefits of the technology. If not, you better restrict them to the IT department.

Technorati tags: Enterprise 2.0, Enterprise Mashups, Jason Kolb, Rod Boothby

Social Data Analysis... But what about compliance?

OK, when I heard about Swivel the other day I thought it was good, but Many Eyes from IBM's Alphaworks is even more impressive because of the charts available, including network maps and treemaps - something even Excel can't do (as far as I'm aware).

Both Many Eyes and Swivel also hint at the possibility of providing private access to graphs and data (Swivel talks about a fee-based "professional" version), but I can equally see potential for a "social data analysis" tool like this inside the firewall with options to restrict data to groups or specific users. Of course sharing the data as widely as possible is what's its all about.

Its also interesting to consider with these social data analysis tools that not only are they making data analysis "social", but I can also see tools like begin to challenge our concept of a basic information unit like a "document".

Think about this - typically to create an ad hoc graph you might paste the data into a spreadsheet and use the tools in the spreadsheet to create the graphic. This activity is something people must be doing everyday all around the world and the net output of course is a spreadsheet file containing the data and the graph that gets stored somewhere. But in a Web 2.0 mashed up world there is no concept of a document with social data analysis tools. In fact it would defeat the purpose.

Unfortunately for an enterprise thinking of using social data analysis tools I can see that this may create a compliance and records management problem, unless the current generation of electronic document and records management systems evolve to automatically capture both permanent structured data and transient unstructured in context together. Now, that's going to be interesting to watch.

Technorati tags: Many Eyes, Swivel, Social Data Analysis, EDRMS

IBM Lotus launches it response to Enterprise 2.0

Thanks to Brian Mulvaney at Attensa I was introduced this week to a few more CSC bloggers, one in particular I had already a connection with via this blog and common interests without knowing that we worked for the same company! As result a few new people have been added to my blogroll:

• Steve Richards
• Graham Chastney
• Stu Downes

At the moment Stu in particular is reporting on the product announcements made at Lotusphere 2007. Like Stu I'd like to understand a bit better what Lotus Quickr is all about:

Well this did take me by surprise.  Its a “a new Web 2.0-based collaborative content offering“.  Now apart from that I don’t know very much.  I do have some questions though.

• Is it Quickplace scaled up or down?
• Does it integrate with the OS file system?
• Does that integration include support for new metadata in Vista?

The screen shots would lead you to believe that the client is a form of information aggregator allowing you to share content with others (presumably via some Quickr infrastructure).  Now I wish I was at Lotusphere!.    The Quickr Teamspace also looks interesting hinting at a combined blogging, wiki and document sharing platform each supported with RSS subscription.

If Quickr is a single product then this for me would fill the gap between simple Quickplace deployments and enterprise websphere portal solutions.  In fact it would position itself against Windows Sharepoint Services 3.0 - however to compete there the price point needs to be very attractive, i.e. free.  Quickr will obviously, as confirmed in the press release have the in-built integration with Lotus products which will differentiate it from WSS 3.0 for IBM shops.

There is also connection with Attensa who have developed something called "HannoverDJ":

The HannoverDJ is an easy to use tool based on the Attensa Feed Server and IBM’s Hannover Application [Lotus Notes 8] that combines the power of activity based computing with Web feed technology to deliver the right information, to right people, at the right time for the right activity.

The mashup gives users -- the information DJs -- command over information coming from multiple information platforms that are interdependent, but often loosely defined and uncoupled.

So maybe IBM Lotus have been listening after all?

Technorati tags: Steve Richards, Graham Chastney, Stu Downes, Brian Mulvaney, Attensa, CSC, IBM Lotus, Lotus Notes, HannoverDJ, Quickr, Lotusphere 2007, Enterprise 2.0

Beyond HR Self-Service available for download

With so much going on this week its difficult to know where to start, but I'm going to be selfish by talking about myself first! You might remember that a few years ago I wrote an article for the IHRIM Journal about HR Self-Service. Well I've finally made a copy available for download in my articles archive - the full reference of the original article is:

Dellow, J, 2005, 'Beyond HR Self-Service (PDF, 127KB): Empowering Staff While Creating Social Capital in Virtualized Organizations', IHRIM Journal, Vol. IX, No. 4, pp.18-20.

While you are there you might also to have a look the related, but much shorter, piece I wrote even earlier called Empower customers with self-service, not automation (PDF, 77KB).

Technorati tags: IHRIM Journal, Self-Service, ESS, Employee Self-Service, Social Capital

A better way to search Wikipedia?

Care of a post and analysis by Steve Rubel, a new stand alone search engine for Wikipedia called Wikiseek has been launched by Searchme. The about page on Wikiseek explains why they think it is different:

"The contents of Wikiseek are restricted to Wikipedia pages and only those sites which are referenced within Wikipedia, making it an authoritative source of information less subject to spam and SEO schemes.

Wikiseek utilizes Searchme's category refinement technology, providing suggested search refinements based on user tagging and categorization within Wikipedia, making results more relevant than conventional search engines."

However, while its a nice idea, I don't yet see as Rubel suggests in his analysis that through search Wikipedia will become a threat to Google - you would have to think that Google could create a similar search fairly quickly if they saw value in it. One other observation I have is that while you can search Wikipedia, there is no direct link to the Wikipedia site!

However from an Enterprise 2.0 point of view, this would also be a great search concept for an intranet search where typically the Web approach to search doesn't always quite work.

BTW Talking of Wikipedia and helping humans to search, this reminds me of another story where researchers have developed a program that uses Wikipedia to help search engines make sense of the world in order to improve search results.

Technorati tags: Steve Rubel, Wikiseek, Wikipedia, Searchme, Google, Intranet Search, Enterprise 2.0, Search Engines

OK, RSS may not be in so bad a place after all

eWeek provides examples of companies where RSS Offers Relief from Enterprise E-Mail Overload (care of Moonwatcher), offering a more positive view than we've heard in my last post. For example at Procter & Gamble they are using a very Enterprise 2.0 approach to deploy RSS internally:

"Identify those users with a bent toward new technology, send them feeds from NewsGator Enterprise Server software and let adoption run its course"

Technorati tags: eWeek, RSS, Enterprise 2.0, Procter & Gamble, Email, Information Overload

RSS not a hit with online consumers or intranets

Clearly those of us who have adopted RSS are in the minority - care of Trevor Cook, Scientific American reports on the poor uptake of RSS. Quoting Charlene Li from Forrester, she tells us that their research shows only 2% of online consumers bother with RSS. Incidentally Li also reported earlier in the year on her blog that "only 1% of online households in North America regularly download and listen to podcasts".

Similarly, while Jakob Nielsen doesn't have a lot that's interesting to say about Enterprise 2.0, I did come across this article (you'll need to scroll down) from earlier in the year talking about email newsletter that examines the value of RSS feeds - he concludes:

"Feeds are a cold medium in comparison with email newsletters. Feeds do not form the same relationship between company and customers that a good newsletter can build. We don't have data to calculate the relative business value of a newsletter subscriber compared to a feeds subscriber, but I wouldn't be surprised if it turns out that companies make ten times as much money from each newsletter subscriber. Given that newsletters are a much more powerful and warm medium, it is probably best for most companies to encourage newsletter subscriptions and promote them over website feeds."

I wonder if Nielsen isn't confusing the value of content with the value of connection that a blog, rather than straight news, feed can create?

Technorati tags: RSS, Jakob Nielsen, Technology in the Workplace, Charlene Li, Forrester, Scientific American

Apple, Inc's new iPhone

Unless you've been living in a cave, you will of course know that Apple have launched their new iPhone (also see Wikipedia's entry on the iPhone) today at Macworld 2007 (see the coverage on Engadget) in the US. Basically its a PDA phone on steroids.

Other than the basic Apple design approach to the thing, two key features stand out:

• New patented "multi-touch" touch screen, rather than a keypad or stylus.
• Runs on Apple's OS X, which means a whole range of integrations and software can run on the iPhone, including a "Full strength" Web browser (Safari), other widgets and special Google and Yahoo services.

The fact alone that the iPhone is running on OS X should make it an excellent information platform. But if we take a step back, is there anything else revolutionary about the iPhone (rather than excellent execution of the converged?

For example, unless I've missed something, there is nothing particularly "social" in the base iPhone. Nokia, Microsoft and I'm sure there are others out there that have at least tried to do something interesting in respect to innovating with mobile technology, e.g. Zune and Sensor.

Also, the specs I've seen say its setup to run on GSM and EDGE. EDGE sounds like it is near 3G, so does that mean it will run on the next generation mobile phone networks rolled out in Australia?

Technorati tags: Apple Computers, Apple, iPhone, Nokia, Microsoft, Microsoft Zune, Nokia Sensor

Lie Detector Technology for the Masses

Talk about the consumerisation of Internet technology... you can now get a free lie detector plugin for Skype from KishKish. What next, IVR for home users? (go on, I dare you!)

Technorati tags: Skype, KishKish, Lie Detectors, VOIP

Michael Sampson's review of SharePoint 2007

Earlier in the year, New Zealand-based Michael Sampson closed up shop at his collaborative technologies research business to take up a full-time position with Foldera. Luckily he has continued to write and maintains a summary page of his "Articles, Blog Posts and Ramblings" via his personal blog.

Most recently In the Nov/Dec edition of online magazine, MessagingNews, he writes a review of Microsoft SharePoint 2007, including a persuasive argument (on paper at least) for hosting internal enterprise blogs and wikis on this platform:

"IT strategists hate the unnecessary implementation of point solutions, when general-purpose platforms are available instead. In this case, the ability to have cool new functionality whilst running on a consolidated platform and using a single authentication foundation (Active Directory) is very compelling."

It reflects some of my own predictions in my 2005 article on enterprise Wikis (PDF, 121KB) that you'll find in my own articles archive.

Technorati tags: Michael Sampson, Microsoft SharePoint, Sharepoint 2007, Enterprise Wikis, Collaboration

Business Continuity and Web-based applications: Sync and Distribute

A few days ago I had a wibble moment with some of the Web-based tools use on a regular basis - for a short period (minutes if that) I couldn't reach Gmail or Google search. Not sure if the problem was the Google end, with my ISP or somewhere in between. Anyway, with recent Internet outages in Asia, it again made me ponder the business continuity issues of Web-based applications.

I'm not the only one to experience wibbles with Web-application services recently, but I think Charlie Wood is (now) approaching the problem with the right attitude - he describes his proactive approach to business continuity:

"I keep a copy of my most important data from salesforce.com on my laptop using Spanning Salesforce, and thanks to the magic of RSS, it's always up to date. Similarly, I synchronize all of my Google Calendar events with iCal running on my laptop using Spanning Sync. That way if Google Calendar is offline I still have full access to my calendar."

However, I think synchronise might be the wrong activity to emphasis - maybe what we should be trying to do is distribute data and application further to ensure business continuity:

• Use multiple data stores in different physical locations and on different physical devices; and
• Use multiple applications and service providers to access these data stores.

Synchronisation is of course important for keeping the data accessed current, but I can't help thinking of JP Rangaswami's experience of his blog's Web hosting failure and how his content was recovered again:

"The community has been fantastic, coming up with rich and varied suggestions as to how I could salvage the blog. A number of you scraped Google caches and sent the salvage on, particularly Chris and Doc. One, Myrto, had a complete set of my posts in Outlook via Newsgator. Some of you, particularly Malc, pointed me at the feedburner cache where the last 73 posts were available. My Mac account had a faithful copy of all comments received for moderation. While Google, Wayback Machine and Feedburner were less than complete, Niall found that Alexa had the complete store."

Technorati tags: Web 2.0, Business Continuity, Charlie Wood, JP Rangaswami

Enterprise 2.0 in 2006 and into 2007

No time to comment on these, but I've had them flagged for a while a posts of interest about Enterprise 2.0 so I thought I'd be a little lazy and just list them:

• Dion Hinchcliffe's review of Enterprise 2.0 in 2006 (see his predictions for 2007 below);
• On the Collaboration Loop blog, Larry Cannell explains why there is more to Enterprise 2.0 than blogs and wikis ... and read Luis Suarez's reaction - also check out the following posts on Collaboration Loop: Social Versus Collaborative Tools, Enterprise Web 2.0 vs. Groupware, Enterprise 2.0: Avoid Ready, Fire, Aim..., Wither the Enterprise Wiki?;
• Mashups haven't quite gone main stream inside the firewall just yet, but we should watch their growth on the Web as signal for the potiential there - ProgrammableWeb.com's list of mashups grew from 245 to 1,404 during 2006! 

And finally, for those looking to the future:

• Bill Ives comments on Jerry Bowles' predictions;
• Find out why Dion Hinchcliffe thinks "2007 will likely prove to be a much more intriguing year for the trend"; and
• Rod Boothby's predictions for Enterprise 2.0 in 2007.

Phew! :-)

Technorati tags: Enterprise 2.0, Dion Hinchcliffe, Larry Cannell, Luis Suarez, Mashups, Enterprise Mashups, Bill Ives, Rod Boothby

The Hidden Web: Microformats and the The Next Internet

I hadn't taken a lot of interest in the detail of microformats until reading this post on the InformationWeek blog that points to a post by Mozilla's Alex Faaborg that explains what they are and how they might turn Web browsers into information brokers:

"Much in the same way that operating systems currently associate particular file types with specific applications, future Web browsers are likely going to associate semantically marked up data you encounter on the Web with specific applications, either on your system or online. This means the contact information you see on a Web site will be associated with your favorite contacts application, events will be associated with your favorite calendar application, locations will be associated with your favorite mapping application, phone numbers will be associated with your favorite VOIP application, etc."

But this makes me wonder, if a Web browser becomes an information broker doesn't that almost make it at most an operating system (OS) or just plain redundant as we know it? This reminds of an article I started to draft back in 2003, but never published... until now... 

The Next Internet – The Hidden Web
James Dellow, August 2003 (Draft 4)

Web services and XML have the potential to turn our idea of the Internet upside down. If you have heard of Web services, XML and associated technologies like RSS then I know you probably think you knew this already. But forget Internet 2, the Hidden Web is quite literally where the action will be.

So, what does this mean for the average user?

Well let’s say you need to buy something. In the future you will boot up your shopping application of choice; maybe its open source or even provided by a retailer. Either way you won’t type in a URL. The Web appliance will bring the shop to you – or rather Web services will work the Web for you, the Hidden Web. And while it might be based on Microsoft or Linux, someone you trust will brand this Web appliance and help make the choices for you.

Or maybe you need to communicate. You’ll use your PDA-phone or the communication Web appliance on your wireless laptop. It’s your choice but Web services will bring news, e-mail and instant messaging to where you are, on whatever device you are using. Here Microsoft, Netscape or even AOL might be your brand of choice – then again it could just as easily be Nokia or Nike.

Why is this vision of the future so different? Let me explain - when you type in an URL you point your browser to a Web site. You go to that site to interact with it in some way. Maybe you download some information, ask a question or order a product. But browsing is a problem. Faced with millions of Web site around world how do you know which to use? How do keep up with the changes and new information? Who do you trust?

Ross Dawson (2003) presents a compelling idea of the “living network” – the Internet as a global brain where users collectively filter information for each other. One of the drivers is technology like XML because it makes organisations more transparent and service delivery virtual. But he still concedes the need to check a variety of sources to avoid global “group-think”. The expectation here is that every productive human, or human that wants to become productive, will need to be highly information literate and have the time to participate in the living network. Unfortunately somewhere along line some one actually has to do the work.

Perhaps what we have overlooked is the how Web services and XML change the way we will actually make use of the Internet. Some people, like Chad Dickerson in Infoworld, have begun to recognise this. While singing the praises of RSS, an XML based approach that allows content from many different sources to be aggregated by users with an RSS newsreader, he complains that “explaining to the uninitiated why RSS newsreaders are so compelling can be frustrating… that reminds me of how it felt to describe the Web to people who hadn’t yet experienced it.” (Dickerson, 2003).

If you’re thinking push technology isn’t new then consider that the original versions were proprietary and based on old industrial order business models where the service was the business. But in the Hidden Web, the “service” is the Internet. Another way of thinking about this is to consider utilities – are you buying electricity or the electricity service? Sure the electricity usage you pay for funds the network, but you don’t pay directly for access. Now its possible we could flip the model but people don’t like to pay for what they can’t see. And Web services work best when they are invisible.

What people want are services, content and products. Here I agree with Dawson and other commentators, the Information Revolution has created a fundamental change in the way we do business. Virtual enterprises have appeared, fueled by interoperability that was first provided by humble HTML (hey you can see what I know!) and now XML (hey, do something with this!). But what about the individual users on the Web who are still stuck in the original Web paradigm where they go to the data? The new paradigm will be that the data comes to the user. RSS is just the beginning of this change. Other technical experts such as Tim Bray, a co-inventor of XML, back up this view. He was recently quoted as saying “a Web browser itself is not a good way to track a dynamic resource…[RSS has] the potential to impact how everyone interacts with the Web” (Moore, 2003).

Web services and XML based technologies will create a fundamentally different user experience that will make people more productive without being more information literate. Of course the missing piece is who will tell you what information you need to access. Nothing will change in that respect and a few highly information literate and branded knowledge workers will continue to play a role in helping us to select what data we need. But what will change is how we access information. The future evolution of the Hidden Web we have glimpsed in RSS shows an end to the prominence that Web browsers have so far enjoyed.

So stop giving me your URL – because what am I going to do with that?

References

Dawson, R., 2003, Presentation at the New South Wales Knowledge Management Forum, hosted at Standards Australia, Sydney, 7 August 2003.

Dickerson, C., 2003, ‘RSS Killed the Infoglu Star’, Infoworld, p.32, 7 July 2003.

Moore, C., 2003, ‘Debate Sounds Over Weblog Standards’, Infoworld, p.18, 21 July 2003.

Technorati tags: Microformats, Internet 2.0, Ross Dawson, Chad Dickerson, Catherine Moore, Tim Bray, XML, RSS, Web browsers, Web Services, Hidden Web

Selfish software launched

A lot of social software and Web 2.0 applications are based on an idea of commons and contribution without expecting anything back in a measured or formal sense. Think of the 1 percent rule. However, indirectly everyone benefits... at least that's the theory.

But now in the peer-to-peer (P2P) space we have BitTyrant:

"BitTyrant is designed to make efficient use of your scarce upload bandwidth, rewarding those users whose upload allocations are fair and only allocating excess capacity to other users."

The academics and students at the University of Washington that developed BitTyrant say that this isn't as "selfish" as it sounds:

"A big difference between BitTyrant and existing BitTorrent clients is that BitTyrant can detect when additional upload contribution is unlikely to improve performance. If a client were truly selfish, it might opt to withhold excess capacity, reducing performance for other users that would have received it. However, our current BitTyrant implementation always contributes excess capacity, even when it might not improve performance. Our goal is to improve performance, not minimize upload contribution."

This actually sounds similar to how the old dial-up Bulletin Boards used to work, except the upload to download ratios were typically a lot softer. However, at the end of the day this is really more about sharing of a limited resource (bandwidth) than ensuring people share content. So unfortunately, if this does impact on the way P2P works its more likely to impact on those where bandwidth is a premium.

UPDATE: Care of Brady Forrest on the O'Reilly Radar blog, the Monkey Bites blog at Wired magazine provides futher commentary on BitTyrant and other anti-social P2P software. Don't forget to read the comments too.

Technorati tags: BitTorrent, BitTyrant, Bulletin Boards, P2P, Peer-to-Peer, 1 Percent Rule

Size counts, for email inboxes

Following on from yesterday's post but this time picking up on the thread of Google vs Microsoft, Charlie Wood in his Moonwatcher blog picks out a great comment from an Exchange admin about Gmail's 2GB limit and the idea from Microsoft that the same should be offered inside the firewall:

"2GB in an Enterprise Exchange environment?
Please shoot the SAN administrator now. OH and the budget personnel.
Please. I have over 30000 users and their mailboxes range from 30mb to 1gb in limits (1gb reserved for a select few - less than 10 people)
I'm already using almost a Terabyte of space on the SAN. Going to 2GB per person would bring me over 60TB because you KNOW "If it's there, they'll use it"
I guess I'll start having bake sales daily to see if we can generate enough dough to get a 60TB SAN for this."

Wood himself comments that "It looks like Microsoft is set to lose—and lose big—to Google. Again".

Technorati tags: Charlie Wood, Moonwatcher, Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft Outlook, Google, Gmail, Web Office

My experience of Lotus Notes at Ernst & Young

I continue to enjoy Rod Boothby's Innovation Creators blog, but I do agree with some of the comments in this recent post (about the growing success of Google's enterprise email service) that he has misrepresented Ernst & Young's use of Lotus Notes.

Firstly I should say that I'm not surprised that Boothby honestly says that "While I worked for EY, I never saw Notes used for anything other than email". This is probably because the Financial Services area he worked in was the smallest group (Accounting and Tax being the largest) and they simply never invested in enterprise-wide Lotus Notes systems as much the other areas. They typically had business requirements that were different from the larger areas who did build customised Lotus Notes applications and databases.

My experiences with Lotus Notes at Ernst & Young on the otherhand, where I worked in their global knowledge management and extranet teams between 1999 and 2004, were very different. As well as working with their global knowledge management tools, also based on Notes, in Australia I was also involved in developing some innovative tools with Lotus Notes. This included a portal in the Lotus Notes client ("EYA.Zone") that looked as good as any Web-based intranet I've seen since and a hugely popular wiki-style tool called "NavigatorLite" (we hadn't heard of wikis then, and thought of it as an electronic knowledge map that any team could manage themselves without needing a developer). In fact it was the experience of watching how NavigatorLite was used that first started my interest in user-generated software tools like Quickplace (a Web-based Lotus Notes application often used for projects - see my case study published here), EMC's eRoom, and more recently the whole Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 space.

However none of this really changes my earlier comments about Boothby and the future of Lotus Notes. However I should add that even in my time at E&Y it was clear that Web-based clients were quickly becoming the preferred user interface, and its important to recognise that in a Web browser end-users don't really care or know what platform the systems is running on - which bring us back to my much earlier posts about the grey area of form versus function in social software and here. Its not important what it runs on, its what you do with it that counts.

Technorati tags: Rod Boothby, Lotus Notes, Domino, Ernst & Young, Knowledge Management, Enterprise 2.0, Enterprise Social Software

The weakest (Internet) link - Asia

Reported here, here and elsewhere:

"Telephone and internet services were disrupted across Asia after a powerful earthquake struck near southern Taiwan"

Apparently 40%-60% of capacity was initially lost due to damage to two undersea telecommunication links.

People affected have my sympathy, but its funny as isn't this the type of thing the "net" supposed to survive? Hmm - well according to sources quoted in Wikipedia this is just a myth:

"The ARPANET was not started to create a Command and Control System that would survive a nuclear attack, as many now claim... Rather, the ARPAnet came out of our frustration that there were only a limited number of large, powerful research computers in the country"

It certainly makes you think twice about the Web Office concept and utility computing, or at least if they are based on the public internet communications infrastructure.

Technorati tags: Asia, Taiwan, Earthquake, ARPANET, Internet, Web Office, Utility Computing

Upload Me

I've blogged about life caching before and - via the Middle Zone Musings blog - here is a great profile of Microsoft computer scientist Gorden Bell by Clive Thompson for Fast Company on his experimental work in this space. Bell is "trying to record every single experience he has, every day: Every phone call, email, conversation, web page, snapshot of everything he sees".

Thompson does an excellent job of exploring not only what is remembered, but the implications for remembering, forgetting and what happens when digital memories are accidentally lost - including the comment that all this technology "might be slowly degrading his real, carbon-based brain's ability to remember clearly." Hmm - that's got me worried too as I treat this blog as bit of a memory aid!

But reading Danah Boyd's post from last week on being virtual, I wonder if Bell isn't a little off track for a more fundamental reason - as Web 2.0 and social software is showing us, we're still social animals even when we augment our ability to communicate with technology... so its not about remembering for remembering's sake, but sharing. Or as Boyd puts it, "These technologies haven’t been adopted as an alternative to meatspace; they’ve been adopted to complement it".

Update: See, even the new Wii game system is impacting back into the "meatspace".

Technorati tags: Gordon Bell, Danah Boyd, Being Virtual, MyLifeBits, Virtual Reality, Life Caching, Wii

Half full or half empty?

Despite my recent focus on Enterprise 2.0 and so on, I'm still concerned with the issue of IT and its broader impact on organisations, like this report and comment from Andrew McAfee on a speech by Robert J. Gordon about IT and productivity (or rather the lack of).

Gordon's thoughts are worth thinking about because he has changed his view on the contribution of IT to productivity from a positive view to a more pessimistic stance. McAfee summarises Gordon, saying "His broad point was that IT definitely delivered a productivity jolt to the US economy in the late 1990s, but that that era is past."

McAfee is still generally optimistic, believing that "Like previous general purpose technologies IT is having a deeply transformative effect, which will take many years to play out completely."

I also wonder if perhaps we are a little too focused on productivity and instead should also look for opportunity value created by IT.

 

Technorati tags: Andrew McAfee, Robert J. Gordon, IT, Productivity

Summer Reading Online

The summer break (in Australia) is almost here, so my thoughts at the moment are turned towards looking for ideas for summer reading and Christmas present ideas for my own wish list!

Based on a recommendation from Anecdote, I recently used my meager earnings from click throughs to Amazon to order a copy of Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software by Steven Johnson.

However, for some holiday reading I'm also looking for some interesting sci-fi to read and came across a couple of interesting Canadian writers, notable for both their stories and their approach to sharing their work via Creative Commons online:

• Cory Doctorow - in addition to writing, his European Affairs coordinator for the Electronic Frontier Foundation. He is the coeditor of the popular weblog Boing Boing.
• Peter Watts - who has "won a handful of awards in fields as diverse as marine mammal science, video documentary, and science fiction."

Doctorow goes to extraordinary lengths to share his work electronically - check out the different versions available for his latest book, Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town.

Of course the point is that I would never have "discovered" any of these authors or blogged about them if their work hadn't been available online - a point made by many others.

Technorati tags: Steven Johnson, Cory Doctorow, Peter Watts, Creative Commons, eBooks

A missing Enterprise 2.0 element - shifting?

Ross Dawson recently presented on "Web 2.0 marketing" and you can watch a recording of it online or read a summary of his key points. Remembering that the focus here is on digital media and marketing, Ross breaks Web 2.0 into the following:

• Participation
• Social media
• Emergence
• Visibility
• (Time) Shifting
• Conversation

Thinking now of Enterprise 2.0, the one thing I haven't seen mentioned before in this context is "Shifting" - Ross describes this as:

"One of the most critical shifts with Web 2.0 is power to the consumer. One of the most pointed examples of this is the ability to shift media and other content onto other platforms and devices. This means that online content is transcending the fixed internet, particularly to mobile devices, as well as merging consumers’ experience of TV, radio, news, Internet, and more. Time-shifting, space-shifting, and format-shifting are embodied in the new consumer tools. You can listen to a podcast whenever and wherever you want. Now video glasses allow consumption of video content in a large screen format while you’re on the move."

Is this relevant to Enterprise 2.0? Well, I did hear before about a firm that provided iPods to its staff as a way to distribute internal communication more effectively. And in many organisations, the original "sneakernet" that email replaced has returned in the shape of USB fueled filesharing. Mobility is also an issue that many organisations have addressed in recent years, but typically the technology used - i.e. the means of access - have been strictly on the organisations terms... so Web 2.0 is probably going to shift control back towards the employee.

Technorati tags: Enterprise 2.0, iPod, Ross Dawson, USB, Web 2.0

Putting users in control

Writing in one of the Sunday newspapers this weekend, author and journalist Julietta Jameson provides an overview of the impact of new technology (such as Electronic Program Guides (EPGs), ad skipping PVRs, and Internet video streaming) on television viewing habits and advertising . A couple of points stood out:

• Quoting a media planner who says "there is plenty of research to say that consumers actually like advertising and appreciate commercial breaks for a chat, cup of tea, loo break"; and
• Ratings from the US for popular shows such as CSI and Grey's Anatomy have exceeded 20 million viewers, suggesting new technologies are prompting more people to watch TV because "they have more control".

This is interesting enough for the new media space, but if we take these points out of the context of TV then I see a more general message about never assuming that users of information technology are passive - they adopt technologies and bend them to suit their needs, not what we think they need.

 

Technorati tags: Technology in the Workplace, time shifting, new media

IT in bed

Are you guilty of this?

"As electronic devices get smaller, people tote their technology around the house more than ever. And as the number of home wireless networks also grows, laptops along with Treos, BlackBerries and other messaging devices are migrating into the bedroom and onto the bed. The marital bed has survived his-and-her book lights and the sushi-laden bed tray. Can it also survive computers that tether their owners to the office or make the bed the workplace itself?"

Make sure you read the comments.

On the upside I find that a bright mobilephone or PDA display makes a handy torch in the middle of the night...

 

Technorati tags: BlackBerries, Sydney Morning Herald blogs, information technology in the home, wireless home networks, wifi, mobile computing, working from home, teleworking

Google OS or Not?

Talking of Google going to head-to-head with Microsoft yesterday, Richard MacManus and Emre Sokullu put forward three possible options of what the Googleplex might do:

• A web based desktop (i.e. operating system)
• A full featured Linux distribution
• A lightweight Linux distro and/or BIOS

Richard and Emre conclude that we might see something within the next 6 months... but, not everyone agrees - Robert Scoble thinks they've been drinking something :-) and responds:

"Why would Google want the hell of doing an OS? They are having a much better time just selling ads on top. And they will continue to be successful at doing that, no matter what Bill Gates says."

Thanks, Robert. There really isn't much else to say is there?

 

Technorati tags: Google OS, Googleplex, Richard MacManus, Emre Sokullu, Robert Scoble

McAfee 0 Slashdot 1

Andrew McAfee made a big splash with his Enterprise 2.0 article, but the waves created by his more recent article on IT haven't been so "buoyant". Getting slashdotted didn't help either ;-)

Actually I have nothing against mental models that help non-IT people to make better informed decisions, but at the end of the day they are just models. But unfortunately in this case I agree with Nicholas Carr's comments:

"As its title suggests, it's one of those dry scholarly exercises in categorization that spend a lot of time explaining stuff that most managers understand intuitively."

Personally I've found more targeted models of greater use such as:

Richard Susskind's Grid for the legal industry; or

Evaristo and Munkvold's collaborative infrastructure model.

Still, I'm a consultant, so I won't throw out McAfee's ideas just yet...

Technorati tags: Andrew McAfee, Slashdot, Nicholas Carr, Richard Susskind, Evaristo, Munkvold, The Grid

The wiki is part of the office productivity suite

Yes, its been a while since I last blogged. Since presenting down in Canberra in early October I've barely had time to keep up with reading other people's posts! What I can say is that is that prefer to deal with an overloaded RSS Reader that a bloated inbox. So, in a worst case scenario RSS still helps my personal productivity.

However a couple of things in particular have caught my attention during that time:

• Hosted wiki'ish collaborative application Jotspot is now part of the Google "ecology"; and
• Socialtext released a Microsoft Sharepoint version of its enterprise wiki software.

Noting that many have observed that Google is lining up the pieces for an Office 2.0 offering that could go head-to-head with Microsoft, I'm also interested to see that either way the wiki is becoming an integrated part of the enterprise office productivity suite.

I'm also pleased in reflection that my enterprise wiki article (PDF, 121KB) for IDM published in May/June 2005 still makes some valid points.

Technorati tags: Microsoft Sharepoint, Google, Jotspot, Socialtext, Enterprise Wiki, Technology in the Workplace

Open Space Technology with Larry Peterson

Another bonus of being down in Canberra yesterday was that I had the chance care of ACT KM during the day to learn a little about Open Space Technology (OST) from one the world's experts in this area, Larry Peterson. Larry is on a bit of a tour around Australia and NZ and recently ran an event with ACT KM's sister organisation in Melbourne.

OST is interesting because I can see how social software can act as both a tool to be used as part of an OST session (to capture and publish outputs quickly) but also as a kind of virtual OST.

Technorati tags: Open Space Technology, Larry Peterson, ACT KM, Social Software

A warm welcome for Enterprise 2.0 in Canberra

Chris Barry from AIM Canberra is making good use of their new blog and has posted some photos from my presentation last night. As you'll see I had a very warm welcome.

Special mentions for their support on the night to Mark Shenk from Anecdote, Angela Beesley, Craig Thomler from WordSoup (who is currently doing some interesting things at ActewAGL, including these map mashups), Brad Hinton (for taking the time to send me a follow up email with some thoughtful reading recommendations and for acknowledging a shared interest in industrial history!) and some colleagues from CSC who attended.

Technorati tags: Canberra, Australian Institute of Management

Half-Live Writer from Windows

I'm currently trying out Microsoft's Beta Windows Live Writer. I have to admit that I mostly like it...

It has comfortable look and feel of a Windows application - since it is essentially some kind of Frontpage/Word hybrid, that's what you would expect. And for that reason I could seriously see enterprise users adopting it very easily.

But there is always a "but" - can I find a simple plugin that will let me insert tags AND that will actually install? I don't know why, but this stuff is just so much easier in Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird! Any ideas anyone?

UPDATE: Charles Teague from the Live Writer team pointed me in the right direction... I'm now up and running with the latest version and that has solved my tagging needs!

Tags: Windows Live Writer, WLW Plugins

Beware of the Dog

All Rod Boothby wanted to do was explain how he thought Enterprise 2.0 was a threat to traditional enterprise groupware like Lotus Notes... instead a pack of Lotus Notes developers turned on him ;-)

"With all due respect, Rod, you clearly haven't got a clue about what you're talking about when it comes to the capabilities of Lotus Notes and how (apart from basic mail and calendaring) it is used."

Read the comments on Ed Brill's blog too.

Yes, its true: I don't think Boothby really understands Lotus Notes either but that really isn't the point. Stu Downes articulates one part of this in his comments to the original post:

"[Lotus Notes] is competing with very well written web based applications which are increasingly becoming available freely on the web. These disruptive technologies will be in our enterprises tomorrow... I hope IBM can use this post as a jolt to remind themselves that many people are not getting the power of Notes because their own organisation is way behind the times and development curve."

However, I think there is more. Personally what I find frustrating (based on my own experiences of using Lotus Notes) is that the Enterprise 2.0 idea could be informed by an understanding of where Notes came from and what it has achieved. So building on Downes point, it could be a two-way street - Lotus Notes improves Enterprise 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 improves Lotus Notes.

Unfortunately the real challenge that Lotus Notes faces from an Enterprise 2.0 platform is that it isn't a consumer technology - the trend we have seen is Web 2.0 technologies coming from the outside into organisations and with only few exceptions this is unlikely to happen for Lotus Notes.

Tags: Enterprise 2.0, Enterprise Social Software, Lotus Notes, Rod Boothby

Screaming anti-theft system for mobile phones

Very William Gibson... if you've read Virtual Light you'll know about the cars and bicycles that tell people to "Back off!" if they get too close - well:

"A UK firm is hoping a mobile security system it has developed which sets off a high pitch scream, permanently locks the handset and wipes all data if stolen, will halt the spiraling rise in phone theft."

This would be good for any kind of mobile information technology, don't you think?

Tags: Mobile Security System, William Gibson

Reminder: Rebooting the Enterprise with Blogs, Wikis and other Social Software next week in Canberra

Just a reminder:

Rebooting the Enterprise with Blogs, Wikis and other Social Software
Speaker: James Dellow, Senior Consultant - Information And Knowledge Management, Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC)
Location: Level 3, Engineering House, 11 National Cct, Barton (corner of National Cct and Brisbane Ave)
Time : 5.30pm-7.30pm (refreshments from 5.30pm)

For more information and to register to attend visit the AIM Website.

Tags: Australian Institute of Management, Canberra, Enterprise 2.0

Enterprise Wiki Survey Results - Participation challenges for some

Care of the ELSUA KM blog, a heads up that the results of a survey on enterprise wikis are now available. Some initial conclusions:

• The main reason affecting the choice of a wiki clearly is the simplicity of use and implementation. The expense is only a very small factor.


• The main problem is the lack of participation of the intended users. Almost half of the participants had to deal with this problem at least temporarily. Thus the encouragement of the employees is an important item to add to the success of the wiki.

Interesting that previously we have heard from the Motorola experience that a bottom-up implementation was easy to achieve. However, this survey suggests that this may not be the experience for everyone.

BTW I'd also like to extend my thanks to Tim Bartel for his efforts and for sharing the results.

Tags: Enterprise 2.0, Enterprise Social Software, Tim Bartel, Wikis

More user control over multimedia content

We all know that user-generated multimedia content, particularly video, is exploding online but as I've commented before a lot of this content is still static from a Web 2.0 point of view.

What I mean is that if you think about Andrew McAfee's Enterprise 2.0 "SLATES" concept - Search, Links, Authoring, Tags, Extensions and Signals - then its the deep search and ability to hyperlink from within content that we need to see mature. This isn't to say user-generated content isn't social, I just don't think it is fully integrated into the Web 2.0 model... well yet anyway.

Pluggd's demo of its semantic podcast search has created a bit of interest this last week and Techcrunch has a good summary of what its all about. Techcrunch comment:

"This is one of the most compelling examples I've seen lately of a growing trend: making multimedia content more granular and letting users take even greater control over the media we consume. We don't just want to consume what we wish, we want to consume it in the way we wish."

Also have a look at their overview of Viddler, who aim to make video easier to search via tagging.

BTW Another piece in this multimedia Web 2.0 space is talkr - working the other way, it converts text-based blogs (or rather RSS feeds) into machine read speech.

Tags: hypermedia, Pluggd, talkr, Viddler

ROI on collaboration technology in the construction industry

Care of the Attensa blog (Attensa is an enterprise RSS solution), a good news story about the high levels of satisfaction in UK construction with collaboration technology, where 96% of respondents to an industry survey "interviewed said they had experienced benefits from using collaboration technologies."

Two of most important benefits identified by this and other research suggests that users value audit trail related benefits and the ability to access data and information quickly.

A report on this research by the UK's Network for Construction Collaboration Technology Providers, which was designed to demonstrate the ROI on using collaboration technology, is available to download (PDF).

Tags: collaboration software, collaboration technology, NCCTP

Universal Sharing Bus?

Is there anything we can't do with a USB port these days? For example, here is an idea for a USB-port powered rechargable battery (care of Read/WriteWeb). And considering how ubiquitous USB is for sharing information and multimedia, running applications and doing other stuff maybe we should include in the Web 2.0 cloud and extend the model to include hardware as well as software?

Tags: Moixa Energy, Web 2.0, USB

Social barcoding

If you're a dot-com veteran you'll remember the CueCat - now the basic idea has been reborn in a couple of ways as SmartPox and also Mytago. Based on previous experience, should we be afraid? Well, both SmartPox and Mytago appear to designed to be part of the social software cloud, but I guess it remains to be seen how successful either will be.

Tags: CueCat, mytago, Smartpox

If they aren't strategic, why are they so essential?

I've been thinking about a piece by Mark Jones in the AFR last week (IBM notes changing trends in bid to boost Lotus, 14 September 2006, Australian Financial Review) where he comments "chief information officers rarely consider Notes, or competitive software such as Microsoft Office, to be a strategic purchase."

I don't disagree with the observation - but it troubles me greatly that CIO's don't think much about the strategic value, or strategic impacts, of their decisions about the basic messaging and office productivity tools they provide to staff. Could this be why so many experienced Lotus Notes users are so passionate about their tool or why so many businesses run on the smell of an Microsoft Excel spreadsheet?

So if they aren't strategic, why are they so essential? Take these work horses away from people, and many organisations would grind to a halt. And perhaps this is why so many people inside the firewall are getting excited about what Web 2.0 technologies will let them do?

BTW The context for the article was to report on IBM's attempts to rejuvenate Lotus Notes by positioning it as a social software-friendly platform - the AFR's article isn't available online (except to subscribers), but this ARNnet article from earlier in the year gives you an idea of what IBM are planning.

Tags: enterprise social software, Lotus Notes, IT strategy

In the eye of the beholder

Following on from yesterday's post, Brian Keairns makes a similiar observation:

"I find Andrews’s definition to be effective even though I don’t believe it will be possible to say that an application inherently meets that definition out of the box. There will certainly be applications that can be deployed in either an Enterprise 2.0 mode or a traditional mode or a transitional mode and enterprises will find a way to deploy even the purist Enterprise 2.0 web software in a way that’s not optional or egalitarian. So if you wanted to “certify” an application as Enterprise 2.0 you’d have to look at the implementation to decide whether it was Enterprise 2.0 or Enterprise 2.0 Transitional or not Enterprise 2.0 at all."

Tags: Enterprise 2.0, enterprise social software

Setting boundaries on Enterprise 2.0

Andrew McAfee wants to define Enterprise 2.0 as "the use of emergent social software platforms within companies, or between companies and their partners or customers" but is concerned that others are expanding the concept to include a discussion of software development models and delivery methods.

Similarly we see some uncomfortable overlaps between the concepts of Web 2.0, Social Software and everything that has gone before. Something I've always done to help deal with this issue is to consider the difference between function (what is does) and form (how it does it). Unfortunately in doing this we have to accept a grey area to exist between the tools and technologies used, the way they are used and how we attempt to explain them using management theory. In other words people don't use technology in such a bounded fashion - think about the spreadsheet, a classic user-driven software tool, and the different ways it is put to use. Another point is that if we separate function and form, then organisations can use what ever tools and technologies they want to achieve Enterprise 2.0, not just (for example) an open source Blog written in PHP and running on Apache.

From a management point of view I think Enterprise 2.0 is a good place to start a conversation about Enteprise Social Software, but if we ignore the broader picture of Web 2.0 inside the enterprise then we may miss out on another story unfolding. The trick is learning to discuss them as both form and function so that we understand the opportunities and implications.

Incidentally part of this other story is something my CSC colleagues have previously identified and labelled "Extreme Data".

Tags: Enterprise 2.0, enterprise social software