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

Around the Google world in 24 hours

We've been mapping the Internet since its earliest days, and now we have what Richard Akerman on the O'Reilly Radar blog describes as a "hypnotic view of a day of Google traffic on a map."

We talk about being always on, always connected but for the most part this map shows a lot of the developing world in darkness while the rest pretty much still sleep when we expect them. Still, I suppose Google is everything.

For maps of the Internet have a look at the Atlas of Cyberspace.

Tags: Google, maps of the Internet, visualizations