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