My name is Jevon MacDonald. I write about the impact of Social Business Design.
“First, The Wall Street Journal’s long tradition of independence, which has been the hallmark of our news coverage for decades, is threatened today. We, along with hundreds of other Dow Jones employees represented by the Independent Association of Publishers’ Employees, want to demonstrate our conviction that the Journal’s editorial integrity depends on an owner committed to journalistic independence.” – Read the Rest Here »
Updates from June, 2007
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Jevon
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Jevon
“Canadians devoted less time listening to their radios as a form of entertainment in 2006 than in previous years, especially teenagers and young adults, many of whom appear to be switching to digital music players and online music services.
On average, Canadians tuned in to their radios for 18.6 hours during “measurement week” in fall 2006, down from 19.1 hours a week in 2005. Since the fall of 1999, when radio listening peaked, this average has dropped by nearly two hours.” – Read the Full Study »
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Jevon
“It’s appropriate to step back occasionally and reflect on what we don’t know, rather than simply sharing what we know. In times of rapid change, asking the right questions is often as important as the answers – at least they help us figure out where we might start looking for answers. There is no shortage of questions – the key is to focus on questions that are not just intellectually interesting, but also where significant economic impact is at stake. These are the questions that will focus our research agenda.” Read the rest on Edge Perspectives
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Jevon
The truth, and this is something I have said to FAST and others, is that right now, finding things is not the problem. All of those search implementations that you, I and others have helped with are there to search information that is 90% useless. Organizations take a lot of pride in their vast repositories of information, and making it searchable makes everyone feel good, but the truth is that users have little use for it. Full Thread Here
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How simple can enterprise software be? A primer
Jevon
With all of the fancy, expensive and new software out there, you would think that the ushering in of Enterprise 2.0 began as a call to build bigger software. You’d think it is a call to build software at all.
New software is an inevitability. Whatever your current swath of enterprise apps includes, you have probably come to terms with throwing a lot of it out in order to get to that place we call “2.0″. The question is, what direction do you go? Do you layer on more software? Do you tear away all that you have right now? Do you mash some of the new with the old?
I thought we could take a look at just how your next installation of enterprise software should look, and why.
If your software doesn’t help people connect and solve problems together then you aren’t doing anything new. If you are a better looking, cheaper, more fun Project Management Application, probably even delivered over the web as a service, then you are a great Office 2.0 solution, but you are not Enterprise Social Computing, or even Enterprise 2.0.
1. The core idea is that people share
All the peripheral conversations are just distractions. The only new idea here is that conversations between all the layers of your organization completely change how work gets done.How can you help people do this? Install a simple message board. PHPBB being the most obvious. There are other solutions (such as what I have been working on) that are a little more involved, but are essentially just great message boards.
My favorite message board design is: Chowhound. If you could replicate that, you are doing great.
2. Advocate tools
Now that a core group is comfortable using your first piece of truly social software, you need to let them become evangelists for the tool. To do this, you need to give them the tools to invite others in to the space, to share stories about what has been accomplished in the space (through case studies, or, primarily, well formed tales).There is a whole world of Viral Marketing handbooks out there, and no doubt they can be of great help, but you will also find that at the end of the day it will come down to conversations, in the hallways and before meetings, that convince people to check out this new thing
3. When they are good at sharing, people will want better ways to connect
As your social software grows the number of users and different interest groups will become seemingly unmanageable.Giving people a set of personal tools to filter through the noise becomes important. The problem is that each person will see the noise in a different way. Some people thrive with noise, they skim and scan and get a large, but shallow, understanding of what is going on. A large number of people will, however, become paralyzed.
Anyone who has used Facebook will understand that the first line of filtering should be your own Social Network.
In the last 3 years, we have done a lot of work with trying to use social networks as primary filters. This is hard work and it can often result in failure. The biggest problem is building the toolset in such a way that the user understands that their network is an actual tool, not just a place to collect friends. This changes habits dramatically.
This is the most complicated level your software should reach. No more.
4. Keep the user at the center
At this point you probably have at least 300 active users, some places will be at 5000 by this point. With this kind of adoption, different levels and silos of management will start to “buy in” and you are going to get pushed in many different directions.Before you know it, you will be asked to integrate BPM, Email and Sharepoint into your platform.
Fight this tooth and nail.
5. This is the living room
Before we move on and look at what toolsets might be appropriate as your platform gets more popular, it’s important to remind ourselves that we haven’t just created a piece of software, or a set of features, we have created a living room. A busy lounge full of all your best friends.If you tried to turn Cheer’s into a Chili’s, it’s safe to say that the place might lose some of it’s regular visitors.
So, remember, some of the squeaks in the floors, and the slightly awkward way some things now work, those are the real features, because they remind people that they are in a place where it is OK to be themselves.
6. Don’t integrate, but link
If every organization was using OpenID, you could skip this step, but most often, with clumsy LDAP databases and old Identity Federation systems, you can’t.Start to link out to other enterprise applications. A simple toolbar
7. You just might be the village idiot
It doesn’t take great smarts, analytical skills or an MBA to bring Social Computing to your organization. It doesn’t take great smarts, analytical skills or an MBA to participate in a community either.You are going to have to come to terms with the fact that none of your smarts, your MBA or your 30 years of experience within your organization will make any difference. Success does not depend on you or your strategy.
Some people accept this, but others fight it. Talk of Policies, Codes of Practice, Launch Strategies and Adoption Strategies are all just mean to cloud the nervous nature of the pioneer.
Accept your fate. This is not a career maker, at least it won’t be if you try to make it so.
8. This won’t work for you
I find a little bit of humor in writing a post like this. It is pretty prescriptive and “smart”, but if you take it at face value, it is pretty open ended. The real guidance is: Start slow and build slow. Avoid convoluted strategies and bootstrap bootstrap bootstrap. -
Jevon
It seems to me that we no longer have to convince IT departments that we need new software, now we have to convince them that it doesn’t have to be as complicated as they want to make it.
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Enterprise 2.0 Quick Recap
Jevon
“The customers are far more interesting, engaged and serious right now than any vendors or consultants who are trying to get in to this movement.”
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The best thing about this KRZR
Jevon
The best thing about my KRZR (besides the fantastic camera) is the fact that people can’t help but ask about it when they see it, and I love to tell them about it. Also, using Bluetooth to push pictures from the KRZR to my mac is so easy and fast it’s amazing. I wouldn’t want to bother sending pictures back to my MacBook Pro any other way.
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e20conference: Launchpad
Jevon
Collanos is a peer-to-peer (on the infrastructure side) “collaborative workspace”. Project orientated. Stowe says “I’m not sure the world needs another groove. You will have the same problems they had.”
Collanos has voice/phone integration. Stowe says “you are still maintaining the old, top-down, group-orientated model, and the world is actually a lot messier than that”.
Next up is Clarizen. “on-demand collaborative project management for your business” that “helps companies systematically achieve project success”.
The guy next to me says to his friend “this is the same presentation he gave in ’97. That’s an entire decade”
What’s different about Clarizen? They say that “Real Adoption, Real Teamwork and Real Knowledge.”
Clarizen uses a 3-pane view for their application, which is windows based.
He is saying “drive adoption through participation”. The computer in my mind says “circular construct detected”.
Stowe says “isn’t clarizen the stuff I use in my eyes”. “This is similar to eRoom. This isn’t a tremendously new idea. You have checklists, task lists, document sharing. It’s not bad,. but it’s not too good”.
The other judge says “this is 1.5, not 2.0″
Now LiquidTalk is up. Dave Peak, the CEO is presenting. This guy has some more energy. “I am not ashamed about my blackberry”. “we are out of time, out of the office, and we have too little time to get things done.”
“Mobile Knowledge for Mobile Workers”. It takes all sorts of content that you create. Voice, text, etc. And lets you get it anywhere. On your Blackberry or anywhere. “iTunes for business”.
Stowe: “I see this as a plugin for Salesforce.com or something.”
The last company is now up KnowNow. “Live information management application for today’s enterprise”.
“We’ve found that Sharepoint in particular has caused a lot of problems.” “Search is not the answer”. “Knownow wants to get rid of the search button — we want to eliminate search”. They do this through “constant monitoring” of data sources.
Stowe: “I like your message, your technology seems to work,. but there are like 900,000 other people picking away at you.”
and that’s it for LaunchPad at Enterprise 2.0 in Boston. Voting is next.
They put “Sanjaya” as an option to vote as a joke, but now everyone seems to be voting for Sanjaya.
KnowNow is pulling ahead now though.
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Jevon
Ross covered the one session I meant not to miss, but did miss. Thanks Ross!