The Social Enterprise
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I'm a huge fan of lists. If they're read with some existing context/knowledge, they're an incredible way to trigger ideas.
So, here's a list from notes made from a talk by SocialText's Ross Mayfield (who along with Lee Bryant, lead the thinking in the 'social enterprise' area) Enterprise 1.0 to Enterprise 2.0, which I think summarise the 'social enterprise' trends I've been observing (and trying to influence) in my clients:
- document-centric to people-centric
- structured to freeform
- taxonomy to folksonomy
- folders to tagging
- knowledge management to knowledge sharing
- need-to-know to need-to-share
- one-to-many to many-to-many
- centralized to distributed
- top down to emergent
- rigid to flexible
The rest of the article requires less than a minute to read, but has a tight summary of Mayfield's views on the roles of intranets, and 'social messaging'. Also worth a skim are Mayfield's slideset on SlideShare.
Print your own notebooks
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Couple of things caught my eye over the last few months, with regard to self-printing.
Most recent first - Moleskine have released an intriguing site that lets you create PDFs of contacts, or your own text/images, that print to fit exactly inside their lovely, pricey, notebooks.
I really like the idea of being able to customise notebooks, perhaps with some timely reading, or personal lists. Nice simple instructions, nothing beyond a dedicated attempt and a text editor...I tried this using an old blog post - doesn't seem to be able to handle line breaks (or basic html paras or lists?).
Like BoingBoingGadgets, I thought there would be a nifty way of integrating this into the notepad, but it seems to be expected to just pop them in wherever. Oh well.
And a fantastically interesting set of ideas and physical prototypes about notebooks, both from a perspective of physical manufacture/repair, and the notebook as memory and intellectual container, is Tom Armitage's post on Endless Notebooks. A fascinating idea; treating notebooks as repairable and upgradable objects, not static clumps of paper.
5 minutes on the the future of reading...
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Last month I gave a 5 minute micropresentation as part of O'Reilly's Ignite session in Leeds, on some research I've been doing into the future of reading (follow that link for a separate blog I've started)...
( Detailed notes of my talk).
Too crammed, not enough preparation (er, none), and I talk too fast...but hey, it was only for 5 minutes...
It was a great night (props to Imran Ali for curating it) ; lots of micropresentations that I really enjoyed. A few that spring to mind:
Google makes electricity meters interesting
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Google unveils smart electricity usage monitor software
Another interesting move in a nascent space...this from google.org, who announced GoogleWatt, their 'strategic' renewable energy investment program earlier last year.
Ambient data management, and visualisation at a personal level, along with the massive aggregation of zillions of households, plays right into Google's core strengths...a lot like the really interesting Google Flu Tracking initiative that uses their search data to detect trends in search terms that predict early outbreaks.
Wait for the inevitable tie-ins with new 'light consumption appliances' at the household side, and Google selling energy usage data to renewables companies and energy futures traders...
For a hardware appliance that tackles similar energy use analysis, it's worth taking a look at Ambient Device's Energy Joule, a plugin smart monitor with a realtime display of energy pricing from it's built in data feed over FM. Very er, smart.
(Via TechMeme.)
Why wikis work in organisations
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I'm popping together some marketing material for our wiki consulting 'suite', and came across some notes. In my new role as re-poster of stuff I've written elsewhere I thought I'd post:
Open Environment
- It’s powerful and effective to let people shape their own software ‘experience’
- Wiki content creates accountability and visibility on project deliverables
- People can see and learn from other people’s content
Dealing with Initial Resistance
- Broadly speaking, managers are more resistant to change than team members
- Wiki content creates accountability and visibility on project deliverables
- Some people instinctively didn’t want open info (e.g. on project deadlines)
- People are addicted to email (cc lists, ‘paper trail’. ‘I told you in email’)
Stick with it
- Initial resistance dies down; some of key advocates were initially very sceptical
- Organic growth is unpredictable; usage has occurred in unexpected places
- Multiplier effect; as people use the wiki in their own areas, more people get exposed to the wiki
A culture of prototyping
- Everything’s fast, low hassle, low cost and open; e.g. asking people to vote for new features
- Iterate content; more comfort with ‘early and often’ iterations (and easier to build content as a team)
Why have wikis worked (and other tools failed?)
- Open ‘adult’ system; unlike KM systems where control/mistrust built in
- Contributors able to shape and manage their environment to fit needs * no templates/required fields
- Organic, completely optional use. Wiki was ‘sold’, but didn’t impose a top-down mentality
- Primary focus was a social/people project and not an IT project
Digital Overload Is Frying Our Brains
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Deeply aware of the irony that I half read this whilst a TV was in the room, and kept getting distracted...
Wired has an interesting intro to a book on attention:
"The other important thing is to discuss interruption as an environmental question and collective social issue. In our country, stillness and reflection are not especially valued in the workplace. The image of success is the frenetic multitasker who doesn't have time and is constantly interrupted. By striving towards this model of inattention, we're doing ourselves a tremendous injustice."
I'm really interested in the ideas from this book - many of my peers feel, at least some of the time, like we've developed some level of ADD; 'thin slicing' our attention into ever smaller elements; I think it's definitely the downside of constant feeds of information and this techo-peripatetic lifestyle.
My Instapaper unread feed...
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I love Instapaper. It's clipping service and lovely iPhone app are my main route into reading, erm, well reading full stop actually.
I only realised today that there's an RSS feed for my unread articles queue - here it is , if you're interested in my inadvertent web curation :-)
Crikey, there's over 650 articles in there :-| More reading now, less 'read later' methinks.
Thoughts on Twitter
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Another in what's turning out to be a regular series in client 'research notes' (ok, in this case, a casual email) I've decided to republish.
I was asked what I thought about Twitter and it's potential, or rather the concept of Twitter, for business use.
(I should have restricted my reply to 140 characters)...
Why it works
I think Twitter works well, because i) it's centralised and so it's easy to pay attention to 'flow' and for them to create ceasy connections between users ii) because, by design, it's blogging restricted to SMS length writing, and iii) they've given easy access to build lots of services around/throught it, and people can easily 'hack' it (e.g. the use of hash tags to identify 'tweets' on a shared topic).
It's too much aggro to write long posts, but quick blurts of status information, throwaway comments, etc. are pretty easy - that's why I think people like using it.
Utility
I scan it once or twice a day to see what my friends have been mentioning; friends who do use it often have an app open, which I find intensely distracting.
You could argue it's just a load of trivial sms type messages; and you'd be right - but when it's your family/friends/hero making those comments, then it becomes relevant.
I found it super useful when at conferences - I want to see quick thoughts, location, status from a bunch of people at a glance; Twitter is fantastic for acting as a central hub.
I've noticed a lot of companies/people use it as an alternative to email to provide updates and 'promotional' info, which by it's nature is opt-in vs. say, email.
Business Model
There's been a lot of conversation on the web about this.
I think Twitter will sell pro 'data mining' accounts with alerting and demographic breakdowns for PR firms and companies who want to track brand mentions and velocity through a influential groups.
They could charge individual users for retaining 'tweets' past 30 days, or for extras like image uploads etc.
And there's good old advertising...
I think the most interesting model would be the pro accounts for PR firms/brands...
And I'd definitely check out this article - it's a good insight into Twitter's popularity from Tim O'Reilly, a smart thinker.
In my original email, I forgot to mention SocialText's 'Signals' which they describe as a Twitter-like messaging environment for organisations using their nifty Wiki platform.
The future of Reading
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Last week I took part in O'Reilly's Ignite session a micropresentations style affair (nice change to talk, instead of organise...)
I tried to outline my thoughts on the 'Future of Reading' - I've put my slide notes and background research in an outline. It's a reasonable summary of my observations and thinking in this area.
The slides, with notes are here (1mb pdf) .
Locking away information in companies
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I'd thought I'd publish another of my briefing notes I've sent to clients, in this case, about the popular (but in my opinion, mostly harmful) desire to 'lock down' access on corporate wiki to other employees.
"It's a really tough one - classic thin end of the wedge scenario - as soon as you (inadvertently) 'socialise' the fact that you can, in fact, lock down spaces/pages in the wiki, you poison the well of openness for the wiki community at large.
The problem is, in my experience, that there's c. 5% (FBFR) [1] of information in a company that truly is secret. Lots of employees feel, proudly that their stuff should be protected too.
And over time, the wiki evolves into a set of silo'd information, that prevents the emergent serendipity of information flow and connection that we think we can help you leverage, say in 6 months time [2].
If there's one thing most companies don't need, is another set of information silos. Just ask the US Department of Defense (sic) - their Intellipedia wiki is an interesting case study for openness of information behind the firewall.
In other clients we've advocated a 'hybrid' approach - exactly like you've got in your wiki space - i.e. it's not the existence of the report/data/file/whatever that is private, but the object itself.
The binary nature of this approach means that it's really easy to socialise, and defend, as you don't end up in a "but they've got secure spaces, why can't we?" conversations.
A good comparative model is (another client) - they have multi-country, massive user and content wiki based on complete (employee only) access.
The open nature of their wiki means that people from across the org chart have connected and collaborated where they had never met or previously known each other.
They also have other wikis where everyone is given locking rights.
Guess which one the CEO gets to hear about on 'Innovation Showcase' days :-)"
[1] Fictitious But Feels Right
I've got some nice anecdotal examples of this, that we've facilitated with some decent 'framing' of the software..
Will Someone Please Invent iTunes for News?
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The Media Equation - Will Someone Please Invent iTunes for News? - NYTimes.com
"Those of us who are in the newspaper business could not be blamed for hoping that someone like (Steve Jobs) comes along and ruins our business as well by pulling the same trick: convincing the millions of interested readers who get their news every day free on newspapers sites that it’s time to pay up."
There's a good debate about newspapers, the role (and cost) of investigative journalism. But this isn't it.
Worth reading to see how this argument won't be won - by framing the discussion about access via 'paper-like' tablets and subscription models derived from physical distribution models.
(Via Vagueware.)
Interesting ICA talks in Feb 09
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Not sure of my travel plans, so might not be in/near London at the right times, but these look like interesting talks for Jan/Feb 09 (in case you're reading an archive :-)...
"...he comes to the ICA to argue that the world of text is giving way to a exciting new age of visual literacy."
"The idea of cybernetics didn't just give rise to the internet. Through its successor discipline of network-centric warfare, it has also burrowed into American and Israeli military culture. Where did those ideas come from, and what has their effect been on the war in Iraq, 2006's Israel-Lebanon war, and the current war in Gaza?'
Pity it's just authors, and not a few actors (in the military) sense, but still...
"...returns to update his thesis about mass internet collaboration in the light of the last year and 'the Obama effect'. We are now seeing masses of people engage in both spontaneous and planned generosity online, according to Shirky,"
Saw him talk with Brian Eno last year...always interesting, but felt more of a reminder - this might be a good review of how Barama facebooked the '08 campaign.
"A small number of major filmmakers now work mainly or exclusively using digital film. How does digital film change the work of the filmmaker and the perspective of the audience? Mike Figgis...is here to lecture on the aesthetic possibilities latent in digital film."
In all of them, "The use of camera phones and recording equipment during talks and events in the Feedback series is encouraged.", so I'll look out for meedja of the events in anycase.
