chieftech’s blog

Through some serendipity, I came across Zaana Howard's CPA Australia case study on enterprise microblogging. In these three parts, we again see a very familiar viral and low friction adoption pattern.

From this experience, Zaana highlights the benefits (knowledge sharing, better communication and expertise location) but also a number lessons learnt, that hinge particularly on the point that "viral success is not enough".

This reminded me that a couple of years ago I came across an organisation that was awash with enterprise social computing tools - wikis, blogs, video, rss, dashboard etc - but each tool was lost within a sea of legacy and traditional intranet and information management tools. The average user in that organisation could barely find anything on the intranet that was already there, let alone the new wave of tools.

It was a shame because the earlier adopters had embraced them and could see the future benefits, but they were actually talking about removing all the social computing tools from their systems because mixing the old and new world was completely unplanned.

BTW Have a look through my blog archives to find more case studies and examples of enterprise microblogging at work.

User participation is now an established feature of the economy, spreading from product development and software to a much broader base of activities, such as marketing and manufacturing, and sectors, including social media, automotives and cosmetics, among others. Early analyses of user participation pointed to the importance of building large communities, creating effective incentives for participation and implementing more flexible forms of organization. Looking back a few years later, the good news is that active participation continues to spread. The bad news is that harnessing participation is more difficult than we thought. Stimulating a continuous flow of high-quality contributions should be the focus of companies that want to take advantage of user participation.

Well, actually, if you've been hanging around knowledge management and collaboration for a while you wouldn't expect it to be easy :-)

I still think Clay Shirky sums this up best - you need:

"a successful fusion of a plausible promise, an effective tool, and an acceptable bargain with the users"

We are taking advantage of the fact that Robin Hamman will be here in Sydney for our Social Business Summit to run a special half-day masterclass in Canberra on Monday 22nd March.

Featuring Robin and facilitated by Anne Bartlett-Bragg, the masterclass will address:

• How existing government activities can be undertaken with more impact, wider reach, and effectiveness using social media;
• Who should do it (and who shouldn't);
• The guidelines and roles a government agency will need; and
• Measuring success for different stake holders.

Please contact me at james.dellow@headshift.com or call 0414 233711 for more information or if you would like to register for the masterclass.

I'll be taking a bit of back seat at this event, but it will give you the chance to hear from two other very experienced people from the Headshift team. Robin's profile speaks for itself, meanwhile you may not be aware that Anne was the other primary author to the Project 8 guidelines I've been talking about a lot recently :-)

Anne was also the lead consultant for Taskforce Project 15, to assist the Australian Law Reform Commission to run an online engagement pilot with their stakeholders.

Last week, internet activists calling themselves “Anonymous” temporarily brought down the Australian governments’ networks and they’re threatening to do it again. Anonymous, a “hacktivist” group, formed through the subculture website 4Chan. Jon Stewart speaks to 4Chan’s founder Chris “Moot” Poole.

Interesting to note that our 'local' Australian issue with the proposed mandatory Internet filter caught the attention of the BBC's Digital Plant radio show, thanks in part to the DDoS attack by the 'Anonymous' group. The story of the relationship between 4Chan and Anonymous was also something I hadn't heard before. They also discuss the radical idea that, perhaps one day, a DDoS might be seen as a legitimate form of protest - at least, they argue, there are no broken windows at the end of it.

Personally, I think the filter is a waste of time for all the technical reasons people have been talking about (like private dark nets) and I hope, if the legislation is successful, that we don't see dramatic changes to cost and speed of Internet access. However, I'm much more concerned about the risk of scope creep and the message this sends to other nations about freedom of speech.

In that respect I'm happier with Kate Lundy's position that:

"legislating to protect the presence and availability of an open Internet service would clearly solve several of the public concerns whilst also showing the world that Australia takes freedom of speech and association very seriously."

This isn't a local issue. In our attempts to protect one group, we actually contribute to putting others at harm.