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Reflecting on 2009

We are nearly at the end of the year, so time for some reflection on the past 12 months.

Just briefly, a few highlights from my year:

  • I started 2009 working on a government project and also ended the year on another government project, both addressing related topics I'm very passionate about - collaboration and Government 2.0.
  • I joined Headshift in March - I've been busy working on a range of consulting projects and have been involved with developing sites using social platforms like Wordpress, Elgg and Confluence.
  • With some help, I unorganised a screening of the Us Now documentary in Sydney... it also turned out to be a fantastic opportunity to meet some great Twitter peeps in real life too!
  • I attended BarCamp Canberra, presented at 4 Public Spheres and ran a conversation cafe at the NSW KM Forum - all setting the scene for lots of activity around Government 2.0 here in Australia during the last 6 months.
  • I also helped to launch an industry cluster, for the IT community in the Illawarra region of Australia (where I live).
  • We finally organised an Enterprise 2.0 meetup in Sydney - hopefully this will grow in 2010.
You'll notice there is quite a strong Government 2.0 and community flavour above. However, I had a quick look at my site stats this morning and its quite obvious that the most popular posts have an Enterprise 2.0 theme. My old blog (after nearly five years, I migrated from Blogger to Posterous in June this year) still receives quite a few hits, although with so much content it is a little harder to see a pattern.

The top post on this blog was 14 Reasons Why Enterprise 2.0 Projects Fail versus 4 Rules of Thumb, while the top 2009 post from my old blog was SharePoint and Enterprise 2.0 (if you enjoyed that post, see my IDM article cross posted on the HOZ blog - SharePoint or Wiki?).

There are also a lot of posts I still didn't get time to make (including some things to say about #nocleanfeed, but all in good time), although I've enjoyed the dynamic of using Posterous for the most part - it has made it easier to post a mixture of event photos, bookmarks and longer post too. Twitter is great, but 140 characters just isn't enough (Twitter + Posterous = a great combination btw).

Hopefully during January I might be able to touch on some of those topics, like:
  • The state of intranets and intranet management (a bit of a bug bear topic for me).
  • Dealing with 'social' in Enterprise 2.0.
  • Talking about not-SharePoint. And probably SharePoint too. ;-) 
  • What is Government 2.0 and getting beyond this idea of 'fixing' the public service (e.g. Social Innovation Camp).
  • Digital inclusion and exclusion.
  • Dachis Group/Headshift's Social Business Design approach.
  • MIKE 2.0 - something I haven't written about at all, but its very much still on my radar.
  • Knowledge management - remember that?
Ok. That's all folks. Have a great Christmas and a very Happy New Year!

A brief recap of recent Gov 2.0 events

I'm well overdue a detailed recap of the last few weeks of Government 2.0 related event. But time is getting away from me, so I think I'll have to admit defeat and just point you at some photos and coverage elsewhere:

The LGWebNetwork conference

This was a really fantastic conference (check out some the feedback they received). Reem and Diana did a great job and I appreciated their attention to detail, even down to the event publication. I was there as a part of panel on community engagement. The conference site also has a selection of audio recordings from the event, including the opening and closing key notes. You'll find more photos on Flickr.

Public Sphere #3
(Geoff McQueen presenting at Public Sphere #3)

Check out Sen. Kate Lundy's blog for the official wrap up post - however, there is still time to participate on the wiki. There were also a couple of interesting posts here:
I spent most of the day running the live blog, but I also presented in the morning on why the Web 2.0 industry was different and what government could do to support it.

Panel at UNSW
The night before NSW Public Sphere, I was invited to participate on a panel hosted by Martin Stewart-Weeks and with Matthew Crozier as part of a lecture. It was good to step into an academic context for a moment, just to get a different view point on the hype around Government 2.0. However, these masters students engaged intelligently with the issues and ideas, not the buzz words. 

NSW Public Sphere (+ Us Now screening)

I started the day at 7.15am with a screening of the Us Now movie for a few fool hardy souls. As well as providing food for thought for the rest of the day, this also did double duty as part of the Us Now Global Screening Project initiative started by Celina Agaton. The big announcement of the day of course was the launch of the apps4nsw competition (you can read the transcript on Penny Sharpe's blog). I posted my slides from NSW Public Sphere in a previous post, which pretty much called for something just like apps4nsw as a next step. I've suggested to Penny that a great next step for NSW Public Sphere would be to run an co-design event to feed into the apps4nsw competition. Also worth reading is this wrap up post from Grant Young. If you are interested, there are also more photos on Flickr.

BTW If you are interested in the idea of Public Service (Co-)Design, there is a list of some useful links at the end of my CPD paper.

Overall, I think you'll agree things are really starting to move beyond talking to actually doing something useful with the Government 2.0 idea.



SharePoint or Wiki?

Archimedes famously told us that with a long enough lever and fulcrum to rest it on, he could move the world. The story of designing next generation intranets that are based on social computing principles, what some call, "intranet 2.0", is also locked in a similar paradox: in theory just about any Web-based collaboration or information sharing tool has the potential to be a social computing platform, if only we have enough time and budget for its development.

Microsoft SharePoint is a great case in point. Massively successful, the free version of the SharePoint 2007 family, known as Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (WSS), has slipped into organisations and has found itself embraced by users and IT departments alike. In many organisations, SharePoint may have been the first collaboration solution they had experienced as an improvement to networked file shares and email.

However, Wikis have also grabbed the attention of many organisations. Despite being a decade old technology, it was against the background of the Web 2.0 that Wikis finally appeared on the corporate radar. They offered a revolutionary "every page is editable" alternative to expensive or rigid Web and document management systems. And just like Windows SharePoint Services, there are many 'free' wiki software options available as open source.

via headshift.com

You can now read the full version (with a few additional notes) of my recent Image & Data Manager (IDM) magazine article that compares Microsoft SharePoint with Wikis over on the Headshift Australasia blog. This article was published in the May/June 2009 edition of IDM.

Writing our own Us Now story | Pool

Here at Pool we're always keen to hear about new trends and ideas in social media. So when we heard about a screening of Us Now in Sydney, a UK film project about the power of mass collaboration, government and the Internet, we just had to share it with you. We asked one of the main 'unorganisers' of Us Now Sydney, Headshift consultant James Dellow, to blog for Pool about the film, the Sydney screening and how it all came about. James asks us to think about our own Us Now Australia story
via pool.org.au

BTW the Pool is an interesting project in itself - the intent of the site, which has been created by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), is to provide an "online ‘town square’ for all Australians... where audiences become 'co-creators'". They are gradually releasing media from the ABC archives to the site so it can be remixed. Worth checking out.

Articles, Presentations & Papers

This is a consolidated list of my articles, presentations and papers:

Television Interviews

Presentations (Selection Only)

Published Articles

  • Social innovation gardening, Local Government Focus, August 2009 - The exciting dimension of Government 2.0 is the impact it can have on communities where Local Government is at the front line, along with other community service agencies and organisations.
  • Writing our own Us Now story - a guest post on the Pool, July 2009 - they asked me to blog about the Us Now film, the Sydney screening and how it all came about.
  • A case of the Twitters?, Government News, May 2009 - Councils are defined by their geographic areas, but the nature of the relationships with their communities has changed.

The following published articles have all appeared in Image & Data Magazine:

  • Rage against the machine, January/February 2010. Argues why a user-centred design approach is needed to effectively deal with the challenge of managing email in the enterprise.
  • SharePoint or Wiki?, May/June 2009. Looks at the best enterprise option when it comes to social computing - is it SharePoint or Wiki?
  • The Enterprise RSS Value Chain [also published under the title, Enterprise RSS benefits go ignored], November/December 2008 - Along the way, an important allied Web 2.0 technology has been largely neglected. This technology is Enterprise RSS and if you can understand how to harness it, the possibilities are endless.
  • Looking for Intranet 2.0 [also published under the title, Too Cool for School], September/October 2008 - Information and knowledge management "cool hunters" have been peering out over the firewall and observing how the consumer led innovation of Web 2.0 is changing the way we use, contribute and interact with information on the Internet.
  • Patrolling the Web 2.0 borderline (PDF, 180KB), July/August 2008 - So is the read/write web a friend or foe to information management? A look at the implications for corporate IS.
  • Knowledge Management: How to separate the wheat from the chaff (PDF, 108KB), March/April 2006 - The demise of knowledge management has been predicted by many, but while we may be uncomfortable with what has to be one of the most poorly defined management concepts, the fact is that the "knowledge" problem in organisations will not go away.
  • Small World! (PDF, 89KB), November/December 2005 - The influence of social network concepts continue to manifest themselves in many different areas of business. From understanding who knows who to viral marketing, organisations are finding legitimate uses for putting conversations and informal connections to work in the search for competitive advantage.
  • In The Know And On the Move (PDF, 89KB), July/August 2005 - It has been said that knowledge knows no boundaries. But as knowledge workers begin to access technologies like personal area networks, wireless broadband, Voice over IP and 3G, can we finally say the same about knowledge management and make it truly mobile?
  • Wiki - The New Facilitator? (PDF, 121KB), May/June 2005 - Is the wiki about to revolutionise team work, communication and how we collaborate in organisations? A wiki is a server program that allows users to collaborate in forming the content of a Website. Wikis are quick, simple and effective whenever people need to share information, but what exactly makes the wiki such a good collaborative tool and should mature IT applications, platforms and architectures be thrown out in favor of the new kid on the block?
  • Use it or lose it (PDF, 113KB), January/February 2005 - IT gets quite a rough ride these days. In recent years the failure and difficulties of rolling out major information systems in organisations have all received a great deal of attention in the media. Meanwhile critics, like Nicholas Carr, have also emerged as the champions of disgruntled end-users who challenge the competitive role of IT in business and argue that it is now just a commodity. But if this is the case, why do we still hear about innovative IT solutions that exceed expectations or achieve widespread adoption? Usability is claimed by some as the missing factor that can make or break a new technology but the real question is to ask if this is so, how do we know?
  • The Search for the Perfect Intranet (PDF, 108KB), November/December 2004 - Anyone involved with intranet development will confirm that they are very much a product of their environment. Every organisation leaves a distinct fingerprint on the design, implementation and management of their internal Web space. So is there a perfect intranet for your organisation? By James Dellow and Leigh Moyle.
  • A Meeting of Minds (PDF, 94KB), July/August 2004 - The technology to ease collaboration in business – both internally and externally – is readily available, but it seems the Australian business community is yet to be convinced of its merits.

 

Papers

 

Other Articles (Selection Only)

These downloads and presentations are kindly hosted by Box.net, Scribd and SlideShare.

Book Reviews

Is Blogging Evolving Into Life Streams? « Web Strategy by Jeremiah Owyang | Social Media, Web Marketing

Check out this website I found at web-strategist.com
I’ve noticed a gradual change in what we know as blogs when Scoble and Shel wrote the book on Naked Conversations. Both of them are now focused on micromedia: Shel has an upcoming book on Twitterville, and Scoble spends more time promoting Friendfeed than his own blog. Secondly, I just learned that Edelman’s top blogger Steve Rubel has retired his traditional blog, and it’s now a life stream, which aggregates content from any source. Of course, I don’t need to mention that many of the top 100 blogs all look like mainstream media, with a team of writers, photographers, and editors. It seems as if blogging is becoming old hat, or at least evolving into something smaller, faster, and more portable. I’m with Louis Gray, (who has finally blogged his stance –great graphics) I’m not going to give up my blog, instead, I think of it as the hub of content, and the rest of the information I aggregate (notice the Twitter bar up top and the Friendfeed integration below). To me, joining the conversation is certainly important, but it doesn’t mean the hub (or corporate website) goes away.

I didn't know I was life streaming here ;-) I'm actually mostly with Jeremiah on this one, although I'm using this *blog* slightly differently. I like the way its pushes content out from the hub, rather than bringing it in. I also like its simplicity - hopefully, you'll see more words from me here rather than less. Certainly, its a place for anything that can't be squeezed into 140 characters or less. And yes, I still think comments are essential for a good blog.

Time for a change

I've been thinking about migrating my original blog off of blogger and on to something like a hosted Wordpress site or something similar. Since moving to a Mac in March, I've also found that blogging without Windows Live Writer just isn't the same either ;-) But then I find myself getting caught up on what theme to use, different widgets and all that complication... and all I really want is something clean and simple (I'm sure most of you only read my RSS feed anyway) where I share news, ideas and other things I've found and have the odd conversation too. I had discovered Posterous a while ago and thought it looked interesting, but then did nothing about it. So, here I am now! Welcome to my new blog.