chieftech’s blog

I'm only just starting to catch up on the commentary from some of the recent run of Enterprise 2.0 related conferences. I really enjoyed this recording of CSC's Mark Masterson's lively and rapid presentation at the International Forum on Enterprise 2.0 held in Milan back at the beginning of June. You can read more about C3 in Claire Flanagan's case study post, including her slides from the Enterprise 2.0 conference in the US this month.

In fact, a big hat tip to the forum's organisers as almost all of the presentations appear to be available on Vimeo and many presenters have also shared their slides online. I haven't even begun to work through all this content.

Meanwhile, over at the Enterprise 2.0 Boston 2010 conference, Dion Hinchcliffe shares his thoughts on that event and identifies his two biggest take-aways:

• Designing Enterprises for Loss of Control; and
• Enterprises Are Going Social.

Likewise, you can also watch recordings from Boson online too.

I'm sure there is more I've missed, but I'm still working my way through some unread feeds!

Thursday July 1, 2010 at 8:00am

Urban Food Store + Cafe

Corner of Marcus Clarke and Edinburgh Streets
Acton, Australian Capital Territory 2601 Get Directions

James Dellow, Daniel Siddle and Chris Adams from Headshift invite you to join them for breakfast to chat informally about Enterprise 2.0 and other related topics like Corporate Social Networks, Knowledge Management, Intranet 2.0 and Workforce Collaboration.

As this is Canberra, we expect there to be a strong Government 2.0 flavour, but very much focused on the issues of internal collaboration and inter-agency collaboration. (As we like to say, if you want to be social on the outside, you need to be social on the inside too!)

Come along to ask questions and share your experiences of introducing social computing to the enterprise or your government agency.

Please RSVP on Upcoming or simply add a comment below.

BTW Sorry its not quite central Civic, but I've been told its a great venue and the breakfast menu looks great (PDF).

Last week I had a long talk with a mid-level executive about the rollout of a new employee engagement program in his organization.

(You know it’s gonna be bad when the words “rollout” and “program” appear together. “Rollout” alone is a dead giveaway.)

He told me that he was reluctant to throw his own enthusiasm behind the program, because he wasn’t sure if it was fair to ask the people who work with him to give any more than they were already giving. He just couldn’t get engaged in the engagement program.

This executive isn’t lazy, or lacking in ambition, or afraid of the challenge of employee engagement. He believes that, more often than not, employee engagement is usually a scam.

And he’s right. Employee engagement is a scam.

Hmm. If employee engagement is bad, what about employee engagement with with social computing tools?

Actually, as this post and the comments with it go on to discuss, employee engagement can actually cut both ways depending on the motivation and world view of those behind it. Having said that, I suspect it is actually harder to manipulate people through employee engagement that this article gives credit for. Certainly, its why I worry about the past history of change failure in the projects I'm involved with.

Bearing that in mind, employee engagement with social computing tools is probably no more or no less a scam that any particular employee engagement initiative might be. However, I do see some additional problems with using these technologies that might be perceived as being at the employees’ expense if not thought about with some care:

1. Not allowing people to be social - this means letting people go off topic some of the time;
2. Giving people tools that create more work for them to participate, instead of giving them technology that works so well it becomes part of how they work; and
3. Not being prepared to accept that some people won't want to participate, but also not expecting that some will use these tools to achieve personal career goals (which might mean moving up, but could also mean moving on).

Address these issues up front and I think social computing can contribute positively to an employee engagement initiative.

An article I wrote for IDM magazine earlier in the year about managing email in the enterprise is now available to read in full on the Headshift Australasia blog. This was intended to be a counterpoint to technology-centric approaches to dealing with email overload, so let me know what you think.

Also cross posted to the Dachis Group's Collaboratory blog.

James Dellow aka Chieftech (from Headshift/Dachis Group) and Alex Manchester (from Step Two Designs) invite you to join them for breakfast to chat informally about Enterprise 2.0 and related topics like Corporate Social Networks, Knowledge Management, Intranet 2.0 and Workforce Collaboration.

Come along to ask questions and share your experiences of introducing social computing to the enterprise!

Ok. This isn't quite to the same scale of the The 2.0 Adoption (who recently joined the Dachis Group family of companies, along with Headshift). However, its still a chance to come along and take part in an informal peer forum to discuss anything related to Enterprise 2.0.

Please RSVP on upcoming or simple add a comment below. And of course, feel free to spread the word.

Our social web tools must start to understand the strength of ties, that we have stronger relationships with some people than with others. And with this knowledge they need to adapt.

There are three kinds of relationship ties:

• Strong ties: People we care deeply about.
• Weak ties: People we are loosely connected to, like friends of friends.
• Temporary ties: People we don’t know, and interact with temporarily.

A great Boxes and Arrows article on the need design social apps to reflect the different needs of strong, weak and temporary relationship ties.

The focus here is on public Web applications, so I suspect some minor refinements might be needs if you were building an application being used within an organisation or some other network, where the trust dynamics are different. For example, inside an organisation roles and position in the hierarchy provides an additional trust structure to use (although bear in mind, it does not necessarily embody social capital based trust).

At some point this would probably also be a good model to add to the Project 8 materials, to provide more depth to the user experience principles we put forward.

Ben - the reality is that many federal government agencies were already making use of social media before the Taskforce was announced. In this respect it is not surprising that many have started to pro-actively address the issue of providing staff with guidelines, but still remaining consistent with current APS policy. Don't forget that the APS policy addressing this area was also updated last year. While it would be good to see a formal response to the Taskforce's report, I don't think this should stop agencies moving ahead. The outcome of the Taskforce will be a decision about a whole of government mandate and supporting infrastructure for engaging online, not determining if agencies should engage at all. That, as we are seeing, is going to happen anyway.

I thought I would share my comment to a report by Ben Grubb in ZDNet.com.au about various Australian federal agencies moving ahead with developing social media guidelines. To be honest, I wasn't sure if I was reading Ben Grubb's opening point correctly:

Federal Government departments have revealed they are moving ahead to implement social media policies, despite the government having not yet responded to recommendations in the Government 2.0 Taskforce report.

You can read this as both a criticism and also as a matter of fact.

Actually, and as I was involved in writing a guide for government agencies that was commissioned by the Taskforce, I'm more concerned that:

• Agency staff aren't actually being engaged internally about social media - simply publishing a policy isn't enough; and
• Agency staff don't have access to the right tools internally to support the level of online engagement that is emerging.

Personally its these issues I worry about and this is where a mandate is needed because words in a policy are cheap, but changing how government and how people within government actually work is another story ("Enterprise 2.0 for Government", if you like).

The Scoop - Enterprise social media

Posted: Mon 12 Apr 2010 5:00PM

Can social networking sites really advance corporate productivity and profile? CIOs must take these services more seriously if they're to capitalise on this booming industry. The Scoop is joined by Anne Bartlett-Bragg, MD of Headshift Australia and Mike Handes, Innovation Lead for Collaboration Software, IBM.