chieftech’s blog

I was recently asked what is a fairly frequent question... what's the difference between the popular social suite software options, aka enterprise wikis, which includes products like Confluence.

Personally I think one of the stand out features of Confluence is its rich text editor + macro capabilities. In some respects, if you aren't thinking about Confluence with this in mind, then really I'm tempted to ask why are you even considering Confluence. Confluence isn't just a wiki, its an enterprise social swiss army knife. Or as I like to think about it, its the social computing equivalent of the spreadsheet. :-)

However, it can be difficult for novice users to get into using macros and other advanced Confluence features. But this sneak peak of Confluence 3.3 from Matt Hodges really shows how its becoming easier and easier for anyone to become a Confluence wiki ninja and make existing ninjas even more productive.

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!

Glenn Archer, Department of Education: Cultural change is the most profound challenge for public servants.

No real surprises in this article, reporting on a series of roundtables held by MIS Australia with local public and private sector CIOs, talking about their experiences with collaboration technologies. It certainly reflects my own experiences with the organisations I've been interacting with this year, particularly in the government sector where my biggest concern is that the importance of internal collaboration hasn't really been debated much in the Gov 2.0 conversation (see Lee Bryant's excellent post that gets to the heart of that problem, for all sectors).

Unfortunately, no real change on the private sector front, although I do detect a little thawing of attitudes towards employee use of social networking and social media. However, its pretty much been the case for the last decade* that some companies get the value of collaboration technologies (like instant messaging, one of the oldest tools in the current collaboration suite) while others will continue to lag behind.

You can view this as a problem, but personally I think it points more to the fact that those that get the value of collaboration technology have the opportunity to use them as part of their competitive advantage. So the real issue is, are they actually getting those advantages from the tools and technologies they've invested in.

Ok. I'm going to say it again... I can't believe we are still having this debate about instant messaging technologies as if it was something new. There - I've done it.

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.

Following on from Mark Jones's podcast about enterprise social media, this week's The Scoop vodcast looks at the related but broader topic of collaboration.

Mark examines the concept of collaboration from the perspective of both a technologist (a CIO) and a non-technologist (a research psychologist) - its quite interesting to see how they both approach this idea.

The technologist in this case is Ken Gallacher, CIO at the ABC. In the last half of the interview, he also has some interesting things to say about the use microblogging at the ABC and the importance of both talking and listening.

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.

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.