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March 10, 2010

The Enterprise 2.0 Breakfast comes to Melbourne

A big thank you to everyone in Melbourne for joining Anne and I for an Enterprise 2.0 breakfast. As always the conversation covered a lot of topics, mostly related one way or another to the topic of 'Enterprise 2.0'.

Howard Emery (pictured at the back of the group, in a black jacket) provided some conversational inspiration for me, with his recent guest post on the Headshift Australasia blog. As we walked over to Southbank from the hotel in the city, Anne and I ended up chatting about the differences between Sydney and Melbourne (as you do!). Naturally, we ended up talking about one of my favourites topics, which is the idea of treating information environments as a kind of urban environment that people have to navigate through - it raises all sorts of interesting questions about design, planning but also if it is possible to transplant one culture from one place to another. That conversation spilled over into the breakfast conversation, although I also ended up talking about everything from the future of intranets as being about getting things done and the challenges of encouraging senior managers to engage online with each other.

I'm expecting the next Enterprise 2.0 Breakfast will be back in Sydney, sometime in April or May. Stay tuned for details from me or Alex Manchester (over at Step Two Designs) for details.

BTW tomorrow (Thursday) I'm at the second day of the Hargraves Institute's Innovation 2010 conference, talking about Social Business Design (which coincides with the start of Social Business Summit series in Austin, Texas tomorrow too).

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Filed under  //   e20forbreakfastmelb   e20forbreakfastsyd   enterprise 2.0   enterprise social computing   enterprise wikis   events   intranet 2.0   intranets   melbourne   photos  

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February 16, 2010

'Social' means understanding information is socially situated, socially constructed. Now do you get it?

A couple of blog conversations by James Robertson, Jane McConnell and Toby Ward (who all run an intranet competition or survey of some sort) have been touching on the change role of intranets and the meaning of the word intranet. Toby Ward kicks off by declaring:

"more organizations that are sleeping through the social media revolution will jump on the bandwagon. 2010 will be the year of the social intranet."

However, Jane isn't quite convinced that the social intranet is really here, well not just yet anyway. Meanwhile, James take this conversation a little further by proposing a shift from talking about 'intranets' to the 'Enterprise experience':

"Within organisations, we should start to talk about the “enterprise experience”. What experience do we want to provide to staff in their working lives? What systems should they be using, and how? How do they interact with the information and tools they need to do their jobs?"

If you see my comment on James' post, you'll see that I'm supportive of the direction James is taking this conversation. However, I think Mark Morrell's comment is more to the point:

BT has an intranet. It’s called the BT Intranet. It’s what it does that has created the reputation it now has rather than what it is called.

It’s what an intranet does that it important – not what it is called.

I feel you should go further than you have. In BT we use internet tools as well as intranet tools including Facebook, Twitter and RSS feeds of internal and external news for business purposeshttp://markmorrell.wordpress.com/2009/06/30/i-now-receive-only-the-information-i-need/.

I also feel work and personal lives are blurring in being separate distinctive things we do and we are doing more of these using intranet/internet tools.

As this evolves intranets could well become a redundant term and something far more embracing takes hold.

This will because of what people are doing rather than calling an intranet by another name.

Rather than asking, "Is the social intranet really here?", we should be asking, "When are we going to start recognising that intranets are social?"

The Social Life of Information (pictured above) was published in 2000. One (Amazon) reviewer summarised the thesis of the book as follows:

"most interesting information is socially situated, socially constructed, or otherwise impossible to tear from its human roots and package into transferrable units of "knowledge". This has major implications for the viability of certain kinds of information systems, educational programs, and the evolution of an "information society". Yet, most information workers and information products appear to be oblivious to these implications."

Finally, is the intranet community taking notice? :-)

BTW While you are over on James' blog, check out his 2009 Intranet Innovation awards video interview with NYK, about its wiki-based internal news aggregator. NYK's approach is pretty rudimentary - you can find some other examples of organisations using wiki-based intranet platforms for achieving the same goal in Headshift's project files (check out the Legal and Professional Services case studies).

Photo Credit: The Social Life of Information

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Filed under  //   information management   intranets   knowledge management   social business design   social computing   socio-technical  

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February 1, 2010

What intranet tribe are you? #e20 #intranet #sharepoint

I'm wondering if you've noticed this...

One way or another I've been involved with intranets for over a decade and I've seen some changes in that time. Back in the past the world of intranets was quite simply - generally speaking, you could divide the world into three intranet tribes: those that were run by IT, others by HR and most of the rest by corporate communications. Sure, there were always a few exceptions (like me).

But since then two significant things have happened:

  • SharePoint arrived; and
  • Enterprise Social Computing was definied... aka Enterprise 2.0.

Some people have migrated from the old world to the new world of Enterprise 2.0; but SharePoint - which is still closely associated with the old world - has also created a brand new tribe through the force of numbers, sucking in new people but also many intranet converts (forced or voluntary).

The problem is, I get the feeling that the new world of Enterprise 2.0, the spin-out tribe of SharePoint and already divided tribes of intranet aren't really talking to each other. A good indicator of this divide is the conference circuit, but it is also evident on Twitter (for example, compare the conversations and people using #e20 to #intranet) and more broadly across the social Web.

However, is this a good thing or bad thing? From a knowledge management and innovation perspective I think it is a bad thing. Even for those people focused on 'traditional' intranets and SharePoint who say they are too busy with today to worry about the future, I think its pretty sad to hear endless conversations about the best place for the news link or if weather widgets are a good idea. We have over of decade of experience with intranets, collaboration etc, but continue to re-invent the wheel, when we could invest that time in what is happening next.

But what do you think? Where did you come from and what intranet tribe are you part of today?

Photo Source: UN Flags (CC: Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic)



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Filed under  //   enterprise 2.0   enterprise social computing   innovation   intranets   knowledge sharing   leading practices   sharepoint  

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January 27, 2010

Enterprise 2.0 software: Measure twice, cut once - is it freeform, frictionless and emergent?

I usually dodge questions about specific vendors and their offerings, and instead answer how I'd look at any particular deployment of collaboration software to see if it met my definition of Enterprise 2.0.

I find this pretty easy to do. I check to see if the environment meets three criteria: Is it freeform? How frictionless is contribution? And is it emergent?

via forbes.com

It worth considering Andew McAfee's criteria for Enterprise 2.0 software - particularly as we get excited about the potential for Sharepoint 2010 for example. However, we actually need to apply this criteria twice. Once to determine if the software's architecture is able to support an Enterprise 2.0 use case, the second to determine if the organisation will actually deploy it in a way that allows those capabilities to be utilised.

Hat tip to Martin Koser.

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Filed under  //   andrew mcafee   enterprise 2.0   intranet 2.0   intranets   microsoft sharepoint   software patterns  

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January 27, 2010

The 2.0 Adoption Council's Social Computing Webinar Series

Dates – January 28th, February 4th, February 11th, February 18th at 12:00 p.m. ET

  • January 28th: Webinar #1: Social Computing Adoption in the Enterprise “the Before” – learn how to best develop the business case, gain buy-in, select technology and establish the team
  • February 4th: Webinar #2: Social Computing Adoption in the Enterprise “the After” –gather best practices on implementation, policy formation, training, and community management
  • February 11th: Webinar #3: EMC Enterprise 2.0 Case Study
  • February 18th: Webinar #4: Raytheon Enterprise 2.0 Case Study
    • via itsinsider.com

    Unfortunately 12pm E(S)T is something like 4am in the morning here on Australia's east coast, however they will be posting the deck from each Webinar on slideshare.

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    Filed under  //   case studies   enterprise 2.0   events   intranet 2.0   intranets   webinars  

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    January 20, 2010

    Enterprise 2.0 for Breakfast this morning #e20forbreakfastsyd

    Thanks to everyone who joined us for our Enterprise 2.0 meet up this morning, here in Sydney. One of the main themes in the conversation this morning was discussing our own experiences of the different organisational factors - such as internal politics, perceptions of productivity in the workplace, information security concerns and generational change - that get in the way of effectively introducing enterprise social computing.

    Unfortunately, due a sporting injury, Alex wasn't was able to make it this time but hopefully he'll be recovered for our next meet up. If you couldn't make today either but would like to be invited to future meet ups, please get in touch with your twitter or email details so I can 'ping' you when we schedule our next event.

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    Filed under  //   e20forbreakfastsyd   enterprise 2.0   enterprise social computing   enterprise wikis   events   intranet 2.0   intranets   photos   sydney  

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    December 11, 2009

    Intranets - the firewall is starting to look rather antiquated

    If you work at a medium-to-large company, you probably spend more time on your company's intranet site than on its external customer Website. Employees share content there that's too sensitive and secret for outsiders to see.

    But the internal/external wall is breaking down, as companies need to share more and more content with freelancers, external sales reps, business partners, and so many other people who can't get inside the firewall but still need internal information.

    Fortunately, today's Web technology allows you to solve these dilemmas, and might even save you some money you're spending on your intranet site.

    via internetevolution.com

    I don't have time to blog much about this particular point right now - I'm just saving this for future reference. However, I do think we are long overdue revisiting the meaning and differences between the related concepts of intranets, extranets and even the Web more generally so we can understand how certain long held assumptions might be hindering us.

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    Filed under  //   de-perimeterisation   extranets   intranet 2.0   intranets  

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    December 8, 2009

    The art of selling IT internally

    The technology annual report
    We wrote an article about this a few months ago in the form of a memo from the CTO to the CEO, laying out the concept of an annual report for technology. Click here. Since we published this, we have received valuable responses from technology leaders. The concept seems to resonate. One head of IT strategy in a leading electric utility said he was keen to implement this concept in his own.  “This makes perfect sense," he said.  "Just like the annual report for the enterprise  communicates with investors and seeks to build enthusiasm in this community, we in IT need to build enthusiasm among all those involved in providing funding for IT. Establishing and sharing an IT balance sheet covering both tangible and intangible assets will raise awareness in our executive committee and provide a much better platform for the dialog around technology enablement.”
    via businesstechnology.mckinseydigital.com

    You mean you weren't doing this already? Scary.

    No wonder senior IT execs and even intranet managers have trouble selling the value of new concepts like Enterprise 2.0 - they aren't even promoting internally the benefits of what they do now... (to busy benchmarking themselves perhaps?)

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    Filed under  //   change management   enterprise 2.0   information technology management   intranets  

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    November 30, 2009

    Better a dead intranet, than dead trees

    If your intranet can be printed off and distributed as a booklet to staff every 6 months then you're not making the most of it.
    via twitter.com

    I'm slightly disappointed that this sort of thing is still happening today, but I'm not surprised. However, this is what happens when you treat the intranet as an electronic book.

    Meanwhile, over on the ReadWriteWeb Enterprise blog they are getting excited about Forrester getting excited about collaboration. However this is all part of the same story - the only difference is that sometimes we talk about 'intranets', other times 'collaboration' and occasionally 'information management' or 'document management'.

    I'd like to start a Campaign for Real Intranets - like CAMRA, but without the beer. Any takers? We could have badges and everything. Alternatively, if you prefer the status quo, perhaps a Campaign for Dead Intranets instead? IMHO Better a dead intranet, than dead trees.

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    November 22, 2009

    Measuring Enterprise 2.0

    You might think from recent posts that I don’t believe in measurement, particularly when it comes to measuring enterprise social computing projects. In fact, I do believe in measurement but also believe that measurement should be treated in a (organisationally-speaking) political context.

     

    I’ve also noticed a quantum-like quality to cause-and-effect in organisational measurement - the helicopter view reported to the board often appears to bare little resemblance to the experience of staff on the ground. I don’t actually think there is anything quantum about the enterprise - its just that ‘organisations’ are complex systems. This simply makes it difficult to measure in absolute hard numbers anything that impacts on that system, unless you are prepared to invest in longitudinal and solidly scientific research methods.

     

    The worst examples of this are systems that promise employee self-service but simply shift the transaction burden from a cost centre (where it is measurable) to the individual (where it is not measurable).

     

    For example, if you are trying to justify the value of an intranet then time saved should be a great metric. However, it depends on how you value employee time and the actual impact on the organisation of time wasted searching for information. In many cases, this waste is invisible - people just end up working harder to make up for deficient systems. 


    So, if measurement is important what should we measure?

     

    Wrong question. More on this another time.

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    Filed under  //   enterprise 2.0   enterprise social computing   information management   information technology management   intranets   measurement  

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