Portals and KM

Implementing Enterprise 2.0 at Océ

I conducted a series on interviews over the past two months on how Océ Is implementing enterprise 2.0. Océ is a leading international provider of digital document management technology and services. Most interviews were with Samuel Driessen, Information Architect at Océ. I spoke about their SharePoint efforts with Jan van Veen, Manager Internal Communications, in Corporate Communications and Tom Dombret, the technical team lead on the SharePoint effort. I spoke with Samuel and Peter Kruizinga about their social bookmarking experiences. This post provides a summary of some key points and links to each of the five posts.

Samuel’s responsibilities include both the information architecture for structured information in applications such as PLMS and SAP and the unstructured information in places such as email and knowledge management programs.

I really like this dual architectural role for both structured and unstructured information. It makes so much sense to have these two information sources under the same architectural leadership. The approach is to define information architecture principles and then convey these principles to management and employees so they will see the logic behind the approach. This is move away from rigid top-down rules. The implementation details will change faster than the principles and managers and employees will be able to make intelligent decisions aligned with the principles.

This granting mangers and employees the right to make decisions is reflected in all of their enterprise 2.0 work and is consistent with the principles of enterprise 2.0. Samuel also provides guidance on the capabilities of each medium so users can make intelligent decisions. I think their effortts serve as a good model for others.

Creating Information Architecture at Océ in the Age of Enterprise 2.0

Lessons Learned from Implementing Social Bookmarking at Océ

Implementing Enterprise Micro-messaging with Yammer at Océ

Lessons Learned from the Océ SharePoint Implementation

Implementing Wikis in the Age of Enterprise 2.0 at Océ

My First Twitter Lists at @billives

I finally got a chance to look at Twitter Lists and create some. Here is a useful post by Mashable on how to create them that demystified the process for me. Like Twitter itself, the web site was not clear on how best to use it so the Mashable article helped. Mashable also as a FAQ post. I asked this post if there is a limit on how many of the lists you are following are displayed as I only see 24 of the lists I am following. However, there were 82 lists shown following me when I wrote this post. It looks like only the last 24 lists I followed are shown. I checked out some that are not shown and they still indicate I am following them. 

A lot has been written about Twitter Lists as they open up a number of possibilities. Here are some excellent uses by the news media, Creative Blend of Mainstream Media and Social Media. The National Hockey League is using Twitter Lists to build social networks for fans. Each team has a list and tweets have proved to be more successful in mobilizing fans than originally anticipated. 

I am still very much in the experimental mode here. Below are my lists. You can check them out at @billives or just click on the links below. I welcome suggested additions. The software firm list includes both company Twitter feeds and those of company executives. The company Twitter feeds are only listed on this list. The executive personal Twitter feeds can also be found on other relevant lists. There is some other overlap as some people are covering several topics. I am sure I will continue to add to them. 

http://twitter.com/BillIves/web-2-0 

http://twitter.com/BillIves/software-firms 

http://twitter.com/BillIves/enterprise-2-0 

http://twitter.com/BillIves/km 

We have also created Twitter Lists at @darwineco. Here is a Darwin blog post describing the Twitter Lists: 

Altimeter Group Provides Useful Resource on Social Media Service Providers

Charlene Li’s Altimeter Group is hosting a wiki that provides useful information on social media resources. There is a list of social media policies and a listing of social media agencies and consultants. The social media agencies and consultant are divided into five groups: independent consultants and experts, social media boutiques – US, social media boutiques – non-Us, PR agencies, and interactive marketing and search agencies. 

Anyone can apply to be listed. I am listed under independent consultants and experts. Two of my business partners are listed under social media boutiques – US,. Beeline Labs manages the AppGap and FastForward blogs. I am also working with Pistachio Consulting on Twitter client engagements. 

This wiki is a nice service and great resource. There is more than simply resource lists. Check it out. 

Lake Massawippi in Eastern Townships Quebec

Lake Massawippi is located in the Eastern Townships of Quebec near Sherbrooke covered yesterday. Towns around it include Ayer's Cliff, North Hatley, Hatley, Ste-Catherine-de-Hatley, and the Township of Hatley. I have often stayed at the Ripplecove Inn at Ayer’s Cliff. Here are pictures from a recent summer trip, mostly taken around the inn.

Sherbrooke Quebec on a Summer day

Sherbrooke is the only major city in the Eastern Townships of Quebec, one of my favorite places. Here are picture on a summer day to remind us of once was as we head into winter.

My Favorite Tweets for October 2009 from @billives

Here is the third in a new series of posts that provide access to my favorite tweets that contain links to useful information.  Some of these I did to link to things I found useful and others are RTs that I want to save for the same reason. Since Twitter archiving is an oxymoron, I am now going to post my favorite links for the month so they can be easily accessed later. I will repeat this once a month if that timing seems to work best. I may adjust the timing. 

I spot tested the reduced shortened urls and they all should work. I hope this is also useful for you.  Let me know your favorite tweets for the month.

Also see the @darwineco favorites tweets

RT @rossdawson: Out top 40 brands on Twitter, 33 are tech or media (others Gucci, Starbucks, UPS, Subway) http://bit.ly/kshRV Oct. 30

The meaning of Twitter from @robpatrob http://bit.ly/3EvOmt Oct. 30

Dunkin' Donuts holding twitter contest http://bit.ly/VoPBE via @SBoSM Oct. 30

Four Good Tips for Building Online Communities http://bit.ly/18O94L Oct. 30

RT @PhilippeMartin RT @GuyKawasaki Five really clever ways to use Twitter http://om.ly/ScIi

Younger employees help senior executives with social media http://bit.ly/3ICI82

8:46 PM Oct 26th from TweetDeck

Which Twitter Strategy Is Right for You http://bit.ly/1GmxXn Oct. 26

Why People Twitter - in one word http://bit.ly/4igvhG Oct. 26

Study of Social Media Addiction from Retrevo http://bit.ly/3A3ttW Oct. 26

US government tackles social media security head-on from@joemckendrick http://bit.ly/5UFAo Oct. 26

Technorati State of the Blogosphere 2009 out http://bit.ly/3xjNyz Oct. 26


Maximizing Business Value from Enterprise 2.0 through Fun & Motivation http://bit.ly/2Hb8Jp Oct. 26


new Pew report on twitter et al http://bit.ly/1DMvPf12:38 PM Oct 24th from TweetDeck

Coke signs up 3 people to visit 208 countries Coke sold to blog about happiness http://bit.ly/3vszjm Oct. 23

Half of bloggers will post about brands they love or hate http://bit.ly/2rlIZq via @SBoSM Oct. 23

RT @jtemplermn #webcom09 I put my speech in Montreal on my blog. http://bit.ly/q8Rvl Oct. 23

RT @GeorgeDearing: Esther Dyson: Release 0.9: We're All Fact-Checkers Now http://ff.im/-agIkc > great post 9:49 PM Oct 21st from TweetDeck

Mob Rule! How Users Took Over Twitter http://bit.ly/4FYqvJ via @SBoSM

Twitter finally adds lists feature http://bit.ly/4EJLe8 via @SBoSM 10/20/09

more Twitter brand advice from CME http://bit.ly/1we9Ra 10/20

Top 5 Twitter Trends to Watch http://bit.ly/2pw23Z via @SBoSM 10/20

another good article on social media and marketing http://bit.ly/1hm2uK via @UrlichResearch 10/14

RT @HarbingerSys Corporate benefits of Enterprise 2.0 | http://j.mp/E0TdG | #E20 10/14

RT @GeorgeDearing: Success Factors for Brands on Facebook [ADWEEK] http://ff.im/-9LPyg 10/14

Utah Creates Social Media Guidelines for Employees Who Blog, Tweet, Etc. http://bit.ly/WJ9i1:48 PM Oct 7th from TweetDeck

RT @GeorgeDearing: CIO Survey Reveals Majority of Companies Prohibit Social Networking on Job http://ff.im/-9lDEx8:56 PM Oct 6th from TweetDeck

More Twitter tips from Fast Company http://bit.ly/UjQQ65:07 PM Oct 5th from TweetDeck

RT @tobyward: A Small Business Guide to Wikis - http://bit.ly/zAZnb (RT @mashable)3:38 PM Oct 4th from TweetDeck

RT: @411tammy 10 Big Benefits of Busy Blogging http://bit.ly/u5wFc9:09 AM Oct 4th from TweetDeck

RT @EdNadrotowicz: RT @dhinchcliffe: Online database of social media policies: http://bit.ly/rRclg Over 100 examples 9:08 PM Oct 2nd from TweetDeck

RT @GeorgeDearing: Twitter [Bits Blog - NYT] "next goal is to eliminate “noise” in most search... http://ff.im/-986o0 > good idea5:11 PM Oct 2nd from TweetDeck

How Social Media is Upending the Enterprise http://bit.ly/Qfxnw? 8:51 AM Oct 2nd from TweetDeck

thx @elsua for nice post on social media and email http://bit.ly/1373WO 8:27 PM Oct 1st from TweetDeck

comments on Google's SideWiki http://bit.ly/37dIQl 4:39 PM Oct 1st from TweetDeck

Banks Test Social Media Waters with #blogs http://bit.ly/TrTR2 via @SBoSM 3:50 PM Oct 1st from TweetDeck

 

Forrester's Top 15 Technology Trends for Enterprise Architects

Forrester’s Alex Cullen recently released, The Top 15 Technology Trends EA Should Watch and they were nice to share with me. The summary states, “Forrester has identified 15 technologies with the greatest potential for business impact, and we’ve grouped these technologies into five themes: social computing for enterprises, process-centric information, restructured IT service platforms, Agile applications, and mobile as the new desktop. I am most interested in social computing for enterprises. Alex wrote that social computing — from member-driven communities to user-generated content — is becoming ubiquitous in our personal lives and business versions of these will become prevalent. I agree and think they already are but I may be talking to too many vendors. 

The key technology trends enabling this spread of social computing start with the fact that collaborative platforms are becoming social, or people centric is Alex’s words. I see constantly new vendors in this enterprise 2.0 space such as CubeTree, ManyMoon, and Yakabod. At the same time established vendors, large and small, are adding more social features to their tool sets such as Sharepoint, Traction, and Socialtext. Since these tools need to be aligned with business processes to work, Alex notes that the organizational change requirements are high, even though the tools are relatively simple and the concepts familiar because of the wide spread use of their consumer Web cousins.

The next trend is integration of customer community platforms integrate with business apps. I see this in such concepts as social oriented CRM from companies like Helpstream and RightNow. Once again the complexity is high because of the necessary alignment with business processes and strategy. Alex also notes that telepresence will gain widespread use and better enable video conferencing. This puts more of the social aspects of business into computing and away form physical meetings. This will be easier to do, especially with the budget reduction and green implications. It is also more of utility that requires less business process integration. I would add that other utilities such as micro-messaging (akaTwitter in the enterprise) will be easier to adopt for the same reason. 

The useful report covers four other groups of themes. Several of the themes within them will also enable social computing such as the continued rise of cloud computing, the Web 2.0 enablement of BPM, and mobile as the new desktop. Many enterprise 2.0 apps are cloud based and mobile computing increases user-generated content. 

Alex recommends that you develop your own technology watch list. I would agree and put a lot of social computing aspects in it. To read more about how Alex selected his technology watch list, read his blog post, Identifying The Technologies That Will Matter.

My App Gap Posts for October 2009

Here are my App Gap posts for October. In addition to the Fast Forward blog (see side bar for links), I am writing in another Corante blog, the App Gap, sponsored by QuickBase, The posts began toward the end of January 2008.  In this case, I am primarily doing product commentaries with a few other things thrown in. Below are the ones for October. There will be more in November.

Atlassian Implementing OpenSocial within Enterprise Applications

Helpstream Supports Social Side of CRM

Socialtext Adds Micro-messaging and Goes Mobile

Exalead Provides Ability to Integrate with EMC Documentum

Conformity Provides Enterprise Management Platform for Cloud Applications

Tealeaf Survey Shows Increase in Social Media Use for Consumer Venting

Tomoye Announces New Community and Social Networking Platform for Microsoft SharePoint

 

Unisfair Offers Release 8 of Their Virtual Engagement Platform

I wrote about Unisfair over a year ago, see: Virtual Environments for Business: Unisfair. They create virtual environments designed explicitly for business clients that provide ease of use. I recently spoke with Joerg Rathenberg, their Senior Director for Marketing. Unisfair has been in the business of virtual environments since 2000 and they are now on Release 8 of their virtual environment platform. Joerg said they now use the terms virtual engagements, rather than events, as the Unisfair platform supports ongoing activity and interaction, rather than simply enabling one-time events, although they do that too.

Joerg said that virtual events are becoming increasingly popular. Marketing Sherpa reported that they have achieved the largest percent increase in usage for marketing compared to all other channels, including search, websites, trade shows, and newsletters. He described it as a perfect storm for virtual engagement. The marketing budgets cuts, the desire to go green, the rise of web 2.0, the increase in distributed markets, the longer sales cycles, and the limitations of traditional webinars all feed into this increase in usage.

Unisfair is prepared for this shift as it is set up to support continuous engagement. This can occur around a specific event but it is not limited to the time sequence of the event. When you first enter a virtual environment, you arrive in the main hall, allowing access to all event locations and activities. You are greeted in the main hall by a virtual host who can take on the appearance and voice of a real person, rather than an avatar. You can register live or in advance and then be notified by email. The image below provides an example of the quality of the graphics.

Other components include the exhibition hall that hosts booths that can be organized in groups. Each booth includes communication capabilities for live interaction, as well as a kiosk for product information. The people in the booth know all the profile information about each attendee when an attendee enters the booth. This is one of advantages of the virtual world over the real world. Another is the virtual briefcase that participants can fill with presentations and collateral, as well as contacts, messages and invitations. The entire content can be exported as a simple zip file. I wish I had this at real conferences.

A networking lounge serves as a central meeting place, where attendees can exchange knowledge and ideas. Each attendee has their own virtual business card and can connect with others using networking and interest matching tools. . Live polls and surveys can be used by organizers and sponsors to enrich participant profile and engagement data. The resource center is the central content repository for attendees to select from all available event materials. Here is a sample networking lounge.

Joerg said that firms can create their own individual environments with point and click customization. You choose from an array of predefined themes and upload real images of your staff to let real people represent your company at your booth. Unisfair also provides an Engagement Index that measures the level of engagement for each participant and lets you rank your leads for appropriate follow-up. This is another potential advantage of the virtual world. There are performance metrics that allow you to assess ROI and lead conversion rates. You can also choose to add your own qualification criteria to generate exactly the types of leads you want.

Joerg said that some companies are using Unisfair for as a collaborative space inside the enterprise. For global reach inside or outside the enterprise, you can set up events so they go through different time zones and change languages and format as they make these changes. Joerg added that will be adding integration with Twitter and Facebook soon so people can leverage their networks in these tools while engaged with Unisfair. I can see why this virtual platform makes increasing sense in today's market and changing technology landscape.

My Fast Forward Posts for October 2009

Here is the monthly listing of my Fast Forward blog posts. I find it helps me with an archive and hopefully is also useful to you. There is a separate category for these summaries in my right side column on this blog. There will be more in November.

Implementing Social Bookmarking at Océ

Barriers to Intranet Use from Forrester

Forrester Includes Social Computing in Top 15 Technology Trends Enterprise Architects Should Watch

Is Social Media the New Cigarette?

An Accountant’s Advice in Making the Business Case for Enterprise 2.0

Fun as Major Enterprise 2.0 Adoption Factor

Painting of Red, Orange, and Yellow Peppers

Here is a 18" x 24" acrylic painting of peppers on a white cloth. I was looking at the multi-colored shadows generated by the peppers and the folds in the cloth. Also, the white reflections off the napkin on the peppers caught my attention. This painting and all others on my Art and Photograghy blog are for sale. Let me know if you are interested. 

Photographs of Chester Connecticut

Chester Connecticut is located near Essex, the subject of last weekend's photos. It is another river town with a long past and some great bars and cafes.

Four Good Tips for Building Online Communities

The Wall Street Journal provides some good advice on building successful online communities in, The Fans Know Best.  It begins with the observation that most often with most successful online communities are not started by companies but by their fans.  The company versions tend to be too controlling and stifle participation and contribution.

The first tip follows form this observation: Stop controlling everything. Most company-run communities host discussions about their products and service but allow nothing they consider off this topic. They are often afraid on getting content about their competitors or complain about their products. However, they fail to realize that people with these thoughts can go to the many other communities on the topic. Then the company loses the chance to respond and the opportunity to learn about genuine concerns with the product that might need fixing.  Just because the comments are not allowed on the company site, does not mean they go away. In fact, they may come back with a vengeance on other sites.

A great example of consumer revenge is the United Break Guitars video that had 5,692,353 views they last time I looked and my be making a career for the song writer who had United Airlines break his guitar and refuse to compensate him after a year of effort to get justice on his part.  An open community might have let United become aware of the danger of their lack of response before the passenger was driven to write a song over his efforts.

The second tip is to welcome diversity.  Many companies actually limit visitors to existing customers. This seems to defy logic. I would think they would want to use the community to bring in potential customers and have them talk with customers to learn the value of the product from a more trusted resource. Having a diverse community will also enable more creative insights for product use.

The third tip is to allow community members the ability to interact.  Some company led communities only allow visitors to interact with company representatives. What are they afraid of?  People are much more likely to believe another customer than a company person. I have experienced this may times myself. However, fan run communities by definition support this exchange.

The fourth tip is to monitor and support fan run communities even if you cannot be like them. Apparently most companies have not taken this step. Here is where Darwin can help as it will allow companies to discover the themes that emerge within fan communities and the relationships between content. Often unanticipated content can be uncovered. There is more on our Darwin Discovery Engine blog. 

A Study of Social Media Addiction from Retrevo

On this blog I have asked if social media is like taking a nap, going to the water cooler, or going out for a smoke?  Here is a study from Retrevo that asks a different question: Is Social Media the New Cigarette? It other words, it looked at social media addiction and found a lot. Retrevo's "Gadgetology Report" is an ongoing study of people and electronics from consumer electronics shopping site. The data came from a study of online individuals conducted by an independent panel. The sample size was 771 distributed across gender, age, income and location in the United States. So the results reflect active online users.

It found that their sample used social media in the car (over 35 – 9%, under 35 – 40%), at work (over 35 – 29%, under 35  - 64%), on vacation (over 35 – 41%,  under 35 - 65%), on a date (over 35- 9%,  under 35 - 34%), and after sex (over 35 - 8%,  under 35 - 36%).  This raises several issues. For example, I wonder how many of the at work users are doing at the companies that ban social media at work?  How many of the drivers are violating laws against this activity? 

Twitter seems to be the most addictive. For respondents under age 35, 27% of those who use Facebook said they check it more than 10 times a day compared to 39% of Twitter users checking in on Twitter more than 10 times a day. Across all age groups, 56% say they check it between one and ten times a day. I certainly find Twitter more addictive. The activity is very fast and real time so you want to stay connected and it is easy to make a quick check.

The biggest enablers of this new addiction seem to be smartphones and other mobile devices, especially if you are under 35. In the Gadgetology study only 19% of the 35+ group use a phone as the preferred device for social media services with 81% preferring instead a desktop or laptop computer. This is me as I never use a phone, even though I have an iPhone. Perhaps I will as I get more used to my iPhone. Over on the other side of the generation gap they found 46% of those younger than 35 indicating their preference for a mobile device for all things social media.

This has already affected the workplace in several ways. Mobile devices are found to drive up business related social media use in other studies and observations.  Some organization like the state government in Utah have recognized these trends and acted proactively by creating guidelines that encouraged appropriate use. This is much better than banning it at work. However, there are situations when bans are the right thing. For example, the dangers of doing social at the wrong time are being recognized by such actions as the recent ban on Federal government employees texting while driving.

Social media will not go away.  In fact, it can be addictive for some. Work place policy and governance needs to recognize this and channel this addiction in appropriate ways. Bans are not the answer or even implementing simple limitations. If your job involves business intelligence or customer service you might what to check Twitter at least ten times a day.

Are you addicted to social media? How often do you check it? Is Twitter the biggest addiction? 

RightNow Introduces RightNow CX, the Customer Experience Suite

Yesterday at its User Summit, Greg Gianforte CEO, introduced RightNow CX, a customer experience suite designed to increase customer engagement. RightNow CX addresses three primary customer engagement points—the Web Experience, the Social Experience, and the Contact Center Experience— to enable a seamless experience, regardless of the number or type of interactions initiated. Unlike CRM, which is an internally focused customer management systems, CX solutions are rooted in the end consumer. It turns customer relationship management on its head to better align with what is happening on the Web with social media. 

The 2009 RightNow Customer Experience Impact Report found that 86 percent of consumers quit doing business with a company due to a bad customer experience; 82 percent of consumers that had a bad experience told others about it. This is consistent with other reports I have seen and extends the trends found in their 2008 report (see: Customer Service Still Matters - Even More Than Ever). With social tools at their disposal, the repercussions of this can be enormous. Many customers are now more likely to talk about their experiences on social media than deal with the company’s web site. The famous United Break Guitars video is a classic example with its over 5.7 million views. 

The RightNow Web Experience integrates into a company’s existing web infrastructure for a fully branded online customer experience. When consumers visit a website they find an interactive, branded environment. They can also easily transition across web self-service, agent online, mobile devices and telephone assistance based on their needs. The RightNow Web Experience includes Customer Portal (for web and mobile self service), Chat and Co-Browse, Email Management and Web Experience Designer. 

The RightNow Social Experience taps into social networking (e.g., YouTube, Twitter, or Facebook) to promote brands, facilitate community, address customer concerns and drive revenue. The RightNow Social Experience allows companies to proactively monitor the discussions occurring on the social web, as well as facilitate interactions within communities sponsored by their brand. 

RightNow recently acquired HiveLive, an enterprise-class social platform provider. With the release of RightNow November ’09, also announced yesterday, the HiveLive technology has been fully integrated and is now part of the RightNow Social Experience which includes Cloud Monitor, Support Community, Innovation Community, and Social Experience Designer. 

The RightNow Contact Center Experience delivers multi-channel customer experiences via phone, e-mail, online chat and voice self service. It includes Phone and Multi-Channel Interaction Management, Case Management, Voice Automation, and Contact Center Experience Designer (which consists of Desktop Workflow, Agent Scripting and Contextual Workspaces). 

This is certainly a move in the right direction to align with social media and what is happening on the Web today. It is also consistent with what they have been doing so far as I have covered in past posts (see for example: RightNow Provides Web Social Monitoring and Analytics with Latest Release). I look forward to hearing more about it. I was originally planning to attend this event but bad cold sidelined me so I will have to catch up on the rest of the details.

Yahoo Moving Focus from Basic Search to Presentation and Services

CDNet reported that Yahoo is pondering the meaning of search. It is in the middle of a company transition, with a pending deal to sell its search assets to Microsoft in exchange for a healthy portion of the revenue generated by searches on Yahoo's pages. To remain competitive in search it is looking at how it can bring added value for users.

Yoelle Maarek, a search expert who recently joined Yahoo Labs from Google, Israel, is quoted as saying that the advances that have taken place since the debut of Google's PageRank are relatively minor compared with the potential to improve how results are presented to users. She goes on to add that search will become more about divining the user's intent and improving the delivery of search results over the next decade.

Yahoo’s CEO Carol Bartz has said that the overwhelming majority of searches done on Yahoo are done by people who are already there, rather than those who head directly to Yahoo.com or set Yahoo as the search window in their browsers. Yahoo has big stakes here as it earned 359 million from search ads on its owned and operated sites during the second quarter of the year. So it makes sense to provide search related services so they continue to use yahoo as a destination. 

Lessons Learned from Implementing Social Bookmarking at Océ

This is the fifth in a series of interviews with Samuel Driessen, Information Architect at Océ and some of his colleagues, about their Enterprise 2.0 implementation and adoption experiences. Océ is a leading international provider of digital document management technology and services. Earlier, I wrote out their micro-messaging (Yammer) , wiki experiences, enterprise information architecture, and SharePoint implementation. For this post I spoke with Samuel and Peter Kruizinga about their social bookmarking experiences.

Peter and a colleague set up the social bookmarking application in the Research and Development department using an Open Source tool. Peter is a member of R&D and part of their job is doing research on current trends in various technical issues. People were sharing links to web articles through email. However, they would only send them to a few close colleagues so as to not “spam” others. The information was not getting fully distributed to the right people. It was hard to decide what to send to whom.

Peter wanted a better way to share important links connected with their research so he set up the social bookmarking application. This provided a non-intrusive way to make these links available and placed the responsibility to accessing them wit the individual. Several people had used public social bookmarking tools such as del.icio.us but they needed a way to share information behind the firewall. Peter said they did not want to give away their areas of focus to competitors.

It started slow with only a few contributors. However, there were many more readers so information was getting shared and the experiment is accomplishing its objectives. There are now plans to both promote the system and extend its functionality.

There have been some notable success stories that Peter and Samuel intend to use as part of the promotion. For example, one R&D project had both Peter and Samuel as part of the team. The other team members had not yet used the social bookmarking tool. They were amazed with how information could be easily shared with the tool and new information that could be discovered. Peter found a number of prior bookmarks on their topic so they had a very good history of the issue with very little effort.

In another example, Peter and Samuel are following different topics on the Web and then sharing each other’s findings. This way they act as a filter to portions of the Web, saving each other time.

They have a number of ideas on how to expand the social bookmarking capability. First, they would like to integrate a trend-overview application based on bookmarks so they can look at what people are interested in over time. They also wanted to establish an offline cache to periodically fetch the bookmarked web pages and documents and place them in local storage. This prevents dead link problems and lost information for older bookmarks.

In addition, they want to offer the possibility to bookmark offline content such as files that were sent by email or any other files for which there is no URL. They want the possibility to search on tags, as well as on combinations of tags or words. They also want the ability to find experts for a specific tag (who submitted bookmarks with that tag). Finding the top three taggers on a topic can be a useful starting place.

We discussed both the integration and the differentiation of the bookmarking tool and other enterprise 2.0 tools. They can now bookmark pages in the enterprise wiki, as well as the memo filing system. They also plan to integrate it with the file sharing system. They will cross-promote the different enterprise 2.0 tools within each one and provide guidance on when to use each.

R&D is an ideal place to start using a social bookmarking tool because of its heavy research of the Web. They now plan to spread its use into the broader corporation. This will enable everyone to better stay current with their areas.

Photographs of Essex Connecticut

Essex is an old river front town is located near the foot of the Connecticut. It is next to Ivoryton where yesterday's post originated. The steamers used to dock there on the way from Hartford to New York. Here are some scenes from this August.

Tale of Two Breakfasts in Ivoryton, CT

First there was the Tale of Two English Breakfasts and then there was the Tale of Two Eggs Benedict in Quebec. Next there was the Tale of Two NOLA Breakfasts in Ashfield MA. Now I am continuing the breakfast series with Tale of Two Breakfasts in Ivoryton, CT served at the Copper Beech Inn. On the left you see a traditional American breakfast and then on the right another Eggs Benedict. Both were wonderful as was our two dinners. Breakfast over looked the garden as shown below.

Who killed the Rocky Mountain News? John Temple at WebCom 2009

This is the second of a series of session notes from Webcom 09 where I am also presenting. Here is the session description for Case Study: Who killed the Rocky Mountain News? John was the former editor of the Rocky Mountain News that closed. He now writes the blog, Temple Talk. “Colorado's oldest newspaper died just days short of its 150th anniversary. The economic collapse may have been all that was needed to sink the Rocky Mountain News. But it already was struggling because of the societal shift to the Internet. Craigslist and other Web sites sapped its classified revenues. 

 Cell phones and computer screens were more of a draw for a rapidly growing percentage of the population than any printed page the paper's clever designers could conjure. Its journalists were slow to accept that their world had changed. Its advertising department was used to taking orders, not to helping businesses grow using the latest tools. Executives were torn - even frozen - over the prospect of potentially "cannibalizing" their print business online. The tension between trying to maintain the paper's once-lucrative print franchise and building a new online business was unbearable. In the end, the Rocky did neither. And now it's a memory in the Wayback Machine. It won't be the last metro daily to make that claim. But there are lessons in its demise that could help others survive and thrive in the Internet era.” 

John began with the story about they produced a documentary on the paper’s demise. The video was started when the outcome was not sure. He said that the Web was a factor but also the economic collapse and the fact that Denver could not support two general interest papers. 

He then offered business lessons going forward for the Web era. He was the editor of the paper for 11 years and publisher for seven. He said that when all your revenue comes form print, it is difficult to turn to other sources. The paper was founded in 1859 and was Colorado’s oldest paper. It had great loyalty in the local area. The company that owned the paper also started the Food Network and is now worth billions so they were smart people. It also had the largest circulation in the area. Lesson One: You have to know business you were in. They thought they were in the newspaper business. In the newspaper business you think about tomorrow. On the Web you have to think about now and forever. I find that this is also the case with blogs but with Twitter it is only now. 

The paper also thought they were in control but really consumers were in control. John felt if they had built online tools to establish greater connection with the community the paper would have survived. They thought their competition was another paper but really it was for attention though various media. It is hard for a general interest communication vehicle in an era of increasing fragmentation. The long tail helped sweep them away. Craig’s List was one factor along with Yelp, Wikipedia, YouTube, and many others. 

During the 2004 US election YouTube did not exist. In the 2008 YouTube was involved with the best presidential debate. Rocky Mountain News went online in 1995. They thought the goal was to strengthen the paper when actually it was a new medium to develop on its own. It re-launched in 1996. They still described the web site as a complement to the paper. This is not a web strategy. 

Another lesson: “keep the new venture free from the rules of the old.” Next lesson, “people running the new business need to be free regardless of impact on the old business.” John gave the example of Yelp that has 25 million users. He said that editors would not have liked giving prominence to user generated content with typos. In 2000, the two Denver papers combined business operations. The agreement did not mention the Web. However, the print classified ad revenue alone went down 100 million a year for several years. They also upgraded their print facilities and won national awards. 

Another lesson, “if you want to compete in a medium, you have to understand it.” They built a great web site with no SEO considerations and no one could find it. Next lesson: measure, measure, measure. The Web allows you to measure, take advantage of this. You also need to do R&D to find innovative new offerings and not just try to get more money for current offerings. 

 I have watched our own local paper, the Boston Globe, struggle and almost fold. It is still going and I hope it learns the lessons John conveyed to continue. You can find the text of John’a talk on his blog. I later did a talk on Blogging in the Age of Twitter. I said that John’s talk was a good precursor and could be called newspapers in the age of social media.

Post Script - Here is John's talk on his blog: Temple Talk.