Portals and KM

Poster Moderne - Andy Tuohy

Here are some great travel posters that have the feel of the wonderful deco posters from the 1930s. As the If team wrote, “To celebrate the new high speed rail link between London and the Kent coast Andy Tuohy has created a set of lovely posters which hark back to the golden age of railways.” Andy’s posters are for sale at the Andy Tuohy web site. They have a slightly modern take on art deco and are quite nice. I have some of those 1930s rail travel posters that I found when I lived in London in 1995. Thanks to the IF team for pointing to this. If you like art deco, I also recommend Euro Deco by Steven Heller and Louise Fili, a book about "graphic design between the wars."

Integrating Business Coaching and Software - Six Disciplines

Six Disciplines provides software to help small to mid-size businesses with their program execution and collaboration. However, it takes a somewhat unique approach in that it does not sell the software without the coaching and other services to increase the business impact of its use. I recently spoke with Gary Harpst, CEO and founder of Six Disciplines. His approach makes sense from my own experience. I find that when I provide guidance to a firm, if it is a one-time event, the success rate is much lower than if I am able to provide ongoing coaching for a while after the initial guidance. This has been the case over the past 25 years, and remains just as strong today. With my blog consulting clients, I find that the ones who retain me for ongoing support, after the initial guidance, are more likely to implement the suggestions that I offer. (end of shameless commercial)

Gary said he formed Six Disciplines in 2000 to help bring some of the best practices from large companies to help smaller firms and help them better leverage the web. He started an accounting software business, Solomon Software, 30 years ago that was eventually acquired by Microsoft after it merged with Great Plains. Six Disciplines is founded upon the lessons Gary and colleagues learned working with thousands of small- and mid-sized businesses through Solomon Software. He found that small companies need four key elements to be successful: a business methodology and plan - this is where the Six Disciplines come in; a coach to provide an outside perspective on executing their methodology and plan; software system to enable the plan and allow for collaboration: and a community to share information and receive support

The firm needs to first have a vision of where they want to be in ten years. Then they need a goal statement for the next 2-3 years, and a one year plan that keeps rolling out a quarter at a time. Finally each individual needs a plan that supports the firm’s vision, goals, and plan. This sounds straightforward but I am sure than most small business do not operate that way.

To support this program, Six Disciplines offers a hosted solution that both the talent management issues but also the collaboration and content management requirements of a small business. Their platform acts to integrate a number of tools. The approach is to integrate with existing web-based tools rather than re-invent them and simply provide the connection points that align with their overall program. They can pull data from multiple sources and act as the glue.

Six Disciplines operates out of regional centers to provide more direct access to their coaches. They have an active blog, Be Excellent, to provide more of their story. Gary also recently a new book, Six Disciplines® Execution Revolution: Solving The One Problem That Makes Solving All Other Problems Easier, which is scheduled to be published in July 2008. In this book he details the elements of a complete strategy execution program, explains why it could only happen now with the current convergence of business issues and new technology.

My grandfather was a country doctor in Oklahoma before it was a state. When he bought one of the first cars in the county, the sales person came and lived on the arm for two weeks to teach him how to use the new technology. Even then it took him a while to make correct use of this tool and he almost went back to his horse and buggy for rounds. As small businesses move to make use of web technology, many for the first time, it makes sense that they need a coach. Six Disciplines offers more than just how to use the new technology, but the concept is the same. There is a significant mind set transformation in play.

It’s the Sociology, Not the Technology: How to be Effective on the Web - Lessons from the Obama campaign

Last year I was on a panel at the Enterprise 2.0 conference titled: 90% People, 10% Technology. The premise being that many people say as they go to implement a new technology, Well, It’s really 90% People, 10% Technology.” Then they invest in the opposite ratio. My good friend, Valdis Krebs makes a similar point in his recent post, It's the networks, stupid, about how the Obama campaign is using the web. In the context of linking to an excellent NYT OpEd, The Obama Connection, he writes:

“…the Dean campaign thought they understood the internet in 2004, but they really did not get "social networks". They made some breakthroughs in technology, but screwed up the sociology, and lost in a big way. Obama seems to be focusing first on the sociology of building networks and then supporting those social networks with technology -- the correct sequence of attention. The Obama campaign is successful because they know that sociology & technology properly mixed give a better result than either of them alone, or improperly mixed.”

I have found it always makes sense to figure out the business problem and then apply the technology. This works whether it is the business of business or the business of political campaigns. I have already written a bit about Obama’s use of the web on this blog. In one post, How Barack Obama is Using Web and Enterprise 2.0 in the US Primary Campaign Through Central Desktop, I quoted commenter Rob Patterson (from the Fast version) who said, “Others say -”He has no experience” But isn’t the organization of his campaign a model for effectiveness and does it not show a brilliant insight into his understanding of the new reality? Imagine a Fortune 500 CEO with this approach and what they could do."

Here is a model for viral marketing for any web startup. There lessons to be learned for any business that wants to make better use of the web. The NYT piece seems to agree as it mentioned, “More than any other factor, it has been Barack Obama’s grasp of the central place of Internet-driven social networking that has propelled his campaign for the Democratic nomination into a seemingly unassailable lead…”

Valdis also shares a useful white paper in his post, Political Conversations, in which discusses the new social nature of voting.

Promote Fairness in Your Blog: Think Before You Post

Pito Salas raises some good points in his post, Asymmetrical conflict in the blogosphere. He talks about how the power of the combination of blogs and search engines can spiral a negative story, fair or unfair, into prominence on the web. There have been many examples of this in the business, political and personal areas. Someone was even prosecuted recently for personal attacks on the web that had very bad consequences. As Pito writes, “Once a thread about your company, or your product, or yourself, starts up, and gets interesting, it gathers a crowd, maybe because they agree, but just as easily because the attacker is funny or outrageous or clever in an evil way.”

Pito concludes his post with the observation, “I know I personally will think twice before zipping off a blog post or comment in anger.” I agree completely and this has been one of my guiding principles. If I have a problem with what someone is doing I address them first in a private forum such as the phone or personal email. If the original comment appears in a group email, I always take my concerns out of the group mode and write directly to the individual. Often attacks start in an attempt to demonstrate the cleverness of the attacker at the expense of someone else. Blogs give us the potential for a lot of power. We need to use it wisely.

Where is the World Going? - The Video

Here is a nice video on the current and future of the world that Eric Herberholz passed on to me. It was first produced in 2006 for 150 people in Colorado about education issues and updated in 2007. Now over 5 million people have seen. When I looked over 1.7 million had seen it on YouTube. A few highlights: Today the number of text messages sent was greater than the total population of the world. The first text message was sent in 1992. Technical information now doubles every two years. By 2010, it will double very 72 hours. I have heard projections like this last one before. The membership of MySpace would make it the eighth largest country in the world. In a few years, the country with the largest number of English speakers will be China. At the same time, I think the Chinese is already the most used language on the Web. But is MySpace or Facebook allowed in China?

SOA Virtualization, Validation and Testing at the Speed of Enterprise 2.0 - iTKO LISA

Here is a topic that I think has many implications for the success of enterprise 2.0 so I wanted to cross post it from Fast Forward. Enterprise 2.0 has provided us with many opportunities to more rapidly develop applications drawing from numerous data sources. However, this is both an opportunity and a challenge. The evolution of application development has been extremely aggressive over the past year and a half. What started out as standard base platforms quickly migrated to composite applications through Web 2.0 and SOA. This rapid development with an increasing array of independent data sources that are now inter-connected represents a challenge for software testing and validation to keep up.

There is more opportunity for failure, or at best inefficiency, if validation and testing cannot maintain the required time frames in the faster paced enterprise 2.0. Any enterprise application has to be able to trust the multiple data sources that get mashed up in a composite application but many of these data sources may be outside its reach at the point of origin. iTKO addresses this issue as we shall see.

Last week I spoke with iTKO Founder and Chief Architect John Michelsen on this topic. He mentioned that when enterprise 2.0 apps were out on the fringe in the form of blogs and wikis, the testing issues were not such a big deal. Now that enterprise 2.0 is moving deeper into the enterprise, as we have discussed a good bit on this blog, the stakes are much higher. iTKO’s LISA software helps to mitigate the risks in three ways.

First, it allows companies to re-think the testing strategy. Most software testing has been done manually in the waterfall manner. The enterprise 2.0 world is moving too fast for this. Data can be brought into composition applications without sufficient testing. For example, one of their clients, a top cable provider, operates in a very competitive field. They were limited to two major application platform releases a year simply because of the testing requirements. Much of this testing is now automated through iTKO. The company has reduced six weeks of manual testing to four machine hours. They are now able to provide new functionality at a faster pace.

Secondly, iTKO helps with ongoing validation of data and the underlying business logic. Since data coming in through composite applications can change without notice, ongoing validation becomes more important. Using the same approach as it does with testing, iTKO can provide continuous validation. For example, a government agency that runs highly sensitive data from multiple sources, has iTKO re-validate it every 30 seconds. It does business logic testing by putting sample business problems into play and making sure the correct responses occur.

Thirdly, iTKO has LISA Virtual Service Environment (VSE) to simulate the real world for testing and validation when test systems are not available and testing cannot be done on production systems. For example, a major travel site had a significant performance downgrade. Virtualization enabled them to test outside the production system, discover the information source that lead to the downgrade, and correct it. To go offline to find this issue would have been impossible. In another example, a bank had only limited access to production systems for testing new functionality. The virtual version gave them unlimited access.

LISA VSE also allows you to test against applications that are not even built yet. If you know what it is going to be, they can create a virtual model for testing. This allows rapid innovation as you can see some of the potential problems before they occur. A major airline is using iTKO’s virtualization of services to increase the pace of development for their next generation, composite application-based platform. In this case they will obtaining data from their many travel partner’s applications such as hotel rewards systems and rental car platforms. Now they can test all the connections before they even occur through iTKO’s virtualization services. The use of composite applications is greatly streamlining the implementation of their next generation system. Services from iTKO allow testing and validation to keep up with this accelerated pace of development derived from enterprise 2.0. iTKO uses the term SOV or services oriented validation as a complement to SOA. It refers to the strategy of simulating the behavior of deployed software assets, and the synthetic construction of those services not in existence, that make up an enterprise SOA application.

I used to develop technology-enabled software training in the 80s and I can appreciate the need for such a service. It was very hard to develop training until it was too late because we could not see what they systems would look like and function until a few weeks before the training was needed. This virtualization should also enhance training development and provisioning training environments.

There is more on their web site including white papers, research reports, and forums. They also offer a blog, the iTKO SOA Testing & Validation Soapbox, which covers SOA testing, validation and virtualization, software quality, automated testing, and IT governance issues with John Michelsen and other iTKO executives.

Re-Introduction from Albert Rivera

A while back I wrote about Albert Rivera - jazz saxophonist on this blog. I just heard from him again that he has a new CD out, Re-Introduction. You can go to his Albert Rivera site to get a copy through Amazon, iTunes and other sources. I am listening to it right now and encourage you to give it a try. The sax is my favorite jazz instrument and Albert does some nice stuff. The first number is Long Way from Home. It has a nice flow as do the rest.

Steve Carter’s Dive of the Month: Skyline Chili, Cincinnati, OH

I have gotten on a list through Stan Garfield to receive Steve Carter’s Dive of the Month. Stan is a leading KM guy with the blog, Weekly Knowledge Management Blog. He has also given me many tips on food in the Midwest. See my restaurants picks for Michigan for example. Steve Carter is vice president of corporate sales, Carharrt. Here is the most recent one and a great example. I look forward to see what he writes about my part of the country next month.

A recent visit to an account in Southern Ohio made me think once again of one of my favorite food groups …. i.e. the humble Coney Island. The Coney, for the uninformed, is a hot dog in a bun covered with a chili styled topping and possibly cheese, onions, and mustard. All parts of the country have their local favorite. The Varsity in Atlanta has the Heavy Dog, The Sundowner at Coney Island Lunch in Johnstown, Louie’s Texas Red Hots are found in the Buffalo area, Yocco’s in Allenton, Ben’s Chili Bowl in NW Washington D.C., Lafayette Coney in Detroit. All of these places and many more hold a special place in my heart. With that said, I must say that my all time favorite Coney is found at Skyline Chili in and around Cincinnati Ohio.

In 1949 Nicholas Lambrinides, originally from the village of Kastoria Greece, and three of his sons opened up the original Skyline in Price Hill, a suburb of Cincinnati. They perfected a sauce unlike the typical Texas chili con carne, nor is it like the typical hamburger and tomato based stew which has been labeled (unfortunately) as chili all over the United States. Skyline serves up a meat sauce which has its roots from Greece as well as a special hint of chocolate, cinnamon, and cumin. While this sauce is at home on top of a plate of spaghetti accompanied by beans, diced onions, shredded cheese and oyster crackers, the best way to partake of this concoction is on top of a Skyline dog with the chili, diced onions, mustard, and a mound of shredded cheddar cheese. A good start to a real lunch is a plate of three of these beauties with a bit of their hot sauce drizzled on top. I like to sit up at the counter where you get a view of poetry in motion as the grill guys put together coneys and chili spaghetti.

A lot has changed since Nick and the boys opened up the first shop. They now have over 100 restaurants in Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana, and Florida. The shop in Clearwater is a great stop before a Philly’s spring season game. The menu now has salads, burritos, steamed potatoes (loaded with chili, cheddar cheese, onions, and red beans), and fries (with chili and cheese of course). If you ever get to the Midwest and want to see what a coney should be made like stop into a Skyline Chili. I promise you will feel right at home and for fewer than ten bucks you will totally carbed for the entire day! Skyline Chili is the only chain restaurant that I will even slow a car down for. Next month we move out of the Midwest toward the Northeast.

Content Management Connection

I recently joined Content Management Connection, organized by George Dearing. It is an “online community for technology practitioners, software companies, and end users to share thoughts and ideas on the changing landscape of content management and collaboration. This site is produced by The Dearing Group LLC., a marketing and new media communications company.” There is growing list of bloggers in this space, many of them I recognize. George also runs the Enterprise Content Management Feedburner Network. I appreciate his leadership in these efforts as they provide a nice aggregation on blogs in the main space covered by this blog. You can add your own blog to have it reach a new audience. I already have a comment on one of my PKM posts that reappeared there. It also has news, events, and surveys. In addition it was features like most read posts, ability to comment on posts, quick surveys with instant results, most discussed authors, most active authors, most highly rated posts, etc. I liked the layout.

The Daily Show on Blogging

Recently, Jon Stewart interviewed David Perlmetter, author of Blog Wars, on the Daily Show. I could not resist doing a re-run from Fast Forward. I think that Jon repeats some of the comments from, Can You Trust Your Blogger? What is the Role of Blogs in Business Communication? The book, itself, covers political blogs but the discussion is relevant beyond that topic. Here are some excerpts:

David: “I think that the good ones (bloggers) are helping to expand democracy and give more people access to the political process.

Jon: Do you think there is push back? Is there a sense that people are accepting the new medium? Or resenting it” Or just looking at porn? What do you think is going on?”

David: “ I can’t speak to the last one…but blogging has become part of the political process (he elaborates)

Jon: “Is there a fear that they are using it as a Trojan horse? (he goes on to express the concern that people may be getting paid behind the scenes to blog on topics)

David: “This came up in the 2006 campaign… Sock puppets in the term for people who just repeat (the party line). But you know blogging is like a personal relationship and you learn over time who is just feeding you what they get (off the party web site) and who is authentic.“

Jon: “ You see this is the thing about blogging. Any of the criticism about it… They say oh this person hasn’t been vetted or this work hasn’t been vetted, but the work speaks for itself. I do not know how you can be negative about something that is just…It is like saying I don’t like these writers because it is just writing (elaborates) If you find someone you like you follow them. I do not understand why there would be push back.”

David concurs that blogs have become mainstream and Jon agrees says that some bloggers are just as good as the mainstream journalists.

I sat through some of the early “wars” between political bloggers and mainstream press in panle during 2004 and 2005. Now blogs are an accepted channel as we can see everywhere. Blogging came to the forefront of attention during the US Presidential election of 2004, as both sides used it. Blog was Webster’s word of the year in 2004 and bloggers were one of ABC News’ “People of the Year.” Then the business world caught on. Fortune Magazine named blogging in the top ten business technology trends for 2005 and the Harvard Business Review included business blogs in their list of breakthrough ideas for 2005. Blogs made the cover of Business Week in 2005. Now the issues that came up in political blogging are coming up in business blogging to no surprise.

BoardVantage Ushers Enterprise 2.0 into the Board Room

I want to cross post this from the App Gap because here is a company with a great idea and one that is helping all of us by demonstrating the power of enterprise 2.0 at the top of the organization. One of the first examples that got me excited about the possibilities of enterprise 2.0 was the use of a blog platform in 2004 to help a group of senior executives, doctors in this case, develop a strategic plan. The control transparency facilitated ongoing communication between meetings, provided an accessible, searchable archive of everything they did, making the process both more efficient and effective. I am excited to see a company that has taken this concept many steps further.

Recently, I spoke with Joe Ruck, CEO at BoardVantage. Their Board Portal centralizes documents, processes and communication in a secure but user-friendly Web portal, designed for boards of directors. Each component of this previous sentence is key as Joe explained. First, there has been a gradual transition from paper-based to electronic documentation for board meetings. It used to be that the general counsel’s office would put together a 500 - 2,000 page paper binder for board meetings. It also used to be that board meetings were more ceremonial than they are now. However, the fall out from Enron and other related events, as well as the quickening of the pace of boardwork largely driven by global competition combined to place a greater emphasis on the active and ongoing involvement of boards .

The general movement toward more electronic documentation accelerated this transition and in turn ratcheted up the need for security. If managed right, electronic communication can be more secure that binders that can be left in hotels or cabs and are difficult to lug around; or faxes that go to the wrong place or, at best, are seen by too many support staff; or email where control goes out the window when you hit the send button.

However, many board members are not that technical so ease of use is a premium to gain initial acceptance and ensure actual use by the board members, themselves. Also, the people who put the materials together are often not technical, themselves, so the administration part also needs to be easy. Lastly, the system needs to support more than documents as the need for greater involvement between meetings brings forward the need for process and communication, not just document storage and sharing.

To meet these objectives BoardVantage incorporates a toolkit for creating and distributing board materials for use in meetings and managing all processes that take place in between meetings. BoardVantage is offered as a hosted service that meets or exceeds the standards of security-conscious IT departments, including those of major financial institutions.

The meeting-based features for board members includes: secure on-line and offline access, a searchable repository, the ability to annotate documents, email and voice alerts when new materials are available, and role-based content filtering. The features for corporate secretaries and support staff include: drag and drop uploading of documents, automated pdf conversion, automation of much of the board book creation process, auto-updates to board books, notification, and role-based distribution.

The features to support communication between meetings for board members include: easy to use consents, conferencing, secure messaging, a central address book, board calendar, and point and click evaluations and surveys. The corresponding set of similar features is available for corporate secretaries and support staff.

Joe said the concept and BoardVantage has really taken off recently as the benefits of electronic communication and collaboration have risen to the top levels of organizations. They are introducing the concept and benefits of controlled transparency, a basic premise of enterprise 2.0, at the top of an increasing number of large corporations. BoardVantage generally actively sells to the people who support boards. Because of the interlocking nature of many board populations, there is also increasing viral marketing of what they can offer. They strike a balance in their offering and promotion between what they refer to as “traditionals” who need to be convinced of the new ways of doing things and the “progressives” who understand the new space and want advanced features. Here is an on-line demonstration of what BoardVantage offers that goes into a bit more detail.

I think BoardVantage is doing all of us a service by demonstrating the power of controlled transparency to the decision makers in large organizations. Now that BoardVantage has a secure place at the top, they are planning to expand their product to other parts of the enterprise. I think they are well positioned to take this next step.

MSNBC Allows you to Embed Their Video on Your Blog

I was listening to the news and heard that MSNBC News now allows you to embed their video in your blog or web site, following YouTube's lead. This is an interesting trend on content sharing.

Google Trumps Microsoft on Yahoo Search

These Google guys are smart but you do not need me to tell you that. They killed off a potential competitive threat and increased their revenue stream at the same time. This is old news but I still had to post it, just to admire the symmetry. As reported in the New York Times, Google Ends Microsoft’s Yahoo Search, the following occurred.

Google’s amazing success and expansion on the web prompted Microsoft, the alpha technology company for two decades, to court Yahoo, a web search rival to Google. They already got Fast for enterprise search which is more in their sweet spot. Google’s success had weakened Yahoo enough to give Microsoft the confidence it could buy the company on the cheap.

Microsoft thought that combing with Yahoo would create a powerful competitor to Google. At first Google indicated they would play hard ball and fight the merger on antitrust grounds in Washington and Brussels.

However, they came up with a better idea. Google offered to let Yahoo use its killer search advertising technology, which by might add a $1 billion in additional cash flow a year for Yahoo and bring Google more revenue through a new channel.

Guess what? Now the prospect of such a partnership and new cash flow pumped up Yahoo’s board to demand more money from Microsoft and eventually caused Microsoft to abandon its quest. That was too easy. The market liked the play and added $4 billion to Google’s market value through a jump in stock price.

The Times article said that “Google has built a highly profitable $16.6 billion empire a dollar at a time,” referring to its cash cow the Google Ads. So this Yahoo move was a short cut to more riches. I get an undisclosed amount of small change a day from my Google ads but at the end of the year it adds up to something slightly more meaningful. Too bad they do not pay in stock.

Chief Blogging Officer - The CBO

Jesscia Lipnack wrote recently on her blog, Netage: Endless Knots, about a new role that is emerging, Chief Blogging Officer. She pointed to a workforce.com article, Chief Blogging Officer Title Catching On With Corporations. The article mentioned that, “companies such as Coca-Cola, Marriott and Kodak have recently recruited chief bloggers, with or without the actual title, to tell their stories and engage consumers.

... Geoff Livingston, CEO of Livingston Communications and blogger at the Buzz Bin, [said]: “The problem is that too many people focus on the actual tool: the blog,” he said. “What they need to focus on is the principles behind social media that make it work—like participating in a larger community works, and not controlling the conversation works.”

This is a nice trend to see and I have certainly seen a dramatic increase in companies wanting help with their business blogging. Geoff comments are also a good continuation of the conversation started with, Can You Trust Your Blogger? What is the Role of Blogs in Business Communication? Thanks, Jessica.

Melanie Coles Offers Where‘s Wally on Google Earth?

Here is a really innovative art concept. Canadian artist Melanie Coles has painted a 55ft Wally on top of a building that can be seen by Google Earth satellites and put up a contest on her website to find it. It was for school project. You cannot see it from the ground. There is a great description of the project on her site, whereonearthiswaldo. Thanks to the IF team for bringing this to my attention.

Denton, Texas Becomes a New Music Scene

I spent my junior high schools days in the early 60s in Denton Texas. The town was dry (aka did not allow purchasing of alcohol). This resulted in multiple liquor stores just across the county line on the way to Dallas. There was also a lot of open space between Denton and Dallas. I was told that for those do did not want to drive that far there were alternative means of purchase. It was a great place for a young teenager with college sports, school sports, and two golf courses that were almost free. I could play golf everyday all year when it wasn’t raining, which was usually the case. The kids in my neighborhood cleared an abandoned lot on out street with permission of the owner and built a baseball field long before Kevin Costner got the idea.

But I never thought of it as a music scene outside of the local college jazz band that did a lot of tours. So I was surprised to see the NYT article, An Indie Scene That Comes With a Texas Twang in Denton. It is a music scene they are talking about. Ther article starts out like the way I remember the town, “With its Piggly Wiggly markets and dusty pawnshops, the Texas college town of Denton does not look the part of a Woodstock in waiting. A Romanesque courthouse juts out of the central square, as in that fictional town in “Back to the Future.” And whenever the local college football team plays at Fouts Field, the entire town seems to put on Mean Green T-shirts.”

But then it goes on to describe a great new music scene and lists some good local clubs to hear it. They call it the next Austin. I will have to check it out the next time I get to Dallas for work or to visit my cousin. .

Nuospace: An Easy-to-Use Wiki for the Rest of Us

I cross-posted this from the App Gap as I thought it might be useful to readers, like me, who have small operations. Mine, of course, is an enterprise of one but I am involved with some start-ups (hopefully to be revealed soon as they get out of stealth mode) where I could see this functionality as very useful. Even though they are designed to be simple, the interface and functions of regular wikis can be a bit complex for the average user and the same can be said for applications like Sharepoint. That extra complexity can be just enough drive them back to email for exchanging documents. I have seen this happen on a number of occasions. Nuospace is designed to address this issue for small to mid-size businesses who need a simple application that can let them escape from the spaghetti and chaos of email for exchanging documents and other simple collaboration tasks.

Nuospace is the first product of Brightside Software, founded in June 2007. A few weeks ago, I spoke with Dimitri Lisitski, co-founder of Brightside and leader of the Nuospace effort. It is their first product and will remain their main focus over the next few years. It is currently a SaaS offering but they plan to offer a version that can be hosted within the firewall in the third quarter of 2008. The key design principle behind Nouspace is to keep it simple and have it remain simple. However, they did not give up useful functionality for this simplicity. Dimitri took me through a demo.

Noupace allows you to set up a variety of pages. There are pages designed for document sharing, discussion forums, standard wiki pages for text creation, posts that work like blogs, and directories to organize the other pages. It was easy enough for me to use so that makes it pass the simplicity test. I especially liked the interface. The look of each set of pages was identical and the functionality was consistent so it was very easy to learn. With document sharing pages you can upload documents, invite others to participate in the editing, and make comments. Then you see on one page the evolving history of the documents and the comments. The same format is used for discussions and posting.

Currently, they offer the tool in a free trial version. The trial version can last forever but you are limited to 100 pages and 200 MB of storage. Then you can upgrade to a commercial account and the pricing depends on your usage. The commercial option will launch the end of this April. It will have SSL security and encryption for pages. You can also make anything confidential.

The plan is to keep the product simple which is a wise move. I heard what happen with Lotus Quickplace as it keep adding features as customers requested them until it lost its simplicity. Nuospace plans to adopt an integration strategy rather than an addition strategy. For example, instead of building a calendar feature, it will integrate with several leading calendars. It is also working on integration with Salesforce.com. I think they are taking the right path. This tool should liberate the non-technical business user from the tyranny of email for simple document exchange and collaboration, as well as a number of other group communication tasks.

Stan Garfield’s KM Thought Leader of the Week

Stan Garfield writes the excellent Weekly Knowledge Management Blog that I have referred to on several occasions. It was nice to see that I was recently selected on his blog as the KM Thought Leader of the Week. This is one of several categories that he covers weekly. Stan also includes the KM Question, Blog, Link, and Book of the Week. In this case, Stan asked many people, "If you were invited to give a keynote speech on knowledge management, what words of wisdom or lessons learned would you impart?" He posted my answer that is repeated below in its entirety. There is much more on Stan’s post for this week so I encourage you to visit the Weekly Knowledge Management Blog by Stan Garfield and add it to your RSS feeds.

"I would say that some principles still hold after 15 years. Align your KM efforts with business processes and measure them by the impact on these processes. Do not create disconnected document libraries. I would add now to explore the opportunities that Web 2.0 brings to the table. There is the potential for creating searchable knowledge bases as a byproduct of working in the new transparency offered by these tools.

However, I would not abandon the first two principles as you explore these tools. Some of the newest generation Web 2.0 tools for business use behind the firewall have gone beyond blogs and wikis to create workflow applications that incorporate this new transparency. This allows for better teamwork AND a searchable, archived window into to what the organization is doing for all who need to know, should know, and can benefit from this knowledge.

Now, when I say workflow or work process, I do not mean the static inflexible workflow of old-style content management or project management tools. The advantage of these new tools is that they allow work processes that are more organic and dynamic. They allow the users to control the workflow or process, build it up from tasks and make changes as needed. And, to repeat, they allow for transparency and archiving, and thus KM, to be a byproduct of work, rather than an added requirement."

So be sure to invite me to your next KM conference and I will elaborate. Thanks, Stan.

The Web turns 15 years old and Spam turns 30

Sir Tim Berners-Lee told BBC News that the web is "still in its infancy." I would hope so. Look at all the other communication channels that it did not replace and have much longer histories. What will be the next channel to emerge? There many new ones by they all are supported by the web so are just extension of it.

April 30, 1993 was the day the web's code was put into the public domain by Cern, the lab where the web was developed. Now there are 165 million web sites globally. Tim convinced the Cern people to give it away to help promote its spread. Now he is the head of the World Wide Web Consortium.

It is ironic that Spam is almost twice as old. Yahoo News reported, “The date: May 3, 1978. The culprit: Gary Thuerk, a marketer for the old Digital Equipment Corporation. His crime: Sending a sales e-mail to 393 users on Arpanet (then a U.S. government computer network and the predecessor of today's Internet). Little did Thuerk know that he'd just become the world's first spammer.” It was not called spam until 15 years later. It took the web to help spam reach its current “potential” for destructive behavior. Here is a piece I wrote a few years ago on Tracking Down the Spam Dogs.

Thanks to John Maloney for pointing out these dates as he wished me happy birthday a few days ago. I will only say that I am older than the web and spam combined and grew up eating the other type of spam.

Lost & Found: A Smart-Practice Guide to Managing Organizational Memory

I learned from Dale Arseneault through an email group I belong to that the Canada School of the Public Service has crafted a good overview of knowledge management (in the context of organizational demographic changes) and has 
some useful s of common approaches/techniques. The research based report is called Lost & Found: A Smart-Practice Guide to Managing Organizational Memory. The focus is on public but the report provides a good introduction for fairly broad consumption.
 Knowledge management is getting close to tits twentieth anniversary, depending on when you count the start. 
That is a good run for something that people though was a fad.

I still do not like the name. Notice they do not use it in the report title. However, the concept is still current and getting a great boost from the new enterprise 2.0 tools

My Fast Forward Blogs Posts for April 2008

I am doing less cross posting of stuff from the Fast Forward blog since I am also now involved in the AppGap and doing fewer interviews on Fast. I will continue to provide a monthly listing as it helps me with an archive and hopefully is also useful to you. There is a separate category for these summaries. Here is a link to my summary of the posts prior to the Fast Forward Conference (November to February 9) and here are the posts for the rest of February for March April May and June July. August, September and October, November, December 07, January 08, February, and March.

Below are the posts for April in chronological order. The blog continues and there will be more in May.

Obama’s Answer Center - CRM from RightNow on the Campaign Trail

Ever Increasing Expansion of SaaS into Multiple Applications

Enterprise 2.0 Application Providers are Blogging

Twitter Clouds - Sign of a New Age?

SaaS enters e-learning Through SkillSoft

Social Networking is Climbing the Revenue Projection Ladder

Enterprise 2.0 is not Web 2.0 nor is it an Oxymoron

A Smart Big Idea for a Small Problem

How many times have you enjoyed a good or great wine and wanted to remember it. I kept a list on my computer for a while, after writing names on napkins. Here is a wonderful creative solution. You know all those signs with stuff for sale with tear off contact details. Well someone adapted this to wine labels. As Noisy Decent Graphics said,

“If you're out and about… and you think think, ooh that was a nice bottle of wine I'll have to remember what that was called. Except you won't remember, because you're a bit tipsy and you've got better things to be remembering.”

The wine company Oxford Landing has applied this concept to their wine bottles. I wonder if they patented it. If so they might make more money of the labels than the wine. The Noisy Decent Graphics blog has a nice picture of a label. Maybe someone can apply the concept to peanut butter jars.

Meat and Chocolate Tour of Western Massachusetts

My friend Don Lesser recently took me on a tour of great places for meat and chocolate near his home in Western Massachusetts. Don is a food critic for the Hampshire Gazette and I have often written about his writing. Here is where we went. All are highly recommended. Here is Don’s take on Hatfield Beef and some other places is his post, Grilling Steaks. See the pictures below.

Hatfield Beef, 42 North Hatfield Road, Hatfield (247-5441). W=As Don wrote, “when you walk into Hatfield Beef, you know you are in good hands. The building is old and well-used, but clean and clean smelling. The long cases are heavy with condensation and filled with thick slabs of beef, some sausages and chicken. The walls are covered in old posters illustrating the cuts of beef and pork. The prices are fantastic.” We got a lot of meat at way below supermarket prices and it is very good. Not a place for vegetarians.

Pekarski Sausage is given five stars by Yahoo local. I got some wonderful ham that was semi-cooked. Later that week I made ham steak with garlic fried potatoes. I can still taste them. It is located at 293 Conway Road, South Deerfield, MA (413) 665-4537

Richardson's Candy Kitchen is a chocolate lover’s paradise. We took a lot home. They maintain a visually exciting web site. It is located on Route 5 and 10, South Deerfield, 413 772-0443.

My App Gap Posts for April 2008

I have started writing in another Corante blog, the App Gap, sponsored by QuickBase, The posts began toward the end of January 2008. In this case, I will primarily be doing product commentaries with a few other things thrown in. Here are the blog posts for January/February, and March 2008. Below are the ones for April. There will be more in May.

SynerG - Taking Mashups Deep into the Enterprise

Customer-centric CRM from RightNow

On-Demand Web Server Load Balancing for the Rest of Us: TZO

On-Demand Behind the Scenes Computer Backups Through Carbonite

Nexaweb: Bringing Web 2.0 to Enterprise System Migration and Transformation

Twing Brings Search to On-line Communities

Many Enterprise 2.0 Application Companies are Blogging

BroadSoft Takes VoIP into Enterprise 2.0

Nuospace: An Easy-to-Use Wiki for the Small to Midsize Business Market

QuickBase’s New Developer Program: Going the Next Step to Support Its Developers and Their Mutual Clients

Central Desktop Acts on Enterprise 2.0 Security

Connectbeam Offers New Social Networking Application Integration Possibilities

More on the Role of Blogs in Business Communication

Here is another follow-on inspired by Andrew McAfee. This time I am adding more to my post, Can You Trust Your Blogger? What is the Role of Blogs in Business Communication? I briefly mentioned Andrew's post, Evidence of the Value of a Blog, at the end of the first post. It deserves more attention.

He provides major credit to his blog for his reputation in the IT field that led to his selection as number 38 on the top 100 Most Influential People in IT by Ziff Davis. He stated that an article is a one time event. Then added, “I’ve found my blog to be a fantastic tool for continuing the conversation. This blog has allowed me to air ideas on E2.0 and other topics as frequently as I want, and at the length I feel is appropriate. In other words, the person determining the editorial calendar for these ideas is me, not an editor.” Exactly.

Andrew then goes on to relate a conversation with Paul Levy, the CEO of Boston’s Beth Israel hospital and his Facebook friend. Paul and Andrew are also my Facebook friends, although I have not yet met them in person, and I trust them anyway (a reference to my last post on trusting bloggers). Andrew words again tell the story quite well.

“He (Paul) brought up the same point - that he can blog on issues he cares about as much as he wants. If the topic is of broad interest and his posts are good, they’ll continue to be read and can help shape thinking on the issue. It occurred to me that without a blog, his ability to do this is greatly reduced. Because of his position he might get to write a single opinion piece in the Boston Globe, and I guess his staff could continue to send out PR releases, but that’s about it. His blog greatly amplifies his voice.” Exactly.

I learned about Paul’s blog through my friend Jessica Lipnack who has the blog, Netage Endless Knots. Jessica has organized a panel on what blogging brings to business for the Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Boston. Our session will be June 10 at 2:15. Hope to see you there and we can continue this conversation in person.

Here is a nice postscript from the blogger, Kevin O'Keefe, who writes the blog, Real Lawyers Have Blogs. Kevin says, in response to the posts around this issue, "Thousands of people read my blog. They must trust something I say. I'm not that entertaining. People put their butts on the line at least once a month asking me to speak in front of large groups. Just received invites to speak at the Texas Bar Annual Conference and to keynote at a Wisconsin Bar Association Conference. I don't know any of the people who invite me. They're reading my blog. If they didn't trust what I was writing, would I get an invite?" Kudos to Kevin. There have been a lot of legal blogs for the start. It is a category that makes a lot of sense. I ma glad to see Kevin getting good take up.

Enterprise 2.0 Success Story from Andrew McAfee

Here is a follow on to my post, Enterprise 2.0 is not Web 2.0 nor is it an Oxymoron. Andrew McAfee who started this term, recently held an online poll to ask his “MBA students their opinions on the potential benefits of Enterprise 2.0 as well as the actual benefits most companies will be able to achieve.” See - Homework the Teacher Learns From.

One response started off this way, “"I have been an eye witness of the power of enterprise 2.0 (although I didn’t know that is what it was called at the time) technology in promoting collaboration and connectedness across disparate individuals and groups within organizations.
“
This brought back memories as I was an eye witness in the early 90s of the power of knowledge management (although I didn’t know that is what it was called at the time) “in promoting collaboration and connectedness across disparate individuals and groups within organizations.” I was very excited and it caused me to switch my focus from learning to what came to be called knowledge management but, in the end the tools and times where not really ready for it to be adopted on a massive basis, yet it still survives.

In the example that Andrew provided, a low-level marketing manager located in a satellite office used a comment on the CEO’s blog to call into question some of the company’s key practices and metrics. The manager produced a lot of data to support his position. It created a lot of buzz in the company. The CEO took the manager’s views seriously and formed a task force to study the issue. Andrew’s student talked about how that without the blog, this issue would not have reached the attention of those who needed to understand it.

Back in the early 90s at the company I referred to above, the CEO was introducing a concept of shared learning to his division heads. One of the division leaders questioned why one division would want to share its insights with another division dealing with different issues. The CEO looked at that division leader and said it is this type of thinking that has gotten them in such trouble. (They were losing a lot of money because of institutional silos.) The company adopted the shared learning concept through some of the more primitive tools of the day. It was one of several reasons that they turned around and became profitable. It was this promise that first got me excited about blogs, web 2.0 , and now enterprise 2.0. Thanks to Andrew’s student for another example.

Portals and KM: Fourth Anniversary

Last week I started my fifth year with this blog. Perhaps it was appropriate that on the fifth anniversary of this blog I did a post on Can You Trust Your Blogger? What is the Role of Blogs in Business Communication? On May 2, 2004 I did my first posts. There were three, Is KM the Killer App for Portals?, Some good articles on blogs and blogs on blogs, and Is RSS TNBT? Two people encouraged me to start a blog, Cesar Brea and Jack Vinson and they remain active boggers. I also attended Dave Winer's sessions at the Berkman Center. Dave has gone but the sessions continue. Writing an article on blogs for Portals Magazine is what got we started with this blog. Writing about web 2.0 inside and outside the firewall remains the core of what I cover during the week. Now I am also part of two group blogs, Fast Forward and the AppGap, both on enterprise 2.0. I also spend almost all my consulting time helping businesses with their blogs.

Some of my favorite posts on this blog are under Previous Posts in the right column. A few of the ones that were most fun to do include: Slow Cooked Ribs and Cajun Music that got me started on the food and music on weekends and Sunday with Ray Charles that got me started on music and non-work topics in the first place. I still get responses to some of these old posts such as the two part series on the Newport Jazz Festival in 1968 and 1969, see Early Newport Jazz Festivals Relived for some of these responses to are The Original Newport Jazz Festival: 1968 and Before and The Original Newport Jazz Festival: 1969 – 1971.

I look forward to the sixth anniversary, as well as the ability to look back over what I was thinking about the past few years.

Value of KM - Matt Moore

Here is a really good presentation by Matt Moore of Engineers Without Fears on demonstrating the ROI / Value of Knowledge Management to beancounters - based various experiences. As he said, “Of course, I can't put the really juicy stuff in the presentation - you'd have to get me in to deliver it for that...” However, it shows a lot of common sense. I use to do KM value statements for years and it was never about volume measures as Matt states. It is about business value, which he also states.

Matt has a nice blog and does a lot of podcast interviews.

Mendelssohn’s Elijah is Coming - The Back Bay Chorale

Not exactly “Eli’s Coming” by Three Dog Night, its even better. Its Mendelssohn’s Elijah sung by The Back Bay Chorale. As they said, “The Old Testament is hardly short of drama, but the story of Elijah still stands out – there’s idol-worship, windstorms, a “my God is better than your god” competition, rain after endless drought, and the assumption of Elijah himself into heaven on a fiery chariot. Now imagine that all set to music by one of the great composers of the Romantic Era – Felix Mendelssohn.” It will blow away those three dogs anytime.

The Back Bay Chorale will present one of the great 19th century choral masterworks in a superb concert hall with world-class soloists and instrumentalists on Friday May 30th, the Friday after Memorial Day at 8PM (pre-concert talk at 7 p.m.).

It will be at Sanders Theatre on the campus of Harvard University in Cambridge. You can go to the Back Bay Chorale site for details.

Omaha, Nebraska Restaurants: A Local’s Favorites

It has been a while since I did a post on restaurants. Here is a list of where to eat in Omaha Nebraska from Steve Carter by way of Stan Garfield. It looks like my kind of places. I have only been to Omaha once to do some work for a client on their call centers. I will have to figure how to get back there.

Farmhouse Café - A great breakfast with cinnamon rolls the size of small children. Excellent omelets. It is located at 3461 S. 84th St. (402) 393-0640

Bohemian Café - A place for a hearty meal, lunch or dinner. Dumplings, kraut, goulash, great rye bread. “Serving mouth watering authentic European dishes since 1924, the Bohemian Café is a cornerstone in the South Omaha community.” 1406 13th St, (402) 393-0640

Howards Charro Café - Excellent enchiladas and tamales. My Travel Guide said, “Located near a number of Omaha attractions, including Henry Doorly Zoo and Rosenblatt Stadium, this restaurant offers authentic Mexican food at affordable prices (entrees range from $7-$9). With an atmosphere both casual and festively ethnic, this restaurant promises to be an excellent choice for a variety of dining occasions. Homemade taco shells and tortilla chips turn the everyday a la carte into a specialty item. On Friday and Saturday, guests enjoy the live music of Howard's own mariachi band.” It is located at 4443 13th St. South Omaha (402) 731-3776

Joe Tess “began as a neighborhood tavern in the 1930s. The main attraction became the Famous Fish Sandwich itself. Cut carp portions were fried in a skillet, placed in a cookie jar and sold for 15 cents. Ever since, the humble carp has been the driving force behind Joe Tess Place.” 5424 S. 24th St. (402) 733-4658

Can You Trust Your Blogger? What is the Role of Blogs in Business Communication?

Joshua Porter recently wrote an interesting post, "Why people don’t trust “bloggers” in response to Jeremiah Owyang who claims that people don’t trust bloggers. As Joshua wrote that Jeremiah based his observations on three studies by respected marketing research companies: Forrester, Edelman, and Pollara. These studies found that bloggers do not elicit much trust when compared to other sources of information. Then he makes an excellent observation, “I can’t help but think that these studies weighted the questions…oh just a little bit. I mean, who would trust someone based solely on the fact that they happen to write a blog? Does merely creating a blogger account and whipping out a few blog posts make one a trusted authority on…anything? Of course not.”

I totally agree with Joshua. If the question had been, as he says, “Do you trust bloggers who you read regularly/subscribe to?” most people would answer that they do.” Why would they read them? As Joshua said, I am sure that Jeremiah hopes people trust him. There are many bloggers out there. Just because you know how to start a blog, which is not rocket science, does not mean that you know anything else. As two of the commenters on Jeremiah’s blog posts said:

“Contrary to what you may imply, you are trusted by many of your readers. You’ve earned this trust by being transparent, by being consistent, by slowly building a reputation, and by the multiple channels in which someone can learn about you.”

“I think that you are confusing two categories. Of course people don’t trust a generic category called ‘bloggers’ But they do trust people they ‘know’, and in these days of social networking ‘knowing’ someone may mean you have never met them in real life. But if a relationship of trust & authenticity has been developed between you & them, then they could trust a blogger

Blogs are conversations and they do put more responsibility on the reader to judge the material than say, the New York Times, with its army of fact checkers. But even the NYT gets it wrong some times and everyone has some type of bias. Blogs are also a medium. You could ask, do you trust people on the telephone more than in person? Do you trust a magazine article more than television? In each case, the answer would be it depends on the person. A blogger has to build the trust of his or her audience by being consistent and transparent as the first commenter wrote above.

The Edelman study compared bloggers to academics, industry analysts, CEOs, regular employees of a company, etc. to “bloggers.” Guess what, many of these people in the other categories write blogs. So does the New York Times. The study compared one channel to people who write in multiple channels, including blogs. The Forrester study compared review by a known expert to a review by a blogger. What if the known expert expressed his views through a blog? Blogs offer an expanded platform for business communication. Whether you believe the blogger is more a factor of the blogger than the communication channel.

Many bloggers I read are also friends that I have meet in person. Friends had the highest trust ratings in the Forrester study so where do blogger friends fall in the ratings? I also read other bloggers , like Joshua that I have not met. However, I already respect his thought process. That does not mean that I will trust or agree with everything he writes. But I do think he got this one correct. I have also never met Jeremiah but I know his blog and respect his expertise. I also agree with much of what he writes. I just think he got it wrong this time. But that can happen with close friends. It does not mean I will stop trusting Jeremiah. In the end it is up to the blogger to earn your trust and you to grant it, regardless of the communication channel they are using.

As a post script, I ran across this blog post from Andrew McAfee, Evidence of the Value of a Blog, where he said he was "pretty sure that this blog is the main reason I made the list." The list being the Ziff Davis Enterprise list of the ’100 Most Influential People in IT" where they put him as #38. Andrew is another blogger who earned trust through many sources, but he credits the blog as a major one. I looked at the list and noticed a few other bloggers on it.

What if the question was do you trust what a person says more in his or her own blog or in a magazine interview or a PR release? They are different channels and hopefully the answer is the same in each. But that would make an interesting study.

Integrating Social Networking and Social Bookmarking with Enterprise Applications: Connectbeam

Here is a cross post from the AppGap because I think it speaks to an increasing trend that I mentioned yesterday, the integration of social networking and other social context enterprise tools with enterprise applications. I wrote about this briefly on the Fast Forward blog, Social Networking is Climbing the Revenue Projection Ladder. Here is a good example.

Last week, I had a chance to catch up with Puneet Gupta, CEO of Connectbeam. I wrote about them a while back on the Fast Forward blog, Connectbeam: Combining Social Bookmarking and Social Networking. As the post title suggests they believe that business networking begins around the sharing of ideas and information so they tightly integrated social bookmarking into their social networking platform.

Now they have taken things a step further with their Release 2.2. It introduces the Connectbeam web services Application Programming Interface (API) that enables you to add full functionality of Connectbeam social software into your existing IT applications. The Connectbeam web services API consists of a series of programming interfaces that have been modularized into functional areas such as Social Search, Bookmarking and Tagging, Social Network, and Communities - allowing you to pick and chose the functionality you chose to integrate with your existing apps and IT infrastructure. You can find out more about what they are doing at The Connectbeam Social Computing Blog.

Puneet showed me an example of how this works. We saw a demonstration of Connectbeam integration with Sharepoint. We first saw how Connectbeam integrates with Sharepoint search. A search term, java, was entered into the Sharepoint search field. The standard Sharepoint response came back in the left column. On the right side was additional contextual information delivered through Connectbeam. You can see a list of related tags, related users, and related bookmarks. Clicking on any of these links brought you to additional information relevant information about the social context of the search. For example, the clicking on one of the related user provides a list of the documents this person has tagged with the search term.

In the second example of Sharepoint integration, we went to the profile page of the Sharepoint user. There was an about me tab that was part of Sharepoint. Next to it was a social context tab that brought information from Connectbeam. For the individual you saw their tags, their bookmarks, and their communities. Each item in each list was a live link to more information. In both cases the integration between Connectbeam and Sharepoint was complete and not apparent to the user who saw the additional social information as just part of the same interface. You can find this demo through their Connectbeam web site.

In addition to the open APIs, Connectbeam’s Release 2.2 also includes other new features. There is automatic user provisioning for LDAP to eliminate user registration process and dynamic email address lookup for ease of community invitations. Enhanced licensing infrastructure allows you to better monitor application usage and adoption. Multi-language support is also offered for global implementations.

There is a growing trend of enterprise 2.0 applications opening up their APIs for integration with enterprise applications. This is a welcome addition as it brings in the social context in robust manner through Connectbeam’s strong combination of social networking and social bookmarking.