Portals and KM

Euan Semple Offers Advice on Social Media for Business on Web TV

Euan Semple, blogger at the Obvious and former lead on KM at the BBC, was recently interviewed by guruonline TV in the UK (see Social Media Advice for Business). He answers a number of questions such as why business should get involved with social media, how businesses should get involved with social media, what are common elements are there to social media., how practical is social media to business, and more. There are 15 video segments in the interview.

Euan sees Web 2.0 and enterprise 2.0 not as distinct movements, but the natural evolution of the Web. He feels it is best for business to get gradually involved and experiment. It can be very practical and easy to get started. Many IT departments see this easy start as a threat. Social media can have a significant effect on business culture and Euan sees that as a large part of the excitement. It allows more people to participate in the business process. Some managers see these tools as potential for a loss of control. However, Euan sees these tools as a better for the smart manager to get alignment with and support for his or her goals.

There is much more but I hope I have enticed you to watch the complete show.

Will Television and Web Converge?

Here is an interesting debate from Stanford University on the convergence of the Web and Television. There are two people representing both sides. They first point out that television is both a medium and a transmission system. TV is used to refer to the screen that you watch, as well as what you see on that screen. The Web on the other hand is a system for transmitting bits, and is different from the device that receives those bits, the computer. It is not enough to say that you can see TV content on your computer as that is already the case. They point out that “For the two to truly converge the content that can be received by both devices should be the same.”

They go on to say: “First, computers and televisions must be able to be content interchangeable. That is, computers must be able to view and use television content, and televisions must be able to view and receieve Internet content. Second, people must be sufficiently interested in being able to view the same content on both device to make implementation of this interoperability commercially viable.”

I like the pro arguments better. They point out that the more difficult question is whether a television will be able to display web content. This convergence means that the television in the living room will no longer be just a television, but it will be an "information" appliance. Both sides admit that the technology issue are the minor ones and can be solved. It depends on whether people will be able to mentally converge these media. I think it will happen.

KM World 2009 Program Available

I received my paper copy of the KM World 2009 program recently. You can see the agenda online at the KM World 2009 site. It looks great with people like Andrew McAfee, Christine LI, David Snowden. Nancy Dixon, Thomas Vander Wal, and Leslie Owens.

The KM World people were kind to allow me to offer you a $200 discount on each of your full-conference passes. They can also sign up for a free expo pass. Go to this KM World registration form.

I also want to bring to your attention to my workshop, Business Social Media Best practices: Blogs & Twitter. It is offered Monday, November 16 form 9AM to 12PM. Here is the workshop description:

Blogs were one of the initial social media and their influence continues to grow. They were the first social media to make it into Gartner’s “slope of enlightenment.” Gartner also recently wrote, “Enterprises must define clear strategic objectives for blogging, and support them with policies to encourage executives and employees to maintain regular entries and to identify and discourage harmful blogging practices… Increasingly, any public-facing media company or enterprise must have a blogging strategy.” This interactive workshop will help you develop and refine your business blogging strategy. It covers blogging best practices in 2009 and how to complement your blogging efforts with the new emerging social media such as Twitter. New customer communication options opened up Twitter are also explored.

I hope to see you at the conference, and even better, at the workshop. :)

Do You Have Cases of Enterprise Micro-blogging (aka Twitter style communication) to Share?

I am looking for examples of successful implementations of micro-blogging within the enterprise. This would include Twitter and all the Twitter like tools (see Rise of Micro-messaging in Enterprise Collaboration Platforms and Pistachio Consulting’s Enterprise Microsharing Tools Comparison) sometimes known as micro-messaging. I am not looking for cases from tool providers but rather from companies who operate in non-technology fields but are using these tools. I want to talk about the non-technical aspects of implementation and adoption. I would like to use these examples for posts on this blog and possibly on the FastForward blog. If you are interested you can put a comment on this blog or send me an email. I cannot guarantee that I can turn all cases into posts, depending on the response.

I am especially interested in people who are willing to share the obstacles they faced and how they overcame these obstacles and what lessons were learned, along with the benefits obtained. Thanks in advance.

Classes on 25 Skills to Become a Great Entrepreneur

Nancy White recently set me a link to this post on 25 Skills and Classes Necessary to Become a Great Entrepreneur. I was interested in these statistics. A Vanderbilt University study a few year sago found that currently, the largest age group of entrepreneurs is in the 45 to 60 year old segment of the population and this group was expected to grow by 15 million by 2006. This growth compares to an expected four million decline in entrepreneurs aged 25 to 44. I wonder about people like me who are over 60. Now I was under 60 when they did the study so I guess I fall in the larger group.

The post goes on to cover the 25 skills for entrepreneurs in great detail. One of the less obvious ones, that still makes sense, is the fact that they recognize that they don’t know what they don’t know and they don’t try to do what they don’t know (they hire someone else to do it).

At the same the post concludes with observation that an entrepreneur, while a specialist, must still be very well rounded in his or her education in order be able to see all sides of the issues in front of them. Successful entrepreneurs are able to effectively wear multiple hats and shift from role to role as necessary. They surely won’t be an expert in everything, but they know enough to surround themselves with great talent and know how to evaluate that talent. This goes back to the point above.

I would add that an entrepreneur must like to work with people and have good social skills. While you can be enterprise of one as a consultant or writer, you cannot be an entrepreneur in an enterprise of one.

There are links to degree programs from a number of colleges that address the different skills.

St. Louis Restaurants: 2009 Updates on 2006 and 2008 Local’s Favorites

Thanks to Stan Garfield for this 2009 update to my prior posts on where to eat in St. Louis. He also provided the originals (see St. Louis Restaurants: Local’s Favorites (2006) and Update on St. Louis Restaurants (2008). In some case she is fixing the links and in others he is providing new choices. Here are his recommendations. I was conceived in St. Louis. These places make me want to go back.

New Links:

Sandwiches: Amighetti's Cafe and Bakery (on the Hill) . Their site says that there special is often called the best sandwich in St. Louis. It was first made by in 1921 by Louis Amighetti. The original location is at 5141 Wilson Ave St Louis, MO 63110 314-776-2855. There are other locations on their site.

Root beer stand: Carl's Drive In (Brentwood) The St. Louis City Guide says, The fare at this authentic, '50s-era diner is mostly hamburgers, hot dogs and sandwiches, with all of your greasy favorites on the side: fries, cheese fries or onion ring.” Carl’s is located at 9033 Manchester Road, Brentwood, MO 63144

Barbecue: Super Smokers BBQ (Eureka) BBQ is very serious in St. Louis. Their online menu looks like the first place I would try on the list. It is located at 601 Stickell Drive (1-44 and Hwy 109 (636) 938-9742

Old-style ice cream parlor: Crown Candy Kitchen. City Seacrh gives it top ratings and says, “Crown Candy's malts in question are the best in town; try the popular chocolate-banana or butterscotch. The hot fudge sundae is so gooey that it carries a tongue-in-cheek warning for denture wearers. Try a phosphate or any of the special ice cream confections on the menu; you can't go wrong. It is located at 1401 Saint Louis Ave, St Louis, (314) 621-9650

Pizza: Lou Boccardi's Restaurant (on the Hill) The restaurant has been family-owned and operated since it opened in 1972. It is located at 5424 Magnolia Ave. St. Louis, MO 314-647-1151

New Places:

Big Ed’s Chili Mac’s Diner provides all permutations of chili -- with beans or without; by the pint, quart, gallon or five-gallon bucket; atop a burger or in a slinger -- there are straight-up burgers, dogs, BLTs, grilled cheeses and all the usual breakfast items. It is located at 6 South Central Avenue Clayton 314-721-8880 and 510 Pine Street St. Louis 314-421-9040.

Herbie's Vintage 72 has great credentials “After spending seven years training in New York City, co-owner Aaron Teitelbaum returned home to pioneer a new style of dining for St. Louis. While in New York, he spent four years with the Culinary Institute earning his Associates in Culinary Arts and a Bachelors Degree in Restaurant Management. Aaron also spent four years working with restaurateurs such as Bobby Flay at Mesa Grill and Daniel Boulud at Restaurant Daniel.” It is located at 405 N Euclid Ave, St Louis, MO 63108 314 769 9595. This is the former Balaban’s site.

Bar Italia (northern Italian) is located at 13 Maryland Plaza St. Louis, MO 63108 (314) 361-7010

Here are more new ones by area.

Clayton:

Remy's (Modern American) is located at 222 S Bemiston Ave 
St Louis, MO 63105 (314) 726-5757

Oceana (seafood) is located at 44 North Brentwood Drive, Clayton, MO 63105 314.721.9400

Il Fratellini (Italian) “A meal can begin with warm baguettes and pistachio-studded butter and segue into a arugula salad with toasted pine nuts. Then comes the entrée -- snapper with kalamata olives, perhaps, or beef medallions Everything here, from the Modernist light fixtures to the tabletop roses to the gracious service, is just right. It is located at 7624 Wydown Blvd. Clayton, MO 63105 314-727-7901

UCity Loop:

Pi (deep dish/thin crust pizzas and Obama fave) It is located at 6144 Delmar Blvd Saint Louis, MO 63112-1204 (314) 727-6633

Moonrise (new deco hotel next to Pageant theater - cool place, OK food) It is located at 6177 Delmar Blvd St Louis, MO 63112-1203 (314) 721-1111

Central West End:

Liluma has great food and good indoor or outdoor dining. It is located at 236 N Euclid Ave St Louis, MO 63108-1506 (314) 361-777

Downtown/South:

Cielo is a new restaurant at the Four Seasons hotel, good rep, great views, probably pricy. “With magnificent views of the Gateway Arch and the Mississippi River from its location on the eighth floor, Cielo offers indoor and – during clement weather – al fresco dining. The menu highlights fine contemporary Italian fare, accompanied by exceptional Italian wines. “ It is located at 999 North 2nd Street, St.Louis, Missouri, U.S.A. 63102 Tel. 1 (314) 881-5800

Niche (hottest chef in town) “When I opened Niche in 2005, I committed to create a menu based on the freshest local, seasonal ingredients. My cooking style is to prepare these ingredients as simply as possible to showcase their fresh and true flavors.” It is located at 1831 Sidney Street, St Louis, MO 63104-2857 (314) 773-7755

Sidney St. Cafe near Soulard. “The décor consists of exposed brick walls, ornate mirrors, street lamps, and gleaming hardwood floors.” It is located at 2000 Sidney Street, St Louis, MO 63104-2829 (314) 771-5777

Maplewood:

Schlafly Brewery, officially the St. Louis Brewery, is located at 2100 Locust Street, St Louis, MO 63103-1616 (314) 241-1365

Monarch combines French, Asian, and American Southwest flavors. It is located at 7401 Manchester Road, St Louis, MO 63143 (314) 644-3995

Onset Bay Blues Festival 2009

I have gone to the last three Onset Bay Blues Festivals and greatly enjoyed them. I plan to attend the 2009 festival on August 1. Here is my review of Onset Bay Blues Festival 2006 and Onset Blues Festival 2007. In 2008 I did a three part review:

Onset Blues Festival 2008 - Part One - Gil Correla and Ricky King Russell

Onset Blues Festival 2008 - Part Two - Lynnwood Slim

Onset Blues Festival 2008 - Part Three - Shirley Lewis Experience

Onset Blues Festival 2008 - Part Four - Racky Thomas

The festival returns this year on Saturday August 1, 2009 for its 17th annual presentation of great blues music. The festival will feature five bands during the day beginning at noon and continuing until 6:00 p.m.

For information and directions contact the Onset Bay Association website. Here is where to eat when you go, Onset, MA – An Occasional Visitor’s Favorites.

Here is Chris Stovall Brown at the 2008 event.

Dion Hinchcliffe's 12 Rules for Getting Value from Making Your Business Social

When Dion Hinchcliffe talks about enterprise 2.0 adoption I listen (e.g. Dion Hinchcliffe Enterprise 2.0 Conference Workshop). Here is another recent classic, 12 Rules For Bringing 'Social' To Your Business, that I want to share with you so I am reposting this from an earlier version on the FastForward blog. It applies to enterprise 2.0 as much as Web 2.0. He set the stages for his twelve points by defining what this transition to social business is about, “It's how those companies are going to make the transition from traditional 1-to-1 relationships with their partners and customers to a one-to-many community relationship where the company is only another member of an endless ongoing conversation. This conversation will be the very lifeblood of companies in the future and consist of all the ideas, concerns, solutions, news, learning, product development, sales, marketing, customer service (i.e. the fundamental fabric of the organization) taking place between anyone, anywhere who feels they have a stake. He adds that we have a long way to go to get there but there have been some starts.

I am not going to repeat all twelve points here as you should read Dion’s original work. I will just cherry pick a few for additional comments. He states that while he does like to talk about technology too early, the new technologies have been helped enable this transformation. I agree on both points. Many of the ideas of enterprise 2.0 were around in the early days of knowledge management but the right tools were not there to enable the full vision. To compound this the some of the software vendors high jacked the movement and led it astray.

We need to avoid the same things happening with enterprise 2.0. This should not be a vendor led movement. A panel member at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference Session on Does Social Media in Matter in Marketing advised us to not focus on one tool as another will come along and replace it or go in a new direction. Used to be how to use technology. Now you can build your own technology. The greatest technology does not seem like technology. A good example is the iPhone.

I would add that Twitter is another but I think within the enterprise it works best as feature in suite rather than as a standalone tool. In the same vein, some of the best features of enterprise 2.0 tools is their behind the scenes activity to create a searchable archive of social interactions as a byproduct of their use. We need to keep this simplicity in the tools. Many enterprise 2.0 tools allow you to fit them around the work process rather than the reverse, another way the technology is less oppressive as in the past. So take advantage of this and pick the business process then choose what tool to wrap around it. If the tool does not fit, change the tool and not the process.

In another step, Dion writes that Censorship kills participation. This is actually why you need guidelines to make the rules explicit (see recent post on Social Media Policy Guidelines Can Encourage Use Outside Enterprise and Adoption Within). The rules need to be open ended and enable and encourage people to participate. Without clear policy people may be reluctant and think that the old ways on top down enforcement still apply. However, if your rules enforce the old ways, do not bother with social media tools. It is a waste of time.

I will pick one more. Dion writes that you should add a social dimension to your business processes. Enterprise 2.0 increasing productivity by increasing accountability. This was one of the concepts that first got me excited about it (long with the creation of searchable knowledge as part of using the tools I mentioned earlier). I have seen many examples of this such as Al; Essa 2004 work at MIT (An Enterprise 2.0 Poster Child in the IT Department) where Al, the CIO, got 60% of his day back by having all project use a blog dashboard for transparency. Another is Changing Organization Behavior at XM Radio through Enterprise 2.0 and QuickBase where XM Radio had its first profitable project because of the new transparency of the work processes.

This is enough for now. Go read the rest of what Dion wrote.

Web TV Takes Off but when will it Really Take Advantage of the Web?

The New York Times reported again on the increasing convergence of TV and the Web, in Rise of Web Video, Beyond 2-Minute Clips. Brina Stelter wrote, “When motion pictures were invented at the end of the 19th century, most films were shorter than a minute, because of the limitations of technology. A little more than a hundred years later when Web videos were introduced, they were also cut short, but for social as well as technical reasons.”

We always tend to first use new media like old media. In this case, we were reluctant to first use Web TV like broadcast TV for the reasons noted. Now broadcast TV is increasingly moving to the Web. The article says that by some “estimates, one in four Internet customers now uses Hulu, an online home for NBC and Fox shows, every month. “Dancing With the Stars,” the popular ABC reality show, draws almost two million viewers on ABC.com, according to Nielsen.”

It goes on to quote Dina Kaplan, the co-founder of Blip.tv, “People are getting more comfortable, for better or for worse, bringing a computer to bed with them.” I have not done this yet even though I have a TV in viewing distance of bed. However, this newer trend is doing what is usually done, simply using the new medium to convey content form the old medium. The first book captured the current version of the epic poems of Homer.

The next move is the take advantage of what the new medium offers. This should happen now that the money and audiences of TV are starting to migrate to the Web.

Paula Thornton on How Knowledge Must Be Applied

My fellow FastForward blogger, Paula Thornton, recently published a great post, Knowledge Must Be Applied. First she breaks down the Data-Information-Knowledge-Wisdom continuum. I agree with her that I have always had problems with it. There is so much overlap here as tom Davenport also remarked as Paula quotes, “I resist making this distinction, because it’s clearly imprecise…for years people have referred to data as ‘information’. Data, information, and knowledge aren’t easy to separate in practice; at best you can construct a continuum of the three.”

She then goes on to bring in other writers on the topic including John Tropea who looks at several writers in his post, Knowledge Management…NOT!, and concludes, you cannot “capture knowledge, as it’s not possible to capture meaning, the meaning is derived by the person encountering it, all the capturing we do is simply information management.” I agree and I never liked the term, knowledge management. In the early 90s we defined knowledge in terms of actionable information that provides business value or something to this effect. A person had to put the information into the useful action.

Read Paula’s post as she provides more details to the argument. I agree with her last and concluding sentence, “Knowledge is something that is applied — for action — within specific contexts. This is not the realm of what is portrayed as Knowledge Management, but it something that is facilitated by Enterprise 2.0.”

I first became excited about what came to be called enterprise 2.0 by its ability to realize the early vision of what was mistakenly called knowledge management.

Social Media Policy Outside and Inside the Enterprise

I am cross posting this from FastFoward to get more feedback and perhaps additional examples. I would be very interested in any other social media guidelines that you think are useful, especially those for activity within the enterprise. I think companies are focusing their guidelines too much on public use.

As the use of social media grows within the enterprise and on the Web, the need for policies and guidelines to govern employee behavior becomes more essential. Effective use of social media requires that employees can act on their own to produce content without review by Corporate Communications or other groups. I remember in my past life with a large consulting firm and prior to the rise of social media every time I talked with the media, a PR person had to be on the call. Now customer and market communication is more and more handed over to individual employees.

However, to avoid violations of company security and such things as government regulations for publically traded companies, some guidance is necessary. I remember in the early days of blogging IBM relied on its standard rules of business conduct. Then in the spring of 2005, IBM used a wiki to create a set of blogging guidelines. Here is the latest version: IBM Social Computing Guidelines. It begins with the following.

“These guidelines aimed to provide helpful, practical advice—and also to protect both IBM bloggers and IBM itself, as the company sought to embrace the blogosphere. Since then, many new forms of social media have emerged. So we turned to IBMers again to re-examine our guidelines and determine what needed to be modified. The effort has broadened the scope of the existing guidelines to include all forms of social computing.”

You find the details at their site. Other companies have embraced this concept. Sun was another of the early adopters. Sun's policy begins with this statement, Many of us at Sun are doing work that could change the world. Contributing to online communities by blogging, wiki posting, participating in forums, etc., is a good way to do this. You are encouraged to tell the world about your work, without asking permission first, but we expect you to read and follow the advice in this note.” I think this captures the right spirit for these efforts.

Intel has released new social media guidelines. It has also created a Social Media department and offers training for employees who are interested in blogging and participating in online forums and other social media venues where they represent Intel (see Intel publishes social media guidelines for its employees). I like the addition of training.

These guidelines are not limited to the large players. RightNow provides a suite of CRM tools that I have covered on this blog (see Barack Obama’s Answer Center - Campaign CRM from RightNow and most recently RightNow is Enabling Further Government Adoption of the Cloud). RightNow's guidelines state that, “RightNow has an open participation policy for all employees. The choice to participate in social media is yours. If you decide to participate, you are making a commitment to following these guidelines.” I was told that RightNow’s guidelines were influenced by the work of Intel, IBM and Sun.

Here are the just released social media guidelines for SAP.

Social media guidelines should not be limited to market facing channels. Use inside the enterprise raises many adoption issues and they are no less important here. Some employee concerns can be clarified by a good set of guidelines. If done right these policies can actually encourage participation as employees are likely to feel more comfortable that their actions are sanctioned. They will also feel like they know the rules.

Here are some more useful tips I came across from Forbes, A Corporate Guide For Social Media.

Where Do Old Computers Go To Die?

Here is an interesting story with great pictures, Where Old Computers Go To Die from PSFK. It reports that the old Commodore 64 or Apple IIC most likely wind up in a landfill somewhere (unless they’re collecting dust in your parents’ attic) still carrying a bevy of toxic materials like mercury, cadmium and lead to their graves. However, Western countries are increasingly exporting this problem to places like India.

This is the subject of a photography project by artist Sophie Gerrard titled E-Wasteland. Gerrard writes that “20 – 50 million tons of electronic waste, known as “e-waste” is generated annually worldwide.” When I got my Mac, I keep the PC so I could access to a Windows machine if needed.

Those new “green” light bulbs also have mercury and may cause more problems than they cure.

Post Script: I am getting a number of comments to this on Facebook. One is the need to make sure you erase all you data however you dispose of you computer. See When You Need to be Absolutely Certain Your Data is Really Gone.

Mama Kodak Took My Kodachrome Away

As Paul Simon sang, “I love to take a photograph. So mama don't take my Kodachrome away.” However, Kodak announced on June 22 that it is discontinuing its venerable Kodachrome line, ending its 74 year run.At the time of its demise, Kodachrome made up less than one percent of Kodak’s already diminished film sales, and only one lab in the world still processed it. However, it still stands as a poignant moment in the history of photography.

I used to use a lot of Kodachrome and still have many slides. As . , many of the most iconic photographs of the past century were shot using Kodachrome. Now I do digital like every one else and do slide shows online. I need to look into how to convert these slides to digital.

“Kodachrome. 
They give us those nice bright colors
They give us the greens of summers
Makes you think all the world's a sunny day, oh yeah.” Paul Simon

Looking for Great Painting Workshops in New England

This is simply a request for suggestions for this August and in general. If you know of good painting workshops in New England that run 3 to 5 days please leave a comment with the details. Thanks.

Painting of Woman in Green Sweater

Here is an 18" x 24" acrylic of a woman with a green sweater. it is the same model and pose that was depicted in Painting of Woman in a Pink Dress. That was the bottom and here is the top from the opposite side. This is a work in progress and I plan to do more with this painting. Suggestions?

Pistachio Consulting’s Enterprise Microsharing Tools Comparison

Nineteen micro-sharing applications are reviewed and compared in Pistachio Consulting’s Enterprise Microsharing Tools Comparison. This is an excellent resource for anyone considering micro-message adoption in the enterprise. The reports first defines micro-sharing as “social networking tools and systems that enable listening, awareness, communication and collaboration between people, through short bursts of text, links, and multimedia content.” And adds that they are a “surprisingly powerful way to connect people to one another for corporate benefit.”

I have reviewed two of the nineteen they cover on AppGap (see Socialcast Brings Twitter Style Functionality into the Enterprise, Socialcast Adds iPhone and Gmail Plug-ins, and Twitter as a Business Application). The report covers 6 pure play tools, 4 open source, 3 enterprise-built (but may come to market), 3 integrated, 2 self-service and 2 that are labeled as pseudo. Since the report came out there has been a rise in integrated micro-messaging with platforms. For example see my recent post on the 15th, Rise of Micro-messaging in Enterprise Collaboration Platforms. The report provides an excellent framework to also assess these newer tools. The section on “what we asked and why” is especially useful for looking at any tool in this space. These are many of the questions you need to ask any vendor you are considering.

Advantages and disadvantages for each of the 19 are provided, as well as a comparative chart on the presence of useful features. Skimming these lists also offers you an overview of what is needed and lacking in this market space in general (e.g., directory integration, groups, location, sharing, and SMS. I am not going to get into the details as you should get the complete report from Pistachio. It is a free download.

The report concludes that microsharing is becoming a significant enterprise opportunity. “The communications and collaboration potential these tools have for leveraging personal and team effectiveness is dramatic. The applications are inexpensive to run, save travel, lost time, email and other costs, unlock latent value and hidden knowledge, and increase employee productivity, motivation, retention and career opportunities. “ They add at the end that they strongly believe this is the “harbinger of an enterprise technology shift.” I would certainly agree and recommend this report to get better informed on the opportunity.

Intrix Is Bringing Semantic Technology to Enterprise 2.0

Recently I spoke with Intrix founder, Davorin Gabrovec, about his new venture. Intrix is a spin off of Intera, a successful business web application company, where he realized through working with hundreds of small to medium sized businesses in knowledge management, collaboration, and project management, that the next evolution in business tools was bringing semantic technology to enhance the migration of Web 2.0 to enterprise 2.0.

Intera was started two and half years ago with the Intrix spin off starting up earlier this year. Intirx plan to have a public launch in September. It is a cloud offering that uses semantic technology in several ways. The first way is to connect related data without having to manually tag or use other manual means. The second is to allow Intrix to learn from individual’s behaviors with the software and infer best practices to share with other users.

In the past most software was used to support transaction. Intrix, like many of the enterprise 2.0 tools is designed to support human interactions. People have learned to appreciate and understand the social side of software from the consumer Web. Now they want this capability in the their business tools.

Intrix features support user’s ability to collaborate, share, interact and exchange information, data and knowledge easily throughout the enterprise. As a social Enterprise solution it connects people with information, it merges collaboration, community and social networking tools into a single Web interface. It has also a an adjustable dashboard feature, so users can see and share information how they want to.

People in large enterprises often do not know what their fellow employees are doing. These interactions need to be made more transparent to make better use of the potential within the organization. Intrix is designed to use semantic technology to further enhance this transparency but adding semantic processing to human content sharing activities.

Davorin gave an example of the added power that semantic technology bring to enterprise 2.0. An experienced sales manager could use Intrix to manage the sales process, covering such items as sales leads, prospect and client information, and schedules. Intrix will learn how the experienced manager organizes and tracks the information. This knowledge can be passed on to new sales people as a best practice.

Davorin’s first start up, Intera, was selected by the Slovenian Innovation Forum as one of the most innovative and family friendly companies. Most recently, Intera was chosen as one of the best business ideas for 2009 by the National Finance Academy and they also won the Red Herring 100 Europe Award. Intrix also has great potential to do well. I look forward to learning more as it becomes more public.

Rise of Micro-messaging in Enterprise Collaboration Platforms

It seems like all the enterprise collaboration platforms are adding more features to become a suite. Th emor eI talk to the more they are developing a similar comprehensive suite. This is not a bad thing, It validates the market an these features.

One of the key elements is the addition of micro-blogging or micro-messaging. For example see some of my App Gap reviews:

Yakabod Provides Robust Knowledge Management with a Social Side

BlogBridge Release 6.6 Integrates Twitter with Comprehensive RSS Reader Capabilities

CubeTree Releases Innovative Enterprise Collaboration Platform

Atlassian Announces Confluence 3.0

Traction Software Releases Team Page 4.1 – Better Enabling the Social Side of Work.

I am sure I missed some. At the recent Enterprise 2.0 conference a number of others announced this capability such as Central Desktop. I welcome additions to this list through comments.

CubeTree Engages Its User Community in Product Development

CubeTree is a robust entry into the enterprise collaboration market offering some very innovative features that take advantage of the social potential on the Web. They are also using social software to engage their users in determining the course of their weekly software update releases. I reviewed their collaboration platform recently for the AppGap blog, (see CubeTree Releases Innovative Enterprise Collaboration Platform). I was interested in their software development process and will explore it in greater depth in this post. I spoke with Carlin Wiegner, CEO and co-founder of CubeTree to go over their process.

We first went over their objectives for the software development process. Carlin said they want to run experiments. They are willing to toss out new features to see how users respond. Then they will retain, refine, or even remove a new feature based on user response. Carlin said that user happiness is paramount. It is key to adoption. Engaging users in the process is one way to strengthen user commitment. I have seen this many times myself. If people feel that the software is being developed to meet their needs, they are much more likely to not leave it on the shelf.

Carlin said they also want to be very efficient with their money so they have adopted a lean approach with small teams and many iterations. Lean is a variant of agile development adapted from Toyota’s auto manufacturing process. It is designed to minimize waste.

They also recognized that developer happiness is very important. They minimize meetings and are careful with team dynamics. We discussed how people issues determine a large part of developer productivity. You need to pair the right people, not simply for compatibility of skills but also of personality. They will shift teams around as they go through the short iteration cycles to maximize this compatibility. Every team has someone with user experience skills and with visual design skills. They also put on someone who is good at adding sizzle to features where possible.

CubeTree picked a cloud offering to promote flexibility and allow for rapid new releases. They settled on weekly releases of new versions. It forces product management to ask for the minimum necessary to make user cases possible. Developers get a good balance between thinking and coding. There is also good long-term quality because it forces you to automate much of the testing. They work in Ruby on Rails and use continuous integration to quickly detect any issues and avoid having many bugs.

To prepare for the weekly releases, CubeTree uses a product backlog maintained by product management. Early in the week, engineering starts reviewing features and some features get visual mockups to work out experience questions. Engineering forms a tentative list of what goes into a release. The weekly release process starts Thursday at the end of day. Features are completed the following Tuesday night and any bug fixing happens on Wednesday. The release is staged on Thursday morning and ships Thursday night through the cloud. They have experimented to determine what days work best and settled on this pattern.

Carlin said they decided that the practice of weekly releases was also a good way to engage users in the process. They tell them about new features and conduct 30and 60-minute feedback calls every week. Users can vote on what’s more important to change. To enable this constant feedback, CubeTree studies aggregated users’ activity via Web analytics and a custom-built data warehouse. I was especially interested in these two practices so we dove a little deeper into them.

They use a tool, UserVoice, that allows them to get users involved on a feature- by-feature basis. At any feature they place a widget that allows you to submit an idea on the feature. It directs you to their Feedback Forum and shows the status of several features as shown below.

At the forum you can comment on the feature, vote on it, see trends in voting, and comment on other’s comments as shown below.

You can also enter new topics and make requests for new features as shown below.

Carlin said they did not want to just rely on what people said but also look at statistics on what they do, so they implemented a data warehousing tool that collects and aggregates statistics on user activity. They can see what features are used and not used, and tracker overall user trends. They also look beyond their users for new ideas. They explore consumer social networks and keep up with their competitors for good new ideas.

There are three targets for new releases: experimental, beta, and generally available. The experimental features are only shipped to themselves. In this case they’re not sure whether it’s valuable or what the user experience should be. They also don’t want to worry about scalability yet. The experimental status also relaxes developers.

They ship beta features to a subset of companies. Then they can dynamically add new companies as the week progresses. They sometimes ship different versions to different clients to run experiments. This gives wider feedback and allows them to start measuring usage quantitatively.

The generally available release ships to everyone and bigger features are announced to users who opt-in. However, they remain open to dropping features that are not well received so CubeTree does not suffer from feature glut. I think this is an important decision as I have seen a number of promising software offerings get overloaded and lose their usefulness and ease of use.

I have found over the years that there is a very positive correlation with the amount of user involvement and the quality of the software. I like CubeTree’s creative use of social software to engage users to provide feedback combined with data warehousing to balance their comments with actions.

Is Twitter Coming to Your TV Screen?

Here is another example of TV and Web convergence, according to the Wall Street Journal, Verizon is working making Twitter feeds available on TV screens to its FIOS subscribers, The WSJ mentioned that Verizon is testing a service that will show a stream of real-time Twitter posts related to the show a viewer is watching. The Twitter TV “widget” is in beta now, and employees are trying it out, but Verizon has bigger plans. It quotes Jen Byrne, director of business development for Verizon, “This seems to be an experience people really want.” I would agree.

Now you can tweet about a TV show while it is happening and see everything on the same screen. Like many other Twitter add-ons, Twitter says it officially has “little to do” with the project.

Worthless Store Transforms Junk into Art

Here is a great idea. It is the ultimate recycle. The Pollocks art collective recently opened a temporary shop named Worthless. It plays with notions of consumerism and the perceived value of material objects. Participants brought in random objects to the London store that they considered junk, everything from old hard drives to tattered shoes. The Worthless team then transformed all the cast-off goods into unique pieces of art. Customers were then able to buy back their submitted items for whatever the felt they were worth.

You can see a video about the project at the PSFK post on the effort.

This idea might catch on. Instead of throwing stuff out, have an artist make into an art work. Many great art works have started from junk. Why not have this done for you?

Send me an email with a picture of your junk and I can give you an idea of what I might do.

Cambridge Art Association Summer Art Fair

The Cambridge Art Association runs an annual summer sale. It is located at University Place on 124 Mt. Auburn St. Cambridge MA 02138 hours: Monday through Friday 9am to 6pm and Saturday 9am to 1pm. The fair runs from July 10 to September 1, 2009. All items are under $300. Here are my three works in the fair.

When You Need to be Absolutely Certain Your Data is Really Gone

I learned something new from this interview about how I was unknowingly leaving data exposed so I want to share my AppGap post on Drive eRazer here. We often talk about the new transparency in enterprise 2.0. However, there are times when we need to go the other way and eliminate any access to information. Perhaps you believe the system messages and think that anything put in your trash folder and deleted goes away. Not so. You might need some expertise to find it, but is still there.

I recently spoke with Jon Johnson of WiebeTech, a subsidiary of CRU-DataPort. Jon said that as a test, they bought twenty used drives on eBay and recovered everything from corporate data to email conversations to financial data to legal documents. To correct this problem, WiebeTech's new Drive eRazer™ hardware solution erases all data from a hard drive quickly and easily. You simply plug it into the hard drive and it does the rest. Here is one of the devices.

Drive eRazer is like a shredder for electronic data, and there is even an incinerator model. Drive eRazer writes over every bit of a drive. Even after one pass, there can be ‘”ghosts” of data that experts can piece together. A second pass approach is available that takes this stuff out completely, even the ghosts. After it's done, there's nothing left to recover.

Jon explained that there is a secure erase function on almost all hard drives. It was developed as a standard by the industry. However, it is very hard to access and use as the industry experts did not want people easily able to accidentally delete stuff. Drive eRazer takes advantage of this utility to do its job. This can be important in a variety of contexts and is essential when you want to sell or donate your hard drives.

I certainly learned something. Drive eRazer is compliant with the Department of Defense requirements for "clearing" a "Non-Removable Rigid Disk." The specification requires destruction of a hard drive containing government classified data.

Founded in 2000, in addition to erasing data, the focus of WiebeTech is delivering high performance portable storage solutions for consumer, business and government markets. WiebeTech also offers computer forensic devices which are critical tools used by criminal investigators collecting suspect data. In 2008, CRU-DataPort acquired WiebeTech to complement its line of data security and data mobility solutions.

MySpace and Bebo Running Out of Friends. How Will Twitter Fare?

MySpace and Bebo are falling behind in the world of social networking. Charles Arthur and Jemima Kiss recently examined their decline and their rivals' rise in the Guardian. MySpace was purchased by Rupert Murdoch in July 2005 for $580,000,000 and Bebo, big social networking site in the UK, bought by AOL in March 2008 for $850,000,000. Now MySpace is decline in terms of time spent on the site per user and number of page views. The same is true for Bebo.

On the other hand, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, three very much younger networking sites that have steadfastly refused to be bought have thrived, while their apparently better-funded rivals are struggling. Facebook has turned down approaches from Yahoo; and Twitter from Facebook. In the US, every social networking site increased its audience over the year - apart from MySpace, which lost more than 1 million unique users to fall to 63.2 million.

The authors speculated that that “social networking may, like other networking trends, be one of those elements of the internet where the winner takes nearly all: if your friends have a MySpace and a Bebo and a Facebook account, but are spending more and more time on Facebook, where will you go? The outcome is inevitable, even if it only happens slowly.”

Good points as Friendster found out. A free web service can be easily dropped. You only investment is the social capital you put into it. I found the best part of Facebook was the status field. Now I rarely use it as Twitter has replaced this function with a better service and most of my Facebook friends went to Twitter. When I go to the trouble of updating my Facebook status I usually do the same for LinkedIn that added this feature. As I have written before, I think that Twitter has the fix its interface issues and its archiving capabilities or it may go the way of MySpace and Bebo. How many micro-blogging tools do you need?

They close with a quote from John Riedl, a professor of computer science at the University of Minnesota, who in 2008 noted a decline in the users of MySpace. "One of the challenges with running one of these large social networking sites is you are always trying to figure out what it is that people want and then balancing that against how do you make money off it."

Will Twitter decline before they figure out the money issue or will they make the needed fixes?

Expanding Web Search Part Two: Real Time Search

Yesterday I wrote about Focused Search-Based Applications as one way that Web and enterprise search is expanding. Here is another. The Wall Street Journal recently posted an interesting article on this topic, Internet Giants Look For Edge In Real-Time Search. It started by explaining that, “that real-time search helps Internet users find Web posts, including those from San Francisco's Twitter Inc., seconds after publication.” Twitter is one real-time search engine and others are joining the market.

The article goes on to add that making sense of real-time data is difficult for the big search players and their current algorithms. Their results are heavily weighed towards older Web pages that have established credibility and attracted large audiences, an approach at odds with real-time search.

Twitter users are constantly pouring out a flood of tweets, many are seconds old but from obscure users with little track record. How do you judge the quality and reputation that Google uses as part of its ranking? Also, tweets are written to take up as few characters as possible so spelling is often changed and acronyms, sometimes unique, are often used.

I see two different uses here. Google for time tested material and Twitter for what is happening right now. But how do you filter out the bad content in twitter like Google does? For now, the best way to determine the quality is to know the tweeter. On Twitter itself, Dion Hitchcliffe tweeted to me and @KMHobbie, “Twitter seems to be a solution at last for "filter failure." Rather have info endorsed by people I know.” I agree. I also look at the content, itself, and evaluate it on its own merits as most useful tweets point to expanded content in a blog or article. Meanwhile, there is a race to develop some relevant quality algorithms and spam filters for real time search.

I also asked the question here, When Do You Use Twitter Search vs. Google Web Search? I said that at times, I get better results on niche topics such as SOA or Agile development through Twitter search than through Google. I also get more current information.

Theron Kelso based on his own research added the useful comment: “Twitter search is better for: Current events, popular culture, and direct access to people for the purpose of continuing conversations.

Google is better for: current research findings (formal) in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (with the possible exception of computer technology), how-to documents, and historical documents.”

Good points. However, the potentially fatal flaw for Twitter is that it dumps its data index after three months so you cannot search back after the ever rolling three month window. I use Twitter for personal knowledge management, just as I do this blog. I can go back and find stuff I blogged four years ago. The blog is a running record of what I feel is important. With Twitter I am saving useful links by tweeting or retweeting them. It is a great source to find information and to archive it for short term use. It complement sthe blog. I also tweet about events I attend but with the three emonth data index dump I cannot go back and find this information. So I am going to look for another real time search tool that can provide this, as long as they can migrate the traffic. Friendster lost followers to MySpace who lost some followers to Facebook. Will this happen to Twitter? You need to be able to go short and go long. Perhaps someone will build an archive app on top of Twitter just like TweetDeck works as an interface app.

So I discussed search-based applications and real-time search. Now where else will Web search go?

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Expanding Web Search Part One: Focused Search-Based Applications

This is the first of a two part series on how the boundaries of search are being pushed beyond the familiar Google style broad Web search. Tomorrow I will discuss real time search. I recently spoke with Eric Rogge of Exalead about how search is playing an expanded role for enterprises inside and outside the firewall. He mentioned that the major players such as Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo are continuing their battle for broad based Web search. Microsoft has now brought Bing into play in this market.

Exalead is not competing here but focusing instead on the other end of the market, operating in the long tail by enabling businesses to create purpose-built search-based applications. I have written about them before (see Exalead's CloudView Offers Integrated Search Capabilities). CloudView is one way of attacking the question I raised in my post, We Need to Tear Down the Social Media Silos. Exalead is bringing search to new enterprise tasks and expanding its role through these search-based applications. See my post, Tweepz brings Exalead search to Twitter for an example of this. In our most recent conversation, Eric talked about other search tools they've built to find and refine all results from the ocean of Web content. These include audio, video, image-based, and even ranking tools.

For example, they and a systems integration partner built a search-based application for GEFCO, a French logistics company than manages the transportation and delivery of new cars from factory to dealer in Europe. They needed to be able to look at inventory and then keep track of delivery status. GEFCO tried to do this in the traditional manner with a SQL relational database but it was too complex. With a structured database you need to set up multiple data entry forms that require specific data types of data (e.g., car model, location, etc.). There needs to be many data entry forms to do the proper inquiry and car dealers and sales people get frustrated with these specific requirements.

Exalead was able to change the approach for GEFCO to a search based application where you typed in information in a single field as in Google and the search engine did natural language processing of the request without the requirements of a structured database. This greatly simplified the task and gave the car guys what they were used to on the Web. However, in this case you do not want thousands or millions of results as in Google but the single correct answer (e.g., where is the car? When will it arrive?). This application won an Europe award for IT innovation.

Eric said there are many applications, such as this tracking system, with very focused requirements. Another example is patient records in a healthcare system. Exalead also implemented a search-based application for the French postal system to track packages and people. They wanted to be able to answer such questions as where is the package or where is the postal worker? It integrated information from several databases to answer these questions through one interface.

He showed me several other examples. There was the Wikifier (see below), a use case example (wikifier.labs.exalead.com). It parses a web page and creates tags that aid in search. It will also recognize a topic and create a link to a relevant page such Wikipedia article or a search results page from Exalead's web search tool (www.exalead.com/search). It is a connecting tool or information mashup. As you go through the page you can hover over content and see relevant background information. This same concept could be applied to an enterprise application that covers business topics.

In another example, Eric showed me a restaurant locator tool called 'RestMiner'. Another use-case example, it mashes together a number of information sources to you get reviews from multiple review sites. A buzz score is calculated from data drawn from multiple sites. Here is another way to break down the information silos on the Web. Google Maps is also integrated to give you location information. Like the Wikifier, RestMiner was built as a proof of concept and could be applied to many business applications.

These examples shown some of the possibilities for search-based applications focused on very specific topics where you want more precise answers. Metrics such as the buzz meter can be build into the application to better aggregate and interpret the data. Many companies have data located in a variety of sources and formats. They do not have to rebuild these applications if a search-based application can work across them breaking down the silos. The Exalead concept of search-based applications has been well received. They had 80 percent growth from 2008 over 2007 and are on track to do it again in 2009. You can also read more about this topic on the Exalead blog.

My App Gap Posts for June 2009

Here are my App Gap posts for June. 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 June. There will be more in July.

Atlassian Announces Confluence 3.0

SkillSoft Introduces More Web 2.0 Features with SkillPort? 7.0 Learning Management System

InnovationSpigit Increases Employee Engagement in Innovation

Caspio Provides Fast and Flexible Online Database Development for Business Users

Drive eRazer for When You Need to Make Sure Your Data is Really Gone

SelectMinds Provides Secure Social Networking Platform for Enterprise Use

CubeTree Releases Innovative Enterprise Collaboration Platform

Twitter as a Business Application

Painting of Woman in a Pink Dress

Here is a 18 x 24" acrylic painting of a woman in a pink dress, at least a painting of her feet. It is the third in a series that includes, Painting of Woman on a Stool and Painting of Woman with Flip Flops.

Boston’s Best Fried Chicken

It is the Fourth of July and what is more patriotic than fried chicken. The Boston Globe ran a story on Boston’s best fried chicken, Fried and True. The article makes you hungry and there is even a video. They list a number of local spots but indicate that you have to go to Virginia to Mrs. Rowe’s Restaurant & Bakery in Staunton to get real pan fired chicken. Well, I am very lucky as my wife makes wonderful southern pan fried chicken that she learned how to make in Arkansas. It has to be the best in Boston.

My wife looked at the video and noted more similarities than differences. She uses more spices and Mrs. Rowe uses buttermilk in the coating but regular milk, like my wife, in the gravy. Otherwise ingredients and methods are the same. Now I was introduced to real fried chicken in New Orleans as my mother made amazing fan fried chicken in the style of what my wife and Mrs. Rowe produces.

Here are pictures of the process starting with the floured chicken this then pan fired. Then the white gravy is made as well as the mashed potatoes and biscuits. A nice champagne goes well with this.

But if you are not able to come to our house, then look at the following. We plan to check some of them out.

Highland Kitchen in Somerville, on Monday nights only, produces buttermilk fried chicken. This will be our first stop as it is not too far away. It is located at 150 Highland Ave, Somerville, MA (617) 625-1131 Post Script: We went to Highland Kitchen. It exceeded expectations and is a great bar with live blues on Sunday night. More importantly, the chicken was excellent, lots of crust with juicy tender inside. Biscuit was excellent. Mashed potatoes were well done but a bit too much on the garlic. We will be back for chicken and the music as they offer a fired chicken wing appetizer every day. Here is an example of a full order only available on Mondays for now.

Poppa B’s. PigTrip wrote æPoppa B's opens at 7:00 AM (9:00 AM Sunday), so their breakfast items are a main attraction: served with the usual eggs, pancakes and waffles are atypical hot sausage, biscuits and sausage gravy, grits, steak, fried pork chops and fried fish. Lunch and dinner items lean more to soul than barbecue, with smothered pork chops, fried whiting, fried catfish and fried chicken leading the way. The ribs (both beef and pork) are billed as dry rubbed and hickory smoked. Chicken is available smoked, smothered or fried (various piece options). Pulled pork is available on a sandwich.” It sounds good to me. It is located at 1100 Blue Hill Ave, Dorchester, MA (617) 825-0700.

Summer Shack has multiple locations. It more of a seafood place but the chicken is good. The Boston location is at 50 Dalton Street in the Back Bay, across from the Sheraton Hotel entrance and the Hynes Auditorium. Upstairs from Kings Bowling Alley. 617-867-9955. Post Script 2: We went to the Cambridge Summer Shack near Fresh Pond and got take out. It was excellent. Tender chicken and crispy outside. Even the potato salad was good and very fresh. You could taste each ingredient. Since this is available every day it becomes a welcome take out option for us. Here are tow portions combined.

Mrs. Jones, It is located at 2255 Dorchester Avenue, Dorchester, MA 02124
(617) 696-0180 in the Lower Mills neighborhood. Hidden Boston writes “the menu is a lot more interesting than your typical takeout joint. Tender brisket, mouthwatering cornbread, buttery pork chops (perhaps the best this writer has had in Boston), gooey macaroni and cheese, flavorful cornbread stuffing, decadent candied yams… whole deep-fried chicken or turkey (the deep-fried white meat and dark meat turkey are both tremendous), ham hocks, and smoked turkey legs. And there are some really interesting entrees that are served every now and then here, including neck bones, pig feet, oxtails, and fish and grits.” I will take the chicken.

My Fast Forward Posts for June 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 July.

What will be the Business Model for the Cloud as Data and Content Storage Becomes a Utility?

We Need to Tear Down the Social Media Silos Launching Social Networks for the Enterprise

My Notes and Thoughts on Google Wave Video Demo

My Notes on Dion Hinchcliffe Enterprise 2.0 Conference Workshop - Part One

My Notes on Dion Hinchcliffe Enterprise 2.0 Conference Workshop - Part Two

Mike Gotta’s Reality 2.0: Getting Started with Enterprise Social Networking at Enterprise 2.0 Conference

Mixing Old and New School Communication

Tom Davenport recently posted a nice piece, Why 1.5 Is Greater Than 2.0, that discussed the benefits of mixing old and media. Always the rock of reason, Tom wrote that asking which is better Web 1.0 or Web 2.0 is actually a false dichotomy. They complement each other. I would agree.

Enterprise 2.0 brings a new dimension but it does not replace anymore than TV replaced the radio or the telephone replaced in person conversation. Tom cites healthcare where this is very evident. We still need the scientific/medical establishment's 1.0 use of research, clinical trials, and licensed practitioners to fight disease. At the same time social media can offer patient-generated content and communities than provides an enriched dimension.

I trust the medical establishment will not abandon the old school ways of sharing information and I do not want them to. I also like that I can use Web 1.0 email with some of my doctors now. However, there are situations where I wish I had the patient’s perspective before I made certain healthcare decisions. I applaud the rise of online healthcare communities where such information is shared.

In a similar way, crowd sourcing does not replace the need for expertise. Malcolm Gladwell and James Surowiecki had a mock debate a few years back on this (see Blink vs. Wisdom of Crowds – Experts vs. the Multitude). For example, Gladwell asked Surowiecki if a 1000 people in a village in China would be better at collectively looking at x-rays than a single highly trained radiologist. I commented that I think both theories have their place and each counters a standard decision model.

Many of the enterprise 2.0 vendors recognize the need to support old and new ways of working and provide ways to integrate Web 2.0 and Web 1.0 tools. I recently talked with both Telligent’s Rob Howard and CubeTree’s Carlin Wiegner, Ross Fubini, and Gita Gupta on this. Enterprise 2.0 tools can provide the social side of collaboration to complement the transactional side.

Tom closes with, “the key word is "augment," not "replace." 1.5 is greater than either 1.0 or 2.0.” Yes.

A Short History of Micro-messaging from Marcia Conner

The Fast Company blog recent posted, Twitterbursts: It’s Not About The Tools; It’s All About The Tools by Marcia Conner of Pistachio Consulting (aka @marciamarcia on Twitter). I always appreciate getting the history of communication channels, especially when there is a cognitive twist thrown in. In a past life I was a cognitive psychologist who studied how media effects cognition. The series of posts, History of Knowledge Management in Six Parts, took on a similar task which I originally called, Knowledge Management is an Emerging Field with a Long History.

Marcia notes that meaning is bigger than words. The more you know someone, the fewer words you need to convey meaning. In fact, very young children learn meaning before words and often invent their own words before they learn their parent’s language. I was told I had about 50 variations on ugh, each with its own meaning. Parents who pay close attention learn this vocabulary and provide validation to their children that helps with their language acquisition.

The best new tools enhance existing means of communication and this is what Twitter does. As Marcia writes, “You have been microsharing and networking since you first asked to be carried and your toys were made of wood.” What is new with Twitter messages “is how they help us do it (forcing compactness and distributing to portable devices) and who we share with (often previous strangers who share our passions).”

While the best new tools enhance existing means of communication, they also bring new capabilities as Marcia notes. We need to learn how to best use these capabilities. We generally start with the past. The phonetic alphabet first recorded oral poetry before it went on to take advantage of the capabilities text offered (See Eric Havelock’s Origins of Western Literacy). I think we are still discovering what micro-messaging can provide. Marcia writes that it can, “amplify voices and net people-picked answers fast… even update our collaboration capacity; improving our mindfulness by encouraging us to ask ourselves consistently, “Is this something I should share?”

This is all true but I wonder what else is in store. The inventors of the alphabet did not imagine War and Peace or the precise sharing of scientific information through journals. The ability to enhance random access in books took over 1500 years and it appears people did not know they could read in silence for about that long. Now I am not equating Twitter with the invention of the alphabet but the alphabet offers an extreme example of what a new media can bring. I kidded Marcia about her ability to engage in Twitter speak at the Enterprise 2.0 conference but I also admired it as both a skill and an example of how new media can effect the way we think and sharpen our communication abilities.