Portals and KM

My App Gap Posts for February 2011

Here are my AppGap posts for February. I am also writing in another Corante blog, FastForward (see right side bar for links), The AppGap posts began toward the end of January 2008.  Here, I am primarily doing product commentaries with a few other things thrown in. Below are the ones for February. There will be more in March.

Hyper-Social Summit – Creating Successful Online Communities – Part One

Hyper-Social Summit – Creating Successful Online Communities – Part Two

Hyper-Social Summit – Creating Successful Online Communities – Part Three

Lotusphere 2011: My Session and Interview Notes

Recommind Advances End-to-End eDiscovery

Jackbe Moves Further into Real-Time Intelligence

 

Cape Town South Africa Area: Franschhoek Wine Region: Part Two – Wineries

This is the fourteenth in a series of posts covering Cape Town and the surrounding Western Cape region. The Franschhoek wine region is east of Cape Town and was settled by French Huguenots over 300 years ago and retains a French influence. I covered the town and the surrounding hills in my last post. In this one we look at some wineries. A few are from nearby Stellenbsoch. Many wineries have tours with free tasting and many offer lunch.  You can see some of our lunches below. 

       
                
              

 

Cape Town South Africa Area: Franschhoek Wine Region: Part One – Town and Hills

This is the thirteenth in a series of posts covering Cape Town and the surrounding Western Cape region. The Franschhoek wine region was settled by French Huguenots over 300 years ago and retains a French influence. It considers itself the culinary capital of South Africa and the food is very good and reasonable. There are a couple of breakfasts at the end of the series. You can hike up above the town in the surrounding hills. 

          

TV Industry Taps Social Media for Oscars and other Events

Continuing its coverage of social media and TV, Brian Stelter reported in the New York Times on how TV Industry Taps Social Media, in this case for the Oscars.  Recognizing that people multiple task with their computer while watching TV as I wrote about yesterday, ABC created a companion Web site with behind-the-scenes video streams. Oscar winners will be seen accepting an award on the TV set, then seen celebrating backstage on the Web.

The article quoted Ian Schafer, the chief executive of the digital agency Deep Focus, who said that Twitter and Facebook messages about shows may well be “the most efficient way to drive tune-in.”  I have found this for blogs and it makes sense for TV. To me Twitter is a great traffic driver, more than a direct message deliverer.  Far from competing than TV, the Twitter “water-cooler effect” makes big shows even bigger. The Grammy Awards had its highest rating in a decade this year with a lot of online support.  Again, the same holds for blogs and Twitter, in my view.

The article also quoted Dick Costolo, the chief executive of Twitter, that online conversations about TV shows turn the programs into events, “meaning people watch them as they happen,” blunting the impact of digital video recording. This makes sense, also the Times noted that digital recording remains strong.

The Times reported more data to support this trend. During the Super Bowl this year, Twitter users set a new record by sending 4,064 messages each second, the highest number of messages per second recorded during any sporting event.. In addition, a recent study by Deloitte of American consumers ages 14 to 75 found that 42 percent sometimes surfed the Web while watching TV. I do all the time, especially during onscreen commercials. The eye balls for ads may be drifting online. 

 

TV Web Convergence Already Occurring Through Multi-Tasking

I have written a bit about the convergence of television and the Web on this blog.  There are many plans for this to occur in single box, either through a television or a computer. However, people are not waiting to a Nielsen study that came out in 2010.  It found that “In the last quarter of 2009, simultaneous use of the Internet while watching TV reached three and a half hours a month, up 35% from the previous quarter. Nearly 60% of TV viewers now use the Internet once a month while also watching TV.”

Mac Slocum at O’Reilly notes the “disconnect between television's lean-back experience and the web's lean-forward positioning.” He believes “a big reason why web and TV haven't yet converged in a broadly adopted super device is because it's uncomfortable -- physically and mentally -- to rock between push and pull. It's a heck of a lot easier to prop a notebook on your lap while the TV plays in the background.”

This is spot on. TV and the Web actually complement each other. I confess to be one of these multi-taskers. This is especially true as I watched sports events. I tend to go to my computer for Twitter or other tasks during commercials. When I look at Twitter I see that others are doing the same thing. I do not watch videos on my computer while I do work on it. I watch them on my TV.  I would not want them on the same device unless it had multiple windows but even then I would prefer two devices.

Are you doing this multi-tasking with your computer and TV also?  Do you agree that putting them on a single device might be dysfunctional?

 

Clarizen Moves Beyond Online Project Management

Clarizen provides applications to support work tasks within the enterprise and I first wrote about them in 2008 (see Clarizen: Collaborative Online Project Management for Small-Midsize Businesses).  I commented in my first post that project management is one of the killer apps for web 2.0 within the enterprise. It was one of the applications that first excited me about the business potential of web 2.0 (e.g., An Enterprise 2.0 Poster Child in the IT Department). This thought still holds true from my perspective. Since I last spoke to them, Clarizen has undertaken some innovative moves to extend this class of applications. 

I spoke with Sharon Vardi about their new moves.  Clarizen felt that while many project management tools adequately addressed the planning part, the work execution part was not properly addressed. In addition, some of the tools make project planning too complex. I would agree with both of these points based on personal experience.  In response Clarizen has adopted a design approach of what they term “robust simplicity” and extended functionality beyond the planning phase.

To address what they refer to as the work execution phase, Clarizen has combined some of the features found in project management tools with those found in collaboration tools.  They also have designed these features to be easily used by all types of project teams members and not just the program management experts.  This includes such capabilities as resource management, scheduling & planning, budgeting, time and expenses, issues tracking and email integration.

The implementation process has been simplified so they can both sell and deliver via the phone and the Web. On the ground implementation services are not necessary. They simply run two webinars and most firms are good to go. This has allowed them to adopt a “land and expand” strategy. With one client they sold 90 seats and within a month they had expanded by hundreds of additional subscriptions.

In the past many work processes tended to be static and fixed. This allowed for a greater focus on planning since once the work started it often did not change. Now the work situation is much more likely to change quickly and a work execution tool needs to be flexible to accommodate these changes.  I can remember about ten years ago having to take the top four people on a project off the work execution to spend three months re-planning the project using one of the very complex project management tools.  We felt it was a huge waste of time. Today it would be even more of a disaster.

Clarizen also developed email integration so team members could work where they tend to spend much of their time.  You can see all of the emails related to a project through a single click. You can also have Clarizen receive updates through email.  They have extended this integration to apply to many of the commonly used enterprise apps such as Salesforce.com, Google Apps and Intacct. For example, this allows you to go from Salesforce.com to Clarizen once a deal is closed and the related work needs to start. You can also go from the popular help desk application, Zendesk, to Clarizen when more complex issue resolution is required.

Clarizen is promoting transparency with their cross-application integration and the features within their tool. To demonstrate some of this transparency, Clarizen created a road map widget that allows you to share project status with others. To practice their own approach, they have made the status of their own tool updates available on their website. Here is a sample of the road map widget looking at their own efforts.

You can see this for yourself at their site.  I like what they are doing and the market has responded. Sharon told me that they have achieved 40% growth for the last six consecutive quarters. Clarizen also received the Codie Award for best project management software for 2010. I look forward to seeing their next moves. 

 

Looking at Middle Management’s Role in Business Software Decisions

Here is a report that asks an interesting quesion. In December 2010, inlevel conducted a research on "Middle Management as Business Software Influencer."  They start with an interesting point. Software tended to be sold to senior business management and CIOs. However, because of increased access to the Web, greater use of cloud applications and simpler applications, a growing number of software purchases do not require senior level support nor need to involve IT.  So this study looked at the current role of middle managers in software purchases. They gathered responses from 210 middle managers across a variety of industries in the US.

The research found that 42% of middle managers surveyed said they are actively engaged in the enterprise software selection process and 41% said no one a cared about their views.  They want to talk with vendors about their offerings.  Asked to list obstacles to their involvement, 24% expect that IT people will be against their software ideas, 23% expect senior management to oppose them, 22% said they need a sold business case and 14% said it is hard find information about the software. Only 21% did not see any obstacles and expect that their software suggestions will be accepted. 

Their advice to vendors is enhance the role that middle managers play in the selection process by providing clear descriptions of the functions of their products, more training materials directed at business professional and make the relationship the software and their more explicit.

How do they get information on software now? The respondents said that 24% comes from industry news, 20% from their IT department, 12% from friends, 2% from social media. They largest category of responses came from the 38% who said they did not have such information.

In a related but different question, when asked about where they go to get software information, 52% said they search on the Web, 33% said they talk to their IT department, 16% said they talk directly to vendors, and 21% said they were not interested.

In another related question about their preferred ways to gather information from vendors, the largest category was the 38% who said they do not bother because they do not have purchasing authority. The next in line at about 20% each was phone, email and reading web sites. Only 4% said that never ask vendors because they do not trust them.

This tells me that that middle mangers are somewhat involved in software decisions and some would like to be more involvd and others do not seem to care.  Without a baseline from prior years, it is hard to tell if this role is increasing due to the changing market factors.  I do know that many enterprise 2.0 software firms are trying the ╥seed and expand╙ strategy. They make a very low entry point and then hope to grow the numbers. A future study would benefit from also looking at the price of software purchases as a variable.  I do think they are asking an interesting question and would like to see more work here.

 

What Web Users Want: Requested UI Themes

I recently saw an excellent study by Derek Singleton of Software Advice, Ten Consumer Web UI Themes We’d Like to See in Business Applications. In this post I want to focus on the top five of these that we have embraced for the Darwin Awareness Engine™.  Respondents were asked to name their top pick so the percentages total to a 100.

The first one was “fewer screens” with 19% of the respondents selecting it. As Derek said, “respondents were most keen on eliminating the number of screens they must navigate to achieve their objectives. We have to agree on this point; waiting for your page to load is so 1999. With the Awareness Engine everything basically happens for the user on one screen and we have designed the system to quickly bring in fresh content.  You can see our basic screen below from the Darwin on Enterprise Social Media. 

The Scan Cloud™ of the top terms within your target content in the middle will change as you select new focal points and that will cause a change in the related content within the right column. The BuzzTape™ will move across the top of the screen but you will not go to a new screen as you explore new content. Only clicking on a content title in the right column to take you to the actual content will open a new screen. In this case your original Awareness Engine screen remains in place for reference.

In second place was “Google suggested search” with 14% of respondents. Derek wrote that this “suggests that some users prefer text searches to navigation. Ideally, an application should provide intuitive navigation and free text search.” We do not provide Google search as we offer an awareness engine rather a search engine. However, it is set up to allow for “search” terms that we call “attractors” because of our Chaos Theory roots. These attractors allow you to focus the Scan Could on a subset of content with your target and have the changed focus come to the current screen rather than navigating to a new screen which most search engines, including Google, require. 

Third place was “context-sensitive navigation” chosen by 13% of the respondents. The Darwin Awareness is all about context.  As you mouse over the scan cloud, related themes are highlighted. When you click on a theme, the related content in the right column is also highlighted. The goal is to allow you to quickly see the context of the themes. When you click to go to an actual content, the original screen remains available for context.

Tied for third was “keyword alerts” also with 13%. While we do not yet provide alerts through another channel such as email, we operate with the spirit of Derek’s comments on this feature. He wrote, that some tools provide “keyword searches that will constantly scan the Twitterverse (or other channels) and provide up-to-the-minute results on a frequent basis. We do operate in real time. We can set up and save an attractor (keyword). Then you can go back to it on a frequent basis so what is happening right now. You can even set up a window and have the Awareness Engine move through your attractors, providing an alert mechanism as you work on other tasks. As Derek wrote, “we’d like to see more user-definable alert mechanisms.” The Awareness Engine offers this capability, we simply keep the action within the application.

Fifth place went to “more white space” at 11% of respondents. As you see above, we employed to principle of as simple as possible, but no simpler.  This was the last one with double g figure results. We will continue to refine our UI and welcome suggestions. Thanks to Derek for this survey. 

 

Photos of Cape Town South Africa Area: Simon’s Town and Fish Hoek

This is the twelfth in a series of posts covering Cape Town and the surrounding Western Cape region. Simon’s Town is on the same peninsula as the Cape of Good Hope. Boulder’s Beach in Simon’s Town is an excellent spot to see the African Penguin. Fisk Hoek has colorful beach huts and another good beach.

                

 

Cape Town South Africa Area: Cape of Good Hope Region

This is the eleventh in a series of posts covering Cape Town and the surrounding Western Cape region. South of the city lies the Cape of Good Hope region. It is the most southwest part of Africa. There are many wild baboons and ostriches, as well as great beaches for surfing. 

   
     


  

My Favorite Tweets for February 1 – 15 2011

Here is another in a series of posts that provide access to my favorite tweets that contain links to useful information.  Some of these I did to link to things I found useful and others are RTs that I want to save for the same reason. Since Twitter archiving is an oxymoron, I am now going to post my favorite links for the month so they can be easily accessed later.

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

Also see the Darwineco favorite tweets.

from @attspin: Why hard to socialize on SharePoint? http://bit.ly/hHxqLR @sympmarc > its doc centric rather than people centric

RT @elsua: ♺ @AnaDataGirl Great article by @oscarberg on Social Collaboration http://bit.ly/fdvaF2 / Agree!

Obama Budget offers U.S. Tech Spending Growth http://bloom.bg/eB41UZ

RT @elsua: ♺ @rawn "Can Consultants Save Us Money By Doing More Work Remotely?" http://bit.ly/hIMVjY Required Reading!

Hey Grammys, you can’t tape-delay social media http://bit.ly/e7ThbI >really!

RT @Pistachio: start your week right: 5 social business must-reads  http://bit.ly/e8bSat

15 Enterprise Products in 30 Words http://rww.to/dWB1DF #E20

Future of Change Management: 5 trends http://bit.ly/gJXE1F

NYT on Web Words That Lure the Readers http://nyti.ms/dNkOEt

RT @lbenitez: RT @lotusknows Lotusphere 2011 in news - Collaboration Soapbox http://bit.ly/fXwCSl #ls11

NYT Huffington Deal Raises Question: What Site Will Be Sold Next? http://nyti.ms/fYRtOo

RT @vernaallee: Forrester Research Outlines Co-Creation Market of 2011 http://bit.ly/i6FLFg

Why Some Twitter Posts Catch On, and Some Don’t NYT http://nyti.ms/hL4ubF

RT @KathleenLau: IBM Lotusphere 2011: Catch up on ComputerWorld Canada’s Canadian coverage: http://bit.ly/dNYeyC

RT @lbenitez: @marceldehoog can still see Kevin Spacey bit on replay: http://pio.mu/fJbW0T #ls11

Hidden Social Media 'Gems': Three Useful Twitter Case Studies http://goo.gl/fb/49tts #sm

RT @rossdawson: It is the structure of social networks that shapes influence… and the structure is changing http://bit.ly/e7ilnV

video of @amcfee at Lotusphere 2011 http://bit.ly/g3QRdF #ls11

RT @DearingGroup: eWeek Comment On IBM's Social Biz Strategy // http://bit.ly/gaSLpf / #socbiz #e20 #ls11

RT @webtechman: Enterprise 2.0 App Stores: When Good Web 2.0 Apps Go Bad http://bit.ly/g4maGS #e20 #apps #security > useful

review - Lotusphere 2011: Social business + cloud top agenda http://bit.ly/fsej0Q #ls11 via http://bit.ly/gVOFXm

RT @mauricioswg: Forrester's @TedSchadler on IBM's Social Business Strategy In Empowered Era http://ow.ly/3QrHP #LS11

RT @darwineco: on Bloomberg today - IBM Aims to Bring Corporate Social Network to IPhone, BlackBerry http://bit.ly/gcLSct #ls11

 

 

Hyper-Social Summit – Creating Successful Online Communities – Part Three

This is the third part of my notes from the Hyper-Social Summit sponsored by the Human 1.0 Network.  It is based on research conducted by Francois Gossieaux of the Human 1.0 Network and Ed Moran, Director of Innovation at Deloitte. I will highlight some of the key findings that were presented. Their book, The Hyper-Social Organization, covers this research in more detail.

There was a wide range of companies involved in the study: 22% had revenues over 1 billion and 32% had revenues under a million. The smallest group was  the 500 million to 1 billion revenue group which accounted for only 2% of the sample.  Within the sample 56% were considered B2B, 23% B2C, 9% were nonprofits and 2% were government.

There was also a range of experience with 14% having communities up for more than three years and 24% less than 6 months and fairly even representation in between. The size ranged from 26% less than 100 members to 11% with over 50,000 members.

Francois pointed out that the dynamics of pilot will be different than a large scale implementation so be careful with pilot results –  53% did pilot and 47% did not. A community can be successful either way. Many piloted their external communities internally so the results might not be relevant on many levels.

There was a wide range of objectives for the communities: 50% served marketing research, 46% were PR related, 45% had branding objectives, 43% provided thought leadership, 39% supported reputation management, 32% provided customer support, 28% provided lead generation, and the same number supported knowledge management.

Marketing was by far the most function engaged in the development of a community with participation in 79% of the communities. Next, was IT at 37% and sales at 36%, followed by knowledge management at 22% and legal at 17%. Similar results occurred for community management with 53% marketing, PR and community development at 11%.

These results suggest a strong external focus and that was the case with %*% externally focused, 10% internally, and 28% hybrid.  Within the external and hybrid communities 81% were customers focused, 49% were prospect focused, and 37% were partner focused. 

There was often a mismatch between goals and implementation. There can be too much marketing focus when non-marketing goals have been generated. Related to this finding, there have been too many programs around products rather than audience.

The objectives considered most successful were: generate more word-of-mouth 40%, increase brand awareness 27%, increase customer loyalty 25%, bring outside ideas into the organization 24%, and improve customer support quality 23%.  The least successful was to increase sales at 22% of the respondents. At the same this was the leading measured used for success at 38% followed by increase leads at 33% and generate awareness at 28%.

Success factors included: ability to connect with like minded people 50% and ability to help others 45%. The findings stressed the importance of social factors for success and secondary importance of other incentives.

The biggest obstacles were getting people to engage 66%, getting people to come back 42%, and attracting people 42%. The number of active people varies as to whether you can rely on user-generated content. Only 25% deployed external people to develop content and 65% did have internal people develop content.  A big factor is the level of passion. However, a community should still have some professional generated content to seed it and direct it.

The investment were mostly modest with 68% spending less than $50,000 a year on the community and 16% between 50 and 200k. Most community were managed by employees 84% and only 8% out sourced. The investment in management was also modest as 51% have less than one FTE and 16% deploy 1 FTE.  Looking ahead, 50% plan to increase investment and 45% stated than the level of investment will stay the same.  Looking at what types of investments will increase they found that 85% will increase time, and 68% will increase funding.  In addition, 68% will invest in content development and 58% will increase their marketing efforts for the community.

These trends indicate that companies do perceive they are getting value from the communities as only 5% plan to decrease investment. However, communities are still primarily driven by marketing goals and some are really marketing programs with little social components or focus. There is often a disconnect between objectives and success factors. The companies are missing the value that can be derived from strong leadership as only 45% indentified leaders within the community.

While there is some success, there is a lot of room for improvement by injecting a greater social focus into the communities.  This is very consistent with then theme of the event. It is the human much more than the technical that will make a community work.  Communities will be a major component of company’s success going forward. The winners will realize that these are human networks and act in this framework. 

 

Hyper-Social Summit – Creating Successful Online Communities – Part Two

This is the second part of my notes from the Hyper-Social Summit sponsored by the Human 1.0 Network.  It is based on research conducted by Francois Gossieaux of the Human 1.0 Network and Ed Moran, Director of Innovation at Deloitte. Their book, The Hyper-Social Organization, covers this research in more detail.

Francois led the event. He went over several factors that characterize successful companies on the social side. First, they are aware of the needs of the communities within their market, Francois referred to these communities as the tribes. He noted that there are many small business communities on the Web and this is an opportunity for marketing effects if done right. The focus needs to be on the people and not on the product.

Successful companies also do not use social media as a channel.  People often buy without looking at company material. They listen to others (because of reciprocity issue) so it is better to use the Web as a listening channel. 

Successful companies don’t just talk about themselves. They want to engage in conversations especially where buying decisions are made. They treat the people in these communities like press and give them special access to information.

Successful companies also create content that travels well so that people want to share it. This often involves tips on how to use the product for an activity that uses the product.

Successful companies have stopped thinking about company or product centricity. It is about your customers. They need to be in the center. Francois gave the great example of a Europe scissors company. It created a community around scrapbook people (not about their product) but about application of their product. It attracted a huge following of dedicated people.  

Successful companies embrace the messiness of social aspects. They do not exercise too much control. One example is Best Buy. They wanted to enter the high-end music business. They found out who has passion for music in their company and asked them to help with online communities around these instruments. It did matter what area within Best Buy they came from.

Successful companies turn a business process into social process. This is not just putting social tools in place but looking at the human characteristics of reciprocity and fairness, You need to get people to help each other even if it is not their job. You need to allow people to engage in their passion. It will increase the passion and engagement for your product.

A customer acquired through word of mouth is twice as loyal as one acquired through traditional marketing.  When Francois and Ed looked within organizations, they found social aspects in almost every process except legal and finance.

Here are a number of things to think about to implement social aspects to your business. First, bring down the walls. Let the wall around company dissolve. Let internal and external communities and people work together. Then do not build new walls.  Fix the divide between customer touch points in your organization. Make sure they are all on the same page. Your relationship with your s customers is only as good as they last contact they had with your company.

Be sure to not simply do the same thing again. For example, there is a new way of buying so traditional CRM is not relevant. Now buying process is more social so you need more social CRM.

Also, make sure the CIO and CMO are good friends. Think culture before tools. Become the customer advocate and not the product advocate. Establish trust as new business currency.

I liked these words of wisdom and it helped me better think though how I might reach the market for a software firm I am connected with. Now that the focus is more on the people and the community than on the company and the product, smaller companies have a more even playing field. It is not so much the size of the company as they size of the community. Smaller firms can go after the communities and the Web is another big equalizer.

In the third and last part of this series, I will cover a number of the research statistics that Ed and Francois collected in their research. 

 

Hyper-Social Summit – Creating Successful Online Communities – Part One

I had the pleasure of attending an extremely useful meeting recently on a very snowy day in Cambridge, Mass. But then most days are snowy this winter. Here are my notes from the Hyper-Social Summit sponsored by the Human 1.0 Network.  It is based on research conducted by Francois Gossieaux cofounder of the Human 1.0 Network and Ed Moran, Director of Product Innovation at Deloitte’s Global technology, Media, and Telecommunications Group. Their book, The Hyper-Social Organization, covers this research in more detail.  Ed got snowed out in NYC and could not co-led so Francois led the event.

Francois began with some highlights from their research. I liked his comments that bad practices in online communities are enjoying rapid adoption.  For example, the SAP social network provided financial rewards for individual participation. This resulted in bad behavior, as people got competitive over the money.  When they switched to an aggregated reward that was donated to charity, the bad behavior went away. However, participation remained.

We need to look at the human issues in online communities rather than just the tools and this need has suggested the name Human 1.0 for the network that Francois and others are developing.  Reciprocity is a key issue and a basic human reflex. If you act without reciprocity it can hurt the community so humans have developed a sense of fairness. There has been a lot of research to support. Fairness is even more important than transparency. 

People can use a social framework or market framework to evaluate a situation. Key is getting people to use a social framework because it leads them to develop better connections and act more fairly. Sometimes money gets in the way of this fairness as in the SAP example.  

We tell people what we think they want to hear. This causes people to give market research false answers. For example, Jet Blue asked their passengers if they wanted healthy snacks. People said yes, as they thought was the correct response. However, very few people actually selected the healthy snacks. Now I know from personal experience that the majority of JetBlue snacks are not healthy. I am currently on my way to Lotusphere via JetBlue as I edit these notes and just finished a bag of potato chips, cashews, and a diet coke. They were some of the healthier choices.

We also love status. This works well with communities but we need to be creative on this and allow for a refresh of the status ranking. People get disinterested if they feel they have no chance for status.

We have a herding instinct. We go where the crowds are located. We follow them. I experienced an example when I was briefly acting as a sidewalk artist in Copenhagen in the 60s. If I was working on my chalk drawing people would stop as they liked activity. If a few stopped then others would also stop so there was a multiplier effect. If I just sat there few would stop, they went were the crowds were forming.   We also tend to have loyalty built in so if a product is okay we tend to stay with it.

In the second part of my notes I will cover some of the traits and activities of companies who are successful with online communities. 

 

Making Greater Use of Smart Content in the Enterprise

Here is a useful Gilbane research report on Smart Content in the Enterprise by Geoff Bock, Dale Waldt, and Mary LaPlante. It covers XML applications. As the authors note, these application have long proven value with reusable componentized content.  However, it has been hard for XML champions to get greater acceptance within the enterprise. The report explores this paradox. The authors looked at both failures and successes to try and abstract common points that could be used by firms wanting to make greater use of the potential within XML.

To answer these questions, they talked with business and technology leaders connected with successful XML deployments and supplemented this with their own experience in XML implementations.  The key findings include a shift toward an outward facing customer impact view of content practices rather than a focus on internal operational efficiencies. 

The authors write that this change in focus for finding value is causing a reversal in how applications are designed. Rather than starting with the content creation process for greater efficiency, successful applications of XML begin with the content delivery process to increase value to the user. Then they work backward to the creation effort.  This reversal has sparked a demand for new ways to enrich content with XML tags for better embedded metadata. The focus on the end state of content use has also broadened the range of contributors to its creation. It has also encouraged the additional of more social components.

The authors use the term “smart content” to describe this new use of XML.  It is granular at the right level, useful across applications, and supports collaboration.  All of these are traits that can be useful in the more social enterprises and Web sites that are emerging and, according to the research, benefits are there.  It makes sense to me and it seems that smarter use of XML is one way to ride the current wave of interest in social applications. The report is addressed to both implementers and vendors in this space and should provide great value to both.

The report concludes that it is important to focus on four content factors: granularity, enrichment, interoperability, and collaboration. The built in granularity needs to be complex enough to support effective repurposing and simple enough to not make this repurposing too difficult. Enrichment guidelines follow this just enough advice. Interoperability is supported by rich tags. The report offers the example of combining directory listing with location information to offer localized content. Collaboration can be enhanced by getting the right content to the right users through smarter content.

The report offers a rich set of findings, case examples, practical advice, and addresses the change management issues required to make effective use of smart content. If you plan to make effective use of XML or you are building applications to address this market, this report should provide valuable insights. It is publicly available for download at the Gilbane web site.

 

Cape Town South Africa Area: Constantia Wine Region

This is the tenth in a series of posts covering Cape Town and the surrounding Western Cape region. Located not far from the Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens is the Constantia wine region. It is the closet wine country to Cape Town. I will cover the more well known Stellenbosch and Franschhoek area later. Constantia is the oldest wine region and was established in 1685. The Klien Constantia winery is famous for its sweet wine favored by Napoleon, Jane Austin and others of their day. Many of these wineries serve lunch. The last row shows part of our lunch and the view from our table. 

                    

 

Cape Town South Africa: Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens

This is the ninth in a series of posts covering Cape Town and the surrounding Western Cape region. The Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens are located south of the city on the inland side. The gardens were established in 1657 by the Dutch. There are many garden walks and examples of plants from all over the country. They have music concerts and we were treated to the sounds of one as we walked around. 

     

My Fast Forward Posts for January 2011

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 February.

The Age Gap Narrows on Social Media Usage

One Take on Top 50 Knowledge Management Blogs

Best Intranets for 2010 from Nielsen Norman Group

Remembering Marshall McLuhan

Social Media Usage in the Inc. 500 Continues to Rise

Middle Management’s Role in Business Software Purchases

 

The Inc. 500 Continues to Embrace Social Media in Increasing Numbers

Here is the latest in the very useful series of longitudinal studies on social media use by The Center for Marketing Research at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth led by Nora Barnes.  This one covered Social Media Usage in the Inc. 500. In contrast here is their most recent one on Blogging and Twitter by the Fortune 500.  In this case, there was a nationwide telephone survey of those companies named by Inc. Magazine to the Inc. 500 list. All interviews took place in October and November of 2010 and obtained 34% participation. 

Of course, this sample represents a moving target as the companies included continue to shift and this may effect the data.  In 2010 there were more government services and financial services firms than the years before. Since companies in these two areas under use social media compared to others, this shift has the effect on reducing growth numbers.

We can see this effect of shifting market niches in the numbers reported in the study. In 2010 83% of the Inc. 500 reporting using at least one of the social media tools studied (see below).  However, government services companies make up 12% of the 2010 Inc. 500, but 27% of those not using social media tools. Energy companies comprise 3% of the 2010 Inc. 500 but 17% of the non-users.  Financial services companies make up 5% of the Inc. 500, but they comprise 10% of the companies who have not yet adopted social media.

The study appears to be focused on market facing uses of social media but then this is the Center for Marketing Research.  It looked at blogs, online video, message boards, podcasting, and the specific social networking tools:  Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Linkedin, and Foursquare.  Two of the biggest gainers in 2010 are Twitter and Facebook. Twitter is used by 59% of the Inc. 500 use it for business purposes, up from 52%.  Twitter is perceived as a useful tool as 81% of users consider it a success. Facebook growth was higher with 71% using it for business up from 61% in 2009 and it had a 85% success rating.

Next in percent of usage were blogs. Looking back over the past three years there was a steady increase in company blogs with a rise from 38% in 2008 to 45% in 2009 to 50% in 2010.  In addition to the growth in usage the report noted that firms are using them more effectively, “There is a strong propensity to engage consumers through accepting and replying to comments and providing a vehicle for subscriptions.”  Company blogging was also considered successful by 86% of adopters. In addition, 34% percent have developed policies to govern blogging by their employees. In the Fortune 500 only 20% report such policies.  Both numbers are too low.  The Fortune 500 also are less likely to use blogs with only 23% reporting have a company blog in 2010, a one percent increase over 2009.

Within the Inc. 500 the majority (56%) feel social media is important for their success online.  They also look at what others are saying about them through social media. Seventy percent report they actively monitor, up slightly from 68% last year, 60% in 2008 and 50% in 2007.  In addition to using social media to communicate to their markets, there is a rise in use for communication with partners, vendors, and suppliers. Blog use in this category rose form 18% in 2009 to 22% in 2010.  Facebook is used by 31% of respondents and Twitter is used by 27%.

I have only addressed some of the highlights. The complete executive summary is available at the Center for Marketing Research site. 

 

My App Gap Posts for January 2010

Here are my AppGap posts for January. I am also writing in another Corante blog, FastForward (see right side bar for links), The AppGap posts began toward the end of January 2008.  Here, I am primarily doing product commentaries with a few other things thrown in. Below are the ones for January. There will be more in February.

Zoho Expands and Further Integrates Product Line in 2010

Growing Number of Mid-size Companies Looking to the Cloud

Darwin Ecosystem Announces a Series of Free Darwin Editions™

Benjamin Mestrallet, eXo CEO, Looks at the Social Enterprise

Clarizen Defines the Work Execution Software Space

Digital Reef Provides Comprehensive eDiscovery and File Governance

 

Complete Listing of My Lotusphere 2011 Notes

This is listing of my notes on Lotusphere 2011. I was very pleased to be back after ten years. I first came to co-present a Lotus Notes based KM project with my client. Now I returned as a blogger. To mark this return we created a special free version of the Darwin Awareness Engine™ that tracks conversations on the Web about Lotusphere. The first post below describes this Edition and provides a link to it.

The posts listed below comprise the complete listing of my notes on Lotusphere and what Darwin is doing related to Lotusphere. I recommend going to Lotusphere 2012. I learned a good bit, saw some friends, meet some people I had only known through the Web, and had fun. 

Introducing the Lotusphere Darwin Edition™  

Lotusphere 2011 Notes: Opening Session

Lotusphere 2011 Notes: Press Conference

Images from the Opening Reception and Morning at Lotusphere

Lotusphere 2011 Notes: Becoming a Social Business Client Panel

Introducing the Darwin Domino Connector

Lotusphere 2011 Notes: IBM Social Business Partners

Lotusphere 2011 Notes: Social Business ROI Panel

Lotusphere 2011 Notes: Work Trends 2021 Panel

Lotusphere 2011 Notes: Future of Social Business: Andy McAfee

Lotusphere 2011 Notes: Future of Social Business: Rest of the Story 

Lotusphere 2011 Notes: Doug Heintzman on Social Business

Lotusphere 2011 Notes: Kevin Cavanaugh - Mobile and Social

Lotusphere 2011 Notes: Brendan Crotty on Social Business and the Cloud

Lotusphere 2011 Notes:  Larry Bowden on Social Business

Lotusphere 2011 Notes: Interviews – Larry Bowden

This is another a series of my notes on Lotusphere 2011. IBM set up a number of individual interviews. This one was with Larry Bowden, Vice President, Portals and Web Experience Software, IBM Collaboration Solutions. Larry has over two decades experience in IBM. He is responsible for the development and delivery of web based products and solutions. Prior to this, he was Vice President of Portal Solutions and Lotus Products, and the lead for strategy, marketing, partnerships, industry offerings and services.

Larry began by pointing out that while there are differences between the Web and work versions of the IBM portal, there are many communal functions. For example, the customer analytics on the Web side are often more complex but then you have the integration of employee directories for finding expertise on the work side. Some firms use one or the other but the firms that opt for both have a cost savings, as well as other benefits.

For example, the development of content once and then shared across stakeholder is both more efficient and more effective. I agree.  While the shared services will immediately impact the cost angle, the shared content can make for greater consistency, a broader reach, and perhaps greater value in the long run. . I remember talking with the call center reps of a major US financial service firms who said they often found out about new product offerings from the customers who called in and saw it in TV. Reps in a UK telcom firm that one of the skills they need to learn was how to have I entertaining chat with the caller while they searched through all the data bases for an answer to their question

We next went into more depth on analytics as a way to manage information overload. This point had been raised in a general session.  Larry said that on the Web side, rather than use static filters, they use predictive analytics to give customers what they are looking for based on their prior online behavior.  They also allow firms to monitor for important key words. For example, insurance companies are sensitive to the word “coverage.”  They use IBM capabilities to monitor its use on the Web and then route the information to the right person for a proper response.

We went on to cover more how some firms are doing a lot with proactive outreach. For example, Best Buy has empowered a large number of its employees to respond to statements on Twitter.  There are IBM tools that can help with Web outreach and bring the right information to the employee for a proper response.

I next asked about their offerings for the SMB market since many of the example sin the general session shave been with large customers. Larry said that their projects on the Web side tend to be mostly with larger clients. However, on the work side there is a lot of SMB involvement.  LotusLive is a SaaS offering that can have very low monthly fees and no development requirements. See my interview with Brendan Crotty posted today also for more). Larry added that you can easily extend functionality by drag and dropping in plug-ins. 

I asked about what is going to happen next. Larry said that there will be more alignment of information and functions with specific roles.  Companies will also need more coordination of the CIO with other groups such as the CMO to take advantage of the new nimbleness. I mentioned the great work that Tracy Hackshaw is doing along these lines with the government of Trinidad (see Lotusphere 2011 Notes: Social Business ROI Panel). While there is no CMO role there, they are clearly successful in looking for what their customers want and acting on these requests. Larry said he is very familiar with Tracy’s work. He commented recently that Tracy is a role model for where all CIOs need to be in a few years or they will be gone.

Larry added that Miami/Dade County is another great example of getting resident input through a variety of devices, including kiosks.  This allows them to be more transparent and nimble at the same time.  Miami has been a pioneer is creative uses of technology for some time. I was involved in documenting an effort in the early 80s on the use of office automation by the police to both plan events and track bad guys that was very innovative for its day. It is nice to see their continued progression. 

 

Lotusphere 2011 Notes: Interviews – Brendan Crotty on LotusLive

This is another a series of my notes on Lotusphere 2011. I am very pleased to be back after ten years.  IBM set up some individual interviews. This one was with Brendan Crotty, program director, LotusLive, IBM Collaboration Solutions, Brendan drives visibility for IBM's software as a service mission supporting LotusLive. During his tenure he has held positions in Technical Support, Field Support Services providing on-site technical assistance for customer deployments as well as supporting the 1998 Winter Olympic Games in Nagano, Japan.

The topic was LotusLive. I noted that the Google Wave experience has suggested that real time online collaboration on documents may need more thought to be properly accepted in the market. I asked what IBM might have learned from watching that product. Brendan said that Google has had several recent failures in the market including Buzz. What IBM has done is start with the business case along with what they have learned from working with customers.  The real time collaboration is just one part of an integrated suite of capabilities, including strong security and what is contained in Connections.

Brendan went on to talk about more features. You can easily share files with LotusLive through a number of options. They are stressing integration to avoid islands. You can also bypass registration to bring in guests but with security. They wanted to make it easy to collaborate with business partners and clients.

Some one asked about the SMB market since most of the examples given so far have been with large organizations.  Brendan said that LotusLive was originally designed for this SMB market.  It was first called project Blue House. Now they have found that large customers are also very interested. In the SMB market he mentioned a local mortgage broker who has cut his loan processing time from 7 days to 30 minutes. This has allowed him to compete in a much broader market.

Another question concerned the social aspects of LotusLive, as well as the ability to have broader capability beyond such functions as file sharing. Brendan said they are actively working with business partners to integrate their applications for increased capability. Salesforce.com is one. Others are Skype and Sugar CRM. They want it to be easy to go back and forth between apps.

Within the government market there have been some pushback on the cloud. It is hard to get consistency in requirements across agencies.  In some European countries there is still a requirement that data stay in the country. This may change but IBM is also building more data centers, in part, to accommodate this requirement.

LotusLive is now $5 per user per month so this can fit with many SMB budgets. Some one asked about integration with Google Docs. Brendan said there is none and none is planned. LotusLive has announced the capability for multiple authors to operate together in real time on presentations, word processing, and spreadsheets through LotusLive Symphony. They also have announced LotusLive for Blackberry.  There is a Domino utility server to put Domino apps in the cloud with rich client access integrated. Help desk services are also available.  

From this interview and others, as well as the presentations it appears that IBM has given integration a priority and has developed the social aspects of their application suite in a coordinated manner.

 

 

 

 

Cape Town South Africa: Camps Bay

This is the eighth in a series of posts covering Cape Town and the surrounding Western Cape region. Camps Bay is located south of the central city on the Atlantic side. There is a wide beach and views up to the mountain range known as the Twelve Apostles that runs off Table Mountain. Many restaurants line the beach. We had an excellent dinner at one. The first picture shows the area from the top of Table Mountain. 

            

 

Cape Town South Africa: Table Mountain

This is the seventh in a series of posts covering Cape Town and the surrounding Western Cape region. Here we move away form the urban to the beautiful mountain hovering over the city. It has appeared in many of the posts I have done prior to this one. Now you get the reverse view. You can quickly get isolated on the top.  There are often clouds that quickly move in and cover the top.  You can either hike up or take the cable car that you can see in the first picture. You can see the mountain from a long way off in many directions. There are two ground shots toward the end of this series. 

        
      

Lotusphere 2011 Notes: Interviews - Doug Heintzman on Social Business

This is another a series of my notes on Lotusphere 2011. I am very pleased to be back after ten years. IBM set up some individual interviews for the bloggers and press. The first one for me was with Doug Heintzman, Director, Lotus Strategy. In this capacity he is responsible for Lotus’ over all strategic direction. Prior to this assignment he was the Director of Technical Strategy for IBM Software Group. In the past 17 years Doug has held various positions in consultancy, sales and marketing, and technical engineering with IBM in both Canada and the US.

I was very interested in the current strategy. In 2001-2003 I was the Executive Sponsor of the Accenture – Lotus alliance from the Accenture side. At that point Raven was a big push.  Times have changed and I like the new social direction that IBM/Lotus is taking. After letting Doug know that I was a true believer in enterprise 2.0, I asked him why IBM chose Social Business, both as a concept and as a term.  He then began an excellent twenty five minute answer. The first twenty were on the concept and then five on the choice of terms.

Doug started by saying that whenever there is a big technology shift it will often first cause an economic growth. Then there will be a disruption that fosters another innovation in response. We went through a growth with business process automation but that growth has maxed out so what is the next source of innovation? When they recently surveyed CIOs the results were quite different that a few years ago when they were looking for cost containment and reduction. Now they want to be nimble so they can respond better to the rapidly changing world.

So if being nimble is a goal, how can you use technology to support that goal?  If you look a different industries you can see places from improvement. For example, in financial services there are places were people are involved and interactions occur. These interactions are not addressed by ERP systems.  There are productivity gaps here that can be filled by social apps. It can happen in any industry even where not expected.

He mentioned that he was talking to the CIO of a tire manufacturer about what IBM was doing with social business inside the organization and how this was making them nimble. The CIO replied that you are a high tech company so you can get people to use the new tech tools. He said we make tires. We do not have the culture for it.

Doug said that today every company needs to change to meet today’s challenges. The question should be not be whether you have the culture but how can I build the right culture.  We will move from hierarchies and siloed units to overlapping communities that from and reform to meet changing needs. The structure will be more organic.

Doug said that there are two major opportunities here. First, some workers are knowledge workers. They work around people and thus their work is social. The goal of the technology is to make these people centric processes work seamlessly. However, not everyone is a knowledge worker in the traditional sense but with mobile devices the information systems are coming to where more people work enabling them to become knowledge workers. You now capture and share experiences remotely. With APIs you can now move the social into more appplications. This was a theme of the Wednesday morning keynote session were Connections is being integrated into other apps. You can now capture and bring local expertise into a work situation for better knowledge ot do the job more effectively.

Now the buying decision becomes more complex. You have the business guy who wants power through the new tools and the CIO office that has to mange and support these new tools. The HR people also get involved with such aspects as profiles and workforce performance.

Doug also addressed how they choose the term, “social business.” They knew that this was much more than collaboration.  The concept was originally linked to the Smarter Planet initiative and they thought of the term Smart Works but that was already taken by the SOA people for a more limited and more technical concept. The Social Network movie came out and this gave them an idea. They shortened it to social business after starting with a much longer string and more complex terms using the social concept.

Since I was involved with Lotus as an alliance partner in the Raven days I asked how this is different. Doug said that Raven involved too much work on the part of users. For example, people had to create their own profiles, Now they take the starting material from existing data and let people modify it. They try to take the burden off of the workers.

The culture is changing. It used to be that information was power so people did not want to share. Now they measure the value of information by how many other people want to use it.

There is Kevin Cavanaugh's post below. Then there will be a break for the weekend to cover others topics. The Lotusphere notes will return on Monday with interviews with Brendan Crotty On LotusLive and Larry Bowden on IBM strategy. 

 

 

 

 

Lotusphere 2011 Notes: Interviews – Kevin Cavanaugh - Mobile and Social

This is another a series of my notes on Lotusphere 2011. I am very pleased to be back after ten years. I first came to co-present a Lotus Notes based KM project with my client. Now I return as a blogger. IBM was kind to set up some individual interviews. The first was with Kevin Cavanaugh, VP Business and Technical Strategy. This is a recent move. For the past nine years he was the VP of the Notes and Domino business.

The topic was the mobile aspects of social business. Kevin said that you can’t do social business without mobile but that all mobile is not social. For example, there might be a mobile inventory app that is not social. Someone asked about Windows Mobile. Kevin said that IBM does support it but they have not seen a lot of adoption Another person asked if there is a context for mobile awareness. Kevin said yes and this is one reason they are using native apps. An activity stream should provide location information. I would agree but you should also be able to turn off and I assume this is a capability.

Kevin said they are making a big investment in being native as much as possible. I think this is a smart move so you can bring in the core functionality of an app.  It also allows for offline capability as you have with Notes replication. He said they are trying to use existing native apps when available such as with Apple but then building their own when necessary. The Connections 3.0 support for mobile is strong.

He said that SameTime clients will be available mid year or later in some cases. I did learn later that the IBM Business Partner, Meetrix, offers SameTme clients now. Meetrix has created an open standards-based Sametime platform that integrates seamlessly with third party vendors up in the cloud, including integrations with Broadsoft for VoIP/IP Telephony and Polycom.

Kevin said that with mobile, employees often buy the devices themselves so there is less control. It would seem to me that companies that supply computers should also provide mobile devices for standardization purposes. Kevin added that with Lotus Connections there will be a VPN solution.  He said the IDC recently noted that IBM’s Traveler is the fastest growing mobile gateway in the market. They also have a lot of apps working on the IPad and iPhone now.

I think the big news here is the drive for native apps and this strengthens their offering.

 

 

Lotusphere 2011 Notes: Future of Social Business – Rest of the Story

This is another in a series of my notes on Lotusphere 2011. I am very pleased to be back after ten years. The Wednesday morning keynote focused on the “Future of Social Business” Speakers include: Charlie Hill, Distinguished Engineer and CTO, IBM Collaboration Solutions; Kristen Lauria, VP of Marketing and Channels, IBM Collaboration Solutions; Chris Dziekan, Cognos Office of Strategy Executive; Mike O’Rourke, VP of Rational Strategy and Product Delivery; Mike Winter, Arichitect and Development Manager of Enterprise Content Management; and Irene Greif, IBM Fellow and Director, Collaborative User Experience.  Andy McAfee licked it off and you see my notes in the previous post.

Charlie Hill led a panel with Chris, Mike O’Rourke and Mike Winter. Charlie began by discussing what do you need to make social happen. First, point was enabling fluid interactions. Second is enhancing situation awareness. Third is making it easy and contextualized. Charlie said a major part of his role is to make it easy to integrate Lotus technology and add more social to apps.  These three principles are guiding their development efforts.

Chris spoke about business analytics. Now you can give people the right data to make smarter decisions. This data can take many shapes and forms and covers past, present and future. They have taken the social core of the Connections Suite and added analytics. They are also doing things to leverage the social network. At the moment 78% of consumers purchase based on peer recommendations and 770 million people world wide visited social networking sites where you can see these recommendations. You need to understand what people are saying about your company right now.

They built Cognos Consumer insights with this in mind. It crawls the Web and looks at what is happening with your brand. It then applies visualization so users can understand what is happening. Are ads working? Is there positive or negative sentiment?  How can I see who the influencers are? They are now applying the same capability inside the enterprise on top of the Connections data. This work is still in development.

Business intelligence provides freedom to think, connect with others and support the average business user at their job even through mobile. Connections capability has been embedded into Cognos. He showed us a dashboard with different possibilities and connections. 

Mike Winter discussed content management challenges providing context to documents.  Knowledge workers need agility but only 11% said they have a good case management and 40% have difficulty making adjustments in case based work. So IBM developed Case Manager as a single place to coordinate case associated content and align tasks for better case management.  They are providing for more collaboration around cases.with such things as IM and shared comments and case history. Luis Suarez was sitting next to me and pointed out a great blog on the importance of case management by John Tropea (see Have we been doing Enterprise 2.0 in reverse: Socialising processes and Adaptive Case Management).   Case Manager is part of the transformation to more social content management. This reminds be of the early work process aligned KM work I was involved with in early 90s using Lotus Notes and adding social aspects to business processes with tools of the day. Today’s tools help us much better realize the early vision of process aligned KM. Tighter integration is one of the key aspects.

Mike O’Rourke said they have the benefit of testing their collaboration tools on the 40,000 people in their group. They are using Agile development and this requires more collaboration. They deal with the challenges that their customser will also face. Their product, Rational Team Concert, creates a collaborative environment across the development life cycle by integrating Connections.  It uses Web 2.0 dashboards to allow the team to see what is happening now with all the team members. IBM is benefiting from this approach internally. There are cycle time reductions by over 30%.  Software reuse is over 50% and there is a component cost reduced of 50%. I remember that our team hand built similar dashboards in our early 90s KM work with Notes. Today it is both better and easier.

Now Charlie made a prediction. Increasingly your online branding will become a metric in HR in such areas as hiring, promotion, and compensation. The others added more predictions. There will be more deployment choices with different types of cloud options as well as new hardware software configurations. We will see a transition form static business process and to more collaborative processes that evolve using real time analytics. Software development is becoming a mission critical success factor. The Chevy Volt has 40% computer involvement and recently most cars had less than 10%.  Of course my first car had zero percent.

Next Irene Grief came out. She leads the Center for Social Software developing new tools.  She asked us to enter into a brain storming session by covering her remarks in twitter and then they could analyze this later. She showed graphs of the Twitter traffic for Lotusphere so far with big spikes during the day. She showed some of the tools they have developed. I have covered a number of these tools (add in see 2010 Update on IBM Social Software Efforts: Part Two and IBM’s Social Lens Provides Smart Content Filter).   Dogear was one of the first that became a product (see Social Bookmarking in the Enterprise – IBM’s Internal Tagging Tool – Dogear).  Many Eyes provides visualizations for collaboration. Another challenge they used to face was technology transfer. Now they allow people to use the tools internally and they then like them and add them into commercial tools.

Irene continued to say that we need an integrated view of data: physical, social, and enterprise.  They are now looking at sentiment inside the company to understand issues with products being used inside the company.  Looking inside and outside the company requires different analytics. For example inside you can use email. A new research project Crowdsourcing Squared is using location integrated with our data. They also found that people in some countries are more likely to ask questions in a status updates than others.

They are also working to put context in communication and making it easier for non-native speakers. Also, they are making other changes to accommodate different cultures. Irene predicted that we will see any difficult cultures within companies.  This comes back to Andy’s point that increased diversity in a problem solving group increases the chance of success and was a nice close.

 

 

 

 

Lotusphere 2011 Notes: Future of Social Business – Andy McAfee

This is another in a series of my notes on Lotusphere 2011. I am very pleased to be back after ten years. The Wednesday morning keynote focused on the “Future of Social Business” The first speaker was Andy McAfee and said enough to fill a bloig post so I will deal with the rest of the session in a follow post. It was mentioned that there have been 9500 tweets and 23000 blogs so far. I am not surprised at the numbers but thought the ratio would be reversed given how quick it is to generate a lot of tweets

Andy McAfee first said he did not like the term social business and told IBM he could come in good faith to a social business. But then he said he was kidding. He does not care about the term because something fundamental is happening. He said he would convey to us what the research is telling so far. He asked how do you convince the business academic that change is coming? First point is that weak ties are strong. But many academics already believe this. However, the issue here is that the technology tool kit to support weak ties has been weak, Now the tools are strong.

Second, crowds can be wise. But many academics doubt this. They like certified people.  However, he added the point that markets work. For example, most of us not want to live in a centrally planned economy even if the leader is the smartest person around. Markets work for many types predictions better than experts. Now they are working to predict product success. Andy said this power can make experts nervous.

Third, with more eye balls, more bugs are shallow.  There are clearinghouses for solving scientific problems. You can put out problems and others can present solutions. One predictor that a problem will get solved is the diversity of people who look at it. Now it is cheap to broadcast problems. Nelson Mandela said the work of a leader is to find everyone’s genius. Now he is one of the smartest leaders around in my view and this is just one example.

Fourth, there are diamonds in the social mind. Now there are good tools to find these diamonds.  People have used Google search trends to forecast things like shifts in the housing market. If you are planning to move to a new location you will likely search about its housing market in advance. Tweet streams can give you reaction to movies and predict thier long term success.  Watson is another example of what computers can do with unstructured data.

Fifth, being social benefits individuals. If you are more central in a digital social network good things happen to you. The better your network the more productive you are and the less likely you will be laid off in a down turn.

Next he pointed out an unfounded claim: social benefits the enterprise. Academics still doubt this. They say that case studies are just anecdotes. However, he said if he was in business he would want his competitors run by business academics as they are too timid. 

He next made two predictions. First there will be a productivity boost through the new tools. Second, we are entering an era where not all will win. It will stretch out the pack rather than compressing it. So you need to get social to be a winner.

I have heard Andy speak many times. One thing I like is that, unlike some other thought leaders, he says something new each time. This was not an exception and another useful presentation from him. My next post will cover the rest of this keynote session.

 

Lotusphere 2011 Notes: Work Trends 2021 Panel

This is another in a series of my notes on Lotusphere 2011. I am very pleased to be back after ten years. You can see last night's sunset over the opening party site to the left. IBM set up a panel on Work Trends 2021. It included a group of Distinguished Engineers and subject-matter experts in the areas of application development, unified communications and social software will discuss how social, analytics and mobile (SAM) technologies will affect the workplace of the future.

The panel was moderated by Kevin Cavanaugh Vice President of Business and Technical Strategy at IBM. It included: Michael Karasick, Ph.D Vice President of Business and Technical Strategy, IBM Software; Scott Prager Distinguished Engineer, Project Vulcan, IBM; Rob Will Distinguished Engineer, Web Experience and WebSphere Portal, IBM; and Fernando Salazar Distinguished Engineer, Unified Communications and Lotus Sametime, IBM.

First, Kevin asked for one prediction from each panel member. Scott said that social computing will be integrated at the workplace at the same level you see in consumer space now. It will help pull together aspects of the enterprise. It will be on the level of email now but email will not go away, just have a more limited role. 

Fernando said he prepared for the panel by looking at Star Trek and other predictive sources. While he was kidding, he pointed out that the increased accessibility of media would make this possible. He sees that this accessibility of media will grow. We will all interact with it. I now go to the ITunes stores when I want a particular song whenever it comes to mind and do not have to get the entire album, much less go to a store. Recently, I went to Cape Town and read there was a great local jazz scene. So I went online and looked at some key performers and downloaded their music allowing me to arrive more informed with my iTunes playlist of local artists on my iPhone that I could play anywhere without being connected to the Web or using a music player. I also have some sample pictures of the trip on the iPhone to share with others. Fernando added that there will be better rich channel connectivity with analytics.

Kevin talked about video chat is available now and how it has enabled him to talk with family members and business colleagues anywhere on the globe. I used the same channel to speak with my wife while in Cape Town. Kevin said we are starting to take this for granted but I am still amazed when I consider it.

Mike talked about the possibilities of increased bandwidth, better batteries, and more computer power in your pocket. He said in ten years he will have a Watson in his pocket. Now there will be more possibilities for who you work with because of the high bandwidth connectivity. Geography will be even less a limiting factor.

Kevin added that we are good with predictions on the physics part but we get the social aspects wrong. 

Rob mentioned the prediction a few years ago that we will go to the moon on weekends and we would have video phones. He said that one reason you cannot go to the moon on weekends is the fact that why would you want to – it is cold and barren. One driver of change is the need to talk with people remotely so much technology has been focused here. How can we can make it more like a physical connection.  Now you can work better remotely because more can be conveyed digitally. This capability will expand for greater participation with both time and space being less of a limiting factor.

Kevin added that we will be less dependent on a full time work force and there will be more participation by retirees because of this increased connectivity.

Fernando told a story about working with a colleague in Toronto while he was in New York a few years ago. To cut down on the plane rides they set up digital cameras pointed at the white boards in their office so you could see all day what was happening by transmitting the image through phone lines. The experiment worked really well but the expensive phone bills in those days made it very expensive. Now you can do it for free through the Web.

My great aunt was the first telephone switchboard operator in a small town in Oklahoma over a hundred years ago. She got the same effect of continuous connection by calling her future husband who worked in the bank. They left the line open and could talk between tasks all day as though they were in the same room.  As with Fernando’s example, the technology was available in those days for continuous remote connection but cost made it unavailable on scale

Kevin Boston said he is involved in a Cyber Arts project in Boston. They are putting video portals on different street corners so you can see people across town by chance and have conversations as though you ran into them at the same place.

John Moore asked about how technology might help bridge different cultural norms.  Scott said that greater resolution might help people become more sensitive or at least aware. It also might be easier to correct misunderstandings with greater resolution as it is now the case with face to face.  However, the panel agreed this will hard. For example, in Japan and China people find it hard to say no directly so they have polite and indirect ways of saying this. Americans will miss the clues.  Knowing cultural norms takes time and experience. With faster communication we may not have time to learn the norms. How can technology help? Watson on Jeopardy has to deal with indirect language and this capability could help with cultural translations.

Scott raised the privacy issue. We see the value of analytics. However, the laws that are in place now make it harder to use these analytics except for aggregated group uses, and even then there are issues.  There will likely be changes but it is hard to predict. Much privacy law is location based and people are anywhere now and location can be unknown.

Kevin talked about dual identities when people mix you up with others with similar names. He was getting constant information for another with his name for a while. Will people figure out to have false personalities in cyber space?  Some do it already.

Mike was interviewed ten years ago on predictions for 2011. He said he missed analytics and thought voice would be bigger as a control mechanism. He missed touch screen which has developed more than voice. 

Scott said that in ten years companies will be analyzing conversations internally for trends, just like they do on the Web now.  The issue will be what they do with it.  For privacy purposes will likely be aggregated anonymously.

Marcia Conner asked what would you not like to be doing. Kevin does not want to be fiddling with devices. He has simplified his digital life. Fernando wants to use face to face meetings less for procedure stuff but more to exchange ideas. Rob does not want to worry about battery life and looking for hot spots. He does not want to deal with information scatter.  It was a great session.

 

 

Lotusphere 2011 Notes: Social Business ROI Panel

This is another in a series of my notes on Lotusphere 2011. To the the left is another great sunset over the event. I attended a session on social business ROI hosted by IBM VP Sandy Carter, Social Business and Sales, Collaboration Solutions. The panel featured clients discussing the business value received from their social software investments.

IBM defines social business as “the world of possibility that occurs when all of the energy and opportunities that have been generated around consumer-side models such as Facebook and Twitter are focused, and brought to bear on business challenges.” They feel that the interest in social on the consumer side is just the beginning of its potential. The real power to transform and help push innovation is on the business side.

Tracy Hackshaw, is the Chief Solution Architect for iGov for the government of Trinidad and Tobago. Tracy discussed how the government is using social business for more effective e-government efforts. There are 1.3 million people in Trinidad and Tobago. A main goal is to increase the engagement of these people with their government and have them more satisfied with what the government is doing. They often look for what the people want and more interaction was a request.  Another was the simplification of information, which became another goal.

Within the country there is a high percentage of access to mobile phones so this was one channel they focused on. They wanted the user experience to be similar to what was offered on computers. One popular example was maps with the location of government offices and transit information on to reach them. Another was the reporting of such things as broken street lights or potholes in the roads. They have reduced the time that these issues are reported.

The different government agencies were each providing their own siloed source of information. So they consolidated this to offer a single, consistent point of access.  Different agencies could collectively created content that they shared with the residents. They also built in more interactivity to get greater feedback. They wanted the government to be more accessible so they created interactive town hall sessions.  They have achieved a 90% satisfaction rating from the residents and this is remarkable for government services. As you will see, each of these cases in their own way demonstrates the value of social business but, of course, I was already convinced. It is nice to see these tangible examples. 

Kristina Verner, Windsor University, discussed “How A Collaboration with IBM Improved the Quality of Life of Our Citizens.” Working with IBM for seven years, the region of Windsor-Essex has significantly improved the quality of life for its citizens. Through the region’s innovative use of technology and IT services, asthma attacks have been alleviated. Improved online communication reduced the time from diagnosis to treatment through the use of remote resources.  They also set up air quality alerts that reduced the number of visits to the ER during times of poor air quality.

Kristina said that one way they were successful with social was breaking down silos for more effective collaboration. In one case they recycled 250 tons of waste materials from a road construction project into new housing for those who needed it the most. In this case, a new bridge to the US called for the destruction of 400 homes, some of which were new. Rather than simply waste these resources, they looked to recycle the components within the homes for use elsewhere through Habitat for Humanity. The first step was creating an inventory of possible components such as appliances that made sense to re-use. Then thirty jobs were created to support a very successful pilot and now the recycle project will continue through the entire construction project.

This region is comprised of 393,000 citizens who live in the city of Windsor and the seven lower municipalities of the County of Essex. Windsor-Essex region uses a variety of IBM collaboration software and Services and was named one of the “Smart 21 Communities” in the world by the Intelligent Community Forum in both 2010 and 2011. 

Jamie Page, Director of Information Services & Brian Larson, Process Guru, Slumberland, discussed “How A More Interactive and Dynamic Web Experience Delighted Furniture Buyers.” Slumberland Furniture is a privately held furniture retailer with 120 stores in eleven Midwestern US states. In this case Slumberland  was able to transform the way it interacts with its employees, franchisees and customers, leading to a higher quality buying experience for their customers and prospects.  

One of the issues was to increase communication consistency with their franchises, as well as their company stores. They implemented a Websphere portal and gave access to both franchisees and in-house stores. They have now just rolled out Connections 3.0 and are using SameTine and Quickr. Although they are using Quickr less now that they have Connections 3.0. Brian said that they are a lean organization focused on continuous improvement.  They use social business to reduce silos, help with collaboration, and make it easier to find information.

Slumberland deployed Genus Media Upshot and IBM Lotus Connections 3.0 software to support the firm’s training and communications initiatives and provide a platform for project based collaboration within the company. This is helping 2,300 geographically dispersed employees and franchisees to work more efficiently. For example, employees can view product and vendor training packages on video kiosks located in our retail stores. In the past DVDs were shipped out to stores.  This paid for itself within the first year. They are also sharing sales tips from the top performers with the rest of the staff. Another cost savings came through the reduction in paper based documents and associated courier services. That project paid for itself within a few months. It is nice to see these very tangible benefits.

 

 

 

 

 

Lotusphere 2011 Notes: IBM Social Business Partners

This is another in a series of my notes on Lotusphere 2011. I am very pleased to be back after ten years. I first came to co-present a Lotus Notes based KM project with my client. Now I return as a blogger. You can see the sunset from my balcony on the left. IBM provided a session for bloggers featuring IBM business partners who are helping their customers become social businesses and served sushi and sashimi whish was much appreciated. IBM defines social business as “the world of possibility that occurs when all of the energy and opportunities that have been generated around consumer-side models such as Facebook and Twitter are focused, and brought to bear on business challenges.”

IBM’s business partners contribute nearly one-third of IBM’s revenue and more than half of the company’s SMB business. In 2011, IBM will invest over $2 billion towards the success of its business partners with a focus on providing valuable education to help partners develop the skills they need to add greater value and meet customer needs.

Ed Brill, Director of Messaging and Collaboration hosted the event. I interviewed Ed on the phone in 2004 for book on business blogging so it was nice to meet him in person. He is currently responsible for the product and market strategy for the Lotus Notes and Lotus Domino product family — market-leading collaborative software; LotusLive Notes; Lotus Symphony; Lotus Protector; and other related Lotus-branded software solutions. Participants included: Jim Engelking, Genus Technologies; Jebb Dykstra, Meetrix Communications; Robert Al-Jaar, Silanis: and Flavien Boucher, Global Lead IBM Cloud collaboration.

Jim Engelking is Director of Business Development and Marketing for Genus Technologies, a US-based business partner specializing in integration between FileNet Content Manger, FileNet BPM, IBM Content Manager and IBM Lotus Software. The firm’s rich media management solution, Media Upshot™, which provides tight services-based integration between IBM ECM repositories and Lotus Connections, Lotus WCM and WebSphere Portal, was recently awarded the 2010 IBM Beacon Award for Outstanding Innovative Collaboration Solution. They make it easier for experts or others to both create and then publish video into such environments as Lotus Cionnections.

Jebb Dykstra is the CEO for Meetrix Communications. Meetrix has created an open standards-based Sametime platform that integrates seamlessly with third party vendors up in the cloud, including integrations with Broadsoft for VoIP/IP Telephony and Polycom. The company has created a patent-protected unified communications and collaboration platform that enables secure, scalable IP-based communications. This platform delivers hybrid, premises-based solutions to enterprise customers, while at the same time enabling commercial hosting of cloud-based unified communications solutions. Meetrix supports the migration of unified communications solutions from their traditional premises-based deployment to centralized cloud environments.

I spoke with Jebb about how the addition of audio and video to SameTime makes it a more robust competitor to webinar services such as WebEx because of the ability to link a more robust set of services that SameTime connects to.

Robert Al-Jaar, is responsible for the Silanis product portfolio. Silanis’ e-SignLive services combines electronic signatures with online collaboration and business networking, available for a monthly subscription fee as part of the IBM LotusLive service. These cloud-based services enable you to electronically sign business deals, legal contracts and other documents over the web, while harnessing the power of online collaboration and social networking during the negotiation and pre-signing process.

I like e-signature as it takes out the last vestige of the analog world from the business processes. Robert made the important point that they discovered that the relationship between them and their customers was not nearly as important as the relationship between their customers and the customers of their customers. They have focused on this. Robert said that they have been integrated into a number of bank portals to support transactions

Flavien Boucher is the Global Lead IBM Cloud collaboration and is responsible for all of Sogeti’s collaboration offerings with IBM technologies.  Sogeti is a provider of professional technology services, specializing in Application Management, Infrastructure Management, High-Tech Engineering and Testing. Sogeti is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Cap Gemini S.A., listed on the Paris Stock Exchange. Sogeti uses Connections throughout its own business.

I was also interested to learn that Facebook is the medium of choice for many real estate agencies as they do recruiting through this means. 

 

Introducing the Darwin Domino Connector

The Darwin Domino Connector or DDC allows you to point the Darwin Awareness Engine™ at content within Domino. The Darwin Awareness Engine™ is a content discovery tool that helps users track Web and Enterprise 2.0 events, uncover emerging trends and gain faster understanding of complex issues. Here is a brief overview. The Awareness Engine can be pointed at content on the Web or inside the enterprise. In this case we wanted to provide Notes users the opportunity to make use of the full capabilities of the Awareness Engine. What follows is a more detailed description of how it works.  Please address any questions you might have to feedback@DarwinEco.com.

The DDC is a Domino database and agents that serve RSS feeds created from records in Notes database views. The DDC is designed to extend the reach of Domino Domino content through RSS 2.0 feeds to the Darwin Awareness Engine. It provides a non-intrusive and centralized configuration for easy administration of your Domino feeds.

Essentially, the DDC converts Notes view data to XML format for consumption by RSS readers and aggregators, by mapping XML tags to column, field or custom keyword. You use one DDC Feed Definition form to RSS-enable one Domino Notes view or folder. Within the document, you specify such attributes as: feed title, language and optional description. You can further refine the RSS feed description with a set of optional tags.

There is also the option of using External Web Pages to collect and transport Web-enabled documents as RSS items to the Darwin Awareness Engine. This view provides links to static URLs for resources that may not be part of a Domino view. For example, you might use this to aggregate important company documents such as Human Resources, corporate policies and knowledge assets found in HTML and PDF formats.

The diagram shown below illustrates how it works. The DDC reaches into your Lotus Domino intranet allowing you to observe the pulse of your enterprise’s collaboration.   You can now observe your own collaboration emerging topics on a ScanCloud™ regardless of the different Domino Databases’ architecture.

You can create RSS feeds from any Domino database, including e-mail, calendar, and contact entries from a user's mail database. No NSF design modifications are required. You can even use the Derived Mail option in the DDC Feed Definition form to RSS-enable all mail files on the server.

As any service request to Domino servers, the feed’s security is specified in the DDC Feed Definition Form according to Domino ACL policies.  An authorized Darwin Awareness Engine user must be added to the Domino Domain’s ACL to allow the generation of RSS feeds.   You can only access and generate feeds for databases co-located on the same server.

Again we welcome your input. Please contact us at feedback@DarwinEco.com. During Lotusphere we can set up a Lotusphere Darwin Edition(TM) to monitor the conversations around this event.

 

 

 

Lotusphere 2011 Notes: Becoming a Social Business Client Panel

This is another in a series of my notes on Lotusphere 2011. I attended a keynote session on “Becoming a Social Business” It was led by Mike Rhodin, Senior Vice President, IBM Software Solutions Group and featured a number of IBM clients, as well as IBM itself: Jon Iwata, Senior Vice President, IBM Marketing and Communications, Gilberto Garcia , Innovation Director, CEMEX, and Greg Welch, Vice President Corporate Branding and Creative, State Street Bank.

I did some work with CEMEX in the early 2000s and was very impressed with their innovations then so I was looking to seeing what they are doing now. Mike started with some of the challenges businesses face today: information overload, complexity and connections.  How can you address this? We can learn from what some firms have done already and that is the focus of the panel today.

How to get clients to talk with each other, can I resolve call center questions faster? How can I drive operational efficiency? How to get new products to market faster? How can I listen to the market better?  How can I optimize on a global scale? How to deal with governance issues with the implementation of social tools?

A firm digital reputation is more important than ever.  Over 25% of links around a brand are to user generated content. Consumers have more power than ever? How can you deal with sentiment analysis?  How can you anticipate and deal with the new legal issues with social business?

Jon Iwata spoke next.  He spoke about the mid-90s when people laughed at the idea of using the Web for business but IBM and Lotus pushed into this space. He said there is another moment of change now around the Web for business. The world is becoming more connected through more devices and smart phones will out paced PC sales by 2012. This sets up the potential for a smarter planet.  There is also the ability to analysis the content within social media to monitor these conversations, On the Web, 22% of traffic is for social networking.

IBM is using new business model to be more connected and collaborative and this is providing greater efficiency. There are new ways for collaboration within the enterprise.  It gets more challenging outside the enterprise. How can a firm get its employees to use the Web strategically and responsively. They launched the Social Business at IBM to make their employees smarter and more effective in this space. They are enabling all IBMers to work better facing their markets.

 

Now the client panel arrived and joined Jon and Mike. Both have used social media for increasing employee collaboration. State Street wanted more employee expertise involvement. They also wanted clients to have a single view of their bank. At IBM 43% of marketing investments are in digital. Clients also have greater power in their hands.  CEMEX found the business case for social business by connecting their employees globally to gain operational efficiency. They found this efficiency. They also wanted to find radical innovations and they found these as well. They wanted to unlock the collective wisdom of their employees.

State Street needed to convince employees within their firm to better convey their vision.  They worked on their intranet to make it more attractive. They also articulated a strategy for governance. This is still a work in progress and includes both monitoring and supporting.  Even at IBM there were challenges to get senior management to turn on the social side in a market facing manner.

Mike asked how do bank deal with the regulatory issues when turning to social media? Greg said they were nervous about this because of potential exposure.  But they decided to switch risk avoidance to risk management. There are some areas within the bank that cannot talk to each other for regulatory reasons also they needed to deal with this.  Also certain countries in Europe have strict privacy requirements for employees and they need to deal with this. They needed to have all the stakeholders at the design phase. This was also the case at IBM. The CFO said that social media that needs to be addressed because of the opportunity and they just have to figure out the risk because it needs to be done.

CEMEX has been expanding around the globe. Their social media initiative took off very fast. They engaged top management and this helped. They developed communities before going viral. Then they got critical mass but still needed to convey the business value as this was for business not just for fun.  Great session.

 

Images from the Opening Reception and Morning at Lotusphere

This is another in a series of my notes on Lotusphere 2011. I am very pleased to be back after ten years. Here are images from the opening reception held on the beach between the Swan and Dolphin hotels.  It was a great party with a good rock band and much performance art with living statues and mimes. The three smiling gentlemen are from right to left my friends Luis Benitez, Luis Suarez, and another Louis.  The last four pictures are from the next morning beginning with the sunrise and then the opening session which had an even greater rock band. You can click on a picture to enlarge it.