Portals and KM

Summary of My Cape Town South Africa Images

I visited the Cape Town South Africa region in early December 2010. I found it to be one of the most beautiful areas of the world that I have experienced. Here is the complete listing of the postings from that trip.

Cape Town South Africa: City Bowl Part One

Cape Town South Africa: City Bowl Part Two – Gardens and Museums

Cape Town South Africa: Bo-Kaap

Cape Town South Africa: Waterkant

Cape Town South Africa: Robben Island

Cape Town South Africa: Waterfront

Cape Town South Africa: Table Mountain

Cape Town South Africa: Camps Bay

Cape Town South Africa: Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens

Cape Town South Africa Area: Constantia Wine Region

Cape Town South Africa Area: Cape of Good Hope Region

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

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

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

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

Cape Town South Africa Area: Hermanus

Cape Town South Africa Area: Clanwilliam

Cape Town South Africa Area: Lambert’s Bay

Cape Town South Africa Area: Sevilla Rock

Cape Town South Africa Area: Wupperthal

Cape Town South Africa Area: Western Cape Interiors

Cape Town South Africa Area: Dogs and Cats

Cape Town South Africa Area: Groceries in Two Cape Town Neighborhoods

Cape Town South Africa Area: Groceries in Hermanus

My App Gap Posts for April 2011

Here are my AppGap posts for April. 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 April. There will be more in May.

Managing Content for Continuous Learning at Autodesk

OutStart’s Participate Supports the Social Side of Enterprise Work Processes

Zoho Adds More Apps to Google Apps Marketplace

Trilog Group Brings Social Project Management to the IBM Environment

IBM on the Transformation of Business Email

Traackr Adds New Features to Its Web Influencer Monitoring Tool

The Evolution of Site Search

Site search is becoming more than a means to increase website traffic. Now 40% of content and collaboration professionals see the feature primarily as a tool to improve customer self-service, according to a new Forrester report, Site Search Evolves from Technical Feature to Customer Touchpoint, by Leslie Owens with Stephen Powers and Anjali Yakkundi.  The next objectives were: increased sales conversion 30%, increased search traffic (SEO) 12% and increased page views 10%.

However, the report also finds that most corporate websites provide an inadequate search experience, lacking customer friendly self-service in areas such as speed, adaptability, relevance, content integration and task fit. In fact, 69% of Web sites examined did not even offer searchable self-help for customer service. Asked to rate the overall success of their search initiative, a survey of 188 content and collaboration professionals gave an average score of just 6 out of 10, reflecting a need for better, more measurable value from search. 

The report found that two thirds of search decision-makers are planning to expand their implementation and usage of site search this year. To be successful, according to Owens, IT and marketing teams must collaborate to develop the top three improvement areas in search: better relevance, enhanced usability, and quality content. They need to move the search functionality from a siloed activity to a cross-functional search partnership.  I would add that this business involvement is the success formula for most IT initiatives.

The report suggests that as marketers begin to take a greater role in search vendor selection and administration in the coming years, they may even completely take over tasks like boosting and blocking content, and setting up metrics to gauge growing levels of customer experience.

Forrester sees site search as a key area for investment. My sense of the market and my own experiences with Web sites has be agreeing with them.  Web sites have often replaced people as the face of the enterprise. It makes sense to put your best face forward. I was pleased to receive a review copy of the report. You can see the report at the Forrester site.

 

 

Promoting Continuous Learning at Autodesk Through Smart Content Management

In February I wrote about an interesting report Making Greater Use of Smart Content in the Enterprise by Geoff Bock, Dale Waldt, and Mary LaPlante. It covers XML applications that have long proven value with reusable componentized content. Here is an interesting case that came out of that effort, Managing Content for Continuous Learning at Autodesk.

Autodesk, Inc., is a design software and services company and its products address all phases of the design processes for architects and designers. These professional often need to go beyond standard practices to complete their projects. They share their practical tips and best practices through online communities. As the case notes, these “communities are the long tail of the Autodesk ecosystem, where the Internet combines the insights from many small groups into a major web presence.” At the same time the professionals like to get their content in short chucks relevant to the context of their work.  While Autodesk has long maintained a comprehensive set o manuals, it now needed to address the changing expectations.

First, they had already started modularizing their technical manuals. They now needed to build on this effort, to improve the accessed to this content.  They also needed to better leverage the content generated through online communities by capturing and curating the contributions of innovative customers.

They set up an enhanced delivery capability by adding MindTouch to their content infrastructure. I have covered MindTouch’s move into this space (see MindTouch 2010 Provides Intelligent Product and Services Documentation). MindTounch 2010 has enhanced three major areas to support this major use case. It now provides new capabilities for authoring, discovery, and curation of strategic content.

As the report notes, “a social web platform supports “community pages” for collecting and sharing user­generated content on a wide variety of topics. Once authenticated by the site, both Autodesk customers and support engineers from across the ecosystem can publish “tips and tricks” recommendations, blog on new topics, comment on posts, reference code snippets, or add links to topics covered elsewhere on the web.” Here is the answer. 

Moreover, Autodesk can track user activity across their site and the communities to determine trending topics and the emerging needs. Content curators perform this role. This tracking helps plan future releases. See yesterday’s post on The Rising Need for Content Curation Skills and Capabilities.

Since MindTouch optimizes online documentation for Web search, Autodesk now can cross sell through the educational materials, based on participants’ interest.  This turns a purely cost center activity into revenue generating one. Smart move. There is much more in the report.

 

 

OutStart Mobile Knowledge Solutions Use Case Series

As mobile devices have progressed from being simple phones to becoming hand held computers with multiple capabilities there is increasing potential within these powerful, always available, always connected devices. Here is the six part series from OutStart on the use of mobile to provide knowledge solutions. They cover a range of examples including enterprise alignment, crisis management, learning, learning evaluation, change management, and the real time push of priority communication.

These posts go beyond the concepts to look at how businesses are already using mobile and, in each case,  provide some of the measurable results. Here are the individual cases:

Real-time Push of Critical Information

Supporting Change Management

Handling Crisis Situations in Areas with Limited Internet Access

Employee Motivation and Enterprise Alignment

Reinforcement of Learning

Training Evaluation

 

The Proper Place for Process in a Dynamic World – Building on Useful Thoughts from Thierry de Baillon

I recent read and reread an interesting post by Thierry de Baillon, Moving Beyond “Work as Usual” in a Complex World. We have moved from knowledge is power to knowledge sharing. This is a good thing but we need to go further as Thierry notes.  Rather that summarize Thierry’s points, I have pulled out a few quotes from his excellent piece as I like his words. Then I offer a few of my own.

“On every subject, for every aspect of our life, the quantity of information available is so tantalizing, that we cannot simply store all information we need at some time into our memory anymore. Such abundance has transformed our cognitive process: we now mostly remember links and references to information, extending our memory map, our knowledge, to a network of peers and sources.”

 

“A recent attempt to deal with this growing quantity of knowledge flows is content curation... Unfortunately, …what is relevant to you isn’t necessarily so for someone else... Context is missing here. What we need is another way to filter information in context, another way to make information usable through non-deterministic tasks. The real power resides in knowledge use, not in knowledge sharing.”

 “Business processes expect a deterministic output; they rely on repeatability and explicit workflows, which often proves itself far from the nature of human relationships. The cognitive process, instead, is a non-linear mechanism, able to make sense from disjointed information. Cognition doesn’t appeal for processes, but for patterns.”

“Business processes work as long as nothing changes, or at least changes slowly, which happens less and less in present business environments. Dynamic patterns, instead, are emergent phenomena of complex systems.”

Building on Thierry’s points, computers are good at dealing with pre-determined processes. People are much better at handling the unexpected. The dominant form of enterprise apps has been process centered, as Thierry pointed out at the beginning of his post.  Efficiency was the guiding principle but that can take us only so far. Now we have social software that is designed to be people centric rather than process centric. Since more work now is project based, team workspaces become the new norm rather than process automation. People-centric software allows for better support for innovation, as well as the complex work we now face on a daily basis.

When I first got involved with knowledge management in the early 90s we created a hybrid version of work support applications. It was applied to such tasks as insurance underwriting and claims processing, as well as call center customer support. These are knowledge worker jobs but they follow some type of process. The knowledge support consisted on contextual access to knowledge e and experts. While it was process aligned, it was not designed to dictate what should be done but make the knowledge workers smarter.  It did not dumb down the job as some process driven tools do. I liked the process-aligned type of knowledge management because it brought content to where it was needed to support decision making. 

In some ways this was a transitional type of work support: both process and centered. We only called it knowledge management because that was the closest term of the time. Now we have better people centered tools and new terms. There is still a place for process in many work tasks but it needs to be supported by people centered tools.  The balance has tipped away from letting the tools define the job to letting people’s practices define the job with tools in a supporting role.

One additional benefit from the people centered approach is that knowledge is captured as by product of doing the work. The new tools can help abstract that knowledge, make it accessible, and keep it current. This was a big burden of old school knowledge management. 

 

Images of Groceries in Hemanus South Africa

Here is part two of my grocery pictures in the Cape Town South Africa area. I always check out the local stores when I go to a new place. This is in Hermanus on the south coast near Cape Town. 

Images of Groceries in Cape Town South Africa

I recently ran a long series of images form my trip to Cape Town South Africa in early December 2010. This weekend I will offer two more posts. I always enjoy going to grocery stores whenever I travel. Here are some shelf shots from two Cape Town grocery stores in adjacent neighborhoods. 

From the predominately Muslim, Bo Kaap neighborhood.

Here are more from the trendy Waterkant area. 

 

AIIM Provides Useful Social Business Roadmap

AIIM has provided a useful service with their Social Business Roadmap.  As their site states the roadmap is, “a tool to help organizations effectively develop social business processes and to help identify and address potential issues before they become real problems. The roadmap is designed as a framework – that is, it addresses a wide variety of issues and challenges, not all of which will be applicable to every organization. Organizations are encouraged to use this roadmap as a starting point, but to customize it to their particular circumstances including their regulatory environment, organizational culture, level of familiarity with different tools, and of course their overall strategic goals and objectives.”

They have set up a wiki partitioned along the eight steps they suggest: Emergence, Strategy, Development, Monitoring, Participation, Engagement, Governance, and Optimization. While you could argue that these steps follow many situations, it remains useful for them to serve as an organizing framework for the collection of useful content related to social business implementations. The wiki is organized around discussions of the "what's next", case studies, and the ability for you to add additional thoughts and feedback. This should be a useful resources if they are able to get contributions for a variety of organizations.

Here is a link to a detailed paper on the topic and to an infograph that they stated we are free to share. 

 

OutStart’s Participate Enables the Social Side of Enterprise Work Processes

Founded in 1999, OutStart offers an portfolio of inter-related mobile, social, and learning Knowledge Solutions intended to accelerate and broaden access to colleagues and the knowledge they need to respond to business requirements more quickly and make better informed decisions.. I recently spoke with Mike Gregory about Participate, OutStart's Social Business Software. It integrates social networking, collaboration, and knowledge sharing technologies in a secure managed environment. As a disclosure I am now working with OutStart on their social media efforts. Participate is one component of their offerings that also include mobile learning and communications, learning content management, and learning management system as well as a solution that pulls all the components together into a single integrated learning and knowledge suite.   

Participate was acquired in 2006 and they continue to extend its features. Some of the capabilities within Participate include: workspaces, discovery and networking between members, blogs, micro-blogging, wikis, and an web-based interface to publish FAQs and contribute to communities. It integrates with Microsoft Office for the contribution of desktop content. There is also integration with systems such as SharePoint, MS Office Communication Server and CRM. Participate provides granular security and access control.

The micro-blogging feature allows for both manually generated updates such as provided through Twitter and auto-generated updates based on user activity.  You can add comments to the auto-generated updates. This latter feature can be a useful way to keep track of the pulse of the organization. It also reduces email traffic.

There is automated management and capturing of question and answer exchanges for organic growth of the knowledge base over time. If you do not know the right expert for your question, the system determines the most appropriate individuals. It reaches out to the experts through email and the response comes back into Participate.  Hee is a sample expertise exchange screen.

This is much more efficient than the old way of mass email blasts. Answers are then made available through search going forward. The capturing is nice feature and reduces the burden on employees to contribute to the firm’s knowledge capital separate from their normal work efforts. That has always been an obstacle to the effectiveness of traditional knowledge management solutions.

Participate supports both internal and externally facing blogs. Inside the enterprise there can be a community blog, as well as individual blogs. Where needed workflow is available for content review before posting. You can vary the amount of control required. It is used for the Web facing OutStart Knowledge Solutions Blog. Here is a sample internal blog screen.

Team workspaces are available. You can assign tasks, add documents, and perform other projects functions. There are three levels of security: wide open, visible but approval required to join, and completely private requiring an invitation to join. Here is a sample workspaces screen.

You can subscribe to content through email in a regularly scheduled digest where you set the schedule. To fit people’s existing work patterns, email can also be used to send subscription digests, immediate notifications of people, groups, or conversations they are following, and tasks assigned through workspaces. Here is a sample subscriptions screen.

There is RSS capability for all content within Participate. This gives great flexibility to monitoring what is going on within the system. You can track the activity of everyone within the system and provide credit for their involvement. People can also rate contributions. Over half of the features are mobile enabled to provide quick access from anywhere through a mobile interface.

We can see from the feature set that Participate offers a comprehensive set of collaboration capabilities. It goes one step further. Through its integration with OutStart’s learning content management system, Participate can be used to support social learning. This social side of learning has been shown to significantly increase the engagement of in learning activities.  Participate can be the bridge between formal and informal learning.

OutStart has won a number of awards including being named a Visionary in the Gartner Corporate Learning Systems Magic Quadrant since 2004, Top Learning Portal by TrainingIndustry.com, and Best of Elearning! awards for their OutStart LCMS and Hot Lava Mobile. I will cover other components of their offerings in future posts.  The OutStart Knowledge Solutions Blog offers an exchange of ideas on how to better utilize technology to improve knowledge sharing.

 

 

Moving to a Multi-Vendor Approach to Handling Today’s More Complex Content Management Requirements.

Here is an interesting report I received from Forrester, Plan your ECM Strategy For Business, Persuasive, Transactional, And Foundational Needs by Stephen Powers and Alan Weintraub with Matthew Brown and Anjali Yakkundi. They note that enterprises are now struggling under increasing volumes of varying types of content (aka multi-channel information overload).

In the past firms have taken a product-specific approach to their enterprise content management (ECM) strategies: “document management for office docs, web content management for online content, records management for corporate records, and so on.” Now the reports argues when “developing a content strategy, they should consider persuasive, transactional, and foundational content functionality to support specific business use cases.”  They suggest taking a content centric approach rather than a tool centric approach to handle this complexity. This makes sense to me.

They discuss three types of content: transactional, business, and persuasive. Transactional content often originates outside the enterprise from customers and partners. It often relies on complex workflows or business process management to drive processes. Formats include scanned e-forms, faxes, print streams from back-office applications, and electronic records.

Business content starts within the enterprise and is part of workers daily tasks. Business content includes office documents, presentations, spreadsheets, e-forms, web content, and mobile content. Persuasive content may originate from many sources. There are many use cases including: “multichannel marketing, lead generation, eCommerce, customer self-service, in-store kiosks, and partner extranets.” Here tools such as web content management come into play.

The authors provide a useful framework that shows how foundational issues go across these three content types. They the look at how the different tool types fit into this matrix. They conclude that you need to remain flexible as you handle the increasing complexity of content types today. I found it a useful way to think beyond traditional approaches to content management that were operating when I helped implement these systems a few years back. 

 

Measuring Economic Impact of Using Cloud-Based Services: Google Apps

This post picks up on the theme from yesterday's post. In May 2010, Google commissioned Forrester to examine the total economic impact and expected return on investment (ROI) enterprises may realize by switching from legacy email and productivity solutions to Google Apps. The report is now out. As most of you know, Google Apps is a cloud-based messaging and collaboration platform that includes mail, calendaring, IM, as well as Web-based collaborative documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and sites. I have used it on several projects and it seems to work fine as a free SaaS alternative. This is especially true for efforts where a commercial cloud-based collaboration tool is not available for whatever reason. 

I was interested in the report, not just for what is might say about Google apps but for any light it could shed on switching to cloud-based collaboration, productivity, and messaging tools. Forrester conducted a combination of executive interviews and two surveys targeted at both IT and end user groups.

The results were impressive as ninety-three percent of respondents saw positive, tangible IT and user impacts that drove concrete ROI. They also found that users familiar with cloud-based personal email transitioned more smoothly to using Google Apps at work. The business user productivity gains were even greater than IT cost savings. The research suggested that end users were able to use Gmail more efficiently than their previous email solution and collaborate more effectively with Google Docs and Google Sites than with traditional office software.

I have used Gmail a bit and it seams straight forward but not necessarily easier than other email systems. I did not need any training but then that can be said for other systems the first time I used them. However, if you are talking about the use of documents in a collaborative way, then I can see that the use of Google Docs is easier than traditional office software.

They certainly found some impressive numbers in the ROI. The three-year results of switching to Google Apps from traditional infrastructure included a “risk-adjusted” ROI of 307% with a payback (break-even) within seven months. Looking more closely at the details within these results, the IT saving included reduced spend on licenses and infrastructure, as well as reduced IT administrator time spent on system maintenance, upkeep, patching, and upgrades. The totals were savings between 38% and 56%. These seem consistent with the claims for cloud-based saving.

The user benefits included productivity gains around email search, spam filtering, archiving, organization of email, as well as improved response time within the messaging environment. In the collaboration space improved efficiency in terms of sharing and editing documents across teams and within teams, the ability to incorporate feedback more quickly, more efficient face-to-face and virtual meetings, as well pushing more timely and relevant information to distributed teams. There was also improved efficiency in interacting with external partners and suppliers. However, remember the comparisons were with traditional enterprise apps, not against the other enterprise 2.0 offerings. Google provided the customers to interview but Forrester maintained editorial control over the report.

I think the findings are an endorsement of using cloud-based apps. Since the comparisons were not between various cloud-based app providers it is hard to say if they are specific to Google apps.  However, they do look good. 

 

My Favorite Tweets for April 1 - 14 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.

Leading app maker said to be planning Twitter competitor http://bit.ly/eQQynn

Gartner: 91% of enterprise arch efforts don't have business input http://zd.net/fVegnj via http://socialenterprise.darwineco.com/

RT @outstart: Enterprise 2.0: Calling Consumer Internet Entrepreneurs! http://bit.ly/gubCXi #e20

Revisiting the meaning of "Engagement" http://bit.ly/g9BnqO via @SBoSM

RT @elsua: [Blog] The Power of Words - Back to Blogging! http://bit.ly/fURhIx

How the Army Corps of Engineers, Charleston District uses social media http://bit.ly/etz5E1

best time to tweet? = wrong question http://bit.ly/i5J1Ap

RT @outstart: RT @jbowles: Social Objects as fulcrum for a community http://bit.ly/grfuBj by @gautamghosh

What can CIOs learn from marketing? http://bit.ly/gHs0kw by @NigelFenwick

Social Media ROI: Socialnomics http://bit.ly/h1M80a via http://social.darwineco.com/

RT @outstart: Why Users Are More Engaged With #Social Media on Fridays http://on.mash.to/i388Nf

Wanted, Twitter Tsar paid like PM to boost UK Gov's 'online presence' http://bit.ly/eQAzim via @SBoSM

Google: Social Media Success Determine Employee Bonuses http://on.mash.to/gk9IR1 via http://bit.ly/bkBSRf

Making Case for KM: One Magic Washing Machine at a Time http://bit.ly/iitCzy good pts by @VMaryAbraham

KLM hosted an influght dance party inspired by a tweet http://bit.ly/eCuCuk

RT @amcafee: New post - "Enterprise 2.0 The Indian Way" - http://bit.ly/hemJRY #e20 #socbiz

RT @OutStart: Mobile users still split app and browser usage http://bit.ly/h4tMzd by @ron_miller

Avoiding Catastrophic Failures in Process Improvement HBR http://bit.ly/gSTdQe

RT @GeorgeDearing: {great read} Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1% [Vanity Fair] http://bit.ly/eEkBia >agree

from @abonde my take on learning is social: http://bit.ly/hVbcqa > good points thx

Out of the Box Intranets – Are They a Myth? http://bit.ly/htFP6s good points from @carolyndouglas

Social marketing gaining prominence in companies' plans http://bit.ly/eHeyMp

RT @drszucker: People who study...Cezanne's paintings...apply new ways of thinking HBR http://bit.ly/hfBATr @digiwonk

RT @outstart: Insurers See the Web 2.0 Light http://bit.ly/hx9Ao0 #sm

TheAutoMod.com Launches #Automotive Social Network http://bit.ly/epkTf0

5 Ways Hiding Your Social Presence Hurts You http://read.bi/hedxXw

RT @plevy: Transparency is the new objectivity http://bit.ly/ez92i7 by @dweinberger

Facebook ad agencies - new frontier after SEO? WSJ http://on.wsj.com/hqvxm9

RT @outstart: RT @dhinchcliffe: Social Networks a Coming Trend at Work http://bit.ly/g2fhjV HT @demeto #socbiz

RT @DearingGroup: What social networks will look like in five years // http://slate.me/gYBiBR

 

Painting of Prawns and Chips - work in progress

It has been a while since I have had time to complete a painting. So here is the one I am working on. It is an order of prawns and chips (fries) at a wonderful seaside restaurant in Hermanus, South Africa, near Cape Town.  You can see the dish and the restaurant through the link. I just have to finsih the prawns and do some general touch up.

Paul Tamburello Does New Orleans

My friend Paul Tamburello writes the great blog PT at Large about his experiences in travel as well as the local art scene in the Boston area. He does a huge amount of posting on my home town New Orleans for which I am very grateful. I will be going there soon. Here are just a few.

Geno Delafose at The Rock 'n' Bowl, New Orleans covers Gene and his band at Mid City Lanes Rock 'n' Bowl. I have often gone to zydeco night here. A must do when you go to NOLA.

New Orleans: On the Eve of 5th Anniversary of Katrina on the remaining effects of this disaster.

New Orleans: Katrina Commemoration Ceremony, March, Rally covers 5th Annual Katrina Commemoration Foundation Ceremony, Second Line Parade and Rally

Ten hours in New Orleans cover great things to do if you only have a few hours. 

New Orleans: Make It Right Does It Right on a great festival for a good cause.

New Orleans: Where Else Could You Find A Debris Sandwich? on Mother’s restaurant, a classic spot.

New Orleans: The Treme Brass Band Lights Up The Candlelight Lounge as featured in the HBO series.

The Maple Leaf Bar: Dive In – one of my favorite music venues. Have been there many times.

There is so much more. 

 

Forrester: Enterprise Search is Maturing and Becoming More Social

Yesterday I wrote about social search and the Web. Forrester has provided an interesting new report, Enterprise Search: Six Key Trends to Watch by Leslie Owens with Stephen Powers and Anjali Yakkundi, and social is more positive here. Enterprise search used to be difficult and often unproductive. Now knowledge workers expect role-specific, contextual search everywhere they work and this is becoming more possible. The report notes that search technology is mature and stable; for the most part, bottlenecks regarding scale, security, and connectivity can be easily resolved. I was pleased to receive a review copy.

Interviews with thoughts leaders and results from surveys indicate that despite the fact that only 10% of IT leaders will upgrade or expand their information access implementations this year, search experts are optimistic about their ability to deliver search solutions that are both usable and useful. The report attributes this optimism to the fact that search technology is now well established, and the pervasiveness of Web search simplifies design decision and training.

As the industry standards for search evolve, vendors will change their products to adapt to new customer investment trends with changes in semantics capabilities and increased usage of search-based applications (SBA). I have also seen a rise in SBAs. Search vendors are making it easier to develop search based applications on top of their platforms via prebuilt components and templates.

Cloud and mobile will have an impact on search programs. However, plans for standalone enterprise search services in the cloud lag far behind cloud-based email or collaboration.

Despite this progress, ROI remains difficult to determine and prove. Usage metrics do not readily translate into bottom line figures. However, costs are coming down as Web services reduce the cost and intricacy of crawling enterprise systems. With W XML connectors are becoming easy or even not necessary.

Social media, especially activity streams through enterprise micro-blogging, is on the rise. The authors feel that as enterprise social computing grows, the knowledge and insight revealed on social platforms via technologies like micro-blogging will become strategically important. I certainly agree and have seen this happening in a number of cases. Organizations will use search to provide access to and analysis of the real-time flow of internal social content in forums and threaded discussions. This is an important source of knowledge capital that needs to be made accessible.

Social aspects will also impact search as more social features come into practice. The authors predict that knowledge workers will also increase their power over enterprise search as they tag, recommend, rename, and re-rank search results on their intranet. Social behavior like tagging and recommending will also become a signal for relevance calculations.

Search and social are very interrelated. I think this combination will continue to be more integrated. The report offers more and I recommend taking a look. 

 

How Will Social Search Impact Web Search and Help Find Good Content?

Over ten years ago Google added a new and transformative dimension to search with its page rank concept. Let the readers help determine what content has the highest value and also look at currency, along with relevance   This has become very useful. I use it every day and it is the default home page for my laptop. However, the top results on any given search are often dominated by the sites using the best SEO techniques.  We have all experienced this. I also have used it to my advantage with some of the blogs I write and helped some of my consulting clients with this effort.  Of course, I only use legit techniques as do most web site people but not everyone does. I mainly try to provide good relevant content and let the readers respond. Google does its best to police any bad behavior and stay ahead of the spammers and black hat SEO perpetrators.

As discussed in: How Will Social Search Affect Social Media and SEO?, over the past few months, “Google and Bing have started to allude that they are beginning to increase the impact of social media content and links on their search results, citing that social networking activity is a strong indicator of what might be most relevant to consumer searches.”

This post looks at some of the impacts of this move. Among those cited were, increased importance of social media buzz around brands/businesses, increased importance of social media links, and more brand benefit from search engines. In other words social media, will be become an increased playing field for SEO. The word optimization was used at lot. The brands and sites that are best at SEO within social will prevail, not necessarily those with the best products or ideas.  This move may likely make it harder to us to find the really good content as it gets buried beneath the mounds of optimized content.

 

 

Using Semantic Technology and Machine Learning for Consumer Advice: Retrevo

With all the publicity over IBM’s Watson, there has been a lot of discussion about how far computers can go to “replace” people. Of course, I think that is not really the question to ask. It should rather be conceived as how computers can complement people. This complementary nature is also the perspective held by Dr. Aditya Vailaya, Chief Scientist for Retrevo.com. He has a PhD in Computer Science with a specialization in Machine Learning and Statistical Pattern Recognition, as well as significant experience with business applications of this technology.  We recently discussed the role of computers and people in handling complex topics that require some level of both learning and semantic analysis.

I have often covered Retrevo’s creative surveys and other work such as these posts: Electric Gadget Inter-City Challenges and Are You a Digital Spy? So I was very interested to learn some about what goes into their services.

Aditya pointed out that Watson has demonstrated that you can build a machine to handle some level of cognition. However, this takes considerable effort. Watson was built and trained by a team of experts over a number of years. It uses math algorithms. These coupled with semantic analysis allow it to understand a natural language question and determine the probability that its answer is correct. However, it is good for a very specific task. The years of training may make it better than most, if not all, humans in playing Jeopardy. However, it will fail against humans in most of the other tasks we face every day.

To put the human versus computer issues in some more perspective it is useful to look at the work of pair of researchers, Martin Hilbert (USC) and Prisicilla Lopez (Open University of Catalonia) who have been looking at the growth of computer power and storage over the past twenty plus years. Recent research noted that, "to put our findings in perspective, the 6.4*10¹⁸ instructions per second that human kind can carry out on its general-purpose computers in 2007 are in the same ballpark area as the maximum number of nerve impulses executed by one human brain per second.”  So all the computers in the world have now reached the capacity of one person. Congratulations. Adtiya feels that these numbers are in the right ballpark.

So the issue is not whether computers will outpace people but how the two can work together. Computers are very good at doing boring tedious, repetitive tasks than would drive people crazy at a rate and scale far beyond what people can do even with a fresh start on their best days. This frees people up to do the more complex and interesting tasks.

James Taylor makes a similar point in his post, Decision Management in the New York Times, commenting on a New York Times article, Smarter than you think, on e-discovery. He concludes that, “automation of decisions sometimes reduces the need for staff. Much more often it innovates and allows companies to apply the same staff to more problems by replacing boring, mechanical work with more interesting, more difficult work that is hard to automate or where automation is not desirable.”

Aditya noted that as computers are able to handle increasing complex tasks this frees people to do increasingly more interesting tasks. He also noted one of the main differences between people and computers. People have motivations. They have the will to survive, improve themselves, and many other things. Despite 2001 Space Odyssey, computers do not have feelings or motivations.  Perhaps this lack of motivation is one reason they do not complain about long work hours but even that idea might be giving them too much intelligence.

Aditya said that Watson takes what the e-discovery tools do a step further. They just run search queries and use semantic analysis to sort what is relevant. Watson takes in full sentences in a natural language format and provides results back in a similar format. However, it can still make errors, just as the e-discovery tools often deal with the probability of being correct.

As these tools require extensive training to get started and constant re-training to stay on target there remains a strong role for people even within the use of these tools. Perhaps most importantly, people need to determine the questions these tools are targeted to address.

I asked Aditya how Retrevo uses machine learning. He said they provide information to consumers on products available on the Web such as digital cameras. To offer the best information, they use computers to scan the Web for product information and reviews. Addressing the volume of content out there is certainly more than a person can do or even a large team of people, especially at the speed required to stay current.

This is a great example of the right place to use machine learning and semantic technology.  People are still required to train the computers, point them at the right sites, and monitor the results to determine adjustments to the algorithms.  I would trust Retrevo’s computers’ ability to find the wide array of current options and viewpoints in product category over a team of people.  It is then up to the people at Retrevo to keep pointing them in the right direction, as well as pushing the capabilities of the computers further.

 

 

Our Webinar Recording: Human Side of Content Monitoring

The recording of our webinar, The Human Side of Content Monitoring, is now available. You see the presentation and hear the narration by Thierry and myself, as well as our answers to questions from the audience.   Here is the description of the session.

The transparency within social media offers a rich source to monitor the conversations within communities. At the same time it can contribute to the growing problem of information overload. One approach to these two issues is to use semantic technology.  While semantic methods allow for machines to understand information, there is no machine as complex as the human brain and its cognitive power to correlate what is meaningful from what is not. In this session we will cover a complementary approach (awareness engine) that does not rely on semantic technology, but rather uses data visualizations to allow an individual to easily understand the essential themes emerging from a massive number of events and conversations.  

Awareness engines operate on the premise that people, rather than computers, know best about where to look next. In this session you will see how real-time awareness plays a key role in making sense of timely and unstructured information, and revealing an organic and intimate semantic pathway within a filtered body of information.

 

Blogging is Still a Good Complement for Your Small Business Web Site

Here is useful data from a recent study of over 1,500 HubSpot customers (mostly small- and medium-sized businesses). 795 of the businesses in my sample blogged, 736 didn't. It clearly demonstrated that companies with a blog have far better marketing results for their Web site. Specifically, the average company that blogs has: 55% more visitors, 97% more inbound links, and 434% more indexed pages. We have certainly found this to be the case with our Darwin Awareness Engine Blog. Others seems find this benefit as well. In 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 as reported by the Center for Marketing Research at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth.

Kevin O’ Keefe offered some useful commentary on these results through his blog.  He pointed out that blogs help with search results. If your provide valuable content you will generates incoming links which supplies more traffic and even better search results. If your provide valuable content your blog will generate a social network for you. People regularly share posts from blogs on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Twitter is my main source for finding out about what is happening on relevant blogs to my interests. I no longer have patience to sort through a RSS feed.  

Has Twitter changed these reasons to blog? I think that Twitter complements blogs and does not replace them. Here is a useful post by Adam Singer that goes into detail on this point, 19 Reasons You Should Blog And Not Just Tweet. Twitter offers the sound bytes and blogs can go into depth. As noted in this blog post, many of the most useful tweets contain links to blogs and other content that goes into more depth.

Adam notes: “Unscientific observation: most bloggers use Twitter, but many Twitter users do not blog.” I think these non-blogging Twitters are missing the chance to have a substantial conversation with their audience.

Case in point, the 19 reasons to keep blogging could not be conveyed in Twitter but the title should draw a lot of RTs and click throughs to the actual post. Which is better to be a RT pointer or the owner of the content where the reader ends up? I encourage you to check on Adam’s 19 reasons. I agree with all of them. Blog on.

 

Great Blog Series on Music and Fun Southwest Louisiana

My friend Paul Tamburello writes the great blog PT at Large about his experiences in travel as well as the local art scene in the Boston area. He has recently been covering one of my favorite places in the world. Louisiana. He is now focusing on a part I wish I knew better, the Cajun country in Southwest Louisiana.  I highly recommend them.

Here are few:

Mardi Gras in Lafayette: Two Stars, One Legend - Riley, Delafose, Menard. It describes Lundi Gras at Outlaws Saloon and Dance Hall with Steve Riley and the Mamou Playboys, D.L. Menard, Terry Huval, Geno Delafose and French Rockin’ Boogie.  I saw Steve play at the Rock/n/Bowl in New Orleans and have some of his CDs.

Mardi Gras in Lafayette: A Zydeco King Cake Party. It describes Geno Delafose and French Rockin’ Boogie (Louisiana Zydeco, Creole) playing at a local home in Breaux Bridge, L

 Swamp Pop, Carnivals, and Characters: Plaquemine, Louisiana describes a regular Weekend in Louisiana
 and covers the Acadienne Festival, Plaquemine, Louisiana.

Mardi Gras in Mamou, Louisiana: Tradition Lives on with the "Courir." About a centuries-old tradition of revelry that still takes place in Mamou, Louisiana.

I think you get the idea. Le bon temps roule.

 

 

 

Revised Painting of Red Room Dreams

I was pleased to recently sell the 24" x 30" painting below through my art and photography blog. Most of the other works are still available. The person who purchased made a suggestion that I place the head that was peaking out of the covers under the covers. I was fine with this and you can see the results below. I actually think it makes the work more interesting as you can see that someone is under the covers, you just do not see who it is. Here is the original Red Room Dreams. 

 

Tech Reporters Losing Control of the Story to Social Media

The Neiman Journalism Lab had an interesting story by Tim Carmody recently on “Journalists have lost control of the story”: Twitter, tech bubbles, and the nostalgia of the technology press.  It discussed how the “accelerated news cycle of blogs, Twitter, and other digital media forces the technology press to work at the same speed as the investors they cover.”

They quoted Thomson Reuters’ Connie Loizos who said. “Thanks to Twitter and, to a lesser extent, other social media like Quora, information about startups and financings has become much more porous,” spreading good and bad information equally quickly, and in volume. “The first story out wins.” Reporters are not only competing against each other for scoops but also saavy investors and others who want to game the system in both legit and bad ways.

The article uses the term Churnalism, to refer to this situation and state that it is a much bigger problem than just press releases and wire stories. It is now everywhere and creating an echo chamber unprecedented in its size and reach. This echo chamber can crowd out more thoughtful analysis.

A large part of this problem is the need to appeal to search tools, like Google, that are driven by popularity.  The most popular is not always the most interesting or most relevant. How do you find what you did not expect?  The Darwin Awareness Engine takes a different approach. It avoids popularity to use Chaos Theory principles and let the content self-organize around relevant themes. 

No tool can guarantee to find the most interesting or relevant stories but the content visualizations within the Awarenes Engine give viewers a better chance to use their human cognition capabilities to seek relevance and find interesting anomalies that a tool based on popularity. Here is more about the Awareness Engine. 

 

Crocodoc Makes It Easier to Work with Online Documents

Here is a useful tool. To help us better work with online documents Crocodoc provides an HTML5 document viewing and collaboration tool that operates out of the cloud. The new viewer can be embedded into existing web offerings and provides a fast, versatile document viewing experience without the need for Flash or 3rd party plug-ins. I recently spoke with Ryan Damico, CEO and co-founder of Crocodoc, to get a better understanding of their offering.

Ryan explained that there are several advantages of using a cloud based HTML5 document viewer over the traditional options of Adobe and Flash. First, it is faster and does not require large files to be downloaded or plug-ins to be installed​. It is not prone to transmitting​ viruseslike the others and HTML5 will soon be available on many mobile devices.  This latter benefit will become increasingly important as many pundits are predicting a significant increase in the use of mobile devices for business collaboration and content sharing.  There is an app development arms race within mobile and Crocodoc’s ability to work with many tools will come in handy.

Ryan showed me how you can take a PDF, Word, PowerPoint, or other document and place it within Crocodoc for both viewing and collaborative commenting and marking up. You can make comments, as well as add highlights and texts. In addition to these editing functions, you can actually draw on the docs to suggest edits. This is very useful for visual images and formats such as PowerPoint.  Below is a comparison of a document in Crocodoc and in a PDF format.

The drawing capability also provides a great e-signature capability. Signatures are the last vestige of the analog world and they can slow down things. I was dealing with this over the weekend trying to fax a signed document to a client and dealing with bad machines, a wrong number and other challenges. There are a number of commercial tools devoted to this need but now it comes as part of Crocodoc. And Crocodoc is free to individual users. Perhaps we can get rid of fax machines now.

Once you like your document you can share it by sending a link, an email, or embed it in a blog post or web site. This latter capability is useful as Ryan showed me how you can easily put a 15-page document in a scrolling window in the middle of a blog post. Below is a sample embedded document. Here is a link to an embedded version of the Hacker Monthly. 

Ryan also explained Crocodoc’s new partner program. They are working with a number of application providers to embed Crocodoc’s capabilities within their applications.  Yammer has already fully integrated Crocodoc’s viewer and online collaboration tools into its social enterprise micro-blogging application as you can see below.

I like the simplicity of this approach and think that it will catch on.  I am looking forward to trying it myself.

 

 

 

My New Role within OutStart’s Social Media Efforts

I am very pleased to announce a new addition to the roles I currently support. I am now helping OutStart with their blog and Twitter efforts as OutStart’s Director, Social Media. OutStart offers an integrated suite of Knowledge Solutions that address social, mobile and learning efforts. They have won a number of awards including being named a Visionary in the Gartner Corporate Learning Systems Magic Quadrant since 2004, Top Learning Portal by TrainingIndustry.com, and Best of Elearning! awards for their OutStart LCMS and Hot Lava Mobile. Here is how they define knowledge solutions. 

I am excited to be a part of the OutStart team as their offerings reflect the past thirty years of my work experience. I started with enterprise learning in the 1980s developing programs for such companies as American Express, Apple, AT&T, Honeywell, IBM, and NCR. Then in the 90s I become involved with knowledge management, but the initiatives I was connected with were more like the social nature of what is now called enterprise 2.0. Clients included British Telecom, Cigna Insurance, Ryder, and Sainbury’s. It is exciting to bring this past experience to my current focus, the use of social media.    

The purpose of the OutStart Knowledge Solutions blog is to promote an exchange of ideas helping us to better utilize technology to improve knowledge sharing. While OutStart offers an integrated suite of Knowledge Solutions to address these issues, the focus within this blog will be more about the concept and what the market, as a whole, is doing in this space. Here is more about the blog. 

The posts on the blog will be written by a number of the OutStart team, including myself, and each will contain the author’s byline. I will provide overall coordination working with Jeff Whitney, OutStart VP of Marketing. Here is my first post, Aberdeen Report: New Learning Tools are Enabling Organizations to Meet Current Business Challenges.

The Twiiter feed, @outstart, will also be contributed to by a number of the OutStart team including myself. I invite you to follow both of these efforts.  While we will tweet at times about OutStart, like the blog, we will focus more on industry news and innovative articles and posts we discover and want to share. We want both of these communication channels to be more about serving our followers and generating conversations than as a means of promotion. 

On occasion, on the blog I will cover aspects of the OutStart offering and other news on as I do with a range of software offerings. These services certainly fit within the scope of my Portal’s and KM blog’s coverage. I am continuing my other roles, including serving as VP of Marketing at Darwin Ecosystem where I also focus on social media. These two product offerings are actually quite complementary and in no way competitive.

I will also continue to write for the AppGap and FastFoward blogs. They both cover the market space that includes OutStart and Darwin Ecosystem. As always I will provide relationship disclosure when relevant. This is an era where people often take on multiple roles. I am very pleased with this new addition.

 

 

Forrester: Mobile Apps Will Change the IT Market and Drive Software Innovation

Forrester has issued a new report, Mobile App Internet Recasts The Software And Services Landscape: App Innovation On Phones Will Spread To Cars, Appliances And Entertainment by John C. McCarthy. It notes that while the explosion of app innovation started with the iPhone, the rise of the “App Internet” significantly impact the enterprise software and services market. Apple has over

iPhone 350,000 apps, and Android has countered with more than 150,000. They wrote that 33% of people with smart phones, download applications at least monthly. I am part of the majority on this issue but I do enjoy my smart phone. As part of the report, they interviewed 27 vendors in this space. I was pleased to receive a review copy of the report.

According to their survey of over 2,100 North American and European software decision-makers, 41 percent say that increasing the number of mobile apps for both employees and customers was a high or critical software priority. The development of this mobile “app Internet” with hybrid local and cold-supported applications will not only foster huge levels of innovation, but it will also open up new services opportunities around the creation and management of these B2C and B2B apps.

This second wave of innovation will leverage cloud-based services. Forrester believes that three service lines will grow significantly during the next 36 to 48 months. First, building initial apps – projected to be at $5.6 billion/year market globally by 2015. Second, managing apps and devices – projected to be at $3.8 billion/year market globally by 2015. Third, re-inventing the business processes and back-end systems – projected to be at $7.6 billion in revenues by 2015

As innovation continues and services vendors help IT pick up the slack, the app Internet will also accelerate the evolution of the enterprise desktop and business applications markets. Forrester sees four main shifts ahead. First, lower-cost apps will increase pricing pressure. Second, task-oriented experience will drive modular design. Third, the consumerization of IT will promote a freemium model. Fourth, a range of different revenue models will emerge. The app stores have really opened up the market.

Some of the innovations will come as sensors in the new mobile devices unlock the notion of context. For example, the sensors enable apps to limit the amount of cumbersome data entry by auto-calculating your location. In addition, the simpler, purpose-built, task-oriented apps are easy to use. To address the lack of screen real estate, the apps have to be highly relevant and very straightforward. This requires creative UIs.

The report concludes with the suggestion that the boundary between business and consumer that has been gradually eroding since the advent of the initial home PC in the late 1980s will fall completely. With the advent of the Freemium sales model and taking a percentage of the transaction, they predict that that the two worlds will become one.

 

My Favorite Tweets for March 15 – 31 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.

Malcolm Gladwell: Social Media Still Not Big Deal http://bit.ly/gYU5Is > it passed tippin point

Twitter Founder Wants to Make Service More Mainstream http://on.wsj.com/ezU3Q0

RT @jackvinson: Google shared: KM, Enterprise 2.0 + Social Business: One + Same http://bit.ly/gRgy9Db thx @elsua

RT @GeorgeDearing: innovation "sweet spot" explained at HBR -- http://bit.ly/fc6mqv

RT @outstart: #Learning Fosters Psychologically Healthy Workplaces http://bit.ly/gwC8un

RT @jevon: The Tech Bubble IS the Recovery http://j.mp/f0slI7

RT @elsua: ♺ @bduperrin New post [eng] : state of community management: 2011 ed available ! http://bit.ly/fQZyzK / Great read, B!

RT @socialmedia2day: Top List of Marketing Blogs http://goo.gl/fb/h2nEz #sm

via @SBoSM RT @Captico: What Chrysler Did Wrong: Remembering Human Side of Social http://bit.ly/eLv1ft

study - Twitter isn't very social http://bit.ly/gjybk4 via @SBoSM > it is for me

via @perryhewitt: Is Twitter the new LinkedIn? http://bit.ly/h2jD6H

Goolge is greatest influence on what Americans cook http://tcrn.ch/fM3dA0 >not good

RT @ConversationAge: 7 Blogging Mistakes That Small Businesses Make http://ow.ly/4mZCa >good pts.

Silicon Valley Hiring Perks: Meals, iPads and Cubicle for Spot http://nyti.ms/g7OjmR > my dogs at work everyday :)

Detroit Outgrows Silicon Valley in Tech Jobs as Ford Binges on Hires http://bloom.bg/hGsOkb

interesting blog by @DanielWRasmus How You Think About the Future Is Dangerous http://bit.ly/ha7K9o

CIOs aren't CIOs for long http://bit.ly/grxxCz > changing skills

#Art Exhibit Uses #Twitter http://on.mash.to/fxKZak > very cool via http://bit.ly/bkBSRf

Scientists hope to check if we came from Martians http://bit.ly/fgeuMM

Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to be Knowledge Workers by @amcafee http://bit.ly/dGZqq0

RT @gyehuda: Understanding motivation of software developers on Open Source projects http://bit.ly/ik0eF2

RT @outstart: Are Businesses Missing Benefits Of Collaboration Tech? http://bit.ly/f2DHqG

nice read from @robpatrob Social Media – New Literacy – The Haiku http://bit.ly/fxgi2F #sm

AIIM social business roadmap http://bit.ly/eoZHaf thx @sympmarc

RT @GautamGhosh: Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information? T. S. Eliot, The Rock

On Twitter, ‘What a Party!’ Brings an Envious ‘Enough, Already!’ NYT http://nyti.ms/gKX7qd

RT @ejwilson1945: Most Marketers Clueless About Social Media Conversations http://bit.ly/fbeF4A

Poole at #SXSW "Anonymity is authenticity." http://buswk.co/gzbG4F > totally disagree

RT @perryhewitt: Irene Greif on Psych of Collaboration: Examining limits of collaborating thru SW http://bit.ly/gpE6Ri

Duck - Facial Recognition Is Going Social http://bit.ly/hwovZo .> scary

Twitter emerging as leading social platform with world's largest corporations. http://bit.ly/hy6u24 via @SBoSM

What’s The Criteria For Being An Innovative Company? http://bit.ly/fZ5fGz

Happier people tweet together http://bit.ly/edAh1m via @SBoSM

RT @joemckendrick: Business social networking: where’s the ROI? http://bit.ly/epasbg

 

 

 

 

Images of Boston Winter 2011

We had a lot of snow this winter and here are some images. These start off with two pictures of the winter sunrise over the Boston skyline and then proceed to the snow we endured. 

                       

Breakfast at Miss Bellows Falls Diner - Vermont

After a long series in the Cape Town South African sun, here is something from the snowy northeast US in February. This is the Miss Bellows Falls Diner in Bellow Falls Vermont. 

                      

 

My Fast Forward Posts for March 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 April.

Social Media Usage Pervasive in Major US Charities, Ahead of Other Sectors

Forrester: Mobile Apps Driving Software Innovation and Changing Market

Increasing Business Performance Through Social Software

Social Media, Tech Reporting, and Content Curation

AIIM Offers a Social Business Roadmap

Will IT Become More Strategic Through Cloud Computing?