Portals and KM

My Favorite Tweets for May 15 - 30 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.

RT @rossdawson: SkyNews on future of tech: Cloud, Privacy, Big data, Reputation http://bit.ly/kKr9ZW

Facebook to assemble global team of 'diplomats' http://bit.ly/mp1Kjv 3rd largest "nation"

RT @ZDNet: "65% of business leaders have plans to buy technology for their group without involving IT at all."

RT @outstart: using #education as a marketing tool http://bit.ly/eD9Kqz

RT @lbenitez: Key to Successful Social Business is Social Everywhere http://pio.mu/kScfLe

RT @dhinchcliffe: Flawed Premise of “Facebook for the Enterprise” http://ow.ly/51xS7 #socbiz

Psychology of Hiring and Social Networking Profiles http://bit.ly/l2AgzK

RT @RomainGoday: management secrets of Barcelona Football Club - Economist: http://me.lt/3F0JV

RT @johnjambrose: Creator of China's Great Firewall pelted with shoes and eggs. http://bit.ly/lVf58v

from @robpatrob - Infographics – new essential communications device for web? http://bit.ly/mEqY6c

RT @gyehuda: Blog post: KM issues not solved by, but enabled, by technology. http://goo.gl/fb/g0hOi

RT @socialmedia2day: 5 Productivity Tools for the Busy Social Media Manager http://goo.gl/fb/4jOxG #sm

RT @SameerPatel: RT @tomforemski: Nice Interview @Om Malik founder of GigaOm: http://bit.ly/mqDfX0 (By @HilzFuld in Israel)

by @joemckendrick Social CRM: Much More Than ‘Just Another Channel http://bit.ly/lBEbjp

RT @SmartDataCo: Why Medians May Not be the Message – for Talent Data http://goo.gl/fb/zV5ad #data

RT @SmartDataCo: Man vs. Machine Contests: Forget "Level" Playing Fields http://goo.gl/fb/SmCDZ #data

Enterprise App Store And Self-Service IT: http://bit.ly/9EkMrs great post by @dhinchcliffe

April 2011 “Content is the Fuel of the Social Web” report http://bit.ly/iDaOp6

Amazon: E-books now outsell print books http://bit.ly/jTyf5M

RT @GeorgeDearing: exs of companies improving processes w better collaboration [@HarvardBiz] http://zite.to/mJMoIH

RT @ghaff: My CNET piece on yesterday's #mitcio forum is now up: http://cnet.co/iPk7Dv

LinkedIn stock doubles in value following IPO http://on.wsj.com/kqqFp2 Via @SBoSM : bubble?

RT @Gartner_inc: #Gartner research: How to Profit From Social #CRM. http://gtnr.it/lP44ns

RT @DavidGurteen: Fighting the Knowledge Hiding Epidemic http://bit.ly/kPIy9n #KM by @VMaryAbraham

RT @hjarche: conventional peer review system (filter-then-publish) bad consequences http://ur1.ca/47ykw by @lemire

RT @lbenitez: Enterprise 2.0 #Adoption Council 2011 Salary Survey http://pio.mu/mxoA5n

great read from @elsua Knowledge Management – Where Are the Bees? http://bit.ly/jT6WjW

Social Marketing Takes Hold, But Traditional Marketing Still Thrives http://bit.ly/kSVV9M

60% Of CIOs Ready To Turn To Cloud Computing http://bit.ly/m3albZ

RT @outstart: Social Media's Secret Weapon - Email http://bit.ly/m72PlH

RT @webtechman: Problem with Fitting New Ideas Into Old Business Models http://bit.ly/ju4qvG via @reuvengorsht

RT @Gartner_inc: Microsoft-Skype Deal Will Advance Enterprise-Consumer Convergence: Gartner http://bit.ly/jmtThs

RT @darwineco: Behind scenes in social media http://bit.ly/k0I6yl via http://social.darwineco.com/

 

 

 

TangentProjects coming to Venice with Invasive Alien Species

It is a holiday in the US so let's talk about art. My London friend Karen Ay is taking a group show, Invasive Alien Species, to Venice this summer. The exhibition will coincide with the 2011 Venice Biennale and aggregate small works to create a larger site-specific installation.

Her collective, TangentProjects, has invited a group of English and other European artists to respond to the theme of Invasive Alien Species and invade the space, “coming up with unexpected artworks, which though perhaps small and inconspicuous in the sense of individual units of work, combine and compete to create a large dynamic, visually striking, site-specific installation.”

Dates and opening times: 1–5 June & 9–12 June 2011 12.00 – 17.00

also by appointment at other times in June 2011

Opening event: 4 June 6-9pm.  Venue: Via Garibaldi 1333, Castello, Venice

TangentProjects is an independent platform for collaboration and project development.
It was established in January 2008, TangentProjects “originated out of a collective desire to create an independent platform for collaboration and project development. Finding that they often crossed paths through a variety of situations and similar interests, three artists made the decision to join forces as a way of creating opportunities for presenting their and others' projects. Circumventing the structures of the mainstream gallery scene, we act as a starting point or trajectory for exploring and finding ways to bring ideas into being.”

In addition to being involved with TangentProjects, each of the artists, Karen Ay,Helene Kazan, Steve Smith, maintains their individual art practice. Karen Ay’s art practice focuses on the “subverting of various groupings and systems by using text, objects, maps and images as agencies of making connections and re interpreting them. By juxtaposing and manipulating those elements she attempts to order, contain, re-system and re-present them in various contexts.  Notions surrounding identity/legacy, accumulated histories, and sense of place are often themes in her work.” Image on left from her site. 

I have always admired Karen’s work and have written about it before. See: Great Upcoming London Sculpture Show and Champagne Army)

 

Dining at B&G Oysters and Music at the Beehive Boston MA

Here is what has become one of my favorite places to eat in Boston’s South End, B&G Oysters.  Growing up in New Orleans I always love a seafood place here is a great New England version. The picture is from their web site and the rest are mine. A greta place to go for music after dinner is the Beehive, just across the street as seen in the last pictures. They have good food too. 

                          

 

 

Fall in Montreal, Quebec

Here are some of photographs of Montreal in the Fall., a great North American city. Yes those are duck fat fries. 

                                               

 

 

 

My App Gap Posts for May 2011

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

IBM Releases Social Jam 2011 Results

Enterprise 2.0 Study Needs Participation

OutStart’s Hot Lava Provides Flexible Mobile Communication Platform

Index Engines Looks Deep into Enterprise Data

SpringCM Goes Beyond Content Management

Mendix Provides Bridge Between IT and Business with Agile App Development

 

How Data Drives Effective Decision Making

The New York Times ran a story, When There’s No Such Thing as Too Much Information, by Steve Lohr, that covered some of the value of using data to help with business decisions.  The article began with the challenge and opportunity provided by the massive about of information we have today. If organizations are not swamped by the sheer volume, there is a lot of value to be gleamed from smart analysis of the content.

The article then focused on research conducted by new research led by Erik Brynjolfsson, an economist at the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Brynjolfsson and his colleagues, Lorin Hitt, a professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, and Heekyung Kim, a graduate student at M.I.T., looked at 179 large companies. They found that those that adopted “data-driven decision making” achieved productivity rates 5 to 6 percent higher than could be explained by other factors, including how much the companies invested in technology.

The Times article noted that Thomas H. Davenport, my former colleague and a professor of information technology and management at Babson College, made that point in his most recent book, with Jeanne G. Harris and Robert Morison,  Analytics at Work: Smarter Decisions, Better Results.

The drive to help companies find meaningful patterns in the vast amounts of content has created a fast-growing business intelligence (BI) industry. Major technology companies – IBM, Oracle, SAP and Microsoft — have collectively spent more than $25 billion buying up specialist companies in the field.

The Times quotes David Grossman, a technology analyst at Stifel Nicolaus, “The biggest change facing corporations is the explosion of data. The best business is in helping customers analyze and manage all that data.”

We are very pleased to se these research findings and commentary as making sense of content overload and finding patterns within it is the goal of the Darwin Awareness Engine™. 

 

Aligning Collaboration with Business Processes

Forrester recently issued a new report, The State Of Collaboration Software Implementations: 2011 by TJ Keitt with Matthew Brown and Joseph Dang. The report noted that while organizations are actively investing in collaboration tools to support their increasingly decentralized workforce, 62% of companies say that these tools still mainly benefit travel and corporate communications. The reported noted that, “only 9% of businesses report that collaboration technology has impacted their time-to-market for new products, with improved innovation and partner relationships also ranking low on the list.” I was pleased to receive a review copy.

Why is this occurring? Forrester report author TJ Keitt offered this explanation. “The tipping point for gaining benefits related to flexible working styles is after a business deploys four or five collaboration technologies. But more collaboration technology alone isn’t a magic elixir. Collaboration pros must work in conjunction with the business to set policies that help information workers use these tools to do their jobs.” He adds, “To realize benefits of collaborative business processes, though, (implementations professionals) must work to integrate these tools into business processes like product development and workflows.”

This makes sense. If you are mainly using collaboration tools to support virtual conversations then travel reduction is likely the big benefit. To get the really big benefits in other areas you have to explicitly go there. You usually get what you ask for, at best.

This was the case with knowledge management. The only really successful KM efforts that I saw were ones that were aligned with business processes such as product development or customer service. In these aligned cases, I saw documented benefits such as reduced time to market, increase in successful cross selling and reductions in repeat calls on the same service issue.

Despite the limited returns, a significant number of firms still see the potential of collaboration technologies. According to the report, 46% of businesses reporting upgrades or net new implementations to team workspaces in the next year and 42% spending on social tools like blogs and wikis. Real time communication is being added to the desktop with new investments in desktop videoconferencing (33%), unified communications (32%), instant messaging (30%), and web conferencing (31%).

Let’s hope they target these investments at specific business processes and not simply general communication. There is more in the report to guide these efforts. 

 

 

Results from IBM Releases Social Jam 2011

In early February 2011, following Lotusphere, IBM hosted an online conversation (called a “Jam”), bringing together over 2,700 participants—representing corporations, academic institutions, nonprofit organizations and government agencies—to discuss social business and the ways in which it can redefine how we work in the years ahead. I was one of the participants. Here is a copy of the Social Jam 2011 results.

For 72 hours, individuals from over 80 countries “jammed” on key issues and generated new ideas on the major themes:

• Building the social business of the future

• Developing participatory organizations through social adoption

• Using social media to understand and engage with customers

• Determining what social means for IT

• Identifying risks and establishing governance

IBM has now published a report synthesizing the 2,600 discussion posts and more than 600 tweets from the Jam.  Some of the highlights include:

• Over 25 percent of (non-IBM) participants said their organizations have low to medium levels of adoption of social business practices, with a key concern being the pressure to quantify the ROI of social solutions. Many participants believe usage of social media is absolutely quantifiable and measurable, but it involves tracking a new set of metrics. While others noted that calculating ROI of social media is attacking the problem from wrong direction. “You can successfully measure the ROI of social media,” one participant wrote, “but you must first understand your audience’s needs and motivations for engaging with social media.”

• The role of middle managers is changing—or perhaps disappearing altogether. Many social business capabilities reduce the need for typical middle management tasks.

• One of the Jam quick polls was "What percentage of your online time do you spend on social networking?" and 25% answered "More than 50%."

• Another Jam quick poll was "What is most likely to encourage you to use social software more often in your job?"  While 24% said "Ease of use of the tools," 47% said "Embedded in the applications I use to do my job."

• The "building the social business of the future" forum was by far the most popular, perhaps because it covered a wide range of issues related to social business. Discussions touched upon the problems with email, how to create incentive for the sharing of knowledge, social networking’s involvement in government and much more.

• There will be an increased focus on integrating social activities and business processes, and there was quite a bit of discussion around how the culture of a company must shift to embrace social (for current employees and alumni who represent an organization's brand.)

We have to remember that this is a biased sample toward early extensive adopters of social media. However, the results are still quite interesting. 

 

My OutStart Knowledge Solutions Blog Posts

As I mentioned on this blog I am now helping OutStart with their social media efforts as part of the OutStart team. I am one of several people contributing to our OutStart Knowledge Solutions Blog (see: My New Role within OutStart’s Social Media Efforts). I will not be repeating my posts for that blog on this one. However, about once a month I will post links to my writing there. Here is the first set going back to the beginning of April. I welcome your comments.

Aberdeen Report: New Learning Tools are Enabling Organizations to Meet Current Business Challenges

McKinsey: Social Technologies Lead to Many Business Benefits

The Impact of Social Learning on Evaluation Models: Is the Kirkpatrick Model Still Relevant

Social Software Changes the Nature of Knowledge-based Solutions

Social Software’s Contributions to Enterprise Collaboration

Putting Knowledge to Use and Accelerating its Value: Moving from Push to Pull, Moving from Document-Centered to People Centered Knowledge Access

Choosing Your Social Learning Channel: Tablet vs. Mobile Phone

Setting the Conditions for Social Learning

 

Images of Sunset at Essex CT Spring 2011

Here was a wonderful spring sunset in Essex CT that ends my series on the area for now. 

          

 

Images from Florence Griswold Museum Old Lyme CT

I recently went again to the Florence Griswold Museum in Old Lyme CT. The Griswold House offered features found in the influential art colonies of France and Holland: a stimulating environment, artistic camaraderie, inexpensive lodging, and picturesque scenery. Now you can see what happen. 

 


 







 

My Notes from the 2011 MIT Sloan CIO Symposium: Enterprise Analytics = Business Values

Here are more of my notes from the MIT Sloan CIO Symposium: Enterprise Analytics = Business Values. Participants included: Moderator: Michael S. Hopkins, Editor-in-chief, MIT Sloan Management Review, panel: Rock Gnatovich,
SVP & COO, Spotfire, TIBCO Software Inc., Brad Peterson, CIO, Charles Schwab, Sid Probstein, CTO, Attivio, and Renée Romano Nocker, Director of Technology Product Marketing, SAS.

Michael said that in 2009 more digital information was produced than in all of past history – so much to look at. They are doing a survey on uses of data at the Sloan Management Review. He asked a survey question – imagine an organization transformed to effectively use data. How close to this ideal is your organization on a scale of 1 – 10? Also where is management in general on this? He asked the panel first. 

Rock answered in terms of level of satisfaction of some of their customers.  He said that business users are finding traditional BI tools too hard to use. However, some of their customers are using their tool, Spotfire, real time and would rate it 8.5.

Brad said that at eBay, his prior employer, all the IT solutions did not work at first because of the scale but it has been solved and now many of the employees have left to bring this knowledge elsewhere. He would give eBay an 8. Data mining was big for them but it was new at their scale. At Charles Schwab he would say a 6. In financial services you need to be very precise with customer data. They want to go to social and mobile next. What they need to do is drive marketing growth more.

Sid said that at Attivio he would say they are at a 7. They are a young company and not globally dispersed so some data collection is not hard. Michael asked about the business world at large and Sid said it is likely at a 5. It is hard to get data into the funnel. Sid said that the interest in unstructured data has grown in the past two years. Renee said that since coming to SAS she is seeing more of what is possible so she world rate the overall business world at a 3 or 4.

Michael said in their over 3000 responses to the survey so far the average is about 4.5. These numbers are likely high because of a company pride issue. Thought leaders would say a 1 or 1.2 and there is great room for growth.  When asked what are the obstacles the answer is not data. The big obstacle lack of understanding how to use the data to solve problems and embed data into business processes.

Michael asked about the biggest misconception about using data. Renee said when business leaders hear analytics there is a focus on reporting and measurement. She sees the value in predicting, not looking back. She sees there is a lack of education in the value proposition on using prediction to make changes in anticipation.

Michael asked if they have seen improvements in the ability to make changes based on data. Sid said there are now offices to manage the data so there is ownership. Analytics are about optimization and changing pain points, not looking backward.  Companies need to do more experimenting.

Michael asked Brad about what obstacles he has seen as he is the one non-vendor on the panel. Brad said that much of senior management is not data oriented. He was trained in the value of data at MIT. We need more senior management to get it.

Rock said there is a sense that only a few people can do analytics in an organization. The IT organization has not been responding fast enough so people bypass it. His firm’s client base has a lot of people who do not trust the data they are given and want to work on data itself.

Brad said that at eBay they had to be able to sell anything ever built. So they could not put in place highly structured data gathering. They had to adapt. You have to give up on too much organization or the business will not adapt. Renee agreed that being open is good in many cases but you still need structure in others. IT people get excited when they are using innovative analytics to help drive decisions in their company.

There was a question from audience about being creative and not getting a mess. What is the right balance of empowerment without chaos. Rock said Excel, for example, allows you to do anything you want but you cannot share it as no one else will know what you did.  You need a combination of guided workflow and free form.

Another question: Some people need to simply have the forms filled in and others are hungry for more data. What is the thing to move companies from a 4 to an 8 on the scale. Renee said it is the skills on how to pick the important parts of data to look at. It is the analytic skills more than the technical skill. Sid agreed that expertise is an issue but also infrastructure requirements and the corporate need for short-term results that limits investment. Companies do not want to make the investment. Brad said the you need to get funds from marketing budgets as this is where the value will go. Rock said it is a combination of technology and methods. He agrees it is a skill gap in the analytic space. Also, the need to not have to organize everything opens up for innovation.

Audience: I heard this morning that BI is not widely adapted and is still hard to use.  How to get this adaption.  Sid said you need to get wider use for BI tools. You need to shift from complex reporting to Google style simplicity. We would applaud this at Darwin Ecosystem as that is one of our design goals. Sid added that you need the consumer model of simplicity to increase usage

An audience member said he has to sell BI within the organization. He asked for any practical ideas to sell senior management.  Rock said you have to create a virtual environment where people can bring their data.  You then need to allow for socialization as people trust other people more than data.  Renee said you need good communicators. They went out and found problems that need data to solve them. Then you do pilots on these to demonstrate value. Brad said give business people an iPad with the BI tool on it and they will love it and show it to others.

 

 

My Notes from the 2011 MIT Sloan CIO Symposium: Collective Intelligence and Social Networks

Here are more of my notes from the MIT Sloan CIO Symposium: Collective Intelligence and Social Networks, Participants included: Moderator: Brian P. Watson,
Director of Business Outreach, Workforce Opportunity Services, panel: Adam Boyden,
President, Conduit, Robert J. Laubacher,
Associate Director and Research Scientist, MIT Center for Collective Intelligence, Dr. Andrew McAfee,
Principal Research Scientist, MIT, and Rob Stefanic,
VP & CIO, Sensata.

Brian’s organization provides education for Vets and high school kids in need. Adam’s firm allows companies to build online apps. Sensata is a manufacturer of control devices for aerospace, autos, and other devices.

Brian asked Rob L. about the biggest trends he sees in collective intelligence.  Rob noted that collective intelligence preceded people. Today, the issue is Internet enabled collective intelligence.  What is new is this tool has only been around for decade and there are many more opportunities moving forward. Most often Web based collective intelligence takes the form of external connections through such tasks as crowd sourcing.  There is beginning to be an understanding of how this works.  Now there are companies that build communities to generate collective intelligence.  He used the term “crowd computing.”

Andy picked up on Rob’s lead. We do not need to prove that this collective intelligence works. We know it does now. It generates interesting data in an unstructured form. You can gain great insights from this. He referred to Erik Brynjolfsson’s work in the morning panel (see 2011 MIT Sloan CIO Symposium Notes: Academic Keynote Panel).  So he asked why are more companies not doing this?  He explained that companies have been cautious. There is a deep reluctance to give up control. We have a mindset from the industrial revolution about control and structured workflow.

Brian wondered about the motivation for this. Part of the reluctance is a lack of understanding of what it is.  Another trend was to slot it into knowledge management. While that is part of it, knowledge management is not the whole story by any means. Brian asked Rob S. what was happening in his organization as the one CIO on the panel. He said he first got a lot of cautious concerns from legal about liability. However, they have moved past this now. They are doing crowd sourcing.  They are also looking at external and internal information in their auto group to look at patterns and make predicts.

Brian asked more about why the adoption has been slow. On one end, some managers are just doing it because their boss asked them to do it. Then people get involved to their surprise but felt no one was listening and abandoned it.  On the other end, some companies have gotten away from simply listening to the intuition of the top guys and letting the data help drive decisions. These companies can be very effective. It is the difference between medicine men and modern doctors.

Brian said that a top guy might read an airline magazine on Web 2.0 and demand one. This feeds into the blind movement approach described above. Rob S. said that they turned things over to the data guys in his firm. They were also driven by a business value rather than simply “checking the box” for participation. Andy said that simply saying here is the new best way will not work.

Adam said that often it is the marketing guys and the IT guys that first get involved and they do not like each other. They have different goals. The marketing guys want it now. The IT guys see all this unstructured data and chaos.  There needs to be a common ground and understanding here to overcome these differences.

Rob S. said that pattern analysis is a big shift in how they look at data. This is a cultural change that needs to take place. They need to move from looking backward to looking forward.

One audience member asked about how to overcome noise and avoid collective stupidity when you open up conversations. Adam offered an example from the game world. There is a large and noisy audience in the online game world that often chants garbage. However, one company enables everyone to feel loved. Make sure you listen to the good stuff and implement it. To the others say you offered good stuff but we are not doing it now. Andy said you should just exile the bad behaviors if you are within a business.  Rob L. said they are trying to measure the intelligence of groups. If groups take turns they are smarter.  Women are better at this so if groups have more women they are often better. 

How do you handle all the different collection of resources? Andy said the bad approach is to act like a librarian and manage these resources. Andy said the good way is simply have an open ended Q & A mechanism that is open to all and it will self-organize. A rating system really helps as people like recognition. Perhaps this is the American Idol approach.

How do you promote executive sponsorship and generate adoption?  Rob S. said you have to overcome the cultural issues first. Especially if there is a need to avoid asking questions because you are supposed to already have the answers.  Andy said that the outside world is helping here because of the success of Web 2.0. Also “weak ties” are very valuable and now these tools support the connections with weak ties. 

 

My Notes from 2011 MIT Sloan CIO Symposium: CIO Keynote Panel

Here are my notes from session of the MIT Sloan CIO Symposium session: CIO Keynote Panel -
The Evolving CIO Role in Cloud and Mobile Computing Environment. Participants included: Moderator: David Kingston,
Managing Director, Corporate Executive Board, panel: Anthony D. Christie,
CIO & CTO, Global Crossing, Mark Egan, CIO, VMware, Sanjay Mirchandani, CIO & COO, Global Centers of Excellence, EMC Corporation, and Tasos Tsolakis, EVP & CIO, Iron Mountain. These notes are made real time so please excuse and typos.

David started talking about the “yes but” concerns as they look at what is happening in the cloud and mobility. He wants to focus on the challenges and go beyond the technical ones.  He sees the management challenges as the most difficult ones to overcome. He asked each panel member to talk about an exciting thing they are doing. Anthony provide a story about how they “drink their own champagne.”  They have 60% of their apps in their private cloud and 90% of new work goes there. They put audio conferencing in the cloud and the user experience improved. They saved 25% during the first 6 months. It has also become a platform for other IT services for hosted communication.

Mark said his firm is about speed and agility and that has been their experience with the cloud. Sanjay wanted to know if their internal users would come back to the cloud if they have a choice and this has been their experience. Tasos said they use the cloud for themselves and customers.

Sanjay said that private cloud starts with efficiency of implementation that leads to efficiency in operation. Anthony said that you need to start with the business problem before efficiency. David said that in one situation hardware efficiency was the focus but agility was the outcome. He wondered if agility is more the driver now.  Mark said that you need to take a layered approach: governance, cost, agility.

David asked about whether to start with private or public cloud. Tasos said it depends. In some cases the public cloud can be less expensive and meet the needs. Anthony agrees it is not either but both: public and private. Standards will play an important role.

David asked about the human factor. What behavior changes need to occur? Mark said that we have a much smarter business audience and IT no longer has a monopoly over approaches. Sanjay said we have done optimization and now it is how the business will use what we built.  We need to transform to usage and not just projects. Tasos said that IT has to be more proactive and challenge the business. IT needs to get out from the back of the bus. It needs to lead change.

David asked about the legacy migration challenge. Anthony said that it is situation specific. Migration should be delayed when necessary. Tasos said it does not pay off to migrate legacy apps. However, you want to put those apps in the background. David asked how important are self-service aspects of the cloud.  Sanjay wants to step away from provisioning. Anthony talked about making apps easy to consume.

David asked about where they are placing innovation bets: individual or enterprise? Tasos said it is both, individual and organizational efficiency. David mentioned that innovation in new uses of tools cuts across generations and is not limited to the younger workers.  I agree and am tired of the talk about generation differences when it assumes that only young people understand new technology.  Mark stressed providing device independent apps and allow for the user to select their devices. They also need to have the ease of use found on the consumer Web. Anthony said they are actively looking to have more functional analysts who understand the business and not simply have data managers.

David asked about the future of IT and what new skills are enabled by the cloud. Sanjay said this is great opportunity for IT.  For years there were well defined IT tracks. Now things are more open and are breaking down IT silos. There is more need for business skills in IT. Tasos agrees and the line between IT and Business is crossing over. David said that many IT roles within the enterprise will not require technical skills, especially unique ones. IT will not be the guild that holds the keys to apps. Much more business knowledge will be needed to apply the apps properly. Mark said that we need to be change agents and have consultative business skills. He is looking for people with these skills.

Tasos said the complexity will be worse before it gets simpler as there will be coexistence with the old ways. David asked how we build those skills. Sanjay said you need to find the people who want to do more. Then give them some space to make mistakes. Anthony it is equally hard to bring someone outside the organization and teach them the enterprise and to expand the skills of someone already inside the organization. If you need to go outside use cross-functional teams for interviews. Also, he likes the idea expressed earlier of doing the interview before you read the resume so you form an independent impression.

 

 

My Notes from 2011 MIT Sloan CIO Symposium: Academic Keynote Panel

The MIT Sloan Alumni Club of Boston, The MIT Center For Digital Business, SIM Boston and MIT ILP, are hosting the eight annual MIT Sloan CIO Symposium today. The event is sold out with over 900 people registered. Here are my notes from the session: Academic Keynote Panel: 
MIT’s Perspective: What Every CIO Should Know About the Future Impact of Digital Business. Participants included: Moderator: Jason Pontin, Editor-in-chief & Publisher, MIT Technology Review, panel: Prof. Erik Brynjolfsson,
Schussel Professor of Management, MIT Sloan, Dr. David Clark,
Senior Research Scientist, MIT CSAIL, Prof. Gregory McRae,
Professor Emeritus, MIT, and Prof. Alex (Sandy) Pentland,
Professor, MIT Media Lab. The notes are done real time so apologies for any typos

Erik’s work looks at how digital technology transforms business. They are looking at data driven analysis.  In past two days more data collected by US business than in the total past. He said that most business revolutions started with better data measurement through out history.

The New York Times wrote about his work recently (see When There’s No Such Thing as Too Much Information, by Steve Lohr,). Erik and his colleagues, Lorin Hitt, a professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, and Heekyung Kim, a graduate student at M.I.T., looked at 179 large companies. They found that those that adopted “data-driven decision making” achieved productivity rates 5 to 6 percent higher than could be explained by other factors, including how much the companies invested in technology.

David works in computer science and artificial intelligence. He is looking at forces that will affect future of the Web.  He is looking at policy issues about home use. Also internet security is a focus as a political issue. Third thing is what is happening with industries that are having a violent crash with Web (telcos. music, video). He noted recent news that 30% of Web traffic is movie and TV  steaming.

Greg is looking at how to design next generation computer enviornment for financial services.  Alex is working in the Media Lab. He is building tools to collect data about what is happening on the Web and inside the enterprise. He sees real financial benefits when this data is used. However, there are security and privacy issues and regulators are getting involved.

Erik said there are over 1 billion searches on Google and you can access the aggregated data for free at Google Trends and other sources. They did it and could better predict housing sales than the professional real estate associations.  Alex said you make a lot of predictions based on people’s Web behavior, including what apps you will download next, your political views, etc. You can get a better cross selling results in a ten-fold magnitude.

Greg said that data storage is increasing at a 80 percent rate compounded annually. There are new ways for data mining to get useful information from this data.  This is important for financial services, especially the unstructured data. 

Alex said that call center communication patterns can reveal data to improve productivity. They did this with one firm. You can also increase prediction results for diabetes risk as it is a behavior driven disease.

Erik companies with online data can do experiments more easily. Amazon does hundreds daily. However, you do not have to be online.  Harrah’s in Vegas uses a lot of data on its clients. They want everyone in the company to think in a data driven way.

Jason asked the panel about security. David said there are specific obligations for privacy. However, the bad guys are more interested in breaking into servers than looking at individual transactions. Alex added that one strategy is to move the risk to the individual in the form of informed consent, perhaps with some benefit for accepting the risk. David is concerned about what happens with physical disks are stolen from data centers and it is unclear what was on them.

One audience member asked about security. Erik said there will likely be a huge security breach that will cause a wake up. Then companies will have to invest much more in it.  Alex said that data auditing to track its sources may help but will be costly. Some firms and the defense agencies do this now.  There are various encryption methods.

One audience asked about her noise in the data to make things simpler.  How do you filter it?  Greg said the cheap storage helps as then you can work on metadata issues and filtering when storing it.  David said that just looking at data without caution can be misleading.  Erik said that signal to noise ratio is getting better.  The issue now is less about getting answers is asking the right questions.  Greg said you can develop algorithms on what are the factor that most impact results. Erik said you need people who have the business skills and the analytical skills and this is a rare combination.  Alex said you need to take the signal to noise experts and train them on the business. 

 

The 2011 MIT Sloan CIO Symposium is Today

The MIT Sloan Alumni Club of Boston, The MIT Center For Digital Business, SIM Boston and MIT ILP, are hosting the eight annual MIT Sloan CIO Symposium today. The event is sold out with over 900 people registered. The 2011 MIT Sloan CIO Symposium's theme will focus on the evolving CIO's role and how the CIO can create strategic value for organizations in a digital business world. I am attending and will be providing some blog posts on the event the blog. Stay tuned.

Meanwhile, here is what I wrote about last year’s MIT Sloan CIO Symposium.

The 2010 MIT Sloan CIO Symposium Notes: Enterprise 3.0?

The 2010 MIT Sloan CIO Symposium Part Two: Solving the CIO Paradox

The MIT Sloan CIO Symposium Notes Part There: Positioning IT as an Innovation Engine

 

2011 MAKE Nominations Open Until May 31

They are now accepting nominations for the 14th annual Most Admired Knowledge Enterprises (MAKE) study. Nominations close on May 31, 2011. I have written about them before, including last year’s MAKE winners. As I mentioned before, this brings back memories. The Most Admired Knowledge Enterprises (MAKE) award has been around for some time. Back when I was with a large consulting company and involved in our knowledge management practice, I spoke at the awards meetings in London several times.  These were the days of better travel funding and the relatively early days of KM. I am pleased that this award is still around and still relevant. 

You can complete the nomination form by visiting the Teleos website - http://www.knowledgebusiness.com - and clicking on 'MAKE' in the left-hand navigation box and then clicking on 'MAKE Nominations'. I suggest you nominate more organizations to enrich the event. A list of the organizations nominated to date is found on their web page.

 

My Favorite Tweets for May 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.

RT @darwineco: RT @dhinchcliffe: How social media + big data will unleash what we know: http://ow.ly/4TRtI #CoIT

RT @outstart: New salary + career research via 2.0 Adoption Council shows social business maturing http://bit.ly/l3gAp

RT @ITSinsider: News Flash: Social in the Enterprise is not for Amateurs http://fb.me/v1gpO4xs

Activity Streams Versus Bureaucracy http://bit.ly/jQrOvs via http://socialenterprise.darwineco.com/

Social media ROI - topic will shift http://bit.ly/kYS5pc

Web Influencers Are Susceptible (You Guessed It) to Influence http://bit.ly/iNLdkV

RT @darwineco: CIO Salaries, Satisfaction, and Standing Rise http://bit.ly/jTDm6w

wisdom from @robpatrob What I think the Skype and Visa announcements mean http://bit.ly/iysAjr

An old report, but prescient. IDC's High Cost of Not Finding Information http://bit.ly/me1AFC

RT @jbowles: RT @humancapleague Why You Should Want to Be a Yes Man http://su.pr/1OR3kE

NYT - Social Networks Offer a Way to Narrow Field of Friends http://nyti.ms/jFD3ME

NYT - Yes, Everyone Can Be Stupid for a Minute http://nyti.ms/jkUYXB > do it every day

RT @BKneuer: Bill, you might enjoy this read (book): "The Most Human Human" http://amzn.to/hRQhLT >thx

RT @LawyerKM: Knowledge Management Book Review: The New Edge in Knowledge by @KMHobbie #KM http://ow.ly/4PS28

RT @outstart: The Hidden Power of Renegade Knowledge http://bit.ly/mH10hK good pts. by @tdebaillon

Nicholas Carr on how the Internet is hurting innovation http://bit.ly/jeQfJL

‘Social enterprise’ moves closer to reality http://smrt.io/kH3xqu by @joemckrendrick

Using Twitter Following + Follower Numbers as Effective Metric http://bit.ly/iARM0N

RT @socialmedia2day: 5 Reasons Why Activity Streams Will Save You From Info Overload http://bit.ly/jtF1qh by @elsua

Why Twitter Shouldn’t Pull the Plug on TweetDeck http://bit.ly/jnpPOX > yes!

Why Twitter Wants TweetDeck – and TweetDeckers – So Badly http://bit.ly/kxUjcq

RT @jackvinson: New post on KJolt: Smart Mobs - interesting blast from past http://bit.ly/lv326h #li

RT @DavidGurteen: 'Activity Streams' Will Be the Glue of Your Online Life http://bit.ly/ldfN4b

Why Mass Influence Metrics Don’t Work in Gardens http://bit.ly/kJP906

 

 

Images of Hadams CT

There are a number of different towns in CT that make up the Hadams in the lower Connecticut River valley. Here are images of several including the ferry at Hadlyme CT. 

 



 



 

 

Images of Copper Beech Inn Ivorytown CT

I recently spent a nice weekend at the Copper Beech Inn in Ivorytown CT. Great food. 

 
   
 
 



 

IBM Covers the Transformation of Business Email

Business email remains big despite some attempts to get stuff out of an overcrowded inbox.  As IBM mentioned, organizations still consider email to be their most important, mission-critical application. In 2009, there were over 800 million business email users worldwide, and that number is expected to jump to almost 970 million by 2014, according to IDC. For perspective, on the consumer side the numbers are almost identical. There were approximately 760 million consumer email users in 2009, with an expected 950 million by 2014.

Recently, I had an interesting conversation with Ed Brill, IBM’s new leader for social collaboration on how email use is changing because of social media. Ed noted that email has been around for almost two decades. I can remember when it was fresh and new.  Then it became the tool for everything and this has become both a blessing a curse. You have a one-stop shop for much of business communication and collaboration but this is a very crowded stop.

IBM is working on ways to transform email and have it better align with the new collaborative technologies within social business models.  Email is reverting to become closer to its communication origins and collaboration is moving to the new social software tools.

At the same time, many of these social tools use email as an alert vehicle. This allows email to become a common dashboard for many tools. Email today has evolved from the static one-to-one exchange, to the inbox for the social framework. Email now includes all relevant updates from your social environment, whether that be a notification of a new activity in your company's enterprise social networking site, a new comment on a blog post that you're following, a file sharing notification, or a connection request from LinkedIn

Email is becoming more focused. Ed said that his own email volume has actually decreased in the era of other social tools. File sharing, for example, has moved to these social tools. However, the email he gets more often requires an action on his part. The concept of an activity stream is getting a lot of play these days. This capability had its origins with micro-blogging when auto-generated updates made an appearance.  Email can serve this same function. Ed said that the activity stream, regardless of location, will evolve beyond simple alerts. It will allow for direct actions.  For example a request for vacation can be approved right in the message with one click, rather than requiring opening another app.  REST APIs allow for this capability and it will be a big productivity booster.

Ed said that IBM is working to embed these actions within email. It is also working to apply analytics to email traffic to determine what might be useful to users. For example, it could let users know who should they talk to about certain issues based on email traffic. They are also working to make the activity stream more pervasive, as well as more connected to other apps. SAP is one example, of this increased connection.

Within IBM Connections, the activity stream serves as the home page as shown below. It is the unifying function to connect other activities and applications.

I saw IBM’s LotusLive Symphony at Lotusphere this year. You can do real time collaborative editing on documents. Ed said that this function will be pushed into the activity stream. It will go to where you are working. I like this direction. I think the connections achieved through an activity stream, whether it is email based or social app based, will be one of the major improvements of social business.

 

Traackr Enhances Its Web Influencer Monitoring Tool

I have been using Traackr for several months. For those who want to better understand the thought leaders in a field, Traackr provides a comprehensive, yet very easy to use, tool set. I wrote about my initial experiences in a prior post (see Traackr Offers Useful Web Influence Monitoring Tool). Traackr provides three scores to hone in on a person’s influence: Reach or the ability to generate views based on audience size, Resonance
or the ability to spark conversations based on such measures as retweets comments, and links, and Relevance
or the ability to cover a specific topic/market based on relevance to your selected keywords.

I recently spoke with Courtney Vaught about some useful new features.  Traackr generates a list of the top 25 influencers on a topic based on the keywords you enter. This list is updated every week so some people fall off and others are added. Now you can now customize your list to more easily go beyond those generated by Traackr. You can now add or remove influencers manually to supplement the list. You can also star those influencers generated by Traackr so they are not removed from the list if they fall off the top 25. Below you can see the input pop up to add a new influencer. 

Traackr still rank orders the top 25 and the additional ones you selected appear beneath the top 25 with their reach and resonance scores displayed. If they have any relevance to the keywords for that list, that will also be counted in their score – anyone who is added to an A-list by the user will be scored, ranked if plausible and tracked the moment they are added. This allows you to continue to monitor people you have a special interest in and expand the list beyond 25.

You can also edit your keywords used to generate the list and add new ones. Traackr has a useful feature that allows you to test these keywords. They can tell if the keyword is a niche term, average or too broad. They also automatically rank order the keywords in priority form niche at the top to broad at the bottom. This is useful so your niche topics do not get overwhelmed. However, you can override the auto-prioritization by starring a key word and it will be put at the top of the priority list.

Traackr allows you to make your top 25 influencer list public. Here is one that I did on enterprise social media. Now you can see both the keywords that generated the list, along with the list itself. I added some new key words to the enterprise social media and the list re-organized itself in ways that made sense to me based on what I know about those listed. Below you can see the keywords and top three of the the 25 on this list. This list will change on a weekly basis. 

 

The New Twitter Journalism and the Darwin Awareness Engine™

Social media has transformed journalism for both good and bad. I awhile back I wrote: Tech Reporters Becoming More News Monitors and Managers. I noted that social media, and especially Twitter is spreading good and bad information equally quickly, and in volume. It is often the first story out that wins t and this condition is called term Churnalism. In my next post, Content Curation in Action, I mentioned an Economist article, Meet the Curators, that notes that "aggregation" or "curation" of other people's coverage is becoming recognized more and more as one of the indispensable elements of journalism. They add that, “Being able to scan a vast range of material, determine what's reliable, relevant and sufficiently objective, decide what will actually interest your particular readers and arrange it in a way that they can use are not trivial skills.”

Now here are some practical suggestions for using Twitter in a responsible way as a journalist in the post, Journalism's new wave: the world in a tweet by Mark Colvin of ABC. This is relevant not just to the traditional professional journalist but to all us bloggers who report about what is happening in our niche of the world.  Mark begins with a long and interesting history of his work in journalism and the evolving technologies form typewriters to Twitter. It also spanned my professional years and the information technologies I used so his experiences were meaningful.

Then Mark gets down to some practical suggestions building off the work of researcher Jess Hill. Jessie uses twitter to follow a lot of people who post about areas of the world we're currently interested in. They “monitor patterns and cross-reference what they see, so that they'll get early warning of breaking stories and then try to verify what they're seeing.” But they do not just accept the tweets at face value. When people appear to be eyewitnesses on the ground, they DM them to get phone numbers and Skype addresses. As Mark notes this approach “relies on old and proven journalistic techniques, like source-checking and cultivating contacts.”

Mark also mentioned the Twitter work of Andy Carvin at NPR who monitors and challenges news stories coming out of the Middle East. I knew Andy when he was in Boston before his NPR days and have great respect for his efforts.

Mark goes onto summarize two Twitter journalism tips. Forst, “If you're going to cultivate sources on Twitter, make sure you stay in touch with them, even when nothing's happening. Show them you care about them as people, that they're not just a story - develop a relationship, just like journalists have always done.” This makes a lot of sense.

Second, “Read many different news sources. If you're not really across the news, Twitter feeds will just look like random chatter, and you won't be able to judge what stories are the most important to focus on.” This is where the Darwin Awareness Engine™ can help as it did with PBS.

As Rob Paterson, working with PBS, said, “What Darwin enables you to do is to see a pattern. To see a pattern you must be ready to see it so you must have a hypothesis on any topic that is complex. Darwin enables me to set up the feeds to reach deeply into the various components of my hypothesis… Then, as step three, Darwin presents me with layers of results every day based on these feeds.”

Darwin does the content aggregation and shows the themes so you do not have to spend energy looking through multiple sources, but rather focus on the emerging patterns from these sources.  It can complement Twitter and other social media sources to help focus the journalist’s efforts. I use it this way to help cover the enterprise 2.0 space for this blog through the Darwin Edition on enterprise social media. 

 

The Rising Need for Content Curation Skills and Capabilities.

Picking up on the theme from last week’s post, Tech Reporters Losing Control of the Story to Social Media, here was an interesting tweet that could a lot of play at SXSW.

 @robinsloan The way to cover big news in 2011 is not "here's what happened." It's "here's how to follow the story" http://t.co/sMqGOuh

It was reported and commented in Economist article, Meet the Curators. The article notes that that "aggregation" or "curation" of other people's coverage is becoming recognized more and more as one of the indispensable elements of journalism. They add that, “Being able to scan a vast range of material, determine what's reliable, relevant and sufficiently objective, decide what will actually interest your particular readers and arrange it in a way that they can use are not trivial skills.”

It goes on to state that Richard Sambrook, a former senior editor at the BBC says that news organizations now face three main roles: coverage of breaking news and live events, deep specialist niche content with analysis and expertise, the aggregation and verification of other sources of information. The article close by stating that social media is “likely to become as much part of the journalist's toolkit in the 21st century as the dog-eared address book was in the 20th.”

We saw this close in hand as the PBS St. Louis affiliate, KETC, made use of the Darwin Awareness Engine to monitor the news on immigration in the US.  Our friend Rob Paterson used the Awareness Engine as part of this effort. In his words, “the value of Darwin is that on a daily basis it starts to reveal patterns of content on the Web. It could be immigration but it could be anything. What I am finding is that by spending an hour or two on Darwin a day looking at what is happening with immigration through a series of filters that allow me to inspect various parts, I can begin to see the patterns.”

This is content curation in action and we were glad to be part of it.

Looking further at curation from a user’s perspective, Aaron Kahlow writes about the information curation potential of social media in his post, 2010: Social Media Removes the Dam of Gutenberg-Google. Aaron comments that social media can help break this new dam. Now we can “get good information through tweets of those we follow, Facebook Sharing, and from others within our networks who are usually connected online. We have a new discovery outlet and a new way to find stories, whether mainstream or from an unknown blogger. We find things based on recommendations of trusted colleagues, friends, etc.”  This is how I found Aaron’s post.

Peter Cashmore raises a similar point in his predictions for 2010 than I commented on earlier (see Reflecting on Peter Cashmore's Web Trends to Watch in 2010). Peter wrote that, “The Web's biggest challenge of recent years is that content creation is outpacing our ability to consume it: "Information overload" has become an increasingly common complaint… In 2008, the answer revealed itself: Your friends are your filter… Increasingly, your friends are becoming the curators of your consumption.”  I certainly agree here and Twitter has served this role for me.  Much of what I write about on my blogs comes from my Twitter friends, including the link to Peter Cashmore’s predictions, as well as the Economist article that started this discussion.

 

 

Deciding When to Automate Through Computers and When to Leave It to the Human Mind

I saw an interesting blog post by James Taylor, Decision Management in the New York Times, commenting on a New York Times article, Smarter than you think, on e-discovery and the use of computers rather than hordes of lawyers. James notes that the focus of the article was on the reduction in staff to examine documents by shifting some of the work to computers through text analytics. He added that this fails to account the massive growth in documents and data available in these cases.

Without new tools, e-discovery could have been headed for what he called the “telephone operator event horizon. “ In other words there might be a point when e-discovery employed everyone because of the massive expansion in documents being processed.  James said this is named after the famous prediction that expansion in telephone service would mean that half the population had to become a telephone operator – a prediction overtaken by the automated telephone exchange.

He goes on to conclude 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.”

Text analytics can reduce the amount of content for a person to scan by ruling our certain irrelevant documents and bringing forward those with relevant content. I have reviewed a number of the e-discovery vendors and they do provide a useful service and can greatly reduce both tedious work and legal expenses. The New York Times article quoted lawyer Bill Herr about the tedious nature of the discovery process, “People get bored, people get headaches. Computers don’t,”

However, in the end a person needs to be involved. In this instance, it is a legal expert familiar with the case. What can we do to allow this expert to make better use of his cognitive capabilities? This is where the Darwin Awareness Engine™ takes a different approach. Rather than trying to get the computer to understand meaning within content, if creates visualizations to allow people to more efficiently and effectively sort through it. Automation based on Chaos Theory takes on the content aggregation and sorting process as the top 100 themes within a set of content is displayed in a manner that allows for easy sorting and investigation. This could be a natural complement to the use of text analytics to narrow the content for analysis. Once narrowed, now a person can best use their cognitive capabilities to know what to look for and where to look next. Here is more on the Awareness Engine.

 

 

Images of Chester CT and River Tavern Spring 2011

I have covered the lower Connecticut River valley on several occasions. Here is images from two great lunches at the River Tavern and the town of Chester CT itself, one of my favorite towns.  

   

 






 

Painting of Prawns and Chips

It has been a while since I have had time to complete a painting. Here is a 24" x 30" acrylic painting from my recent trip to South Africa. 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.

How Big is the Cloud?

The global cloud computing market will grow from $40.7 billion in 2011 to more than $241 billion in 2020, according to new Forrester forecast data reported in Sizing The Cloud by Stefan Ried, Ph.D. and Holger Kisker, Ph.D. Based on Forrester’s cloud market taxonomy, this new report outlines the different market dynamics for the three core layers of cloud computing - the public cloud, the virtual private cloud, and the private cloud. The total size of the public cloud market will grow from $25.5 billion in 2011 to $159.3 billion in 2020. The market for virtual private cloud solutions will grow from $7.5 billion in 2011 to $66.4 billion in 2020. The market for private cloud solutions will grow from $7.8 billion in 2011 to $15.9 billion in 2020.

The cloud market will change as we move toward 2020. While the successes of early leaders have prompted many other providers to offer IaaS solutions, Forrester feels that this market will reach a peak of $5.9 billion in global revenues in 2014 and then enter a period of significant commoditization, price deterioration, and margin pressure. SaaS represents the largest and most sustainable growth opportunity, thanks to rapidly increasing demand from companies of all sizes. At the same time Forrester believes that desktop virtualization is reaching the end of its cycle of innovation, while a new set of technologies that allow virtualization of large-scale, server-based enterprise applications are starting to become more important.

The market is not one-dimensional and is maturing at different levels and serves different groups within the enterprise. As the report suggests, cloud value propositions are compelling to individual end users, corporate buyers, and tech providers such as independent software vendors (ISVs). As a result, the benefits of cloud computing range from personal productivity to operational flexibility to cost savings.

Cloud-based solutions and services will continue to be useful in a rapidly changing market as companies can more easily align their underlying operational processes and systems as their business requirements change. I covered several of these trends. On Wednesday I posted, Can Cloud Computing Elevate the Role of IT, Making It More Strategic? I have also written several times on the rise of cloud based apps in a down market.  I was pleased to receive a review copy of this useful report. You can find it at the Forrester site. 

 

My Favorite Tweets for April 15 - 30 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.

RT @socialmedia2day: Top 10 Reasons Twitter is On Top of Social Media Food Chain http://bit.ly/gnXigg

RT @MITSloanExecEd: @amcafee: Tune Out, Turn Off: A Mantra Needed for Our Times? http://s.hbr.org/fh0Zgj

4 Ways Behavioral Targeting Is Changing Web http://on.mash.to/gWV204 via http://socialenterprise.darwineco.com/

LinkedIn’s Mario Sundar on getting the most out of your network http://bit.ly/dJ672d

Is There Ethical Quandary to Corporate Social Networking + Crowdsourcing? by @joemckendrick http://bit.ly/fUWErx

RT @outstart: by @robpatrob Measuring Influence and so Attention – New York Times http://bit.ly/gx4ekd

RT @rossdawson: RT @ariegoldshlager: WSJ: Best Practices for Engaging with Customers Thru Social Media: http://on.wsj.com/hqpi0q

40 Most Popular Social Networking Sites of the World http://bit.ly/bazV8h

RT @rickladd: @dcunni Seems it's the American Idol of expertise. Check out http://ow.ly/4FFYA > agree

RT @jbowles: Loosening Taylorist Stranglehold on the Workplace http://bit.ly/e8xr75> > bout time

RT @socialmedia2day: How-To Use Social Media Research To Drive Strategy http://bit.ly/dRzhDz

RT @forrester: What makes one tech company stand out from another? http://forr.com/ek3j3r #ITF11, #ITFE11

RT @outstart: 3 Must Read Articles on Management for Anyone in E2.0 or Social Business http://rww.to/dOiNTJ

Apple Earnings Q2 ’11: $24.67B Revenue; 3.76M Macs, 18.65M iPhones, 4.69M iPads Sold http://tcrn.ch/hTu6q3 > I got a Ma

RT @outstart: Community Managers: What They Do, Why You Need Them http://bit.ly/gYFBTD by @cflanagan

Most Marketers Plan to Increase Social Media Spend This Year http://on.mash.to/hWb240

RT @GautamGhosh: RT @Qontext: Better employee self service by using a social HRIS system http://bit.ly/hHj4N

RT @outstart: RT @bduperrin: Corporate Microblogging Helps Employees Migrate Work Conversations Online - http://bit.ly/eJRDow

RT @webtechman: Interview: Eric Von Hippel on #Innovation http://bit.ly/fogbz7 via @ariegoldshlager

RT @GautamGhosh: RT @Qontext: Better employee self service by using a social HRIS system http://bit.ly/hHj4Nl

RT @outstart: RT @bduperrin: Corporate Microblogging Helps Employees Migrate Work Conversations Online - http://bit.ly/eJRDow

 

Enterprise 2.0 Study Needs Participants

Jacob Morgan at Chess Media Group is conducting a study on enterprise 2.0 and collaboration.  The purpose of the survey is to address issues that executives will find relevant when considering to invest in enterprise 2.0 initiatives.  They are asking questions such as: what tools organizations are using and why, how budgets are being allocated, and how the ROI is measured. I took part with my Darwin Ecosystem hat on and I think the results should be very interesting.

The survey takes around 5-10 minutes to complete and all of your information is confidential.  If you complete the survey, you receive access to four enterprise collaboration case studies featuring Intuit, Vistaprint, Oce, and the Federal Government. The research is sponsored by the Enterprise 2.0 Conference and the Social Business Forum, among others.

The more people who take this survey, the more useful it will become so I recommend participating. 

 

My Fast Forward Posts for April 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 May.

Dealing with A Dynamic World – Useful Thoughts from Thierry de Baillon

Forrester Sees Steady Growth in US IT Market

Getting the Most from Your Collaboration Software

Review: The New Edge in Knowledge, Carla O’Dell and Cindy Hubert

Rise of Tablets in the Enterprise in 2011

Are You Engaged in Your Job?

 

 

 

Portals and KM Blog Begins it Eighth Year

It is hard to imagine that I have been writing this blog for over seven years now. I certainly would not have predicted that when I started the blog on May 2, 2004 with three posts: Is KM the Killer App for Portals?, Some good articles on blogs and blogs on blogs, and Is RSS TNBT?  

I had recently learned about blogs and sold a free-lance article to Portals Magazine on them. I decided to start one as research so I might know a bit more about what I was writing about. I picked the title as I had recently led the knowledge management and enterprise portals practice in a division of a large consulting firm. The title got shortened to fit the space requirements for Typepad at the time. Now I was operating as an enterprise of one. I soon discovered that I generated more market awareness for this small enterprise than the PR people at my former firm had done for me.

I first wrote about industry stuff and blogs  (ex. Blog as Filing Cabinet). These posts were so 2004.  Soon I branched out to music with Sunday with Ray Charles and then music and food: Slow Cooked Ribs and Cajun Music and First You Make a Roux: Getting Gumbo Right, beginning with stuff from my hometown New Orleans. I started the practice that I still follow of doing work related posts during the work week and music, art, food, travel, etc. on the weekends.

I discovered how blogs could get you on the front page of Google and helped a number of firms and individuals with their blogs.  I began several blogs to experiment with how to jump start a blog. They are still available but I am only active with my Art and Photography Blog. I was excited to recently sell a painting through it.  There are many more available. I also started writing on several group blogs and now there are four in this category: FastForward, The Appgap, The Darwin Awareness Engine™ blog, and most recently, the OutStart Knowledge Solutions Blog.

These other blogs all publish on different schedules but the Portals and KM blog has posted at least once daily since it’s beginning with a brief lapse when I went to Italy in the summer of 2005. Now there are over 3,000 posts, over 2,000 comments, and over 670,000 page views. Thanks for your participation. Who knows how long this will continue.  Blog on.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Gardner Museum’s New Interactive Web Site

Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum has launched a newly designed exploratory website at www.gardnermuseum.org. In addition to structural and navigational improvements, the museum’s new site “aims to engage online visitors with meaningful explorations that reflect the unique, multi-sensory experience of a physical visit to the Gardner Museum and its interior courtyard and galleries.”

The site’s landing page is organized around the historic galleries and floors of the museum. It provides many images leading to a selection of almost 300 objects of art, which can be understood through traditional and historic material. The design invites visitors to virtually explore the galleries and collection. You can listen to audio; read archival excerpts; closely at works of art; and discover different perspectives on the collection or new work by visiting contemporary artists. This exploration improves “accessibility to the Gardner Museum’s collection and encourages connections across museum departments, programs, and media through a user-driven path that provides a personalized web experience.” Give it a try. I did and it was fun and very engaging.