Portals and KM

Happy New Year's Eve - Opelousas LA Happenings

I hope you all have a great New Year's celebration. I decided to go west from New Orleans to take in some of the events in the Opelousas and Lafeyette area know for its Zydeco and

Cajun music and great food. I saw zydeco bands such as Geno Delafose and French Rockin' Boogie (above) and Keith Frank and the Soileau Zydeco Band (see right). I will post my experiences in the coming weeks but I am still celebrating now. Meanwhile, here is what I found around this time last year as a preview.

Photos of Lafayette Opelousas Louisiana Area

Taking in Zydeco Music in Opelousas Louisiana and More

Taking in Cajun Music in the Lafayette Louisiana Area

Eating Great Cajun Food and BBQ in the Lafayette Opelousas Area

For Opelousas/Lafayette LA Tourist Information: St. Landry Parish Visitor Information Center

 

 

Images from Mount Rainer, Washington

I climbed this mountain in 1984 but doubt I could do it again now. I was there this summer and it remains as beautiful as ever. As frequently happens, the top of the mountain was covered by clouds. The last pctures were taken from the plane.

                                                               

Images from Seattle's Bainbridge Ferry

Seattle is a place surroudned by water and there are numerous ferries. This is one of the main ones to the Olympic Pennsiula. The first series is the ferry arriving ta Bainbridge. Part way down you see the boarding process in Seattle. 

                                                           

Blog Cases from 2005: Jessica Baumgart on Journalism, Librarianship and Blogging

This is another in a series of case studies from people I interviewed in 2005 about their blogging efforts. Now as we move to 2013, I find it interesting to look back at the early days of business blogging. I will only include cases from people who are still blogging now. These cases have not appeared on this blog before 

Jessica Baumgart is an information resources specialist for a major university. She participated in eleven blogs in 2005 when we talked. She still writes the blog, j’s scatchpad. It is the one she used for professional development issues when we spoke and it still covers her thoughts on journalism, librarianship and blogging.

In 2005 the blog’s readership had grown to over 2500 RSS subscribers and she got between 200 and 400 hits an hour, up from about 30 a year ago.  Jessica changes the tag line everyday, often being humorous or thoughtful. Some of her readers check in to see the tag line of the day as it does not show up in RSS feed. On November 29, 2012 the tag line was, “I am thankful for not having to deal with a sudden windfall in the millions.”

The story of her blogging begins with a how and evolves into a why. She was the volunteer Webmaster for a professional association of news librarians. The woman who was overseeing her Webmaster work then was incredibly tech savvy. She was into blogging and kept pushing for the association to use a weblog.

While Jessica was under this pressure to start blogging for the association, Dave Winer came to the office next to hers to do an interview for the Harvard Gazette. During the course of the interview, Dave mentioned how he wanted to connect with campus librarians. The writer brought Dave to Jessica’s office when the interview was over. She realized that she could think about setting up a blog forever or she could just jump in and figure it out as she went along.

She set up j's scratchpad within days and started attending blog meetings at Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society where was a very active participant, often creating the meeting notes.  I participated in these meeting from 2004 to 2006 and this is where I met Jessica, as well as Dave Winer and many other early bloggers.

Like many bloggers, Jessica felt she had no idea what she was doing or what she was going to do with a weblog. She knew that she didn't want to write about personal things. She started focusing on professional development kinds of things and stayed with it. Blogging was a way for her to take notes, manage knowledge and information, share things with her friends and colleagues, and reach out to others.

Jessica noticed very few people writing about news librarianship. She knew from her days in graduate school and her work with the Special Libraries Association News Division that not many people outside of her field know about what these librarians do, including library/information science students. She saw a need for a source that talks about issues in the profession, not just one that shares resources or notes.

When we spoke, Jessica thought her blog had surpassed her original objectives. She didn't think she would still be blogging in 20 months. I will add that she is still doing it in 2012, seven years after we talked. She didn't realize how useful blogging would be and what she could do with it. Now she focused much more on providing resources for her readers than she did in the beginning. Part of that was just her training as a librarian: if Jessica knew someone might be interested in something, she tended to share information about it. If she saw something that was topical to her blog and she knew a reader might like it, she would definitely try to post it.

Jessica, like many bloggers, had found that her blog helped with community building and becoming more connected. She spoke about blogs at a local meeting on copyright law for librarians and mentioned her blog, j’s scratchpad. The person’s eyes lighted and said, “you write j’s scratchpad? I read it.”  She has made connections with dozens of people who read her blog that would not have happened otherwise.  Prior to a conference, Jessica would often look for blogs by the participants or people she might meet there to have a better understanding of them.

Jessica also felt more demand for providing new content than she did when she started blogging. There was also pressure to keep blogging, even though she joked about how some of her readers would like her to stop. Jessica felt a responsibility to her readership and knows what happens when a blog with significant readership stops. For example, she was following a colleague’s blog when this person’s employer, a newspaper, told this blogger to stop as they felt was a conflict of interest.  Jessica felt a real loss as the blogger had been writing about her experiences in the job market as a librarian, providing much useful content to her fellow librarians.

Determining what is appropriate for her weblog was a challenge. What kinds of things would her readers like to read? What kinds of things won't get her in trouble at work? Will friends/colleagues be upset if she talks about them on her blog? How much information is too much, too personal?  Jessica addressed these concerns by talking to a lot of other bloggers about things like how they decide when to use someone's name, how personal they want to get on their blogs, and what kinds of things they post.

Jessica said that everyone has to find their own voice and scope of content. She mentioned that she had a friend who would write in an open way each morning that conveys her mode. The colleagues of this blogger would read her blog before work to determine her mood that day to guide how they might interact with her.

The major source of content for her blog was the Internet and other blogs. Anyone who's interested in any of the topics her blog covers can benefit from reading j’s scratchpad. Jessica covered a range of topics related to news librarianship. She also tended to cover a lot of things related to beginning to blog, technology, and useful software. Some people thought she did a good job of translating technological concepts into plain English.

Jessica got some ideas for blog posts by reading other blogs. She also noticed that she knew a lot of things before others did. She noticed that she often knew about something a day or two before they showed up on discussion lists. Jessica felt that this was because she was more tuned into the world than she used to be. If she wasn't reading blogs, she wouldn't have know what a lot of her friends were talking about.

Jessica had the following advice to have for others in large organizations thinking about starting an individual blog. Jump in and do it. Don't worry about perfection from the start. Finding things to share could be easier than you think. Don't worry about whether you're blogging for yourself or for someone else. Just go for it. Take some time to figure out what you need or want in software and evaluate different systems. Jessica wrote about professional issues but she did not blog at work. She often got ideas and notes them for things to post after work. 

Blog Cases from 2005: James Robertson on Content Management

about their blogging efforts. Now as we move to 2013, I find it interesting to look back at the early days of business blogging. I will only include cases from people who are still blogging now. These cases have not appeared on this blog before.

James Robertson is the Managing Director of Step Two Designs, a content management consultancy located in Sydney, Australia. James still writes the blog, Column Two. He started blogging in June 2002 when the his business changed it's focus to pure consulting in the areas of knowledge management, content management and intranets. Looking for ways to increase its business profile, James saw that blogging was a good way of communicating in a different way to those interested in these topics.

So basically his blog was initially a marketing tool for the business first and foremost, with the goal being to drive traffic to the site, hopefully leading to greater sales of our reports and new consulting clients. In addition, there was a secondary goal to provide him with a personal communications tool to share his thoughts. In both cases, it certainly was a "work tool", not a personal diary.

James found that his blog was hugely successful. In the first two months of posting the blog, traffic to the site almost doubled, which was quite amazing. At the time of our interview in 2005, the blog was the consistently highest source of visitors to the site, rating ahead of all the articles that he published. More importantly, James constantly bumped into people at conferences and the like who say: "you're the one that runs that blog, aren't you!".

Having a picture clearly displayed on his blog helps in this, and many people have commented that it was useful when wanting to pick him out of a crowd, or when he was meeting people for the first time. So as a "profile raising" tool, it has certainly worked. And as a tip to those running blogs, James advised, don't put your personal identity in the background!  He says to clearly list yourself as the author on the main page, providing e-mail and web links. Give a small bio of yourself, and include a photo if at all possible. Beyond just giving your blog a personalized identity, it makes the words much more your voice than some corporate message.

James also found that his blog worked well as a marketing tool, as it operates somewhat like a newspaper that he owns. It's his blog and his content, so there's nothing to say that he can't use it to market his reports, workshops and activities. James doesn't think the readers mind either. Using the blog allows him to remind people about early-bird dates for workshops, or to post new reviews of our reports and products. These all have a noticeable impact on our sales and registrations. All in all, it has been a valuable investment of his time, and one that he will continue to make into the foreseeable future.

At the time we talked, James had made the decision to increase the amount of unique (self-written) content on his blog, beyond the links to other articles and resources. The objective of this was to increase the value of the blog, and to ensure that it continued to be useful to his readers and the wider blogosphere. James feels that the timing was good for this change as he was doing quite a few interesting (and very diverse) projects at the time. These were forcing him to explore new areas of thinking, and it's the insights (however small) that he was hoping to blog more of. The challenge was, of course, finding time to write this additional content. So far, he has managed to write a number of entries designed to be thought-provoking. James felt that only time will tell whether he is able to keep up with these writing demands.

James feels that these changes are incremental, however, and the fundamental purpose of the blog as a marketing tool continues unchanged. When we spoke it continued to meet this objective well, More significantly, James now had two blogs. One was external, which is the topic of this discussion, and now another was an entirely internal blog. Every staff member in the business now has an internal blog that is used to keep everyone up to date on compnay activities, major changes, new clients and the like. This internal blog has proven to be a great tool. Since many in his firm were traveling, or out at client sites, the blogs make it easy to catch up on what's happening, and to feel part of the business. When we spoke, James posted upwards of 6-10 very short blog entries every day internally, and it's his main way of communicating to all his staff.

These internal blogs are part of his company’s efforts to apply good knowledge management principles to its own work (beyond just recommending them to their clients). The purpose is not to necessarily convey information, but simply "awareness". If people have a vague recollection that some relevant to their current project has been done somewhere else in the team, they can then chase up the specific details. In other words, all actual knowledge is conveyed person-to-person, but the blogs help connect people.

The biggest challenges James faced was finding the time. What he ended up doing was increasing the working day in order to fit in both his blogging and other work. Basically, when he first got into work, it took him about an hour to get through most (not all!) of his e-mails, and his blogging. Only then was he able to start into the actual work. While this can sometimes be a burden, he generally found it's a useful way of letting his brain slowly wake up in the morning, before starting into business or client work.

The blog also helped James to be disciplined. He set himself a schedule of posting at least one blog entry a day, if at all possible. This was an entirely self-imposed goal, and he didn't imagine that anyone would complain if it didn't happen. It did however help to ensure that he sets aside the time to make blogging actually happen.

James also found that his blog was a useful way of filing away information that he personally might want in the future. So instead of bookmarking something, he blogs it. This is an added "what's in it for him” factor that makes it easier to devote the time required to keep the blog ticking over. James found that there are also some "slow news days" in which there isn't much to post.

In early 2005, James’ blog was primarily a "link" blog. That is, the many entries point to recently published articles, books, and other similar resources. In this way, his blog acted as a human-filtered "aggregator" of useful information within the specific field in which he works. This content came from his keeping up to date on other blog feeds, mailing lists, conferences and resource sites.

His original content came directly from his experiences in the field, consulting to clients. James was constantly on the look out for client issues or approaches that might have broader appeal. Many of these got written in the articles that he wrote (2-3 a month), with the rest going into blog entries. In this way, his blog was part of a whole "communications plan", with each communications medium playing a part:

• KM Column articles: detailed step-by-step guides to approaching an issue or tackling a problem.

• CM Briefings: one page articles that discuss a single concept or approach at a high level.

• Blog entries: personal opinions or challenges to the status quo. This is where he can speak in his own voice, and present opinions without having to take a necessarily neutral perspective.

James sits at the intersection of quite a few different fields: knowledge management, content management, intranets, usability, information architecture, XML, change management. As a "boundary spanner,” he hoped to expose people to information and ideas that they wouldn't have otherwise come across. This was, he thought, the main reason why people read his blog. He pulled together an interesting mix of articles and resources that helped them to do their job at least a little better. Basically, James did the hard work of "filtering" the huge amount of information on the web for his readers, sparing them the effort. Within the areas in which he works, he puts a lot of effort into keeping his "finger on the pulse", and generally having at least a vague idea of everything that is going on.

James benefited from reading other blogs. As a consultant, and occasional "guru", he is expected to know everything that's going on. While this is clearly impossible, he does like to "know a little about a lot", and blogs are the single best way of keeping track of activities and opinions from across the globe. Without blogs, there would be no way to keep track of what is happening in the 4-5 professional disciplines that he works in.

In 2005 James tracked almost 90 blogs in his news aggregator. These covered a wide range of topics, and include both "link" blogs and blogs that publish commentary and essays. He found them all useful, and with a news aggregator it's easy to lose sight of which information is coming from which blog. James found that some of the most valuable blogs are those written by the practitioners in the field, rather than the gurus or the vendors. At their best, these blogs convey the real-life experiences of what works, and more importantly, what doesn't work. This really helps him to feel part of a community of practitioners, even if most of these people are located thousands of miles away.

Since this interview I have met James in person at several conferences. His blog laid the foundation for a richer connection when this occured. 

 

Blog Cases from 2005: Karen Ay on Art

This is another in a series of case studies from people I interviewed in 2005 about their blogging efforts. Now as we move to 2013, I find it interesting to look back at the early days of business blogging. I will only include cases from people who are still blogging now. These cases have not appeared on this blog before.

Karen Ay, an artist working in London. I have written about her on numerous occasions. See for example, TangentProjects is going to Venice with Invasive Alien Species, and Great Upcoming London Sculpture Show. She combines a sense of humor with art that makes you think but does not dictate the process.

In 2005 she started a blog to talk about her art and other stuff. It is called Fluid Thinking: “thoughts and observations on making art with the odd rant occasionally thrown in.”  Karen has a web site that she has maintained for some time. It now called simply, Karen Ay. It is does an excellent job of displaying her art. Among other things, she builds ephemeral three dimensional objects and then photographs them with very inviting results. Her 2004 statement said that “identity is a mutable construct, often occupying more than one space simultaneously, residing somewhere in between rather than being absolute.”

Karen wrote in her first post, beginning blog…, “I've decided to start a blog in order to compile an ongoing diary of thoughts and observations in relation to my art practice, with the odd rant or random thought thrown in. I've kept written diaries and sketchbooks on and off for years, mainly as a means of exploring ideas and possibilities when making work. For me the interesting bit has always been the slow realisation that certain ideas continue to reoccur over time, though sometimes in different formats, and I've found this to be a useful compass. So it seemed logical for the next step to be a blog - a place where ideas can unfold and at the same time, have information chronological and easily accessible for future reference.”

Karen began the blog on 14th Feb 2005 for a few reasons. In general terms, she needed to provide a more formal structure for documenting the process of making work. It’s such a myth that art is ‘made in a moment of inspiration!’ Usually it is hard work, like anything else, and requires a lot of thought, planning and experimentation, all of which takes time. So in order to minimize some of that time, a blog is a great device. Karen felt another prevalent myth is that artists are ‘airy-fairy-in-the-clouds’ people who lack organizational skills. This is laughable, really, because most artists, though perhaps lacking in admin skills, are actually pretty obsessive-compulsive people. She said “give artists a structure or set of criteria to be obsessive about and they can do it to the nth degree in terms of making our work.”

Personally, Karen found it entirely too easy to be un-self disciplined in terms of writing about or documenting her work and ideas and when that happens, ideas tend to slip away and not get explored. She said, “suddenly one day you wake up and see your idea or something very similar to it in a gallery somewhere and the realization quickly arrives that it’s your own lack of planning and organization that prevents you from carrying the idea out.”

Karen had kept sketchbooks for years and they’ve always been a great tool for navigating the work, but she felt a need to make a stronger commitment. With a sketchbook or written journal, there’s the feeling that it’s private, not for public consumption. That’s great in terms of feeling free to explore even the wildest ideas, but it also prevents ideas from becoming reality because there is the safety of not being accountable. So she thought it was time to be accountable for her ideas. Not to say that she doesn’t use other strategies as well, just that she needed to take them a step further.

Karen also wanted to be able to consolidate her ideas and evolving projects with useful information that she could easily access later. This is where sketchbooks can be a pain because you end up having so many and they eventually begin to collect dust in a box somewhere instead of being live documents. So in practical terms, she wanted a central place to put all the relevant information that becomes important to a project in terms of research, vendors, materials, techniques and so on, as well as showing in real terms how the ideas evolve, how connections are made from one thought process to another, and how a piece of work unfolds. She describes it as a sort of ‘verbal’ flowchart or diagram.

Another reason was, very simply, hope for more exposure. Karen said that even in the best of times it’s hard getting your stuff out there and seen, especially in a city like London. There is a lot of competition, as well as a lot of talented people out there, so she felt she needed to explore lots of different avenues with regard to getting her work out there. While her website can be a great means of exposure, the drawback is that it lays dormant for long periods. Karen is finding now, especially, as the work begins to move in some very different directions, that it’s difficult to keep the website as current as she would like. So a blog seemed like the logical next step – a presence on the web that can be updated easily as well as at any time, by her instead of by her wizards at Quest Design. Amazing though they are, it’s just impractical to call up every time she has a show and say ‘hey, can you update my list please?’ With a blog Karen can get the information out there easily and quickly.

Lastly, she likes to write.

The blog definitely met her original objectives. She is seeing connections more immediately and there’s a real comfort in knowing that all that information is in one place. When we spoke in 2005, the exposure was yet to be seen, as she had only just started so it was difficult to know just yet. But she was hoping it would be a means of connection and communication and far reaching at that. I can now say that it did met her objectives.

After Karen started her blog, it became much more useful than she realized. In the beginning it was like dipping a toe in the water – very typical artist – ‘Look at me! No! – Don’t look at me!’ Karen said that we all want to be seen and acknowledged yet in actuality most of us are fairly shy - otherwise we’d be rock stars instead of artists. So in the beginning it was nervewracking for her thinking someone might actually read it, other than friends, of course. Putting stuff out on the web for anyone to see is a bit scary, but it’s also forced her to really consider and clarify her ideas, as well as attempt to articulate them coherently. That has huge benefits, personally as well as professionally.

Additionally, Karen has seen the power of ‘the link’ and that has opened up so many possibilities for her regarding accessing information, as well as seeing a sort of ‘map’ of how her mind is working in regards to the connections she makes as she put together a post.

The biggest challenge Karen faced is “anything involving << >> !! I am so un-tekkie. I’ve used a Mac ever since they came out and have had one since the days of the Mac Plus so I’m very comfortable with computers but not in terms of HTML.” The technical aspects of blogging are not something that interests her in the slightest and therefore she had to force herself to learn how to use the tool more effectively. She felt pretty good that she had managed fairly quickly to figure out how to do links and pictures but she also knew there’s a lot she needed to learn in order to get the most out of the blog as a tool.

Aside from that, the biggest challenge at that time was figuring out how to ‘get seen’ and which blogs to get connected to (that’s after she figures out the ‘get connected to’ part, of course.)

The other big challenge was to find a balance between creating a document for her own reference purposes and something that is interesting to read. Also to be succinct – no one wants to read pages and pages of someone bla, bla, bla-ing, no matter how interesting it seems to the writer at the time of writing, and she struggled with her own verbosity. And lastly, there was the challenge of tearing herself away – it’s the typical thing: new toy, wanna play with it all the time.

As far as overcoming the tekkie stuff goes, she did as much reading and research as she could stand, but she did not do it all at once. Karen knows herself well enough to know that she has a very low threshold for ‘technise’ so she tried to learn this in manageable chunks. But Karen found the immediacy of the reward once she figured stuff out was a great incentive – for instance, when she figured out how to do the links it was just amazing to comprehend that she really could have all this information in one place, for her (or anyone else) to easily access in the future. That’s powerful.

Karen’s major source of content is self-generated, the evolution of her ideas. She used Google a lot as well, because it gets her information quickly and easily and their image sourcing is great. She had just started accessing other artist blogs, and that has been interesting, though at the time it surprised her how little this tool seems to be used in the art world, especially in the UK. Karen was sure that will change over time and it did. For instance, she has seen exhibitions before where an artist has done a collaboration using an ongoing email conversation with another artist – which frankly gets really boring, and quickly. She finds blogs much more interesting to read and the best bit is that they are interactive. That opens up so many possibilities in terms of collaboration as well as communication.

Karen found other blogs a great source of information as well as living lessons in what to do and what not to do when writing one. Karen had the following advice to have for others thinking about starting a blog:

- Read the instructions carefully when you start your blog.
- Once you start posting, ALWAYS check your links to make sure they work!
- Always do a spellcheck and if you can, have someone proof it before you post.
- Be succinct – easier said than done, I know.
- Have interesting content.

This is still relevant. 

Visiting Seattle's Zoo

Seattle has a wonderful zoo. Here are a selection of photos of the inhabitants. 

                                         

Chiba: Great Japanese Food with a New Orleans Twist

The New Orleans food scene is stronger than ever with over 1300 places to eat, up from 800 pre-Katrina. I have long enjoyed the food of my hometown. Since I returned to live here full time at the end of October, I have been conducting further explorations into what New Orleans offers.

In my own neighborhood, there are easily twenty good restaurants worth repeating within walking distance. One of these is Chiba, offering high quality Japanese food on Oak Street.  Chiba is run by my neighbor Keith Dusko. It has provided the two best meals I have had since I moved here on Halloween.  And their innovation crosses over to wonderful cocktails like a blackberry mojita and a very large sake selection.

You know you are in New Orleans with items like Crawfish Tempura and Bananas Foster Egg Rolls.  And they manage to pull it off with great skill doing homage to both food traditions.  Their sushi and sashimi are wonderful and likely the highest quality in the city. However, their cooked dishes also show great innovation and execution, with examples like the two above and pan-roasted mussels with ginger, garlic and green onions and short rib tempura served on fresh lettuce with sesame soy jus. I think it ranks with any place across the city for culinary innovation and execution.

Here is our first meal: crawfish tempura, pork belly steamed bun, fried oyster steam bun, pan-roasted mussels with ginger, garlic and green onions, soy mirin-glazed NY steak with marbled potatoes, Tasso ham, Thai basil and chili aioli, and we finished with blueberry beignets and ice cream.

       

The tempura was light with plenty of crawfish and we ate it before I got the camera out, The mussels were flavorful, the steamed buns were very light with intense flavors inside, the steak was thin sliced and combined well with the potatoes and Tasso, and the desert blew us away.

Here is our second meal; tempura calamari salad with Dikon radish and green vinaigrette, sashimi special served in a crispy fish that was also very eatable, short rib tempura (partially eaten as we got carried away before I took the picture), crispy skin salmon with spinach and a peanut sauce, and closing with bananas foster egg roll with vanilla ice cream and caramel sauce.

   
 

Each dish was innovative, fresh and well prepared. There were lots of calamari, the sashimi was subtle and the presentation in a whole crispy fish was a pleasant surprise, the short rib reminded me of a high end version of chicken fried steak and I say this with great homage to a dish I grew up on, the salmon had a nice combination of crispy outside and juicy inside. Once again the desert blew us away.  We will be back many times as there are many other innovative choices left on the menu to sample.

Chiba is located at 8312 Oak Street,
New Orleans, LA 70118 (504) 826-9119. They do take out but we enjoy sitting at the bar watching all the new drinks being prepared. If you are comig to the city, add it to you list of places to eat.

Blog Cases from 2005: Gautam Ghosh on Management

This begins a series of case studies from people I interviewed in 2005 about their blogging efforts. Now as we move to 2013, I find it interesting to look back at the early days of business blogging. I will only include cases from people who are still blogging now. These cases have not appeared on this blog before.

Gautam Ghosh now writes the blog, Talent and Social Business. In 2004 Gautam Ghosh wrote the blog, Gautam Ghosh on Management (that now redirects to the new one) that provided his “musings on the corporate world, management & strategy, HRD, training, innovation & creativity, knowledge management & creation, organizational development, the “new” economy, systems thinking, complexity theory, etc.” At that time he was a human resource, training & organizational development professional located in Bangalore, India. While he often wrote on topics of local interest, many of his posts address global issues.

Gautam has been a chronic contributor to various business related egroups/yahoogroups and listservs over the last five years. Initially, he started the blog, two and half years ago, to chronicle his various contributions at these e-groups, so that he could have them handy at one centralized place. His blogging experiences met the original objectives but the objectives also evolved.  It was only after he started this blog that Gautam realized the power of blogging. He found the power of the easy hyperlinking facility, to be precise.

Gautam’s blogging objectives continued to evolve, especially as the resources that were under his command started to develop. Initially, Blogger (which is the service he uses) did not have either a commenting facility or permalinks. With the addition of these tools his blog posts actually became dialogue points and not 'soliloquies' alone.

When Gautam discovered Technorati, it added the ability to find out who was linking to him and what was being discussed in the blogosphere. Knowing these realities actually influenced what he posted. Gautam was no longer posting for himself anymore...having a readership (however small), and a knowledge of this readership, changed his objectives.

Gautam had not really faced any challenges in his blogging. There were a few changes he made in the blog template that sometimes messed up his formatting but there has been nothing significant as he continued his blogging.  He faced the minor technical challenges by trial and practice.  He also learned some basic HTML to take more control over his blog.

Other blogs provide Gautam’s major source of content. He has set some phrases as Google news alerts. He also monitors some business related sites. Readers of his blogs will find that he links to interesting thoughts in the areas of organization, human resources, people, creativity, innovation and Indian business scene. His blog offers a different perspective from the economics/marketing focused blogs.

Gautam benefited from reading other blogs by picking up some great insights from people who look at business issues from different perspectives. He could get easily and quickly educated on other issues like American politics and environmental issues, as well, which provides an added bonus. He has many favorite blogs. Bloglines and RSS have made it possible to read all the great posts at one given place. His required reading was BusinessPundit, The Canadian Headhunter, Tom Peters' Blog, Seth Godin's Blog, Fast Company Now, Business 2 Blog, Bill Ives’ Blog, Don Clark's Blog, Smartmobs blog, Dave Pollard's blog, Rajesh Jain's blog, Dina Mehta's blog, Alternative Perspective, Madhukar Shukla's musings, Denham Grey's blog, Knowledge Jolt with Jack, Judith Meskill, Lilia Efimova amongst all the 120 odd that he follows.

He picked blogs to read for several reasons. Some have great writing abilities, some have great insight, and most of them have both. Most of the blogs he reads relate to business, while others have a more holistic picture on environment and community effects of corporations.

Gautam offered this advice for others thinking about starting a small business blog. A blog is a great way to build conversation, but realize that a blog will attract feedback of a vocal minority that is savvy with technology. If your business has a substantial consumer group who fit into these demographics, the qualitative feedback from these conversations will be useful.

A few months prior to our conversation, he offered a nice weekend musing (http://gauteg.blogspot.com/2004/09/weekend-musings.html) that I immediately aligned with. Gautam wrote, “It is my view that organizations (of any form) are unnatural entities with their command and control structures and secretive ways. For organizations to survive and thrive they need to embrace the ways of a natural human community (which they already are, but pretend not to be).”  Referring to James Surowiecki’s The Wisdom of Crowds, Gautam concludes, “Once we start discovering the wisdom rather than just the 'optimum decision' business will cease to be seen as extractive by the rest of community. But how do we get there?”

Blogs offered a way to tap into the wisdom of the audience for your business or cause in 2004 and they still do now.  

Igloo Offers Comprehensive Platform for Social Business

Igloo provides a full featured SaaS solution for social business that bridges internal and external collaboration and networking. I recently spoke to Stephen Rahal on their latest moves.  They offer major product releases every 90 days and half of their new features are driven by customer input. Since they use the tool themselves, Stephen walked me through their own usage. 

Igloo strikes a balance between ease of use and configurability for the end user, while still meeting the requirements of IT.  Set up is easy as it integrates with Active Directory and provides a comprehensive means for application integration that I will cover later. It combines the file sharing capabilities of traditional intranets with the collaboration capabilities of a social business platform. There are activity streams, blogs, communities, events, wikis, polls, project workspaces, and discussion forums. Templates are available to use in configurations and the components are added through widgets so you can design your own system without any heavy IT lifting. There is also presence and profiles. Below is a sample home screen.

One of the features I like is the ability to separate activity streams from microblog chatter as you can see above. Many tools combine these two related capabilities and it can be confusing. In Igloo’s case activity streams are the auto-generated chronological records of activities around documents such as starting one, editing one, and commenting. Microblogging is the Twitter-like manual updates provided by users. Document sharing is enhanced by the activity stream notifications. Then anyone with access rights can see and comment on the document. This provides a much more efficient means than traditional email. You can see a document being shared and commented on below.

Project workspaces can have all the features of Igloo but they are devoted to a specific workgroup around an initiative. The leader can select the relevant components. One person can have multiple project workspaces to cover their different areas of responsibilities. You can see a sample project workspace below.

Application integration is key to making any social platform relevant to the business you need to be able to integrate the conversations with the transactions and incorporate these capabilities within workflow (see Integrating the Interactions with the Transactions). Igloo provides several means to this end. There are pre-packages integrations with widely used tools like Salesforce and SharePoint.

There is also an open API that can connect to tools like Microsoft Dynamics; Moodle, an open source learning management system; and other enterprise applications. You generally need IT support to enable these integrations but they are one-time tasks that take a few days or weeks in the most complex cases. To provide quicker integrations you can also embed a site within an I-frame but this is only useful when you simply want to present information without the interactions. The deeper integrations require the API.

There is a comprehensive widget library to help assemble the Igloo instance you want. Capabilities include blogs, search, RSS, calendars, forms, and wikis. They can be easily added or subtracted and arranged on the screen. Others can be reached through icons across the top of the screen. Some of the widget library is shown below.

Igloo has partnered with MicroStrategy for improved analytics. You can set up filters on factors such as time, projects, and people and then create reports. Analytics can look at activities, content, comments, and other factors. The next release will have even more filtering capability. The results can be made very granular and exported to Excel for further analysis. Below is a sample analytics screen.

There are gamification capabilities. You can also make comparisons between groups on metrics as shown below.

There is dynamic translation that currently works for English, French, Spanish, and Portuguese. A participant who knows a language can confirm that they agree with the translation so others will know it is not simply a machine view. Mobile support includes cross-platform support for iOS, Android with future support for BlackBerry and Windows.

Igloo is being well received in the marketplace. The IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Enterprise Social Software 2012 Vendor Analysis said that, “Igloo had the best overall solution capability rating from respondents.” It has also has appeared on the Magic Quadrant for the past 4 years. I like the ease of use, the flexibility, and I can why they are getting these ratings. 

The Joy of Getting Disconnected

Happy Holidays. Time to disconnect. There have been so many surveys about the addictive power of social media and the need to stay in touch with email.  For example a 2009 study found that It found that their sample used social media in the car (over 35 – 9%, under 35 – 40%), at work (over 35 – 29%, under 35  - 64%), on vacation (over 35 – 41%,  under 35 - 65%), on a date (over 35- 9%,  under 35 - 34%), and after sex (over 35 - 8%,  under 35 - 36%).  More recent studies find the numbers growing. With email it is even worse,

The New York Times addressed this issue recently with, The Workplace Benefits of Being Out of Touch. Sounds good to me. The problem is that most of us feel that if everyone else is available 24 hours, then we have to be, too. The article quotes, Dalton Conley, dean for the social services at New York University and author of “Elsewhere” (Pantheon, 2009), “Then it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy — if we’re always available, then we’re expected to always be available.”

However, the article goes on to say that companies are increasingly realizing that employees need to be disconnected from time to time and that “giving workers time to chill helps ultimate long-term productivity.” A survey of 1,600 managers and professionals and found that only 2 percent turned off their devices, even while on vacation.

There is a two-edge sword here. Having device to remote access allows for longer time spent away from your normal work place. I spent a month in Greece in April because I could be connected when I wanted to but I was disconnected for most of that time. Then I went to New Orleans for three weeks because of the same benefit. But you cannot stay connected the whole time or you might as well stay home. I also found that being disconnected for long periods of time opens me up to new ideas.

A few companies are recognizing this value as reported in the Times article. The Boston Consulting group is now giving team members a night off while others cover for him or her. You need to strike a balance here. The key is being in control. As someone who works part time, I now work online extensively for certain periods of time and then take whole days off and disconnected. While a full time worker may not be able to do this they can, and should take some nights and major portions of weekends away from electronic devices to participate in the real world.

Having written this post, I am going to reward myself with a long bike ride, but one enhanced by my iPod and leave my iPhone behind. 

 

Images from Lake Union, Seattle

Lake Union is a landmark of Seattle with many houseboats, views of the city, the Gas Works Park, and sea plances. We even had a great meal on the shore as a multitude of sail boats cam eout at sunset. 

                                                    

Images from the Seattle Art Museum

I spent some good time at the Seattle Art Museum. Here are some of my favorites. 

                                       

Why I Still Like Text Over Slides and Video on the Web

I have written on this blog and elsewhere that the phonetic alphabet was the greatest ever breakthrough in information technology. I still think is the best medium for the Web. Now I would add that it is best supplemented with images but images without text frustrates me. When I get a link to a slide share or a video I frequently do not bother the look at it. Here are some reasons.

You cannot grab quotes or paste into another doc.

Text is very scannable – according to Jakob Nielsen users have time to read at most 28% of the words during an average site visit and 20% is more likely but it is easier to come back with text.

Text is easy to distribute – It’s easy to cut and paste it and send it somewhere or to clip and re-syndicate it via email, RSS or social networks

Text is easy on the workplace – It’s much easier for cube-based workers to read text on the screen and get away with it vs. watching long videos.

Search results are still largely made up of text and better SEO is good thing if you want to get your message out.

Now the ancient Greeks who came up with the phonetic alphabet probably did not think about these implications. It is the invention that keeps on giving. The concept of an original version that could be preserved did not evolve until after written text. This was critical to the development of modern science among other things. In many ways, the epic poets, chief knowledge distributors of their day, made up the details as they went along. Text made available a visual record of thought, abolishing the need for an acoustic record and hence the need for rhythms. The first thing put into text was an epic poem but soon text inspired documents appeared.  But there is more.

Like many great inventions, the uses of text slowly evolved. In fact, it appears that reading was often done aloud until after the 6th century. Ivan Illich relates that St. Augustine refrained from reading after his brothers went to sleep for fear of waking them. After the 6th century, silent reading became more commonplace, and such techniques such as tables of contents and indexes first appeared over a thousand years after the phonetic alphabet first emerged. These new devices allowed for random access to text information, a concept we take for granted now.  Now people were free to read their emails and blog posts without disturbing their neighbors. What will be next for text?

 

 

2012 Global Most Admired Knowledge Enterprise MAKE Winners

Teleos, in association with The KNOW Network, has announced the 2012 Global MAKE Winners. Inaugurated by Teleos in 1998, the Most Admired Knowledge Enterprises (MAKE) research program seeks to identify those organizations (for-profit, non-profit and public sector) which are using knowledge-driven strategies to out-perform their peers by above average growth in intellectual capital and wealth creation (in the case of the public sector, increased societal capital).

An even more select group of organizations form the 2012 Global MAKE Hall of Fame.  These 24 organizations have been Global MAKE Finalists in each of the past five annual studies: Accenture, Apple, APQC, ConocoPhillips, Deloitte, Ernst & Young, Fluor, Google, IBM, Infosys Limited, Mars, McKinsey & Company, Microsoft, MindTree, Petrobras, POSCO, PwC, Royal Dutch Shell, Samsung, Schlumberger, Siemens, Tata Group, Toyota and Wipro Technologies.

A panel of Global Fortune 500 senior executives and internationally recognized knowledge management / intellectual capital experts selected the Winners. The panel rated organizations against the MAKE framework of eight key knowledge performance dimensions - visible drivers of competitive advantage and intellectual capital growth:

- Creating an enterprise knowledge-driven culture

- Developing knowledge workers through senior management leadership

- Innovation

- Maximizing enterprise intellectual capital

- Creating an enterprise collaborative knowledge sharing environment

- Creating a learning organization

- Delivering value based on customer/stakeholder knowledge

- Transforming enterprise knowledge into shareholder/stakeholder value

Successfully managing enterprise knowledge can provide quantified returns. The 2012 Global MAKE Winners trading on the NYSE/NASDAQ showed a Total Return to Shareholders (TRS) for the ten-year period 2002-2011 of 19.7% - nearly three times the average Fortune 500 company median.

The Return on Revenues (ROR) for the 2012 Global MAKE Winners was also 3.2 times that of the Fortune 500 ROR median at 12%. In addition the Return on Assets (ROA) for the 2012 Global MAKE Winners was 9.9% - nearly four times that of the Fortune 500 ROA median.

It still pays to make effective use of the knowledge within an organization. In fact, as the percentage of value within an organization tied to intangible assets continues to grow, the value of making effective use of knowledge will grow in an aligned manner. 

Social Media and the Boardroom: Much Work Remains

Richard Levick recently wrote an interesting article in Fast Company, Social Media And The Boardroom: Critical Questions Directors Need To Ask. There is a convergence here of increasing responsibilities for boards of directors and the increasing power of social media. As Richard wrote, “from Sarbanes-Oxley to Dodd-Frank, directors have been subjected to new liabilities and new mandates for elevated levels of transparency and accountability.” At the same time social media has emerged from its niche marketing role to impact every company in many ways.

Richard writes, “Social networks are the venues where purchasing decisions are increasingly made, investment opportunities are increasingly weighed, and corporate adversaries--such as social activists and the plaintiffs’ bar--increasingly gain public support for their agendas.” Yet directors are often not looking at its impact. He reported on a study by Stanford University’s Rock Center for Corporate Governance that asked 180 top CEOs, senior executives, and corporate directors how they approach social media’s opportunities and risks.

There is an awareness of what social media is and its potential impact but few pay attention to it as 90% report a basic understanding of this now established fact. However only 32% of their companies monitor social media to identify risks and only 14% measure social media sentiment about their organization. It gets worse, as only 24% of senior managers and 8% of directors actually request regular reports on their company’s social media engagement efforts and stakeholders’ social media sentiment. Then about half of the respondents do not even collect this information.

These are people who use social media as 65% of use social media for personal purposes and 63% utilize them for business purposes. Of that group that uses social media, 80% maintain a LinkedIn account and 68% are active on Facebook. It is surprising that they cannot connect the dots. This is not rocket science.

If they do manage to take their head out of the sand or off their own Facebook page (note 350 million suffer from Facebook addiction), Richard offers ten useful questions for them to ask gathered from three PWC audit people: Catherine Bromilow, Chris Wood, and Neil Manji. I will not steal their thunder or Richard’s as he lists them with commentary but they all make common sense.

Basically, boards need to take a comprehensive look at all aspects of usage within their organization, including how they, themselves, are using social media and its impact on their organization.  Otherwise they will get some personal surprises and their organizations will fail. 

Images from Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew in Volunteer Park Seattle

We watched Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew in Volunteer Park as part of a Summer series they run every year. Here are the highlights of a great performance. 

                                                        

 

Images from Volunteer Park Seattle, Washington

Volunteer Park is a wonderful place located at 1247 15th Ave E.  Volunteer Park is home to the Volunteer Park Conservatory and the Seattle Asian Art Museum. They are both pictured below. There is also a great collection of trees. They do Shakespeare play outdoors. I will present images from one, Taming of the Shrew, tomorrow. 

                                                   

Stand Out Social Marketing: A Review

I was pleased to receive a review copy of Stand Out Social Marketing by Mike Lewis. The full title is: Stand Out Social Marketing: How to Rise Above the Noise, Differentiate Your Brand, and Build an Outstanding Online Presence. It provides “tactics for standing out and drawing positive attention in the already overcrowded social web.” The book provides case studies and interviews of social media leaders on ways that the most powerful brands have succeeded in this area.

Mike is the Vice President of Sales & Marketing at Awareness, a company I have covered a number of times (see for example, Awareness Provides Social Marketing Automation and Awareness Report on Understanding and Leveraging Social Capital). The book covers several aspects of standing out in the social media world: paying attention, stimulating and engaging in interactions, creating content, developing a distinctive presence, managing the process, creating an audit, and measuring ROI.

As anyone who looks at the Web knows the social media space has gained legitimacy and investments in social media marketing continue to rise every year. That is the good news. The difficulty that this book addresses is how to stand out in a crowded field. We are generating more content every year or two that ever before and much of this is through social media.

While you can buy Twitter followers, and Facebook likes, as well as use other tricks and short cuts for some measures of impact, the meaningful measures cannot be faked but are based on creating good content and promoting it well. You need both sides of that equation and this book is a good primer to be successful at both.

You need to be seen as unique. Then if you are successful, expect to be copied so you need to unique again. You need to be in a constant state of innovation. Mike offers the Levis Friends Facebook Store as an example. Once you enter this online store you get a personalized shopping experience based on the likes and recommendations of friends. They placed a Like button next to the SKU for each item in the store to encourage participation. It is a good idea and I can see how this would work for Facebook addicts. I can imagine that many of the people who flock to Facebook would want to know what jeans their friends like.  Personally, I tend to look for bargains but then I also do not spend much time in Facebook. But then 350 million suffer from "Facebook addiction." 

Time Magazine named “you” as the person of the year in 2007 put a mirror on the cover. These types of tactics will appeal to those interested in the social mirror. I have to admit that while clothes may not be where I focus, I am intrigued by what people do think in areas of interest to me such as social media or even art.

Each chapter has specific guidelines. For example, there is a detailed set of steps and processes for paying attention to the right things that impact your brand. First, you need to identify where the relevant conversations are happening. Then you need to refine these conversations to see might ones have impact through what Mike calls an “attention matrix.” Third, you need to measure your efforts. Each chapter ends with useful actions and takeaways.

I recommend the book for anyone interested in social media marketing. I would recommend using social media marketing for anyone serious about gaining visibility for their brand, so that casts a wide net for this book.  

CIO Job Requirements 2012

Rob Preston recently wrote about What CIOs Want In Their Successors in Information Week. Rob talked with four CIOs in the U.S. about the attributes they're looking for in a successor.  First, they want multidimensional leaders. This makes sense as the IT scene is getting increasingly complex with a number of transformative trends such as consumerization, the cloud, and mobile.

Dave Bent, CIO of United Stationers was quoted, "They may be brilliant technologists, but without the business engagement and leadership skills, they will not make it to the higher level." I would agree that it is increasingly hard to make it on tech skills alone.

Even within tech skills, you cannot be a specialist. Another CIO, Jerry Johnson, CIO of Pacific Northwest National Laboratories, emphasized the breadth of IT experience required: software development, infrastructure, operations, architecture, and project management. This implies that future CIOs need to move around their department and gather a variety of skills and perspectives.

Customer skills are particularly important for CIOs at technology companies, where the CIO is often asked to speak on the products use within the company. IBM is a big believer in testing inside first, then releasing a product to the public. Of course, not ever tech firm has over 300,000 enterprise users to serve as a means to test and refine products.

This need to speak to customers can extend beyond the tech sphere. For example, Rob writes about Kent Kushar, CIO of E. & J. Gallo Winery, who is comfortable at wine-tasting events discussing vintages and palate taste zones. Not a bad job to have.

Future CIOs also need to be team players. Then need to be able to stand up as peers to others in the C-suite and be respected for their leadership skills. They also need have brought home a number of projects successfully. In addition, they need to be self-starters and be willing to take a stand on an issue even it is counter to the prevailing views.

I would add that CIOs need to understand the rising ability of the business units to go around IT if they cannot get their needs met. They need to serve as a leader but not a dictator or they will lose quickly. They also need to understand the power of social busines

My AppGap Blog Posts for November 2012

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 November. There will be more in December.

Alfresco Enhances Its Content Management Offering with More Integration Touchpoints

Atlassian Stash Supports Enterprise Application Developers with DVCS Git

IBM Connections 4.0 Offers Expanded Social, Integration, and Analytic Capabilities

Box Now Offers Comprehensive Collaboration and Extensive Application Integration

Complete Listing of My 2012 E 2.0 Innovate Notes 

Wrike Takes Project Management Mobile

 

Images of a Market In Seattle's Central District

I was struck by the products and produce offered in a grocery store in Seattle's Central District. I always enjoy exploring grocery stores when I travel. Here is some of what I found. I wish I was there long enough to enjoy everything. 

                                           

Images from Seattle's Central District

The Central District is an interesting area within Seattle and I sepnt a few weeks there in August. As theWikipedia notes, the Central District is a mostly residential district in Seattle located east of Cherry Hill, west ofMadrona and Leschi, south of Capitol Hill, and north of Rainier Valley. Historically, the Central District has been one of Seattle's most racially and ethnically diverse neighborhoods and is the center of Seattle's black community.