Portals and KM

The Digital Workplace in the Connected Organization – Part 2: New Features

Jane McConnell, Netstrategy/JMC, has recently published her excellent annual report, The Digital Workplace in the Connected Organization. Jane conducted her 8^th annual survey of organizations and had 314 respondents. Here are some of the highlights of the results. The full 198 page report goes into great detail on the findings and how they impact the organization. I was pleased to receive a review copy of this valuable document. The report can be purchased online at this site. This post covers some of the new features and my prior post summarized the highlights. There are three main new features this year.

The Digital Workplace Scorecard is based on nine dimensions of the digital workplace model Jane offers in the report. The three main categories are: capabilities, enablers, and mindset and each is further divided in three dimensions. The Scorecard provides a self-assessment tool that should prove essential to building a roadmap for establishing a digital workplace that plays an essential and strategic role in the organization. The scores are calculated based on several hundred data points from responses to online survey questions. All participants privately receive their own scorecard and can benchmark themselves to the rest of their industry. All industry scorecards are published in the report.

This year, the digital workplace is put into the context of the organization. It provides an understanding of how the digital workplace impacts and is, in turn, impacted by organizational processes, structures, leadership, culture and mindset. The survey covers these points in addition to traditional questions about people capabilities, mobile services, finding expertise, and sharing knowledge. 

There are twenty-three "In practice" cases that are developed in more detail than in previous years. Organizations included in these cases stood out during Jane’s data analysis process of the 314 organizations that responded to her survey. They were chosen as examples because of high scores or because their comments and examples are relevant to challenges many organizations face today. 

The case studies and other data show that the “digital workplace helps organizations enable their customer-facing workforce, helping them interact with customers in real-time with up-to-date information. An effective digital workplace facilitates fast reaction and proactive initiatives when an organization is faced with unexpected events such as environmental emergencies, challenges from competitors or global market shifts.”

I highly recommend this document to who wants to stay competitive in today’s market and who desires to attract and retain an intelligent workforce.  

 

 

The Digital Workplace in the Connected Organization – Part 1: Highlights

Jane McConnell, Netstrategy/JMC, has recently published her excellent annual report, The Digital Workplace in the Connected Organization. Jane conducted her 8^th annual survey of organizations and had 314 respondents. It was first done in 2006 and is a comprehensive and highly useful document for anyone working in digital media within the enterprise.  I was pleased to receive a review copy of this valuable document. The report can be purchased online at this site. The 198 page report goes into great detail on the findings and how they impact the organization.

Jane begins by pointing out that, “the digital workplace is much more than technology. It is a blend of Capabilities, Enablers and above all, Mindset - all essential perspectives in how organizations work.”  In organizations that are effectively using digital technology, there are new virtual structures such as communities. “Cross-organizational communities are playing a long-term strategic role as custodians of knowledge, thus complementing traditional hierarchical structures. “

In addition, new processes such as crowd-sourcing, “Internal crowd-sourcing is now deployed enterprise-wide in over half the Early Adopters who report “transformational” or “significant” impact on their organization.”

Successful early adopters are operating within an open and participatory leadership model. These early adopters report a much higher rate of top management as a “driving and active” force in their digital workplace initiatives. They also have organizational cultures that are more open and based on teamwork. Top managers, as well as Communication, IT and HR managers, are more “open and participatory” in their leadership styles and ways of working.

The vast increase in workforce mobile services is also transforming business processes. Jane found that, “Mobile services for the workforce will be deployed in 30 to 40 percent of organizations by the end of 2014.”

The top two strategic drivers overall for the digital workplace are “increasing organizational intelligence” and “gaining efficiency and cost-savings”. The first is number one for early adopters. It makes sense as these innovators are often attracted to initiatives that increase their effectiveness. The second is number one for the majority of organizations who more often wait to be attracted by bottom line results.

It is interesting to note that physical workplaces are slowly evolving toward more “non- territorial” workspaces, encouraging the flow of ideas and information among people.

I highly recommend this document to who wants to stay competitive in today’s market and who desires to attract and retain an intelligent workforce. This is the eighth year Jane has conducted new research and published her report on the findings and recommendations.  In my next post I will review some of the new features in this report. 

Enterprise Social Networking Mindshifts by Catherine Shinners

My Merced Group business partner, Catherine Shinners, has published a useful series on Enterprise Social Networking Mindshifts. As McKinsey has shown there is a lot of value to working with social tools and processes. Yet, as Catherine notes, according to a report released by Ovum last week, there's only about a ten percent (10%) adoption rate in organizations.  In the series she provides useful ways to make creative uses of social networking and increase adoption. I will let you read what she wrote and not repeat it here. Take a look.

Here is the list of posts in her series

Enterprise Social Networking Mindshifts #1 - Think Community

Enterprise Social Networking Mindshfts  #2 - Why Community Matters

Enterprise Social Networking Mindshifts #3 - Managing Social

Enterprise Social Networking Mindshifts #4 - Working Social

 

Catherine Shinners on Building an Online Community at Enterprise 2.0

My Merced Group partner, Catherine Shinners will present at next week’s Enterprise 2.0 on " Building an Online Community from Strategy, Planning, and Launch to Effective Engagement and Adoption.”  Her session is at 11:15 – 12 on Tuesday June 19 in Room 312.  Here is the description.

“Building and supporting community is a powerful way to build leadership relationships, connect with customers to improve service and accelerate innovation or transform internal organizational productivity. Yet sometimes organizations grab a packaged-off-the-shelf community offering and launch a site and find that it is not gaining the engagement and adoption that was hoped for. If you’re thinking of building an online community or have started on the path, but are not sure you have all the elements in place, this session will provide you with a roadmap to community strategy, planning, launch and early stage adoption, and engagement practices.

The session will guide you through a community strategy process that is aligned with the business strategy, identifying and surveying stakeholders, accurately assessing and clarifying the unmet needs of the community stakeholders to drive the user experience, content and programming plans. Using a case example of an online community for education leaders, the session speaker will outline considerations for staffing and resourcing a community, engaging constituencies through social media, marketing and communications efforts for adoption engagement, analytics and Key Performance Indicator development to assess health of the community.”

It is part of a great community management track created by Rachel Happe. Hope to see you there. I will be blogging the conference.

 

 

 

The Rise of Mass Collaborative Decision Making vs. Top Down Direction

Deb Gallagher has an interesting article, in the MIT Sloan Review, The Decline of the HPPO (Highest Paid Person’s Opinion). She refers to the work to Andrew McAfee of the MIT Center for Digital Business. He said that the next wave of Enterprise 2.0 will see companies managing decision making and knowledge in very different new ways. This is similar to a post I did a few weeks ago (see Standing Old School Management on its Head). That post reported a study by Bill McCleave that found three characteristics kept appearing as critical to good management: communication, listening and the ability to delegate (aka macro-managing vs. micro-managing).

Deb quotes McAfee, ““The central change with Enterprise 2.0 and ideas of managing knowledge [is] not managing knowledge anymore — get out of the way, let people do what they want to do, and harvest the stuff that emerges from it because good stuff will emerge. So, it’s been a fairly deep shift in thinking about how to capture and organize and manage knowledge in an organization.”

This means looking for good ideas within the ranks of the organization as well as outside the organization. Communities has a great way to provide this innovate, as Catherine shiners writes in Social Business for Executives, “Understanding how to derive repeatable business value from collaborative community is an important senior management skill to master.” This seems to be an increasing trend.

Jon Husband has long talked about this with concept of wirearchy. As he writes, “The new interconnected environment demands new principles for organizing collaborative activity. Traditional hierarchy does not lead and support networked activity as well as newer forms and principles.” Communities become a way to make this new form of decision making concrete.

Deb writes that McAfee adds that the concept that the best minds and the best solutions are often outside our organizations is central to this new mindset. Companies must be willing to seek out those experts wherever they may be.

She offers a great example form Allstate. They offered a competition to see who could beat their current best prediction for which of these cars is going to get into an accident somewhere down the road. Of course the contestants improved on their data. This likely led to better underwriting and higher profits. I am sure we will see more and more of these examples. 

 

Have We Moved Past Intranets to Networks?

Tad Staley raises some interesting issues in his post, Social Intranets and Organizational Collaboration. He begins by rightly noting that the concept and term of “Intranet” is outdated and wonders it be rehabilitated with “Social” as its first name. My initial reaction is that this falls into the common trend of using a new technology like the prior one until the unique characteristics of the new one can be fully understood.

Intranets were about making content more accessible. But, as Tad writes at the, “heart of the trend toward Social Intranets is the interest in making collaborative capabilities more available throughout the enterprise.” To me this means dropping the term intranet as we are moving way beyond content accessibility. The focus is no longer on the document but on the person. As Tad rightly notes simply running an activity stream down a content focused tool does not make it really social.

Consistent with this thought Tad offers five forms of collaboration to consider with content collaboration being only one of them. There is also project and process collaboration, as well as communities of practice/interest and communication and coordination.

To take the next step in social business the term intranet needs to be dropped.  

 

Communities and the Nature of Trust – Georg Simmel

I have been looking at bit at the work of Georg Simmel, a German sociologist I read in my student days. Georg saw the development of trust as a mental process that has three components: expectation, interpretation, suspension.

Expectation is the anticipated state or outcome at the end of a process. It is preceded by the combination of interpretation and suspension. Interpretation concerns our experience of reality that provides ‘good reason. Suspension is the mechanism of bracketing the unknowable, thus making interpretative knowledge momentarily certain. Suspension enables the leap of faith required for trust.

Collaboration requires a bit of trust, as does participation in the blogosphere. We have an expectation of benefit from our efforts. This expectation takes many forms and it is best that the expectations of the participants align, but it is not necessary, or even desirable that they are identical, just complimentary. Then we interpret our communication through the lens of our expectations. The first two components are necessary, but not sufficient. Suspension enables us to bridge the gaps and, through it, achieve trust. But that suspension is based on our prior experience and enabled by our own perspective on life.

I tend to err on the side of trust. That is my going in position, unless I see a warning sign from my past experience. For collaboration and communities to exist we need to set the right conditions so that expectation and interpretation can enable suspension. 

 

The Social Organization According to Gartner

Here is a book that I recently put at the top of my business reading list thanks to a suggestion by my Merced Group partner, Catherine Shinners. She posted an excellent review, Social Business for Executives. As she opens her review with the comment, “Understanding how to derive repeatable business value from collaborative community is an important senior management skill to master.” There is more and more evidence coming out about the value of social business. Many of you are familiar with the McKinsey studies that provided concrete quantified benefits (see for example, How social technologies are extending the organization).

Here is a book that gets senior managers ready for the next evolution in business: The social organization. The basic premise of the book is “being a social organization goes beyond experimenting with social media technology tools—the "provide and pray" approach. In fact, it's not about the technology at all.” The Social Organization: How to Use Social Media to Tap the Collective Genius of your Customers and Employees, is published by Harvard Business Review Press and written by Anthony J. Bradley and Mark P. McDonald of Gartner.

Now I would say there is a little bit of technology to consider (see for example - Maybe Enterprise 2.0 Is About the Technology – but this title was more provocative that meant to be taken literally. I do agree with the need to focus on the business side if you want to be successful (see for example, Putting Social Media to Work).

As Catherine notes this book is indeed about putting social business to work in larger enterprises. She quotes the authors, mass collaboration, in their definition "is a large, diverse group of people pursuing a mutual purpose that creates value..yet...who act independently to contribute open and complementary information" and thereby becomes a "collaboration community that enlists the interests, knowledge, talent and experience of everyone along its value chain to create results that exceed those possible using traditional process and small-group collaboration"

Senior management engagement and leadership is essential to make this work. First, she notes that senior management is essential for “ensuring that a community is mobilized around a business relevant purpose.”  This is the key starting point that is often missing when new technology is implemented. She also notes that senior management is required for “bringing the results of the collaboration community into relevant business processes.” I have never seen a successful knowledge management for that was not business process aligned and this is even more important with social business (see for example, Integrating the Interactions with the Transactions).

Catherine reviews the very interesting case of CEMEX, the Mexican producer of concrete that was already creating huge profits through advanced use of technology in their business processes in the early 2000s. I had occasion to do a small bit of work with them during this pre-social business era and was very impressed. It is not surprising that they picked up on mass collaboration. You can see Catherine’s blog post for the case and the six basic principles for a successful cycle of mass collaboration.

 

 

 

The Individual vs. the Community

The debate over the individual perspective vs. that of the broader community is so old it is a cliché to even mention this. It is not a matter of the political left vs. right as there are instances of dominating collectives on both the right and left and instances of extreme individualism on the left and right.

Here is one of my favorite poems in which Joy Kogawa in 1973, I feel, nicely lays out some of the complexity of issues in the broader debate. 

To the Lady Who Phoned Chairman Mao

Of course, you understand the thing was mad.

Had you represented the League of Women Voters

Or at least the local PTA in your town,

Something might have been arranged.

As it is,
I’m only an interpreter, and not empowered

To include in the current five year plan

A telephone call to Peking

From Assonet, Mass.

 

When you said that you were trying to prove

To your children, who were listening

On the extension, that they were not

Without power or meaning in the world,

And that the individual person

May speak to the ear of the Chairman,

It would normally have been my duty

(Had you not called collect)

To remind you of the Chairman’s words

On the sterility of the alienated act.

The facelessness of the man without a Party

And the reactionary nature of the attentat.

 

However, as you hang up,

Not having quite reached to Chairman Mao,

I shake my head and savour

The fragrant sauce on an other wise flat

And unseasoned day.

And I am enough of a descendent of Lao Tse

To think of children’s possible delight

In this adventure you made them –

 

And of you husband, returning form the garment factory,

Who will say that to phone was gall enough,

But to phone collect was chutzpa.

Later, over the evening tea,

I will wonder if in the Untied States

They have had your phone disconnected.

 

This is from a collection of Canadian poems, I.S. 15, edited by Ted Whitaker, printed in 1973 by Coach House Press, 401 Huron Street (rear), Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The rest are just as good if you can find a copy.

 

Does a Senior Exec Need to be in Charge of Enterprise Collaboration?

Jacob Morgan recently wrote an interesting post, Do Organizations Need a Chief Collaboration Officer? Whatever you decide to call this person, I think that there is a compelling argument that someone at a senior level needs to have his or her sole responsibility be to support collaboration across the enterprise. McKinsey has well documented the financial benefits of the connected enterprise and Jacob offering some strong arguments to support this role.

First, he notes that adding it to the responsibilities of a senior exec with an existing set of responsibilities will insure it will not get the right attention. Collaboration, by definition, needs to go across business units so this executive should be in position to do this and not be aligned with a particular group. At the same, time, as Jacob notes, the collaboration exec needs to work closely with other senior management, including the CIO, but also with each business unit lead, to ensure the necessary cross-fertilization within the enterprise.

Jacob offers a useful job definition for this role: “I imagine that prior to deployment this person would be in charge of things such as developing use cases, evaluating vendors, developing a strategy and roadmap, evaluating risks, and building a team (not having the CCO do this on his own).  After deployment this person would be focusing on thing such integration, training programs, adoption strategies and the like.  The long term role of this person would be scaling the program, fostering a collaborative culture, continuous evaluation and adoption, and integrating collaboration within the overall business strategy of the company.” 

I think the emphasis should be on the strategic. Jacob makes a very important point about not having this person doing the work on his or her own. I have seen too many senior level roles in a wide variety of verticals and horizontals created without the proper staff and budget. That approach is doomed to failure and a waste of time and money. In fact it is worse than nothing because it creates the illusion that collaboration is supported when it is only getting lip service.

Jacob argues against having CIOs lead collaboration because they already have too much on their plate and collaboration is more than technology. I would underscore the second point. In fact, I would argue that the CIO is last person to do this because it will be seen as a technology play when it is much more a business play. Certainly technology needs to play a role as I have written elsewhere (see Maybe Enterprise 2.0 Is About the Technology and Looking Deeper into Getting Social Business Right) but it needs to be a supporting role, and not leading the charge.

We also need to be careful and not go overboard in the other direction. As I wrote in the second post above, many people at recent conferences say, “it is not about the technology.”  I think this can be misleading because part of the change is within the technology and the IT department may be a major point of resistance. It is better to say, “it is more than the technology.” I think that is a subtle, but important distinction.

Jacob provides a useful list of pros and cons for a CCO. I will not repeat them here and recommend you read his original post. I do want to emphasis one of these points, the need to look at “collaboration from a holistic big picture of how it impacts everyone.” I remember being at senior staff meeting of a P&C insurance company in the early 90s that was in serious trouble. The new CEO, who had been brought into save the company, said that it was important to share content and insights across business units.  One leader for a vertical market asked why he needed to know what (another seemingly unrelated vertical market) is doing. The CEO looked at him and said that thinking is exactly what is wrong with this firm.  The CEO went on to support the notion of shared learning as a strategic initiative and it was one of several reasons the company got turned around. Whether you call the person a CCO or some other title, the organizations that put someone in charge of collaboration and give this person the budget and staff to do their job will be the winners in our ever connected markets. 

 

Cisco Expands Its Cloud Collaboration Strategy

I have written extensively on Cisco’s I-prize efforts (see Cisco Announces I-Prize Winner and Results of Their Global Collaboration and Cisco Announces Second I-Prize Winner) but have not yet had a chance to look at their enterprise collaboration efforts.  So I was pleased to recently speak with Murali Sitaram, vice president and general manager of Cisco’s Cloud Collaboration Applications Technology Group (CCATG), to discuss Cisco’s cloud collaboration strategy. It includes leading enterprise cloud applications for web conferencing (WebEx), instant messaging (Jabber) and enterprise social software (Quad) but goes much beyond that.

Murali began by noting that we have entered the post-PC era. It is not longer a single operating system on a single device. Now there are multiple smart devices, many mobile, that have more capabilities than the PCs of a few years ago. There are also multiple operating systems and thousands of apps that you can download from the cloud through app stores. This is occurring both on the Web and within the enterprise where BYOD is spreading. Now we have mobile devices, social applications, visual media, and virtual storage. This has certainly transformed the challenges faced by IT departments trying to keep up with their user’s requirements.

Cisco’s strategy in this post-PC world is to deliver collaboration on any device, anywhere and at anytime. Key to this strategy is a cloud offering that can deliver these services over any network and support all of the popular PC, tablet and phone operating systems that users bring into the workplace as a part of the “BYOD” pheonomenon.

Murali introduced a useful collaboration quadrant (see image below). In the upper left is Communications where Cisco a market leader.  It has 37% of enterprise voice, 52% of telepresence, and 45% of SaaS webconferencing, leading each of these three categories by a significant margin.  They are also the number two SaaS service with 5.8 million registered hosts worldwide. In the upper right is the People side with social capabilities and identity management. This is an area that Cisco is making some serious moves. It is the right direction as people, rather than documents, are becoming the center of collaboration and the means to create connections within the new social enterprise. As Murali expressed, it now more “who” than “what” than shapes communication.

In the lower left is Business Processes such as CRM and ERP. Here Cisco is taking an integration and partnership strategy. In the lower right is Information Management where they have also adopted with same integration and partnership approach. This makes a lot of sense. Build on your strengths in communications to add social and other people related capabilities that are a natural fit and extension of communications. Then, do not re-invent capabilities where there are plenty of strong partners to work with and where new options for integration are opening up with increased API functionality.

As part of their move into the People quadrant, the next generation of Web Ex is designed for the complete meeting cycle. It offers a centralized meeting space to streamline items before, during and after a meeting – from meeting agendas, presentations and notes shared during the meeting to follow up actions and meeting recordings. The solution that now supports HD video is interoperable with Cisco TelePresence and supports two-way video on the Cisco Cius, Apple iPad and Apple iPhone. The solution also supports a set of common APIs that can integrate third party applications such as CRM offerings. There is also integrated calendaring and scheduling.

Cisco has also expanded its collaboration platform, Quad with a comprehensive set of features. There are profiles and you follow people with a single click. There is an activity stream and watch list capability and you can share comments and ideas. You can create rich content with micro-blogs, wikis, documents, and videos. Real-time collaboration is available and recordable for future use. Backend applications such as calendaring, document management, and custom enterprise apps are accessible. You can search for experts and determine presence. Mobility is supported for both smart phones and tablets. Here is a sample Quad screen.

All of these features provide a totally integrated user experience taking email down to the role of a relatively minor player as the rich nature of communication options, including presence and the ability to switch quickly to real-time communications, provides a much richer set of options. You can even bring email into Quad if needed.  

To supplement these communication capabilities Cisco is offering a new freely downloadable Cisco Jabber Web browser plug-in that lets companies and developers embed UC collaboration capabilities into any web-based application. The kit is highly customizable, and with just a web browser, users can connect, communicate, and collaborate with presence, IM and click-to-call or click-to-video capabilities within line of business web applications or general purpose, public-cloud web applications.

One example of Cisco’s new approach to collaboration can be found at Virgin Media that recently announced they are deploying Cisco Quad, Cisco WebEx, Cisco Unified Communications as part of its Flexible Working Initiative. By putting people and not the device at the center of collaboration, Virgin is now able to support a more flexible work environment. People can co-work from a variety of office locations or from home. Virgin Media’s employees will now be able to collaborate and work remotely with video calls and shared documents from the device of their choice: PC, laptop, tablet or mobile phone.

I like what they are doing. As Murali mentioned, people, rather than documents, are becoming the center of collaboration. Cisco is well positioned to make its strength in communication more social to address this shift in how work is being is done in the connected enterprise. I plan to speak again with them to take a deeper dive into the specifics of the relevant products offerings.

 

 

Engaging and Supporting Community Champions

Claire Flanagan provides an extremely useful and comprehensive set of advice in her post, Community Advocates Part Two: What Motivates Them? How Can You Reward Them? I will not repeat the details here and encourage you to read it in full. I just want to offer a few headlines and share one of my own related experiences.

I really like the way Claire segments the different types of advocates, First, there are connectors who “are well networked and can help amplify your brand, providing necessary Word of Mouth through to their network.” Then there are critics who “can provide important insights on what’s working or what’s not working or be a source of innovative ideas.” Of course they are useful to extent they are not pushing their own agenda. The third group is the creators who can help develop important community content or answer community questions. Finally, there are collectors who can help keep the community content organized by providing necessary tags, ranking content or moderating community content.

Claire goes on the write with specific detail about how to match rewards to each type. Now I am not going to reveal her wisdom so you will have to read what she wrote. I found it useful.

I want to write instead briefly about an underlying concept, offering people a sense of engagement in what directly affects their life. In too many traditional top-down organizations where managers make decisions and offer direction while the workers carry out orders, there is a disengagement with the work place. This is not the right ground for a community, at least a community to support the organization.

I did some work for a property casualty insurance company in the early 90s that was in dire straights. It was losing money. The field did not trust the home office and the home office did not trust the field.  The only engaged community was the rumor mill that occurred at the water cooler and on email. That was the main source of energy. The people felt they had some control here and rumors spread around the enterprise in nanoseconds. Everyone stayed engaged and current with the rumor mill and frequently contributed content.

One symptom of the disconnection was the IT system that “supported” the underwriters. It was a transaction recording system developed by IT so the home office people could keep track of what was happening in the field. The underwriters saw no value in using it and avoided it whenever possible. They tended to not be careful or complete when they did use the system. Home office often operated on bad data.

The firm decided that big changes were needed or this business might close. One of the changes was to instill a sense of underwriting discipline and a careful underwriting process. They engaged some of their best underwriters to conceive the process and developed an IT system to align with the new process. They asked many people in the field for feedback on the process and made adjustments.

They also asked the field about what type of IT system would help those in the field and what features would be useful. This approach was new, as the people had never been asked this question. It generated a lot of excitement and hope. News of the new approach spread quickly through the rumor mill and the new IT system got a lot of good press. There began to be a stronger sense of community within the underwriters toward their work and turning the company around. They began to be a sense of community between the home office and the underwriters in the flied who finally felt they were being listened to.

Underwriters really wanted to do a good job and desired access to best practices in areas they were not familiar with and access to experts in those areas. They wanted this information aligned with the steps in the new underwriting process. They wanted to get the information they needed to make intelligent underwriting decisions. They did not want an automated system telling then what to do. The IT developers and senior management listened and these positive developments continued to spread through the rumor mill. Underwriters used the new system and they contributed their experiences into the “shared learnings” database for others to benefit from their experiences.

Champions emerged to articulate and promote the benefits of the new way of working. But most importantly almost everyone became champions in their own ways. The four advocate types that Claire covered emerged. Underwriters were able to find the right people to talk with on their current issues. Then they were able to contribute back their learnings into the system. The underwriting community turned from being disconnected and simply worrying about their job to actively wanting the company to succeed by everyone working together.

It worked and the company did turn around. The ingredients for this success were there all along. The people just needed to feel engaged, connected and part of a community with a shared focus for the good of the organization. 

 

Has the Industrial Age Has Finally Run Out of Gas?

Yesterday, I reviewed Rawn Shah’s book, Social Networking for Business.  Today I am going to comment on his interview With Don Tapscott: The Industrial Age Has Finally Run Out of Gas.  I reminded of the TV commercial where everything runs on gas, even the dentist drill. It asked what if everything ran cleanly on the grid?  Don is quoted as saying, “Throughout the 20th century, we created wealth through vertically integrated corporations. Now, we create wealth through networks. We are at a turning point in human history, where the industrial age has finally run out of gas.”

I hope he is right. But then a lot of the gird is powered by old style coal that is not so clean. Don position is that people are now participating in mass collaborations within or across the boundaries of the organization. This collective now powers enterprises. While this is should be the wave of the future, examples like the BP oil spill in the Gulf demonstrate that the networks of collective intelligence are not always running cleanly.

I am sure that Don would argue that it is successful organizations that are now connected and those that are not will also run out of steam.  This I would certainly agree. I just hope this concept spreads faster.

To make the connected enterprise run smoothly you need leaders who “guide and influence others, rather than to give orders and instruction. Simply said, they are not managers any longer but influencers and this takes new skills and a different mindset.” I agree but still see old school management occurring in many places. He gave an interesting example of the Chinese motorcycle industry where hundreds of little companies all work together. They meet to coordinate on the Internet in tea houses and provide 40% of global motorcycle production. Of course operate with very command and control political infrastructure and likely benefit from its macro economic policies.

Don is working with a number of cities using a variety of means to gain greater citizen engagement and reap their collective intelligence. Methods include: digital brainstorms, electronic town halls, citizen reporting, predictive markets, and policy wikis.

Tracy Hackshaw, the Chief Solution Architect for iGov for the government of Trinidad and Tobago, leading a similar effort. His government is using social business for more effective e-government efforts. There are 1.3 million people in Trinidad and Tobago. A main goal is to increase the engagement of these people with their government and have them more satisfied with what the government is doing. Within the country there is a high percentage of access to mobile phones so this was one channel they focused on. One popular example was maps with the location of government offices and transit information on to reach them. Another was the reporting of such things as broken street lights or potholes in the roads. They have reduced the time that these issues are reported.

CEMEX, the highly profitable Mexican cement company, found the business case for social business by connecting their employees globally to gain operational efficiency. They found this efficiency. They also wanted to find radical innovations and they found these as well. They wanted to unlock the collective wisdom of their employees and this occurred, as well. I did some work with them about ten years ago and they were impressive in this regard then.

Rawn concludes his interview by noting that leaders may feel challenged when the number of stakeholders increases by magnitudes. Yet, he says that these systems have worked and they continue to work. They are our best way to make use of the collective and diverse intelligence within our organizations and our world. 

 

Rawn Shah’s Social Networking for Business: A Review

I did some catching up on my reading over the last holidays. One book at the top of the pile was Rawn Shah’s Social Networking for Business: Choosing the Right Tools and Resources to Fit Your Needs. Rawn is best practices lead in the Social Software Enablement team in IBM Software Group. He was kind to give me a review copy. In this book Rawn brings together patterns and best practices based on his experience managing worldwide online communities at IBM. He makes the case that for online communities to succeed they must be guided and nurtured carefully, actively, and intelligently. I can certainly agree with this position.

Rawn begins with examples of collective intelligence including IBM’s Innovation Jams. The 2006 one drew 150,000 business partners. I wrote a bit about the 2005 Jam that drew 52,000 IBM employees. The paper, World Jam: Talk Among 50,000+ describes the event. They built a Jam Analyzer to help visualize what is happening and enable you to drill down on specific participants and conversations. IBM has invested over $100 million to develop new businesses in each of themes that emerged such as improved healthcare and work toward a smarter planet.

Rawn notes that other companies are also adopting the use of collective intelligence and supporting it through social media. He writes that the trick is to focus on specific goals and methods instead of just looking at innovation in a general way.

He next goes on to look at examples of Web sites such as last.fm and social tools such as IBM’s Quickr that enable community based work. I was a big fan of Lotus Quickplace as Quickr was called when it first came out and promoted it with a number of clients. In 2000 I worked on the implementation of a knowledge management system at Ryder that used Quickplace as an important component that was novel for the time. This implementation won a CIO 100 award for innovation in 2002. Quickplace foreshadowed some of the enterprise 2.0 collaboration tools providing a quick and easy way to set up a web-based team workplace. Here is a 2006 post on the Quickplace Story – Then and Now.

The collective experience is not one-dimensional and Rawn provides a very useful set of models. They include individual (e.g. SlideShare), social network (e.g., LinkedIn), closed workgroup (e.g., Quickr), visible workgroup (e.g., Pandora), community (e.g., SAP Developer Network), and mass collaboration (e.g., last.fm or Amazon). See Four Examples of Wikis Working within the Enterprise for more on the SAP example and similar efforts. Rawn goes on to use this set of models to discuss their value and how to support them.

Rawn next discusses effective leadership in social environments. The old command and control methods do not work. Again he offers a range of different leadership styles and discusses how each relates to collaboration. The same careful and useful detail is offered. He then goes into different models of the social tasks related to collaboration. This is followed by a discussion of the different social domains, again using the approach of defining and discussing alternatives.

Building a social culture is the next topic. He discusses how the social leadership and social tasks already covered impact culture. This discussion continues with chapters on engaging members and community management. Next Rawn tackles how to measure social environments with same degree of precision, again exploring alternatives. He concludes with a discussion of social value. I highly recommend this book as it offers very specific and clear guidelines for anyone wanting to engage in social collaboration and that should be all of us.

Rawn currently writes the Connected Business blog at Forbes. Tomorrow I will comment on a recent interview he did with Don Tapscott, The Industrial Age Has Finally Run Out of Gas, where he continues to discuss collective intelligence. 

 

Good Advice for Content Curators

Sean Carton wrote an interesting piece, Become a Content Curation King. He first noted that this high flying buzzword is not actually a word. My spell checker agrees but I am sure that Webster will add it soon. He defines curation as “the act of sorting through the vast amounts of content on the web and presenting it in a coherent way, organized around a specific topic(s).” Sean gores on the rightly note that this has been going on for some time with many blog providing links to interesting stuff (such as this post) and that portals did the same thing in the 90s.

So what is new? Sean quotes NYU Professor Clay Shirky: "Curation comes up when search stops working…[and] when people realize that it isn't just about information seeking, it's also about synchronizing a community." Sean goes on to add that it's the "community" part that's at the heart of the whole curation movement …Just as a carefully-curated museum exhibit is sure to draw like-minded people together, carefully-curated content on the web has the potential to attract (and/or build) an online community of people who are into the same stuff.”

Sean provides a number of useful suggestions for how you can make curation work for your brand. I think the tips are not limited to marketing as curation can serve many functions. He begins by noting that you must think like a curator and simply be an aggregator. First, you need to know your audience and make a commitment to meeting their needs. Think about your niche and help the community make sense of its niche. Provide an ongoing resource (not just an event) and offer an attractive user experience.

These are all useful suggestions. I will add more. Select some useful tools to help you with the curation process.  If you spend too much energy looking for useful content, it will interfere with your ability to make sense of it. This is where the Darwin Awareness Engine™ can help. It is specifically designed to help content curators. I have covered it a good bit on this blog and will not go into too may details now. You can find an overview of the Awareness Engine here, a manual here and a list of FAQs here.

Rob Paterson used the Awareness Engine as he acted as a content curator for the St. Louis community around the topic of immigration through their PBS station, KETC. Rob said that “what I have found incredibly helpful about Darwin is the uncovering of emerging trends and gaining clarity on the issues…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.” Rob said it saved him several hours a day by bringing together the content on immigration in one source. He could focus on the results rather than spending a great del of time looking.  Darwin works best in the hands of a skilled curator who knows his or her topic well. Then they can see the anomalies and pull out the interesting and useful content. 

 

My KM World 2010 and Enterprise Search Summit 2010 Notes: Stan Garfield on Communities of Practice

Here is another in a series of session notes for KM World 2010 and Enterprise Search Summit 2010. I attended the session, 10 Principles for Successful CoPs.

This session was led by Stan Garfield, Community Evangelist, Consulting - Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited and Author, Implementing a Successful KM Programme. Stan created the SIKM community that has close to 500 members on a global basis. I have been a member for some time and there are some great discussions. Here is the session description. My notes follow.

“Based on his experience in creating, leading, and managing communities and communities programs, both inside and outside of organizations, Garfield defines and describes 10 principles for successful communities. He offers real-world examples and discusses tools while emphasizing key themes: Communities should be independent of organization structure; they are different from teams; are not sites, blogs or wikis; community leadership and membership should be voluntary; communities span boundaries; need a critical mass of members; start with as broad a scope as is reasonable; need to be actively nurtured; and more.”

Stan said that he was first in a professional community at Washington University School of Medicine in 1975. He was in the role of running community knowledge sharing sessions and there was no technology involved. This was new then. He found that communities work if people share a passion. He has been involved in many communities since then.

Here are the ten principles: One - Communities should be independent of organizational structure. They should be based on the content.

Two – Communities are different from organizations and teams.  People are assigned to a team. Communities are better with self–selection for joining and remaining.

Third – Communities are people and not tools. You should not start with tech features. A platform is not a community. Readers of the same blog are not a community but that might be a byproduct. 

Fourth – Communities should be voluntary. The passion of members should be what drives a community.  You should make the community appealing to get members and not assign them to it.

Fifth – Communities should span boundaries. They should not be for a particular group likes Sales or IT. There is a lot of cross-functional or cross-geography learning that would be missed then. Diverse views help communities.

Sixth – You should minimize redundancy in communities. Consolidation helps to avoid confusion by potential members. It also reduces the possibility of not getting a critical mass. Reducing redundancy also enables more cross-boundary sharing.

Seven - Communities need a critical amass. You need at least 50 and likely 100. Usually ten percent are very active so you can get sufficient level of activity with 100 people.

Eight – Avoid having too narrow of scope for the community. Too much focus can lead to not enough members. Stan advises people to start broad and narrow if necessary.  Or start as part of broader community and spin off if needed.

Nine – Communities need to be active. Community leaders need to do work, often in the “spare time” at their regular work. This means that the leader needs a passion for the topics so he or she will spend this extra time. There needs to be energy to get things going.

Ten – Use TARGETs to manage communities. TARGET includes: Types, activities, requirements, goals, expectations, and tools. Each of these issues needs to addressed and explained to prospective members.  Tools are necessary, but the least important component, so they are placed last.

I think these are a very useful set of things to consider. Stan covered more useful details faster than I can type. You can get all the details about these ten principles at Stan’s website.

 

 

 

Mixing Old and New School Communication

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

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

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

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

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

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

Allman Brothers Anthology on YouTube

Now you can find a stable collection of Allman Brothers videos on YouTube. Just search for Moogis within YouTube and you will find these videos along with Moogis promotions. There are many interviews and great live videos including Highway 61 Revisited" Allman Brothers Band w/ Johnny Winter 3/10/09 and Allman Brothers Band live @ Beacon - Red House w/guest Johnny Winter - 3/11/2009, NYC. They do covers nicely along with their original works.

Moogis is a social networking that includes live streaming concerts of the Allman Brothers, and new upcoming jam bands. Wyndstorm helped Moogis put the site up. They also convinced the Allman Brothers band members to release some of their music videos for free exposure on YouTube and similar venues.

I like their quote from Butch Trucks, founding member and drummer of the Allman Brothers Band. “For years, I had a vision of how the Internet could bring the live concert experience into people's homes, dramatically expanding the audience and the experience, and finally, with the help of Wyndstorm, technology has caught up with this dream. The fans of the bands we have lined up understand two things about jam concerts: it’s about the music, and it’s about the social experience.”

Here are some more from Moogis that should stay up on YouTube.

"The Weight" – Allman Brothers w/ Levon Helm

"One Way Out" Allman Brothers w/Los Lobos

"Smokestack Lightning" - Allman Brothers Band w/Bruce Willis

"Loan Me A Dime" PT 1 - Allman Brothers w/Boz Scaggs

"You Don't Love Me" Allman Brothers w/ Buddy Guy

"Turn On Your Lovelight" Allman Brothers w/ Robt. Randolph

Networks and Communities Connection by TechEmpower

At the suggestion of Tony Karrer and the invitation of Nancy White, I recently joined Networks and Communities Connection. It is a content hub started by Nancy that collects and organizes information around communities and networks. Tony runs a similar content hub, elearnng learning. His firm, TechEmpower, supplies the platform for both hubs and a number of others.

I spoke with Tony recently. He said that the goal is to provide a vetted source for content around a topic for the benefit of the readers and the writers. The contributors are selected and monitored by the site leader. This gives readers a trusted resource to explore new content on the topic in an organized way as it emerges.

These topic hubs go beyond the typical content aggregation sites as they also provide additional benefits to the contributors. The site can generate greater exposure through its key word optimization, bring in new readers and help organize the content. This last feature is what is especially unique.

If you click on a blog on the site it goes to a page that provides content from that specific blog nicely organized along a number of dimensions. There is the latest and the best according the site algorithms. In the key word column, the content on the blog is organized according to keywords grouped by concepts, tools type, and year. So you and your readers can see your content key words exposed and organized. Clicking on any one will take you to the blog posts relevant to the key word. This same listing of key words is also displayed on the individual contributors blog. You can see mine if you scroll down the left column, along with a link to the Networks and Communities Connection site and the ability to search the site.

The same format is carried up a level on the home page to organize the content of all the contributors. When I looked last week, the post selected at the top of the best post list from my blog was Business Blogs Trump Social Networking Sites as New Business Drivers. There is confirming evidence on this rating as this post was also the most popular of my posts syndicated at Social Media Magazine.

At the moment, you will only see a limited number of the most recent blog posts from my blog on Networks and Communities Connection as Typepad does not currently allow access beyond these. WordPress also limits access but Blogger is more generous and provides all historical data. Tony is working to expand this coverage.

I think these content hubs offer a great service connecting reader and bloggers. I look forward to participation.

Social Computing Magazine – Great Enterprise 2.0 Content Source

Here is a very useful source for new on enterprise 2.0, Social Computing Magazine. They have been re-syndicating a few of the posts from the this blog recently so they must have good judgment, right? The online magazine covers a wide variety of topics related to enterprise 2.0. There are book reviews, a who’s who section and a useful lexicon. Their event calendar includes the upcoming Enterprise 2.0 conference in Boston, June 22 – 25. There is also a news desk, community forums, and hot stories this week. When you are looking for good stuff to blog about, here is one good choice. They have a Twitter feed -- https://twitter.com/soccompmag

Here are the three articles they recently covered. There have been some others in the past.

Deloitte Survey Finds We Are in a 'Media Democracy'

iTKO Expands the Agility of Enterprise 2.0 Application Development with New Service Virtualization and SOA Governance Offerings

Unexpected Benefits of Phonetic Alphabet Keep Appearing – they add nice graphics. Here is what they did for this one.

Neil Young Adopts Social Media to Help Transform Auto Industry

Fast Company recently published the article, Neil Young: Automotive Entrepreneur? by Allyson Kapin. It said that Neil Young, the singer, and The Linc Volt project have been adapting Neil's 1959 Lincoln Continental, using existing technologies, into a “self-charging electric vehicle, running on natural gas and getting 100mpg!” It said that they are already up to 65mpg with the 2.5 ton Lincoln Continental, Now I once had a 1974 Lincoln Town Car, when it was still a trim option for the Continental. I bought it used for only a few hundred dollars during the a gas crisis so I have a feel for their challenge.

Now here is the social media part. Linc Volt has teamed up with SalesForce.com to set up a web site at lincvolt.force.com that uses SalesForce.com technology to build community around the project. In typical web 2.0 style, visitors at the site can submit their ideas and vote on other user's ideas. Then the most popular will get incorporated into the project if possible. Visitors can also share photos of themselves and their cars. These cars they would like to do a Linc Volt transformation when the project is finalized. As Fast Company reports, “Neil and crew are crowd-sourcing innovation. It's a great move, especially in what they would like to turn into a grassroots movement.”

I also think it is great that this practice of outsourcing innovation is becoming more common. See for example, Mining the Web and the World for Innovation - Part Two and Cisco Announces I-Prize Winner and Results of Their Global Collaboration.

Enterprise 2.0 Knowledge Sharing Platform from Knowledge Plaza

Knowledge Plaza is a new Web-based platform for enterprise search, social bookmarking, knowledge management, information brokerage and expert identification. It was developed by the Belgium based firm, Whatever. I recently spoke with Olivier Verbeke, CEO at Whatever and COO Antoine Perdaens. They explained the concept behind this interesting platform. There are three components, the Dashboard, the Plaza, and the Web. They offer a SaaS version and an on-premise version.

The Dashboard lets you know is happening in your knowledge community. You can see recently activity within your personal workspace, team workspaces you have joined, and your network of contacts. Pieces of information are called Tiles and they are put together to create Mosaics that provide knowledge. You can see what you have saved and what others have sent you. Here is a screen shot of a Dashboard page

As mentioned above, users can individually and collaboratively combine pieces of information (Tiles) into a Mosaic, build wiki content around the information and make it available for other users. In addition it's possible to export the Mosaic for sharing outside of Knowledge Plaza. I especially liked this last feature. I remember using Quickplace in 2000 along with a Notes based content management system to provide a more primitive version of this concept. We could send the Quickplace where the document and other related ones were created to offer more context. Now with Knowledge Plaza you can create a specific collection of documents and links to build a story and then send this off intact to others.

The Knowledge Plaza is where the real action is located. As the name implies it is place to share information. You can bring many different content types into the Plaza. Users can add internet bookmarks, documents and files, e-mails, contacts and references into the Plaza. There is browser and e-mail integration to simplify the process of adding content. You can just email content to the Plaza. Users rate content and this helps guide search efforts. There is enterprise social search allowing you to use the expertise of those around you to find and retrieve information. You can also save searches and repeat them over time. Here is an example of a Plaza.

You can set up different workspaces, invite members, and provide layers of access to the content. You can search individual workspaces or across all of them. You can also rate members, as well documents, and this rating stays private but it can guide your search results. Members set up their own pages, as in Facebook. Here you put information about yourself and your network of individuals. You also add your workspaces and other information. People can use you to guide their search efforts by seeing what you are storing and what sites you have visited. You can restrict search results to the activity of one or many members.

The third Web component creates on-the-fly vertical search engines within Internet bookmarks stored in the Plaza. A keyword search in this component can provide results exclusively located inside your own bookmarked websites, as well as inside all shared websites in the Plaza. Their concept of “Expert as Search Engine” (EaSE) allows you to search only inside a specific member’s bookmarked websites. Further contextualization of Web search results can be carried out through tag and faceted navigation. The Web component additionally provides a combined search tool for pulling in and categorizing external or commercial search tools to the Plaza. Here is a look at the Web component.

Knowledge Plaza has struck a balance between top down taxonomies and bottom up folksonomies. You can set up a taxonomy for consistency in tagging but users can add new terms. Then administrators can check these new terms on a periodic basis to decide which new terms to add to the taxonomy. When looking for information users are able to combine full text search with facet and tag selection. Such categorization is applied in the same way to all tiles (including members and contacts) and allows for many different uses such as efficient expertise location, library management, etc.

Every tile, or piece of information, has its own page like members so you can see all the activity related to the information. You can also send a link to the page so others can see the context around the information. I like this in the same way I think the Mosaic concept adds value. You get the context surrounding information and you can share this context. This concept of providing context is pervasive in Knowledge Plaza and I think that is one of its greatest strengths. It takes knowledge management nicely into enterprise 2.0.

Even More Research on the Use of Social Software in the Workplace from IBM

I recently wrote about More IBM Research on Enterprise 2.0 – Activities and Other Tools. Here is even more. Four IBMers, Joan M. DiMicco, David R. Millen, Werner Geyer, Casey Dugan recently published, Research on the Use of Social Software in the Workplace. It focused on their Beehive social networking website behind IBM’s firewall. Beehive was launched in 2007 by IBM Research as “an internal social network site for IBM employees designed to blur the boundaries of work and home, professional and personal, and business and fun.” I briefly mentioned BeeHive as part of Looking Closely at Lotus Connections. At the time I wrote that the Beehive tools are exploring how to use Facebook features like fun walls, photo posting, and high 5’s inside the enterprise.

IBM Research is looking at four main areas: understanding adoption, usage patterns, motivations, and impact. This position paper gives a brief overview of the key findings from last two: motivations and impact on the workplace. The found that within a company intranet’s protected environment, employees choose to reach out on Beehive to new people rather than only connecting to those they know, which is different than behavior reported on Facebook. Now I have seen a lot of reaching out to new people who have connections to known people on Facebook but still, this is interesting. They also found that employees also share personal details that have not appeared with any significant frequency within IBM on other enterprise social software tools, such as intranet social bookmarking and blogging.

Looking further through in-depth interview they found three motivations: interacting with colleagues on a personal level, career advancement, and the ability to convince others to support ideas and projects. They wrote that, “employees use Beehive to present themselves professionally and to network with those they believe can assist them in their career goals within IBM.” Being part of large consulting organization in a past life, I can understand the internal marketplace dynamics that this system plays into. Social media is often used for viral marketing in the external marketplaces so it is not surprising that people would make use of its capabilities in a large organization with an active marketplace for people, ideas, and projects.

The researchers also looked at impact. They found that the more intensely someone uses Beehive (as measured by more frequent visits and stronger associations with the online community) the higher their reported social capital, across all measures. In other words, “they have closer bonds to their network, they have a greater willingness to contribute to the company, they have a greater interest in connecting globally, have greater access to new people, and a greater ability to access expertise.”

They said these results are only at the correlational level and they cannot make any casual inferences. However, I do think they are looking at some interesting ways to measure the effects of social software, independent of the effects of this particular software. In addition, I think that an interesting next step would be to look at the relationship of these measures to the bottom line business results. The IBM researchers at looking at sound level three behavioral changes. Now me needed to see if there are ways we can tie these behaviors to level four financial impacts. I feel confident that this can be done. Thanks to Tomoaki Swada for pointing out this work to me.

Update from the Obama Answer Center - Web 2.0 and US Elections

I have written about the Obama Answer center before (see Barack Obama’s Answer Center - Campaign CRM from RightNow and this update, More on the Obama Campaign’s Use of the Web with RightNow). I recently received an update from RightNow on what is happening there. I made sure that the Obama campaign has approved sharing this information before sharing it. As a discloser, I am a supporter of Barack Obama and have done canvassing for him in my neighboring state of New Hampshire. I go under the name, Bill the blogger:)

RightNow was chosen at the beginning of the campaign to run the Obama Answer Center. It is a place where voters can go and get information about the campaign or Barack. This also allowed the Obama campaign to better server voter questions and requests, as well as better track donors and people looking to join the campaign.

Below are some recent figures and updates from the Obama Campaign:

The current top questions selected in the answer center are:

- Is Obama a Christian?

- Asking about him saying the pledge of allegiance.

- What is his position on women’s issues?

Interestingly, there is nothing about the economy or war within the top questions selected. I am not a political analyst so I will not interpret these results but I am sure that is the type of data that a campaign would find useful. I heard a recent poll in Texas said that 23% of voters thought Obama was a Muslim. Now that should be not be a problem since it is one of the world’s largest religions, except that it is not true. He is a Christian. So the Answer Center can see that this is one of the top questions people are asking.

Some more interesting facts:

Since the August Democratic Primary Convention, Obama’s Answer Center has seen a 700% increase in visitors to the website in October translating into 1,290,000 page views, and not once has the site had issues dealing with this surge in visits.

Also, 684,000 email questions have been submitted in this time frame. Marking the highest number of email questions submitted since the start of the campaign, this is a 70% increase in October compared to August (312,000 emails submitted).

Also new this month is the Obama campaigns usage of RightNow’s webform. In the answer center: you can choose the second tab “contact us” and now fill out a RightNow designed “ask a question form” which contains pre-fields that allows the Obama campaign to streamline workflow sending the questions to the appropriate Obama campaign subject expert, increasing response times.

Also, the campaign can track this form within the same system with the answer knowledge foundation to reference information, making response times faster and answers consistent. So far they have received 85,000 web form submissions just this month.

In my last post in September, I wrote that it will be great if the US government adopts these practices to better connect with citizens. Perhaps lessons learned during the campaign on such issues as effective web practices to increase citizen engagement can be adopted by the government. There is great potential here. I think it is demonstrates some of the ways the new web can be used to increase engagement and the innovation evidenced by this campaign.

For more on Obama’s use of the web see these other posts:

How Barack Obama is Using Web and Enterprise 2.0 in the US Primary Campaign Through Central Desktop

Rolling Stone Magazine and More on Obama’s Use of the New Web

Post script. Here is an interesting article from today's NY Times, Campaigns in a Web 2.0 World. It said "Given the profound change in the media landscape in just four years, in 2012, voters will be following the election through news sites that have not been invented on platforms that cannot be anticipated." I look forward to these discoveries.

Enhanced Web Presence for the Uniqueness in Small to Large Businesses - EveryScape

When I wrote a book on business uses of blogs a number of years ago, several local regions were starting to use the Web, through blogs, to focus on their unique local businesses and fight the spreading homogeneity of national chains. The new Web, with increasingly rich bandwidth and increased user participation, is even better equipped to support the long tail of business. EveryScape is taking this concept way beyond these early blogs to allow us greater access to what is unique. I like what they are doing so I wanted to cross post this from the App Gap.

EveryScape is creating “The Real World Online” through a visual and interactive platform for local search that is creating a virtual experience of all metropolitan, suburban and rural areas. I recently talked with Jim Schoonmaker, EveryScape's CEO who explained their business model, as well as what they offer now and their future plans. I immediately liked their site, as the top example was a virtual tour of the Boston Celtics victory parade route.

However, since we are writing about enterprise applications here, I first wanted to understand how EveryScape supports businesses. Jim explained that the way local businesses got exposed to potential customers used to be simple; you took out an ad in the Yellow Pages and did local newspaper ads. Now it has become difficult with a more complex search engine bidding process for ad space that can be beyond the interests and/or understanding of many local businesses. Users get text and maps but it is hard to get a real feel for the unique nature of local businesses.

EveryScape is designed to give local business a better way to reach customers and have a richer web presence. EveryScape will create a visual record of a neighborhood and then ask the local businesses if they want to be included in this visual record. Do they want people to be able to go inside their business? Like the traditional Yellow Pages, EveryScape is free to users and charges companies to offer a visual display of what goes on inside their restaurant, store, etc. They pay a yearly subscription fee to open themselves up to virtual foot traffic.

At first, Jim thought they would get mainly high-end retail, hotels, and restaurants. He was pleased to find a more diverse set of customers with hair salons, dentist offices, hardware stores, book shops, and many other typical small businesses. The opportunity to bring people inside their store and see their unique offerings appeals to many business owners. Everyone knows what the chains look like, now the world can see what these individual business look like. I like this support for, and focus on, the unique qualities of individual small businesses. Local institutions are also included. Here is the interior of the Harvard Museum of Natural History, a place I used to take my kids when they were young.

This service makes long tail advertizing simpler and allows small businesses to have the same or better web presence than large firms through this collective site. It helps to level the playing field. Everyscape works on the SEO for them and is also developing partnerships with sites like Boston.com that already have good traffic. They are moving into online conversion starting with hotels with a “book now” button added to their hotel descriptions. There has also been interest by some chains, especially ones that have a unique set of resorts or other locations. EveryScape has covered one million points of interest, 15,000 miles and 21 states in their first year. Now they have started an Ambassador program, designed to speed expansion worldwide through a team of trained Ambassadors, who are photographers and entrepreneurs. They can earn money by photographing the public spaces of specific destinations, as well as interiors of local businesses. “Destination Ambassadors” own a particular region, meaning he/she is responsible for capturing the photography of the region’s public spaces (streets, landmarks, etc.), with the additional opportunity to sell interiors to local businesses. “Local Business Ambassadors” are essentially assignment photographers for EveryScape.

They also support user-generated content with World Tags. Through this feature, EveryScape lets businesses upload photos, videos, links and more. For example, a restaurant could upload a video interview with its chef, or a women's boutique might want to upload photos of its latest line.

EveryScape is also working on social networking features. Their new "Scape Memo" lets people share favorite locations with friends. You can create a private link on EveryScape.com with up to 200 "memos" that identify your favorite locations to share with friends. For example, you could create a link pinpointing your 30 favorite restaurants nationwide, or you could send your friend a link with a memo identifying a new dinner location. Scape Memos are private and are shared via email. In addition, users can embed any memo within their favorite social network such as Facebook or LinkedIn. Take a tour of the world, or your own neighborhood, and see what is unique.

See Wire and Media post, EveryScape Takes You Where Google Can’t, for more media mentions. Here is a screen shot of the actual Cheers Bar in Boston through EveryScape.

On-line Communities Have a Search Engine: Twing

Online communities have seen a resurgence but they have been under-served by search engines. Twing.com has been launched to serve these online communities and forums. On-line forums are as old as the internet. They have evolved over time and new social media have emerged, Blogs are primarily a one-to-many channel with some exchange though comments and trackbacks but forums are still the place to engage in real asynchronous dialog. Blogs are optimized for search or should I actually say the reverse. Google and other search engines are optimized for blogs with the page rank concept. It has been harder to use traditional search engines to find stuff on forums and the use of forums is one the rise. For example, the TIVO community forum has over 130,000 registered user and 1.2 million unique visits a month.

Last week I spoke with Scott, Director of Product Management at Twing, a search engine designed for forums and communities. Scott pointed out than many forums start with a question and this can lead to extensive discussion if the topic is right. He said that there are more people participating in one scuba diving forum he is engaged with than the total circulation of all print publications on the topic. But how to find what is going on? How do you find the useful forums?

Twing is designed to address this problem. Scott did a walk through for me. One feature I found useful was the many filters to prevent the thousands of hits you get on many Google searches. They have drop down filters that are dynamically based on the top 50 mentions in a category (e.g. people) on a forum at the time of search.

You can search by posts on a topic (e.g. scuba diving) to find posts within forums that relate to the topic. You can search by topics to find whole discussions on the topic. You can also search by forums to find forums on the topic. In each case you can narrow your search by using the filters. There are filters for top forums, people, and companies related to the topic, as well as by language and media. You can also put a date range in and add terms to avoid.

There is also a community buzz button to take you to the hot topics of the day. You can see the most frequently used search terms and the most discussed topics. There is also a directory of forums arranged by categories. Within each category are sub-categories leading to the actual forums. You can install a Twing search box on your home page through a widget. Twing has its own blog and forums for discussion about the tool. The tool is simple but with enough complexity to make it useful. Scott said that there is sort of a mental “cost-benefit” analysis that people do as they conduct a search with the cost being their time. Twing is designed to make it easy so you continue. If you are into forums you should check this out. Twing is free. Many enterprises are setting up forums to get customer feedback on their products and services.

Media Literacy – A New Facebook Group

Nick Hernandez has started the Facebook group, Media Literacy, to promote discussion on this topic. It also lists the Alliance for a Media Literate America (AMLA) which is the first and largest professional association for American K-16 media educators, health professionals and media activists. I think this is a worthwhile cause and I am pleased to join the discussion. I did my academic research on the effects of media on cognition so it has been a topic of long interest. The group is open to anyone who is interested. It just started so I was the third but I see the number is growing.

The Wilkipedia defines Media literacy as “the process of accessing, analyzing, evaluating and creating messages in a wide variety of forms.” web+2.0 Facebook Business

The Communicators’ Network

I recently signed up for The Communicators’ Network operated by Melcum. The Communicators’ Network is a free social networking site for professional communicators, those responsible for internal communication, organizational communication, public relations, intranets, knowledge management, social media initiatives etc. It launched in June and has around 2,500 signed up so far from around the world and is growing quickly.

This blog is now listed in the reviews section of the Communicators’ Network. The section allows network members to recommend this blog to other users by giving it a 1-5 star rating and post a short comment. They have signed up some excellent blogs, including Knowledge Jolt with Jack Vinson, and will publish a regular top ten list of blogs, books, podcasts, and websites to assist members find useful resources recommended by other members. So vote early and vote often. business blogs enterprise social media

The MDjunction Story – A Healthcare Community Site

Community sites are one of the most rapidly growing parts of the new web. I have been talking with a several companies who are interested in their potential for marketing and greater customer intimacy. Recently, i received an email in response to a post I did on community sites. It was from Roy Lev who is involved with MDjunction – A Healthcare Community Site inviting me to take a look. I did and it seemed interesting so I sent him a bunch of questions about the site. Roy sent back the following story that I have edited a bit but not changed the substance. I think it makes an interesting case for community sites.

The founders of MDjunction are a group of 4 friends. All are around 30 with various IT/Internet skills. They all have day jobs but MDjunction is their passion.

About a year ago, one of their mothers was diagnosed with breast cancer. They searched the internet for information, support and comfort and did not find what they looked for. There are plenty of sites that do those things, very little that do just that, and no one that does it like they thought it should be done.

MDjunction is still in its beta stages, they are trying different things, asking the community for feedback, as well as bloggers they appreciate, and it is improving all the time. The first feature they had up is "know your doctor" (like RateMDs) but it was just an anchor for the start.

Their aim, and the reason for this project, is a community, a place for people dealing with health related issues and their family/friends. They want to establish a place to share knowledge, tell your story, chat on-line, tutorials, compare treatments and medication, and most important – comfort and support with people that go through the same experiences you do.

Next month, they plan on putting up a platform for online support groups. The first group will cover breast cancer and many more will follow. The support groups, as they plan them, encapsulate all they feel about how the community should be. The support group features as well as the 'look & feel' of the support group portal, are the outcome of many meetings they have with patients, families, a psychiatrist and a psychologist specializing in group therapy.

Up till now, they have not have any legal problems. They have declared MDjunction as a platform, and as such they cannot be liable for the data posted by the community. They mention this in their TOS and emphasize that posts and articles should not be a replacement for medical diagnosis and treatments. They understand that though they ask the community to stick to the facts (for example, when writing a review on a doctor), some of the things that people write may not be 100% accurate. It's the same when you talk to your friends and family in your off-line community, and in they feel that it's part of the beauty of a community site.

They do not have a business model yet. They feel that while it may be naïve, but they truly believe that if you do something that is good and has a meaningful value to people – money would not be a problem. They are thinking of adding a healthcare price comparison tool and maybe product reviews, both are "money makers", and still have true value to their members.
"How do people find out about it?". Now they mostly rely on "Word Of Mouth", Google, and kindness of people…

"How do you measure success" –They feel that this is a tricky one. Technically it's the growing number of visitors, and even more, the growing number of active members (which they expect to rise dramatically when the support groups are up). Practically, it would be if they could quit their other jobs and focus only on MDjunction. And mostly it would be when MDjunction becomes a true meaningful community. This would be the type of place that makes a positive impact on the lives of its members and visitors. Roy knows the last one is a huge, but with that, the other two would come as well….

Currently, they allow you to rate MDs, look up ratings of MDs by specialty, and search by various criteria. There are 135,927 physicians listed as of few days ago. They have featured doctors and featured reviews. There are forums on various topics. There is also a tag cloud to see the hot topics. You can also provide a profile of yourself as you join the community. The various health issue awareness ribbons are described. I think this is a great start.

Rise of Rating Sites

There was a nice article in the Boston Globe, Ratings sites flourish behind a veil of anonymity, which discusses all these rating sites that are emerging. There seem to be a specialized version of community sites like dig and newsvine and more focused aspects of the rise in rating in places like Amazon and many travel sites. This all part of the increased participation in the web.

The Globe article raises a good point.

“The sites provide a wealth of easily accessible, virtually uncensored information that can help consumers choose a doctor, lawyer or other service provider. But they are denounced by critics who say they don't provide enough protection from angry clients, dissatisfied patients, disgruntled students, jealous colleagues, or estranged friends and relatives who can use them to post malicious comments, or from manipulation by people who give themselves high rankings to falsely inflate their reputations.”

The same can happen with Amazon book reviews. When I look at ratings of restaurants and hotels, I try to look through the logic and substance of what is being said but even that can be easily twisted by someone who is a good writer. In the end the wisdom of crowds may sort out those who operate in bad faith but it may take a while.

Speaking of crowds, the Globe said that RateMyTeachers.com rates more than 1.2 million teachers, while RateMDs.com has rates 34,000 doctors and LawyerRatingz.com rates of only 1,300 lawyers nationwide. I went to my state but did not find any of my docs.

I went to the rating site they the globe promoted, The Ratingz Network, which says it “is the place where you can read and post anonymous, independent ratings and reviews of places and services in your community and across the US.”

Their prescription drug ratings had small numbers of raters for most drugs so the tyranny of small numbers is the current norm on this site. However, this is trend, customers talking back, that is on the rise everywhere.

Community Spaces Bonaza Part Two

As I mentioned earlier this week, community web spaces seems to be the new frontier to get rich, here are a few more I got from the trend setting business magazine, Rolling Stone, August 24 issue.

First, there is mog.com, described as the most tunes-centric of the MySpace challengers, a cross between MySpace and music recommendation portals like Pandora.com and last.fm. Mog has members link to their music libraries to connect those with similar tastes.

Then there is Panjea.com which adds a financial incentive, allowing users to make money several ways. Musicians on the rise can sell their original music and videos online and set their own prices and keep 85 percent of the funds. This is good deal as most re-sellers charge more. You can earn point sin others ways like do a blog post and then spend your points on the videos or music of others. As Rollingstone said, ‘it’s one happy capitalist circle.”

They also mention Vox, which I recently learned about at the Berkman Thursday Blog meetings. Although RS did not say this, Vox is supposed to be an adult Live Journal (or My Space) as the makers of Live Journal are marketing it to teenagers. It allows "adults" to integrate media from sites like YouTube.com and Amazon.

Peter Gloor told me about Pandora.com which is mentioned above. It has some great community enabling functionality. As their site says, “Ever since we started the Music Genome Project, our friends would ask: Can you help me discover more music that I'll like? Those questions often evolved into great conversations. Each friend told us their favorite artists and songs, explored the music we suggested, gave us feedback, and we in turn made new suggestions. Everybody started joking that we were now their personal DJs. We created Pandora so that we can have that same kind of conversation with you.”

John Gotts may have paid $3 million (US) for wiki.com but the real money is in community spaces. Millions want to be there own DJ or whatever and see what others are doing and share it. Reality shows provide cheap amateur created content. These community spaces are doing something similar. They also may be a bigger bubble than dot.com bust one.

BTW I see that Rolling Stone also has a Rolling Stone blog.

Want to get Rich? – Start a Community Space

Bebo has just passed MySpace on UK traffic so they turned down a 300 million offer. That is UK pound not US dollars. Michael Arrington writes in Tech Church, “Michael (of Bebo), or his VCs, still seems to think that £300 million is way too low and are holding out for more. When asked about a sale, he said “If I sell it, I’d have to start from scratch.” Translation: “Give me a billion dollars please.” If the dollar continues to decline he can get a billion dollars at the current price.

Michael adds, “The Financial Times is reporting that the company is in acquisition talks with Viacom, the owner of MTV and other cable stations. This is the third try for Viacom, which lost out when bidding for both Myspace and Facebook (with Facebook reportedly shunning an offer of at least $750 million)..”

They are many, many community sites in the new web. This seems to be the new gold rush. It is the new dot com boom. What to know what is happening in all these community sites? Look at iQuest. It can let you know who are the major players in the conversations and how they are connected. You can see the gatekeepers, leaders, influencers, coordinators and innovators in each topic. You can better understand the evolving community.

iQuest also looks at relationships over time and provides “movies” of these communication patterns as they evolve. This allows you to see how relationships within a community change and the impact of temporal events on these relationships.