Learning from Each Other

June 30, 2008 at 5:09 pm · Filed under Collective intelligence, Enterprise 2.0, Learning, Web 2.0

A colleague of mine teaches a course in Online Social Networks the Computer Science department at Boston University. He’s done it for two years now, and his teach method has come under some scrutiny, for what he does is pretty novel in a traditional university setting. During the course, each student needs to create a web site as part of required credits for the course work. What my friend doesn’t do it is either to tell them how to do it, or provide him with tools for web site building. He gives them enough direction so that they know where to look and get started, but after that they are on their own — almost. What he aims for is that the students will ask each other what they are doing, where they found good (free) tools to build web sites, and so on. Most of his students come away delighted with the course, though there are always a few who complain that B. doesn’t teach them anything. They overlook, of course, the fact that they actually learned a good deal.

I had similar experience recently during Enterprise 2.0 and the blogging panel that I was on (see my blog on this at Networks, Complexity, and Relatedness). I am saving some bits about content and conversation for a more comprehensive note here on the AppGap anon. We on the panel had decided that we would like to do less talking and more listening so we did not do a usual panel with powerpoints. We merely introduced ourselves and started a conversation, intending to be open to questions and comments from the audience. We ended with a really rich discussion about blogging for business (that was, in fact, not really the topic we’d prepared to discuss). The audience participation was great, including a lot of information about blogging that we as panelists would never have known. Yet, in the conference wrap-up session, I took note when one of the attendees offered the comment that she was very unhappy with panels that didn’t provide content. That is, she came to be taught, and not to enter into a conversation. (We also had attendees who were thrilled with the way it all turned out.)

Learning from each other is a recurring theme for John Seely Brown (JSB), whom I heard talk a few months ago at a client’s. What he said was, “Learning from each other matters.” Speaking of formal education, he said, “we learn from other people in the room, not from graduate school.” Think of the best courses, the best seminars that you attend. Aren’t these the ones that generate the most conversation, that inspire people to share their stories? Learning occurs socially, which is why he feels strongly that Web/Enterprise 2.0 represents the future of learning.

At a subsequent panel on “Developing a Next Generation Workforce,” led by Mike Gotta. That was another great exercise in learning from each other. The conversation wanted to talk mostly about the “millennials/Generation Y” and the impact of their entrance into the workforce. An Xer piped up and made a comment that makes me understand how this shift to social learning is generational. She said, “It all goes back to how we learned in elementary school. When I was in school, we were told that when we finished our assignment we could work quietly on homework or other reading. The Gen-Yers are told that when they finish, they should help someone else.”

I see this as all of a piece: learning to share, learning to learn from others. The role of the instructor? As Andrew McAfee put it (in yet another session at E2.0), the best advice he received when he started teaching at Harvard was to “trust your students,” that is, to set up a classroom environment in which the students are learning not (just) from the teachers, but from each other and collectively building up knowledge.

Person Andrew McAfee

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Design Dogma

June 30, 2008 at 2:42 am · Filed under AppGap Tips, Tips + Pointers, Work Design

I was recently reading through an article by Eric Reiss‘ on dogma for making websites usable. With a number of AppGap authors writing about work design and information design recently, I thought I would share Eric’s take on Orwell’s Rules for Authors applied to online information system design:

1. Anything that exists only to satisfy the internal politics of the site owner must be eliminated.
2. Anything that exists only to satisfy the ego of the designer must be eliminated.
3. Anything that is irrelevant within the context of the page must be eliminated.
4. Any feature or technique that reduces the visitor’s ability to navigate freely must be reworked or eliminated.
5. Any interactive object that forces the visitor to guess its meaning must be reworked or eliminated.
6. No software, apart from the browser itself, must be required to get the site to work correctly.
7. Content must be readable first, printable second, downloadable third.
8. Usability must never be sacrificed for the sake of a style guide.
9. No visitor must be forced to register or surrender personal data unless the site owner is unable to provide a service or complete a transaction without it.
10. Break any of these rules sooner than do anything outright barbarous.

Eric’s words are a reminder that often we forget that our designs often don’t fit the worker, but are implemented to suit something else, whether a management practice or someone’s ego. What we end up with is something that is less than fit-for-purpose.

When we bring new tools and practices into the modern workplace we shouldn’t forget the philosophy of user-centred design and take time to consider:

1. Who are the users?
2. What are the users’ tasks and goals?
3. What are the users’ experience levels?
4. What functions do the users need?
5. What information might the users need, and in what form do they need it?
6. How do users think things should work?

Maybe if more of us drew on these questions in our craft, as do so many of those evangelists who’ve brought us web 2.0 tools like wikis and blogs, then practices like knowledge management would have been more successful.

M

Awareness Summer 08 Release Brings Sharepoint Integration and New Features

June 27, 2008 at 8:38 am · Filed under Reviews

I have written about Awareness several times, the most recent was on the Fast Forward blog, Awareness Makes a Smart Move with Its Facebook Integration. Last week I caught up with Eric Schurr, VP of Marketing and Direct Sales, to discuss the latest version of its platform, Awareness Summer 2008. This release includes Microsoft SharePoint integration, advanced social networking functionality and portable widgets that extend Awareness-powered Web 2.0 communities to any website and third-party services such as iGoogle and Facebook. In addition, administrators of Awareness communities now have enhanced self-service reporting and metrics functionality to better understand and manage community activities.
Microsoft SharePoint users can now connect with Awareness communities on the Web, bringing external-facing social media to SharePoint users. This allows Sharepoint users to link to these external communities through web parts for social networking, content contribution, content viewing, as well as administrative and reporting functions. There is also, single sign-on, integrated search, and the Sharepoint profile can be enhanced with Awareness capabilities. This integration can support customer collaboration, marketing campaigns, market input for innovation, market research, and other community-based objectives. This Awareness - SharePoint integration can also be used to complement SharePoint for internal-facing communities.
The Summer 08 Release also provides additional ways to connect with other applications using their portable widgets and improved API. The portable widgets allow Awareness-powered communities to be extended to any page on the Internet. These widgets span a range of Awareness capabilities, including displaying and contributing community content, social networking features and more. Awareness widgets can be rapidly placed on any HTML page or third party services such as Facebook and iGoogle. The Awareness API has been extended to include the entire range of Awareness community and administrative level capabilities. This empowers companies and partners to build their own communities and integrate with other collaboration and social networking services. They can also extend and embellish the communities that Awareness builds for them. I think providing completely open APIs is a smart move, as well as all this increased connectivity.

Awareness has also increased its social networking capabilities to complement its support for user-generated content. A customizable user interface and the ability to create different types of social groups within communities can make for a more varied user experience to drive increased engagement and participation. New features include: people lists, status, profile privacy, presence and activity feeds and a personalized drag and drop user interface. There are also two new types of organizational constructions within communities. First, there are Neighborhoods, where community administrators can create structured social areas that feature comprehensive security and customization. The neighborhoods are more “top-down” and structured with assigned membership. In contrast, there are also Groups, where users can create ad-hoc social areas that other users can join by invitation or by request. McDonald’s has launched a number of the neighborhoods to connect with both employees and owner operators.

Awareness has also worked on its administrator functions. They now have increased self-service capability to report and graph participation and success metrics in their communities, including user activity, content activity and other metrics. These include user and group growth over time, most and least active users and groups, top/bottom categories, most viewed content, most commented on content, highest rated content, etc. They have also increased performance with significant increases in page views per second capability, showing 10 to 20 times performance improvements over the current Awareness release.

I think they are hitting key areas with this release, especially the increased integration, social networking, reporting, and the offering of both top-down and bottom community options. As I wrote recently in response to Andrew McAfee at the Fast Forward Summit, striking the right balance between the concepts of “emerge” and “impose” is what will define successful enterprise 2.0 offerings. Awareness is working to cover both of these bases with their Summer 08 Release.

Facebook webinar slide deck and questions (and hopefully answers)

June 26, 2008 at 1:03 pm · Filed under Communities, Webinar

Below you’ll find the slide deck that accompanied yesterday’s webinar. In addition, you’ll find the great questions and comments that were flowing in over the course of the discussion, only some of which were we able to address. We’ll be pointing the panelists back to your questions and hope they’ll be able to respond in the comments. Feel free, of course, to pose new questions as well.

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Questions and Comments

• A few of the speakers today have mentioned that some companies take a dim view of Facebook because they see it as a “kid’s thing.” Are there strategies you can recommend to turn that fun/social element of Facebook into a virtue for building engagement?
• How can Facebook group coordinators build deep social capital to drive engagement?
• Which of the engagement issues discussed in these cases are present in any electronically-mediated social network and which are specific to Facebook given its affordances and limitations?
• How would you characterize the level and quality of engagement in Facebook groups with a substantive purpose vs. a marketing purpose?
• Kimberly touched on how social network behaviors seem different from professional behaviors; can we say more about this?
• Can you please briefly explain to me what the “Influentials Theory” is?
• Are the loosely associated groups of individuals in Facebook actually communities? Do they behave as communities?
• Has anyone done a functional comparison among Facebook, LinkedIn, and SharePoint, etc? That is, these hosted Web 2.0 apps and enterprise tools?
• I think this work is very interesting, and can’t help but wondering “What’s Next?” From a research (study) perspective, some things were uncovered and learned in this experience. What will we do with these and where do we go from here?
• Would most of you agree from this experience that it takes a calculated combination of virtual and on-the ground connection to build these kinds of communities?
• Kimberly: how did you work with the 5 people who were “recruiters” of the 1300 or did this just evolve?
• I think the Alexa graph shown [in the slide deck] narrows the field of relevant data. If you zoom out from Alexa’s results to encompass all of the last year, you see a similar shallow dip in June-July of last year (likely due to summer vacation for college students). As the ‘Facebook Generation’ grows up, we may see that cycle fade out. But it does show that the Facebook crowd may still be relatively young. Does that significantly limit the ability of brands or companies to cultivate a relevant audience?
• Is it viable to use Facebook groups as a stepping stone to a full blown ‘for fee’ membership site?
• Was there any data gained from the study that provided a link between the group and improvement in sales? Any evidence that community members went the next step and actually clicked a link to initiate on-line commerce?
• Great research - very interesting - thank you very much. But is it is still a pity that the event platform is not more open and social itself - allowing people to see who is here and what questions people asked. Wondering why that is so?

Is Your Workplace Results Oriented or Time Oriented?

June 26, 2008 at 8:50 am · Filed under AppGap Tips, Collaboration

Sometimes it feels like the company owns your time, and that usually means that you work in a time-oriented office. Usually this is the regular 9 to 5 job where you log in and out of the office and your supervisors need to see you actually working. This type of work environment is traditional and comfortable - since this is how we’ve been doing things from the Industrial Revolution onwards. But a new type of workplace is emerging, one that is more results oriented and focuses on what you accomplish rather than how many hours you log in.

Having experienced both approaches to work, I noticed some key differences and made the following list based on my observations:

Time Oriented (TO): You must work hard. Maximum input produces maximum output.

Results Oriented (RO): You must work smart. Maximum output from the minimum input possible is desired.

TO: You are seen as diligent if you are the first one in the office and the last one out of the office.

RO: It’s not about when you arrive and when you leave, it’s about what you accomplish during your stay - no matter how long or short it is.

TO: Let’s have long, regular meetings so we know we’re discussing things in depth.

RO: Let’s have meetings only when necessary, and make them as short as possible.

TO: Use email to communicate as it is short and saves time.

RO: Use the appropriate communication tool for the situation - whether it’s email, instant messaging, a collaboration platform, or a phone call.

TO: It’s about when you work that matters.

RO: It’s about how you work that matters.

TO: You must adapt your working style to the needs of your company or supervisors.

RO: You must find a way to satisfy the needs of your company or supervisors within your own working style.

TO: Show up and offer your time.

RO: Step up and offer your ideas.

Is your workplace time oriented or results oriented? What makes you say so? And have other items to add to this list?

Recording of “Facebook for Business” Webinar now available

June 26, 2008 at 8:13 am · Filed under Communities, Webinar

The recording of yesterday’s great conversation about how companies are using Facebook for business can now be heard here (see end of the post) or downloaded to be listened to at your convenience.

We again wanted to thank the panelists, our sponsor QuickBase, and all those who listened in for the wide-ranging discussion about what several Facebook group owners have learned from their experiences trying to leverage the site to market themselves and more. More about the webinar’s focus and participants can be found here.

In a subsequent post we’ll be posting the many good questions that came in during the call and asking the panelists to follow up in the comments. Feel free, whether you attended yesterday or not, to post additional questions to that post.

 

 Facebook in Business [60:11m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (208)

EveryScape Brings Enhanced Web Presence for Businesses of All Sizes

June 25, 2008 at 5:38 pm · Filed under Reviews

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. Here is a screen shot of the actual Cheers Bar in Boston through EveryScape.

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.

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.

Reminder: AppGap Webinar on Facebook - today at 3 p.m. EDT

June 25, 2008 at 12:03 pm · Filed under Webinar

A quick reminder to readers of The AppGap that Jenny Ambrozek, a contributor here, will be leading a discussion on research she and her colleagues have conducted over the past six months on how companies are using Facebook Groups.

Find out more and be sure to register here.

A Mosaic Created from 1001 Web 2.0 Company Logos

June 24, 2008 at 10:03 pm · Filed under Reviews

I found this nice application in my inbox and wanted to share it. It is a world mosaic created from 1001 web 2.0 company logos. The logos appear in full-size when you hover over the mosaic. Click on a logo to visit one of today’s web 2.0 sites. Here is what it looks like but you have to go to the AppAppeal site to see the real thing.

The mosaic was created by AppAppeal.com. While we focus more on enterprise 2.0 applications at the App Gap, their mission, similar to ours, is to guide their visitors through the world of web 2.0 applications. They also provide independent reviews of web applications.

How to Find Productivity Tools to Help You Get Your Job Done

June 24, 2008 at 12:15 pm · Filed under AppGap Tips, Tips + Pointers

In a recent post we discussed how to evaluate your existing productivity tools and applications to see if they are a match for your needs.  And should you discover that they aren’t, you’ll need to find replacement or supplemental tools to increase productivity.  How to go about doing this?

Research.  Once you’ve evaluated the tools and methods you’ve employed, you’ll likely have surfaced some problems or challenges you need to address.  When you notice these problems, you’ll have to do a bit of research to solve them.  Are there better tools out there with the features you need?  Is there a productivity or efficiency system you haven’t tried yet?

Your research can start simple.  If you have a cluttered inbox, you can simply input “how to unclutter email inbox” in your favorite search engine and start from there.  You can also look at the reviews of existing productivity tools to see if they are for you (my colleague Bill’s many reviews here at The AppGap may be a good place to start).  Note down everything relevant that you discover during the research process so you can easily go back to these ideas later.

Testing and Tweaking.  Once you’ve found a list of new tools and methods, it’s time to test them.  Of course, it’s best to test them one at a time rather than as a group so that you can accurately evaluate each change you’re making.  Set a testing period of 7 to 10 days, or earlier if it’s obvious that your new tools aren’t working out.  Here are some things you should look out for:

* Ease of use.  Are the commands and interface intuitive?  Can you easily access the features you need whenever you need them?
* Features.  Does the tool have the features you need? If not,c an it easily integrate with another tool to compensate?
* Lifespan and reliability.  Do your new tools have many bugs?  Is technical support available?  Is the company reliable enough that you’re likely to get updated versions for the next few years?
* Collaboration-friendly.  If you’ll be using your tools with a team, it’s important that they have options for collaboration, or that everyone in the team can easily adapt to using them.

Don’t be frustrated if your new tools have imperfections - it’s almost impossible to find a tool that will perfectly pair up with all your needs and expectations.  That’s why it’s important that you learn how to integrate different tools and make them work together to form a unified system.  After all, there’s no way to get everything you need out of a single application unless you have the resources to hire a reliable programmer to make you the ultimate productivity tool from scratch.

During your testing phase, you might find that you’ll also be using non-computer tools such as index cards or a whiteboard.  This is perfectly acceptable, and, in fact, encouraged.  The point of the testing phase is to find out what works for you and your team.  Whatever tools you need, no matter how bare and simple they are, you need to incorporate them into your workflow.

Also, don’t be surprised if the testing process takes a few weeks - it’s a necessary step to finding the best tools and system for you.  However, it’s very important that you record and measure the results of your testing phase.

Re-evaluation.  Now that you’re done with testing your new tools, it’s time to evaluate the results.  Did they make a significant impact on your productivity?  How much time did it cut back on your previous number of working hours?

This is like a debriefing process that allows you to review the lessons learned from your testing period.  If you’re doing this with a team, it helps to have each individual’s input.  Not all members of your team are guaranteed to have success with your newfound productivity system.

What’s guaranteed is that there are many valuable lessons you’ll learn when it comes to finding new tools and getting them to increase your overall productivity.