Archive for April, 2011
by Bill Ives
April 26, 2011 at 4:00 am · Filed under
Web 2.0
I have been using Traackr for several months. For those who want to better understand the thought leaders in a field, Traackr provides a comprehensive, yet very easy to use, tool set. I wrote about my initial experiences in a prior post (see Traackr Offers Useful Web Influence Monitoring Tool). Traackr provides three scores to hone in on a person’s influence: Reach or the ability to generate views based on audience size, Resonance
or the ability to spark conversations based on such measures as retweets comments, and links, and Relevance
or the ability to cover a specific topic/market based on relevance to your selected keywords.
I recently spoke with Courtney Vaught about some useful new features. Traackr generates a list of the top 25 influencers on a topic based on the keywords you enter. This list is updated every week so some people fall off and others are added. Now you can now customize your list to more easily go beyond those generated by Traackr. You can now add or remove influencers manually to supplement the list. You can also star those influencers generated by Traackr so they are not removed from the list if they fall off the top 25.
Traackr still rank orders the top 25 and the additional ones you selected appear beneath the top 25 with their reach and resonance scores displayed. If they have any relevance to the keywords for that list, that will also be counted in their score – anyone who is added to an A-list by the user will be scored, ranked if plausible and tracked the moment they are added. This allows you to continue to monitor people you have a special interest in and expand the list beyond 25. Below you can bee the input screen for adding an new influencer.
You can also edit your keywords used to generate the list and add new ones. Traackr has a useful feature that allows you to test these keywords. They can tell if the keyword is a niche term, average or too broad. They also automatically rank order the keywords in priority form niche at the top to broad at the bottom. This is useful so your niche topics do not get overwhelmed. However, you can override the auto-prioritization by starring a key word and it will be put at the top of the priority list.
Traackr allows you to make your top 25 influencer list public. Here is one that I did on enterprise social media. Now you can see both the keywords that generated the list, along with the list itself. I added some new key words to the enterprise social media and the list re-organized itself in ways that made sense to me based on what I know about those listed. Below you can see the keywords and the top three of the 25 on this list.
by Bill Ives
April 21, 2011 at 3:42 am · Filed under
Web 2.0
Business email remains big despite some attempts to get stuff out of an overcrowded inbox. As IBM mentioned, organizations still consider email to be their most important, mission-critical application. In 2009, there were over 800 million business email users worldwide, and that number is expected to jump to almost 970 million by 2014, according to IDC. For perspective, on the consumer side the numbers are almost identical. There were approximately 760 million consumer email users in 2009, with an expected 950 million by 2014.
Recently, I had an interesting conversation with Ed Brill, IBM’s new leader for social collaboration on how email use is changing because of social media. Ed noted that email has been around for almost two decades. I can remember when it was fresh and new. Then it became the tool for everything and this has become both a blessing a curse. You have a one-stop shop for much of business communication and collaboration but this is a very crowded stop.
IBM is working on ways to transform email and have it better align with the new collaborative technologies within social business models. Email is reverting to become closer to its communication origins and collaboration is moving to the new social software tools.
At the same time, many of these social tools use email as an alert vehicle. This allows email to become a common dashboard for many tools. Email today has evolved from the static one-to-one exchange, to the inbox for the social framework. Email now includes all relevant updates from your social environment, whether that be a notification of a new activity in your company’s enterprise social networking site, a new comment on a blog post that you’re following, a file sharing notification, or a connection request from LinkedIn
Email is becoming more focused. Ed said that his own email volume has actually decreased in the era of other social tools. File sharing, for example, has moved to these social tools. However, the email he gets more often requires an action on his part. The concept of an activity stream is getting a lot of play these days. This capability had its origins with micro-blogging when auto-generated updates made an appearance. Email can serve this same function. Ed said that the activity stream, regardless of location, will evolve beyond simple alerts. It will allow for direct actions. For example a request for vacation can be approved right in the message with one click, rather than requiring opening another app. REST APIs allow for this capability and it will be a big productivity booster.
Ed said that IBM is working to embed these actions within email. It is also working to apply analytics to email traffic to determine what might be useful to users. For example, it could let users know who should they talk to about certain issues based on email traffic. They are also working to make the activity stream more pervasive, as well as more connected to other apps. SAP is one example, of this increased connection.
Within IBM Connections, the activity stream serves as the home page as shown below. It is the unifying function to connect other activities and applications.
I saw IBM’s LotusLive Symphony at Lotusphere this year. You can do real time collaborative editing on documents. Ed said that this function will be pushed into the activity stream. It will go to where you are working. I like this direction. I think the connections achieved through an activity stream, whether it is email based or social app based, will be one of the major improvements of social business.
by Bill Ives
April 18, 2011 at 7:47 pm · Filed under
Web 2.0
Whenever I see a social application like the Trilog Group’s ProjExec 5.0, I wish that enterprise 2.0 applications were available back when I was managing projects at a large consulting firm. I recently spoke with Alex Homsi and Randy Washington at the Trilog Group about this application. ProjExec 5.0 provides social project management for IBM social software. This is a useful extension as the IBM social software is more focused on collaboration. The benefit works both ways as project management is becoming increasingly collaborative so the IBM suite offers a great set of supporting capabilities to ProjExec.
I know from personal experience that old school project management tools tend to be difficult to use and, even worse, they often put project teams in straight jackets. They require people to conform to the tools, rather than the reverse. On top of these issues the old school tools are usually siloed which is increasingly a problem in today’s connected enterprise. ProjExec addresses all these issues quite nicely.
Alex said we need to empower middle managers to directly run projects and not have them be dependent on project management technicians. A project defines a community so a project manager is also a community manager. The community manager needs to also leverage expertise from the broader enterprise to fill out a team or get advice. Building a project management capability today requires integration with community management and collaboration tools.
ProjExec uses the IBM social business tools in several ways. SameTime supports collaboration. Quickr provides content management and team collaboration. Connections offers activity management and resource management and WebSphere Portal Server enables cross-enterprise application connections. These tools are all extended through templates within ProjExec.
Alex provided a useful demo that illustrated how these integrations work in the context of project management. As he noted, these social tools make project management transparent so newer employees can learn from the masters.
ProjExec scales to large complex projects by providing a web-based Gantt tool, which can be sync’ed roundtrip with MS Project or any desktop scheduling tool, integrated into a Lotus Quickr place. ProjExec Enterprise edition includes enterprise project management modules, such as Financial Management, Issues Management, Time Management and Change Management, while providing the means for PMO’s, Project Managers, and Project Team members to manage themselves. Below is a sample screen shoot of the Gantt chart function.
Rigor is maintained as reminders are automatically sent out when these individuals do not update their tasks in a timely manner. There is an activity stream Trilog refers to, Facebook style, as the Project Wall. This provides much of the transparency as team member actions auto-generate entries in the Project Wall for others to see. You can embed documents, videos, and other media in the activity stream. You can reorganize your documents and the links will remain effective. You can see a sample Project Wall below.
ProjExec also simplifies access to project information and tools by providing a Web 2.0 widget for Lotus Notes or MS Outlook sidebar.
There is also a common calendar where individuals can see all of their projects and update task progress within that same view. It can also sync with their personal Lotus Notes calendar. Notes can be added to calendar items.
ProjExec has mobile capabilities and this is becoming increasingly essential for any business application. There is support for Blackberry, iPhone/iPad, Nokia, and Android. After this year ProjExec will integrate with Lotus Live to allow projects to be pushed into the cloud.
I was impressed with the capabilities within ProjExec and its seamless integration with the Lotus social business tools. It also fills a missing link in the IBM tool set.
by Bill Ives
April 14, 2011 at 3:08 am · Filed under
Web 2.0
Zoho is making a big play in the Google Apps market; Zoho Creator, Zoho Discussions, Zoho Meeting, Zoho Reports, Zoho Wiki are now Integrated with Google Apps. Raju Vegesna, Zoho evangelist notes. “While Google is a competitor, they are also often a collaborator we work with wherever it can benefit our users. Going forward, Zoho and Google users can look forward to even more Zoho applications making their way to the Google Apps Marketplace as well as integration enhancements for the apps already there.” I think this is happening more in the software market as a general trend. The SharePoint market is another example.
Zoho Creator for Google Apps lets users quickly create database-driven web applications. Casual users who are not programmers can create their own business and situated apps using simple drag and drop operations. These are generally small, situation-specific applications often needed immediately, on the fly that cannot wait for IT to step in.
Zoho Discussions for Google Apps lets users make decisions from discussions. Members of public and private communities can share ideas, report problems and ask questions from a single point, letting organizations bring people together and reach decisions easily.
Zoho Meeting for Google Apps lets users host web meetings to connect with team members, clients and partners from anywhere. In addition to one-on-one meetings, users can have multiple participants in a meeting. Zoho Meeting for Google Apps can also be used for desktop sharing and providing remote support.
Zoho Reports for Google Apps is an online reporting and business intelligence service that helps users get new insights on their business data. Reports and dashboards can be easily created without professional help.
Zoho Wiki for Google Apps lets users create online workspaces for content sharing within a group. Users can create personal, public and private team wikis for collaborating with project teams, clients and partners anywhere on a virtual basis.
This is a nice collection of tools. Prior to this recent move Zoho has also integrated CRM, Projects, Invoice, Books, Recruit and Zoho Creator Helpdesk with Google Apps Marketplace. I am now using Zoho CRM and find it useful.
by Bill Ives
April 7, 2011 at 3:27 am · Filed under
Web 2.0
Founded in 1999, OutStart offers a portfolio of inter-related mobile, social, and learning Knowledge Solutions intended to accelerate and broaden access to colleagues and the knowledge they need to respond to business requirements more quickly and make better informed decisions.. I recently spoke with Mike Gregory about Participate, OutStart’s Social Business Software. It integrates social networking, collaboration, and knowledge sharing technologies in a secure managed environment. As a disclosure I am now working with OutStart on their social media efforts. Participate is one component of their offerings that also include mobile learning and communication, learning content management, and learning management system as well as a solution that pulls all the components together into a single integrated learning and knowledge suite.
Participate was acquired in 2004 and they continue to extend its features. Some of the capabilities within Participate include: workspaces, discovery and networking between members, blogs, micro-blogging, wikis, and an web-based interface to publish FAQs and contribute to communities. It integrates with Microsoft Office for the contribution of desktop content. There is also integration with systems such as SharePoint, MS Office Communication Server and CRM. Participate provides granular security and access control.
The micro-blogging feature allows for both manually generated updates such as provided through Twitter and auto-generated updates based on user activity. You can add comments to the auto-generated updates. This latter feature can be a useful way to keep track of the pulse of the organization. It also reduces email traffic.
There is automated management and capturing of question and answer exchanges for organic growth of the knowledge base over time. If you do not know the right expert for your question, the system determines the most appropriate individuals. It reaches out to the experts through email and the response comes back into Participate. Hee is a sample expertise exchange screen.
This is much more efficient than the old way of mass email blasts. Answers are then made available through search going forward. The capturing is nice feature and reduces the burden on employees to contribute to the firm’s knowledge capital separate from their normal work efforts. That has always been an obstacle to the effectiveness of traditional knowledge management solutions.
Participate supports both internal and externally facing blogs. Inside the enterprise there can be a community blog, as well as individual blogs. Where needed workflow is available for content review before posting. You can vary the amount of control required. It is used for the Web facing OutStart Knowledge Solutions Blog. Here is a sample internal blog screen.
Team workspaces are available. You can assign tasks, add documents, and perform other projects functions. There are three levels of security: wide open, visible but approval required to join, and completely private requiring an invitation to join. Here is a sample workspaces screen.
You can subscribe to content through email in a regularly scheduled digest where you set the schedule. To fit people’s existing work patterns, email can also be used to send subscription digests, immediate notifications of people, groups, or conversations they are following, and tasks assigned through workspaces. Here is a sample subscriptions screen.
There is RSS capability for all content within Participate. This gives great flexibility to monitoring what is going on within the system. You can track the activity of everyone within the system and provide credit for their involvement. People can also rate contributions. Over half of the features are mobile enabled to provide quick access from anywhere through a mobile interface.
We can see from the feature set that Participate offers a comprehensive set of collaboration capabilities. It goes one step further. Through its integration with OutStart’s learning content management system, Participate can be used to support social learning. This social side of learning has been shown to significantly increase the engagement of in learning activities. Participate can be the bridge between formal and informal learning.
OutStart has won a number of awards including being named a Visionary in the Gartner Corporate Learning Systems Magic Quadrant since 2004, Top Learning Portal by TrainingIndustry.com, and Best of Elearning! awards for their OutStart LCMS and Hot Lava Mobile. I will cover other components of their offerings in future posts. The OutStart Knowledge Solutions Blog offers an exchange of ideas on how to better utilize technology to improve knowledge sharing.
by Bill Ives
April 5, 2011 at 3:28 am · Filed under
Enterprise 2.0
In February I wrote about an interesting report Making Greater Use of Smart Content in the Enterprise by Geoff Bock, Dale Waldt, and Mary LaPlante. It covers XML applications that have long proven value with reusable componentized content. Here is an interesting case that came out of that effort, Managing Content for Continuous Learning at Autodesk.
Autodesk, Inc., is a design software and services company and its products address all phases of the design processes for architects and designers. These professional often need to go beyond standard practices to complete their projects. They share their practical tips and best practices through online communities. As the case notes, these “communities are the long tail of the Autodesk ecosystem, where the Internet combines the insights from many small groups into a major web presence.” At the same time the professionals like to get their content in short chucks relevant to the context of their work. While Autodesk has long maintained a comprehensive set o manuals, it now needed to address the changing expectations.
First, they had already started modularizing their technical manuals. They now needed to build on this effort, to improve the accessed to this content. They also needed to better leverage the content generated through online communities by capturing and curating the contributions of innovative customers.
They set up an enhanced delivery capability by adding MindTouch to their content infrastructure. I have covered MindTouch’s move into this space (see MindTouch 2010 Provides Intelligent Product and Services Documentation). MindTounch 2010 has enhanced three major areas to support this major use case. It now provides new capabilities for authoring, discovery, and curation of strategic content.
As the report notes, “a social web platform supports “community pages” for collecting and sharing usergenerated content on a wide variety of topics. Once authenticated by the site, both Autodesk customers and support engineers from across the ecosystem can publish “tips and tricks” recommendations, blog on new topics, comment on posts, reference code snippets, or add links to topics covered elsewhere on the web.” Here is the answer.
Moreover, Autodesk can track user activity across their site and the communities to determine trending topics and the emerging needs. Content curators perform this role. This tracking helps plan future releases.
Since MindTouch optimizes online documentation for Web search, Autodesk now can cross sell through the educational materials, based on participants’ interest. This turns a purely cost center activity into revenue generating one. Smart move. There is much more in the report.
Thought...
