Social Software Helps Rebuilding Efforts in New Orleans

June 27, 2008 at 12:16 pm | In Blogs, BurtonGroupCatalyst08, Enterprise 2.0, Web 2.0, social software | 2 Comments

I’m here at our Catalyst Conference in San Diego and just saw a great presentation from Alan Gutierrez of Think New Orleans.  Alan is a community organizer and, through a stunning set of photos from his city, showed the challenges that New Orleans faced after Hurricane Katrina and how social software in every possible form helped to provide informal, emergent connectivity between people when the formal, centralized organizations had failed.  One particularly poignant photo showed a road sign that had read “deaf child area” defaced to read “deaf government area”.

When necessary, open publishing of information enabled the shaming of local politicians and developers into often doing the right thing.  Information sharing was essential for putting together the individual pieces that formed a larger pattern.  For example, Alan described some shifty deals where a string of perfectly good homes along a street that developers probably wanted to freshen wound up being declared a health threat . Alan: “It’s hard to get local press, but we can get national press and then we get local press and then something gets done.”

Alan described how the idea of community that feeds much of Web 2.0 is a natural fit for New Orleans.  As Alan said, “This is a city that is familiar with community … Mardis Gras isn’t created by the chamber of commerce - it’s created by krewes that pool together to create a float.”

Much of Alan’s work has been around trying to ensure that the rebuilding of New Orleans doesn’t form an excuse for gentrification that replaces the communities in the city with generic, upscale suburbia that displaces existing residence.  Alan: “Life takes place outside in New Orleans … this is a 19th century city and we want to know the city we’re rebuilding is the city we lost; that we’re not building over it.”

Social software - including groups, wikis, blogs, and extensive use of Flickr - provided a way for disenfranchised residents to exchange information, note patterns, and organize to address them when required.  For example, in one case social software was used to pull together a rally of 5,000 citizens to protest a rash of violence . But, as Alan said, the use of these technologies was not just useful but necessary: “If you’re used to meeting people in your community in the coffee shop and if your coffee shop is now gone, you use these technologies because you’re compelled to”.  Today, “In New Orleans, being a citizen means being a knowledge worker”.

Back Home and Blogging Again

June 17, 2008 at 4:02 pm | In Enterprise 2.0, portals, social software, virtual worlds | No Comments

It’s been a while since my last blog post as I’ve been kept running all over Europe lately doing speaking and visiting current and potential clients in Munich, Copenhagen, Vienna, and London.  My presentation on social computing for the Domino Notes Users Group in Bremen went fine except for my PC getting possessed and flipping slides around on me while presenting.

IMG_2943

Now that I’m home I’m decompressing and reflecting on what I was hearing from the corporate and government organizations I talked to about collaboration and portals. 

  • I found a great deal of interest in social software, but the dozen or so organizations I spoke with seemed a bit further behind the U.S. in terms of awareness and piloting.
  • There was quite a bit of SharePoint work going on, but generally in a more controlled fashion than I’ve seen in the U.S.  SharePoint was being stripped down to fit into the rest of the environment, being used as just a web file store in one case and as a low-end content management system in another.  I prefer this approach to the whole-hog implementation that steps on the toes of other installed infrastructure that I see too often.
  • Portals were a hot topic, with most organizations I visited using them, sometimes many of them.  In fact, portal consolidation and governance is as big an issue as it was in my last few visits to Europe.
  • Enterprise virtual worlds came up twice, without much prompting from me.  One governmental agency was very interested in its use for rehearsal and disaster preparedness.

Now I’m off to work on the Mother of All Expense Reports.  

Munich Neues Rathaus

Social Networking Occurs Before and After Collaboration

June 2, 2008 at 1:43 pm | In Enterprise 2.0, collaboration, social software | No Comments

I’m just putting the final touches on my presentation on social software at the Domino Notes Users Group conference “Social Collaboration for the Enterprise” in Bremen, Germany and ran across a great posting from Gia Lyons (until recently of IBM Lotus, now at Jive Software).  Her description of what Connections does is a good description of the role of social networking in an enterprise environment in general.  An excerpt (full posting here):

Lotus Connections helps you:

  • Find the ‘good’ people with whom to collaborate, whether they’ve filled out their profile or not.
  • Find information that your trusted colleagues think is good, without relying on unsatisfactory search solutions.
  • Find the knowledge “crowds” that are locked up and hidden away in your company, so that you can lurk-n-learn, or connect-n-collaborate.

This posting got me thinking about how social networking fits with collaboration.  The conclusion I came to was that it can be useful before or after collaboration:

  • As a prelude to collaboration: After finding and tracking people with whom you share interests, like, or respect, a situation may naturally arise where you wish to connect to achieve a shared goal.  This may take place this afternoon or in ten years, but once the process of growing connections becomes second nature, the harvesting does too.
  • To maintain social links after collaboration: Sometimes collaboration triggers a desire to network rather than the other way around.  In this instance, collaborating on a project with someone lets you get to know them and their skills.  Adding those you have learned to respect to your network leaves the door open to mutually beneficial collaboration or sharing of additional network ties in the future.

If you’re going to be in Bremen, be sure to see my keynote address on “Sharing, Collaborating, and Networking in the Social Enterprise” on Friday and stop by afterwards to say hello.

Is There Anything New to Say about Enterprise 2.0?

May 21, 2008 at 4:34 pm | In Blogs, Enterprise 2.0, Web 2.0, social software | No Comments

I’m waiting for the “Enterprise 2.0 presentation” v2.0.  I’ve already heard enough times about how web 2.0 is important and can be applied to the enterprise, how Wikipedia is a new paradigm, how information flow is important, the importance of social networks, a walk-through each technology (blogs, wikis, social bookmarking, …), relevant surveys and studies, etc.  The first few times were fine since even the converted sometimes need to hear a better way to evangelize others and have materials (presentations) to show their bosses to prove it’s not just them saying it’s important.  And there are still lots of people who are hearing this for the first time.  But the number of first-timers decreases each month thanks to evangelism from all sides (vendors, press, industry analysts, conferences, academia, books) and it’s about time to think about what kind of presentation one can give to an audience who already knows how participatory interactions and networks are important, buys into the value, and knows their technologies and terms.

At BEA Participate there were a few Enterprise 2.0 (E2.0) presentations from BEA folks, although the best was from Andrew McAfee.  It was really the archetypical Enterprise 2.0 presentation.  That’s fine - he created the archetype and suffice it to say that if you haven’t heard him speak before, he’s a great speaker and is very good at conveying what he means by Enterprise 2.0 and possesses a wide variety of surveys, academic references, case studies, and anecdotes to support his case.  He’s the Lexus of next-generation information worker speakers.  Having heard this type of information literally dozens of times before from many sources (and I’ll be doing this same type of presentation myself at DNUG in June), I’d like to hear the next version.  Since Mr. McAfee is a professor, I’d say that by now I was expecting the “201″ presentation in college terms, or maybe “501″ for grad school.

Note: I’m not asking for an enterprise 3.0 presentation.  I’m not saying “OK, enterprise 2.0 - I got it. What’s the next big thing?”  I’m not looking for a whole new set of technologies beyond the E2.0 ones.  I buy into the E2.0 set and want to continue following their evolution and absorption into the enterprise.

Some thoughts off the top of my head on what goes into “The Next Enterprise 2.0 Presentation”:

  • Tracking statistics:  E2.0 presentations all tend to use snapshots of stats demonstrating pain points or E2.0 adoption.  By now we should be starting to get tracking stats that show how they are increasing or decreasing over time.  Note: I’m a stickler for proper survey technique, so you can’t just compare separate surveys that happen to be a year apart to deduce trends.  It would have to be the same surveyors who would then word the questions the same and weight the respondents according to the same demographics (industry, geography, company size) for the results to mean anything
  • Top 5 observed blocking factors: Unless you’re ready to hold up a “mission accomplished” banner on E2.0 in the enterprise, you should know by now what’s holding E2.0 back in many cases.  Not just what one could assume (cultural barriers, incentive barriers, control issues, immature directory infrastructure, etc.), but from actual observations
  • Models: We should have seen enough uses of these technologies by now that certain patterns start to emerge.  My colleague Mike Gotta has been doing a good job of teasing out patterns in areas like blogging
  • Architecture: Again, with more actual implementation experience there should now be guidance emerging on conceptual and physical architectures.  Showing how identity management systems integrate with E2.0 systems, how to include extranet partners in the E2.0 topology, and how centralized and decentralized (with syncing) models can be architected would be of particular interest
  • Deflating the bubble: There has been a lot - perhaps too much - excitement and too high of expectations on E2.0 (to say nothing of some revolutionary rhetoric).  OK, you got people’s attention and made points by being a bit extreme - now you can bring it back down to Earth a bit.  Now is the inevitable time to step back and admit where old technologies have proved resilient, where the new technologies aren’t all they are cracked up to be, and build a bridge between the two worlds on how they can blend together
  • Roadmap: You may not be ready to hold up the “mission accomplished” sign yet, but can you now see where we’re headed?  Where are we today, where are we trying to get to (maybe a choice of multiple points depending on the enterprise), and what are some milestones to look for on the road there?  I think an obvious input into this roadmap is standards, so which standards will be needed to get to the destination and what is their status?

Of course there can also be updates to information in the 101 presentation, such as new case studies, new surveys, new products or websites, clarifications of terms (there are constant battles about terminology being fought by the digerati that result in slight changes to definitions), and more depth (like more detail on how wikis work).  But I’m really holding out for the next E2.0 presentation that moves the concept forward, not just goes deeper or jumps on to a new set of technologies.

I know I’m just dreaming here - all this is just a wish list.  But I think it’s one that’s within reach for the next iteration of E2.0 presentations.

A Mashable Web Services API is Sticky, Contagious, and Attention-grabbing

August 3, 2007 at 9:31 am | In Composite Applications, Enterprise 2.0, Mashups, Web 2.0, portals | No Comments

I’m hoping that my recent postings on mashups (see here and here) have served to point out that 1) mashups are easier to define as an attitude and “feel” than a strict technological definition and 2) that mashups are not something new, although the attention to the quick&easy end of the composite application development scale is a good thing

I’d like to now add a #3 to that list: 3) that a killer web services API is sticky, contagious, and gets the creator/hoster a lot of good attention.

See this example from the EMC Documentum 6 enterprise content management platform. I had a few conversations with Documentum about the importance of web services APIs and what kinds of things and level of granularity they should operate at. Those conversations may have had a positive effect because Documentum subsequently released their first set of web services APIs, which I thought fit the mold of what customers were looking for. With version 6 they have pushed this further and added a development tool:

– Documentum Enterprise Content Services: a new, Web Services-based API that simplifies development and integration with ready-to-use enterprise content services for easy integration with other enterprise applications within a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). EMC’s new services interface was redesigned to eliminate Documentum specific methods and terminology and replace it with a vendor-neutral framework for working with content management functionality. These services enable developers with no Documentum experience to build ECM applications quickly and easily. This open, generic approach eliminates the “knowledge barriers” that get in the way of incorporating ECM functionality in all enterprise applications and business processes that deal with content

– Documentum Composer: provides a standardized environment for development and configuration tools that reduce the need for coding and facilitates composition of applications with reusable elements

I’m hoping that as vendors realize how powerful Google Maps has become in part because of the great API that has encouraged thousands of websites to create mashups that depend on it, they will also want to provide “mashable” APIs. “We want to be the Google Maps API of the xxx industry” is shorthand for saying that a vendor (or enterprise with B2B channels) wants to make available a mashable web service that is:

  • Sticky: Once a website incorporates a web services API it is unlikely to remove it for quite a long time.
  • Contagious: Every website incorporating the API acts as an ambassador to visitors that get ideas about how it could be used in their website. To quote an obnoxious 70’s shampoo commercial “And they’ll tell two friends, and so on, and so on, and so on …”
  • Good attention: When the UI being integrated is branded or the source somehow easily recognizable, it acts as an advertisement for the infrastructure underneath.

Live from the Enterprise 2.0 Conference: Tuesday

June 20, 2007 at 4:34 pm | In Enterprise 2.0, Web 2.0, social software | No Comments

I’m here at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference in San Francisco. I was not here on Monday, but Tuesday’s speakers had some good food for thought.

David Weinberger

David Weinberger posed an interesting question: “If there’s too much information, why aren’t we drowning?” His answer was that we’re adapting well and the solution to information overload is metadata. I believe he’s correct that we’re adapting well and that metadata is a key to surviving, but I think much of the information out there is redundant too. Frequency is often used as a measure of importance. All one has to do to catch up on the latest travails of a wealthy young heiress is catch one of the thousands of stories floating around.  By showing the phrase “Call me Ishmael” torn out of Moby Dick he made the point that deep searching (through the details of the data) is enhancing our ability to find information.  That’s true, although it’s not an example of metadata.  He also made a good point about the next frontiers for Enterprise 2.0 to conquer: authority, trust, and boundaries.

Andrew McAfee

Andrew McAfee was up next and assigned grades to E2.0. While he’s a highly respected Harvard professor, I suspect some grade inflation going on here:

Awareness: A. Among technology people I would agree, although awareness is often far short of understanding. Among business people though, I think it’s a C. There are a significant number of CEOs and business people that have heard of web 2.0 technologies, but nowhere near as many as know the latest business buzzword.

Technology: A-. Since he’s specifically talking enterprise, it’s hard to see how it could get an A- unless you mean “progress”. He seems happy there is so much to choose from. But that makes his point of view the technology vendors and not the implementers. Until the frontiers mentioned by David Weinberger (authority, trust, and boundaries) are conquered I can’t see giving the technology more than a “C” at best.

Communicating results: C. I’ll buy that. We seem to keep rehashing same success stories. The conference didn’t help in that regard though. I went to two sessions on case studies and half were vendors doing the case studies. The end users ones were not the best either (alerting? Nah).

Stowe Boyd

Stowe’s description of social apps sounded like self-actualization to me: “Judge the app by how it helps people discover who they are”.  I don’t find that description applicable in an enterprise setting.  Enhancing their ability to get their job done, visibility to management, feeling a part of a community: yes.  Learning about myself: no.

Any middle level manager who believes Stowe will want to immediately ask for a demotion or make a play for CEO since he says the center of organizations will hollow out, the “edgelings will self-organize”, and management (always just a necessary evil anyways) is doomed.  There’s more to say on this than I can type here at the airport this morning, but I find this view extreme and unlikely.  I don’t think 10,000+ person organizations can be self-organizing and I don’t think they will increase shareholder value by breaking up into 1,000 ten-person organizations.  I don’t think everyone wants to be self-directing and self-organizing.  I don’t think that employees will all become essentially independent contractors who decide what they want to do, self-organize into teams, and the “company” becomes little more than which logoed shirt they decide to put on the morning.  The market has generally voted its money on the idea that people organized in a hierarchy of groups (teams, divisions, conglomerates) are most likely to produce a return on investments and when that is not true (like a spinoff) they break up the units themselves.  I don’t see that changing.  That doesn’t mean employees will not become more empowered - just that their new networks are superimposed (not replace) the existing structure on the org chart.

Live from the Enterprise 2.0 Conference: The Conference Lifecycle

June 20, 2007 at 4:34 pm | In Analyst biz, Enterprise 2.0, Web 2.0, social software | No Comments

As an analyst, I’ve generally been assigned to coverage areas with a full life cycle. By that, I mean they have exciting beginnings, a bump against reality, then settle down to a boring, mature, reasonable level. I’ve covered Java (Java 1.1 through J2EE), application servers (remember when you used to pay a real lot for those and they were highly differentiated?) and enterprise portals, all of which followed that curve. Sometimes I felt I really enjoyed myself more than the guys covering steady but consistent technologies like databases, but sometimes I envied them too for the consistency their posts in the technology wilderness had.

In that regard, the Enterprise 2.0 conference feels like deja vu all over again. It has that same feel I remember from technologies past. The supply side attendees at the conference (vendors, media, speakers and panelists, pundits) outnumbered the demand side (enterprise buyers). By my estimate, about 40% of the attendees are from enterprises in listen mode. My figures come from a set of unscientific badge checks and one session where enterprise attendees were asked to raise their hands. By my equally unscientific crowd counting techniques there were about 350 attendees in the audience for the Tuesday keynotes counting the main room, standees, and overflow room. During dull stretches in the presentations I found myself scanning the audience for other stats and found similar figures to other technology conferences I’ve been to (e.g., blazers: 20%, male:female ratio: 7:1, Gen Xers: 65%).

This is pretty standard for the early stages of a technology maturity curve. Over time I expect to see enterprises strongly outnumbering vendors/media. Then the technology gets boring enough and the conference gets renamed or merged with another conference and the cycle begins anew.

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