PKM And Networks

I came across this interesting post by John Tropea, about Sensemaking, PKM, and Networks. He has written a rather interesting one about the value of networks. What is nice about this post is the way he distinguishes between the "best practices" (what i like to call codification), and the "network" (collaboration) approaches to KM. One thing which we usually tend to overlook is the fact that documents, or codified knowledge arises from the human mind. Rather, that all knowledge is directly or indirectly tacit, and documents are the result of externalization of tacit knowledge, into some form.

If we take this line of reasoning forward, it would be easy to arrive at the thinking that the idea of the network has not really been alien to the idea of KM, only that the importance of the network was overlooked for some time. Rather, if we look at history, before even the invention of printing, the traditions of storytelling (which, by the way, were, and still are, quite strong in human society), and the tradition of orally transmitting knowledge from one generation to another has always been a part of human civilization. This implies blending the codification and collaboration approaches. Only the last few years, with the over-emphasis of codification of just about everything, that we have actually deviated from this. Which means that the emphasis on networks is a welcome thing.

I quite agree with John when he says:

Now I know that many people develop PKM habits out of frustration. The information they need is not readily available through the company, or through the community, so they build their own stores. But as soon as the content of those personal knowledge stores starts to drift away from community knowledge, then all you are doing is introducing information and knowledge silos at the level of the individual.

However, i am not sure i agree with the observation:

So for me, PKM is a sign of failure of corporate KM. If you get corporate KM correct, you don’t need personal knowledge management, as all knowledge management will be collective, giving the individual access to far far more than their personal store.

The way i look at it, all knowledge is essentially peraonal (remember, all knowledge is directly or indirectly tacit?). If this be the way it is, then the question that we need to ask is what role does the network play, and what role the corporate KM initiative can play. To look at this simply, the idea of the corporate KM initiative is essentially to get the personal KM out of the personal space of the individual, into the community, or the corporate space, so that this knowledge is available, as easily as can be, to the network, the community, and the organization. The thing we need to appreciate is that by their very nature, networks are quite good at doing this, and this could be one reason why networks might need to be one of the central aspects of the KM initiatives.

Twitter ...

I have an on-and-off kind of interaction with twitter. There are days when i am online most of the day, and there are days, when i just dont login. I wonder why. But, this gets me wondering ... What is twitter all about? I mean, i understand twitter from the perspective we are familiar with, but given my interactions with twitter, i am wondering ... what are the implications of a twitter within the organization. And this is something i havent been able to figure out.

There is lots written about the value of a twitter-like tool within the firewall, but i am thinking ... lets look at it simply. Twitter is a platform which lets you write short messages about whatever it is that you want to write, and your friends to follow those messages, and comment on them, if they like. The 140 character limit is quite nice ... stops people like me from ranting on and on. But, having said that, there is the other aspect of this ... the volume. There are so many activities people do. Which is why, oftentimes i find some kind of overload from twitter ... theres just too many tweets to go through. Which is actually nice the way i am using twitter today, but if you were to replace your connections on twitter with your colleagues at work, would you be so keen? Maybe ... or then, maybe not.

There is also the idea that by following what your colleagues are doing, you yourself can learn a bit. Colleague reading a blog? If they tweet about it, you could get to know about an interesting blog, which you might find helpful at work. But then, looking at it from a different perspective, how about social networking? Wouldnt a social networking platform do just about something similar? With the additional functionality for building your social networks, and interacting with people as they go about their day-to-day work? In other words, what about social networking (aka facebook) as an aggregator for the activities that people are doing? There is definitely an overlap here, though i tend to believe that maybe a facebook is something which i find easier to interact with, because it brings in a more social aspect to the interactions. And if one could link up a corporate facebook with some of the other systems, it could actually be an interesting concept.

I have posted a poll to find out what you think ... care to post your comments? Look forward to hearing.

The Economist: Social Networks

Thanks to Prithwis da, who posted this interesting article on facebook ... about Primates on Facebook ... this is an interesting article, because this brings the realms of sociology and anthropology into the realm of social network ... with good effect ... given that social networks are "social", and so, of interest to sociologists, and they are inhabited by "primates", hence being of interest to anthropologists of all hues.

The article throws light on an interesting aspect of social networking ... and something i have thought about, but not come to understand ... how do people who have more than say 500 connections on a social network actually keep track of their friends? Turns out, as this article tells, that maybe most of the connections are casual connections ... something Andrew McAfee had written about quite some time back ... when he talked about the strength of weak ties ... that indeed, there is a core of strong relationships, and an extended network which is made up primarily of weak connections. Which leads to the idea that more often than not, you wouldnt find a new job through who you know, but who they know.

Though what i am thinking about is what impact this information has for social networks within organizations. After all, we are talking about leveraging social networks for increasing knowledge-sharing, and enhancing knowledge flows within the organization. While this is a nice idea, the question is, wouldnt the information in this article imply that social networks, beyond a particular point, tend to wilt? Not really ... if you look at it carefully, the same phenomenon is applicable to email, as much as it is to social networks. After all, email is also used by the same primates, isnt it? How many people do you email on a regular basis, and how many do you mail on an "as required" basis? I am talking about at work. If you think about it, you would find similar patterns (and i am not talking about all those forwards). But then, within organizations, the people we connect with on a regular basis (the core, according to the article) are few. Having said that, the fact is that we connect with a lot of people on an "as required" basis. Need some information? Talk to someone, with whome you probably connect only infrequently. In other words, though the core makes up what are strong ties, there is also the larger network which people tap into, from time to time.

Power ... Aggregator

My friend Mark pointed me to an interesting site ... you might need to check out Power ... interesting because this is doing something which was a requirement with a lot of people. To begin with, a lot of people have presence in multiple social networks. More often than not, you would have the same set of friends in your network on most of these networking sites, but then you might not.

Which is where power comes in. Instead of having to login to multiple social networking sites, you can actually point your multiple social networks to a single place, and actually connect with multiple social networks at a single place. This is quite neat, saving a lot of work, am sure. Of course, they still need to do a lot to bring this to a place where it can be more widely accepted, but what i liked most is the way you get the original facebook look and feel in the UI here.

Search Or Communities ...

No, i dont think they are mutually exclusive. Interesting post by Nirmala ... where she is posing the question ... about what is it that lets your choose between google and wikipedia? to my mind, not much ... or, to put it differently, when i search on google, more often than not, wikipedia results are among the first few to appear.

Now, this is interesting. Nirmala mentions someone being of the opinion that the rise of social networking would spell the end of search. While, on the face of it, this sounds like a tempting assumption, this is probably a bit of an oversimplification. Let me put it this way ... if i am looking for something, i search. If someone on my network has found something, and i find it useful, i go through it. The opinion here seems to be a bit too much of a stretch, if you ask me.

Lets look at it this way ... social networking is about knowing who you know, and this leads to (more often than not) knowing what you know. And the two, to my mind, are related, but different things. What could happen (and this is something i have been looking at, for some time now ...) is that search could change ... in the way tools enable users to interact with them. One of the possibilities is the availability of aggregators, or the possibility of searching for opinions.

In other words, and this is something i have been chatting about on the KM India Forum as well (as i am sure, my friend Sumeet Anand would agree ...), that "collaboration", and what i like to call "codification" are complementary, and not competitive in terms of the value they can add to the larger KM initiatives, and stressing on one, to the deteiment of the other, is not something which is nice. And if we agree with this, we would also tend to agree with the idea that content is an integral part of the knowledge inventory of the organization, and as long as this is so, search (in some form or the other), must also be around.

Where, then, does this bring social networking? To my mind, social networking is about bringing value which was not possible with the "KM 1.0" paradigm of the 90s. This is more about bringing the people aspect into the entire way of doing things, which was lacking. Now, one could argue that documents originate from people, and hence, looking at the people aspect should be enough to enable us to not look at the "codification" aspect, but the point remains that its not possible for you to know everyone in the organization (even if you are working in a mid-sized organization), and hence, to some extent, it is imperative to abstract knowledge, and this is where the content, and the search aspects come in.

Communities ...

Here is an interesting post about communities ... about how to run communities ... Rob Howard has written a rather interesting piece about this. There are a few points here which i wanted to write about ...



Firstly, there is the point about generating value. This is an interesting part. Actually, this is the chicken-and-egg situation which i have written about before. With communities, people wont adopt till they find value, and communities wont generate value till people adopt. And it is this cycle which needs to be addressed by organizational intervention. Of course, different ways would be used in different scenarios, but one way could be to identify community evangelists, or managers, if you will, who can spread the word ... generate awareness about communities, and the value these communities can generate for people who join in. Of course, this would need to be supplemented by some sort of rewards program which the organization would need to bring in.



Of course, this idea of value also brings to the point that when people join a community, they are, more often than not, looking at getting, rather than giving ... and hence, the organization may need to invest expertise into building some content, some expertise sharing, to attract people to sort of follow the experts. This could be one way of getting out of the cycle. Of course, this still doesnt address the basic problem. If the only reason people join the community is to read the comments of these experts, the community would stagnate over a period of time ... how lang can one or two experts sustain a community? Not long enough, one would think. Which means, that over a period of time, there would need to be some means of inviting more and more people to write, to share, and give, rather than passive receivers. Some form of value for contributors to the community must be developed. Here again, different things work for different people, which means that a rewards mechanism which reaches out to a maximum number of folks would be helpful. Recognition, perhaps? Or, maybe, brownie points? Or, maybe this kind of mechanism for advertising the contributions of people?



The most important point Rob raises is about the value of the community. Since the community is going to oeprate in a articular context, it is a little easier to identify where the community should have reached, or what the community should have delivered after a period of time, and this should be more than simply number of posts, number of replies, etc. (which, by the way, is the way a lot of organizations i have interacted with measure ...). Having said this, there must be some form of balance between the achievement of the community, and the contribution of individuals. The temptation to hide individuals beneath the umbrella of the community is high, but it must not be given in to. Otherwise, over a period of time, you end up driving away people from the community.

Sabre Social Networking

There is lot being written about the work Sabre is doing around social networking. And, there is a lot from what i am reading. There is a blog about the cubeless platform, and there is this case study in employee social networking ... and it seems quite interesting, what they have developed.

Seems like an application which could be quite a good platform for social networking within the organization. there are two things which quite catch the eye ... Firstly, there is the relevance engine. What they say ...

On Sabre Town, users can post a question to the entire organization, and the site's inference or relevance engine will automatically send the question to the 15 most relevant employees (based on what they've entered in their profile, blog postings and other Q&As that have been previously posted).

This seems to be the part which is quite interesting. What this implies is that the system, by itself, is able to discover what people are doing, based on their activities, and can identify who are the right people for a particular kind of thing. This, of course, would not be as adequate as people can do this, but this can be a reasonably nice starting point to build up some form of discovery in the organization. Having said this, we would also need to make sure this is supplemented with more adoption efforts.

Which is the second point ... the idea that this is designed for adoption. This is something i feel is the most important aspect of social networking, or indeed, for KM, as i have written before. What seems interesting is the kind of incentive it can give to people to adopt the platform. First, the number of questions you have answered, or asked, something they call Karma (i am assuming its something to do with helping other people out when they want some information) ... The important point to understand here is that there has to be some kind of initiative of this nature, whether on or off the platform, which works to encourage people to adopt the platform, and since this is about the platform, maybe this should be linked to the platform itself?

Social Networking ... Today, Yesterday!

Shiv Singh has written an interesting piece about how facebook is blurring the lines between personal and professional lives. Interesting because this is something which we can see all around us. And interesting also because i dont think this is completely owing to facebook, or the social networking phenonomenon which is all around.


My two bits ... the way i see it, the lines between professional and personal lives have never been completely well defined. They have always been blurred. Remember those networking dinners? Office parties, and the kind of chatting that goes on? Human beings are social ... and, human beings need to network, because none of us are in a position to do everything that we need all by ourselves. Ergo, social networking.

Having said that, the technology wave is definitely catalyzing things, and the sheer scope and breadth of social networks today is remarkable. Having said this, this is true of a whole host of technologies. Take CRm, for example ... the entire idea of CRM has been built around something which the neighbourhood grocer has been doing for ages, although on a totally different scale.

On to the most interesting part ... the reach which social networking gives us. Just to give some statistics ... On linkedin i have (at the time of writing) 200 connections, which gives me access to a network of more than 2 million people (at least theoretically). The numbers are mind-boggling. That, to my mind, is the real secret behind social networking.

Business Relationships ...

Something i have been meaning to write about for some time now ... First, let me get this straight ... I am not trying to sell any product. Having said that, i do have a close relationship with Oracle, given that i have spent most of my working life there.

One of the najor aspects of the workspace that we are focussing today is relationships. Interestingly, Oracle came up with an interesting idea quite some time back ... only thing, i dont see them talking about it the way they could have had. They have a rather interesting tool ... The Trading Community Architecture. From what i know about the tool, the idea is to be able to capture the eco-system of the organization ... including customers, partners, employees ...

Though, thats not the main aspect that i am writing about here. The thing which impresses, looking back, is the way the tool addresses relationships. There is a neat way to define relationships between customers, partners, vendors, etc., not just in terms of organizational relationships, but in terms of relationships between people, too. And this is the impressive part ... the way the tool recognizes the value that can be derived from these relationships. So, for example, if Ms. X is working for Customer A, and Mr. Y is working for Customer B, and they happen to be husband and wife, then the value to be derived from this relationship can also be captured in this paradigm. Another source for identifying and leveraging relationships for the organization. Though of course not something which is comparable to a facebook (definitely not), it is the way the paradigm of the relationship is recognized here, which is impressive.

Fantasy App ...

Is it a pointer to me being a wierdo if i am fantasizing about an application? Well ... maybe! But then, whatever ...

I have been using both facebook and twitter for over a week now. And the way i see it, both of these applications actually complement each other. While facebook is about connecting with folks, and doing your own thing, twitter is about being yourself, and just penning down your thoughts from time to time. I am thinking of a facebook homepage where updates from twitter, from my network get reflected, and where i can not just keep in touch with what my friends are doing, with their statuses, photos, work, play, etc., i can also keep in touch with what they are thinking.

And, this is a pointer to a larger thought process ... Right now, i am confused about which social network i want to log into. So, i log into twitter, because i want to share my "thoughts of the moment" with others, and i log into facebook to connect with friends. And, i log into ning for communities, and ... What is required, to an extent, is an aggregator, which can give the functionality of the social networks i am a part of, in a single place. This way, i am sure a lot of folks would save a lot of time not having to update multiple social networks?

There is, of course, the argument of diversity which multiple social networks brings in, but i dont see too much logic in that, considering that most of the folks on my network in facebook overlap with those on twitter, and hence, the impact of diversity is only minimal.

Social Networking ... A Study

Alain has pointed on his blog, to a post about corporate social networks being a waste of time. Interesting post ... and, the study seems to be an interesting one. But then, isnt this something which was waiting to happen? Somehow, what managers seem to ignore is the fact that when people network outside the firewall, they are having fun, while when they do so inside the firewall, they are working (not necessarily the same thing as having fun, isnt it?). Something i have written about before, and here, and here.

Actually, this is something to be expected. Though, there are a couple of things that i was thinking about, with this post ...

1. Million Dollars for Social Networking? What were they even thinking! First of all, we must understand, that most of the web 2.0 pieces are quite anti-thetical to the traditional technology project management scenarios. There is no need for multi-million dollar contracts, and 2 year, T&M project life-cycles, with consultants flying back every Thursday, blah blah ... This is a different paradigm altogether, and unless we understand this, we are probably going to end up grabbing the wrong end of the stick. because, once we realize this, we will understand that its of prime importance that web 2.0 be driven by business users rather than technology users. And, once we can get business users to drive this, there's still hope.

2. We also need to understand that advertising of these tools is also of prime importance. Dont advertise about it, and people wont come to know about it, and if they dont know about it, they wont come there, and if they dont come there, the entire point is lost, as the post says.

3. Community Managers, to my mind, is something which is definitely required as a concept. Whether full-time, or part-time, dedicated or not, is a different issue altogether. For all that is said about Communities of Practice being self-organizing, in the corporate sphere, communities need some amount of prodding from the organization. Remember, smooth functioning of these communities is in the interest of the organization. Thing is, this is an aspect which a lot of managers forget. Rather than being managers, these are essentially champions. These could either be people who are Knowledge Managers, who are driving the adoption of communities in the organization, or these could be Subject Matter Experts taking an active interest in social networking.

Either way, there has to be a separate effort to drive adoption ...

Application in Facebook ...

I came across an interesting application on facebook ... But, more than the application itself, the idea of the application is quite interesting. We all know that facebook, and similar social networking sites are a platform which enables us to get in touch with friends and family, as well as to come in touch with more people with whome we might share some interests.

Interestingly, more and more, there is the need for people to be able to categorize their friends. On social networking sites, we tend to have a large number of friends, and this brings up the requirement of categorizing them, maybe even colour-coding them. This, to my mind, is an interesting phenomenon. Outside these social networking sites, we dont need to colour-code our friends. This raises the question of why. And this is one of the most interesting things about social networking. When it comes to social networking, we are all creating ties which go way beyond the ties outside the circle of social networking. These ties which we end up creating include friends and family, for sure, but at the same time, we are in a position to discover ... discover groups we might want to join, and more importantly, discover people we might want, or need to connect with, for shared interests. These could be people who are experts in a particular subject we are interested in, or they could be people who are also working on a particular topic, which is also of interest to us. And this idea of discovery is the essential value of social networking.



Lets take an example. One of my favourite bands is one by the name Junoon. Well, there is a nice group which is their fan club on facebook, and i was quick to join it. Interestingly, six of my friends from facebook also joined the group. In all probability, they also wanted to, but either they never came round to it, or they werent able to find it. This is the nature of discovery from social networking. And to my mind, this is one of the major issues knowledge managers need to work on, to make sure that we are able to bring about a similar nature of ease of discovery behind the firewall, as there is, outside the firewall.



There is an interesting application i came across the other day. This is a facebook-like application developed by Trampoline Systems. Or, the facebook-like application from Microsoft. The idea is to bring the idea of social networking into the firewall. However, having said that, there is a bit of euphoria which might be a little misplaced. For, the entire motivation for adoption of social networking behind the firewall is quite different from what it is outside the firewall. To that extent, there might need to be a few changes to the approach to social networking which might need to be brought in to bring about this change within the firewall. All ideas on how to do this invited ...

Interesting Idea ...

I guess its true ... Every alternate day, there is an interesting idea which is taking shape in the world ... especially on the web. I came across one such idea the other day ... but first, the way i came across this idea is actually as interesting as the idea itself.

I was indulging in some self-awareness ... i have a visitor map on my blog. You can click on this to enlarge the map. I did that the other day, in order to see the visitor map of my blog in more detail. No, this is not what it is. There was a banner of a website on here, which caught the eye ... and, i must say its quite an interesting idea ... Its idopia ... and an interesting idea, i must say.

What can you do here? Not much ... Actually, i am also just exploring this. Off the cuff, what you can do is, ask a question, and post it ... and, people can respond to the question. Not quite a discussion forum, though. Its more of a polling tool. Any question you have in mind, you can ask, and people can support, or oppose the idea. You can also post details about the question you are asking, enabling people to understand what you are asking in detail, before they respond.

In addition, you can also get an overall picture of the kinds of questions people are asking, what are the responses people are posting to them, and also, which are the most active topics which are garnering the most interest.

What is most interesting is the way this could be utilized in the organization. Couple of scenarios come to mind ... Would people prefer e-learning to in-class training for a particular topic? Or, do people like the new compensation plan for salespeople? As a standalone tool, though, this might have limited utility, but used in the larger context of social computing tools, this could be quite an interesting tool. A blog, say, could have a reference to questions related to the topic on the blog, as a quick reference to readers, or members of a network could use this tool to find out what people think about a particular topic. Seems interesting, and i possibly, people could find more innovative ways to use this, than any one of us can think of?

Of Social Networking, and Questions ...

Interesting post by Andrew McAfee ... Some Questions You Might Get Asked ... Somewhat like a cheat sheet of some of the top of mind questions you get asked whenever you are trying to sell the idea of social networking. And, Andrew seems to have covered most, if not all.

The interesting thing is that most of these questions are not as novel as they would be made out to be. The argument i would have, to answer quite a few of these questions is that a lot of the questions raised relate to things already happening ... these are part of human nature, not the exclusive domain of social computing. And some of the questions raised have been around for some time, and would be around, social networking withstanding.

This brings me to the point of social networking ... The only thing social networking tools are allowing people to do is to create relationships, which can be leveraged for work, and pleasure. Now, i wouldnt deny that there would be a fun aspect to social networking, even behind the firewall. But, this is simply because we are all human beings. How many times have you been to a meeting where the discussion was totally centred around work, and not a word about anything besides work? (If you can actually think of times, please assume this question to be rhetorical, and take some time to smell the flowers ...). Point is, "time wasting" is not so much that. Its more of a way to create human relationships, rather than simply relationships which can be expressed in the forma of mathematical equations (i am actually reading a book on this these days!).

As for time wasting (read posting photos of vacation), every organization has the system of setting performance targets, and appraising performance against these. I would expect this process to address time-wasting! And, i am sure managers love to give stretch targets to their reportees, which means that folks out there have less and less time to actually do anything apart from work (sometimes they actually forget to breathe?). In fact, this runs counter to the argument which i have heard a lot of times, which goes something like this ... nobody in my team has time for social computing, because they are already piled up with so much work (check it out here).

Larger concern is the possibility of information leakage. Its not to say that leakage doesnt happen now, but its just that social computing tools could act as a catalyst. Which is where, when within the firewall, there might be the requirement to build some amount of walls around content which is considered sensitive (and please dont treat your annual report as being sensitive, especially when its already been released to the markets!). The point i am trying to make is, there is the temptation to mark everything as sensitive. There must be mechanisms to address this, otherwise nobody gets to access anything. In other words, there is the possibility of falling into the silo thought process, which should be avoided (Chinese walls to be avoided?).

Enterprise Apps and Web 2.0

Something i have been thinking about ...

What is the basic difference between business applications the way they have been around for decades now, and the social computing tools which are developing today?

Not many folks are talking about the possibility of blending the two (the focus seems to be more on the usage of web 2.0 tools ...). Which means that as of today, the two are being seen as two different independant entities. Which need not necessarily be the case as these evolve. Which is because, end of the day, they are both addressing two different aspects of the same thing.

The way i see it, the success of social networking has been essentially because they are built around people. In other words, users are central to social networking. On the other hand, the software, the apps, for example, that you see in facebook, are peripheral. And the relationship between the two is that the peripheral applications are pushing value to the central user.

On the other hand, enterprise software, or business applications are just that ... they are not focussed on the user. As we must have seen, these are built keeping business processes as the central aspect of the enterprise, with people being the participants in the business process (who are essentially performing some pre-defined, well documented work, which might benefit from SOA, or some such other software tool ...). However, as i have written about earlier, there is always some aspect of such straightforward computational processes which is not necessarily straightforward.

And this, to my mind, is the point ... there has to be, over a period of time, the melting together of these two concepts. There has, to a large extent, come the understanding in organizations, that business processes shouldnt be seen as being isolated from people. What this should mean is that sometime soon, there should also be an evolution of software which combines the two? I have written about how SAP is already trying to do this.

Welcome all thoughts about what shape you think this could take?

Encouragement - Continued

Some reflections continuing from the previous post ... and, encouraged by Bill Ives writing about the Enterprise 2.0 conference ... Some of the things i have been thinking about, and talking about for some time ...

If we were to look at three levels of management in the organization ... the junior, the middle, and the senior ... ok, ok ... so, this is a bit of an oversimplification, but not too much, dont you think? ... i find that the junior folks (call them kids in my old age?) are the folks who are usually gung-ho about adoption of some of the social computing tools which are available to us today. These are folks who have almost grown up with social networking ... who started using these while at school, or at college ... and, who effectively use a variety of tools for managing their connections. In other words, these are the folks who live in a connected world.

The top management (older than me, if you insist ...), are the folks who are looking at adoption of social computing tools from the business returns perspective ... and, more often than not, these are the folks who, uncalculable ROI notwithstanding, are not necessarily the folks who are against these tools (ok, so this is a generalization, so please take this with a pinch of salt!).

The challenge to adoption, what i feel, is where the middle management comes in. These are the folks who arent as adept at social networking, or computing, as the junior folks are, and these are the folks who dont necessarily see the bigger picture, and hence, in their domain of the limited picture, with an inadequate understanding of these tools, there seems to be a kind of lack of understanding of where social computing could lead us, as individuals, or as organizations. And this is probably the part which we need to address as much as any other.

Web 2.0 -- Encouragement?

There is an interesting post that Andrew McAfee has written ... What he is talking about is whether Is Management the Problem? based on interactions with early adopters in the web 2.0 space.

There is the fact that one would expect managers to actively oppose these tools. And this is where the findings which emerge from the discussion are quite surprising. However, in my experience, i have found that managers are not actively opposed to the emerging world of social computing. The key word probably is actively. Why i would say this is because at times, the resistance is more indirect, and couched more in terms which are nothing to do with social computing in the first place.

Having said this, there is much to be said about the busyness factor. The fact is that in organizations, adoption of a lot of the social computing tools is not what it is when you go outside the firewall. This again is not surprising. Reason? Simple ... The way people operate on facebook, or any place outside the firewall, is not really the same as within the firewall. Something i have read about, and written about, too ... While there are incentives to spend some time on facebook everyday, update my status, and catch up with folks, if not going through some fun apps. On the other hand, wheres the incentive to do things which are definitely not half as much fun, and that too, have something to do with work!

Given this background, there is the issue of adoption. And, the fact that social computing is as good or as lousy as its adoption is. Which is where the cookie crumbles. There is, on the one hand, the scenario where users have no reason to adopt some of the social computing tools (ya, some folks understand their value, but hey ... why change the way things are done around here?), and on the other hand, there doesnt seem to be too much encouragement for changing them on the other hand.

Interesting thing is, it seems that a lot of us are being proved wrong when it comes to managers discouraging the idea of social computing. This is quite encouraging. Though, i am not sure whether it is too early to declare that spring is here. Like i have written before, things are changing. Question is, to what extent will they continue to change? The nature of boundaries is changing, decision making is shifting, and these together are having their own impact on the way work is being done. Question is ... to what extent would such changes be welcomed? Especially when they could probably change the basic way in which work is done, decisions made, and maybe, just maybe, power reallocated. This is early days yet, so it might be an excellent idea to watch these trends.

Enterprise Social Computing ...

Almost the topic of a white paper i came across. Stan Gargield, in his post refers to a software vendor, Trampoline Systems. Over at their website, there is a white paper which they have published. Interesting paper. What i liked about the paper is the simple way in which its written. Not too many heavy words getting you running for your thesaurus, and some reflection on the subject which is common-sensical. However, lot of the stuff you would have already heard, so probably not much new you would gather, i guess.

Few thoughts about the stuff they put there ...

1. The paper tries to draw a parallel between Consumer Social Networking (stuff we do today on a lot of sites out there), and Enterprise Social Computing (stuff we would like to see people doing behind the firewall). The impression i get is that the assumption is that these two fit neatly into mutually exclusive compartments. I dont think this works this way. Theres no telling where the professional ends, and the friends part begins. And, to a large extent, knowledge sharing happens based on the rapport people have amongst themselves. You are more likely to share thoughts with buddies than with casual acquaintances, arent you?

2. The primary concern the paper raises is about the possibility that people may not use this, making it redundant. This, i believe, is the largest challenge any KM practitioner has to contend with. I believe any KM initiative is as good as its adoption. Otherwise, you might have made a better mousetrap, but no point if the world is not beating the path to it. Something i have written about. This is, however, not to say that that is all there is to it. I also believe that KM has been happening for centuries, with or without a separate KM function. What seems to be missing is the direction, and the possibility of leveraging the potential provided by technology, to look at ways of fundamentally changing the way things are done around here.

3. One thing i really flipped for (not something which a lot of people actually say, and its even more difficult to do so, if you are a software vendor) ...

The aim of Enterprise Social Computing is not to drive users to a system and keep them there, rather to create possibilities for offline connection, collaboration and innovation by combining the disciplines of social networking and knowledge management.

Heavy ... but, makes sense!

4. Another important point the paper makes is about the automation of capturing profile/work information about people. On facebook, folks are updating information about themselves, because its for fun, and its a way of keeping friends and family updated. Dont expect them to do the same thing behind the firewall. Theres just no reason to. However, considering the myriad systems that are deployed in the typical organization, it can be quite easy to capture information on what things people are working on, on an ongoing basis.

All in all, seems an interesting thing (though, please note ... i am not trying to sell any product, nor have i even used the product ... hey ... i am writing about the paper! :-))

Social Learning ...

We have heard this before ... that learning is a social activity. And, our experience right through school and experience bears this out. Ask any of my pals from college, and they would vouch that getting past those exams was a very social process! There is an interesting post i came across ... Bridging the Gap between web 2.0 and higher education ... quite interesting, because this is something i have been thinking about, and writing about. Something which, to my mind, brings out the basic relationship between two apparently independant worlds of KM and Training. And, coming from a training background, into Knowledge Management, i think this is an area which i think i am interested in a lot.

This post represents some rather interesting thoughts ...

Firstly, this brings out the point, that unlike in a few e-learning implementations (few, not all ...), learning is something which is controlled by the student (or their boss ...), or, in other words, is more of a pull activity than a push from a centralized LMS.

Secondly, and this is where this is departing from the traditional e-learning (its already begun being used along with traditional ... the timescales sure are changing, arent they!), is in the interactivity this model visualizes among students. Whether it be in terms of discovery of trainings that the user would be interested in, or whether it be interactions in terms of "collaborating to learn", or whether it is in terms of generating content either as stand-alone content, or to supplement content generated by institutions.

In terms of discovery, i am looking at something like the facebook model ... something i have written about ... it could be as simple as finding out from fellow students what book to read for a particular topic, or, the courses which would be useful, because they have been taken by folks who are interested in something similar to what you are interested in, too. Basically, discovering trainings, courses, curricula, books, papers, and other resources based on what your network is doing, or simply based on search.

Collaboration to learn is essentially about sharing of thoughts, and ideas among students, and the teacher essentially transforming into a facilitator ... something i have written about before ... i have found, as a trainer, that students tend to learn far more from experimenting with each other than from the instructor. And this is something which ought to be part of our learning structures sooner rather than later.

Coming to the part of content ... and this is where the interesting part of the convergence of web 2.0 and learning comes ... Which is where i agree with something Michael Feldstein ...

You may want the structure and motivation a course offers, which could come from a recognised institution, or could be a user generated ‘course’ that is taken just for fun and run by an enthusiast. The key point is this – most LMSs are based on a centralisation philosophy, and as soon as you disaggregate the technology, you also decentralise control.

Interesting observation ... with the disaggregation of technology, e are looking at more and more content being created by learners themselves (now, this is nothing new ... we used to get a lot of notes from seniors, apart from photocopying notes from classmates who were the most sincere, and with the smallest handwriting ... the handwriting was a cost consideration), read blogs! And, this is where the structure of formal learning, and "discussional learning" could get merged going forward. They are already beginning to complement each other.

Role of Tech Pros

I came across an interesting piece ... about the impact of web 2.0 on tech pros. Interesting thought ... about the impact web 2.0 technologies (more of the DIY web, the way i like to see it) is having on the job profiles of technology professionals. Of course, to a last extent, when it comes to business apps (read ERP, CRM, SCM ...), i dont see web 2.0 really impacting the role of folks who work on these technologies (though there is an extent to which web 2.0 technologies are being incorporated in some of the business apps ... i have written about this here).

However, when it comes to the larger information technology arena, the research this article refers to shows that more than more, there is the requirement for more and more technology professionals to align themselves to web 2.0 technologies. Interesting ... the research shows that there is quite a bit of inroads the technology is making in organizations, though maybe not to the extent that would make it as effective as a facebook. A lot of folks believe this might make technology professionals irrelevant, though i believe it wont ... it would simply reorient them. From being the masters of the apps, to the facilitators of business innovation (something i have written about here). Now, thats quite a shift. Of course, thats only the ideal, and the shift could probably be to different levels in different environments, but to an extent this is already happening. Especially in companies which are more at ease with deployment of new technologies.

An example of what i am talking about ...

The SharePoint draw is that Microsoft is essentially giving away lightweight wiki and RSS technologies for free, and unquestionable business value from a trusted brand. The opportunity will be for IT professionals to leverage the partnership ecosystem Microsoft is creating around SharePoint to extract further uses for the system.

What this is doing is making the technology folks the discoverers of new apps and new usage for these apps, in the face of increasing, and changing demands from the user community.