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.

Social Computing ... Observations And Implications

I was watching this awesome video which Luis Suarez has made, posted over at his blog. There are some very imortant point that Luis is making over here, especially when he says that with social computing it is no longer you versus others, its you as part of a team, of a community.

What i liked probably the most was the idea that in an open platform as social computing can provide, it quickly becomes clear who is contributing how much, and what. The whole idea of free-riding is something which can be taken care of. Though, to my mind, that is a tad oversimplistic. Folks will find out ways to get around this. This also could have implications for the way people work ... bringing in more transparency ... and, to my mind, this is one of the very reasons this kind of a change would be resisted in a large number of organizations. Not just because change is usually resisted (which i believe is not, its just that the value proposition of the change is not usually communicated well enough ...), but also because a lot of people are not comfortable saying out things in the open.

What is also interesting is that unlike with email, you can control what you read. Of course, this might mean you miss out on something. But, as Luis says, networks have a way of informing you. While this is valid logic, this rests on the assumption of adoption. And, this is where the chicken-and-egg situation i have written about earlier comes into the picture ... the network cannot deliver value till there are plenty of people in it, and you wont have plenty of people in the network till it start delivering value.

There are two things i would add to the number of excellent points Luis has made ...

Let us first ask, what is the most important asset for an organization (knowledge-based, i am assuming here ...)! The most probable answer you would get to this question is ... People! Yes, they sure are. But, if people are the most important asset, why is it that Knowledge Management systems are content-centric, and not people centric? After all, content is a proxy for people, isnt it?

Look at facebook, for instance ... the focus of the entire network is the people ... when you login, you see what your friends are doing ... you are seeing content which is generated, for sure ... but, content that is generated by people, or, in other words, content in the context of people, which brings people to the centre of the entire schema. Ditto for twitter, too ... the first thing on a tweet is the picture, and the name of the person who has written it. Even your favourites are content, but they are about the people ... the focus being on the people who are generating the content.

This has another benefit ... Unlike documents, or static content, which goes obsolete over a period of time (by the time you post it, as Luis says), the people who write the content dont! People are more up-to-date than platforms are!

Another thing which comes up is, if you are emailing a document to ten different people, you are sending ten different copies, one to each one of them ... you are in effect isolating one from another. Contrast this to the social computing paradigm, where you are bringing people together, by bringing them to a single copy of the document.

AppGap On Facebook

AppGap has put up the recording for the webcast on Facebook for Business ... Quite an interesting one, this ... the summary is available here. They are making some very important points. One thing which they point out is that facebook has a way of getting group information propagating seamlessly, and information tends to find its way to other groups quite easily on facebook.

If, on the other hand, you look at linkedin, you would not find something like this happening. In fact, the groups over at linkedin are not nearly as dynamic as what you could find over at facebook (unless i am missing those which are ...). From this, or from other research, they arrive at the conclusion that facebook users are more social than linkedin users. First of all, i dont think this distinction can be made. You find more or less the same set of guys around. To my mind, this is more to do with positioning ... linkedin have positioned themselves around work ... its a very serious network! On the other hand, facebook is fun ... which is probably why folks believe that facebook is for "kids", while nobody has this opinion about linkedin.

In other words, the social network is heavily reliant on its positioning. Which is true of most of the tools you would come across in the web 2.0 stable ... they are, after all, all about people participation, and people will participate in a way in which they perceive the tool. Hence, this perception needs to be created and managed, more so in the organizational context. A well-hidden social network is totally irrelevant. So if you are looking at introducing social networking at the office, it might be a good idea to run advertisements for this.

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.

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.

About Twitter ...

I have logged onto twitter ... finally! OK ... so i was trying out facebook all this while. And, for all the cool things that twitter gives, i somehow find the functionality at facebook way too cool. Actually, this is early days yet, but from what i am seeing, one thing which is really like about facebook, which i am missing at twitter is the way i can see all the applications my friends are installing, all the groups they are joining, etc., etc. ... this, to my mind, is a wonderful way of easing the process of discovery. These were my thoughts when i had joined facebook. And not much which is changing here.

Though, the thing i really like about twitter is the way short, sweet, quick messages can just be shot out. This is an interesting thing to do, especially because this enables me to capture the "thought of the moment". Rather than writing a long blog, i can write a series of short snippets, which could basically become the source for my blog. Its akin to something i have been thinking of doing for some time now (since i started writing my book ... yes, more about that soon!), that is, carrying a dictaphone and just recording whatever thought occurs right at the moment when it occurs. Its this kind of functionality that i find quite interesting. More so, in the organizational context, this could be really nice, because with this, rather than asking folks to write their experiences in a blog which could be quite lengthy for people to write, or worse still, asking them to write documents, people can simple capture this "thought of the moment", and share this with whoever wants to see what they are reading ... especially with their social networks!

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 ...

Relevance of Communication

The other day i was asked a question ... about the role communication skills might play in the realm of knowledge management. This got me thinking ... interesting topics ... this is not something i have read much about, nor have i written about it myself.

Let us try to look at it from two perspectives:

From the perspective of explicit knowledge, this is a no-brainer ... if you are trying to write something, put something to paper, you are in the process of communicating with the world through the document which will result. So, there must be ample and proper articulation, which in turn requires sufficiently good writing skills. This is important because when you are doing so, you are trying to translate a picture which you are carrying in your head, to a set of words, and there is the very real possibility (something which happens more than one would like to see) of meaning being lost in the translation.

Moving now to the realm of collaboration ... today, when we are talking about web 2.0, collaboration deals more and more with an ongoing conversation ... through blogs, wikis, through social networks, etc. However, this is where my viewpoint begins to differ from the traditional one. the way they have been developed, and their essential philosophy, is totally opposed to any kind of structure. There is some, of course, which is in the interest of brevity (which is why we still divide posts into paragraphs which can be more easily digested), but apart from this, this paradigm of social computing has rather little to do with the sophisiticated techniques that one is taught during communication skills trainings. Apart from the basics ... Keep it short, capture the interest of the audience, and make sense at what you are talking about.

The impact is interesting ... while communications are becoming more and more informal, they are also becoming more and more vibrant (read twitter ... which reminds me, i need to graduate to twitter one of these days, except that i am just too lazy to create my network all over again over there, when i have already done so over at facebook). Lots has been written about the way sms has changed the way people communicate. To my mind, a lot of this is applicable to the social computing space as well.

Training Scenario ... Possibility?

Carrying on from the previous post, i am trying to build up a training scenario which leverages the emerging un-book concept, and social computing. First question ... why? This question gets more or less answered in the last post i have written. Instead of a static handout (even more of an issue if you are doing technology training), the training material could be something which could offer the following benefits:

1. The training material is up-to-date. As people contribute to blogs and wikis (which could be maintained by a training organization, though preferably not!), there is content which is getting generated every day. This means that the latest thought processes on the topic are incorporated into the content.

2. The training material reflects all opinions. Usually, training material is written by one or two people, and reflects the ideas, thoughts, and opinions of these people. This is one of the things which restricts learning to only the specific things which are covered in the training material. Whereas with the un-book concept, the blogs and wikis students could refer to, are actually representative of a large cross-section of viewpoints.

The scenario could work out something like this ...

When a student enrolls for a training program, the training team could email them a set of intro blogs. Links to these blogs, along with their ratings, and comments from previous students could be maintained as part of a wiki page, which could serve as an aggregator for contents on a particular topic, and could be maintained by the training team itself. The training team could also recommend the students to read the "Intro blogs" (these could be blogs which are classified based on user or training team tagging, as being introductory in nature). These recommendations could also come from the faculty who is conducting the training. This ensures that some amount of background resources are available to students before they come to the training.

During the training, there could be a set of blogs, "Training Material" (which represent the thoughts of a number of folks on the topic being taught), though in the interest of brevity, the list of blogs could be pre-selected by the faculty, or identified by the training team. I would recommend this, otherwise, a plethora of resources being available would only tend to confuse students.

What is most important (and this is an issue which most training organizations face), is that these resources are available to students even once they are through with the training, and back to their day-to-day jobs. This would enable the training team to provide resources to students which would enable them to engage with the topic taught in the training, even post-training. And, maybe ... just maybe ... one or two of the students from each batch might start writing their own blog on the topic, and this would only add to the resources which are available to subsequent resources.

I have tried to create a rough model of how the training organization could leverage social computing to deliver training in the organizational context. This might not work too well outside the organizational context (havent thought this through, to be honest), but could be worth a thought, at least?

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?

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.

Discovery ... The Key!

I was accessing a blog written on KM ... There was a nice link on the blog ... of sharing the blog on facebook. Now, being quite active on facebook, i thought this was quite a neat thing. First thing i did ... went on google, and searched for a widget to enable this link on my blog. This can be an exercise which can consume a lot more time than you would think.

And, this i believe, is one of the major challenges we face as knowledge managers ... that of discovery. How best one can enable the discovery of content, as well as of expertise in the corporate intranet. There usually are so many siloes, that this is all but a simple task. And this is where web 2.0 technologies can play an important role. One thing links to another ... though one could argue that this was true of "web 1.0" as well. However, with web 1.0 the content that you would link to would be comparably static content, compared to the dynamic nature of content, once the contect creation is enabled for everyone. Though, of course, the "circular problem" still exists ... Start from point A, explore links to several links from point A, and quite soon, you will either have forgotten what you were searching for, or you would go down a link which would take you back to point A. And this is where aggregation needs to play an important role. Aggregation of content in a way which is accessible in a simple and easy to use way, and content which can be presented to users in a way which is simple to read, and easy to assimilate.

Social Networking

I am trying to catch up on reading ... all the blogs i have subscribed to, and am making some progress on that. Which is why it was only today that i read a post by Luis Suarez (he usually knows what he's talking about, which is more than can be said about a lot of folks, including me!) about the Value of Twitter. Quite an interesting post ... Though i would like to change the direction of the discussion ...

I am looking at social computing within the organization ... Something i have written about before here and here. And this is where i would move away from the numbers ... Bottomline, the success of social computing in the organization depends largely on the adoption of the platform, which in turn is measured by the numbers ... number of hits, posts, etc., but before we can go there, we need to look at the platform itself. I have recently logged into facebook. Ok, so i have been hibernating, but i am trying to catch up. One thing which impressed me a lot was the way a number of third party applications are available for use. These applications can bring value to users, especially with things they want to see. More importantly, the way profiles of users can be used as an advertisement for these applications is amazing.

Let me put it this way ... I need something to complete some work. Is there a way i can discover what kinds of apps are available which can help, and who are the people who are using those apps, and how i can connect with them in the simplest possible way, to make my work simpler. If we assume that things take the shortest possible route, this could be a way we could drive larger numbers, and hence, larger collaboration within the organization. Of course, this is early days, and this may not necessarily take off unless there is a larger eco-system of collaboration apps providers (which there is). However, that said, all this is doing is bringing the process of discovery one level closer to the user, and making it that much simpler. And, i like what i see. And, if you take this to the virtual worlds, the possibilities can be immense. Imagine an island on SL, where you could find out what are the kinds of tools they offer which you could use. Imagine, also, a directory of tool users, and also avatars announcing their latest finds.

On Facebook

Its been a few days now ... I have finally succumbed to Facebook. After having resisted the urge for a few months now (basically, I was wondering how different this would be from other websites), I have finally become active on facebook. And, I have already gotten in touch with tons of folks I went to school with (most that I can recognize by name, though not by face, considering the incredible growth in girth a lot of them tend to be showing). But, apart from that, what I was really impressed with was the way applications are sprouting on facebook. Most of them, I have no clue about ... That said, this does have a lot of potential ... especially if we look at the possibility of this architecture, and the concept being unleashed within the organization.

I am talking about an aspect of the organization which doesnt get too much attention, though it does get a lot of effort from people ... expertise location. A facebok kind application could enable the organization ... the people in the organization could describe the work they are doing, and the kind of expertise they are looking for. And, applications specifically developed could bring these two together ... much in the form of a matchmaker ... only, this could be much more significant than any matchmaker, simply because this is taking what people have to offer, in their own words, and in their own expressions, and delivering this to people who need them. A pillowfight could be an invitation to critique an idea ... and so on ... This is nothing but a simplistic description of what I have seen of facebook, and I guess much more can be written about this.

Happy New Year

Its been a while, but here I am ... wish you a very Happy New Year ...

There ... Thats done. Now, to what I was writing about ... Andrew McAfee has written a nice one about Getting Facebook Ready for Work ... Quite an interesting read. And, this talks about an interesting piece ... Facebook for the enterprise. Something I have commented about earlier.

This was something which was waiting to happen, and I would think it was a matter of time before it happened. And, something which opens huge vistas for the adoption of social computing in the enterprise. This could bring the entire idea of social networking within the enterprise, though of course, there would still be the security concerns. But, security concerns notwithstanding, this, I would think, would be something thats here to stay. After all, these security concerns havent stopped organizations from hooking onto the network.

And, as we have seen to a certain extent ... this has the potential of moving the entire idea of sharing a few ntches up the corporate ladder, bringing it more into the centrestage.

Social Networking ...

Might this lead to another round of writings about the problems with social networking? There was the orkut connection to the murder of a teenager in Mumbai, there was the orkut connection to terrorist bombings, and now, there are the Facebook, MySpace, and Youtube connections to the murder of the young British student in Italy. ToI has written an article about this.

The important point to note here, however, would be that we cant blame the tool for its usage. It would be folly to think the concept of social networking is all bad. We need to understand that the concept is an immature concept yet, and there are points in social networks which are prone to misuse. This definitely doesnt mean the tool itself is to be blamed.

On the contrary ...

The media have latched on to the trend. A Youtube video of Finnish schoolboy Pekka-Eric Auvinen showed him brandishing guns before he shot nine people in November. In the Perugia case, images and information taken from these sites has filled the void of verifiable facts.

What this points out to is that we need to watch out for trends in the things which are happening on social networking site. The idea here is somewhat similar to searching for opinions. Today, most of the search is geared towards words or numbers, but not much which is geared towards searching for patterns, whether those be patterns in data, or whether that be patterns in opinions (a la blogosphere). Some of this could be a reliable indicator of things to come?

Volunteered Wikinomics

I am reading a nice book ... Wikinomics ... they even have a website now. Its quite an interesting read ... and, gives you a convincing view of the way things are shaping up ... and, not just in the trendy hi-tech, or publishing, media, or entertainment industries ... but, something as "old world" as mining ... read the Barrick Challenge. I am currently reading the chapter on Peer Production. Quite an interesting reading. The key word here is collaboration, as we know by now ... Another word which stands out in the discussion, but doesnt really get discussed too often is voluntary.

And, this has some interesting connotations. If a large part of the changing landscape is based on voluntary work (no, this is not in the sense of social service, but rather, the individuals also stand to gain a lot by participation in the effort ... think Linux?), then this raises a few thoughts on two different levels.

1. This has massive implications on the future of business. While this means that there is a lot of value that can be realized by bringing on the power of collaboration. While this is a very nice thing, I am trying to understand the implications of this in the current organizational scenario. Lets face it ... How many folks would volunteer for an open source project on-the-job? In the organizational context, there are not many volunteers. Which means, that this entire idea of collaborating to the extent of creating an operating system is probably not going to happen within the organizational context, skunkworks notwithstanding.

2. If this model sustains ... There is the usual set of detractors of the model (lots of folks tout IBM's success with open source ... but, not many who mention that IBM doesnt create open source ... they create business models to make money from there ... and, end of the day, IBM is a corporate, much like a lot of others). This is the part which we need to watch out for ... Something I have written about earlier. What this implies is that there is a fundamental friction between the form of the organization as we see it today, and the form of the organization which is emerging. One school of thought believes that if you are able to show value to managers, they would embrace this change. After all, its a more efficient way of doing business. But, managers are not such rational beings. Which is why, this friction is here to stay, at least in the near to medium term.

Putting these two thoughts together ... unless the contradictions of both these thoughts are resolved, I dont think the power of collaboration can be harnessed to a large degree within today's organizations. Its still early days yet, and organizations do evolve, and this is where I agree with Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams is that this wave of collaboration is going to grow ... and, those companies who try to resist this, would not be right there, at the forefront of business.