what's a wiki grandad?

I quite like social software. Hence the blog, the podcasts, the use of wikis & google docs, the twittering, the social network stuff (not much Second Life activity as of yet). And I go around telling people about this kind of thing because I like it but I am also quite a sceptical, cynical person.

So I try to strike an uncomfortable balance between enthusiasm and realism (and I don't always succeed). One area that has worried for some time are the claims made on behalf of those younger than me (Gen Ys and younger) by those my age or older. Apparently the next generation is effortlessly using social software to change the world. I think this contains a kernel of truth but it also causes problems:

• It's something for social media experts to scare potential clients with.
• It ignores the differences within generations to focus on the differences between them and so perpetuate stereotypes*.
• It gets social software labelled as "young person's stuff" - rather than stuff that everyone can and does use.
  

So I was intrigued to find Net Gen Nonsense - which includes links to some interesting data from Australian students. And surprise, surprise, the picture is actually quite complicated. A minority of students are into social software as a creative activity but many are not.

So what does this mean? I think we need to bin the generational arguments around using social software in the enterprise. It's not about the Gen Ys or their younger brothers and sisters. Some of them are really switched on but there are plenty out there that know less about this stuff than you, dear reader.

*Those Gen Xs are just like you Scorpios y'know. Or is it you ISTJs? Or you chicks? Yeah, you're all the same.

analyse that

The responsible and hardworking type. They are especially attuned to the details of life and are careful about getting the facts right. Conservative by nature they are often reluctant to take any risks whatsoever. The Duty Fulfillers are happy to be let alone and to be able to work in their own pace. They know what they have to do and how to do it.

Typealyzer said both this blog and the other are ISTJs. GenderAnalyzer said here there is an 87% chance that we are male but over there, there is a 56% chance that we are female!

Make of that what you will.

canberra - information & knowledge policy

Just a quick note to say that I enjoyed the presentations by Kylie Dunn, Sally-Anne Leigh and (of course) Nerida Hart at Information & Knowledge Policy Development gig.

i had my social media echo chamber designed by mc escher

Some nice person gave me a pass to Online Social Networking & Business Collaboration World 2008. I missed the morning sessions which apparently saw senior execs from Friendster, Bebo, MySpace and Google tell the throng (200 people?) just how important their site is.

I did go to the afternoon session with Andrew Mitchell (Urbis), Chris Knowles (Heinz), Jeremy Mitchell (Telstra) and Wayne Hughes (Virtual Medical Centre). Andrew, Chris & Jeremy were all good - but I've seen their presentations before (may be I should go to less conferences). Wayne's topic was interesting but I was a bit mystified as to why he was in that stream and he had a fair whack of sales material in his presentation.

Captain Coincidence being who he is, Hugh McLeod has been posting this series of cartoons. There'll probably be more soon.


My take is that there is no real role for social media experts. There are people out there who will either sell you existing software or build it for you - and that's fine. There are also people out there who can advise you on marketing, collaboration, information & knowledge management, advertising, etc - and they may use blogs, wikis, social networks, virtual worlds, RSS, etc in doing so. Many of them are very good.

user generated learning

I really must start asking these guys for some cash.

the banality of wisdom

Nerida sent out a link to this. I'm still processing it but I kinda feel ambiguous when I saw the trailer. We have a lot of famous people, most of whom are quite old. They mostly say sensible stuff. And sometimes they say it in quite a charming or poignant way.

But it's rarely stuff that you haven't heard before. But that's the thing about wisdom. Most of it is not new (that doesn't make it easy do). So we are left with people who have done wise and unwise things and who may (or may not) be wise in some respects. But whilst I'm sure they can entertain, I'm not sure that they can enlighten. We can enjoy the cinematography and nod sagely but are we any the wiser?

stupid ideas and dead people

You may remember my obsession with the Cochrane Collection Collaboration. I've been pursuing this on the actKM list with all the ferocity of a man trying avoid a major deadline around a difficult client report. Anyway, we got into a big discussion of measurement and causality and stuff - but the vibe I got from a few people was "this is just too hard, we will never produce anything as rigorous as medical science". They may well be right. Knowledge managers are not doctors.

But if you compare the Cochrane Collection with The Old Operating Theatre in London then some perspective comes into play. I was at the Operating Theatre a few months ago (there's nifty picture of me getting my leg cut off that I've go somewhere) and, although they'd tidied it up a bit, you could imagine what a dirty, dingy, deathly place it must have been. If you got a broken limb then you were probably dead. And if you weren't dead then you were certainly due an amputation.

How has medical science advanced? Simple: stupid ideas and dead people. There have been lots of stupid ideas in the history of medicine. Often not completely wrong but not right either. And these stupid ideas meant lots of dead people. And at various points in history, medics have decided (whether for reasons of humanism or greed or pride or whatever) that working out which ideas are the least stupid will mean less dead people. This is not a linear narrative of progress. This is messy. There were (and are) mistakes, blind alleys, and maddening gaps.

One of the most interesting things for me are the articles in the Cochrane Review that say "there is insufficient evidence to come to clear conclusion on this". That speaks of an ambition to eventually find out what works and to improve health.

In my own discipline, we need that ambition. Lots of catastrophes have a knowledge dimension (or more frequently an ignorance dimension). But to be honest, most of my work is about the alleviation of small problems that make working lives miserable and organisations less effective than they could be.

We need to be more reflective and critical of our own practice. We need to find ways of sharing our failures as well as our successes. And we must not loose the focus on results. Most of all, we need to understand that our first efforts in this will be partial, messy, crude. We don't get to start in a gleaming, hi-tech surgical lab. We are rummaging around in the darkness and grime of garret. Tough - that's where you start.

We may not have as many dead people but I'm sure we can make up for that with stupid ideas.

captain coincidence strikes again (2)

So I liked Fake Steve Job. Then I forgot him. Sorry Steve, the illness showed that you were weak and mortal. I had to dismantle my shrine. Then a couple of days ago, I found Real Dan Lyons. He is a blisteringly funny writer about the tech world. And then mere hours later, he stopped.

Coincidence?

Well, yes, absolutely. What else could it be?

captain coincidence strikes again (1)

So earlier this week I wrote about Ben Goldacre - who has a pet peeve against suspect nutritional advice in general and "superfoods" in particular. Yesterday I received an email from a friend inviting me join a "multi-level marketing"* scheme involving a goji berry energy drink - from a company he told me would be the nutritional equivalent of Microsoft (cue: lots of gags about bloatware & obesity). I like my friend, he is one of the nicest guys in town. He is also pretty damn smart. I wondered if I had lost my mind.

He did assure me that there were over 100 "solid gold" clinical studies on PubMed. I had a look (using the Latin term "Lycium barbarum") - and it brought back 103 papers. From what I could see, most of them dealt with in vitro experiments or tests on lab rats. Now if I was a bunch of cells on a glass dish or, indeed, a rat (steady), this might be handy. The only clinical study on humans (outside China - they seem to be keen on the berries) was carried out by... a major distributor of goji products.

I should say that the goji berry energy drink had less sugar in it that other energy drinks (yay!) - but also had caffeine in it. Which makes me wonder if goji berries are so gosh darn great, why the caffeine?

*This is not a pyramid scheme - as one Brisbane newspaper found out to its cost. However I did look at the compensation scheme for "marketing executives" on their web site and was completely confused. Nine pages of points, ranks, numbers, uplines, downlines and I was no clearer at the end as to how much money I would get. Maybe their compensation system requires you to have had your brain boosted by goji berries before you get it.

collaboration models (2)

Stuart French has been working away on his model for wiki participation. Matt Hodgson has expanded it with Stuart into this beast:

There's a lot of very interesting stuff in Stuart and Matt's musings. The critical insight that social software participation can be a mix of either/or both/and "bottom up" vs "top down" is a useful one. I have a few quibble but the key comments would be:

• The activity domain seems to be a bit of an after-thought. What are those 5 kinds of behaviour doing compared to the rest.
  
• As a way of exploring thinking visually, it's intriguing. But it seems to be getting more complicated rather than less. At some point it has to become a simpler or become one of those complicated diagrams that everyone nods at sagely but doesn't really understand.
  

collaboration models (1)

James Robertson has developed this three-tiered model for collaboration. I like it. However there are two comments I would make:

• I'm not sure it's a fully-fledged model yet. It's a checklist of things that impact an organisation's ability to collaborate grouped into 3 areas. More map than model. How do these things interact?
  
• James writes: There are many elements of collaboration, and we often encounter the “blind men and the elephant problem”. We’re all talking about collaboration, but we’re actually discussing different parts of the animal. I think there's an additional issue. There are not just different elements to collaboration but there are different kinds of collaboration (that based around project teams vs virtual communities for example) that require different individual skills, models, tools, governance approaches. I don't get a sense of that from this.
  

bad science and getting better

Ben Goldacre writes for the UK's Guardian newspaper and also puts out the Bad Science blog. His mission is to attack poor uses of science - esp. in the medical field where he was trained. New Age therapist, Big Pharma PR, dodgy neuroscientists, credulous journalists and dishonest labs get mercilessly ripped. BG seems to rather enjoy doing this.

It's via BG that I discovered the Cochrane Collection Collaboration. It's an organisation that systematically reviews the medical literature for evidence that particular treatments work (or don't).

For the past year or so, Patrick's presentations and blog posts have explored the development of health science as discipline in comparison with knowledge management. It's something I've been pondering recently too. In part because I've been reflecting on the divisions between academics and practitioners in the KM world - which encompassed a discussion on actKM (many thanks to the participants). Patrick articulates it well:

"There is no great merit in and of itself that a practitioner "gets into" academia, or an academic engages in practice successfully, or that gifted individuals manage to get invited to both tea parties. The merit is in whether practice gets better. KM is fundamentally a practice - theory is its servant. And the practice needs to show beneficial outcomes affecting real people in real organisations in real economies and societies."

How do we get better?

blogging is boring - excellent!!!

James D highlights the the death of the blogosphere. In this Wired article, Paul Boutin says that writing a blog will no longer guarantee you attention and Bloggers today are expected to write clever, insightful, witty prose to compete with Huffington and The New York Times. Paul is of course a journalist and also a former blogger.

Paul is of course right - starting a blog now will not get you the attention it would have got you 4 years ago. But as a journalist he assumes that all bloggers want to be journalists. However lots of us don't. The more I blog, the less of a **** I give whether I have readers or not (which explains my 49-part history of custard - to be launched next week).

Twitter and Facebook/LinkedIn status updates just don't give me the space I need. I need more than 140 characters - cuz, like, ohmigod, I'm a 35 year old man with a receding hairline who needs to vent a lot - that's a lot. And I ain't pretty enough for YouTube.

Now some middle-aged Californian has said this isn't cool, can the rest of us just get on with it please*?

*This is the definition of "plateau of productivity" in Gartner's hype cycle that they toyed with but never had the balls to publish.

making marketing interesting

A couple of jobs are coming to an end in the next few weeks and it's time to gear up into marketing / selling mode again. I don't mind selling - I definitely wouldn't say I was a "gun" salesman - provided the person wants to be sold to. So I'm going to be picking up the phone and talking to people. If you don't want to be talked to then just say that. If you don't want to talk about business then let's grab a coffee and talk about something else.

I have one request for you tho. If there's someone you think I could have an interesting conversation with then let me know. Not (necessarily) in terms of business development or doing some kind of deal. Just in terms of having an interesting conversation.

writing articles - any requests?

I've been writing a fair few articles recently (as you can see). It's partly because I like writing and find it fairly straightforward (altho I haven't heard about the last one I submitted - so it'll probably get rejected and I'll be left feeling a little less smug). I can also justify it as "marketing".

I'm feeling a little stale tho. So over to you. Feel free to suggestion publications (& topics) that I should pitch to and I'll give it a go.

km theory vs case studies

Final follow-up to this post below. Most case studies are useless. I remember being at a major KM conference and a friend asking me: "What's wrong with me? Why aren't my KM projects as smooth and flawless as these presentations?" It reminds me a bit of the argument about unrealistic portrayals of female bodies making ordinary women depressed. If everyone looks like a Hollywood starlet then I must be ugly and useless.

The thing is most case studies as written up in articles or presented at events leave out the really useful stuff. Where did you screw up and why? What were the unexpected events?

However 'real' case studies (warts n all) are very powerful indeed. I love The Mistake Bank. I think that knowledge managers are slowly, painfully building up this base of experience - but we could do a whole lot better - as Patrick has often stated.

The role of theory here is, for me, not fully decided. Dave, Patrick, Shawn, Gary Klein and others, have all done a brilliant job of bringing in research from complexity theory, cognitive science and narratology to bear on real-world problems. More KM practice needs to be built on research. However theory by itself is not enough. It needs to be constantly tested against brute reality.

What I am arguing for here may be impossible: A transparency around KM practice that requires a strong theoretical base, a willingness to experiment and a drive to learn from the work of others.

the strategic question for knowledge managers

This throw-away post seems to be still generating more heat than a forest fire.

The challenge I (and my colleagues) faced as knowledge managers was getting beyond the "oh, you look after databases" dismissiveness of staff, managers, execs, etc*. It wasn't that we didn't want to focus on strategic issues (well, some were happier hiding away but I think they were in the minority) but that getting the opportunity to tackle them is harder than just walking into the CEO's office and saying: "Hey I'm going to solve your strategic problems for you".

I can remember sitting in meetings where we were talking about workforce change, systemic organisational risk, improved performance for a group of workers and we'd get asked for some minor changes to be made to a web site. Occasionally an issue would erupt that would give us some traction, some leverage with someone we already had a relationship with (possibly because we'd edited their web page for them). And then we'd run as far as we could with it. And then there would be a pause. N.B. Simply showing how our KM activities aligned with the corporate strategy didn't really differentiate us because that's what everyone does. Saying you support the corporate strategy is like saying your in favour of "good stuff" (motherhood, apple pie) rather than "bad stuff" (war, famine).

So you readers out there (all 3 of you). Can you give an example of a game-changing moment that you have had? A moment where you saw an opportunity and went for it?

*A core quality of a successful knowledge manager is sheer bloody-mindedness.

Now if I can get through this without accusing anyone's mother of darning socks in Hull, we may get an interesting discussion.

gigs - melbourne / sydney / canberra

I'll be doing sessions based on the actKM presentation in Melbourne next week (courtesy of the KM Roundtable) and possibly in Sydney two weeks later (courtesy of NSW KM Forum). There's now the white paper and I'm toying with T-shirts & coffee mugs but I reckon there's a limit to cross-promotion on this baby.

And then there's that gig in Canberra that with a social software bent. Thanks to Alex, Andrew, Paul, Cory, Kelly, Luke, Viv & Dan for answering the dilemmas and sharpening the thinking.

Hmmm - T-shirts, now there's an idea....

smart people + recession = ?

The last couple of articles seem to be focused on "tough times". But anyway, Talent Management in a Down Economy is now available on the other site.

white paper - justifying your km programme

A new white paper over at the other place.

tribes - how about that audio book

So as you may remember, I signed up for Seth Godin's latest book Tribes. The book arrived last week. So what's the verdict?

• The marketing campaign was a blinder. The Ning site for the first 3000 people to sign up to the book - which was a bit of mess and kinda lost my attention but still a brave experiment.
• Sending you two copies of the book for the price of one to those 3000. One to give away. A nice(ish) gesture. It wasn't like it was ice cream or anything but that doesn't travel so well. But a fantastic idea in terms of spreading the word.
• Giving the audio book away for free. Some people bitched about this but so what? It's free!!! And it's different to the book so that's fine.

So I think SG has done a dashed good job of marketing by being quite nice to his readers and generating buzz. Full marks.

Now let's get to the actual book. SG writes cool, buzzy sentences. Even his paragraphs are quite good. Things start to unravel at the chapter level and the final result is not really a book as many traditionally might think of it. There is no line of argument rather there's a rant that riffs around tribes and leadership with lots of case studies - a statistically improbable number of which are based in New York restaurants. I'm not finished yet but I'm getting a similar feeling to reading "Purple Cow" last year. There is an idea here but it feels more like a talk thats been worked up (really worked up) into a short bookette. I suspect the audio book would actually be better because then you might lose yourself in the momentum of the SG verbiage. Maybe he should charge for the audio book and give the paper one away for free.

I don't think that SG was always like this as a writer - I mean Permission Marketing felt like a, you know, proper book. Or are proper books, like, soooo 20th century? Plus the prose has a bit of a Tony "Awaken the Giant Within" Robbins feel to it. Is there going to be a 5-day, 5-figure seminar series off the back of this?

As for the idea? That (informal) tribes are more important than formal organisations? That leadership comes from all over the place? It's not a bad idea by any means and there are parts that I absolutely agree with. But it didn't feel that new to me. Maybe it's "Here Comes Everybody" if you have ADHD.

So Seth Godin. Genius marketer. Good blogger. Book writer? Not so much anymore...

politeness

A recent post led to a somewhat predictable exchange with someone. In the comments section, I am told that one of my statements is impolite. A couple of months ago I had a stoush with someone else on an email list that then went off-list. I had publicly attacked the mode of arguing that person had used. In an off-list exchange, I was told I was being impolite and unprofessional. Maybe I am.

I'm always a bit dubious when the "politeness" card is played. If I have called you "stupid" then I agree, that is impolite. If I have called what you say "stupid" (and also justified why I think that) then the case for "impoliteness" is much weaker. It often seems to be a distracting tactic. I reserve the right to criticise statements and behaviour. I also accept that my words and actions will get called these things in return. And yes, those who seem generally "nice" will get treated more gently than those who seem to relish verbal battle.

What do you think the rules of etiquette are?

[UPDATE: Well that doesn't seem to have ended well]

actkm - networks

Graham and Laurie both ran sessions on networks of different sorts. BTW networks are so hot right now.

I interpret Graham's work as being built on a single, brilliant insight (plus lots of hard work). The insight is that the nodes in social network analysis don't have to be people. They can be projects or policies or many other kinds of business objects. I strongly advise you to read his blog.

Meanwhile Laurie's partnership scorecard is also shaping up nicely. He now has lots of nifty templates. The session suffered from being a dash hypothetical (I imagine it plays so much better for real) but again definitely worth checking out.

actkm - arthur shelley's wiki

Arthur presented on his wiki experiments with RMIT students. The trials and tribulations. The collective efforts. It's a shame that this one wasn't recorded as the slide don't really do it justice.

actkm - matt hodgson

The key part of Matt Hodgson's presentation for me was the note that social software uptake inside organisations could be related to power distance i.e. social software is more likely to be taken up in organisations with low power distance. Matt - Do you have the background research on that?

UPDATE 30.10.2008 - Stuart French has pointed me towards this discussion on Matt's blog where Matt sources his findings. I'd like to get my hands on the underlying data if possible. Any spreadsheets there Matt?

actkm - dave snowden's challenge

Rewinding to the actKM conference a couple of weeks ago, I want to pick apart a comment by Dave Snowden. In a public discussion, he stated that knowledge managers should focus on solving intractable problems.

I have two responses to this:

1. That's easy for you to say, Dave. To my knowledge, Dave has never held down a KM role inside an organisation (apologies if that's wrong) and his primary engagement with KM has been as a consultant. He gets to pick and choose "intractable problems" that he will work on. Most knowledge managers do not have that luxury but must try to sell innovative projects to a sceptical management while ensuring that things like the intranet are working.

2. As a provocation, an incitement to knowledge managers not to get pigeon-holed as document minders, it's a great one.

an infatuation

All the Obama vs McCain stuff in the US? It nags at me. Not because I think Obama will lose. It's possible but looking less likely by the day. At not because I think Obama will be a bad president. I think he'll be competent enough. And he seems a better choice than his competitors for the crown.

My beef is that he cannot possibly satisfy the desire for change that he has both nurtured and ridden. He reminds me of Tony Blair in the UK - and to a lesser extent Kevin Rudd here in Australia. A dream has been created that must necessarily be broken.

Within 12 months of Tony Blair's election, many of those who had been hyping him turned against him. They had created a fantasy candidate in their heads and Blair with all his human failings (plus the slightly autocratic leanings that Rudd seems to share) could not live up to their dreams.

The problem with infatuation is that you don't fall in love with a person but your project of that person. I give the infatuation 6 months before it fractures in the face of the human reality.

i really don't give a **** about social media

I'm kinda over it all at the moment. Maybe it's because I'm sick in bed with nothing but my computer for company. But maybe I'm getting a bit over the social media milieu as well. We are actually a very small group in Australia - buzzing each other up on Twitter.

I'm a bit bored of presentations talking about "revolution" and using inspirational stock footage that trigger associations with these guys. This stuff isn't a revolution. Which is good coz most revolutions fail in their aims and end up eating their children. I don't want a revolution.

I'm struggling to articulate these small annoyances. They'll nudge together into something more coherent over time. I want this social media bubble of voices bouncing off the inside of its skin to burst.

I want little moments of insight.

i don't want a clean feed

Let's get one thing straight. I am against child pornography. However I am also against censorship of the internet by governments. Esp. when that censorship is ineffective. The EFA's no clean feeds campaign is well worth a check out. As is Angry Aussie's analysis of the situation.

email not dead shocker

A friend of mine called me last week and said she was thinking of setting up an online community for a group of female entrepreneurs. What should she use? Well, we had a chat and what do you think we came up with?

A blog, a wiki, a Facebook group, a Ning site?

No - an email list. An oldie but a goodie. These people aren't tech-savvy and email is their primary form of communication. I've ranted about email before but in this situation it kinda makes sense (for now).

mp3 on advice to new knowledge managers

I asked several people at the actKM conference what advice they would give to people new to the field of KM. You can now listen to their advice on the actKM site.

Hear what Mark Schenk, David Gurteen, Arthur Shelley, Graham Durant-Law, Keith De La Rue and Cory Banks have to say.

What piece of advice would you give?

Age of Conversation TWO!!!

Some of you may remember the first Age of Conversation last year. Well Gav & Drew have been hard at it and assembled another 200+ writers, ranters and relics for Age of Conversation
TWO!!! The aim is to raise $15k for Variety (the children's charity not the magazine). You can buy the book here.

Go on. Treat yourself...




Adrian Ho, Aki Spicer, Alex Henault, Amy Jussel, Andrew Odom, Andy Nulman, Andy Sernovitz, Andy Whitlock, Angela Maiers, Ann Handley, Anna Farmery, Armando Alves, Arun Rajagopal, Asi Sharabi, Becky Carroll, Becky McCray, Bernie Scheffler, Bill Gammell, Bob LeDrew, Brad Shorr, Brandon Murphy, Branislav Peric, Brent Dixon, Brett Macfarlane, Brian Reich, C.C. Chapman, Cam Beck, Casper Willer, Cathleen Rittereiser, Cathryn Hrudicka, Cedric Giorgi, Charles Sipe, Chris Kieff, Chris Cree, Chris Wilson, Christina Kerley (CK), C.B. Whittemore, Chris Brown, Connie Bensen, Connie Reece, Corentin Monot, Craig Wilson, Daniel Honigman, Dan Schawbel, Dan Sitter, Daria Radota Rasmussen, Darren Herman, Dave Davison, David Armano, David Berkowitz, David Koopmans, David Meerman Scott, David Petherick, David Reich, David Weinfeld, David Zinger, Deanna Gernert, Deborah Brown, Dennis Price, Derrick Kwa, Dino Demopoulos, Doug Haslam, Doug Meacham, Doug Mitchell, Douglas Hanna, Douglas Karr, Drew McLellan, Duane Brown, Dustin Jacobsen, Dylan Viner, Ed Brenegar, Ed Cotton, Efrain Mendicuti, Ellen Weber, Eric Peterson, Eric Nehrlich, Ernie Mosteller, Faris Yakob, Fernanda Romano, Francis Anderson, Gareth Kay, Gary Cohen, Gaurav Mishra, Gavin Heaton, Geert Desager, George Jenkins, G.L. Hoffman, Gianandrea Facchini, Gordon Whitehead, Greg Verdino, Gretel Going & Kathryn Fleming, Hillel Cooperman, Hugh Weber, J. Erik Potter, James Gordon-Macintosh, Jamey Shiels, Jasmin Tragas, Jason Oke, Jay Ehret, Jeanne Dininni, Jeff De Cagna, Jeff Gwynne & Todd Cabral, Jeff Noble, Jeff Wallace, Jennifer Warwick, Jenny Meade, Jeremy Fuksa, Jeremy Heilpern, Jeroen Verkroost, Jessica Hagy, Joanna Young, Joe Pulizzi, John Herrington, John Moore, John Rosen, John Todor, Jon Burg, Jon Swanson, Jonathan Trenn, Jordan Behan, Julie Fleischer, Justin Foster, Karl Turley, Kate Trgovac, Katie Chatfield, Katie Konrath, Kenny Lauer, Keri Willenborg, Kevin Jessop, Kristin Gorski, Lewis Green, Lois Kelly, Lori Magno, Louise Manning, Luc Debaisieux, Mario Vellandi, Mark Blair, Mark Earls, Mark Goren, Mark Hancock, Mark Lewis, Mark McGuinness, Matt Dickman, Matt J. McDonald, Matt Moore, Michael Karnjanaprakorn, Michelle Lamar, Mike Arauz, Mike McAllen, Mike Sansone, Mitch Joel, Neil Perkin, Nettie Hartsock, Nick Rice, Oleksandr Skorokhod, Ozgur Alaz, Paul Chaney, Paul Hebert, Paul Isakson, Paul McEnany, Paul Tedesco, Paul Williams, Pet Campbell, Pete Deutschman, Peter Corbett, Phil Gerbyshak, Phil Lewis, Phil Soden, Piet Wulleman, Rachel Steiner, Sreeraj Menon, Reginald Adkins, Richard Huntington, Rishi Desai, Robert Hruzek, Roberta Rosenberg, Robyn McMaster, Roger von Oech, Rohit Bhargava, Ron Shevlin, Ryan Barrett, Ryan Karpeles, Ryan Rasmussen, Sam Huleatt, Sandy Renshaw, Scott Goodson, Scott Monty, Scott Townsend, Scott White, Sean Howard, Sean Scott, Seni Thomas, Seth Gaffney, Shama Hyder, Sheila Scarborough, Sheryl Steadman, Simon Payn, Sonia Simone, Spike Jones, Stanley Johnson, Stephen Collins, Stephen Landau, Stephen Smith, Steve Bannister, Steve Hardy, Steve Portigal, Steve Roesler, Steven Verbruggen, Steve Woodruff, Sue Edworthy, Susan Bird, Susan Gunelius, Susan Heywood, Tammy Lenski, Terrell Meek, Thomas Clifford, Thomas Knoll, Tim Brunelle, Tim Connor, Tim Jackson, Tim Mannveille, Tim Tyler, Timothy Johnson, Tinu Abayomi-Paul, Toby Bloomberg, Todd Andrlik, Troy Rutter, Troy Worman, Uwe Hook, Valeria Maltoni, Vandana Ahuja, Vanessa DiMauro, Veronique Rabuteau, Wayne Buckhanan, William Azaroff, Yves Van Landeghem

my future bank is blank

If you are an Australian social software head then you probably know all about Cheryl, uBank/NAB and the demise of My Future Bank. At this point it would be de rigeur to beat up Loaded Tech/NAB and point you towards my own top 10 tips for corporate social software engagement (because this is, of course, all about me).

Here's my take:

• Cheryl's been writing about the marketing attempts of Australian banks for a while. I think her criticisms were valid and I share a lot of her frustrations with the way Australian banks operate. I want the banks to get it. I want them to give a flying **** about their customers but I am not convinced they do.
• The more observant of you may have noticed a little turbulence in the financial markets at the moment. Perhaps many people are not liking bankers presently...
  
• ...However the question of what my our future bank(s) should be has never been more important. We desperately need more consumer engagement from our banks - N.B. "engagement" does not equal "advertising".

So here's the pitch. A bunch of us re-start MyFutureBank. The banks are invited. Consumers are invited. Governments & NGOs are also invited.

Let's have this conversation.

actkm 2008

Massive shout out to the team who organised and contributed to the actKM 2008 conference in Canberra this week. Here are the presentations from Day 1 (including my own). Further reflections will follow on the weekend.

webifying the australian government

Did you know there is a Director, Web Policy & Online Technologies in Canberra who is responsible for making the Australian government all Web 2.0 n stuff? I didn't until a couple of days ago when I got an email for her. I had written to AGIMO to enquire as to what had happened about this. Of course in between sending the mail & getting the reply, I found this. There is undoubtedly some good stuff going on - such as Lindsay Tanner sticking his head above the parapet.

Apparently there are several events going on in Canberra in the next few months around this. Has anyone out there been invited?

It seems that the government are trying to achieve a radical goal (online engagement with their citizens) through traditional means (consultations, expert advice, behind-the-scenes meetings). N.B. If this is not the true state of affairs then educate me.

I really want to encourage them to go beyond that. Can we have members of AGIMO blogging about this for example? One thing I love about people like Jason Ryan is that they walk the talk. Come on my little cuddly bureaucrats, it's nice and sunny out here.

slower (perchance to dream)

I was at the Dave Gurteen / NSW KM Forum brekkie on the topic of "Is KM social?" with many of the usual suspects and some new faces.

One thing that stuck with me, while social software tools allow you to record experience as part of people's work, they can't fully solve one of the key challenge that knowledge managers face. Whilst embedding stuff and making things easy for people is very important, we've actually got to be wary of making things too easy for people.

Sometimes it's our job to say "Stop".

A key part of learning (individual or collective) is reflection. If you aren't willing to stop and reflect on what you have done (and its consequences), then you do not get the full benefit of that experience. We all probably need a weekly thinking time.

Just as our bodies need time to process the events, thoughts & emotions of the day (which may well be a key function of sleep), so we need time to process. Sometimes we do need to be asleep on the job (metaphorically).

One symptom of sleep deprivation is psychosis. If we cannot process our lives, we risk going insane.

Join the dots.

game 3: sticky wiki

A wikipedia entry referencing the minister of your department includes derogatory nick-names given to your minister by the press. A senior advisor to the minister approaches in the tea room one day and asks you – as the office “computer whiz” – to delete the offending remarks.

What do you do?

game 2: forumed is forewarned

An internet forum site with thousands of Australian users – tidalwave.com.au – includes a number of threads that are openly critical of the work that your group does. One thread in particular contains accusations that you and your group have acted illegally. These accusations are false. A major national newspaper has been lifting stories from this forum site on a regular basis and you fear that the contents of this thread could be next. You contact the media relations advisor in your department but they do not appear to understand the risks involved.

What do you do?

game 1: unleash the blogs of war

You are a public sector manager. Anne, a member of your staff, has a public blog where she posts mostly personal news about her rock climbing hobby. You don’t read the blog but occasionally she sends round email links to her climbing photos on the blog to her colleagues in the office. One afternoon you receive an angry phone call from Tricia, a senior public servant in another department. Apparently Anne has posted a blog entry critical of activities of that department that involve the rock climbing community. The post is not defamatory but some of the readers' comments attached to the blog post are abusive. Tricia believes that Anne has broken her terms of employment and wants to institute disciplinary proceedings against her.

What do you do?

social media public sector decision games

I'm doing a conference session in Canberra in November. My session is Social Media and the Public Sector - Examining the Hazards and their Policy Implications. I thought I'd kick things off with some decision games. I will post the 3 exercises up here. You can post up:

• The decision you would make.
• How you might change the scenario to make it more challenging or useful for participants.

the election (no, not that one)

Just before I went overseas (hence the lack of blogging), I exercised my rights as a new Australian citizen voted in my local elections. Australia differs from the UK in that voting in compulsory – punishable by a fine if you do not participate.

If you ask most Australians which system is better then they say the Australian one. However if you dig a little deeper and ask if they believe that Australia has a more engaged and informed electorate or a better standard of government than the UK then they tend to answer no.

The big problem here is that compliance is a poor way of generating engagement. The option of “going thru the motions” is a very tempting one for most people when presented with a compulsory activity. Do I need to point out any similarities with the world of organisational change and knowledge management?

ban "leadership"

This post by Bob Sutton chimed with some of my own thoughts. "Leadership" is a term much bandied about - and unhelpful. "Leader" is of some use but should be handled with care. "Leading" is fine.

There are people who lead others sometimes. They go somewhere (literally or metaphorically) and other people go with them. They are leading. The moment those people stop following them, they are no longer leading. And remember, they have to be going somewhere - otherwise that's "staying in one place" not "leading". Staying in one place is not necessarily a bad thing altho it doesn't have the same ring to it and probably won't get you laid: "Hi - I'm a leader stayinoneplacer."

Why am I being so picky? Well I think there are several things wrong with the industry that has grown up around leadership:

• It focuses on "being a leader" rather than "leading" and hence deals with characteristics & qualities rather than actions. Thinking that training courses & seminars will help you lead others more than actually, y'know, trying some leading is misplaced.
• It focuses on the individual (allegedly) doing the leading rather than the mass of people moving a direction (or more often several related directions). This allows the majority of us to disown our responsibility to lead ourselves: "I can't do this, I'm not the leader".

So what do I propose instead?

• If you want to be a leader then try some actual leading. Head off somewhere and see who comes with you. It needn't be somewhere hard to get to. If no one will come then ask them why. They may have some good reasons.
• The rest of us need to recognise that everyone's a leader. "It's not my responsibility" isn't really a good enough answer, ever. One day I may even live up to this.

networkplace

The commercial arm of EngineerswithoutFears continue their punishing publishing schedule.

making stuff happen if your thang is professional

The prompter behind the previous online post was some thinking around online communities with a corporate -> consumer focus (which is more about knowledge gathering). This post has been triggered by some conversations I've been having with different groups with more of a professional flavour - i.e. how do you nurture communities in a nascent professional group (either within an organisation or outside it)? This is more about knowledge dissemination.

I'm afraid there's another 2x2 matrix here but bear with me. It assumes that knowledge is unevenly distributed - there are experts and newbies. But it also assumes that even those with only some knowledge can help each other.

1. You probably need to start with some face-to-face (or coaching-intensive online) training - a mix of presentations & activities that use a "trad" learning approach. This is be demanding of time but relatively focused.
   
2. A website (with a blog, podcasts & videos) is helpful here. In effect this is your online broadcast system. This will require the building of content.
   
3. Once those newbies are up and running, they need to support each other. Something online helps here (esp. if people aren't co located). It may be a discussion board, an email list, a wiki or even a community tool like Ning. This will require facilitation.
   
4. Those newbies need to meet F2F occasionally to share what they have learned (both good & bad). This should take the form of an unconference like BarCamp - or some similar participatory approach.

Participants start on the left as learners. Then move to the right as colleagues then spread back across to the left as experts, colleagues and still learners (because ultimately we all remain learners).

The trick is to get these different activities to reinforce each other in a positive feedback loop. Trad education has been good at 1. eLearning made a stab at 2. But those charged with making people smarter need to get their heads around all four to be effective.

online communities - everybody's gotta thang

After this post, I've been thinking about online consumer communities. I was working on something very, very complicated and then realised that the first thing I had to write was actually very simple.

Communities

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the whole truth and

So I was thinking about the relationship between fact & fiction in relation to storytelling and some observations came to mind.

1. Fact & fiction are agreements. A story both teller and listener believe to be true could be labelled "fact" and one both agree is untrue could be "fiction". However those are not the only possibilities. A story the listener believes to be true but not believed to be so by the teller would probably be labelled a "lie" by a 3rd party. And the reverse might be labelled a "error" (or a delusion at worst). 2. In most social situations there is no 3rd party umpire of truth & falsity. And agreement on "fact" and "fiction" can be murky esp. when talking about interpretations and motivations. We end up negotiating a lot of this stuff.

3. The belief of a listener or teller in the story is not always constant. As a teller I might distort events for any number of reasons both innocuous (e.g. compressing events to make the story easier to follow) or self-serving (to influence the listener). As listener I constantly revise my belief of the story - esp. if I don't know the teller well or doubt their reliability.

I'd like to do an experiment where a story is told over the phone with teller and listener being able to control a slider with "totally true" at one end and "totally false" at the other. The result would be a pattern drawn on the above matrix (with a time component - you might show that with a gradual change in colour from start to end).

I wonder what the patterns would look like?

presentation station

So after Louise Mahler's sesh last night, I believe I ended up ranting about the 3 things that people need to do to become better presenters (because there are too many bad presentations that happen every day and life is too short to endure them).

1. Learn how to tell a story. A beginning. A middle. And an end. Pick up a book like this. Watch some movies. Read some books. Listen to experiences that other people tell you that stick with you. Try putting together a story of your own. Then cut out the bits you don't think you need. Then cut it back some more. What is the fewest number of words you need to tell your story? Can any word you add justify its place?
2. Learn how to tell a story with pictures. This book and this one and maybe this one. Learn to paint. Or doodle a lot. Or try getting busy with the camera. Try to tell a story using only pictures. I dare you.
3. Learn how to be in front of others. Now that you only have a few words and a few pictures - what is there left? There's you. Hear your voice. Raise your gaze. Feel yourself inside your body. Get up on a stage and do something unrelated with your work - acting, dance, comedy, stripping, it doesn't matter.

And when you've done all this, you'll probably rock (but you'll rock as yourself).

I am annoyed that so much of our education focuses on the analytic side of things & not this stuff. This shouldn't be hard but we seem to make it hard for ourselves. Go figure.

transformer

As much as McKinsey might bug me, they have an enviable access to senior execs and do churn out useful surveys. This one on organisational change is similar to their Web 2.0 number in that it kicks off with the bleedin’ obvious:

• Transformations with well defined targets tend to do better than those without.
• Having visible involvement from top people is important.
• Focusing on the positive as well we the negative (go positive deviants!)*

The final point is that organisations need to engage with their people in a bunch of different ways – incl. the use of narrative (in there above performance targets & incentives). I also like it that role modelling comes out at number four. At 7 pages it is way too long - compile it down into a single page that you can stick (framed or otherwise) on your CEO's door.

*Interestingly, it seems that it helps if you have a roughly equal mix of emphasising problems and successes – so think on that appreciative inquiry.

make some noise

The Sound of Leadership wasn't a promising title but the session run by Louise Mahler with the Creative Leadership Forum last night was excellent. Favourite exercise: The importance of pelvic thrusts in vocal delivery. Favourite fact: The reason behind the epidemic of vocal chord nodules among telephone sex workers.

intelligence test

We have emotional intelligence and then social intelligence, political intelligence, narrative intelligence and last night I heard about vocal intelligence. I like the idea of expanding our understanding of abilities to include more than just the mathematical or logical - as Howard Gardner has explored. However I'm getting a bit tired of hearing about "xxx intelligence". I'm not completely sure why but it's starting to feel overused - even cliched. It's in danger of taking a bunch of stuff that people do (and do well or poorly at different times in their lives) and making it mysterious.

The problem with the original Intelligence Quotient (IQ) is that it reified (& unified) something that might not be one simple thing (I find the Flynn Effect fascinating). These other intelligences could broaden out the notion of what it means to be an effective human being OR they could just be marketing labels that obscure more than they illuminate.

What next "blogging intelligence", "eating intelligence", "gardening intelligence"?

banker lend to thy self

Cheryl has a post about banking customer service that ends with the comment:

And they wonder why consumers hate banks. No amount of ads about happy banking, or your bank caring about you, or determined to be different, or whatever they advertise to try to convince you they care about you, will ever change the banking culture.

I am currently having some issues with my bank. And three thoughts strike me:

1. The greatest asset that many large, underachieving businesses (and that includes you, Australian banks) have is customer apathy. Seth Godin puts it well.
2. The banks are in for a(nother) shock. A few months ago, when I was still working for a certain financial regulator, a former exec from one of the retail banks came in to teach us about the banking sector. It was an interesting day but one thing stuck in my mind. In the 90s, the Australian banks were caught out when their prime business (loans and especially home loans) got hit by new entrants such as Aussie Home Loans - with lower rates and better service. Now the growth market that banks are targeting is "wealth management" - i.e. advising people on where to spend their dosh. Based on this former executive, the banks seem to think that this market is theirs for the taking. I think it's more likely to be a repeat of the loans situation - i.e. new entrants creaming the incumbents with better offers and stronger service.
3. Banks don't seem to understand that customer service means actually serving your customer, not your customer serving you. Not putting lots of bureaucracy in their way. Not hitting them with fees for everything (and most recently I have been charged a fee due to one of their cockups). If and when I become wealthy, why should I trust my future to someone who has no concern for me beyond the next fee hit opportunity and cannot be trusted with the most basic activities?

article at the other place

Find it here. More to come over the next few weeks.

podcast - mary-alice arthur on stories

A further podcast on stories with Mary-Alice Arthur in New Zealand.

Download the mp3.

Show Notes:
00:00 - Mary-Alice meets storytelling @ Glistening Waters
03:00 - Leader as Storyteller as Megatrend
04:00 - 4 Million Dreams in New Zealand
05:00 - 9/11 as one catalyst
05:30 - Appreciative Inquiry as a response
07:00 - Personal & national dreams
07:30 - Youthconnect
08:00 - "Not just one thing to do"
11:00 - What does a conversation sound like as a drumbeat?
13:00 - The Paua Shell
15:50 - Hoberman Sphere

more dramas

I spent Saturday hanging out with Johnnie Moore during his visit to Sydney and going off on lots of tangents. Our conversations seem to consist of multiple tangents from which we eventually return to our original topic. Anyways, one topic that came up was “mindfulness”. In fact it’s been coming up a lot recently (e.g the slow community podcast with Nancy). Here are some reasons why:

• Life is getting faster & more complicated. If we don’t manage ourselves we will get washed away.
• We have more autonomy – no one else (e.g. a government, a paternal corporate) is going to manage our lives for us. And as our lives get more complicated and more unique, others are less able to provide us with reliable advice.
• Mindfulness & self-restraint have been part of our religious traditions. As we have lost our dependence on religion so we have lost some of the resources that religion provided.

So in discussing drama triangles, I see them as part of a personal project around mindfulness and self-understanding. James R comments that they are negative – which can be true if they are used in an accusatory way: “You are a rescuer”; “You are a victim”. I see them more as tools to aid self-awareness (as KT notes): “What games am I involved in here and do I really want to play them?”

There’s something existential - recognising that you have a choice and more freedom than is immediately apparent.

the enterprise 2.0 drama triangle

If you are driving Enterprise 2.0 in your organisation, there are 3 roles you might be lured into playing:

• Rescuer. "Help, help, we cannot collaborate with Notes Teamrooms, surely your wiki will save us!" "Why yes, it will solve all your problems and all will be right with the world."
• Victim. "Why does no one pay attention to me? Why cannot I get any traction with the business?"
• Persector. "You are doing this all wrong! You are idiots with your impenetrable chains of emails and your hidden information nests!"

Other people will tempt you to into playing these roles by playing one of their own. They may even shift between them.

However, the budding Enterprise 2.0 dude (or dudette) must avoid playing any of these roles and being caught on the point of a Karpman Drama Triangle. There are other options:

• Rather than being a victim, admit your vulnerability. You are not all knowing and some of your experiments may fail. But you will fail fast, fail early and learn from your failures. You will succeed.
• Rather than rescuing, reach out. Connect with others trying to achieve similar things in other organisations. Tap into your internal & external networks.
• Rather than persecute, persevere. The "Enterprise 2.0" buzz term will disappear but the need to help smart people work together smarter will not.

Keep the faith people.

A hat tip to KT for putting me on to these in the first place.

enterprise 2.0 presentation

Here is the presentation from yesterday's conference.

E2point04ip

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Some notes to go with the presentation:

• This is a revised draft of this presentation I created back in April - with slides 23-28 owing a heavy debt to Patrick Lambe's rewrite.
• The email detox podcasts with Luis Suarez & co: Part 1, Part 2 & Part 3.
• The five steps are: i. ban attachments & instead link to files sitting in a more permanent location; ii. if an email conversation involves more than 5 people then shift it elsewhere, iii. make your tools as simple to use as possible, iv. encourage role modelling of good behaviours by senior staff, v. begin with a small step in the right direction rather than trying to change the world in one go.
• The 5 issues to consider are: i. security. email is insecure anyway but you need to clearly establish access guidelines for each location where documents are stored, ii. privacy with new tools is important - e.g. staff need to understand how public their discussions will be, iii. develop an archiving / retention policy for your documentation, iv. do not hit staff members with too many tools, they could be overwhelmed with choice, v. consider different IP options for ownership of content esp. if consumers are involved.
• The Cynefin framework is introduced because social software adoption is complex (lots of interacting agents, inherently unpredictable) rather than simple or complicated. Waterfall approaches do not work. More on Cynefin here: http://www.research.ibm.com/journal/sj/423/kurtz.html
• The final page concerned drama triangles. There will be a blog post on this topic soon.

grow your wiki

Stewart Mader is tearing himself away from the Tooheys-scented teet of Sydney/San Fran wiki-meisters Atlassian and going out on his own. As a fan of Stewart's work, I wish him all the best and advise you to check out his offerings.

enterprise 2.0 tomorrow

I will be chairing Enterprise 2.0 for Information Professionals tomorrow and then presenting the following day. See you there.

I promise to be as nice as possible.

what's wrong with shameless self-promotion?

So Seth Godin* has posted a comment where he says he doesn't think of the tribes thang as "shameless self-promotion". I don't think there's anything wrong with shameless self-promotion. Provided it's done well. If you give people stuff that is useful for them then it's fine. Bad shameless self-promotion is another matter. Taking attention ("lookatmememmeme") and giving nothing back is one of the surest ways to earn enmity short of calling someone's mother a street-walker.

There may also be a cultural issue here. Seth is American. I am English. What looks like shameless self-promotion to me probably looks like diffident introversion to him.

*Well I assume it's him. On the internet no one knows you're a lactose intolerant scuba diver.

the strange fate of steve denning

I am currently have a mild stoush with Steve Denning on actkm. I had the experience of meeting the "best keynote speaker on leadership innovation business narrative & storytelling" in DC earlier this year and it was as thrilling as any encounter between two awkward introverts (one of them still jetlagged) can be.

I picked up The Secret Language of Leadership in the US and have been listlessly flicking through it. It's not a bad book. In fact more than anyone else coming out of the KM arena, SD has found a topic and a style that resonates with business managers. He writes well. He has his sights set on the lucrative "leadership" market* and he's using storytelling as his differentiator. On their own, each book is good. But the overall sense is one of diminishing returns. This book is quite similar to the last. Either SD is a prisoner of his own success or he simply hasn't noticed yet.

He also has a worrying tendency (along with many other popular management writers in the US) to offer fixed recipes that allegedly cover every situation. This makes it easy for the reader to digest and gives them to confidence to apply the advice but life isn't always that simple. For example, the weakest chapter of The Leader's Guide to Storytelling is the chapter on innovation. Storytelling gets advanced as pretty much the only way of advancing innovation within organisations and it all gets a little silly.

The next book concerns high-performing teams. My fear is that there will be a thin veneer of new research over familiar themes. My hope is that it will be something completely new.

*This market will always exist because most people want the kudos of being a leader without the pain of actually leading. Books, seminars, workshops - anything but actually taking other people somewhere new.

ted's dead baby, ted's dead

I was having lunch with a mate a few weeks ago and we got onto discussing TED. Now don't get me wrong, there are lots of mighty fine talks on the TED site (and doubtless at the TED event). Inspiring, funny, clever, etc, etc. But we were both a bit sick of people going on about it and wanting to do copies. Y'know - fly in a few international speakers with books to their name, dress everything up in slick audio-visuals & charge $3-4k a head.

TED is interesting because it is unique. Which means that if you want to copy it you are missing the point. On the other hand, Interesting South tried something same same but different: Yes we have interesting speakers but they have a short period of time to make their mark. BarCamp also (punk) rocks - every man & woman is a star. Open Space offers a different model again.

For me there is a continuum between the pure performance that many trad conferences have fallen into and the emergent will-to-action of an Open Space. Given my personality, I prefer the local & the anarchic but it's up to you.

How do we make something better than TED? How do we make something new?

collaboration open space

So in the comments on the Open Publish post, Michael Sampson pulls me up. We were all talking about the human aspects of collaboration weren't we? I'd disagree. We were still talking about the human aspects of collaboration technologies. Which given the audience at OP is not necessarily a problem. But where in the environment for IT folks & KM folks & HR people & internal comms dudes & facilitators & suchlike. And even regular ordinary workers?

I'm not sure there is anywhere (please feel free to prove me wrong).

So I want to run an Open Space event around "collaboration". Only we probably won't use that term as such. Suggestions for a better one please. I dunno whether this will be 20 people in a church hall or 1000 people at the exhibition centre. You tell me.

I'll need the following:

• Volunteers/helpers/collaborators from different disciplines.
• Sponsors. I ain't gonna make any money out of this but if we want a big location then it's gonna cost $20-30k.
• And you. Yes, you.
  

mckinsey on web 2.0

You may recall EwF covering McKinsey's last Web 2.0 report. Well the Jesuits of Management Consulting are at it again with "Building the Web 2.0 Enterprise" (yours for your soul email details). They have a broader survey base than AIIM (but far less depth than the boys from Boston) and I can't comment on the other decent source of Web 2.0 business survey info because Forrester charge a day's wages for two pages of comment ("Our exhaustive research with IT decision-makers indicates that ECMs can be difficult to implement")*.

Anyway the McKinsey report is definitely worth a look-see. It seems that blogs, wikis & RSS are up and web services are down. The top uses are managing knowledge & improving collaboration. And companies where the business drives usage rather than IT seem to be more satisfied (which even the report acknowledges is kinda a "duh" observation but one worth reinforcing it seems). One result is that Asia-Pacific businesses have an unusually high level of satisfaction with Web 2.0 tools. But the survey doesn't tell you why. Lots of tasty hints, not much in the way of satisfying detail.

*At some point I will buy & read "The Groundswell" but I'm unusually time-poor at the moment.

slow communities & pace layering

Further to Nancy's work on Slow Communities and her question: "when do you need to be fast & when do you need to be slow?". This reminds me of Stewart Brand's idea of pace layering - which he developed to describe our physical environment but which also applies to our digital one (it's a favourite of information architects). Different layers change/move at different rates.

Activities, relationships & artifacts all shift at different rates. One thing important in our lives (individual & collective) is that they don't all do it at the same rate - the variety is good for us.

tribes vs communities

"Community" is term with a whole bunch of associations: collective, fuzzy boundaries, warm, social, perhaps a little suffocating, possibly a bit leftie.

"Tribe" has a different set of associations: also collective but harder boundaries, us against them, perhaps a little ruthless, possibly a bit atavistic.

Etienne Wenger and his many collaborators produced the theoretical work around communities of practice in learning & knowledge sharing. Meanwhile marketers & advertisers chose to identify* consumers based on the tribe they belonged to - trying to link abstract market segmentations to real social relations.

As online social spaces proliferate, we are hearing more about communities & tribes. But the more I hear these terms, the less I think they usefully describe what these new social groupings are. Few of our online groupings are either "tribes" or "communities" as most people would understand them. They are too loose, too ephemeral, too dynamic.

We don't have the words for what these things are yet. We have a language lag.

*And identity is important to both communities & tribes.

online communities & "tribes"

I've been a participant in online communities for over decade (pretty soon after I started exploring the internet seriously in 1996). Being a bit of a freak and therefore poorly serviced by my immediate physical communities, I launched myself into groups concerned with music, chaos magic and other stuff. I was a little surprised when things I learned about this environment could be applied to the KM issues I encountered in my job. Two things have come out in the last couple of weeks that take this a little further.

Beeline Labs, Deloitte & The Society of New Communications Research have a report on the "Tribalization of Business". This does not refer to middle managers covering themselves in paint and hitting each other with sticks (altho the trend for outward bound "team bonding" exercises in the 90s wouldn't make this topic surprising). Rather it's about the involvement of businesses in online consumer/customer communities - for customer service, marketing, new product development, etc. It's actually a pretty solid piece of research - with some nifty presentation ideas (use of Slideshare as a channel, using tag clouds rather than graphs).
Some of the takeaways for me are unsurprising:

• The focus should be on creating a good environment (including seeding the space with good content).
• It's about customers talking to each other (based on social rather than market imperatives).
• You need to support/facilitate them (many organisations seem to be under-resourcing their communities).
• It's not just about your community - but the range of online environments that your customers interact with each other in. You are part of an ecosystem and you (and your ego) have to accept that.

I don't think that we will be replacing Chief Marketing Officers with Chief Community Officers anytime soon for two reasons: i. For most organisations, there is more to marketing than online communities & ii. Online community champions need a different skills set to the traditional marketer. This new role has the following skills:

• Someone who is embedded in the same online environment as your customers outside your community environment as well as inside it.
• Someone who excels at listening, facilitating & doesn't need to hog the limelight.
  
• Someone who understands their own organisation very well.
  
• Someone with some understanding of the role of the community in marketing & new product development & customer service & PR.
• Someone who can pick up the tools quickly and make them work (but probably isn't a technologist).

Meanwhile Seth Godin has a wizard wheeze to promote his new book. Which is on tribes funnily enough. So Seth put up an invite on his blog to join his tribe (on Ning natch). All you have to do is pre-order his book and you're in. Well, you were. The invite was closed after 24 hours due to demand. Seeing as I was probably going to buy SG's book anyway (and I can still cancel it from Amazon if I change my mind) I pitched in. Some observations so far:

• SG's Ning group has nearly 3000 members. Many of them are like SG - shameless self-promoters who sometimes have something interesting to say. It feels very crowded - and already some structures have either emerged or been imposed to cope with that.
• What do these people have in common? Well, Seth. There seems to be a lot of "Seth, Seth, look at me" behaviour. Hopefully this will die down after a bit and people can start talking to each other.
  
• Ning seems to cope with a few hundred people relatively well but less so with thousands.

Things to check out:

• Beeline Labs Tribalization homepage (with webinars & stuff)
  
• Deloitte webinar (with added Intuit)
• Read/Write's observations
• Seth Godin lays out his Tribe thang.
  

Just as "collaboration" will become a much-abused buzz word, so "tribes" & "online community" have hit the peak of the hype cycle. More reportage as it happens.

open publish redux

So a major theme at Open Publish 2008 was "collaboration".

• Brett Jackson (in his capacity as a recently-departed employee of Atlassian) started off well, dipped into a puff-piece and then came good in the end.
• Michael Sampson talked about expertise location & some other collaboraty stuff.
• Cairo Walker talked about working with the WWF - and included some interesting facts about bees & elephants.
• James Robertson had some interesting points about collaboration - including the distinction between the internal (collaboration) & external (publishing) roles of team collaboration.
• Nerida Hart presented on the LWA work she has been doing.

I have two concerns with all this talk of collaboration:

1. Keeping the focus purely on collaboration technology rather than all the other elements.
2. Making it concrete & specific. Who wants to collaborate on what and why? Because not all collaboration situations are the same and what works well for a co-located team will not work for a global community of interest. "Collaboration" (like "knowledge" or "innovation") is a word that covers a multitude of sins.

mobile

The last couple of weeks have been a bit crazy so I haven't been able to blog as much as I like. Apart from Open Publish there have been some other things going on - including two events around mobile technology.

AIMIA ran an event on augmented reality. There were four speakers:

• Jason Collins from Alcatel-Lucent demoed some work with Georgia Tech. Live magazine ads & posters that cameras can recognise and then trigger content on your phone such as video.
• The next dude might have been either Adam Dunne or Peter Bray -pretty sure it was the former. Stuff on QR codes & Telstra. QR codes make the world clickable - a hyperlink on every surface.
• Viveka Weiley talked about the AR toolkit and some other stuff. VW obviously knows a lot but had some difficulty articulating that.
• Aaron Stafford from Adelaide talked about wearable computing & the Hand of God. Aaron was pretty blunt about the current user experience offered (it's a bit shaky and the equipment is a pain) but there are some obvious applications - augmented gaming, real estate & construction, etc.

The second event was Mobile Monday (which was bloody packed). Two pressos here:

• Xumii - a mobile social network site aggregator aimed at Gen Ys. Interesting tool but I suspect there is a low barrier to entry for this kind of product and they are still in beta.
  
• Justin Baird from Google. This was the headline act and a bit of a let-down. We learnt that mobile will be big (no **** sherlock) and that Google have some creepy ads for SMS Search. Android looks like it might have some cool stuff in it but that's all for the geeks really.

So two main takeaways from these:

• Expect to see QR codes everywhere before the end of the year. Also expect to see QR spam/junk data and marketing successes & failures (success uncorrelated to spend) in the same timeframe.
• Expect to see a plethora of mobile social networking technology - most of it aimed at teenagers. The first generation will simply be aggregators - then the next generation will start introducing rich media & location-based services.

Oh and I'll be getting an iPhone in a few months but I'm waiting for the data plans to sort themselves out first.