by Bill Ives
March 23, 2007 at 12:40 pm · Filed under
Enterprise 2.0
The 2003 – 2004 blog definition debates continued and I was prompted in November 8, 2005 by Ethan Zuckerman’s comments at another Berkman Center meeting to write: When is a Blog, A Blog? Ethan made this comment at a session introducing the blog Christopher Lydon and his team from Open Source radio had just created. Ethan said that they were not doing a blog, but rather an RSS enabled content management system. In other words, they were using blog software to present ideas and collect comments. Ethan explained that most blogs are connected to an ecosystem of other bloggers who engage in online dialog. To be a real blog, the Open Source site had to present more of Christopher’s personal views. Much semi-heated debate followed.
I think the best answer for Enterprise 2.0 is somewhere in between Zuckerman and his characterization of Lydon. An RSS enabled content management system is not Enterprise 2.0. Ideally, Enterprise 2.0 initiatives create an enterprise ecosystem with online dialog but certainly the topics should not be restricted to personal views, even on enterprise issues, as there are many other practical and useful applications of these new tools and approaches. What is your perspective on enterprise blogging? How many, if any, of the norms of the blogosphere apply within the firewall.
by Joe McKendrick
March 22, 2007 at 12:03 pm · Filed under
Enterprise 2.0
Nick Carr has just posted the results of two new studies on Web 2.0 adoption within the enterprise, which appear to demonstrate that the Enterprise 2.0 trend is growing legs within enterprise settings. However, at this stage in the Enterprise 2.0 evolution, it may be time to start taking a closer look at the business benefits being leveraged by Enterprise 2.0 technologies, rather than obsessing about how many are adopting which types of tools.
Forrester, for example, found that almost nine out of ten of the 119 CIOs surveyed said they had adopted at least one of six prominent Web 2.0 tools – blogs, wikis, podcasts, RSS, social networking, and content tagging. More than a third said they were already using all six of the tools.
Another survey of 2,800 executives (not just CIOs) from McKinsey & Company also found strong interest in many Web 2.0 technologies but much less widespread adoption. McKinsey looked at six tools, including mashups (not covered by Forrester), blogs, wikis, podcasts, RSS, and social networking. Investment in or planned adoption included the following: social networking (37%), RSS (35%), podcasts (35%), wikis (33%), blogs (32%), and mashups (21%). Interestingly, McKinsey found Indian companies leading North America in embracing these tools.
Nick’s report was pretty straightforward, without the spicy anti-IT opinions that usually color his commentary. But Dana Gardner, a leading industry analyst, did step in with a response, questioning whether such surveys should be directed at line-of-business executives, rather than CIOs — who tend to look at the technologies as tools, rather than their usefulness to business. Plus, there needs to be more questions asked about business benefits, not mere adoption. We’re well beyond the tools “adoption” stage in the evolution of Enterprise 2.0.
Such business benefits may include “inexpensive global/long tail communication, marketing, search ranking benefits, and community development and involvement,” Dana said. “The same survey should be given to the marketing executives — who may get this more than the CIOs at this juncture. The better question to ask is, how do the marketing and knowledge management leaders in the enterprise want to best avail themselves of these tools?”
In fact Hadley Reynolds just provided some insights on the business benefits from a recent survey of 400 executives now being put together by FAST and Economist Intelligence Unit. As Hadley relates, more than 80% of respondents reported that they view the 2.0 technologies as “an opportunity to increase my company’s revenues and/or margins.”
In addition, the EIU survey finds that more than 75% of executives report that the greatest impact from Enterprise 2.0 will come in “the way my company interacts with customers.” Approximately 40% report that they see strong impacts coming in the way their company is viewed by customers and in the way employees interact with each other and the enterprise. And 40% also report that they see 2.0 impacting their business models.
“All of these survey results point to a strong sense of connection between 2.0 and future business benefits – particularly in offering the customer web-centric channels for interacting with the firm,” Hadley concluded.
In his own blog response to Nick Carr’s news, Ross Mayfield also urges that we focus on the business applications, and supporting grassroots introduction of new technologies.
by Bill Ives
March 21, 2007 at 10:39 am · Filed under
Enterprise 2.0
Well, I actually do not believe this and it would be an odd post on an Enterprise 2.0 blog. However, this is the title of a blog post I wrote on May 31, 2004 as I was first getting to know blogs. I had just attended one of Dave Winer’s blog meetings at the Berkman Center where he said that he heard from those who have seen blogs both inside and outside organizational firewalls that the more interesting blogs are outside the firewall. I added in my post, “If the goal is objective and entertaining journalism, then I would agree completely with Dave and, in fairness, this was likely his context for the comment.” However, we have gone far beyond this use of blogs in 2007. The early uses of blogs attracted a lot of attention, as blogs were one of Webster’s Words of the year in 2004. This attention both helped and hindered their use within the enterprise.
There was a lot of debate in 2003 and 2004 about what is blog. Jordan Frank summarized some of this discussion in his post, What is a Blog? A Wiki? As Cesar Brea said in 2004, blogs can be considered as both a style and technology. For each objective, there will likely some unique aspects of the technology, the functional design, and the style. Dave Winer focused on the style and defined blogs as the unedited voice of the writer and they reflected a personal perspective. He viewed technical functions as not as important and the need for comments as optional. Jordan focuses more on the technology as he defines blogs and wikis as “A system for posting, editing, and managing a collection of hypertext pages (generally pertaining to a certain topic or purpose)…
Blog: …displayed as a set of pages in time order…
Wiki: …displayed by page as a set of linked pages…”
For Enterprise 2.0 purposes the emphasis should be on the technical capabilities, on one hand, because it opens up more uses. From a purely technical perspective Jordan boils the tools down to their essence and essential difference and this is useful as we think of new uses. As he wrote, why should a technology be defined (and limited to) by its initial major use case. However, the Enterprise 2.0 technology does enable a different “style” of interacting with others and this is something many of us prize. And blogs and wikis have distinct styles apart from each other. Blogs are more about communication and are author-centric. Wikis are more about collaboration and are content-centric. The open communication of both blogs and wikis is much more than a technology and Enterprise 2.0 is much more than a technology play. It needs to be more than technology to realize its potential and to succeed.
I found that the early perceptions of blogs as personal political platforms often got in the way of acceptance by those within an enterprise or least it limited their thinking about what can be done with these tools. We still have a job to overcome these early perceptions of blogs while maintaining some of their open communication. Wikis seem to have less baggage attached to them and that might partially (and only partially) explain their recent rise in use within the enterprise.
by Jerry Bowles
March 20, 2007 at 11:24 am · Filed under
Enterprise 2.0
Kicking Vista at this point may fall into the dead horse category because so many users have already vented their frustrations that there isn’t much left to say. But, fellow Social Media Collective member Zoli Erdos has been having a lot of fun trashing Microsoft lately and my first encounter with Vista is still fresh enough to get my blood boiling so hear me out.
When my old computer died a few weeks ago I ordered myself a new Dell which came with Vista already loaded. I know from personal experience that installing a new Microsoft OS over an old one never works out well and it’s always better to start fresh.
My first disappointment was discovering that my new Vista computer was no faster than my old one running XP–despite having 2 gigs of RAM. Vista is a ruthless RAM-sucker. That’s not my least favorite thing, though.
My least favorite thing surfaced when I attached my Maxtor backup drive and tried to move some old files over to the new hard drive. I clicked on a folder and a message popped up to inform me that I didn’t have permission to open the folder. I tried another one. Same thing.
Now, my wife checks e-mail occasionally on my computer but other than that nobody else ever uses it. All of the files and programs on it are mine. I put them there. Ditto, the Maxtor. So, I think, why can’t I get access to my own files?
After about an hour of fumbling around, I discovered that through a laborious manual process I could claim “ownership” of the files, set permission levels, and open the folder. Sure, I thought, there must be a single button somewhere that I can push to tell Vista that all of these files are mine. Not even those CIA guys at Guantanamo would make a hardened terrorist go through this process for every single one of the 400 or so folders on the drive. I was wrong. Bill Gates planned to make me do exactly that. Bottom line: I’ve had my new computer for six weeks now and there are still files on the Maxtor that I haven’t transferred because I just can’t go through the bullshit. I also have an access problem with an update client that the system blocks about three times a day–although I’ve given it permission at least 300 times. If I say okay that many times, shouldn’t the system take my word for it that I want the program to run?
Of course, there is also the problem that all this access stuff is pointless. If I can continue to click and give myself permission to open a folder that means anybody else who sits down at my computer can do the same thing. Maybe the process makes a little sense in a corporate environment where you might have multiple users who log on with different identities but why punish the millions of home and home office users by making them go through the bullshit?
To be fair, there are some things I like about Vista. The look and feel are comfortable and it feels stable. The file organization is much improved. I particularly like the new Windows Mail client that replaces the old Outlook Express. It also has a decent calendar. In fact, I liked it so much that I uninstalled Outlook, the Microsoft product that I have come to hate most. No more, endless scanning of the archives because I “didn’t shut down properly,” no more five minute searches of the inbox to find a missing e-mail, no more archive rot.
But, if Bill thinks I’m going to spring for an Office Update, he’s nuts. There is just too much good Office 2.0 stuff out there and I’m planning to hold a grudge about the permissions nonsense for a very long time.
