by Joshua-Michéle Ross
February 11, 2009 at 11:15 am · Filed under
FASTforward'09, FFC09 Interviews
Jim’s comments focused on two basic themes. On the plus side is the notion that the heavy lifting of search is being hidden from end users who can’t/won’t learn to do sophisticated search queries on their own. On the “mildly troubling” side is something that he posted to the blog about this afternoon. As Jim explained, that post addresses the following notion: one of the management challenges being glossed over in the marketing focus of the conference is that managing search implementations and enterprise 2.0 implementations runs counter to the sense of order that makes most managers comfortable.
To manage these changes requires managers to become much more comfortable dealing with a messy environment. More importantly, perhaps, they need be careful lest they cripple innovation and experimentation by imposing an inappropriate level of management overhead and structure on these efforts. Technology management has become gunshy in too many organizations about technology project failure. They need to be careful to not take those lessons over into Enterprise 2.0 or they will kill the necessary degree of innovation we need to see.
BIO: Jim McGee: “For over 30 years, I’ve helped executives and organizations become more effective by making better use of information and communications technology. I’ve attacked these problems as an entrepreneur, senior executive, professor, author, blogger, speaker, systems developer, designer, and consultant. Today, I work with senior executives in organizations to formulate, structure, and solve problems in the effective use of information technology in complex knowledge work settings. I am adept at working with organizations to recognize patterns and make sense of complex situations. My clients and I then collaborate to design and build new business patterns and practices to take advantage of these situations and opportunities.”
by Joshua-Michéle Ross
February 11, 2009 at 11:13 am · Filed under
FASTforward'09, FFC09 Interviews
Matt Skone is a man with unique problems. As senior software engineer with LexisNexis his customers are lawyers. The unique problem that Matt faces lies in how lawyers need to search and consume information. Lawyers need to ensure that they have exhaustively reviewed all relevant content (think about missing an old ruling that set a precedent upon which your case might hinge). The most “popular” or “highly rated” content that might be helpful for average consumers does not help lawyers . The holy grail in the case of LexisNexis is to help lawyers know when they done searching.
by Joshua-Michéle Ross
February 11, 2009 at 11:03 am · Filed under
FASTforward'09, FFC09 Interviews
Just to mix it up a bit, I started the conversation by reflecting on my own observations about the conference as a first-timer. Paula suggests that there’s been a lot of overlap in messages from prior years wanting to think, “Are we there yet?”. Reflecting on a special Analyst Briefing she attended with the blogging team on Monday, she offers a few differences such as the social aspects of search and richer UIs.
BIO: Paula Thornton says, “Chasing business problems for over 3 decades has led me to a focus on Enterprise 2.0. The problems begin and end with issues that people have trying to get stuff done. Most enterprise tools hinder productivity at best — but they’re mostly just darnright annoying. The answer lies in real design (not decoration).”
by Joshua-Michéle Ross
February 10, 2009 at 11:47 pm · Filed under
FASTforward'09, FFC09 Interviews
Joe explains in this interview how Enterprise 2.0 will help individuals and enterprises manage through the current rough economic environment. Unlike with previous downturns, we have tools and technologies that enable degrees of collaboration, information sharing, and processing that offer new alternatives. For example, the technologies and services available to individuals – LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter – are enabling individuals to stay in touch with peers, and tap into the power of networking. Enterprises as well have low-cost resources available that enable conversations with customers, and internal collaboration will increase productivity and product turnaround times.
BIO: Joe McKendrick is an author and independent analyst who tracks the impact of information technology on management and markets. Joe is a regular blogger on the FastForward Enterprise 2.0 community site, and also authors ZDNet’s Service Oriented Architecture blog. Joe is also SOA community manager for ebizQ, and speaks frequently on Enterprise 2.0 and SOA topics at industry events and Webcasts. Joe writes a regular column for Database Trends & Applications, and has authored numerous research reports in partnership with Unisphere Research, a division of Information Today Inc., for user groups such as SHARE, Oracle Applications Users Group, and International DB2 Users Group. In a previous life, Joe served as director of the Administrative Management Society (AMS), an international professional association dedicated to advancing knowledge within the IT and business management fields.
by Bill Ives
February 10, 2009 at 11:46 pm · Filed under
FASTforward'09, FFC09 Interviews
Yesterday I posted my first impressions on The Don Tapscott Show at FastFoward 09. Here are some more thoughts. I said that rather that trying to figure out which generation is smarter or dumber, it is more useful to say that the definition of intelligence is changing. Prior generations were smarter than ours on many skills that were important to them.
My grandfather was a college professor but he also worked his way through school by building houses, a skill he got form his father. So when he obtained his first teaching job on a low salary, he built his own house for his young family. Now people are more specialized. Some of this broader range of practical skills in the real world may become useful again in today╒s down-turning economy. I am sure you can think of examples with your own grandparents.
So if we look at new skills in the virtual world, it also allows us look at the specific skills needed in our changing world and what skills may be enhanced by use of these media. Each medium is not a complete representation of reality. Each represents a different look at reality and each requires different skills. My grad school advisor, David Olson, said that if you read a book on skiing you enhance your information on skiing and enhance your skills in reading, not skiing. Among other things, he looked at what skills we gained as a byproduct of reading.
Each new medium brings us new skills as byproducts that are not always apparent. For example, researchers in the 70s showed film with zooming in to one group and similar film without zooming in to others. Then the two groups were given unrelated tasks and the people who saw the zooming in film paid more attention to details. Of course, whether this lasted more requires long-term research. Understanding the real impact of our new media also requires long-term research (see What Does Computer Use Really Do to Our Minds?)
Since each medium draws on different skills and supports different cognitive processes, we want to properly map media to tasks once we better understand their characteristics. For example, in some cases a picture is worth a thousand words, but in other cases a few words can be worth a thousand pictures. I did research in the 70s that showed that words were much better for certain spatial tasks that required location definition because they provided a way to codify the spatial environment to pinpoint locations and describe them. In other cases, with tasks that involved the mental manipulation of images, words did not help in the same way.
With the Web, text is still king for many purposes. It allows us to better codify information than images for certain tasks and in this way allows search to more easily find this information. Generally, we have to add text to images through tags to allow today?s search engines to find the images. Text also allows us to process information silently. The younger generation understands this since they can text message each other in the presence of their parents without their parents listening in.
This silent processing also makes text better than videos for sharing information in certain other environments. I often get videos sent to me when I am surrounded by others and have to save them for later. Then I never get around to looking at them. Text based messages allow instant processing in more environments like the conference session I am sitting through right now. As I wrote before, it took almost a thousand years for people to realize that you could process text in silence (see Phonetic Alphabet: the Information Technology That Keeps On Giving). I am sure it will take a while for us to better understand how to use the new digital media.
However, text is not always the right answer, as I found before. For example, the combination of audio and images can work better, in some cases, than the combination of text and images. You can only process one visual channel at a time but you can dual process an audio and visual channel. So you cannot read a text caption and look at the image at the same time. You have to go back and forth. However, you can listen to an audio description and process the image simultaneously. There is much research work to be done here. Getting back to the beginning in this post, the research is better focused on what are the skills and requirements that the new media bring and not which generation is smarter. I think the generally more inclusive younger generation would agree.
If you want the video version of this text message, here is the conference interview I did on it.
