Social Media - Restoring the American Dream?

May 12, 2008 at 6:49 am · Filed under Blogging, Collaboration, Columbus, Energy, Peak Oil, WOSU

When de Tocqeuville came to America he was stunned by how Americans did not wait for the official authorities to fix local problems as they did in France. He saw that Americans usually got together as a community and worked things out for themselves. Most of see now that this response has been lost.

But there are signs that blogging and social media is restoring the original values of America. Here is how “The Other Paper” is describing the work that WOSU is doing to spark the Bloggers in Columbus to life as a real force in the city:

A civic divide is growing in Columbus. For the past decade or so, ordinary people have become less inclined to call their political representatives or drive all the way down to City Hall to personally lobby government officials.

But a community of tech-savvy, affluent white kids say they’re picking up the slack. Columbus’s bloggers believe they’re furthering democracy, improving the economy and advancing humanity—all without missing Grey’s Anatomy.

Ranked as the No. 8 most active blogging community in the nation, an estimated 10 percent of Columbus inhabitants regularly pounded the keyboard in 2007, offering up online commentary themselves or consuming somebody else’s, according to Nielson Media Research.

If you’re among the remaining 90 percent, all this probably seems like a colossal waste of time.

In fact, according to the bloggers themselves, they’re saving the city.

“The need for two-way or conversational media is more vital than ever,” said Jeff Johnson of the Urban Infill blog.

Johnson compared his medium with what he called the “doomsday” style of the mainstream media. Traditional outlets simply report troublesome news, he said. Bloggers, on the other hand, “have a propensity for uncovering solutions,” he said.

When bloggers get together, “We create ideas. We create a vibration that this city is thirsting for.”

There are problems that just cannot be solved by the “authorities”. Will the school system reform itself? How will the mortgage crisis resolve iself? How will the middle class and the working poor cope with higher oil prices? My bet is that these kinds of issues can only be resolved by communities working with each other.

Here is how they are helping with the Mayor’s plan for bringing back streetcars:

“These are the kind of people who will make Columbus great as we move forward,” said Mike Brown, spokesman for Mayor Mike Coleman.

“This audience is important to the mayor, and he is paying attention,” he said.

Nevertheless, the mayor is eager to capture the hearts and minds of the demographic that lean toward blogging, Brown said.

“Many of them are young, creative professionals. He loves the energy.”

One reason Coleman might love the energy is that bloggers have embraced his pet proposal: streetcars. The online community has been more supportive than the public at large for the mayor’s plan, which is now stalled, to run a streetcar line between Downtown and campus.

Many bloggers have put “My blog supports Columbus Streetcars” icons on their websites. RetroMetro’s Paul Bonneville has launched Columbus-streetcars.com, the “unofficial citizen support site for the Columbus Streetcars.”

I think in 2008, the pips will begin to squeak. Higher food and energy costs will begin to fracture how we all live. Where I live on Prince Edward Island in Canada, the average wage is $26,000. Half the people live in rural settings and have to have a car/truck. We have a 6 month heating season. Many are hanging on by their finger nails right now.  I am sure that large parts of America are in the same situation.

I think it will become clear soon that we will have to re-design nearly every aspect of how we live becuase the design we use now assumes affordable energy prices.

Social Software may well be at the heart of how we do this re-design.

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Survey: Demand for Web 2.0 Skills Hot, Getting Hotter

April 18, 2008 at 2:55 pm · Filed under Blogging, Collaboration, Enterprise 2.0, Google, IT Department, Microsoft, Social Computing, Web 2.0, Yahoo, enterprise software, mashups

I recently completed work on a survey report for Evans Data measuring the impact and trends shaping Web 2.0 projects within the enterprise.

The survey of 385 corporate managers and developers covered Web 2.0-based development mechanisms — such as mashups and gadgets/widgets — as well as social networking tools. Both types of environments are now very much a part of the corporate scene, and have become important tools for corporate applications, the survey finds.

Demand for Web 2.0/Enterprise 2.0 talent is hot, as a matter of fact. Two out of three respondents say their demand for such talent will increase over the coming year. That’s because there is a lot of strategic business-to-business and internal business development going on by software developers in the survey. Developers are working on Web 2.0 software for business applications in several areas, including interface design, gadgets and widgets, and social networking.

Most Web 2.0 applications are being targeted at internal corporate requirements, versus consumer engagements. Close to half of the survey participants are focused on developing applications for internal use inside their companies. Less than a third are building Web 2.0 applications intended for delivery on a subscription base to online users.

Forty percent of interfaces for Web 2.0 applications are “mixed” web-rich clients that include AJAX for fast downloads of pages that include live feeds of data (gadgets) and other dynamic components found in Web 2.0 applications. An overwhelming majority of respondents are using gadgets and widgets (portable Web parts) from Google, Microsoft, Yahoo! and others to deploy fast, lightweight business applications and services.

More than four out of ten companies encourage social networking; however, most feel the business value still needs to be demonstrated at this time. Social networking is strongest among developers in scientific and technical fields, who see social networking as a communications and collaboration medium, and among OEMs and systems integrators, who see benefits in product delivery.

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A Modest Proposal to Kick Off the Ultimate User Revolution

March 5, 2008 at 4:01 pm · Filed under Change, Collaboration, Dead Paradigms, Enterprise 2.0, FASTForward '08, FASTforward08, IT Department, Messy World, User Revolution

In the old days, radicals talked about workers owning the means of production.

What about owning the means of production in today’s information age?

Bob Lewis has a 21st Century take on this: why not leave it up up to the end users to supply their own computers on the job?

Here’s the lay of the land, as Bob puts it:

“When using their home computers, end-users experience a vast array of possibilities, but at the office they operate in a very constrained space; and increasingly, ‘work/life balance’ is giving way to “‘live your life wherever you are.’”

As we’ve seen from the many insights coming out of FastForward ‘08, users need to be unleashed to get their jobs done with the tools they see fit. So why not let employees do their thing with their own PCs? As Bob Lewis put it:

“No corporate-owned PCs at all. Let employees buy their own — whatever they think they need to do their jobs. It’s Nicholas Carr’s vision in reverse: Only central IT remains. Employees take over ownership of the periphery, including responsibility for their own PC support.”

We already see plenty of instances of employees using their own mobile devices for work-related connectivity. And, countless users log in from their homes to check into the intranet or for updated communications.

Of course, the legal departments would pull their hair out at the notion of everyone bringing in their own machines to work, especially in light of fears of data being taken out the door. But if there were a way to effectively lock down data either online or offline, wouldn’t this idea make a lot of sense?

So, Bob put another idea out there — virtualize. “Give end-users two virtual machines.” One virtual machine — the corporate virtual machine — could be “buttoned-down, corporate, protected, fully supported, and strongly connected.” The personal virtual machine could be the “sandbox,” on which users can do anything their hearts desire.

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Enterprise 2.0 Opportunities are No Fool’s Gold

February 19, 2008 at 3:36 pm · Filed under 2.0 Design Thinking, Artisanal Economy, Change, Collaboration, Economics, Enterprise 2.0, FASTForward '08, FASTforward08, Messy World, Social Networking, Wikinomics

In his keynote at FastForward 08, Don Tapscott asked a question I’ve always wondered about: “Why does the ‘firm’ exist? …Why isn’t everybody an independent contractor at every step of the proecss?”

I’ve always felt that there’s entrepreneurial energy in all of us, and that being relegated to worker bee roles stifles that innovation, locking it into a 9 to 5, two-week-vacation-a-year cage.

Don answered the question with the fact that the cost of transactions has historically been too high for most of us to bear.

Well, the times, they are a changing. Enterprise 2.0 has changed that equation dramatically. Don pointed out that collaboration costs have dropped dramatically, to the point where people are peers, and the can interact beyond the bounds of the traditional corporation.

Don offered an example of Goldcorp, a mining company, which had the challenge of locating new sources of the mineral within its properties.The company’s in-house staff of geologists were unable to identify new sources with the information they had. The CEO decided to open up all the information it had on its properties, including geological data, and offered a reward to anyone out on the net who could help locate new sources. Geologists and non-geologists alike offered information that led to new finds, and the company has grown from $90 million to $10 billion in assets.

Dare I say it? There’s gold out in them thar Enterprise 2.0 hills.

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Davor Sutija, SVP of enterprise products, FAST

February 19, 2008 at 2:17 pm · Filed under Collaboration, FASTForward '08

Davor discusses how the nature of talent is changing and why collaboration among individuals is so critical.

Bio: Davor Sutija is senior vice president for enterprise products at FAST and has responsibility for go-to-market and product strategy. Previously he was general manager of the Adaptive Information Warehouse offering and led FAST’s business efforts in the use of search with structured data. Prior to joining FAST, he served as a board member and executive at Birdstep, SensoNor, and REC. Mr. Sutija holds a B.S. from the Management of Technology program at Wharton and a Ph.D. in chemical engineering from the University of California, Berkeley. He studied studied philosophy of science at Cambridge.

 

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