Archive for Web 2.0
by Bill Ives
July 26, 2011 at 9:09 am · Filed under
Social Media, Web 2.0, Work 2.0
Here is a recent study that reported digital distractions from Harmon.ie on what has become a major issue at work. It impacts both work and time outside work hours, often blurring the distinction between the two. For example, the majority of people under the age of 40 stay digitally-connected in bed, and 44% of people stay connected during a night out at the movies. Of course many of these connections are for personal reasons, but often work is involved. In the following result summaries the bullets are in the words of the study. Here are some of the work related findings:
- Two out of three users will interrupt a group meeting to communicate with someone else digitally, either by answering email (48%), answering a mobile phone (35%), chatting via IM (28%), updating their status on a social network (12%) or tweeting (9%).
- Relatively few workers disconnect to focus on a task (32%) or during virtual meetings or teleconferences (30%), webcasts (26%) or lunch (12%).
- A majority of workers turn off their devices only when their boss asks them to (85%) or during one-on-one meetings (63%).
Most of the distractions are digital.
- Users reported getting sidetracked in email processing (23%), switching windows to complete tasks (10%), personal online activities such as: Facebook (9%), instant messaging (6%), text messaging (5%) and Web search (3%).
- Multiple devices on the desktop contribute to the problem, with 65% of respondents reporting that they utilize up to three additional monitors and/or mobile devices simultaneously with their main computer screen as they work.
Companies have responded with strategies to limit these distractions.
- 68% of respondents reported that their employers have implemented policies or technologies to minimize distractions, while 73% of end users have adopted self-imposed techniques to help maintain focus.
- The #1 corporate strategy used to discourage digital diversion is blocking access to public social networks such as Facebook and/or other non-business websites (48%).
A related, but different, problem is the difficulty in finding content. Respondents reported that they spend an average of 2-1/2 hours per week trying to find the documents needed in multiple local, corporate and cloud repositories.
- The user’s email inbox is the #1 location searched, with 76% of respondents reporting email as the first place they look. Other locations include the desktop (69%), file server (52%), shared workspace (34%), portable storage device (18%) and/or cloud storage (9%).
- The average user emails two or more documents per day to an average of five people for review, increasing email-based document volume by up to 50 documents per week. The fact that these attachments are stored on multiple local computers complicates the challenge of finding the latest document versions as well as merging feedback from multiple reviewers.
All of this points to a very disorganized workplace. The very tools that are supposed to help us are actually overwhelming us in some cases. The solution starts with a unified strategy for digital communication and requires some smart policies, cultural issues and wise implementation of limited number of technologies. I wrote about this recently (see Taking Control of Our Knowledge Consumption and Our Social Presence). I quoted Nick Carr whose new book, The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains address this issue, “companies need to challenge the assumption that employees should always be available. Some people do their best work when they’re disconnected, and companies should create a work culture that encourages it.” It sounds like they need to actually force many people to disconnect.
by Bill Ives
July 8, 2011 at 4:43 am · Filed under
Big Data, Enterprise 2.0, Social Media, Web 2.0
Big Data is a hot topic. I went to a session on Big Data Analytics for Social Media at the recent Enterprise 2.0 conference. Computerworld reported on an IDC study that predicts we will see a 50 times increase in the world’s data in the next ten years. In 2011 alone they report that 1.8 zettabytes (or 1.8 trillion gigabytes) of data will be created. This is the equivalent to every U.S. citizen writing 3 tweets per minute for 26,976 years. Then over the next decade, the number of servers managing the world’s data stores will grow by ten times to match the 50 times increase in data. The report adds that IT execs will likely have trouble finding enough people with the skills and experience to manage this increase This is all covered in the fifth annual IDC Digital Universe study.
This data growth is fueled, in part, by the spread of smart devices such as sensors in clothing, medical devices, and structures like buildings and bridges. In addition, unstructured information – such as files, email and video – will account for 90% of all data created over the next decade. Some of this growth is through the rise of high bandwidth data such as videos.
There is some good news as new hardware and software has driven the cost of creating, capturing, managing and storing information down to one-sixth of what it was in 2005. This is likely why servers will only grow ten times while the data they store will grow fifty times. Relative costs have also dropped as since 2005 the annual investments by enterprises in hardware, software and cloud services technologies, along with the staff to manage information, has only increased 50% to $4 trillion.
The cloud accounts for some of the cost reduction and will account for more going forward. Today, cloud computing accounts for only 2% of all IT spending. However, by 2015, though, close to 20% of all information will be attached to cloud services some way, and as much as 10% will reside in a cloud infrastructure, IDC stated.
According to David Reinsel, IDC’s vice president of storage and semiconductor research, the next step is to enable companies to better extract value out of their mountains of data, via big data analytics. “This is where real opportunities lie, and where some folks may miss the boat. As soon as big data success stories are advertised and people see that there is gold in their data … then you will find more companies desiring to put more data online.”
Gartner also weighs in on this issue in a recent report. While the volume within big data is a significant issue, Gartner analysts “said the real issue is making sense of big data and finding patterns in it that help organizations make better business decisions.” I could not agree more.
Yvonne Genovese, vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner: “The ability to manage extreme data will be a core competency of enterprises that are increasingly using new forms of information—such as text, social and context—to look for patterns that support business decisions in what we call Pattern-Based Strategy. Pattern-Based Strategy, as an engine of change, utilizes all the dimensions in its pattern-seeking process. It then provides the basis of the modeling for new business solutions, which allows the business to adapt…”
The ability to handle this explosion of data and make sense of it should be a priority of enterprises or they will be swamped in the next few years by both the data and their competitors.
by Bill Ives
July 5, 2011 at 3:35 am · Filed under
Enterprise 2.0, Innovation, MIX, Web 2.0
The Management Innovation eXchange (MIX) is “an open innovation project aimed at reinventing management for the 21st century. The premise: while “modern” management is one of humankind’s most important inventions, it is now a mature technology that must be reinvented for a new age.” I am impressed with their efforts and recently joined the MIX site. It is free to sign up.
MIX leaders include: Gary Hamel, Michele Zanini, Polly LaBarre, and David Sims, and others. I had lunch with Michele after the Enterprise 2.0 conference in Boston and he filled me in on some of what they are doing.
Here is the MIX Manifesto: “What law decrees that our organizations have to be bureaucratic, inertial and politicized, or that life within them has to be disempowering, dispiriting and often downright boring? No law we know of. So why not build organizations that are as resilient, inventive, inspiring and socially responsible, as the people who work within them? Why not, indeed. This is the mission of the MIX.” I can certainly support this effort.
They refer to this effort as Management 2.0. Consistent with Enterprise 2.0, MIX is using an open innovation model to collect and share ideas to support their mission. Operating under the principle that innovation is a social process they are building a community to support their goals. To encourage sharing at MIX, “every effort will be made on the MIX to ensure that every valuable contribution is recognized, and every contribution fairly credited.” This is a smart practice. They ask that all participants follow these guidelines, be: contrarian, concise, concrete, constructive, collaborative, and colorful. Part of the color side is to encourage more interesting profiles by participants.
One of the MIX initiatives is the Harvard Business Review/McKinsey
M-Prize for Management Innovation. In the first leg of contest (which runs from May 25 through July 18), they are seeking the “most progressive practices and disruptive ideas that illustrate how the governing principles and tools of the Web can make our organizations more adaptable, innovative, inspiring, and accountable.” There are two types of entries: an instructive case study (a Story) or an experimental design (a Hack). The goals is to show how Web 2.0 values (including transparency, collaboration, meritocracy, openness, community and self-determination) can help overcome the design limits of Management 1.0—and help to create Management 2.0.
Here is an excellent blog post by Polly LaBarre, How to Hack Management: A Practical Guide to High-Impact Disruption and Storytelling, that illustrates what they are looking for in the M-Prize but the advice goes beyond this initiative to provide guidance for any new management effort. Polly asks if the idea is: deep, bold, human, clear, and social.
Here is a sample hack, The Deliberatorium, by Martin Klein, Principal Research Scientist at MIT Center for Collective Intelligence. It is s “a software tool designed to help organizations better harvest the knowledge and incorporate the perspectives of their members to identify solutions for complex problems, avoiding the dysfunctional behaviors (such as noise, disorganized content, and polarization) that other social media often produce when applied to challenging topics.” It provides better treading of conversations that offers useful maps of conversation to enable to harvesting of broader input into management decisions.
by Joe McKendrick
June 5, 2011 at 4:59 pm · Filed under
Enterprise 2.0, Social Computing, Social Media, Social Networking, User Revolution, Web 2.0
Just a few years ago, engagement with social communities was an experiment that some bold individuals in bold organizations were conducting to boldly go where no one has gone before. Now, social or virtual communities are the fabric of day-to-day business. It is transforming the way information is disseminated outside and inside organizations as they connect with customers, partners, and industry players. But for some industries, it is disrupting or destroying — or if you look at it another way — enriching information gathering. Nowhere is this more evident than in the news business.
The question is then: Is the news business a victim or a beneficiary of the social media explosion?
That’s the question I and co-author Dr. Bill Gibbs of Duquesne University recently took up in a chapter in a new book on the implications of social networking, titled Handbook of Research on Methods and Techniques for Studying Virtual Communities: Paradigms and Phenomena.
The book, compiled and edited by Ben Kei Daniel of University of Saskatchewan, explores how over the last decade, virtual communities have evolved from massive experimental, educational, technological, business, and social environments to normal, day-to-day operations for a variety of organizations.
Chapters cover studies on various types of virtual communities, and in our chapter, we explore how global online communities now include hundreds of millions of members, able to communicate almost instantaneously.
Increasingly, traditional news organizations are finding they are being outpaced in coverage of world events by cadres of “citizen journalists” reporting in real time via social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook. While there are valid concerns about the credibility of information being posted on social networking sites, there’s no question that contextual reports are being delivered much faster to global audiences than traditional outlets. In addition, recipients have a wide array of choices from which they can acquire this information.
The news providers that are on top of the game now offer interactive sources that engage people, enable them to build community, and to participate in the news. At the same time, the digital interfaces through which people access the news are continuously evolving, diverse, and oftentimes visually complex.
In the chapter, Bill and I explore trends and developments in news-oriented virtual communities. We review several data collection and analysis techniques such as content analysis, usability testing and eye-tracking and propose that these techniques and associated tools can aid the study of news communities. We examine the implications these techniques have for better understanding human behavior in virtual communities as well as for improving the design of these environments.
The book has an additional 43 chapters as well, intended as a guidebook for executives and corporate leaders concerned with the management of expertise, social capital, competence knowledge, and information and organizational development in different types of virtual communities and environments.
by Bill Ives
May 24, 2011 at 3:45 am · Filed under
Social Media, Web 2.0
Recently, I read two blog post commentaries on Nick Carr’s The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains. One by Andy McAfee, Tune Out, Turn Off: A Mantra Needed for Our Times?, and another by Doris Nhan, Live from #gc2011: Nicholas Carr on how the Internet is hurting innovation. Carr’s book provides his research on how technology and the Internet have affected people’s ability to process information in a negative way. He argues that we are losing our ability to concentrate because of the Web. And I thought it was my advancing years. But I digress. Before I add my comments let me summarize what Andy and Doris wrote.
Andy said that he was first a skeptic but as he read Carr’s book and “reflected about my own habits, though, I started to get the uneasy feeling that he was on to something fundamental.” He adds that the 2.0 Era has put us put us immediately in touch with friends, family, colleagues, and strangers through easy to use software on the Web and increasingly available and portable hardware devices for access. Andy notes that this can be addictive and I would agree. Andy supports Nick’s claims that this also takes us away from deep thinking. His remedy is tune out and turn off but not before you provide your comments to his blog post. I did both in the order he suggested.
I have long been convinced of the need to gain a sense of isolation to concentrate, at least for me. I have always liked to work at home, starting as an academic in the 70s. I went to the office to meet with colleagues and students but my thought work was done at home away from those distractions. Now I have come full circle as I mostly work at home but maintain a very active business social life outside the home. For me it is having control over when I want to concentrate and when I want to be social. For this reason I schedule phone calls rather than have people call me whenever. The Web also allows for this option because it is available for virtual socializing when I want it but I can also turn away.
Doris Nhan goes a step further in her discussions about Nick Carr’s book by offering some specific suggestions from Nick for work that align with my own thoughts above. She writes that “to regain a much-needed balance, Carr suggests dedicating time specifically for the Internet and time specifically for focused attention on one task.” I would certainly agree. This is what I do. I often turn to the social aspects of the Web as a break from focused work just as people might go to the water cooler or the coffee room in an office environment.
Nick also suggests that, “companies need to challenge the assumption that employees should always be available. Some people do their best work when they’re disconnected, and companies should create a work culture that encourages it.” Ahem. I have long believed in this. For example, I never liked IM. When required to use it by one employer, I just had my status always set at busy. When I finally got a cell phone in the late 90s, it took me a year to discover that the incoming call function was broken as I only used it for outbound calls. I still give out my office number rather than my cell number, except for specific situations like meeting someone. I know I may be extreme but it is my way for maintaining control over my social presence and my knowledge consumption so that I can accomplish the thought work I need to do like write this blog post.
There does need to be a balance. I do expect someone to always be available when I need help with my computer but then I would not assign these call center people with the additional task of developing the company’s strategic plan while on call center duty. The bottom line is creating a pull rather than push situation and the Web does allow us to use it this away if we choose to operate in this mode. Now it is easier for me as I am working part time on many assignments and mostly working from home. I think that companies need to give their employees that same freedom if they want innovation and real productivity in thought work. Granted someone needs to mind the store but someone also needs to be determining where to take the store next. This is why you have a team.
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