by Francois Gossieaux
August 19, 2011 at 3:05 pm · Filed under
FASTforward'09, Microsoft
Three years ago we embarked on a journey of hosting an Enterprise 2.0 discussion through the FASTForward Blog. The aim of this blog was to drive and deepen conversation about how today’s companies can use technology to put users in control of information. It was home to the ongoing discussion about Enterprise 2.0 opportunities and challenges.
The FASTForward Blog like the Enterprise 2.0 discussion has had many ebbs and flows. When we started the discussions were focused on Enterprise 2.0 adoption and today we are moving towards convergence.
The conversation has shifted and the focus we had at the beginning has changed. Just look at Rob Patterson’s post “Is Shutting Down Social Networks the best response to unrest”, a quick look at how community and the police are using social media to help with cope with the rioters in the UK or the post about Designing Mobile Apps by Bill Ives.
Those two posts indicate that our content has evolved and our initial purpose has been fulfilled with widespread discussion of E2.0 occurring in businesses and organizations of all sizes.
With that in mind, we will be closing the FASTForward Blog. Microsoft has hosted this discussion and we think you will agree that it has offered a forum for some stimulating, thought provoking and at times controversial conversations and for that we are thankful and hope that you have found value in your visits.
We have asked our most active bloggers over the last year to post closing comments for you. Thank you for the opportunity to host the conversation.
by Bill Ives
August 19, 2011 at 3:15 am · Filed under
Enterprise 2.0, Social Media
Recently, I received a review copy of Business Goes Virtual: Realizing the Value of Collaboration, Social and Virtual Strategies by John P. Girard, Cindy Gordon, and JoAnn L. Girard. I have known Cindy for some time and we have done work together on several occasions, including several writing efforts so I had high expectations for this work. The book argues that after some false starts, four critical enablers have converged to make virtual business opportunities a reality: social technology, visionary leadership, an increasing recognition of the value of a collaboration culture, plus virtual worlds. They define virtual business as follows: “A virtual business provides innovative solutions to new and traditional business challenges by exploiting social technology, leadership, and collaboration in both the real and virtual words.”
The book examines four virtual business strategies that are showing promise. The “any place, any time” strategy provides high quality service 24/7 through bypassing traditional geographic challenges. The “people know best” strategy looks at crowd-sourcing the wisdom of every-day people. The “everyone has a stake” strategy allows organizations to take advantage of their stakeholders’ views. Finally, the “real in the virtual world” strategy enables real businesses to sell their wares in the virtual world.
The book provides case examples and best practices. They look at both successes and failures in this new market and make some bets on the future. They conclude that virtual business is here to stay and firms need to develop a strategy to take advantage of this new market or risk their demise.
One strong example is the transformation from printed books to e-books. I am reading a virtual version of their book now. The authors report that on Christmas Day 2009, consumers purchased more Kindle books than physical books through Amazon, a virtual store itself. Now the iPad is booming with Apple selling more tablets than PCs both in terms of volume and revenue – and the iPad is much cheaper. It takes e-reading to new heights and provides connectivity to so many other possibilities. For example, it becomes that much easier to sharing insights from what you are reading or look up related information from other sources. Publishers who recognize this trend will be in position to ride the new wave and those that do not will be ridden over.
This new world will change many things including jobs. The authors note that many of the top jobs of 2010 did not exist in 2004. We are now faced with preparing our children for jobs that do yet exist and to solve problems that are yet unknown. This uncertainty has always been the case to some extent but it has become a much stronger factor. I saw from another source that in 1986 75% of the knowledge that a worker needed was stored in workers’ heads but by 2006, that number was estimated to be 9%. We need new ways of providing the remaining 81% and the virtual world opens up an opportunity for this also through social software.
by Rob Paterson
August 11, 2011 at 11:41 am · Filed under
Adoption
In my most recent post I showed how the community and the police are on a rapid learning curve to use social media to help them cope with the rioters – who also use the same tools.
It is ironic that we in the west now are considering shutting down parts of social media as a response to the UK riots – while we encourage its use by people in the Middle East.
Authorities grappling with violent unrest should avoid heavy-handed clampdowns on social media and instead try to enlist the help of the public against the rioters, said John Bassett, a former senior official at British signals intelligence agency GCHQ and now a senior fellow at the Royal United Services Institute.
“The use of social media in the unrest looks like a game-changer. But any attempt to exert state control over social media looks likely to fail,” he told Reuters.
“A much better approach would be to encourage and support individuals and community groups in identifying alarming developments on social media and even speaking out on the internet against extremists and criminals, and ensuring that the police have the skills and technical support to get pre-emptive and operational intelligence from social media when necessary.” Link
Surely the lesson here is to help the community and the police get ever better at using these tools themselves. To shut them down makes the community and the police blind too! Social Media did not cause the riots – it only makes the rioter more powerful. It can also make the community more powerful too.
Update: Here is how the Police are using Twitter as a Perp Walk:
Lifting a page from the hacker’s handbook, the Greater Manchester Police are naming and shaming rioters on their Twitter feed.
“We promised we’d name all those convicted for their roles in the disorder — here we go …” the police announced, as they began listing the names, dates of birth and partial addresses of individuals tried in connection with the disorder, which flared across Britain.
“Eoin Flanagan (born 01/01/1983), of Carson Road, Burnage, jailed for eight months for stealing clothes,” read one post.
“Jason Ullett (born 15/10/72) of Woodward Court, Ancoats, sentenced to 10 weeks in prison for swearing at police officers,” read another.
And another: “Stefan Hoyle (born 27/01/1992) of St. Stephen Street, Salford, jailed for four months for theft after found with a stolen violin.”
Think of it as a new kind of perp walk, but very much in the tradition of hackers who are fond of outing their rivals online.
The police department’s efforts received both praise and criticism, along with a few questions. The department explained that it released dates of birth so as to avoid confusion with individuals with the same name.
by Bill Ives
August 11, 2011 at 3:12 am · Filed under
Social Media, Web 2.0
Mobile collaboration is an increasingly important topic as two-thirds of the information workforce already work remotely, according to Forrester data. With the adoption of tablets such as the iPad and the proliferation of smart phones in the enterprise, that number figures to grow significantly. It is a matter of when, not whether that mobile devices exceed desktops. The new Forrester Wave™: Mobile Collaboration, Q3 2011 by Ted Schadler for Content & Collaboration Professionals offers some useful advice on how mobile collaboration requires a new app approach.
We are now living in a work everywhere world. I have noticed that even most small vacation inns have free wifi as a standard offering. Forrester notes that your most productive employees m now use four devices to get work done. This means that “client/server solutions with on-premises servers are inadequate, simply not responsive or agile enough for escalating user requirements and expectations.”
They note that mobile apps need to be designed to run well on any mobile device because of the proliferation of devices. With so many different mobile platforms and form factors to target, app developers will have to organize differently, code differently, and execute differently. In this new environment design skills grow ever-more important (and scarce). There will be new abstraction layers that separate presentation from interaction from back-end services. Teams now must design for mobile first.
Mobile apps must be delivered as a cloud service. Forrester notes that latency is already a problem for distributed organizations and even waiting for email to upload or download to a remote site can be painful. I see this with my iPhone. For me this wait time is mitigated by the fact that I mostly use the iPhone to check for messages when I am killing time. It would be very frustrating in normal use. In addition, access to team sites and even the file system from a hotel room over a virtual private network (VPN) can be excruciatingly slow. Fortunately this is no longer an issue for me but I remember it well. Forrester states that the problem is the lack of capacity, bandwidth, and data close to the device. The solution is cloud suppliers with data centers around the world and points of presence in every major city. The cloud is simply better for delivering good mobile app experiences. I would agree.
Here is another perspective on mobile app creation from the recent Enterprise 2.0 conference. This session discussed three components that any mobile strategy should have, which includes deciding what goes mobile, understanding how to mobilize applications and services, and designing a framework for managing mobility. On a related note here are some thoughts from the 2011 mLearn Mobile Learning Conference.
by Rob Paterson
August 10, 2011 at 8:01 am · Filed under
Adoption
Joe mentioned this week that the use of Social Media still have not taken off in small business.
But we also learned this week that the use of social media and texting is at the core of how the riots in the UK are being organized. The best rioter’s tool – The Blackberry which is encrypted.
Since then, the BBMs regarding Duggan’s death and the ensuring riots have gone viral. The Guardian was shown one message by a recipient which read, “Everyone in Edmonton, Enfield, Wood Green, everyone in north London, link up at Enfield train station at 4pm.” It detailed what items to being–including hammers–for the demonstrations.
The advantage users have with BBM is that the news continues to circulate, but is covert enough that it is difficult to trace. BBMs are encrypted and hacking this network would be incredibly difficult, so protestors are able to stay a step ahead of authorities.
RIM UK has stated that it will help Scotland Yard in any way it can, so the BBM may only have so long to live as a tool for rioters. But most of them are of the young, mobile-minded, tech-savvy generation, and there are a variety of tools at their disposal.
The Police and the community are learning also in real time how to help each other – by also using social media. Citizens are using Twitter and Facebook to help the police have better intelligence and the police are learning this week how best to respond and to monitor.
Here is a Google map that is being run to track incidents
The Police are setting up a Flickr site to help citizens help the police identify rioters
The Guardian has a map that shows incidents all over the UK
The only chance that citizens and the police have to get ahead of this to to get ahead of it – they have to use the same tools better and faster.
I make no ethical comments – this is what it is and there is no going back
This is the reality of our world today – it is rushing to a network state. So if you don’t know how to use this well – you are at extreme risk. You just don’t know what is going on and the pace of your interaction with the world will be too slow. It does not matter how small you are – you will be too slow to know.
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