The Workplace Blog

Original Signal is a new metablog that covers all things Web 2.0 extremly well. The blog combines headlines from a series of Web 20 blogs including Techcrunch, 37Signals, Mashable, Web2.0 List and Bokardo.

Wanting to learn more about wikis? Interested in some of the research behind wikis and their current usage. Hop over to the Proceedings of the WikiSymposium 2006 and you’ll find enough thoughtful reading to keep you busy for a week. I found the survey on corporate wiki usage particulary useful. Did you know that wikis are most successful when used for tasks requiring a novel solutions with information from credible sources being published?

The research also identified two types of wiki users - synthesizers and adders. Synthesizers post more based on their impact on other wiki users while adders’ contribution frequency was affected more by being able to accomplish their immediate work.

I have finally stopped using a blackberry. I am more thoughtful and reflective as a result. My blackberry cannot affect my personal life anymore either. When at home, I am not thinking about work anywhere as much as I used to. I am a happier person and I have more balance in my life.

I would have guessed that others moving away from their blackberrys would have agreed. However, a recently published survey on mobile usage proves just the opposite. Most business executives insist that mobile technology has improved the balance between their work and personal lives. According ot the research, 4 out of 5 business executives are always connected to work through mobile devices. 77% of those say that it improves their work life balance as it allows them to leave work earlier and work even when they need to be at home.

An article of mine titled “A Web 2.0 Tour of the Enterprise” was just published on Boxes & Arrows. A couple of folks have also posted some interesting comments in response to the article. Boxes & Arrows is an online publication for user experience professionals.

CIO magazine has published a list of game changing technologies. They include multicore processors, server consolidation and virtualization, RFID, software as a service and endpoint security. Not surprisingly, software as a service is most interesting to us.

Software as a service has immense potential. However, companies shouldn’t expect to see returns overnight. Companies will need to approach software as a service first with their outlier, non mission critical applications. And rewriting those applications from scratch is pointless. The web 2.0 philosophies that drive the software as a service mantra are worthwhile to consider when building new software only at first.

Writely, which was acquired by Google a month ago, has started accepting new registrations. While it doesn’t appear to be part of a Google Office Suite as yet, there are signs that Google maybe moving in that direction. As it is, we already have Google spreadsheets, calendar and mail applications. A Google storage service is rumored to be launching soon and Gartner analysts are predicting that a Google powerpoint application will launch too.

Should Microsoft be worried? I don’t know. Writely is a small application without the features and verstality of Microsoft Word. But then, it is free. And like most Google products, it can only get better in time. What does this mean for the knowledge worker? Nothing at the moment. No company is going to be asking its employees to move to Writely anytime soon. Except maybe Google, of course.

A Business Week article gives us a behind-the-scenes look at Digg (featured earlier in this blog here). As more than a million people visit Digg, what’s evident is the increasing collective propensity to give out facts, opinions and data and an often neglected need to listen (i.e. see this post by Seth Godin). Listening is not really convenient sometimes. It slows down our pace and requires that extra step, interrupting our momentum from a reacting frame of mind to a reflecting frame of mind. Obviously it doesn’t have to be an either-or proposition. Strategy, often viewed as a long-term proposition, requires nimble responsiveness; and our fast-paced response systems are fine-tuned by regular check-ups with the existing strategic framework.

A “practicing what we preach” example is found here. In the context of quickly evolving technology and collaborative dynamics, the Corporate Intranets Best Practices Report is a working document for continued discussions. Incidentially, Grazr’s newly released online feed aggregator (thanks, CNET News) has been included into the report. Check out the Screenshots page.

There is a visceral emergence subtly growing above the rapid pace of technological advancements. Listen for any length of time and you might feel like you’re in front of a virtual smorgasbord enticing your appetites. New oppportunities abound for the enterprise, and the counsel to implement is quite ubiquitous (also here). The clamor and promise for “new and improved” methods of communication, collaboration and innovation is real, but nevertheless contingent.

This “visceral emergence” started with a hushed reticence to embrace something just because it’s new; it continued as skeptics inform us of the hype and the failures of yester-year. Soon afterwards, we’ve probably accumulated enough mistakes to learn from the past ourselves (see this article for what web 2.0 is not).

One of the lessons from this “visceral emergence” is that overlying strategic considerations need to inform our decisions for the unknown future. Competitive advantage from technology is contingent upon the context of the enterprise.

Being “wiki-capable” is hardly going to become a differentiation factor for your firm’s strategic advantage. However, to capture that strategic makeup of your organization and to frame it anew with the technological capabilities available may amplify strategic advantages for tomorrow. Moreover, technologies have the potential to help explore new areas within the enterprise and uncover discoveries that may deepen or expand the existing strategic advantage.

Managerial judgment and decision analysis will, of course, be required to predict future consequences of the increase in scale/scope due to technological advances within the enterprise. The Intranet Maturity wiki might provide the framework needed to assess the status of your existing enterprise intranet.

Gartner’s Hype Cycle for emerging technologies is aptly summarized in this article from Out-Law.com and this article from CNET.

Digg swarm and stack (shown above) were recently launched to visualize, in real-time, the latest and the most “dugg” news and blogs. Check it out at http://labs.digg.com/. These projects are the result of collaborative efforts with Stamen Design. Stay tuned as Digg will be releasing a public API to allow outside developers access to this data.

Yahoo has recently started its corporate blog after “the successful launch of a dozen or so Yahoo! product blogs“.

As a consulting firm, we are always advising clients. In doing so, we leverage best practices, experiences from other accounts and industry research that can help us give our clients more informed advice. But sometimes there is nothing healthier or simpler to learn by practicing what we preach.

With that in mind, we would like to announce that the previously launched intranet best practices report is being made available as a “working document” in a wiki format. Just go to www.intranetmaturity.com to view the report, comment on a page, add a trend or even edit a page. Depending upon the responses and bearing in mind the risks of vandalism, we may need to limit the editing function at some point down the road.

We believe in wikis. Our own intranet is a wiki to which everyone contributes content and comments on it. We also believe that the more people who collaborate on a document or an idea, the stronger it becomes. That’s why we have launched the best practice report as a wiki. You can still download the polished version if you prefer. The downloadable version is better for sharing with co-workers.