The Workplace Blog

Colin White featured the Avenue A | Razorfish Wiki in an article for the Business Intelligence Network. In discussing web 2.0 technologies and how they can be used in collaborative workspaces, Colin highlights our wiki and compares it to Accenture’s more traditional knowledge management system. To quote,

“As the Avenue A | Razorfish portal demonstrates, Web 2.0 technologies offer a powerful and alternative approach to building and deploying portals and their associated workspaces. Web 2.0 is here to stay, and IT organizations must plan for its use. At present, Web 2.0 approaches are being used by more technically focused staff such as consultants, and it remains to be seen if less experienced business users will adopt them.”

Those are kind words but I would like to point out that Wikipedia is not managed by technologists and nor are they its audience. I believe that wikis have a place in any organization and it is more a matter of the organization’s culture that determines how successful a wiki solution maybe. Wikis aren’t for everyone, but they’re certainly useful for more scenarios than you may realize.

Over the last two years here at Avenue A | Razofish we have talked about the consumerization of IT. We’ve discussed how consumer technologies are invading the workplace and changing it for the better. We called this the Google Affect. When we launched the corporate intranets best practice report last summer, we included a special section discussing consumer trends influencing the workplace too.

Everyone else is talking about the trends now. The Economist magazine has a story about consumer technologies invading corporte computing. They use Google’s Apps for Domain as an example of how some companies are ditching their email infrastructure to use the Google service. The article also discusses Salesforce and the software as a service model too. It’s worth a read.

It was only a matter of time before IBM and Yahoo entered the corporate search market. What’s surprising is that they decided to do so together. Recognizing that employees depend upon the web to find information as much as their own intranets, IBM has partnered with Yahoo. IBM’s Omnifind search solution will present the results in a single consolidated user interface. And like Google, they also have a starter free version of the software.

Increasingly, companies are realizing that the lines between their intranet and the wider web are blurring. The more an intranet can integrate the web and connect with it, the better it is. Employees want to find information and they care less about the source whether it is their own intranet or a trusted external web source. Companies that tried to bring the web to intranets via weather and news portlets are realizing that its best to let employees choose their own sources of information.

It’s a good sign when IT departments communicate with their business customers and the wider world. Business people learn about the challenges and pressures facing the IT departments. Intel has taken the lead in this effort with their recently launched IT@Intel blog. Are your business units and the IT departments talking to each other? If not, a blog like the Intel one may help.

Be sure to read the post on reversing the 80/20 rule for IT investments. They talk about HP’s efforts to reverse the basic 80/20 rule where 80% of the IT investments go in keeping the business running while only 20% goes towards new capabilities.

Now here’s an application that you maybe a little hesitant to integrate into your own intranet. Cogmap is the Wikipedia of Organizational Charts. Any user can go in and edit the organizational chart on the intranet with this tool. You can zoom in, view related information and make corrections as and where you see fit or maybe make errors too.

So why does this application matter then? It’s a perfect tool for senior managers who are restructuing their companies They can brainstorm new organizational structures together, move things around, add suplimentary information to the charts and see how what their new organization may look like. In other words, this is the perfect example of a web 2.0 application that has a niche audience which can be integrated into an intranet. Ideally speaking, this tool should be bundled with other tools targeting senior managers.

Sometimes it is much better to have someone else talk about what you do. We visited Andrew McAfee, a Harvard Business School professor, last week to chat about Enterprise 2.0 and give him a tour of our intranet wiki. This wiki is our latest attempt to practice what we preach and builds on the Peers intranet tool which was developed in our west coast offices. In a nutshell, Andrew absolutely loved the wiki.

Visit Andrew’s blog for more screenshots and his commentary. The wiki was recognized at the Shared Insights Portals Conference as best in class in the collaboration category. Donna Jensen attended the conference to receive the award on Avenue A|Razorfish’s behalf. I also presented the wiki at the recently held cmf2006 CMS and Intranets conference in Denmark.

Several different people participated in the design and development of the wiki including Ray Velez, Donna Jensen, Karen McGrane, John Ryder, Greg Gross, Sherwin Green, Steve Gray, Mike Barrett, Eric Muller, Kevin Kearney, Amy Vickers and myself. The decision to “wikify” was made during a technology community leadership meeting late last year and we have been fortunate to have the active support of the Avenue A | Razorfish management team as well.

Susan Scrupski of ITSinsider fame was in our offices last week and blogged about us on her new ZDNet blog which covers the IT Services space. You can read about her conversation with Basel Salloum, David Deal, Amy Vickers and Bob Lord at ZDNet IT Services.

B2B magazine has a special on Web 2.0. The articles include Web 2.0: Join the Revolution , what exactly is Web 2.0, B-to-B Media buy concept, Watching Web 2.0’s rapid evolution and Sun enters virtual world to connect with developers.

I’m quoted in the what exactly is Web 2.0 article as emphasizing that Web 2.0 is about the values it espouses. I also discuss a few of the potential challenges with Web 2. applications. Telll me if you agree/disagree with views expressed in the article.

Google bought Jotspot today to add to its Google Docs & Spreadsheets collection. The writing is on the wall. Google feels that it can compete with Microsoft by creating (or buying) free Web 2.0 oriented Office type programs and serving up advertisements on them. The question is whether something like Office Live is equivalent. Take Office Live for a test run to see what it’s like. Do you see easy to use, web-based, collaboration features?

Microsoft should be worried. While Office 11, Sharepoint and Office Live are strong products, they operate in a different space to Google Docs. A space which Microsoft should not be seceding to Google if it wants to be relevant in the web 2.0 world. It’s only a matter of time before Google moves up the value chain with an enterprise version of Google Docs that will directly compete with Microsoft Office. They did that with search, they can do that here as well.

If I were Steve Balmer or Ray Ozzie, I’d buy this company right away. The company’s products integrate with Sharepoint.

We all know that the physical environment that you work in makes a difference to your productivity. Some companies take that notion extremely seriously. Check out these seriously cool workplaces and decide which you think is the best. By the way the one pictured above is from Red Bull’s London offices.