frogpond

The Visual Wiki: A New Metaphor for Knowledge Access and Management

Via Simon Dückert I found this video of John Hosking talking at Google TechTalks about “The Visual Wiki: A New Metaphor for Knowledge Access and Management“:

Successful knowledge management results in a competitive advantage in today’s information- and knowledge-rich industries. The elaboration and integration of emerging web-based tools and services has proven suitable for collecting and organizing intellectual property. Due to an increasing information overload, information and knowledge visualization have become an effective method for representing complex bodies of knowledge in an alternative fashion by using visual languages. The focus of this research is the development of a “Visual Wiki”, which combines the notion of a textual and a visual representation of knowledge. A Visual Wiki model has been proposed which provides a unified framework to design and discuss different approaches. Three prototypes of Visual Wikis have been implemented and evaluated according to the improvements to knowledge management applications that they facilitate. […]

Organizational information architecture: Freely Seeping through the walls of the garden

Some notes from a talk at reboot10: Thomas Vander Wal on Freely Seeping through the walls of the garden

I’m here for obvious reasons: collaboration, knowledge and innovation management (enabled by social software). Besides I travelled to Copenhagen with Thomas this morning, we talked shortly about his planned talk (and he’s a nice chap, too).

– walled gardens inhibit creativity & sharing, yet they create so comfortable environments

– no cross-pollination, no problems of seredipidity and innovation

– people connect on average with 10 people on Twitter (some are not average somehow) – we’re sticking to small groups of people we know

– connections and relationships aren’t commodities and will never be (Luis said something along these lines yesterday in Varese too)

– are we really aiming at freely sharing of information (around and about identity/objects)?

– increased understanding, let everybody in the organization get smarter

– on the elements of social software (duality of identity and object – presence, actions, sharing, reputation, relationships, conversation, groups, collaboration) and how to build order (I have to ponder this a little bit, I doubt that this is a sequential model, seeing also frog-leaping and some fuzzy, i.e. spirally-/recursive learning and adoption curves powered by feedback and learnings etc.)

– spheres of sociality (personal, selective, collective, mob)

– sharing one by one then sharing with groups (e.g. Dopplr, Ma.gnolia)

And yes, all this plays into

– why social software in the enterprise “doesn’t spread like wildfire” and

– yes, there’s much food for thought in here, some derived consulting and implementation challenges are:

– we need to help in easing the fear in the organization, help people go exploring the neighborhood gardens etc.

– we need to teach and inform on the “dangers and pitfalls” of departmentalized knowledge management systems – rebuilding silos and all – trying to look like a worthwhile solution (drag queens, anyone?) while we need to make the walls permeable. Have hedges but tear down the brick wall … then expand on your garden design endeavours (yes, this in freely linked to the earlier responsive architecture session).

Bedrohen Wikis die Macht von Managern?

Die nette (aber auch etwas reißerische) Frage und der zugehörige Artikel aus dem Harvard Business Manager von Juni 2008 sind nun via ManagerMagazin auch offen zugänglich. Im Interview äußert sich Jimbo Wales, u.a. zu den Chancen für Unternehmenswikis und der Rolle von Führungskräften:

HBm: Wozu brauchen Unternehmen denn all diese Wikis?

Wales: Sie nutzen sie für jede Art von Wissensmanagement, bei der es auf offene, flexible und schnelle Zusammenarbeit ankommt – insbesondere wenn Mitarbeiter an weit entfernten Standorten arbeiten und gute Beziehungen zueinander aufbauen müssen.

und

Wales: Wikis können bei Führungskräften Bauchschmerzen auslösen, insbesondere in Unternehmen mit einer stark hierarchisch geprägten Kultur. Das Management formuliert seine Ängste zwar nicht unbedingt in präzisen Worten. Aber es entwickelt ein vages Unbehagen, wenn es sieht, wie Mitarbeiter Probleme unter sich lösen, statt auf die Anweisungen ihrer Vorgesetzten zu warten. Wenn Sie auf die Wikis Ihrer Mitarbeiter überempfindlich reagieren, sollten Sie sich fragen, warum.

Social Software für Open Innovation

Via doIT-online gefunden: Eine aktuelle Studie der Universität Leipzig zu der Bedeutung angepasster Kommunikation für das Innovationsmanagement (es gibt einen 68-seitigen Ergebnisbericht). Konkret wird auf Open Innovation-Initiativen eingegangen, u.a. mit der Diagnose, dass sich hier neue Anforderungen an das Kommunikationsmanagement ergeben und dass leider (noch):

vielfältige Chancen vergeben [werden], beispielsweise bei der Schaffung eines zukunftsgerichteten Innovationsklimas im Unternehmen und der erfolgreichen Einführung neuer Produkte und Dienstleistungen.

Einige meiner Key-Learnings aus dem Bericht:

– strategisches Verständnis für Open Innovation ist vorhanden; aber die notwendigen Strukturen fehlen
– Open Innovation wird meist einseitig verstanden: Wissen wird eingebunden, aber nicht abgegeben
– systematisch verzahnt sind Innovationsprozess und Kommunikation nur in jedem zehnten Unternehmen
– die Unterscheidung in fünf unterschiedliche Typen der Innovationskommunikation (Traditionalisten, Strategen, Taktiker, Allrounder, Spielmacher)

Richtig, der Übergang von Closed Innovation zu Open Innovation muss mit einem veränderten Kommunikationsverhalten einhergehen. Und ja, der Open Innovation Ansatz muss als ganzheitliche Strategie verstanden werden, die Öffnung des Unternehmens für externe Innovatoren kann sich nicht auf singuläre Innovationsprojekte beschränken, sondern muss u.a. durch die Anpassung von Marketing- und Kommunikationsstrategien, d.h. die Wahl des “richtigen” Mix von Massen- und Individualkommunikation etc flankiert werden.

Wo kommt hier Enterprise Social Software wie Unternehmenswikis oder Projektblogs ins Spiel? An mehreren Stellen – im Wissensmanagement, in den Prozessen der Zusammenarbeit, die jetzt mehr und heterogenere Partner umfassen, letztlich auch in einer veränderten Interaktions- und Kommunikationskultur. Der Einsatz von Social Software wie bspw. Weblogs, Wikis, Social Networking Plattformen etc. für unternehmensübergreifende Prozesse, bspw. im Rahmen von Open Innovation, ist ein Thema, das zunehmend an Fahrt gewinnt.

Für mich ist ein zentraler Aspekt, dass die Einbindung externer Partner die ohnehin hohe Bedeutung von “tacit interactions”, ad-hoc Kollaborationen, Diskussionen etc. in Innovationsprozessen weiter erhöht. Die Öffnung der Innovationsprozesse ist Kernidee von Open Innovation, die Anpassung der Ideen des Web 2.0 in Unternehmen sind eine stimmige Möglichkeit diese grundlegend zu verändern und zu öffnen – gerade Wikis sind eine “natural infrastructure” für vernetzte Wertschöpfungsstrukturen. Sie sind adaptive Infrastrukturen die genutzt werden können um Organisationsgrenzen zu überbrücken, wobei flexible Benutzer- und Zugangsverwaltungen es erlauben schnell und flexibel neue Mit-Innovatoren einzubinden und zu beteiligen.

Geek breakfast, email and RSS observations …

Last Friday morning I had the pleasure to host Luis Suarez and his IBM colleague Matti for an improvised geek breakfast at my house. I didn’t take any photos, Luis did, but you can believe me that we had a gorgeous time sitting on the porch, sipping coffee and exchanging trade secrets of the enterprise social software market – IBM and all.

Luis is one of the bloggers I really dig, his contributions range wide – from enterprise knowledge management to collaboration software, from social software suites to personal/knowledge worker productivity. Check his talk at Next08 for some insights on living without email (“Thinking out of the Inbox – More Collaboration through less e-mail“).

Here Jon Mell talks with Luis on escaping Email (mp3). This experiment has some interesting learnings, so check his status reports and Jons summary of the talk. There’s also an extended version of the “email detox experience”, in another podcast Luis did with Matt Moore and guests.

Yes, instead of email we’re moving conversations, knowledge exchange, and collaboration to wikis, instant messaging, and other social tools. Here, RSS is one central tenet, and this is where I want to chime in, adding some compiled RSS notes I was collecting since the Enterprise RSS Day of Action (initiated by James Dellow of ChiefTech) and the Mai 1st RSS Awareness Day.

RSS is a technology, which in my perspective is still underrated – this holds true also in corporate settings. RSS can ease the life of knowledge workers, yes this is an obvious fact, but one that got reinforced today in the sessions I attended yesterday at the BarCamp Bodensee. Yet, a big problem is awareness – it’s hard to teach people, you have to help them giving it a try, and help them see how RSS comes in when dealing with information work.

In the enterprise RSS provides a channel for notifications, delivering content automatically and intelligently: Monitoring recent changes in internal wikis, moving information privisioning from push to pull, integrating various sources of information – RSS sits right at the intersection of information management and collaboration.

So here you go:

Recently AvenueA/Razorfish communicated that RSS was the social media tool with highest growth rates. Nice news, via pheedo:

RSS growth surprises many when the hear the numbers. It is used by over 50% of online users according to AvenueA/Razorfish. RSS has been growing under the radar for some time. According to a 2008 study from Universal McCann, RSS use is exploding, growing faster than all other key social media platforms, including social networking and video sharing. According to the study, the number of RSS users jumped 153% between June 2007 and March 2008. Publishers today recognize that their content is increasingly consumed away from their website by their most loyal, dedicated readers. For many top publishers, their page views consumed outside their domain are greater than their website page views.

Janet Johnson expands on Enterprise 2.0 and RSS adoption, linking back to me:

[…] enterprise RSS adoption is coming into fruition – but why has it taken us so many years to finally get here? Why do the folks considering enterprise RSS today have to be the ‘forward thinking’ ones?

James Dellow sums up his learnings:

Overall, I don’t think that Enterprise RSS Day of Action changed the world, but this was never the intention – I’m just pleased that we’re having this conversation. However, I’m also feeling a bigger disconnect between what excites the external world of Web 2.0 and the reality inside the firewall
[…]
In these still early days, being an Enterprise RSS champion requires a delicate balance between being visionary and pragmatic.

And finally Common Craft’s basic but brilliant explanation of RSS in plain English:

Upcoming: WikiWednesday Paris, International Forum on Enterprise 2.0, WikiSym, Web 2.0 Expo

I know this is on short notice, but if you’re close to Paris – WikiWednesday is due on May 21st. Can’t be there, sadly – but it’s my birthday the other day. However if you want to meetup with french wiki enthusiasts this is probably an opportunity to meet the people behind XWiki and more.

However, you might earmark the International Forum on Enterprise 2.0 at Varese on June 25th. The Forum is characterized by:

A 360° overview on Enterprise 2.0 business and organizative impact
A comprehensive exploration of Enterprise 2.0 tools and techniques: tagging, blogging, wiki, feed rss, open innovation, widgets

Equally interesting if you are into wikis, collaboration and enterprise 2.0 is WikiSym2008

The Symposium offers a rigorously reviewed research paper track, as well as plenty of space for practitioner reports, discussion of work in progress, demonstrations, tutorials, and informal but lively OpenSpace and WikiFest sessions.

Wikisym 2008 will take place from Sep 8-10, 2008 in Porto.

Then, the web 2.0 expo call for participation is open:

The 2008 edition of Web 2.0 Expo Europe will take place 21-23 October at the Berliner Congress Centrum. Want to participate in the Web 2.0 conversation at a higher level? If so, you are invited to submit a proposal now to speak at Web Expo Europe. Share your story of successes, trials and errors, best practices, and case studies with other designers, programmers, marketers, IT savvy business executives, entrepreneurs, innovators, and other people passionate about building a better Web for the whole world.