frogpond

Wiki usability and Enterprise software sexyness

There’s an interesting debate going on, which is definitely worthwhile to follow. Arguments are exchanged whether, and if so how enterprise software can be as “sexy” as the all new web. Robert Scoble triggered it off (but somebody else called for it in the first place), got criticized and even flamed badly, others came to help, and so on. You know the game, see Techmeme for more. I am sure you will be enjoying the discussion in all branches and forks as much as I am.

While discussing UI, usability, user-friendliness and all is interesting (though putting lipstick on a pig really doesn’t help much) – well, even the endless arguments of “industrial-strength-software proponents” are entertaining in a way because we know better (this is dire stuff, and I ask myself if those guys ever worked with enterprise-style-software like R/3) – I want to chip in some observations from another perspective.

As a long-time enterprise software user, developer (yes, I was – years ago in my old life) and today enterprise 2.0 & enterprise social software consultant, I want to offer look at this from a position of wiki advocate (-evangelist, if you want).

Are enterprise wikis sexy? Most people don’t think so – but I think they get it wrong: Enterprise wikis are interesting not because of their advanced technology, their polished user interface or their neat mark-up language – in fact these are kind of disadvantages most of the time when we want corporate adoption to take off. Like when people doubt whether the wiki markup language will be accepted in their companies – they sure don’t deem wiki markup sexy. Yes, these are no shiny tools, they don’t offer eye candy, but they are well suited for doing their job.

The key is to start from business applications and needs – not tools. If the starting point is a specific business application like e.g. project management or business development support, users will judge the sexyness of the application in a different way – they will look for personal use and business value primarily.

Wikis soon gain “cool tools status” – just because they offer room for flexible emergent uses, coupled with great simplicity. In this light Dave Snowden opens a can of worms, which should attract more discussing, when he’s pointing to the inherent differences between complex social software and standard enterprise ware.

So yes, wikis can even be fun to use, and while sexyness is always a matter of taste, this is a good start and adds to the other wiki benefits like scalabity, connectivity and cost effectiveness that stand on their own anyway. This is no “fantasy land”, this is today, the 21st century and the changes will be great, and they won’t be about technology or tools:

Enterprise 2.0 is already upon us, providing us attractive, usable, reliable and secure applications. We just haven’t made the move to adopting it. But it’s happening now, with Generation M, mobile, multimedia, multitasking and here. Now.

Intranet 2.0 Forum am 7. Dezember in Zürich

Leider musste ich meine Teilnahme am Intranet 2.0 Forum in Zürich kurzfristig absagen. Das ist sehr schade, ich hatte mich bereits sehr auf das Wiedersehen von bekannten (Stephan Schillerwein u.a.) und unbekannten bzw. bisher nur internet-bekannten Menschen (Leila Summa u.a.) gefreut. Mehr als ein kleiner Trost ist aber die ausgezeichnete Berichterstattung in verschiedenen Blogs, die mir die Aufarbeitung der Veranstaltung ermöglichen. Nicht dabei ist aber nicht dabei und nichts ganzes – ich bin froh dass die Gelegenheit zum direkten Gespräch und zum lockeren Wissensaustausch beim Kaffee (und ein oder zwei Nusstängeli) dank Kongress Media bald wiederkehrt.

Zu den Berichten:

Leila Summa verweist auf ihre Slides (pdf) zum Vortrag “Wanted Mitarbeiter 2.0: Wenn Technologien auf Nutzer warten” und linkt auf Kommentare dazu von Jürg Stuker, CEO von namics.

Saim hat hier eine kurze Zusammenfassung gebloggt, u.a. mit diesem Originalton von Jürg Stuker (meine Hervorhebung):

Jürg Stuker, CEO von namics, zeigt sich von der Wiki-Idee begeistert. Er schildert den Einsatz eines Projekt-Wikis bei namics sehr praxisorientiert. Der Grundgedanke: Je weniger ein linearer Prozess vorliegt umso besser funktioniert ein Wiki, das Änderungen und Aktualisierungen in einem Projekt, durch teamorientiertes Erfassen des Projektgeschehens, sehr viel besser dokumentiert als irgend ein anderes System. Es ist dabei sehr wichtig das gegenseitiger Respekt, Wertschätzung und Vertrauen die Grundregeln eines Wikis sind. Die Einhaltung dieser Regeln wird durch die Verwendung der eigenen Namen und Mail-Adressen unterstützt.

Schön dass er hier selbst noch die wichtigen Erfolgsfaktoren der Implementierung zusammenfasst (“Tipps für den erfolgreichen Wiki-Einsatz in Firmen”, Slides als pdf):

– Ängste aktiv im persönlichen Gespräch adressieren (nicht im selben Medium)
– Ergebnis dauernd über Hierarchie stellen
– Alles was nach Silo oder Wand aussieht, sofort abreissen
– Keine Zugriffs- oder Editierbeschränkungen! (alle User dürfen alles)
– Alle Projektinformationen sind im Wiki zu finden (Vertrauen schafft Vertrauen!)
– Jeder User schreibt seine Wiki-Inhalte selbst!
– Nur persönliche Usernamen und E-Mail Adressen nutzen
– Es braucht einen WikiGnome
– Aktiv Anlässe schaffen, das Wiki zu nutzen
– Min. eine Schlüsselperson (z.B. Schutz vor Ressourcenabzug, Rückendeckung bei Entscheiden) muss zu 100% im Boot sein.

Ich bin zwar mit der Maximalforderung “alle Nutzer dürfen alles” nicht einverstanden weil sie in den Anfangsphasen der Einführung nicht praktikabel ist – stimme ihm aber zu dass dies für viele Unternehmen ein lohnendes Ziel wäre.

Die umfangreichsten Berichte hat ohne Zweifel aber Webonomy von Swisscom gebloggt, Frank hat hier die verschiedenen Posts kurz angerissen und verlinkt, aufgefallen sind mir persönlich der Eintrag zur Präsentation von Leila Summa

[…] im Bereich Intranet vielen Firmen meilenweit voraus und hat erkannt, dass dies ein fundamentales Instrument für den Mindchange Richtung Enterprise 2.0 ist.

und zu Richard Dennisons Vortrag (“Social media im Unternehmensumfeld bei der British Telecom“), interessant:

Lessons learned beim Einsatz von “social media” im Corporate Umfeld:

– Nicht auf die Risiken fokussieren, sondern auf den Nutzen!
– Start small and build slowly! Die Benutzer sollen die Richtung und Geschwindigkeit diktieren.
– Binde die Benutzer so früh wie möglich ein – suceed or fail quickly … and cheaply!
– Binde Legal, HR, Security etc. ein und zeige auf, dass es bei der Einführung von “social media” Funktionen nicht um eine Revolution geht, sondern um eine Evolution.
– Realistische Erwartungen setzen, um Enttäuschunge zu vermeiden
– Den Enthusiasmus der Enthusiastischen nutzen – vor allem wenn es “Seniors” sind.

Daneben hat Webonomy auch noch Jürg Stukers Vortrag ausführlich dokumentiert – vielen Dank.

Be like the Internet

OK, now I am in my first workshop at the Web 2.0 Expo. Scott Hirsch, founder of Management Innovation Group (MIG) out of San Francisco is inviting people to think about innovation issues they are facing.

[…] getting honest about the real assets you bring to the table and finding ways to work with the network instead of fighting the changes it represents. This means explicitly changing the way you work and collaborate to set direction, scope opportunity, and build capabilities to rapidly assess business changes and react to them … or choose not to react.

Unfortunately I’ve been late to the show (thanks to Berlins public traffic system …), so I missed the introductory informations. I will try to get my hands on the slides, and provide the agenda and more then.

Scott introduced the audience to the changed business environment in the Web 2.0 era, some important points being

You don’t own your ideas
It is really easy to start a business (and you don’t want to own the infrastructure)

First part of the workshop: Bottom up Innovation – A personal guide to Disrupting the World

Characteristics of web 2.0 innovators (don’t overcommit to solutions, don’t overplan strategy, embrace many points of view and transparency, …)
Traits (humble, flexible, facilitative, persuasive, collaborative, passionate, persistent – but not defensive)
They create cultures to manage (uncertainty, openness, leadership, management, hiring, strategy, competition, marketing, business and product development, …)

Nice thought and metaphor: “Web 2.0 innovators look at their business like a poker game, not a chess game”

– you don’t have all the information you need
– you constantly get more information from the other players
– you have to pay to play and for information
– every round there’s a new round of cards
– business case is useless, you just look at options

Nice example of Web 2.0 innovators view of strategy (comparing friendster, MySpace and Facebook) along axes of openness/closedness and awareness (also hinting at openness for evolving complementing business ecosystems)

Jotspot and Google as examples for how Web 2.0 innovators look at business models

Web 2.0 innovators view of management (opportunity cost is the scarce resource, not people, time or money), comparing Yahoo (fear of false positives) and Google (fear of false negatives).

Web 2.0 innovators view themselves as facilitators rather than managers, and encourage smart divergence over quick convergence.

Continued after the break, in fact I have blogged notes on the second part of Scott Hirschs workshop over at my BMID-blog: Uncovering Strategies and Business Models

What is OpenSocial? Yes, it’s a business model innovation

There’s a myriad of posts on OpenSocial already and I know that I’m a latecomer to the party. Yet I will try to put down some observations and notes, if only because this has rattled the plans for my planned BarCamp session this weekend. I have to update my slide deck now, thanks Google. OK, most of the stuff I’ve written before remains valid and/or got valified through this move (see e.g. Portable soziale Netzwerke, and my post on NoseRub, german posts also touching on big hairy questions like privacy of data).

Some observations from a strategic / business point of view:

Google is proposing an open approach with the goal of integrating a variety of networks – they are not building up yet another social network. This is a platform approach, not a product or services innovation.
And this is also a cool business model innovation move – Google is opening up the social networking space to the many developers outside with a standard platform, i.e. they have learned the Facebook lesson and expanded on it – turning the table for Facebook in effect. Now who’s leading the charge in the web OS game …
Google understands that there’s more value to be gained from a shared ecosystem and from the long tail of distributed communities, than from a walled garden even if it’s big. There’s no need for an one and for all über-network, but for an easy way to integrate the many existing social networking sites (and communities of people in fact).

Nice before/after picture:

Some snippets (via Richard MacManus, …):

OpenSocial is not a social network itself, rather it is a set of three common APIs that allow developers to access the following core functions and information at social networks:

* Profile Information (user data)
* Friends Information (social graph)
* Activities (things that happen, News Feed type stuff)

For developers there are lots of benefits. They can build an app that easily works across all the OpenSocial partners. And they can use normal HTML, Javascript and Flash – instead of the proprietary languages Facebook forces developers to use.

You may also check out the Google guys view on all this, here at the all new OpenSocial API blog (“The web is better when it’s social“)

Then, for those with more time on their hands there’s also this one-hour explanatory video:

And here’s a little video by Marc Andreesen of Ning explaining the concept of container and apps:

Find more screencasts like this on Ning Network Creators

Interested in more analyses? Go visit Techmeme and bring lots of time. Or take my short list of cool posts, starting with Jeremiah Owyang of Forrester (“Explaining OpenSocial to your Executives”), this is a good short status report, short excerpt:

What is Open Social?

Google says: “OpenSocial provides a common set of APIs for social applications across multiple websites. With standard JavaScript and HTML, developers can create apps that access a social network’s friends and update feeds.”

Translation: Social Networks, and other websites (we can call them platforms or containers) can let mini-websites (applications or widgets) to be shared and interact with existing online communities (social networks, social graphs, communities).

Jeremiah also expands on the opportunities this offers, namely in the community building space (Efficient development, harness existing communities, open standards help long term, your existing applications become social, future brings social to your website). Recommended analysis, gets you up to speed quick.

Then there’s Anil Dash of Six Apart (“OpenSocial, Killer Apps and Regular People”), on why the opened social graph can help people in their networked lifes:

This gives regular people on the web more control over the social networks and applications they use.

Interesting times ahead.

Some crossposts from my other blog …

Lately blog readership of this blog has taken up – yet, I suspect that some of you don’t know that there’s a sister blog on business model innovation and design (BMID) that I am writing too, and that sometimes stuff is blogged there that’s related or touching on Enterprise 2.0, Web 2.0 or Social Software. So here you go, in reverse chronological order:

Social Networks and Organizational Pathologies …

What’s the attraction in Facebook?

Make innovation a truly open and collaborative process

Marketinginstrument Community – Wie können Marken den Nutzer beeinflussen?

Portable soziale Netzwerke

Noserub @ Barcamp München Tag 2

MIT Sloan Business Insight, with a link to an interesting article (How can companies build organizational networks that encourage innovation?)

Jumpstarting innovation (and how to leverage collaboration …)

Technology, Innovation and Organization (for complex organizational settings)

Leitfaden zum Thema Web 2.0 & E-Commerce

The Impact of Web 2.0 and Emerging Social Network Models

Designing for Flexibility

Barcamp München

Da bin ich heute und morgen, u.a. werde ich heute nachmittag eine Session zum Thema “Social Networking Plattformen im Unternehmen” anbieten.

Yellow Pages, Xing und Co. – Infrastruktur für soziale Netzwerke im Unternehmen (mit einem Ausflug in SNA aka Social Network Analysis) – wenig Theorie, dafür Ideen und Anregungen – am Beispiel organisatorisches Wissens- und Innovationsmanagement

Folien zu meiner Session folgen dann später hier, ebenso die Zusammenfassung der Diskussion. Weitere Berichte vom Barcamp München werden vermutlich wieder mit den bekannten Tags versehen, bspw. bei Rivva, Flickr, Technorati etc.

The digital native will drive adoption …

Found this via Lou Paglia: ‘Digital Natives’ are Driving Web 2.0 Adoption into Your Business, which reminded me of the experiences some people reported at the IEEE Web Collaboration workshop, namely that companies that want to attract and retain good employees are well advised to provide them with the knowledge work tools these people need. This includes social networking tools, but also blogs and wikis, which they use to build up and demonstrate their expertise:

As these digital natives grow up, they’re moving into the work force, taking with them blogs, wikis, mashups, RSS feeds and other so-called Web 2.0 social networking tools that will enable them to collaborate more freely in an enterprise environment […]

and

They bring with them a set of expectations of how they will interact and the tools they’ll use to interact, and they can be woefully disappointed walking into organizations that don’t have some of the Web 2.0 tools that they’re used to using for building relationships and getting things done […]

So yes, even when we they aren’t really “technologically literate”, they are socially literate, i.e. they are building up and leveraging their own informal networks, and they see the benefits of fast and flexible (Web 2.0) tools, especially when they learn from their peers that the time and investment to come up-to-speed are quite low.