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. […]

Second day of rebooting – working for free

Second day at reboot, started in the main hall with Jerry Michalski (“Thinking through free“) and Thomas’ (“Free Information Structures“) second talk.

Now it’s “Working for free” with Peter Rukovina (listen to the pre-conference podcast interview with Nicole Simon)

Some notes
– Peter introduces “selfish altruism” and some other nifty definitions (I will link the video here when provided, this is a great presentation but it’s going fast)
– we really need to trust each other more – the alternatives are miserable
– small is good
– not “almost free” doesn’t work – there’s no point in discounting in client relationships – do it 100%-money-based or for 0% – there’s no in between
– essential: we must be clear about the basics (and be prepared for suspicion)

For Peter it works because:
– feeds his curiousity
– gives him access to cool people
– he likes the fun in it
– builds up skills and gives him plenty of learnings

Being Free within Organizational Structures

Next reboot-session where I am again actually taking notes is “Being Free within Organizational Structures – A conversation on achieving “free working” in a more traditional environment” by Robert Slagter:

Within the existing structures of a larger organization it is not trivial to be a “free worker”, even when the organization embraces the idea.

– goal: insights in how to cope with “old school” structures

– what does being free mean for knowledge workers (e.g. when, where and with whom and how; choose topics that align with passions; use tools that work best for me; …)

– organizations aren’t keen on providing freedom (yes, I know that one’s obvious) & freedom comes at a price (more responsibility; less structure and predictability; less guidance; …)

– Robert says that some people seem to be quite comfortable within their “iron cages“, well, yes, in fact living in walled gardens feels safe.

– Simple model of barriers that prevent people from venturing into a more free kind of working: 1. Myself & the people around me 2. Work setting, organization, technology

Now Robert asks us for our experiences and tricks to deal with these barriers, some topics discussed:

– problems stem in part from an outdated understanding of work

– we also need a new role understanding of leadership

– while the need for coordination of big tasks doesn’t disappear (and organizations will continue to thrive) a more 21C-way of working may appear alongside – flexible ad-hoc value networks, business ecosystems, companyconglomerates, etc.

– to leverage the full potential of your knowledge workers you better design for emergence and adaptivity, ie. allow for heterarchic configurations

For me it’s a different kind of game, as an independent consultant your work is life and life is work (still, work-life balance is a problem sometimes). In fact the line between work and leisure time is blurring, but out of free will. Still, as a freelancer you’re less bound and restricted by a boss (no, multiple clients don’t mean multiple bosses …) and most of the barriers I experience are self-set-up and well-thought out 😉

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).

Next week: International Forum on Enterprise 2.0

Next week I am going to attend the first International Forum on Enterprise 2.0 in Varese on 25th, right before heading to Copenhagen for reboot (flying with SAS the other day from Milano-Linate).

Here’s the program of this workshop day – will be great to meet some people for the first time after all this internet-only communication (Stewart, Thomas), and to greet friends and colleagues from all over the world (Luis, Ran).

09.00 – 09.45 Registration
09.45 – 10.00 Welcome Reception by Renzo Dionigi (Rector University of Insubria) – An Overview on Enteprise 2.0 and its Strategical Value for Companies
10.00 – 10.30 Web 2.0 comes to an enterprise near you by Rosario Sica, Emanuele Quintarelli
10.30 – 11.00 It’s not technology, stupid! Enterprise 2.0 as an organizational and strategic revolution (TBD)

Enterprise 2.0: Tools and International Success Stories

11.00 – 11.30 Building web communities that add value by David Terrar (D2C and ITBrix LLC)
11.30 – 12.00 Social network analysis: From informal conversations to tangible assets by Laurence Lock Lee (Optmice)
12.00 – 12.30 Cultivating wikis to change the enterprise and improve the bottom line by Stewart Mader (Atlassian)

12.30 – 13.30 Business Lunch & Networking

13.30 – 14.00 Social tagging to unlock the collective intelligence by Thomas Vander Wal (InfoCloud Solutions)
14.00 – 14.30 TamTamy: our reply to Enterprise 2.0 needs by Emanuela Spreafico (Reply)

14.30 – 15.00 Thinking out of the inbox: More Collaboration through less e-mail by Luis Suarez (IBM)
15.00 – 15.30 Consumerizing the Enterprise by Ran Shribman (Worklight)

15.30 – 16.00 Coffee Break & Networking

Italian Cases

16.00 – 16.30 Innovation through Collaboration: Social Networking for Sales by Diego Gianetti (BTicino)
16.30 – 17.00 Empowering the Middle Management Leveraging Communities of Practice by NN from Direzione Personale (Banca Popolare di Vicenza)

Enterprise 2.0 at Work

17.00 – 18.00 How to bring Enterprise 2.0 to your company by Emanuele Scotti (Open Knowledge), Roberto Battaglia (Intesa Sanpaolo), Roberto Mairano (Future Drive)
18.00 – 18.15 Presentation of the Course in Enterprise 2.0 by Gaetano Aurelio Lanzarone (DICOM)

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: