Edge of the Web (EOTW) 2008 – PART 2

 

Stephen Collins

 The standout presentation of the business stream was given by Stephen Collins (of Acidlabs). Titled “Enterprise 2.0 – is it the new age of Aquarius for business?”, Stephen provided a heap of useful references to tools, people, books, and practical guidance.

In a style that was accessible and just plain sensible, he laid out the kinds of problems that many organisations see, and judging by the volume of knowing chuckles as he illustrated some of the points, much of the audience also had first-hand experience:

• monolithic projects with 2 year lifecycles are dead
• 70% of ICT projects fail to deliver expected benefits
• too many departments tend towards isolation (and many seem to like it that way)

Stephen’s presentation expanded around the key concepts of Web 2.0 as defined by Tim O’Reilley:

 1: The web is the platform

By using the web to exploit customer self-service, businesses can reach out to the edges of the web (be that the WWW or the internal network): accessing both the centre of their communities and the ‘long tail’, giving much greater, deeper reach:

“By using the web as the platform you expose opportunities and information to a far richer ecosystem. One where users are self organising and self empowering, where your ideas and the ideas of others and the knowledge you collectively generate are available to the whole business/community.”

2: Harness collective intelligence

There is a clear and demonstrable increase in the value of information and data in the network as more information and users are added. User contributions are THE KEY to dominance in the Web 2.0 era.

The focus of systems should remain on people over process, facilitating collaboration in new and engaging ways. By bringing people into a community you can realise benefits such as:

1. higher engagement & motivation;

2. Higher inclination to innovation;

3. increased ability to capture data;

4. increased ability to apply meaning to data as knowledge;

5. greater discoverability of expertise information.

The ‘network effect’ (or Reed’s Law) describes this increase in value within networks as more people are engaged. It works like this: as more people join a given network there is an exponential increase in the value of that network (both for the new user and the existing pool of users). Mathematical models prove this – take a look at the following snips from an Excel formula and try this yourself. If you increment the number of network users in cell A1 minimally (such as from 5 to 6), note how many increased network connections (and therefore ‘value’) this creates for the network overall – in this example 1 extra person introduces 10 new potential relationships that can benefit the network’s purpose.

As the network scales, so do these benefits. In a larger organisation of 200 users, introducing just 1 extra person generates 400 possible new relationships (and within any of those new relationships might be the killer idea that your business is looking for).

The exponential power of networks

 

The moral of the story is of course that every user matters – the one person you miss or exclude through lack of engagment, or by giving them poor quality tools to work with, might be the key facilitator you have been seaching for. It is through a lack of engagement and keeping the network/business divided into uncommunicative silos that ideas, companies, people, and networks wither and die.

3: Data is the DNA of the application

Without good data, no application has any worth. Flexibility with data is key, and data should be free as much as possible to be consumed by any user, or any other software, (so it can be ‘mashed up’ and repurposed).

If you have data in your organisation it is probably much more useful than for the things you are currently using it for. If you expose it publicly (external or more widely internally) through a user-friendly application, it becomes even more useful again.

Quality data should be able to be reused and leveraged by the network of users, but data management must remain a core competence in Web 2.0 companies, or else junk in = junk out.

4: Operations must be a core competency, users must be treated as co-developers

Support lightweight programming models that allow for loosely coupled systems. Think syndication, not coordination – design for reuseability.

People and organisations will need to undergo significant change to achieve success. Slow, heavyweight management practices need to be replaced with light-touch management. Think flexibility, frequent change and release & deep stakeholder engagement, where developers and business teams are allowed just to get on with the job.

A groundswell of acceptance and utility emerges through an iterative approach, and understanding the marketplace and the needs of your business is a prerequisite to building and deploying applications in a Web 2.0 environment. Be sure that a lack of usability leads to failure, so be engaging – the days of passive users are over.

5: Create good aesthetics for a rich user experience

Mobile devices are increasingly a go-to platform for data consumption. Multi-device, multi-browser & multi-platform integration is important, as it allows the network to broaden and grow at the fastest possible rate.

Seek to create good interface & workflows, and ask the users to help solve those problems: the days of passive users are over.

Applications need to be brought to core functionality quickly and evolved and matured just as quickly, all the time taking into account the needs of the user base as a key factor. If you build an application without users in mind, don’t be surprised when no one uses it.

Summary

Stephen was an inspirational speaker to listen to. He obviously deeply understands the Web 2.0 world and lives it professionally, enabling him to pepper his presentation with anecdotes and references to research sources and other bloggers working in the Web 2. 0 space. He’s a pretty fast talker though, so I am pleased I managed to record much of what he said, as my brain-hand coordination was not able to keep up on the day! That’s a nice feeling though – to be absorbed in considering one really interesting point, only to be spurred on to the next one a few words later, and then the next, then the next.

If you get the chance do try to catch up with Stephen in person – it’s well worth the effort.

Obama 2.0

It’s great to see that President-elect Barack Obama has utilised some Web 2.0 features within his new website http://change.gov .

Instead of the usual static government broadcast site Obama is utilising http://change.gov as a multimedia and multipurpose resource, channelling the current euphoria around his victory into the practical configuration of his administration (all the way down to an open recruiting call-to-arms for non-specified positions) . If this is an early indication of how capable and fast his administration can be in applying new ideas and technology, then there may be some truly exciting and historic times ahead of us (as if the last week hasn’t been enough!).

The site uses some established Web 2.0 features:

• Blog
• embedded video
• RSS feed
• subscriptions

But it uses its intent to go way beyond applying these as just another set of marketing tools, making it a stand-out in terms of government sites. What it offers and requests (note the 2.0 way traffic) is involvement in actually forming the policy direction. So on the one hand there is the to-be-expected political ‘agenda’ – namely a list of policy and position statements. Yet alongside this is an invitation for readers to provide their ’story’ and their ‘vision’ for America, giving the impression at least that there will be some correlation of these responses undertaken to ascertain that policy action aligns with true public opinion  (it would be a tragedy if this was simply a stunt to look like he cares – this could be priceless data). 

Now from outside, other countries sometimes struggle to get the United States – and perhaps the invocation on the Change.gov website of the core U.S. principle of government: “Of the People, By the People” grates as a little cheesy to us. One thing we must be sure of though is that U.S. citizens take that kind of rhetoric very seriously, and there might be a lesson in there for us more cynical types in >not=America< locations.

Web 2.0 can only work in an atmosphere of trust and mutual benefit. If either side betrays the other we end up with pointless websites, filled with pointless banter from ‘the community’ (a corrupted version of what The Jam memorably sang as “the public get’s what the public wants”). If there is some early promise that Obama can deliver then it might start with this cyber-consultation campaign, and the rest of the world will be all the better for it from what is the very early days of his administration.

Not so much a case of walking before you can run, more like winning the New York Marathon using the midwife’s forceps as a set of starting blocks.

Let’s cheer him all the way.

KM Australia (Day 1)

The first day of the 2008 KM Australia conference in Melbourne has been thought provoking and beneficial.

The conference is dealing with issues surrounding Web 2.0 technologies, and some great examples were given today of just what Web 2.0 is, and places it has been implemented effectively.

The first speaker was perhaps the best of the day: Hideo Yamazaki of the Nomura Research Centre who spoke on ‘Utilising Intranet-based Social Networks’. This is of particular interest, as I think that more social networking would be useful in my workplace, but the argument needs to be made of why/how it could be beneficial.

Hideo Yamazaki at KM Australia 2008

Hideo spoke of the “usefulness of the useless”. The ‘useless’ is the commonly perceived problem with social networking at work – that it is little more than staff wasting time on Facebook.

Yet in Japanese culture, much of that nation’s post-WWII industrial success stemmed from the culture of social inclusiveness that all companies encouraged in their employees. Hideo recounted  that companies maintained holiday facilities for the use of employees, company outings were common, and at company athletic meetings the employee’s families were encouraged to participate.

What this led to was an inclusive, human-centric culture that formed a wider community beyond just basic employee/boss/job relationships.

The benefit of staff interacting socially like this is that trust is built (“Oh, I saw on your profile that you like the same music I do… ”), and from trust grows emotionally-based knowledge sharing (the emotional component – liking someone – is vital, as we react much faster to emotional responses than logical ones, letting us share much more, much faster, and feel much better about it afterwards!).

Once this kind of sharing can permeate a business, it resolves common questions that staff often ask of the workplace:

• what is my workplace identity
• Why am I here?
• What is the role of myself in life and within this company? 

If social networking in the office can help resolve these esteem issues, then it can encourage staff members to begin actualizing themselves as professionals.

Hideo put this in an elegant way: there must be professional ‘communities of practice’, but this is best facilitated by first creating ‘communities of joy’.

I think if Web 2.0 technologies can do anything to accelerate this, then it is well worth giving a very good try-out.

I’ll post more from the conference later…