Collaboration Technology 2.0

Today is the start of something new, Pincher and White are giving away the secrets of suceeding in a increasingly collaborative world.

With people's growing desire to share stuff and be heard and with boundaries of work and play blurring by the day, we will highlight opportunities, link to benefits and tag dead-ends to help you make sense of this whirlwind of change.

With 40 man-years of working with collaboration software technology between us, we will be provoking the key players in this arena to share their experience, insight and knowledge for the benefit of all.

This blog is going to formally launch next week so I thought I would check out CW virtual front page today, first we have UK government loses data on 25 million Britons followed closely by Fortnum & Mason improves store flexibility with new LAN. Now I am not decrying the Queen's grocers transition to the 21st century but juxtaposed against the former article it goes to show how little the general public get to understand the issues and activities that will change all of our lives as time moves on.

Mark Ryan at Microsoft brought to my attention a blog entry addressing optimal sizes for terrorist groups which looks at the break point points for effective small, medium and large sized teams.

30 months ago Ray Ozzie joined Microsoft, 18 months ago Ray became Chief Software Architect for that company (Bill Gates old job). In June I had the chance to meet up with 600 people at the Lotus 25th Anniversary including Ray. Having moved from Lotus (IBM) to Microsoft I was more than interested in Ray's view on the world of collaboration and innovation.

So you think you are running a team, well pull the knives from your back and read on.

OK, here is our first in a series of top tips to identify good collaboration rationale, technology and approach.

First things first are you really a team? Most effective collaboration tends to focus around groups of individuals with a common purpose. If you are not sure take a look at this (Goal Centric Networks) and start to build clear collaborative objectives.

If you want frivolous postings then my personal blog is normally the place to visit. But in the spirit that because we in the IT community can be a bit po faced from time to time, it is nice to show we have a human touch; I bring you a fantastic YouTube clip brought to my attention by my colleague Gareth Howell.

It is worth watching the whole clip and for those of you struggling with your home internet configurations this may make you realise - you are not alone

Dear Diary

Last Thursday I attended the BCS / Computer Weekly Annual jamboree. Gosh is was fun, met lots of spiffing people and was fed lots of tasty tuck in the Refectory. The Headmistress and staff then gave out the house prizes to the chaps and chapesses who had excelled themselves during the last three terms.

Mostly is was usual suck-ups but one of the school houses did very well namely Spinvox. I was very impressed with their project. They will go very far when they leave school and join the rest of us in the big world of commerce.

Computer Weekly editorial team has asked its bloggers to answer the following questions:

o What will be the dominant item on the CIO agenda in 2008?
o How will the predicted economic slowdown in 2008 impact IT professionals in the UK?
o What issues do you think will emerge around managing the ‘Web 2.0 generation’?

We lit a hookah and after entering the zone came up with a shimmering view of next year......

When you pull your Christmas cracker and put on the funny hat remember that while the joke inside may not be funny at least it passed the scrutiny of the thought police.

How did you do with your emails this year?

It's easy to slip into careless habits so here are a few tips to remind you what NOT to do for 2008...

We have a major collaborative project starting in the next few days as a result we have to set up a significant secure, agile and highly mobile team environment. Our sponsor and his elves have explained that although the project duration is very short the deliverables are very important ant and the whole thing needs to be 100% reliable.

You think you are working, but are you really? That is the question implied in a new Basex study (reported by ars technica). Their report, "Information Overload: We Have Met the Enemy and He is Us," estimates that email, IM interruptions and reading blogs by knowledge workers will drain the US economy of $588B this year. It claims that e-distractions are eating up 28% of a knowledge worker's day. Consider there are about a fifth the number of knowledge workers here as in the US. Factor in our higher average fully loaded salaries. Quite easily you are pushing £100B as the parallel cost to our own economy.

I was talking to a Don who is an assessor at a university court. A court that has had civil jurisdiction in all matters involving scholars or privileged persons of the university since 1244. We were discussing email and its dangers and how, as a consequence, telephones are ringing again between the the ivory towers.

This is my first Lotusphere 2008 blog and I have a captive blog source. As I travel from London to Orlando there are a number of delegates on the flight who I have asked to share with me their expectations of next weeks IBM event.

Wednesday’s theme (yes another keynote) was Social Networking for Business. Lotus Connections and Quickr were the lead products. Both of these products address elements in the delivery of social collaborative applications (wikis, blogs, affinity, etc). However they do overlap in some places and this will need to be addressed by IBM in coming product releases as customers on the whole respond better to a streamlined set of offerings.

I went to the second ever Groove User Group meeting last evening. We were entertained by Microsoft at their plush offices in Victoria. The space, furnishings and location makes my IBM friends location on the Southbank look positively East German!

Microsoft's bid for Yahoo has got myself and my fellow bloggers somewhat stimulated. There are assertations from Cliff and Jean-Paul that this is the end of MS as we know it. I agree to a small extent, but for me it is a leading indicator of something new. In a similar way to devices - if you can see and feel it then you are handling something that is out of date - Microsoft, like IBM, Cisco et all have been heavily re-inventing themselves over the past couple of years and what we see today making news is a pre-requisite to enable the new beasts that will emerge from the carcasses of the past.

I have been a bit frugal will my posts over the last few weeks. This is mostly due to the large number I posts I made during Lotusphere and a need to recharge my blogging batteries. However a small altercation has broken out on Ed Brill's most excellent blog that is worth bringing to your attention.

IT people know that the one thing you should never do if you want to retain access to all your applications, is change your name. Today one of my companies changed its name, from one nonsensical moniker to another. We risked more than just access to applications but we had two companies and now they are one, so one name had to go. Lincoln Burnett Associates vanished.

About this time last year I was taking a short break with my SO in Vegas, no business just pleasure.

This year the hordes of conventioneers have been led to Sin City by Microsoft at its third annual MIX event. To quote the event introduction:

Now in its third year, MIX is an intimate opportunity for cutting-edge technical, creative and business strategists to engage Microsoft in a conversation about the future of the web.

This seems very promising, however trolling through the news posts I have found a mixed bag of attitudes to MS (they will be a bit thick skinned to these by now). Considering it has only really started today (Tuesday) the nay-sayers seem to be jumping the gun a bit with thier prophecies of doom for Redmond !

It is unlikely that you will know Cartercar, LaSalle, Nash and Haynes, they are all examples of car marques that although popular when they we first introduced - in time (some short, some long) died out.

Similarly Digital, MicroPro (Wordstar) and Dbase are just a few examples of shining stars that have collapsed and have only left memories held in small alleys of the internet and of course Wikipedia

Right now I imagine there are lots of HD-DVD advocates telling anyone who is willing to listen how much better a standard it is compared to Blu-ray. Hey guys you are obsolete and it was the PS3 that killed you.

Some of the above simply failed and we are only left with examples of the brand, sometimes the innovation they introduced is revered or sometimes we are left with just a name as they were gobbled up and then maybe re-gobbled up by some large faceless corporation that did not care too much about what they represented.

Mr Darling if you want a modern Britain then you have to enable change. Today's budget did nothing to stimulate or facilitate the adoption and renewal of IT infrastructure in this country.

I have a vested interest. In my distant past I worked for the BBC, I still have a great deal of affection for the esteemed organ of the British establishment, but it is changing. I came across this very interesting article on the changes now being implemented at the Beeb.

The corporation has really grasped the possibilities afforded by the latest web technologies (check out its podcast and vodcast output) and within the next two years on the back of the iPlayer we are going to see a tons of innovations affecting both UK, European and world wide audiences. The world of broadcasting, narrowcasting and affintiycasting will never be the same again.

Do blogs matter, well maybe in the IBM universe they do... Ed Brill is one of IBMs most influential bloggers (as an IBM employee) and his reactions to my last post have stirred a fair amount of comment. Interestingly he directly quoted me (below) in his blog:

It is clear from even the most casual observation to see that the funds now being invested in product development are at a rate not seen for a decade. As much as I applaud this turnaround it seems that although the factory is running at 100% capacity the marketing strategy as to which customers should be buying the output and more importantly why they should be buying which piece of the output seems to have gone walkabout. Looking on at a distance, how all the pieces fit together within an 'over arching' structure frankly seems completely absent.

I have been impressed at the level of rational discussion engendered as a result of the excerpt quoted in his blog, however I am disappointed at the shortage of constructive suggestions generated. As a blogger its always nice when people agree with you and often as nice when they don't!

So the challenge is to those who care - come up with some pithy positioning (try to say that drunk) so that the senior IBM dudes who I know are reading this and other blogs can be inspired to do better than they are at the moment.

Ideas as responses to this post please

ps the emphasis is still on the why

Last week I started my Small Things post, each week I am going to look at the plethora of Web 2.0 collaborative (and personal) tools that are arriving on an almost daily basis.

This week I have had a week of Twitter under my belt, and an introduction to Symbaloo and some conversation around Plaxo.

After recent blogs on Plaxo, Twitter and Facebook I thought I was duty bound to spend some time on Linkedin. To be honest the UI has improved greatly over the last few months but it still feels a little bit of a mess. I can't help wondering about these types of inline advert supported sites and their ongoing viability in a business world.

My contention is that instead of charging money for additional features, the revenue should be generated as an incentive for the delivery of an ad-free environment. The BBC is considering this model for outside of the UK access to its web content, free access with ads, clean access with subscription.

Are Self-Organizing Neighborhood Wireless Mesh Networks the next biggish thing? - Well I live in a town with the most number of retired vicars, priests and ministers in the UK - a statistical fact. From where I'm sitting I can "see” the wireless network of the Baptist, Methodist, Anglican and Catholic Churches. Now, the Baptists don't talk to the Catholics who don’t talk to the.... etcetera .etcetera. However, the area is a flood zone so we are trying to 'mesh' the area so if waters of biblical proportions descend like last year we've better communication in place. Just shows you how a bit of enlightened self-interest breaks down barriers.

A recent study found that Internet use in communities' increased social interaction between neighbors, built up a community support structure, and improved the general well being of community residents. Community mesh networks facilitate communications and information sharing locally.

Walking round Infosecurity 2008 you realise how significant the change to commoditisation in IT has become. The once arcane secrets of IT security are now an applied science -- bolt on the black box and away you go. However, the calls from the demonstrators on the exhibition stands were all about people still being the problem.

it’s not the external threat -- it's the internal one

The recent Microsoft Mesh announcement at Web 2.0 provoked some calls of 'bias' by the BBC favouring MS. Some felt the coverage was disproportional with respect to the level of product being delivered beyond the usual promises and slide-ware. In a former life I worked for the Beeb so I have some interest in the veracity of this claim.

Simple research points to a broad market share figures (rounded on my part) which gives MS a 90% share, Apple a 7% share and all others (mostly Linux) a 3% share. Therefore it would be reasonable to expect news coverage in roughly the same proportion, using the following search terms 'Microsoft Windows', 'Apple Mac' and 'Linux' and out of curiousity 'IBM' the results were as follows:

The search was run on the BBC 'news' section only and I know the percentages are sort of spurious and that if I added in iPhone I would boost the Apple numbers, but by my reasoning the bias looks to be towards Apple not towards Microsoft.

By the way a search on IBM Lotus gave me 11 stories (and some of those are very interesting)

Last week I spent much of my 'after pool' time reading up on what was coming out of the Web 2.0 conference. Load and loads of stuff attracted my attention, however right now as I sit in a damp Cafe Nero in London, the key message that came across (to me) in a loud and clear voice was Ray Ozzie's pronouncement for support of OS's other than Microsoft's own.

This was of course greeted with howls of derision from those who have been both the benefactors or victims of Microsoft prior behaviour. I know Ray and I know his commitment to standards (proprietary and open), cross platform and scaleable solutions is fundamental of the man.

Time alone will tell, the scoffers may be right, my bet it that the model developing in Redmond right now is based on a broader appeal outside of its traditional patch and whether it controlled by MS or by some holier than though open-standards body will be moot to the outcome.

Love or hate Microsoft it is not smart to treat their stated directions with disdain.

Why do so many good business ideas bite the dust. For many it is because they are not really as good as they seem, for others maybe the economics don't work or they are simply to complex to execute. Lastly we have the 'ideas ahead of their time', the most frustrating sort is when a good idea bites the dust only to be resurrected some time later and then become wildly successful.

Watching last nights 'Apprentice' on BBC really brought the matter into sharp relief, two teams set the same tasks found their ideas built around it, support it and were convinced they could sell it until the cold bucket of reality was tipped over their collective heads. Ego had been nurtured but not tested against common sense. Looking back over ventures that I have directly and indirectly been involved with I can see how many time the 'good idea' became an end in itself with large groups of people either promoting or not opposing it because of the energy and support of the sponsor.

It does question the 'wisdom of crowds' which statistically may be true but as will all statistics there are sufficient variables to be dangerous!

Next time you have a good idea - try to test it both by restraining your own ego but by giving sufficient weight to the egos of others. The Alan Sugars of this world love great ideas but they also love the consideration of common sense to ensure that they can make money out of them.

I have just had to pull a posting due to an NDA that I had not been aware of. Emotionally its quite a drag having spent a fair amount of time crafting my entry. If you missed it then I am afraid you will just have to wait a couple of weeks for the 'secret stuff', it really is not that exciting !


So for now - that cat has been placed back in the bag

I am sitting in a quiet little back water in the City of London, sipping on a skinny latte. It's a sunny day, pleasantly warm for this time of year and a nice resting place in between appointments. Next to me are a tablefull of 'advertising' types who are unintentionally doing great impressions of Harry Enfield's 'feel my wad' character, Loadsamoney, from the 80's.

Its good to see that even in these recessive times ostentatious and loutish behaviour has not died.

Oh goody, we've moved on to cars now!

What makes teamwork, for that matter what makes a team work? I can't help but wonder. Over the years I have worked in many sorts of teams. Teams that are single purposed, clearly led with very differentiated tasks for each member. At the other extreme I have worked with teams where objectives are poorly defined, roles even more so and individuals left to determine amongst themselves what they need to do, when, how and why!.

Which teams structures were the most successful? Well neither, both had pluses along with other mixtures of team styles - simply put: you can't generalise.

Even with clear leadership and sharply focussed goals teams fail - this can be often caused by soft issues - personality clashes, internal politics and such like. Teams even with the most wooly of construction often deliver fantastic results. Individual commitment, professionalism and people engagement supplanting the rigid structures found elsewhere.

These are my top tips for effective technology supported teams:

o Clear team objectives - preferably written down and clear goal lines that can be crossed

o Effective communications - mandatory shared content, any emails that circumvent this should be stamped upon in a hard and ruthless manner

o Regular meetings - virtual or physical, set in stone and properly documented

o High visibility of slipping actions - stuff that at the outset was trivial can come back to haunt the team if not tracked

o Listen - Team members must be encouraged to contribute in and outside of their comfort zones, with luck this will drive out the 'gotchas'

Should I Pownce or Twitter?. I have re-started my examination of popular Web 2.0 technologies to see which are (at least to me) best.

I have been posting Tweets for a while and I thought I should give Pownce a go as there is a degree of overlap between the two. You can follow me via these links Twitter or Pownce and help me work out which is the best (if it can be established) between the two.