Collaboration Technology 2.0

A lot of discussion in and around our industry Is focussed on the impact of Social Networking. Is this was Collaboration 2.0 what this is all about, I think not. If we continue to use this phrase as a product classification for Collaboration 2.0 a number of things may happen

1. The outside world will perceive Collsboration 2.0 as a 'lightweight' and frivolous product
2. Why use vendor tools when you can use other social networking tools for 'free'
3. The business value and role within an Enterprise of web based Collaboration 2.0 will be extemely hard to position

What else could this be called? this blog post suggests SNB (Social Networking for Business), but will could call is Collaborative Netwoking or some other handle. Suggestion welcome - I do think Social Networking by itself mis-positions what we are trying to achieve.

My colleague David Peacock has referred me to an article in Slate.com by Emily Yoffe. The interesting aspect of the article is that it extolls the usefulness of Web 2.0 technology for my generation. Now if a pincer action starts to take place between the current influx of job starters with senior management trying to eek out the last few years of their careers by becoming collaboratively savvy it could be the 70s and 80s generation that get caught in a technology gap.

Interesting piece in the Harvard Business Review this month on the social networking issue that Ian raised in October - he's always on the edge of the curve is our Ian. A readers comment to the article http://hbsp.ed10.net/t/SLOQJ/O3BKH/RF/TPZJ8W by Kelly A. Shaw, Ph.D. an analyst at Serena Software http://www.serena.com points to,

this odd mix of being detached and intimate at the same time, is the way society is evolving

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.

Goals, shmoals - that's simply not enough!

OK, so you've got a goal, a strategy and a team, but can it be effective? The number of people in a team truly influences your ability to deliver a positive outcome. So where does it start and where does it stop?

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.

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.

According to Antony Savvas recent article in CW, a group of surveyed users indicated ‘E-mail is the most desired service for mobile phone users’. Today at Lotusphere IBM announced immediate availability of business grade email for the iPhone.

How many keynotes can one conference support? IBM believes the answer is as many as you need - the only problem is that they start at 8am, not great after an evening of refreshing old friendships. And my legs and feet are under siege and my shoes are suffering from cheap carpet burns. To matters:

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.

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.

For those of you interested in IBM's Lotus technology (and those of you think you ought to be) a rare opportunity is presenting itself right now.

As part of the Lotusphere come to you (yes you) global event program, IBM UK is holding one of its two gigs in Wembley stadium in two weeks time. A little birdie has told me that those of you who can get there (and you better hurry because space is filling up fast) will have an opportunity of a behind the scenes tour. And the whole thing does not cost ! - It may be on April the 1st (and 3rd in Manchester) but this is not a gig for fools

So check out the landing page before the doors close.

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.

I just prefer Plaxo. Hey I am a member of both!

LInkedin is described in Wikipedia as 'a business-oriented social networking site' whereas Plaxo is described as 'an online address book service'. Both interestingly (if not unsurprisingly) are based in Mountain View and more significantly both are at least part funded by venture capital specialists Sequoia Capital.

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.

In the old days waiting for the sun to shine when on holiday normally meant reading some trashy paperback, those days are past. This morning I have been listening to a well researched BBC World Service program on Social Networking impacts on business. The nugget I picked up from this program was the importance of anti company / organisation Facebook Groups or Websites, A contributor noted how useful these sites are to gain insight on what a company is doing badly and then build strategies to address shortcomings.

If you talk the talk you have to walk the walk (or so they say). My eye was caught by this posting on the BBC technology page:

'Web 2.0 is set to be embraced by Enterprise 2.0 as businesses prepare to spend nearly $5 billion by 2013 on social networking tools.....The news comes as San Francisco plays host to the Web 2.0 conference on next generation of the web.'

and

"This is where we see the future of the web," said conference co-chair Jennifer Pahlka. "The companies making announcements here are building that future."

Today at Web 2.0 we have seen Microsoft's pre-emptive strike (or is that 'we can do that too' strike) at all of its competitors (read this posting for details) however its all been avialable to see in bits for some time, considering this has been so predictable its doubles or trebles my frustration with IBM.

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.

All of this comes on the back of an 'upgrade' to ease the problems associated with the current version of the blogging platform used across the Reed Business Information titles here in the UK (and elsewhere for all I know). For months all of us have been dealing with instability, poor performance and a general lack of facility mainly due the old system was about 3 full releases behind the latest supported release. The first tentative upgrade was scheduled for the 14th April and the upgrade has been on and off since then.

You can guess what has happened, Computer Weekly (and the rest of the titles) has experienced the sort of 'gremlins' that we in the real world of organisational computing face on almost daily basis. It was not for a lack of planning, there appears to have been a lot of that. It was not for the lack of testing, that too was extensively undertaken. As my fellow blogger Michael Pincher loves to say 'it was due to the law of unintended consequences'.

It is working now otherwise you would not be able to read this. I know it has been very embarrassing for them although the problems do not represent the end of the universe. It is however it is a salutatory lesson for the professional journalists who must have got very frustrated over the last few hours because of the service failure. They now know first hand the knife edge that afflict so many systems in the 'real world'. In future they might take a few more thought cycles before taking a 'pop' at some new IT disaster.

According to IBM Lotus blogger "The Turtle" all we need to move fully into the wonderful post-apocolypse post-Microsoft world is an alliance of

Google: with the reach
IBM: with the technology
Apple: with the marketing nounce

All this is true but like all wishful thinking won't come true because:

Google: thinks it has all the tech it needs
IBM: is an a federal business and thus finds it almost impossible to work in a unified manner
Apple: promotes a sort of 'we're upper class' and looks down on the rest of the world

For those of you who wonder what it is like to be upper class check this out

Maybe certain parts of the Lotus community are a bit 'thin skinned' but I do hope those who have enjoyed reading my views on Collaboration will continue to do so via RSSing this feed. I am curious if the post that triggered the ASBO 2.0 is as damning that my judge, jury and executioner obviously considered. Your views welcome.