3 "New" Online Collaboration Tools

It's been an interesting few weeks in the consumer "online collaboration" world.

Stop!

If you're reading this from within the (not so) cozy walls of a company thinking that the crazy, fast moving, unfocused consumer world of online collaboration won't affect you for a long time then I'd recommend you stop, take a look around at the newbies within your organisation and see where they spend most of their online time. And if your (IT Dept) response is more site blocking think of it as another brick in the dam's wall holding back a river of online services flowing faster and faster - "she's gonna blow captain!".

Or, you may be an enlightened organisation and on to it.

And so, you need to know what's already coming through the cracks in your wall and more importantly what is just around the corner. Once you know you can then divert the flow you want, use it for the betterment of your company and discretely let those parts of collaboration you don't believe will work to flow into dark, still pools of nothingness.

So, what's coming -

1: Knowledge / Answer Computational Machines

Wolfram|Alpha - it's been in all the news :-)

In a nutshell and from them:

Wolfram|Alpha's long-term goal is to make all systematic knowledge immediately computable and accessible to everyone. We aim to collect and curate all objective data; implement every known model, method, and algorithm; and make it possible to compute whatever can be computed about anything. Our goal is to build on the achievements of science and other systematizations of knowledge to provide a single source that can be relied on by everyone for definitive answers to factual queries.

Despite the "Google killer" tag the media placed upon them they never claim to be such, well not publicly anyway, they seemed to have done better than Cuil (still going!) and made it passed the first week. There are many humorous "failures" and as equally numerous "wins".

How does Wolfram|Alpha sit with collaboration?

I believe it will be used as a tool to smooth the waters of collaboration. Imagine having the ability to ask any(ish) question within your organisation and get THE answer that everyone can see and act upon - we would have the "one source of truth" utopia all knowledge/information managers crave for.

But hold on, this is not a one-horse race with Microsoft's Bing [video] soon available to to give us all our answers. And Google's moving this way having already released "search options" for it's standard search and preparing Google Squared ("coming soon ...") in the wings.

2: Aggregation + Conversations

It's all chatter, chatter, chatter online now-a-days.

Facebook was overtaken by Twitter in the "cool as" stakes and of course there is bound to be something else that will trump Twitter.

I am of the view that it's not just about talking though, collaboration is built upon 3 main pillars one of which is "good communication" and that represents a two way flow of information ... someone has to be listening.

But if everyone is having chattering is many places (Twitter and Facebook are the obvious but saving a Delicious bookmark is a form of a "shout out") how on earth are we all to keep a track of it AND respond?

One way is to get in amongst it by signing up for everything and spending every waking hour tracking everyone. RSS can, to be fair, assist here.

Another is to stick with one main service/community (Twitter is probably the current favourite) and follow the herd as they move around the services. Works, sort of but I find that the outlying services can have some of the best conversations which are quieter, more focused and not so "whiny".

My favoured response to this problem is to use FriendFeed (or equivalent, is there one) in conjunction with Google Reader (no, I do not hold with the view that RSS is dead!).

In a nutshell let the conversation happen wherever it wants, bring it to me, respond/join in and have it pushed back out. This means I don't interrupt others chosen way of working but can join in as I want.

3: Realtime, Open Collaboration

Finally there is Google Wave.

And whilst this is so new I see it as another step towards true online collaboration - it may even be the approach/technology that finally breaks the email dependency we all have.

It's so new that all I can really do is point you to Mashable's excellent Google Wave: A Complete Guide and the official Google Blog announcement before letting you decide for yourselves.

Oh, and this Google product has come out of Sydney (Australia) from the fine folks that brought us Google Maps ... it's a large reason why this excites me as that team seem to know how we want to work!

3 Simple Steps To Save 570 Wellington Community Websites

Here at MiramarMike.co.nz we know that the Internet, and in particular the Web, can have a huge positive affect on the work community agencies perform every day. And so when we read over at Scoop that the Wellington Council is reviewing its support of Wellington Community Net (a free website hosting and support service for community groups) we know it will be a huge retrospective step that will hurt these agencies.

In a nutshell the situation is (as outlined by Mike Rumble, Director of Wellington ICT)

So if our funding is cut next year – as the council proposes – the Wellington Community Net will no longer be viable. The service will have to be handed back to the council. The council will then end up with more than 570 community websites to support, but with no money to do so.

This is what YOU can do to help

Note: the deadline for submissions is 5pm Monday 18th May

1. Read (and comment on) the Scoop article
2. Sign the official e-petition
3. Submit a comment on the LTCCP Submissions page

I have, have you?

3 Steps To Making Intranet News Useful

Everyone that has an intranet probably suffers from an ill used and badly conceived "news" section purporting to give you the latest happenings within your organisation but is generally ego-centric publishing's from upon high that have little if any impact on your day-to-day job. Of course this is unlikely to be 100% of the time for 100% of organisations but if it is, GET OUT!

But hey, it's my role in life to take these issues and, for your organisation, make it better and to that end I started writing this posting before discovering someone had beat me to it. Yep, James over at Step Two Designs (Sydney, Australia) wrote the post I was going to waaaay back in July 2006 - Intranets as a news channel

2006, so has much changed in 3 years ... no, not really, the issues are still the same:

... issues arise because the news section is implemented as a ‘default’ element of the intranet home page. Little consideration is given to the design or management of this news channel, beyond implementing a basic set of capabilities.

The list of improvements James outlines are still valid:

1. Improving the design of news
2. News in its place
3. Pushing via email
4. Broadening the scope of news
5. Reaching all staff
6. Competing news sources
7. Ensuring the intranet is useful

Back in 2006 the use of RSS was in its infancy and so point 3, "Pushing via email" is probably the only one that I would challenge by suggesting we give the news readers the ability to choose their delivery mechanism.

So, the three steps starts with ...

1: Read Step Two Design: Intranets as a news channel and implement

Following James' improvement suggestions will leave you with a much happier news site.

Having said that, a lot of you may have done some of them already (this was posted 3 years ago so I'd hope at last some of you have :-) and the emergence of "social media" in the online consumer world has moved us on a great deal.

2: Stop Thinking Of A "One-Size Fits All" Intranet Homepage

News = Important, obvious right? And therefore it should be the first thing you see, the Intranet homepage. Hmmm, maybe ... maybe not. Perhaps by placing the news on the homepage you are elbowing more relevant and useful items out of the way. And how do you know what is "relevant" and "useful" ... go ask the people.

So maybe news is not THE most important thing.

Also, within the news articles there will be a wide range of relevancy and usefulness, especially if you suffer from a large amount of ego-based news publishing (you'll know it when you see it). A lot of intranet news has had an over prioritisation on proximity to the news producer, perceived prominence and impact. Also standard definitions of what constitutes "news" as used by internal journalists (or Internal Communication Advisers) places value upon the event being reported and the news producer doing the reporting over and above the value to the staff members - and in the past there wasn't a lot we could do about that.

Being able to filter as much of the news to fit the individual staff member should be your second part of cutting down the "one size fits all" - think about what the system should already knows about the reader and filter accordingly:

• Where they are in the world
• Where they are in the organisational hierarchy
• What content they are already reading (match "tags" etc)
• What products are they currently working on
• ...

And because I'm about to suggest you increase the amount of news published your staff will need help managing it your "news system" should be actively filtering, searching and prioritising relevant and useful news. But your business is your business and you can ask your staff what would make the news more relevant and useful to them.

3: Allow News Of Any "Size" To Be Produced

And finally, the tough but valuable step is to democratise the news production.

News, be definition, is what the news publisher publishes. Out in the real world this is a simple but powerful point often missed - events happen and, depending upon their timeliness, proximity (to news consumer AND news producer), prominence, impact, suspense, human interest, novelty and progress they may become "news".

Proximity to the news producer is a key item focus when democratising internal news - news may happen in a remote store and not in the hallowed offices of the corporate mother ship. Giving the ability for "remote stores" to produce their own news allows the news to flow which, with point '2' in action means more news that is relevant and usable flows passed those at need to see it.

I hope this gives you food for thought when revisiting the design of your internal news on your Intranet. Other articles related to this:

• Whoever pays for your information, owns it
• 3 parts to good information - available, findable and usable
• 1 Easy Way Of Making Information Usable
• 5 Questions To Ask When Wondering If To Moderate ("Censor")

FriendFeed - Totally Integrated With Twitter, Facebook And Google

I'm on a bit of a mission to get as many of my @miramarmike Twitter friends onto FriendFeed AS WELL.

Just sign-up and let me know and then you can go back to Twitter and tweet happy in the knowledge I also get to see all your stuff.

Please :-)

Cartoon: How Times Have Changed

Geek and Poke: How Times Have Changed

Brilliant, just brilliant - here's part one, "Web 1.0" which is followed by "Web 2.0" and "Today"

See the complete cartoon ...

"at least three out of every five people who sign up for a Twitter account bail within a few weeks" (see Nicholas Carr). How times have changed!

Seven Or So Rules For Collaborating Professionally And Still Staying Friends

I discovered this article, 7.5 Rules for Working Together, quite some time ago and it's been sitting in the "drafts" of this blog waiting for a good moment. Now seems to be a good time as the previously understood hierarchies of organisations are stripped away due to "cost cutting" and the need to collaborate through a much more meshed/networked environment both within the corporate walls and more and more through and beyond these walls.

Having said that I'm not convinced that these "rules" are perfect and may even come from a time of "to hell with the costs, let's just play at being a business because there's money to burn!"

Here's the opening blurb:

Honm Friebe is an economist and journalist and one of the managing directors of Zentralen Intelligenz Agenturin Berlin.

Holm Friebe’s book, Wir nennen es Arbeit (”We call it work”) is a bestseller in Germany, describing how to work creatively and with integrity in “the hedonistic company.”

Please note the original article has a 25 minute (ish) video with Homme Friebe and Philipp Albers presenting the main parts of the book and particularly the "Seven or So Rules for Collaborating Professionally and Still Staying Friends"

And so, the "rules" which they admit are constantly in flux but have been "road tested" at their company for some time.

Rule 1, The 7 Nos - No office. No employees. No fixed costs. No pitches. No exclusivity (company doesn’t own your life). No working hours (results only). No bullshit.

Rule 2: Work-Work Balance - balance projects for clients with your passion projects, given equal priority and attention.

Rule 3: Instant Gratification - profit immediately with work; no salaries, billable time/project, always keep 10% of profit for the company for play money; pay bills immediately as well

Rule 4: Pluralism of Methods - tech solutions for social problems, use online tools for collaboration; Skype, Google calendar, Google Docs

Rule 5: Fixed Ideas - live up to your intellectual obsessions and dark desires at work; take them seriously; don’t be afraid to offend people;

Rule 6: Responsibilities Without Hierarchies - each project as to have one person incharge, but it can be anybody; beginning of year retreat in the country; rethink the business model; sift through projects and leaders take them on;

Rule 7: The Power of Procrastination - don’t try to be too efficient; good deas will adapt and catch on, even if you neglect them for a while; they have to ripen; there is a natural Darwinism of ideas

Rule 7.5: Marketing by Feuilleton - no adverstising, no PR; do something interesting and press coverage will be yours; they get coverage in the culture section

As I said I am struck by how the "rules" have a pre-recession feel to them with a "build and they'll come" and don't worry about the money (particularly 3 and 7). The "rules" would also challenge the more traditional/longer lived organisations out there and are probably aimed at the more fleet-of-foot/agile "start ups".

All good grist for the mill - your thoughts?

*Picture credit: NZ Film Commission, "A Game With No Rules"