Year: 2007

Market survey effort on Enterprise 2.0 readiness

Francois has put together an online survey to generate some data on what organizations are currently doing about Enterprise 2.0.

What is the state of the market for Enterprise 2.0 Tools?

Are you in the process of deploying Enterprise 2.0 Tools or thinking of doing it? Who in your organization is involved? What do you anticipate the biggest barriers to adoption to be? How will you measure success? Which process will you start with?

If you are interested in participating in a project in which we collectively come to an answer for these and other questions, then take a few minutes to fill out the Enterprise 2.0 Market Readiness Survey. We will share all the results with everyone who’s interested.

And of course feel free to post it on your blog for your audiences to fill in and participate (just point them to http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?u=937203810006).

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Developing an eye and ear for Web 2.0 phenomena

Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead
Benjamin Franklin

I’ve been following the controversy and conversation around Digg, HD-DVD keys, and the AACS-LA response. I’ve found the following to be among the more thoughtful and useful posts on the topic for my interests:

My views on copy protection and DRM (digital restrictions management/digital rights management) have generally been more pragmatic than ideological or policy oriented. I think the evidence suggests that copy protection and DRM schemes generally don’t accomplish what they ostensibly claim to. They don’t stop anyone who wishes to circumvent them, and they increase costs and interfere with the rights of those who do play by the rules.

In this most recent incident, we’re discovering that the latest generation of technology tools and services with explicitly social components are even farther ahead of law and policy than usual. “Cease and desist” letters begin to lose their effectiveness when the number of “offenders” starts to expand exponentially. “Deep pockets” lose their effectiveness when the conflict becomes asymmetrical.

The decision makers here are not stupid people, despite what their responses might suggest. On the other hand, they do appear to be “net deaf” or “net blind.” Their judgment is formed and informed by long experience in linear environments. Whether they can compensate for that experience in a changing world is problematic. Ed Yourdon in another post that just hit my feed reader offers some thoughts on why it may remain difficult.

The problems of hierarchy are largely invisible from the top. The power of new networks is hard to appreciate if you don’t immerse yourself in it. It’s a bit like trying to coach a sport that you’ve never played. There’s only so much you can learn by watching from the sidelines. If you want to make sound decisions, you need to invest in acquiring the requisite experience.

 

Blogrolls matter – do you want one here?

Like Rick, I haven’t published a blogroll here for quite some time. Since I do 95% of my own blog reading inside FeedDemon, I don’t pay much attention to them myself. I’m curious as to who might want to see a blogroll here. It would have to be a subset of the 300+ feeds I am currently monitoring. Let me know in the comments.

Blogrolls matter

I haven’t had a blogroll on my site in years. Turns out that’s a mistake. I’ll be working on remedying that in the next few days…

Congratulations to Bill Ives on his third blogiversary

Courtesy of Jack Vinson, I found Bill’s blog within days of its start. Since then, Portals and KM has been part of my core knowledge work reading list and Bill and I have had the chance to work together virtually. Later this month, we will finally get the chance to meet face-to-face at the Enterprise 2.0 Rave in New York.

Portals and KM: Third Anniversary

Tomorrow I start my fourth year with this blog. On May 2, 2004 I did my first posts. There were three, Is KM the Killer App for Portals?, Some good articles on blogs and blogs on blogs, and Is RSS TNBT? I think the last one is now answered yes as RSS is everywhere and not just with blogs. Blogs are also everywhere and in many niche business markets such as real estate and sports. KM may be a killer app for portals but web 2.0 tools like blogs, wikis, and tagging are going to change intranets forever so they may not look or act like the enterprise portals that I was describing.

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Mindjet announces MindManager 7

Here’s something to look forward to for MindManager fans. I saw a brief preview of this earlier this year, but otherwise haven’t had a chance to look at it yet. I will be upgrading as soon as I can get my hands on a copy. Thank you to Chuck Frey for his excellent summary post on the upgrade.

Mindjet announces MindManager 7

Mm7pro400px Mindjet today announced the launch of MindManager 7, a new version of its flagship mind mapping and business visualization software. English and German versions will be available on May 30, 2007. I’ve had a pre-release version to play around with for a few days, and have used it in my work. Here’s what I like about it:

  • Ribbon style toolbar: With MindManager 7, the developer has adopted the Office 2007 style of “ribbon” toolbar. It’s well designed and easy to use, and exposes more of the tools you need to create and manage maps, without being overwhelming. In other words, the developers at Mindjet did a very good job designing this toolbar, from a usability standpoint. One thing that took a little getting used to was the location of the text formatting tools. Formerly located along the bottom of the MindManager workspace, they have now been moved into the ribbon toolbar at the top of the workspace.
  • Saving queries and views: I haven’t used this feature yet, but I think it’s going to be an important one for MindManager “power users.” You can now save a set of match criteria used by the Power Filter, Power Select, or Power Bookmarks commands for later re-use. Nice!
  • Focus on topic: This new command automatically centers the currently-selected topic in the workspace, and collapses all other map branches. This enables you to quickly focus your thinking on that part of your map, and minimizes other distracting content.
  • Tighter MS-Office integration: The “insert” menu now enables you to create new Outlook tasks, appointments, contacts and notes, from within a MindManager map. Clicking on the task toolbar button, for example, opens a new Outlook task dialog box. When you’re done typing, you click save, and the task is automatically added both to your Outlook task list and as a topic in your map – very slick! You can also do the same thing with a range of spreadsheet cells using the Excel range toolbar button.
  • Map styles: MindManager 7 now offers an expanded selection of map styles, which incorporate different styles of topic lines, color schemes and more. The styles give users a pre-formatted, time-saving set of attractive styles to choose from. This should be particularly appreciated by new users of the program, who may otherwise find making such map-level changes daunting at first.
  • Improved formatting options: In the formatting tab of the ribbon toolbar, MindManager 7 now includes options for changing the spacing between sibling topics. You could do this in previous versions, but it required digging down through the program’s menus and making these adjustments in a dialog box. Now, you can click on increase and decrease spacing toolbar buttons, and immediately see the impact on the appearance of your map. In addition, the new version of MindManager now offers a “format painter” similar to the one in Microsoft Word.
  • More topic sorting options: In MindManager 7, you can sort by alphanumeric order, alphabetic only, on task percentage complete and task priority. For added flexibility, you can also choose the sorting “depth” – subtopics only, the entire sub-tree or to a level that you specify. In addition, you can select from a forward or backward sorting order.
  • Topic styles: MindManager 7 now enables you to create named topic styles, based on the format of the currently-selected map topic. This is a time-saving feature that will enable you to quickly reformat the appearance of your map topics to meet your needs. It’s similar to the way in which you can create named topic styles in Microsoft Word, where each one “remembers” a particular set of fonts, colors, sizes and text styles, and can be applied with a click of the mouse.
  • Icons and map markers: These visual elements can now be added from the ribbon toolbar, which is faster than opening a panel on the right side of the workspace and then selecting what you need, as in previous versions of MindManager. You can still access this type of window, but what’s significant is that the program’s developers now provide you with a streamlined way to add them to your map.

While previous upgrades to MindManager have been incremental, version 7.0 is clearly a bigger leap forward. The ribbon toolbar really does enhance usability by putting more tools at your fingertips. In addition, Mindjet’s developers have added a significant number of new features that make the program easier to use and make it more powerful for managing large amounts of information.

MindManager 7 will be available in Pro, Lite (a basic version for home/education users) and Mac versions. For more information, please visit the MindManager 7 page on the Mindjet website, where you can register to be notified when the program is available for purchase. Click here to view today’s news release announcing this significant new visual mapping product.

Enterprise 2.0 RAVE in New York

One of the basic advantages of Enterprise 2.0 technologies is that work gets divvied up among your social network and you can often take advantage of situations such as this, where Bill Ives has already summarized information that I also wanted to pass along. I’m looking forward to linking up with Bill and a great collection of other speakers and facilitators. Better yet, Francois Gossieaux of Corante has designed the event to maximize interaction among all those attending.

Enterprise 2.0 RAVE in New York

This is a reminder about first Enterprise 2.0 RAVE in New York on My 21 and 22. I have been asked to be a part of this session and I am looking forward to connecting with the other speakers. I have also heard that the attendees so far are very interesting. You will get a $250 discount by using “bloggers” (without quotes) as a discount code during the registration process.

The event will start on May 21 with an informal dinner and a short talk by Andrew McAfee, Harvard Business School professor, who first used the “Enterprise 2.0” term. The Enterprise 2.0 Rave will continue on the 22nd with four sessions, three of which will managed as group brainstorm sessions around the following topics:

Deploying Enterprise 2.0 tools – the adoption issues
Targeting the right business processes for Enterprise 2.0 projects
Getting started with Enterprise 2.0 and how to measure success


The last session will be an interactive wrap-up session involving all the thought leaders who participate in the Enterprise 2.0 Rave. Speakers include many of my fellow Fast Forward bloggers: Jerry Bowles, Kathleen Gilroy, Jevon MacDonald. Jim McGee, Joe McKendrick, Euan Semple. Others include JP Rangaswami, CIO of BT Global Services, Jason Wood, a principal and head of research for RT Capital Management, Susan Scrupski founder of IT Services Advisor, John Musser founder of ProgrammableWeb.com, Jenny Ambrozek, Jeff De Cagna, and Johnnie Moore.

Warren Bennis on Great Groups

Bennis - Organizing Genius

Organizing Genius : The Secrets of Creative Collaboration
Bennis, Warren; Biederman, Patricia

Much of the talk about Enterprise 2.0 centers on the possibilities that new technologies open up for improved cooperation and collaboration in organizations. The problems of cooperation and collaboration in organizations have attracted attention long before today s technology options existed. Warren Bennis has been studying the issues of leadership and organizations for decades. In Organizing Genius, Bennis turns his eye toward the lessons we might draw from the successes of great groups.

Published in 1997, Organizing Genius examines the case histories of seven great groups, whose stories are worth knowing regardless of the lessons they contain. The groups the Bennis and co-author Patricia Ward Biederman chronicle include Disney s animation studio, Xerox PARC, Apple s Macintosh team, Clinton s original election campaign team, Lockheed s Skunkworks, Black Mountain College, and the Manhattan Project. As a long-term student of leadership, Bennis here emphasizes the importance of the group in achieving exceptional results when those results call for creativity and innovation. While there is still an important role for leadership, it is leadership that calls for a much more delicate touch than we are accustomed to seeing or valuing. In Bennis s view, in fact, great leaders cannot arise absent a great group to lead.

Bennis highlights the following lessons about great groups:

  1. Greatness starts with superb people
  2. Great groups and great leaders create each other
  3. Every great group has a strong leader
  4. The leaders of great groups love talent and know where to find it
  5. Great groups are full of talented people who can work together
  6. Great groups think they are on a mission from God
  7. Every great group is an island but an island with a bridge to the mainland
  8. Great groups see themselves as winning underdogs
  9. Great groups always have an enemy
  10. People in great groups have blinders on
  11. Great groups are optimistic, not realistic
  12. In great groups, the right person has the right job
  13. The leaders of great groups give them what they need and free them from the rest
  14. Great groups ship
  15. Great work is its own reward

Bennis also has an online article on The Secrets of Great Groups, which summarizes his insights in a slightly different way. None of these lessons are exceptional, although it s good to see that Bennis emphasizes the importance of shared mission. That s something that I see as a frequent problem in groups that are struggling.

In all of this, technology is not center stage. What Bennis does is to show us places where you might focus your technology efforts.

Everything is Miscellaneous from David Weinberger

I just placed my order for Dave Weinberger’s newest book Everything is Miscellaneous. You know it will be worth it. Of course, there is also an excellent blog to accompany the book.

Book launch at the Berkman on Monday

The Berkman Center is holding a launch party for Everything Is Miscellaneous on April 30. I’ll give a talk at 6pm in Pound Hall Room 335, and then there will be a reception at 7pm at the Berkman Center at 23 Everett Street. (Pound Hall is a block away.)

You are invited. [Tags: ]

Video: RSS in Plain English

This is making the rounds. It is excellent and fun little explanation of one of the important underlying components of our Web 2.0/Enterprise 2.0 world.

Video: RSS in Plain English


Click To Play

We made this video for our friends (and yours) that haven’t yet felt the power of our friend the RSS reader. We want to convert people… if you know someone who would love RSS and hasn’t yet tried it, point them here for 3.5 minutes of RSS in Plain English.

If you’d like to share this video, please do! Grab the code here.

You can find out a little more about The (still new and a little clumsy) Common Craft Show here.

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