Collaboration: March 2009 Archives

The first wiki, WikiWikiWeb, was created 14 years ago today, by Ward Cunningham. Since then, the wiki has become one of the most widely deployed collaboration tools available. One might even call the wiki the catalyst of the Social Software movement.

Why is the wiki so popular? There are several reasons, including ease of use, structured navigation, and the ability to track changes to wiki pages and roll back to previous versions. The democratic nature of the format, in which anyone who has access can edit the wiki, is undoubtedly a major contributor to its success as well.

The primary reason for the wiki's success is its flexibility. Wikis have been used for everything from collaboratively authoring a document, to managing a project, to establishing a corporate knowledge base. We are seeing the same phenomenon today in Twitter, which is being used in ways that its creators never imagined.

So, at age 14, what has the wiki taught us? That collaboration tools should be designed for flexible, yet intuitive, use. Complexity is kryptonite to collaboration. Let's remember that before we build and deploy enterprise collaboration software.

About a month ago, Frank Gilbane posted on Gilbane Group's use of Twitter. His post lists the Twitter accounts Gilbane Group has established and how we intend to use them. The blog entry also lists some of the Gilbane Group analysts that are active on Twitter and includes their usernames.

We would like to expand on the earlier post by communicating a policy point relevant to the social networking sites on which Gilbane Group currently maintains a profile (Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook) and any other social networking site that we may join in the future. First, a brief related aside.

Every organization should establish a social collaboration policy and communicate it -- many times over several channels -- to all who use enterprise social software provided by the organization. The policy statement should describe expected and unacceptable behaviors related to enterprise social software use. It should include any potential rewards that individual users may accrue by using the software and all consequences of potential misuse. Ideally, the policy statement will also describe the governance structure put in place to monitor and guide usage of the tools. Excellent examples of corporate social collaboration policy statements include those of IBM and Intel.

Right! Back to Gilbane Group's social software policy specifically. We want you to benefit from our active participation in social networks like Twitter just as much as we want to learn from you. Therefore, you should be aware that:

Gilbane Group will follow all individuals and organizations that have chosen to follow us on Twitter. Additionally, we will encourage our analysts to keep the same practice with their individual Twitter accounts.

Simply put, you follow us on Twitter and we'll return the courtesy (unless your account is clearly a spambot or inappropriate.) Social networking is all about conversations, and all conversations include two or more active participants, by definition. We can learn as much or more from you as you will from us. So Gilbane Group and its analysts will engage with whomever enters into a social relationship with us.

Below is a list of current Gilbane Group Twitter accounts, including those of individual Gilbane analysts. Please follow any of these that you would like to and expect us to return the favor. Thank you!

Suw Charman-Anderson posted a thoughtful piece with the title Businesses will live to regret their social media ignorance today.  Her main point is that organizations that do not deploy enterprise social software behind the firewall will lose control of information as it spreads through public social media.  This is an oft-heard refrain these days in the blogsphere.

Please don't misunderstand, I agree with Suw.  If businesses want to retain some control over their information, they should provide secure, enterprise-ready versions of the specific types of collaboration and communication tools that employees want to use.  For example, if the risk of information leakage via Twitter is too high, the organization should deploy an enterprise microblogging application on its own servers (or subscribe to a SaaS offering hosted by a trusted vendor.)

What is especially valuable and somewhat novel in Suw's post is her recognition of the content management issues surrounding the use of public social media to share corporate information.  She writes,

"...you need to make sure you know how communications using these tools are going to be logged, archived, and made searchable. Mostly, archiving (or logging) is built in, so it shouldn’t be that difficult. Cross-archive search might be a little bit more interesting, but it’s worth your while because more time is wasted in re-finding information than in finding it in the first place."

Much of the dialog around enterprise social software has rightly been on connecting people to other people and the information and knowledge they possess.  The notion of using software to connect people to unstructured information hasn't gotten nearly as much attention in the Enterprise 2.0 discussion.  Perhaps content management is a dull topic in comparison to connecting people, but enterprise social software is essentially a content authoring tool and it has fueled growth in the amount of content created within an organization.

Traditionally, unstructured information has been housed in what most would call a 'document', but it also may be contained in a message authored in a microblogging, wiki, or instant messaging application.  Those messages must be stored, indexed, and searchable so that users can find valuable information after it has initially been documented and shared by the author.  The same content management principles that we've applied to corporate email must also be used to ensure the findability of information generated in and shared via enterprise social software.

What is your view on this issue?  Do you have horror stories or best practices to share?  If so, please do by adding a comment below.

I am happy to announce that Larry Hawes has joined us, starting today, as Lead Analyst, Collaboration & Enterprise Social Media Practice, along with Geoff. This has been an important area of coverage for us since we started writing about enterprise use of wikis and blogs over 4 years ago - it is hard to believe how unusual such a thing was then. Not so now, and it is great to have Larry aboard to help IT and business managers understand the role of social media tools in corporate and government applications.

Larry has most recently spent 6 years with IBM Global Business Services as a Consultant and Program Manager in collaboration and knowledge management, focused largely on public sector clients. Larry also spent 3.5 years at Delphi Group as an analyst and consultant where he worked with both vendors and enterprise customers. Larry's bio has not been posted on our site yet, but can be found at: http://lehawes.wordpress.com/about-larry-hawes/, and of course on LinkedIn.

Larry's email is: larry@gilbane.com and his phone extension is 154. You can follow Larry on Twitter at:
http://twitter.com/lehawes

Welcome Larry!