Activity for our 4th Gilbane Boston conference at the Westin Copley November 27 -29 is ramping up quickly. The conference schedule and session descriptions have been posted. The early list of exhibitors and sponsors is also available. And, online registration is open. We’ll be updating the site on a regular basis from now on, usually daily, so bookmark the pages that interest you to keep up-to-date.
Author: Frank Gilbane (Page 53 of 71)
The state of Massachusetts has approved Microsoft’s Open XML format for state documents. Some of you may remember there was quite a fight over the state’s decision to adopt the OASIS ODF (Open Document Format) backed by Sun and IBM a couple of years ago. The decision excluded XML output from Microsoft because they controlled it.
We covered much of the controversy here, and in our conferences where we hosted a few debates. Our opinion hasn’t changed. Here is a statement from the State’s IT Division website on their official position:
The Commonwealth continues on its path toward open, XML-based document formats without reflecting a vendor or commercial bias in ETRM v4.0. Many of the comments we received identify concerns regarding the Open XML specification. We believe that these concerns, as with those regarding ODF, are appropriately handled through the standards setting process, and we expect both standards to evolve and improve. Moreover, we believe that the impact of any legitimate concerns raised about either standard is outweighed substantially by the benefits of moving toward open, XML-based document format standards. Therefore, we will be moving forward to include both ODF and Open XML as acceptable document formats.
Tim Bray reports Atom 1.0 is complete. Atom is the XML app that is meant to be a better RSS. We have been using both in our newsfeeds for awhile, sometimes switching depending on various newsreader support issues, and have been reluctant to completely switch from RSS. But this will edge us closer.
Today’s Wall Street Journal has 2 articles that relate to enterprise social computing: Instant Messaging Invades the Office, and iPhone Calls to Some Business Users. Our recent informal poll of Facebook users suggests they think instant messaging will be more dominant than some other “social software” in enterprises in the near future. The WSJ article indicates IMing is invading fast.
It is not surprising that iPhones, with their dramatically improved viewing experience, will find a lot more use in business environments. I love my Treo, but avoid viewing spreadsheets and using it with other web apps. The iPhone will make a huge difference to my interaction with our corporate information when I am out of the office. Of course, there are security issues, and no doubt other technical issues that may get in the way initially, but there is no going back. And if tomorrow’s numbers from Apple are less than expected they will merely reflect the initial velocity, not an inability to reach escape velocity.
UMass professor Nora Barnes has added to her earlier research on enterprise adoption of social software, this time focused on use by universities. Below is an intro with a link from her announcement. Also see our Collaboration & Social Computing Blog where Geoff comments on a new report by McKinsey.
Earlier this year, my research partner, Eric Mattson and I revealed that the fast-growing companies of the Inc. 500 are adopting social media faster than anyone would have predicted based on the previous research into corporate social media (summary). I sent you that announcement. Those findings were actually picked up and featured in Business Week in March!
For our most recent research, we followed up on that survey by examining the social media usage of the “marketing teams” (a.k.a. admissions departments) of 453 colleges and universities nationwide. The results are fascinating. I thought you’d be interested.
Generally, the “marketing teams” of academic institutions are more familiar with and adopting social media faster (especially blogs) than even the innovative companies of the Inc. 500. Even more importantly, they are using social media and search engines to research potential students. No longer can applicants behave irresponsibly online without potential consequences to their futures (and their parents’ sanity).
An executive summary of the results entitled The Game Has Changed: College Admissions Outpace Corporations in Embracing Social Media can be downloaded here from the website of the UMD Center for Marketing Research.
Thank you Andrew.
Andrew McAfee has a thoughtful post (“It’s Not Not About the Technology”) on a topic I’ve often bitten my tongue about, i.e., the (often smugly delivered) phrase “It’s not about the technology”. And of course the context is a discussion about applying technology to a business application, which should by definition, imply that both technology capabilities and business requirements need to be part of the “about”.
It is common for one or the other to be overly emphasized to ill effect. Perhaps because of my technical background, I am more sensitive to the use of this phrase in situations where the utterer is covering up for a lack of knowledge or fear of technology or change.
You simply can’t make good business decisions that involve technology without understanding what the technology can and can’t effectively do – business requirements need to be expanded or contracted based on what is possible and feasible if you want your IT investments to be successful and competitive.
Often the largest benefit of a piece of software is a little known (even to the vendor) feature that happens to allow for, e.g., a process improvement that would be a requirement if you knew it was possible. See what Andrew has to say.
Here is a chart including the data from the poll described yesterday from 500 25-34 year old facebook users combined with the results from the same poll given to 500 18-24 year old facebook users. There is certainly a difference. But the most surprising results are the extremely low expectations about the use of blogs and wikis, and even social networking software. These findings, informal as they are, would make me very nervous if I were a start-up hoping to make it by capturing the facebook generation as they stream into the workforce.
Geoff and I and Leonor are at the Enterprise 2.0 Collaborative Technologies conference in Boston, and I’m sure we’ll have some things to report. In the meantime I used the new facebook polling feature to ask facebookers what they think about a few collaboration technologies and their importance in the workplace over on our main blog.
