Author: Larry Hawes (Page 3 of 3)

Atlassian announced today the Atlassian Stimulus Package, a discounted offer on two of it’s most popular products, Confluence and JIRA. This offer is intended to benefit three different parties: Atlassian, small workgroups using these products, and children in developing countries.

Here are the details of Atlassian’s package, which features the number 5. For the next five days only, teams of up to five users may purchase an annual license to either Confluence or JIRA for $5. Atlassian says that these are fully functional versions of the software, not “light” versions. In addition, the license is renewable annually for the same amount and includes support from Atlassian.

Atlassian stands to gain from this promotion, of course. The company should gain many new subscribers to its products as a result of this offer. Their hope is that the small teams using Atlassian software will influence others within their organization, leading to additional purchases at full price.

Small workgroups of up to five people also benefit from this deal, because they can purchase proven collaboration tools at a huge discount and can continue to use the software at an extremely low annual cost.

The real winner from the Atlassian Stimulus Package is impoverished children around the world. Atlassian will donate 100% of the proceeds from this promotion to Room to Read, a charity that builds libraries for children in developing countries. Atlassian’s goal is to donate $25,000 to Room to Read, as a result of selling $5,000 in discounted Confluence and JIRA licenses on each of the next five days. More kids will have books to read — or learn to read in the first place — as a result of Atlassian’s and Room to Read’s joint effort.

Hats off to Atlassian for crafting a marketing promotion that not only sells software, but also benefits less fortunate children around the world!

A team of researchers from International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) released a very interesting piece of academic research this week, which presents some findings from a study of “the largest organizational social network ever collected.”  The researchers collected and mined data related to c. 400,000 IBM employees.  The researchers further focused on a subset of that dataset — 2,600 consultants — to draw insights on how connectedness impacts the productivity of employees who generate revenues by logging billable hours.

What makes the study so interesting — in addition to the extraordinarily huge dataset used — is that it is one of the first attempts I’ve seen to assign a currency-based value to social network connections.  In this case, the social network is based in email; it lives in IBM’s internal deployment of Lotus Notes.

The study associates incremental revenue earned by a consultant with both individual and project-level email activity.  For example, the study finds that if an IBM consultant uses email to reach out to a manager that is not his direct supervisor, he produces, on average, an additional $588/month in revenue as compared to a consultant that only interfaces with her direct manager.

This is fascinating stuff, and my head is spinning with the possibilities of how this might be applied to inter-enterprise interactions conducted via emergent social software, rather than through well-institutionalized email.  I just came across this study today and haven’t had time to properly digest it yet, but will do so and comment further.  In the meanwhile, I invite you to read it for yourself and leave observations and  comments here.

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!