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Category: Collaboration and workplace (Page 43 of 96)

This category is focused on enterprise / workplace collaboration tools and strategies, including office suites, intranets, knowledge management, and enterprise adoption of social networking tools and approaches.

Gilbane Group Twitter Policy

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!

 

Twitter Name Description
@gilbane Gilbane Group’s corporate account
@NewsShark Information and content technology industry news reported by Gilbane Group
@gilbanesf Information and dialog related to our Gilbane Conference San Francisco (next event is June 2-4, 2009)
@fgilbane Frank Gilbane, President & CEO
@marylaplante Mary Laplante, VP Client Services & Senior Analyst
@billtrippe Bill Trippe, Lead Analyst, XML Technologies and Content Strategies
@lwmtech Lynda Moulton, Lead Analyst, Enterprise Search
@spaxhia Steve Paxhia, Lead Analyst, Publishing Strategy and Technology
@lehawes Larry Hawes, Lead Analyst, Collaboration and Enterprise Social Software
@Lciarlone Leonor Ciarlone, Senior Analyst, Globalization
@dwaldt Dale Waldt, Senior Consultant, XML, Publishing, Content Management
@nealhannon Neal Hannon, Senior Consultant, XBRL Strategies

 

Content Management Vendors on Twitter

So I have spent enough time on Twitter to conclude that it is useful, indeed very useful, for keeping up with news and trends in technology. Just like the blogosphere, Twitter has its “A list” folks like Guy Kawasaki and many hundreds of interesting people with smaller followings. But I have also found it to be the most useful means I have for following news feeds—from Scientific American (@sciam in Twitter) to Paid Content (@paidcontent) to New England Sports Network (@NESNcom).

Not surprisingly, content management vendors are getting involved as well, and I welcome this. I put out a call ages ago for vendors to alert me to RSS feeds of their press releases, finding them much more useful than emailed press releases in long form. (Few did.) But now I want these things via Twitter. I love Twitter search, and I have begun using TweetDeck to filter and group things. I feel like I can keep much better track of things, read what I want to in long form, and share what I think is especially interesting.

What I would like to see next is an easy way to share groups of Twitter feeds, and even collaborate on them. I have been collecting a list of CMS vendors on Twitter, and offer the start of that list here. Anyone have thoughts about how we could create a useful master list? To start with, I would love to add categories to this—some are WCM vendors, others more niche, some are open source, and so on.

Thoughts?

Twitter User Name Twitter URL Company  
 
acquia http://twitter.com/acquia Acquia  
AlfrescoCMS http://twitter.com/AlfrescoCMS Alfresco CMS  
attivio http://twitter.com/attivio Attivio  
boxdotnet http://twitter.com/boxdotnet Box  
brightcove http://twitter.com/brightcove Brightcove  
coremedia_news http://twitter.com/coremedia_news Core Media  
CrownPeakCMS http://twitter.com/CrownPeakCMS CrownPeak  
daysoftware http://twitter.com/daysoftware Day Software  
Dirxion http://twitter.com/Dirxion Dirxion  
DotNetNuke http://twitter.com/dotnetnuke DotNetNuke  
Drupal http://twitter.com/Drupal Drupal Org  
elcomtechnology http://twitter.com/elcomtechnology elcom Technology  
ektrondave   Ektron  
emccorp http://twitter.com/emccorp EMC Corp.  
EMCsoftware http://twitter.com/EMCsoftware EMC Software  
episerver http://twitter.com/episerver EpiServer  
escenic http://twitter.com/escenic escenic  
EE http://twitter.com/EE ExpressionEngine  
gentics http://twitter.com/gentics Gentics  
google http://twitter.com/google Google  
hpnews http://twitter.com/hpnews HP News  
HP_IPG http://twitter.com/HP_IPG HP’s Imaging and Printers Group  
HylandSoftware http://twitter.com/HylandSoftware Hyland Software  
IBM_ECM http://twitter.com/IBM_ECM IBM ECM  
ibmevents http://twitter.com/ibmevents IBM Events  
Intelledox http://twitter.com/Intelledox Intelledox  
Interwoven_Inc http://twitter.com/Interwoven_Inc Interwoven/Autonomy  
ipublishcentral http://twitter.com/ipublishcentral IPublishCentral  
IronMountainInc http://twitter.com/IronMountainInc Iron Mountain  
Jadu http://twitter.com/jaducms Jadu  
Jahia http://twitter.com/Jahia Jahia  
joomla http://twitter.com/joomla Joomla Org  
Lionbridge http://twitter.com/Lionbridge Lionbridge  
Lotusphere http://twitter.com/Lotusphere Lotusphere  
magnolia_cms http://twitter.com/magnolia_cms Magnolia CMS  
SharePoint http://twitter.com/SharePoint Microsoft Sharepoint  
msoffice_us http://twitter.com/msoffice_us MS Office US  
MSDN_Office http://twitter.com/MSDN_Office MSDN Office News  
NsteinTech http://twitter.com/NsteinTech Nstein  
Omtool http://twitter.com/Omtool Omtool  
openedit http://twitter.com/openedit OpenEdit DAM  
OpenText http://twitter.com/OpenText OpenText  
Oracle http://twitter.com/Oracle Oracle  
papayaCMS http://twitter.com/papayaCMS papaya CMS  
plone http://twitter.com/plone Plone Org  
radiantcmsntcms https://twitter.com/radiantcms Radiant CMS  
ScriptoriumTech   Scriptorium  
sdltridion http://twitter.com/sdltridion SDL Tridion  
squizuk http://twitter.com/squizuk Squiz.NET  
streamserve http://twitter.com/streamserve StreamServe  
tizra http://twitter.com/tizra Tizra  
TYPO3_INFORMER http://twitter.com/TYPO3_INFORMER
Typo 3  
vignettecorp http://twitter.com/vignettecorp Vignette  
webworks_com http://twitter.com/webworks_com WebWorks  
wordpress http://twitter.com/wordpress WordPress  
XeroxCorp http://twitter.com/XeroxCorp Xerox  
XMPie http://twitter.com/XMPie XMPie  
       

 

Management of Content Authored in Enterprise Social Software

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.

Welcome Larry Hawes – yes another one!

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!

Welcome back Kaija

Our colleaugue, Kaija Pöysti, has posted mostly on the content globalization blog, but also here in 2007-08. She took some time off to move back to Finland, get re-engaged with board work, and write a book on corporate use of social media with co-author Leenamaija Otala. She is now back and will be posting on both globalization and social media topics. Welcome back Kaija!

Enterprise Search and Collaboration, or is it Compliance?

For two weeks in a row I have been struck by the appearance of full page ads on the inside cover of Information Week for Autonomy ControlPoint. For a leading search vendor, this positioning is interesting and raises a number of rhetorical questions about Autonomy’s direction and perhaps even the positioning of search in the marketplace. Top of my mind are these:

  • How will Autonomy be viewed by IT folks, whom I assume are the principal readers of Information Week?
  • Is this a shift away from an emphasis on search as “search” by Autonomy?
  • Is Autonomy just expanding its range to broader business interests to gain better enterprise penetration?
  • Will their deep technical competence in search be as rich in the areas of governance and compliance?

To try to get a handle on all of this, since the second ad had no URL, I went to the electronic version online at Information Week archives but discovered that the ads don’t appear in the PDF. No problem; I went to the advertisers’ index and clicked on the Autonomy link, thinking that the link would take me to the ControlPoint pages on their Web site. It only took me to the main page for Autonomy where there was nothing referring to ControlPoint, compliance, regulation or governance (all words prominent in the magazine print ads). I tried the drop-down for Products; nothing there either. At least Autonomy uses IDOL as its search engine on its own Web site, so I tried it. Yea! ControlPoint appeared in the results; the first entry got me to a page describing it.

But what else did I learn by following the breadcrumbs? A step back to the “products” level brought me to an Autonomy Electronics Records Management description and I began to notice the logo in the upper right said “Autonomy Meridio.” Lots of clicks later, I discovered that Meridio was acquired by Autonomy in 2007, which I probably would have known if I had paid more attention to “non-search” stuff. ControlPoint belongs in that family of products. When I clicked on this sidebar link, Autonomy ControlPoint: Information Governance for SharePoint and this one, Meridio eDRM for Microsoft Office, more questions came to mind:

  • Is Autonomy, the search company with its Meridio and Interwoven acquisitions, having a serious run at Microsoft by entering their traditional markets?
  • If an office tools software company like Microsoft slides into the search market by acquiring FAST and then leverages its great success with SharePoint by making FAST its default search offering, why shouldn’t Autonomy turn the tables?
  • By appealing to IT professionals will Autonomy be able to gain mind share that pits them directly against Microsoft with language like “Named Email and Compliance Vendor of the Year by Financial-i” and “Is SharePoint enough?”

Yes, we are going well Beyond Search, aren’t we?

EPiServer’s New Relate+ Incorporates Social Media Features and E-Mail Marketing into Websites

EPiServer announced the general availability of EPiServer Relate+ – a new package which combines the latest social media and web 2.0 features with EPiServer’s web Content Management System (CMS). Relate+ provides combines community building, email composition and maintenance, and a CMS in one package. EPiServer Relate+ contains a template package in the form of a ready-to-use community, inspired by Facebook, which can be adapted to customer-specific needs. You can now mix controlled content from EPiServer CMS with the dynamic and user-generated content which will appear in EPiServer Community. http://www.episerver.com

Government confronts the new information world

With the rise of Web 2.0 and 3.0, growing Internet traffic, social networking and a host of other technologically driven applications and appetities, government at all levels is confronting the burgeoning changes in its role and participation in the society around it.

An important part of this process is the separation of the paths down which technology is taking society at large from the paths government should and should not follow in performing its essential functions. Experience has shown that not every tool, functionality and resource available to and used by citizens should become part of the governance process. The quandry is deciding up front which is which. This quandry can be seen in the very definition of government being used to described the future: “connected government”, “open government”, “participatory democracy”, “transparent government” are just some of the terms being used to describe what their users think government should be.

The core challenge, it would seem, is to develop an approach that makes government at once more effective in discharging its myriad day to day duties, more open and responsive to the honestly held beliefs and concerns of its citizens, yet still fully capable of discharging its constitutional responsibilities without infringing on or abrogating the rights of its citizens. History shows that this:

  • Will not be an easy process
  • Will not lend itself to a solution based solely on availablle technnology
  • Is likely to be tried unsuccessfully (or disastrously) more than once before we get it right.

This would seem to dictate that, whatever the technological imperatives, government should be changed carefully, in small steps and with well-considered fallbacks from the paths that turn out to be ineffective or dangerous to our liberties. One way to do this, for instance, would be to focus on those government functions we know are broken and understand how to fix (yes, there are such things.)  Then we could focus on applying new technology in areas where the target is familiar, the outcome more easily measured and the impact is less likely to spin out of control.

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