Happy Birthday Doug! A perfect gentle knight of technology as well as a pioneer and great inventor. Doug Engelbart's 87th birthday - today - is a fine day to watch the video of Doug's talk "The Strategic Pursuit of Collective IQ" embedded below. And a great day to (re) read Doug's "Augmenting Human Intellect: A Conceptual Framework" 1962, see DougEngelbart.org. My favorite Doug quotes and links, see Doug Engelbart | 85th Birthday Jan 30, 2010 from two years ago.

[from archive.com] "The Strategic Pursuit of Collective IQ" - Doug Engelbart's presentation at the The Brown/MIT Vannevar Bush Symposium in 1995, celebrating the 50th anniversary of Bush's groundbreaking article "As We May Think". Introduced by host and long-time friend Andy van Dam, Doug recounts his discovery of Vannevar's work, briefly describes the unfolding of his own work and what's next using hisBootstrap "Paradigm Map", and shares his wish that, had he only known that Vannevar was still alive in 1968, he would have sent him the film of his 1968 demo. See Doug's Abstract and Bio for this talk. Presentation: 50 minutes; Q&A 10 minutes.

See the Video Archives - Bush Symposium page at the Doug Engelbart Institute website for links to all 11 sessions of this Symposium.

This movie is part of the collection: Doug Engelbart Video Archives

  1. DougEngelbart-128w-192h.jpg  (27.4 KB)

Forbes.com contributor Hayden Shaughnessy writes: "By moving social media practices into the enterprise we will change the way senior managers communicate, the way employees communicate with customers, and possibly people’s experience of work." He asked three platform vendors, including Traction Software President and co-founder Greg Lloyd, to respond to three questions on how a company can make social a success, starting from Day 1 requirements, benefits to the employee and enterprise outcomes . Greg's advice includes: "“Social” use can informally open up a timeline of activity to make it easier for people working on the same activity – including people who may be from different parts of the organization or even customers, partners, suppliers. Jon Udell and Jim McGee call this “Observable Work” (on a personal basis “narrating your work” hits many of the same points). It’s very easy to do, and generally well accepted – people learn by example." » Read the article

See related Enterprise 2.0 and Observable Work
The Future of Work Platforms: Like Jazz
Borlaug Global Rust Initiative Wins 2010 Forrester Groundswell Social Impact Award
and TeamPage Connected Work

  1. forbes_logo_main.gif  (7.1 KB)

ITPro Active has published a white paper by Traction Software Partner Applied Knowledge Co, Ltd on Social Enterprise Knowledge Management and Search. A Google English translation of the article begins: "Knowledge management is an eternal challenge for companies. Traditional knowledge management approaches are not quite accumulated knowledge and fresh content to help you develop your business even if the substrate is stressed not utilize excessive accumulation have also been organized, and there is a problem."

"As a solution to these challenges is to leverage the structure of social networks like Facebook and blogs, and enhanced security and access privileges for enterprises, "enterprise social computing" is effective to introduce. Furthermore, this "search" By fusing a vast company that distributed the "knowledge" that enables integration of information."

See Google's English translation of the ITPro article and register to download the white paper (in Japanese).

  1. ITPro-Active-Logo.gif  (4.8 KB)

PRNewswire Dec 7, 2011: Leading unified information access company, Attivio, suggests alternate approach to all-out ban. "Visionary companies must find ways to change the way e-mail is used; not banish it," commented Sid Probstein, Chief Technical Officer at Attivio in response to widely reported news that a 'zero email' policy is underway at one of the world's largest IT companies. Thierry Breton, CEO of British-based Atos, wants to phase out e-mails over the next 18 months.

Probstein offers prescriptive guidance for businesses facing similar challenges. "Workers are drowning in information overload, so Mr. Breton's reaction to the effectiveness and value of e-mail is natural and visceral; but reverting to phone calls and verbal conversations for most internal correspondence is not the answer. The reality is that businesses need to enable efficient collaboration amongst their workers, and they need to preserve and provide access to historical information. Otherwise, they are perpetually re-inventing the wheel each time similar issues arise." ...

Organizations can dramatically reduce e-mail volume by using it where it makes sense, by deploying Traction TeamPage and other advanced Enterprise 2.0 collaboration tools for specific tasks like project management, discussion groups and exception handling. The federal government, for example, has taken this path to reduce e-mail volume. A recent Department of Defense study reported a 50% reduction in time spent on electronic communications management after implementing Traction in a technology testing program.

"The key to effectively managing e-mail is to retain the right information and enable users to control it as they do any other important corporate resource," explains Probstein. He provides tips for end-users to create value from e-mail:

• Link internal correspondence that relates to external communications from customers and partners;
• Use a Unified information access strategy to identify relevant, messages;
• Secure and index e-mails with other important files, E 2.0 collaboration tools, intranet pages, and content from CMS or competitors' websites;
• Discover e-mail through the normal process of search, running reports, or monitoring dashboards.

Good advice Sid! Read the full Press Release

See also Extending the fabric of work, or How to Be Emergent
Email isn't dead - It's only sleeping ...

  1. MarketWatch-Logo.jpg  (32.7 KB)

At the Enterprise 2.0conference two weeks ago, Tony Byrne (President, the Real Story Group) and Rob Koplowitz (VP and Principal Analyst, Forrester Research) were joined for the SharePoint Analyst Panel. David Carr's Information Week column Does SharePoint Have Future As A Social Platform frames the debate as lopsided with a simple conclusion: No.

IT Managers across the globe are deploying SharePoint in hopes that it will form the basis of their collaboration and social strategy, but SharePoint's ability to check off the feature lists (yes, it has a notion of profiles, pages, tagging, discussion, tasking) belies the actual outcome.

Koplowitz said: "it's a lot better portal than it is a social platform." (I am not convinced that this implies it's a good portal)

Byrne said: "They've built a decent platform for lightweight file-oriented collaboration... But SharePoint only provides two of the 10 or 11 key applications enterprises are looking for" in a social platform.

Byrne said: "the dirty little secret of SharePoint is that the vast majority of its usage is for very basic file sharing."

Koplowitz said: "If you're going to take on this beast--if you're going to take the buffalo down--you'd better be prepared to consume every part of it."

Not very promising.

An easy way to handle basic file sharing or even construct a basic portal may be an important part of an information strategy but isn't worth the true cost of SharePoint and doesn't merit the upside down 3 to 1 (by a conservative estimate) services to licensing cost ratio that any company should be ready to swallow if they want to tune and customize SharePoint to do more than what it's good at out of the box (some portal and lightweight file oriented collaboration activities). Following that path is expensive and led Thomas vander Wal to write SharePoint: Gateway Drug to Enterprise Social Tools.

If you don't have SharePoint, Koplowitz' fair warning is you better be ready to take the buffalo down. But the good news if you already have SharePoint is twofold:

1) It is OK at short term, small team oriented file collaboration and always will be.

2) You can break down the workspace and content type silo problem and make that locked up content more findable, social and valuable by adding TeamPage to the mix. For far less than it would cost to re-engineer "social" into SharePoint or even upgrade it to the 9s to run their FAST Search, you can unlock it's silos and socialize around it with TeamPage Attivio Plus Search and Social Enterprise Web.

Why stop with a social wrapper around or inside SharePoint. By making Connected Workpossible with TeamPage, you can also engage across all your other enterprise systems, content, and even the entire web.

I just joined the Nov 2011 W3C Social Business Jam and added a discussion topic: Seamless integration can work like the Web. I'm on deadline for Enterprise 2.0 next week in Santa Clara [ see you there ! ] but will try to steal time to jump in to a live IBM Jam while it's open (through Nov 10, 2011 8pm EST).

The description for Seamless Integration begins: Are there effective ways to combine legacy applications with new social technologies to help foster or encourage greater use in the company? If so, can it be done incrementally?

I propose:

... integration of social software (now "systems of engagement") and transactional systems where work gets done (now "systems of record"), using the same W3C protocols and layers over W3C protocols that make the public Web successful: Web-standard content delivery, links, and link-aware search."

The world inside a social business differs from the public Web in many significant ways: a) it's much smaller; b) it's very link-deprived compared to the public Web; c) there's a lot of redundant content (think of all of the copies of the same slide deck distributed in email); d) some highly valuable content isn't linkable at all (think legacy systems of record); e) finer-grain permissioned access rules are much more important when you want to open up the most of what the business does, and what people in the business know. On the plus side, social business activity adds valuable context.

This bring issues like consistent and reliable identity, consistent and reliable access controls (over W3C protocols), representation of context, and permission aware search to the top of the queue. I believe these issues can be addressed by system architecture and layering of services over base level W3C protocols, which may eventually lead to extension or additional layers of W3C protocols.

Then use Doug Engelbart's model linking Knowledge Product (systems of record), Dialog (systems of engagement), External Intelligence (email, public Web, other social businesses) as examples. And Traction TeamPage. Published in the Jam with with links of course!

See Seamless integration can work like the Web - in the W3C Social Business Jam.

Reinventing the Web

Extending the fabric of work, or How to Be Emergent

Fixing Enterprise Search

Intertwingled Work

Introducing Online Workplaces - Greg's notes on Larry Cannell's July 2011 Webinar

20 June 2005 | Supernova | Why Can't a Business Work More Like the Web?

  1. W3C-masthead.jpg  (1.8 KB)
  2. CODIAKProcess.gif  (95.4 KB)

Traction Software's Greg Lloyd and Jordan Frank will be at Enterprise 2.0 Santa Clara Booth #208 15-16 Nov 2011. We hope to see you there! Traction Software will announce pricing and general availability of new Social Enterprise Web and Attivio Plus options, see Jacob Morgan's Chess Media Group review and Traction Software on Connected Work.

TeamPage's Social Enterprise Web option gives you freedom to add a Task tag, comment or share pages you find on the public Web or your company's intranet. You can add a badge or TeamPage comment widget with one line of Javascript. Or share, task, tag and comment on any Web page using TeamPage's free Web browser extension for Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari and Chrome.

TeamPage’s Attivio Plus option fuses TeamPage and External Systems of Record to work like the Web

TeamPage integrates search and discussion. Tag, task, and share content stored in SharePoint, email in Exchange, Documentum, File servers, SQL Databases, the public Web, private intranets, and other sources.

Don't miss Greg Lloyd on Tony Byrne's panel Marketplace Choices: Platform vs Products panel, Tuesday 15 Nov 2:30-3:30pm. Greg will join Oracle, Moxie Software, and Microsoft representatives in a lively discussion. Be our guest and Register with priority code CPHFES22 for a free Expo Pass, or save $500 on full conference registration. See us at the conference, or follow @TractionTeam on Twitter for TeamPage news you won't want to miss! To schedule a meeting with Jordan or Greg at E2.0 Santa Clara, please email e20santaclara@tractionsoftware.com, use Traction Software's contact form, or shout out to @TractionTeam on Twitter.

Conference Details This year's Enterprise 2.0 Santa Clara conference is at the Santa Clara Convention Center, 14-17 Nov 2011. Traction Software will be at Expo Pavilion Booth #208 from noon through 6:00 PM Tuesday and Wednesday. Register with priority code CPHFES22 for a free Expo Pass or save $500 on full registration. The Expo Pass entitles you to attend keynote and free sessions, visit the Expo pavilion, and free cocktail receptions from 4:00 to 6:00PM Tuesday and Wednesday. See you there!

  1. E20-Conference-Logo.jpg  (45.2 KB)

Writing in KMWorld Magazine Judith Lamont quotes Forrester Analyst Rob Koplowitz: "Many companies are placing a big bet on collaboration to support their business activities. In particular, the workplace is moving toward one in which many business applications are integrated through collaboration and exposed through the social layer." Lamont chooses Teampage customer the Borlaug Global Rust Initiative (BGRI) as her first example. BGRI is an international research project funded by the Gates Foundation and others to organize and conduct research aimed at stopping the spread of crop disease that threatens a third of the world's wheat supply. "The organization selected TeamPage from Traction Software as the collaboration solution and the Attivio Active Intelligence Engine (AIE) to aggregate the many types of content on the website. TeamPage includes wiki, blog and social networking capabilities. "We chose TeamPage because it could be deployed very quickly and was simple to use," says John Bakum, webmaster for the site, which is hosted by Cornell. The site was up and running in just a few weeks, and has grown rapidly over the past several years."

One of the first steps taken was to provide the community with information that had been scarce or expensive. "We arranged with the publisher of the Wheat Rust Atlas to put a PDF version of the book on our site," Bakum says. "The book was out of print but was a valuable resource, and now it's available to all the researchers."

The website helps expedite the administrative aspects of conducting research. Forms to request screening for wheat rust or dispatching seeds that may be resistant to the disease are available on the website, for example. "If a lab in Canada has a variety of wheat that may be resistant, researchers can send it to nurseries in Ethiopia and Kenya, where it can be grown and tested. Our website acts as a central place for that data, benefiting researchers around the world," Bakum explains."

Because members upload files into collaboration workspaces via e-mail, some content arrives in the form of attachments. "Attivio searches Word documents, PDFs, spreadsheets and other types of files, even if they are attachments," Bakum says. Much of the site is public, but TeamPage allows for the creation of internal spaces that are password protected, to enable private virtual meetings.

» Read the full story

See also Borlaug Global Rust Initiative
19 Nov 2010 | Borlaug Global Rust Initiative Wins 2010 Forrester Groundswell Social Impact Award

  1. KMWorld-logo.jpg  (41.5 KB)

Ada Lovelace Day celebrates the contributions of women in science and technology. I've chosen to write about Betts Wald who was a branch chief in the Communications Science division of the US Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) when I first met her. I joined NRL in 1974 as my first real job - after serving in the US Army when I was drafted as a graduate student at Brown. It was a great experience. NRL was full of wildly talented, energetic and brilliant managers who knew how to get impossible things done in engineering and government, and taught that skill to their teams. Betts was one of the best: leading and inspiring her team, running interference, providing just enough technical guidance (i.e. to avoid permanent damage) while constantly encouraging and developing her team's talents. Women in science and technology should be encouraged to consider career paths as leaders as well as individual contributors: Betts is a great role model. Although I never heard Betts shout: "To the difference engine!", except for the pipe it would be in character. And I'm not certain about the pipe.

Note on the Ada icon: I strongly recommend that you download the thrilling adventures of Babbage & Lovelace for your iPad, and see author Sydney Padua's excellent 2D Goggles site.

  1. FindingAda-IApp-Oct2011.jpg  (16.4 KB)

"I’ve seen the Traction product a few times now I have to say that I really like it and not just for small and medium size businesses. Traction offers an amazing search integration feature which many large vendors can’t even come close to replicating." Chess Media Group Principal and author Jacob Morgan just started a weekly series of concise, consistent, and even-handed public reviews of vendors in the emergent collaboration / Enterprise 2.0 space. Traction Software is honored to chosen for the second review in Jacob's series. Jacob asks wide-ranging questions on overall direction, along with practical questions on integration, support, pricing, maintenance, time to go live, technology, focus, capabilities, customers, key differentiating factors from competition, along with Jacob's candid take.

Jacob continues: "I think their approach to using search as the backbone behind collaboration is also very unique, in fact they are the only vendor that I have spoken to which highlights search and discusses it in such an integral way. I like the focus of not having to integrate various systems together which requires duplicating and then syncing content but I also wonder how deep the search functionality can go into things such as billing and invoicing systems, service request systems, or ERP/CRM systems. The platform itself is very intuitive and easy to use, everything extraneous seems to have been removed but without compromising the UI or the functionality of the platform. I also think their pricing model is also quite attractive." » Read Jacob's full review and Greg Lloyd's comment.

See Connected Work
Related Traction Software Introduces Social Enterprise Web

  1. Jacob-Morgan-Logo.jpg  (72 KB)

KMWorld 2011 Panel C303 2pm-2:45pm Thur Nov 3, 2011. Join Traction Software's Jordan Frank and a stellar panel from the FDA, Attivio, and Deloitte to discuss and debate the future of social software in the enterprise, how it relates to what you see and use on the public Web, and how it differs. Expect a lively discussion based on practical experience, research, and analysis. “We want Facebook for the enterprise!” That’s a call to action, but what does it mean, and why will it fail? There is a gulf of difference in the use case for 2.0 in the Enterprise vs. the Web. Deloitte research indicates the best starting point for E2.0 is exception management, not making friends. Permissions issues, incentives, and infrastructure differ enormously when you consider the enterprise vs. the web. Enterprise architects and decision makers need to look at the web to gather ideas but not to look in the mirror.

Panel
Jordan Frank, VP, Sales & Business Development - Traction Software
Sid Probstein, Chief Technology Officer - Attivio
Paul Fisher, Senior Policy Advisor - FDA
Marcelus DeCoulode, Strategy & Operations - Deloitte Consulting

More on this session. Please contact us to meet Jordan and panel members during KMWorld 2011 and learn about new Attvio Plus and TeamPage Social Enterprise Web capabilities.

See KMWorld 2011 Nov 1-3 Washington Marriott Wardman Park, Washington DC.

  1. KMWorld-2011logo.jpg  (26.3 KB)

Athens Group is an independent consulting firm based in Houston, Texas. In 2009, the company migrated their Athens Group Quality Management System (AGQMS), industry knowledge base, and training curriculum to Traction TeamPage where the information is easily accessed, collectively edited, and the content can be moderated where necessary. TeamPage became their integrated Intranet. In 2011, the TeamPage Attivio Search Module was added to further improve information access with automatic page ranking and faceted drill down navigation.

Using TeamPage, Athens Group is able to quickly and cost-effectively train a greater number of Drilling Technology Assurance℠ (DTA) consultants, enabling the company to provide its DTA services to a rapidly growing client base. The Traction TeamPage based Intranet streamlines management of AGQMS and allows anyone in the company to gain quick and easy access to Athens Group quality procedures and documents.

About Athens Group

Athens Group provides independent, third-party technology assurance services for high-specification Oil & Gas drilling and production systems. Our mission is to help operators, drilling contractors and asset owners ensure safety, reduce non-productive time (NPT), and safeguard the environment over the entire asset lifecycle.

Before Traction TeamPage

In 2009, Athens Group was faced with the need to scale its training and quality management systems to accommodate its rapid growth. Traction TeamPage helped the company to:

• Consolidate AGQMS for more streamlined change management and greater internal visibility
• Keep up with the demand for its services by enabling new hires to more quickly remove any gaps in their knowledge, become well versed in the Athens Group proprietary Proven Practices, and become productive DTA Consultants

Benefits of Traction TeamPage

“No, really, we want you to edit our intranet first day on the job.” Thomas Cogdell, the Knowledge Coordinator at Athens Group, usually gets a disbelieving look when he tells this to a newly hired Drilling Technology Assurance℠ (DTA) consultant. “We believe that you bring experience, knowledge, and perspective that will improve our knowledge management systems. And don’t worry, our TeamPage software ensures I’ll get an email notifying me of a change to any page; and it keeps full history so we can always roll back if need be; and it locks down some tightly-controlled spaces like AGQMS so that you won’t be able to make changes where you shouldn’t. So … we really do want you to edit our intranet!”

This oft-repeated conversation highlights three reasons why Athens Group selected Traction TeamPage over competitive systems:

• Ease of editing by anyone in the company
• A full audit trail of all changes
• Ability to have a mix of open and moderated spaces

The ability to export collections to Word and PDF, subscribe to pages and spaces, and use keyword tags were other important features for the fast-growing company.

Less than a year after implementation of the company’s Traction TeamPage based Intranet, adoption has been rapid, as shown in the following graph.

By building its company Intranet using Traction TeamPage technology, Athens Group has been able to:

• Consolidate disparate sources of company knowledge into a single portal
• Streamline its training and knowledge management processes

Athens Group Quality Management System (AGQMS)

The Traction TeamPage deployment of AGQMS was designed and implemented under the auspices David Wight, the Director of Quality for Athens Group, who has designed several ISO-certified quality systems. After AGQMS was migrated to Traction TeamPage, it moved from a bulky set of processes, procedures, work instructions and documents to a highly visible and easily customizable Intranet system that's known and used by everyone at Athens Group.

The AGQMS space’s home page is a comprehensive home page on the Intranet, with links to top-level articles:

Athens Group chose to make AGQMS a moderated space, creating an audit trail of approvals as well as edits. For example, this page shows both the Edit and Moderation history of one page:

Using the tagging capabilities in TeamPage, each page is assigned an owner and an approver. This gives each person an easily accessed “to-do list.”

Athens Group Knowledge Portal

As a consulting services organization, accessibility to corporate knowledge is a core value that Athens Group provides for its clients. Athens Group leveraged TeamPage's tag-driven sections to create an Athens Group Knowledge Portal that's both comprehensive and self-maintaining.

To aid knowledge transfer, Athens Group created its own taxonomy of industry keywords. Late-generation drilling rigs have their own vocabulary and acronyms, and the same company or piece of equipment can be known by more than one. For example, a top drive (which drives the drill bit into the well) might be referred to as “Top Drive”, “TD”, “T.D.”, “Derrick Drilling Machine”, “DDM”, or “D.D.M.” – often in the same document! Rather than have to search for all the possible combinations, Athens Group created a single tag “Top_drive” which is then applied in every place where the top drive is referenced.

Similar tags for clients, vendors, operators, rigs, and so forth enabled creation of section driven pages that dynamically build themselves as Athens Groups adds new clients, rigs and projects to its ever-expanding list of successful delivery of DTA services. For example, in addition to links to external sources such as Rigzone, each rig page in the knowledge base has dynamic lists of projects for that rig, lessons learned from working on that rig, and other references to the rig anywhere in the Intranet.

These lists are self-maintaining, because any time a new project or lesson learned or other page is tagged with the rig name, TeamPage will automatically update the list.

Traction TeamPage’s ability to use tags and dynamic sections has resulted in a highly cross-linked, yet zero-maintenance knowledge portal.

DTA Training Curriculum

The increasing demand for Athens Group’s DTA services created the need for scalability in the training process. Once AGQMS and the Knowledge Portal were implemented in TeamPage, Athens Group moved from a paper-based training curriculum to an online curriculum that references other parts of the Intranet.

The DTA Training space implements this approach and has greatly improved the scalability of Athens Group’s training program. A newly hired DTA Consultant works through the Training Curriculum which guides him or her through the entire multi-week process.

Each of the training pages may have links to many other spaces, such as AGQMS, Company Info, or DTA Proven Practices. Training pages may also include links to network shares such as the DTA Knowledge Base℠, other Athens Group online systems such as OpenAir, or external resources such as the Driller’s Club message boards.

New hires who are seasoned veterans from other leading companies in the industry have consistently say that the Athens Group Intranet, quality system, and training program is the best they've ever seen. And they're surprised to learn that they're expected to contribute content immediately, even on the first day! Once assured that their changes will be reviewed and can be reversed, they do.

The Future of Traction TeamPage at Athens Group

Athens Group’s Traction TeamPage based Intranet allowed the company to better leverage its AGQMS system and reduce the training time needed before DTA consultants are ready to be assigned to projects. As Athens Group continues to expand its services, clients and employees, Traction TeamPage will prove its value again and again.

  1. Athens Logo.png  (17.6 KB)
  2. Athens Usage Trends.png  (26.2 KB)
  3. Athens Quality Contents-1.png  (117.8 KB)
  4. Athens Edit History.png  (81.5 KB)
  5. Athens Training Contents.png  (77.1 KB)

KMWorld recognized Traction Software's TeamPage as a Trend-Setting Product for 2011. TeamPage: "enables searching both external sources and TeamPage's Social Enterprise Web to discuss, tag, task, share and badge internal or external content." KMWorld's judging panel of editorial colleagues, analysts, system integrators and users evaluated over 800 products in reaching their decision for KMWorld's ninth annual list. Traction Software is honored that KMWorld has selected TeamPage as a Trend-Setting Product for the fourth time. » Read KMWorld Trend-Setting Products of 2011

  1. KWTrend-product-2011-311w.jpg  (136.4 KB)

Hat tip to Professor +Andrew McAfee for pointing out Do Happier People Work Harder? my nomination for Required Reading of the Day (#RRD). Teresa Amabile, a professor at Harvard Business School, and Steven Kramer an independent researcher wrote a great New York Times Labor Day opinion column. They cite sobering results from a Gallup-Healthways poll of 1,000 adults every day since Jan 2008: "People of all ages, and across income levels, are unhappy with their supervisors, apathetic about their organizations and detached from what they do." They also suggest that the problem is manageable - by what I would define as great enterprises.

Over the past half-decade Amabile and Kramer researched micro-level causes behind this problem, collecting nearly 12,000 electronic diary entries from 238 professionals in seven different companies. The results support three important conclusions:

1) "... inner work life has a profound impact on workers’ creativity, productivity, commitment and collegiality... Conventional wisdom suggests that pressure enhances performance; our real-time data, however, shows that workers perform better when they are happily engaged in what they do."

2) "Gallup estimates the cost of America’s disengagement crisis at a staggering $300 billion in lost productivity annually. When people don’t care about their jobs or their employers, they don’t show up consistently, they produce less, or their work quality suffers."

3) Managers can help insure that people are happily engaged at work - I believe Peter Drucker would claim that's the primary responsibility of management. And doing so isn't expensive.

Amabile and Kramer say:

"Workers’ well-being depends, in large part, on managers’ ability and willingness to facilitate workers’ accomplishments — by removing obstacles, providing help and acknowledging strong effort. A clear pattern emerged when we analyzed the 64,000 specific workday events reported in the diaries: of all the events that engage people at work, the single most important — by far — is simply making progress in meaningful work..."

"Most managers don’t understand the negative consequences of this struggle. When we asked 669 managers from companies around the world to rank five employee motivators in terms of importance, they ranked “supporting progress” dead last. Fully 95 percent of these managers failed to recognize that progress in meaningful work is the primary motivator, well ahead of traditional incentives like raises and bonuses."

"This failure reflects a common experience inside organizations. Of the seven companies we studied, just one had managers who consistently supplied the catalysts — worker autonomy, sufficient resources and learning from problems — that enabled progress. Not coincidentally, that company was the only one to achieve a technological breakthrough in the months we studied it."

That's good news - but not really news. An enterprise that makes great use of the creative talents, enthusiasm and unique expertise of its people can gain a sustainable competitive advantage and be a great magnet for attracting and maintaining talent. Look at Apple among others.

Technology can't create a great enterprise, but it can open the door for innovation in how any enterprise operates - from micro to macro scale - including how it operates with external stakeholders, customers and suppliers. This opens the door to another form of strategic as well as operational advantage.

I've persistently said that the 2.0 of Enterprise 2.0 should refer to a conscious rethinking of how an enterprise can work more effectively and creatively, using Web technology to enable "action at a distance" and connections spanning barriers of space and time. Web technology is necessary but not sufficient for this kind of innovation at scale, although Doug Engelbart's work clearly called this shot decades before the Web.

I'm no sociologist, but Amabile and Kramer seem to support the view that socialization in the context of everyday work - rather than as a separate "social" duty while at work - may be best. I don't think people know how to "be emergent", but people are very good at discovering and developing unexpected relationships in a context where many values and norms are shared - at work.

Repeating points from Enterprise 2.0 Schism in 2009: 1) It's not just the technology; 2) It's not just the people; 3) An effective organization is a social invention that is created or shaped to serve extraordinary ends, and that may be the most valuable invention of all.

"The purpose of an organization is to enable ordinary humans beings to do extraordinary things." ~ Peter Drucker, Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices (1974)

See Amabile and Kramer's New York Times column, and read their July 2011 book The Progress Principle (Forbes interview).

Do Happier People Work Harder? By Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer New York Times Sunday Review, September 4, 2011

G+ discussion on +David McRaney's The Illusion of Asymmetric Insight and how emergent behavior is not all unicorns and rainbows. Think Lord of the Flies

Need for Incentives, and other Innovation Myths - The most powerful incentives are intrinsic, not "pay to share" games.

Enterprise 2.0 Schism - Why Doug Engelbart and Peter Drucker should be declared Patron Saints of E2.0

Peter Drucker and Enterprise 2.0 - Drucker Centenary Nov 2009

Doug Engelbart | 85th Birthday Jan 20, 2010

See G+ for original post and discussion

Enterprise photo courtesy US Navy. Strictly speaking CVN-65 is Enterprise 8.0 - the eighth US Navy ship to bear that name see enterprise.navy.m…

I don't know what a picture of an "Enterprise 2.0" might look like, and don't want to use any of the stock photos of smiling folk around a laptop that are about as convincing as socialist realism posters of smiling tractor factory workers. And all the good Star Trek Enterprise photos are Paramount's copyright.

  1. USSEnterpriseBowShot-300w.jpg  (110.1 KB)

Writing in the 23 Aug 2011 Financial Times, John Hagel and John Seely Brown of the Deloitte Center for the Edge advise CIO's how to improve performance, usually without increasing spending. They recommend that CIO's identify their biggest pain points, and adopt a Performance Improvement Funnel approach to leverage the unique, full value of social software. Hagel and Brown cite two examples from their Feb 2011 Social Software for Business study including: "Alcoa Fastening Systems reduced time spent on compliance activities by 61 percent using an internal collaborative platform provided by Traction Software. Both companies targeted specific pain points and were able to deliver tangible improvement in performance that mattered to the senior executives of the firm." » Read the full story

  1. Financial-Times.jpg  (36.6 KB)

I enjoyed reading Dion Hincliffe's Putting Social Business to Work and G+ discussion led by Luis Suarez on Laurie Buczek's The Big Failure of Enterprise 2.0 Social Business. I agree that top down - and isolated - Social Business parallels the faults of top down - and isolated - Knowledge Management. I like Laurie's analysis and recommendations, including her top level: "Make social tools part of the collaborative workflow." This is good for both social business and knowledge management. The question is: how to extend the fabric of work?

An edict from management or prayer from internal evangelist to "be social" is often translated: "how many hours a week?" and "instead of doing what?" A top down Knowledge Management edict: "share what you know" turns into a empty Friday afternoon exercise that's soon abandoned.

In both cases bottom-up capture of conversations, actions, responses to routine or exceptional issues, and human actions in context is a much better way to deliver what knowledge management and social business promise.

This includes free-form accidental discoveries and introductions to folk throughout the organization who aren't usually involved or aware of what others are doing. In my opinion, emergent and unpredictable value that advocates of Enterprise 2.0 promise is an outgrowth of making work more open, observable and discoverable. It's also critical to make work easier, more effective and more enjoyable. Build on that rather than adding overhead and waiting for people to jump into an activity they see as optional and divorced from their contribution to the success of their business.

Enterprise 2.0 systems like Traction TeamPage are really good at capturing conversation in context, tracking action and linking what people do or say to their profiles and vice versa. But it's difficult to make work done within siloed systems of record - document repositories, ERP, CRM - visible and actionable. Opening up siloed discussion in each system of record makes matters worse, not better.

Sharing activity streams across systems of record is one way to avoid the siloed discussion trap. But limiting visibility of work to activity streams opens a new problems: activity stream overload. If you think following hundreds or thousands of people on Twitter can be frustrating, wait until you hear what you get from raw streams from line of business applications. A stream of "What I had for lunch" tweets is thrilling compared to a stream of Documentum check-in notices and decontextualized status.

I believe that the best solution will include permission-aware search than spans activity streams and systems of record to make documents, individual email messages, SQL database records from CAD/CAE or other line of business systems actionable, social objects. What's important is the ability to connect people, records, conversation and action in the context of core business activities like product development, sales, support, and coordinated work with customers, suppliers and partners. This should include daily routine, exceptions, and new discoveries.

At E2.0 Boston, Traction Software announced and showed TeamPage and Attivio's Social Enterprise Web technology used to search, discuss, tag, task, and share live structured data or unstructured content in external systems of record including Microsoft SharePoint, EMC Documentum, Microsoft Exchange, File servers, SQL databases, intranets, and the public Web.

A question found in a customer email stored in Exchange, an issue with a new drug application filed in Documentum, a fact in a legacy document stored in SharePoint or a File server S: drive, a record in an SQL database can all be discovered, discussed, tagged, and tasked for follow-up action in TeamPage without converting or importing data from its original source. Systems of record look and act like they are part of the same permission-aware TeamPage fabric used for collaboration, communication, and action tracking in the flow of daily work.

Large companies have enormous IT teams promising enterprise-wide search and collaboration with roadmaps stretching years into the future and budgets of seven to ten figures or more. Traction TeamPage and Social Enterprise Web capabilities are packaged and priced to make deep, permission aware search and collaboration crossing many sources simple to deploy, manage, and use. This is a game changer for small to mid-size businesses who don't find complex, multilayered enterprise architectures manageable or affordable. This is also a great option for teams in large companies who want to get their work done now, working over existing systems of record.

You'll hear more about this soon [or contact us to learn more now]. Making systems of record look and act more like the Web - including scalable, permission aware search - extends the fabric of work in context for external and internal stakeholders.

See related 21 Jun 2011 | Traction Software Introduces Social Enterprise Web
Alcoa Fastening Systems - Groundswell 2011 Award Nomination for Collaboration
Introducing Online Workplaces - Greg's notes on Larry Cannell's July 2011 Webinar - Online workplace
Fixing Enterprise Search - spanning systems of record
Intertwingled Work - connecting work across multiple sources
Knowledge Fishing vs. Knowledge Farming - Grass roots knowledge management
20 June 2005 | Supernova | Why Can't a Business Work More Like the Web?

On G+ see
Luis Suarez - 24 Aug 2011
Dion Hinchcliffe - 24 Aug 2011
Greg Lloyd - 24 Aug 2011

  1. Fabric.jpg  (173.8 KB)
  2. 07-Search-started-hit-on-Sharepoint-cropped.jpg  (322.6 KB)

On Aug 5, 2011, Andrew McAfee opened a public discussion on Google+ by sharing How Apple (unintentionally) revolutionized corporate IT by Aaron Levie. McAfee commented "Story from CNNMoney about how Apple is unintentionally revolutionizing corporate IT. About time, too." and asked "Does anyone doubt that the Cloud + mobile + social + new devices is going to have a huge impact on corporate technology infrastructures and costs within the next 5-10 years?" Off to the races...

Greg Lloyd - This may also radically reduce the roll-out time for new corporate capabilities designed to use native Web infrastructure including HTML5, GWT and other technologies that deliver a user experience on par with the public Web.

The same applies to back end services and IT's ability to acquire, deploy, adapt and support back end services more rapidly and effectively.

Contrast aggressive internal awa external use of Web tech and architecture by IT versus the interlocking three, four, or five year update cycles using the MS stack (or others) and update cyles of IT systems that depend on and lag MS by years.

A very highly placed person in government told me: "Traditional IT architecture and practice almost guarantees that any new initiative will be late, grossly over budget, and obsolete before it is delivered."

Forcing change to a Web-like approach from front end mobile and user experience expectations can shift IT back to focus on timely response and business value rather than plumbing. And deliver systems people like to use.

Dan Camper - +Greg Lloyd I agree with you, so long as the problem (and solution!) domain remains within the "corporate capabilities designed to use native Web infrastructure."

There is sometimes a tendency for IT to force an inappropriate solution onto the customer merely to make IT's life easier. A web app implementation rather than a thin app (or even a custom app), for instance. Or vice-versa. This leads to a dissatisfied captive customer base, which of course doesn't help anyone in the long term.

An IT department would do well to treat its internal customers as if they where external, paying customers instead. To borrow some of Steve Jobs' phrasing: Delight those customers with extraordinary, amazing solutions. Yes, you have to pay to play, but the end result would be worth it.

Greg Lloyd - +Dan Camper I agree. "Lipstick on a pig" fits for a weak Web interface as one-for-one replacement for IE6 or similar vintage IT clients for systems of record. But even a weak Web interface can at provide mobile access, and steps around an obsolescent plumbing choice that Microsoft urges customers to abandon.

I believe that the 5-10 year shift in corporate technologies and infrastructure Andy envisions should and will move toward: 1) traditional, transactional "systems of record" - ERP, MRP, Accounting, CAD/CAE - remain as specialized silos and functional back-ends for enterprise systems; 2) minimalist secure (authenticating) Web-compliant interface to these systems of record (to create a thin or custom app as needed); 3) secure, permission-aware search spanning content of systems of record and "systems of engagement"; 4) minimalist but effective, easily adaptable and extensible Web interfaces provided by vendors of system of record (scaling down to mobile); 5) social software / Enterprise 2.0 technology and "systems of engagement" spanning and connecting human work, exception handling, innovation and "systems of record".

Issues of enterprise wide authentication, secure access, permission aware search spanning "systems of record" and "systems of engagement" at enterprise rather than public Web scale can and have been successfully addressed - at least in early stages. The architecture of enterprise IT will more or less resemble the architecture of the public Web - with adaptation and extension of provisions for authentication, permission-aware access, permission-aware search that go beyond the needs of the public Web (although Google and G+ seems to be heading in that direction too).

For thoughts on this shift in IT architecture, see:
July 2010 | Intertwingled Work - Observable work as an activity spanning systems of record

And a step in that direction (full disclosure - I am President and co-founder of Traction Software)
June 2011 | Traction Social Enterprise Web - "Marrying Deep Search and Collaboration"

In this case (and others) its' putting our money where our mouth is, not vice versa.

---

These are quotes from a public GooglePlus discussion - feel free to join in. If you need a Google+ invitation, please email grl@tractionsoftware.com with the email address I should use to send the invitation.

See also Reinventing the Web on how we got here

Building pleasant and stable islands in a storm-tossed sea ... on extending the Web

A Circle is not a Space on GooglePlus experiments and notes

Note: The only iStock photo I could find with lipstick on pig used a piggy bank rather than a real porker. Seems to fit.

  1. Lipstick-On-Pig.jpg  (66.7 KB)
  2. Lipstick-On-Pig-P50Crop.jpg  (28.5 KB)

Vote here for Alcoa's Forrester Groundswell Award What were you doing at 7:15AM Saturday July 2, 2011? Sleeping? Getting ready for a Fourth of July weekend picnic or a trip to the beach? Joe Crumpler of Alcoa Fastening Systems (AFS) was reaching for his iPad to review status for the world wide roll-out of an Oracle upgrade scheduled for the holiday weekend. The story starts the night before. Joe writes in the Next Think Next blog that he co-authors with Brian Tullis:

I put it to the test Friday morning at 12:01 am. I held a kickoff meeting for the leadership of the Oracle upgrade project. We set the plan for starting the upgrade process and discussed communication strategy. Project hand-offs were to be explicitly communicated by email. Project work journals were to be handled by a Traction Teampage status update. My test had begun.

I finally went to bed at 1:30 am. I woke up Saturday morning at 7:15 am. I reached for my iPad so that I could check my email feed before even getting out of bed. I had subscribed to the feed for the project’s workspace the day before. My inbox was full of one-line status updates. It looked like a Twitter feed. I was happy to see that most of the volume came from Traction status reports. I read for 20 minutes before starting the morning status meeting. I had a basic understanding of everything of importance on the project before the meeting started; including all of the problems. More importantly, I knew we were behind schedule.

Fortunately for the team's rollout and holiday weekend, Joe's planned status meetings were reduced to two thirty-minute checkins per day (an 80% reduction over meeting practice before using TeamPage):

One of the reasons I use Traction Teampage for project management is that, if used properly, it dramatically reduces the need for project status meetings. I managed the China and Newbury Park’s QAD projects using two 30-minute long meetings per day. This freed team members to focus on working instead of wasting time in meetings. Unfortunately, the acquisition project required hours of meetings per day because the information flow was cumbersome, and my system had failed me. The good news is, for the Oracle upgrade, I am using two meetings per day. One in the morning, and one in the evening.

This is how the 30-minute meeting works.

(1) Start with a review of the open issues.

Team members use status updates to identify issues. We make one issue tracking article per day, which resides in the project management workspace. The title of each issue is listed, along with a link to the task. We create a task for each issue. We track these within the go-live milestone on the Oracle upgrade project. We briefly discuss each issue. The goal is to describe the issue and its impact, and then assign who does what and by when.

(2) A five minute update:

The next step is for the project process owner. the person who has responsibility for executing the next step in the project, to give a five-minute update on the project. This normalizes project status across the team and is essential for team continuity. It also gives the team a better understanding of their comments and work schedule.

(3) New issues:

We ask each team member about potential issues. All issues are welcome, including the minutia of the project. Each issue is described accurately. We assess the potential impact and assign the issue an owner. The owner is responsible for resolving the issue or developing a plan that supports the project timeline.

We record all three steps in Traction so that a wider audience can follow the project. The first step is a static article. The second step represents the latest status posts via Traction’s project management interface. The third step updates a static page with links to tasks from Traction’s project management interface. We tie each issue to the go-live milestone.

Since this is a first attempt at using the status update capability, I’ve had to push my team to use it. It is not mandatory, but it is strongly encouraged. So far, they are exceeding my expectations. I think this is because a status update is easy to do and takes no more effort than tweeting. Plus, the post has no overhead. Team members simply write about accomplishments. It only takes few seconds.

The outcome of the four day go live process was successful. Brian Tullis, Alcoa Fastening Systems Information Services Director and co-author of Next Things Next writes, extending his comment on Joe's July 2 post:

We managed almost 180 issues to closure using the Traction project and task management capabilities. We identified go live issues within a “Go live Issues Log” milestone, and that is visible in the screenshot. As of this screenshot, we closed 175 out of 179 issues identified. The benefit we realized from using Traction here come from everyone on the technical team being on the same page, being able to collaborate through the issue itself rather than in parallel email streams, and being able to communicate clearly to our internal customers about the status of issues encountered. The benefit realized here is that it was a critical success factor in the go live process, and we supplemented issue identification and resolution with the status update (like a Twitter feed) to provide people with project-related information during the 4-day go live process. The project went live successfully and all remaining open issues are being tracked separately as part of our operational processes.

Pin-point focus on activities associated with a specific Task, Project or Milestone is extremely valuable when you need to stay on top of rapidly changing, time sensitive and critical activities such as the Oracle rollout. But it's equally important to be able to zoom out to maintain a healthy awareness of many other tasks, status updates (aka Enterprise Tweets), conversations, questions, and other activities that surround you at work.

Every action, status, post or search result also gives you one click access to the Profile of the person behind that activity, allowing you to learn more, contact that person, or see the person's status and activity stream (like all content, streams or searches, clipped to what you have permission to read).

Integrated collaboration, communication, action tracking and search using the TeamPage model offers a big advantage: add a Task tag to any paragraph in a Wiki page, status post or other TeamPage item. You can then use search, Profile or Dashboard views to dive in to any topic, conversation or business activity associated with that Task using business context, person, Task, Project or Milestone to navigate.

In Social Software for Business Performance - Some Perspective, Brian writes:

Working in the same platform as our procedures and documentation allows for some interesting things to happen, again, leveraging core hypertext / linking services. For example, we are doing a major system modification project, and one deliverable is to update the documentation for that system. We can associate a task from that project to the procedure in our [TeamPage] documentation wiki. Depending on the context, I see that something needs to be done to that procedure.

• In the project context, I see a task pointing me to the procedure and calling for action.
• In the procedure context, I see a task on the procedure, referencing the project.
• In the user profile context, the assignee will see the task assigned to her, pointing both to the procedure itself and the project that generated the task.
• It’s the same content, the same base URL, referenced in 3 different spaces but all linked together.

Brian is providing his background and perspective on Alcoa Fastening System's participation in the Feb 2011 Deloitte Center for the Edge Study: “Social Software For Business Performance: The missing link in social software: Measurable business performance improvements”

Brian's team at AFS maintained internal metrics of performance over a three year period - before and after adoption of Traction TeamPage - that enabled them to document a "61% reduction in time spent on compliance activities through the use of Traction software."

Brian writes:

What was our goal? We went from request to live in seven months. A team of techs from the US supported a travel team of analysts. We accomplished a task that normally requires at least 2x the time and many more resources. We did it on time and under budget. The stars lined up for us on this project, but our map was in Traction. ~ Enterprise 2.0 and Observable Work: Recap and Speakers Notes

By consolidating this work in an enterprise social software platform, we eliminated 61% of the work required to maintain documentation, do tests, and inefficient waste time spent searching for information across 7 locations. 61% equates to almost two full time resources.

We tried previously to do this consolidation through other tools, to no avail. Why were we successful with Traction? There's something about Traction and social tools like it that enable outcomes that were never before possible. If you read the study, you learn that we experimented with applications of the tool until we found some that worked in solving a real business problem.We can spend that productivity gain on project work, software changes, user support, and all of those other customer-facing things that our colleagues expect us to do as an IT organization. Individual IT teams that have not consolidated all of their work into our central group are applying these patterns and using the same tools. ~ Social Software for Business Performance - Some Perspective

ps - I haven't checked with Joe, but I hope he had a happy Fourth of July weekend, with plenty of time for picnic, beach, fireworks (in the sky - not AFS IT land), and relaxation between status checkins and updates.

Traction Software is happy to nominate Alcoa Fastening Systems for a Forrester 2011 Groundswell Award in the Management | Collaboration System Category.

Forrester's Groundswell Award Rules FAQ page states "We'll [Forrester] judge winners based on proof of accomplishing business or organizational goals, not based on what looks best or uses the best technology. Innovation and audacity are good too." with objectives for Collaboration Systems: "Help employees work together on projects."

We're proud of the Traction TeamPage user interface and technology used by AFS, and believe both are best in class for Social Software at work (other analysts and customers agree), but challenge you to find a better Groundswell nominee than Alcoa Fastening Systems judged on their proven accomplishment of business goals, innovation, and audacity.

It's also appropriate to commend Brian and Joe for their candor, openly sharing their experiences on the Next Things Next blog as well as talks at the Catalyst 2010 conference, E2.0 Santa Clara conference and Traction User Group (TUG). I'd also like to thank Alcoa Fastening Systems and other Traction Software customers who helped turn TeamPage best practices for action tracking and observable work into the integrated TeamPage capabilities introduced in 2010 and 2011.

Please read the Groundswell nomination page for Alcoa Fastening Systems - and add your own rating and review for the AFS and other Groundswell nominations.

Selected posts from Next Things Next blog:

In the Trenches with Traction TeamPage - Joe Crumpler Jul 2, 2011
Your journal is your life - Joe Crumpler Jun 29, 2011
What's the Vis? - Brian Tullis, Apr 6, 2011
Social Software for Business Performance - Some Perspective - Brian Tullis, Mar 7, 2011
Everything is a Project, Part 2 - Brian Tullis, Jan 24, 2011
Narrating your work - Joe Crumpler, Nov 22, 2010
TUG 2010 / Observable Workshop Notes - Brian Tullis, Nov 2, 2010
E2.0 Santa Clara: Patterns of Observable Work - Brian Tullis, Aug 29, 2010
Enterprise 2.0 and Observable Work: Recap and Speaker Notes Catalyst 2010 San Diego - Brian Tullis, Jul 30, 2010
Everything is a Project - Brian Tullis, May 5, 2010
My Motivations for Enterprise 2.0 - Brian Tullis, Apr 22, 2010
Project Reviews and Continuous Learning - Brian Tullis, Apr 7, 2010

Deloitte Center for the Edge Study, Feb 2011
Social Software for Business Performance
The missing link for social software: Measurable business performance improvements
Download the report (.pdf)

  1. traction_groundswell_afs_project_go-live_issue-tracking.png  (181.2 KB)
  2. traction-groundswell-afs-p297.png  (81 KB)
  3. Fireworks-XSmall.jpg  (230.5 KB)
  4. traction_groundswell_afs_project_go-live_issue-tracking-800w-468h.jpg  (339.7 KB)

Like many people in the tech industry, I've been happily exploring and enjoying Google+ for the past week or so (thank you Susan Scrupski for the early invitation). I like the Google+ bar, polished integration with Google Profiles, Photos, and Video, as well as the new Huddle and Hangout capabilities. And I'm looking forward to Google+ integrated Search.

Google's Circle model was carefully designed, with a wonderfully polished interface for adding folk to Circles and creating new Circles. Google is encouraging active discussion, feedback and suggestions on how Google+ should evolve. That said, I've also followed more than a few Google+ discussions in which people get confused by what the current Circle model is versus what the word "Circle" means to them.

I think it's easiest to understand the Circle model by comparing it directly to email lists. This post illustrates that analogy, with my analysis of the Circle model's strengths and weaknesses, and how it might evolve.

My Google+ Foodie Circle Example

If I create a Circle named Foodies and include all my foodie friends, I can post restaurant photos and notes that can only be read by folk I've included in my Foodies circle, hidden from the public. They can comment on what I post, and their comments can be seen by others named in my Foodie circle.

This means:

1) You can't add yourself to my Foodies circle. I'm the only person who can add people to my own Circles.

2) When you look at my Profile, you don't know what Circles I may have added you to. You see either: a) I haven't added you to any Circle (I won't even see your Public posts in my Google+ stream), or b) You are in Greg's circles too. If you're in at least one of my Circles, I will see anything you post to Public or to one of your Circles that include me.

3) You don't know the names of any of the Circles I have created. For all you know, I may have Circles named Saints, Sinners, and Bozos as well as Foodies.

4) You don't know the names of those Circles of mine of which you're a member. You may be both a Saint and a Foodie.

5) You can't treat Foodies like a Twitter Hash tag. It's not the label of a topic that categorizes my posts in a way that is meaningful (or visible) to anyone but me. It's [currently] a set of people to whom I can choose to address a specific post.

So when I create a Foodies Circle, you can't follow or block posts I make to that Circle (a common request).

You don't even know that my Foodies circle exists unless I tell you about it. So you can't "follow just my Foodie posts" without Google+ allowing me to share at least some of my Circle definitions, and giving you the ability to follow just those posts rather than everything I publish.

And when I'm on my Google+ Streams Page, clicking Foodies doesn't show me posts I or others have made "about" food - it just shows me the list of all public or limited distribution posts made by people I put in my Foodies circle. Foodies is a set of people, not a topic or a shared Space.

It's also not [currently] possible for a group of friends to create a public Google+ Circle that people can follow, join, or leave on their own. As a variation on this theme, different types of public Circles might have open membership, moderated membership (to keep out the spambots), or membership by invitation only.

Adding public Circles would create a kind of shared Space model, where everyone who is a member of the same Space gets (at least) permission to see what other members of the same Space post. The globally known (or selectively shared) name of a Space like Foodies would then create a shared room or context for people to talk or work within, implicitly sharing access with other members. Traction TeamPage builds on and extends a Space model to provide permissions, tags, and context for business activities, see Borders, Places and Spaces.

The current Circle definition and possible extensions are pretty clear to folk who get deeply into sharing models (including yours truly). But details of the Circle model seem pretty complicated when you try to write them down, draw pictures, or explain them. Part of the problem is the power of the word Circle.

"Circle" is so powerful that I think a lot of people hear it as something acting more like a shared Space than how Google+ currently works: Circles act like email lists. Thanks to John Tropea for the Google+/Email analogy in his Google Plus : Closed group email collaboration done online of 8 Jul 2011.

A Google Circle is Like a Personal Email List

Google+'s Circle model provides a way for you to share specific conversations with a set of people who you select, who may choose to listen to what you say, and who can comment back to you and others who share the same conversation.

1) You address a Google+ post to a specific set of individuals or to a named Circle (email list) when you create a post. A Google+ Public post can potentially be read by anyone (cc: the World).

2) If people to whom your post is addressed decide to listen to you (they name you in at least one of their Circles), they'll see your post in their input stream. Otherwise they'll need to look at their Google+ Incoming stream to read posts addressed to them from you and other people they don't already "follow". Reading Google+ Incoming feels like reading a low-priority email folder vs reading your standard or Circle filtered stream.

The list of your Circles shown on your Google+ Stream page looks something like a list of incoming email folders. Actually it's a way to show incoming posts from people listed in that Circle: Click a Circle to see all of their Public posts and limited distribution posts addressed to you. As an input filter, Circles don't organize posts by topic (like an email folder), but by sets of people.

3) Commenting on a post is like replying to a specific email message. People who can see the original Post can see the additional comments. The current Google+ presentation becomes noisy when a famously popular person writes a post which attracts an endless stream of "me to" or spammy comments (see G+ comment stream discussion below).

4) You can't change the Circle to which a post is addressed. Like the email list of an outgoing message, the selected Circle or specific folk addressed by a post are fixed when you send it. However, unlike email you can retroactively edit members of the Circle to add or remove folk, as well retroactively edit your own post or comment.

5) When you Share a Google+ post from someone else, it's like you're sending a copy of the original post to a different set of people (the Circle you select), but without the original post's comments. This is analogous to forwarding an email to a different group after stripping out any embedded replies.

Each Shared copy then accumulates its own independent set of comments, visible to the people to whom the new Share was addressed, including resharing a private message to the general Public. Google quickly added an option that the original author can use to disable Sharing of specific posts, and a reminder that resharing of limited distribution posts can be a violation of confidence. But like an email message that's copied and forwarded many times, comments on Shared posts quickly become fragmented.

GMail, Wave, Buzz, Google+ Circles - Email messaging is the model

I believe GMail, Wave, Buzz, and the Circle model of Google+ all share DNA from Google's email culture and the GMail product:

... there are literally tens of thousands of special interest groups that can range in size from two to more than 1,000 members and cover topics from wine to hiking to quilting to Dungeons & Dragons. There are the Gleeglers (who sing a cappella); the Dooglers, who bring their dogs to work; the Snowglers (skiers); and the Skeptics (who question everything). There are groups for pilots, expectant moms and photographers, and a group for Googlers who like flea markets. There's even a group for former startup employees whose companies were bought by Google and who may struggle to navigate a company where they must be both entrepreneurs and employees.

Any employee can start a group -- in fact, employees are encouraged to, said Stacy Sullivan, Google's chief culture officer, a title bestowed by the founders. Most groups have an email "alias" on Google's vast intranet system, such as "bowling@google.com." Google has more than 100,000 group aliases in its Intranet system, although not all groups are active.

For employees, the groups "have been kind of anchors and havens and think tanks -- to actually be able to build their own community, just for their own support and interactions, within the mass of all Google," Sullivan said. As Google has grown, "I think it's become much more important because when you're this big, you can lose sight of being connected to the mass around the world. So this is one way they can all pull together."

From At Google Groups are key to the company's culture
by Mike Swift, San Jose Mercury News, 23 Jun 2011

Google+ Circles avoids the Buzz assumption that your social network could be gathered and publicized by analyzing the your email contacts - an assumption that might have worked internally for Google, but which caused a firestorm of protest and legal action when Buzz launched. But the Buzz presentation model of a top level Post and its comment tree as the unit of conversation, floating to the top of your stream every now and then, carries over to Google+.

Google+ Circles provide a much more refined model of selective sharing. However, in my opinion the Circle sharing model works much better for Facebook style sharing of friends and neighbor conversations - a post by an individual and its comments - than it does for Twitter's fast paced global stream of conversation fragments which interleaves the equivalent of posts, comment (replies) in one stream that's easier to scan, particularly when a post may collect tens or hundreds of comments.

Twitter connects fragments by tags. Twitter also implements a socially refined retweet and reply permission model that works better than Google's for that purpose: in Twitter you only see replies if you are following both the person who posted and the person who makes the reply. This has signifiant value for conversation and signal to noise in a large public Commons. See "Option of Latest Posts Discussion" below.

A Circle is not a Space

For work, the current Google+ post and comment presentation can become noisy and unpredictable, repeatedly showing promoted posts based on recent comments from any source, and repeating Shares that fragment comment threads. A presentation choice that favors a top level post and comments, rather than a stream of post and comments (with link back to the conversation in context) is a presentation choice, not a fundamental limit.

More significantly, the current Google+ Circle model makes it difficult to see what's happening in the context of a business activity - tapping into a stream of posts, comments, replies, actions, and actions. For business activities, the stream of actions and conversation in a shared Space provide a natural framing context and natural boundary for permissioned access.

For example, a Space shared by members of law firm and Client A naturally frames and protects work and conversation in that context while also protecting it from disclosure to any other client. A shared Space, tag, and activity stream model is simpler to understand and use for work and conversation with groups that share a purpose and common expectation of privacy.

Experiments

JP Rangaswami is currently experimenting with three different formats for three purposes:

Playing with formats. Twitter as short form frequent. google plus as longer form, one per speaker at TED. Blog as even longer, one per event) 12 Jul 2011 @Jobsworth

He's also experimenting with a Google+ Circle workaround to allow people to opt in to his conference liveblog posts. You post a comment back to him, he adds you to the Conferences circle he'll use for his liveblog posts. In this case, JP's intent is to allow folk to throttle down the volume of his liveblogging posts appearing in their stream, rather than make those posts private. See "Circles should be created by Publishers as well as Subscribers" discussion below.

The Google+ preview is just about a week old, and Google is actively asking for feedback and suggestions, which has led to lively discussions on how Circles might evolve. And when Google+ integrated search appears (soon), I expect it will be permission-aware, which will be a game changer. Enough balls are in the air to make me rethink for Commons, Neighborhood and Work players in Explaining Twitter - One of Three Places for People - stay tuned!

See links and Google+ discussion (gathered from G+ and all over)

JP Rangaswami, Google+, 12 Jul 2011 (Public)
I'm experimenting …

JP Rangaswami - I'm experimenting. Seeing if I can avoid making noise in people's streams by giving them subscriber-level choices on subsets of my stream. For the next few days I will be covering TEDGlobal, but the updates will only reach those who ask me for them. If you asked me, and you don't start receiving them in a short while, do let me know.

Yes I know the way I've done it is messy (creating a publisher circle and then manually adding people to that circle as they ask to be included) but I could not find s simpler way. Let us see.

John Tropea, Library Clips blog, 8 Jul 2011
Google Plus: Closed group email collaboration done online

Greg Lloyd, Google+, 6 Jul 2011 (people in my Circles only)
G+ comment streams on public posts by popular folk are problematicI can't Share this to Public without losing comments, but here's the main point:

Greg Lloyd - Interesting - and encouraging - to see improvements to adaptive boost of posts based on new comments. Today a 5 hour old +Sergey Brin scenic photo post ~ sticks in place as older post despite a continuous patter of "nice photo!" comments from folk I don't know or follow.

Not clear what the promised comment weighting stream boost adjustment was. Social / follow weighted, linguistic or other, but helps S/N for public posts by famous folk whose patter of friendly, log rolling or spam comments would never die. Google+ needs to fix this before it's gamed to spoil the Public commons.

Followed by:

About 30 minutes after post thanking Google for promised improvement in comment boost to reduce noise based on "non-relevant" comment, a 5 hour old +Sergey Brin photo popped to the top of my mobile and desktop stream with a recent "Cool Man!" comment. No intervening comments from folk I follow in those 30 minutes that I can see.

+Sergey Brin Still getting flooded with tortoise pictures and the like. More recent pyramid pictures are an improvement, but please keep pushing for improvement.

See "flooded by tortoise pictures" discussion

JP Rangaswami, Google+, 10 Jul 2011
In G+, Circles should be created by "publishers" as well as "subscribers"

JP Rangaswami - I guess I'm warped. What I really want is to break myself up, classify myself, into a series of circles: cloud, food, music, books, cricket, politics, hippieness, freedom, whatever. Then others who put me into their circles can choose to put bits of me or all of me. Publisher circles are like hashtags and channels. Subscriber circles are filters and balancers. That combination creates the best signal-to-noise ratios

Jeff Jarvis, Google+, 4 Jul 2011 (public)
... I still want the option of only the latest posts, regardless of comment tagging.

Greg Lloyd - I'd also welcome a pure chron option, with one click to take me to the full post and comments for context when I want it.

For promotion or pure chron, imo Twitter asymmetric reply clip is pretty effective. E.g. Twitter rule that mutes replies from your stream unless you follow both parties. Although I originally opposed the change, I've grown to like it.

Without a pure time ordered option (and jump to full thread) or a hard clip, promoting a post from famously popular person will always be problematic when thousands of "me too" comments pile on. That was my major beef with Buzz. I guess I need so see what Google+ does with rank.

... Jennifer Forman Orth - So, basically, no one's ever going to see this comment :-). How does this foster networking, especially for the Technorati who cultivate these large clusters of folks they do not know to follow them? If I figure no one's going to read what I say, what is the incentive to comment?

Greg Lloyd - Jennifer - A valid point, but IMO the recourse is social. With Twitter, Jeff or someone else may rt or "publicly" reply to you and a wider non-clipped audience by prefixing your handle with a character. This subtly raises the visibility of particularly good comment based on human judgment, polite recognition, and an invitation to a larger audience to read more of what you say.

Greg Lloyd - Taking this conversation as something close to a best case, about 50% of the comments are "I agree" or restate the original point. This from a group of bright and eager early adopters. When the number of Google+ folk increases by three or four orders of magnitude - not counting bots - the bounce will become ludicrously noisy, like Buzz. That's not conversation, that's Brownian motion. Selectively following a reasonably large number of diverse, curious and intelligent folk with a sense of humor is the only scalable filter I know that balances breadth vs S/N. I want to leverage their judgement to surface interesting discussion and as well as talent scouts for who else to follow

Sergey Brin, Google+, 4 Jul 2011 (Public)
… getting flooded by comments on [ five year old ] tortoise pictures

Sergey Brin - I think a lot of people are under the misimpression that I am posting photos of exotic places at a furious pace to Google+. Actually, I have had a bunch of albums public for some time on my picasaweb page. However, people only started to take note recently thanks to Google+ and when they comment on those photos they end up in the streams of people who have me in their circles.

We made some ranking changes recently that demote such comments if the commenter is not in your circles. Let me know if you are still getting flooded with tortoise pictures and the like.

Ross Mayfield, Slideshare, 5 July 2011
Visual Guide to Circles in Google+

  1. google+circles.png  (26.4 KB)

Larry Cannell, Research Director, Gartner Group presented great slides and hosted an excellent webinar on July 7, 2011 based on his research and experience. Free registration gives public access to a recording of the Webinar and a copy of Larry's slides - at least for a few days (after than please check Gartner Webinar Archives). Please register and learn! Larry will also be leading sessions at Gartner Catalyst Conference 2011 San Diego, July 26-29. Larry's framework is very crisply stated, general and useful. The 65 slides include very helpful diagrams, examples, scorecard decision aids, and more. These are just top level points from my notes.

An IT Vision for Social Software: Introducing Online Workplaces

The emergence of a new layer of online capabilities, one that sits between rigid business applications and the dynamic world of the information worker, has gone unnoticed for years. Some have started to call this a social layer, inspired by the rising popularity of social software. However, it is better described as an online work layer because not all activities within an enterprise are social in nature, but they all support how work is done. Enterprises need to develop their own tailored vision for how this online work layer (which includes the use of social software) improves their business, rather than relying on vendor product positioning.

This webinar will describe a vendor-neutral framework that helps IT describe, manage and evolve collaborative and workplace technologies to maximize the effectiveness of their enterprise’s information workers. ~ Larry Cannell, Research Director, Gartner

Introducing Online Workplaces
Larry Cannell, Research Director, Gartner @lcannell

Need to distinguish:
What (Business Objectives) vs How (Approach for accomplishing What)

What (business objective): Work
How: Unified communication, Email, conferencing, Productivity tools, Social Software, Workspaces, Content Management, Search

Defining a Work Layer

Enterprise Goals and Objectives -> Business Processes (PD, Mfg, Sales...) <-> Work Layer (Routine, Non-Routine) <-> People (individuals, teams, communities)

[ Very good slides distinguish needs and perspective as individual, as member of functional team, as participant in broad community and directed versus volitional participation ]

Online Workplace:

Organize/Manage Work (tasks, priorities, etc)
Facilitate Work Processes (ad-hoc, tacit)
Work as Individuals (attention management)
Work together (team, communities)
Capture and Reuse Intellectual Assets.

Online Workplace Relationships:

Business processes <- (tasks, priorities) -> Online Workplace <- (completing tasks, prioritizing work, planning, deciding) -> People
Human Capital (knowledge, experience, relationships) <- (discover, describe) - > Online Workplace
Structural Capital from Applications (CRM, ERP, PLM, SCM, etc) - (data) -> Online Workspace

Online Workplace Framework:

Individual environments, Group environments (Teams, Communities)
Knowledgebase
Business Applications, External Information

Group Environments - A spectrum of participation
directed - individual must participate to meet some joint objective or get certain kind of work done.
volitional - individual choses to participate or not, choses level of participation

Process (90% directed participation, 10% volitional participation)
Activity (50% directed, 50% volitional)
Community (30% directed, 70% volitional)
Network (10% directed, 90% volitional)

Recommendations

Position online workplaces as strategic assets
Take care of the individual worker
Expect to support multiple online workplaces
Develop new skills
Provide a roadmap
Demand what you need from your vendors

Online Workplace Framework and Traction TeamPage

Larry's framework is descriptive and intentionally vendor and technology neutral.

I believe Traction TeamPage is very well aligned and easy to explain in terms of Larry's framework. Expect me to make liberal use of his framework and terminology - with credit to Larry. Here's a start:

Traction Software Introduces Social Enterprise Web - The TeamPage workplace spans external Sharepoint, Documentum, Exchange, Email and other Systems of Record using TeamPage Attivio Plus, bookmarking and content badging. Unlike some analysts and vendors, I believe the future workplace will be search and content coupled (just like the public Web) rather than exclusively activity stream coupled.

I see activity streams as a great alerting mechanism to help maintain situational awareness with respect to human centered or software events spanning many systems. But event awareness is no replacement for unified, permission-aware search combined with link, tag, task and comment capabilities spanning systems of record. That's what TeamPage delivers, enabled by Attivio's Active Intelligence Engine™ (AIE) technology.

The Future of Work Platforms: Like Jazz - When you watch a skilled team in action, it's like watching a great jazz group - there are themes, there is structure, and there are limits, but a team shines in individual excellence combined with coordination, improvisation, innovation, handling exceptions, and seemingly effortless awareness of where others are and where they're headed.

Intertwingled Work - The record of collaborative and observable work needs to span multiple external and internal systems to provide a simple and coherent view of activities

Traction Roots - Doug Engelbart - A dynamically evolving knowledge base ... [consists] of three primary knowledge domains: intelligence, dialog records, and knowledge products (in this example, the design and support documents for a complex product). ~ Doug Engelbart

See also Enterprise 2.0 Schism - Why Peter Drucker and Doug Engelbart should be the patron saints of Enterprise 2.0. And what to do with social media gurus and sinners.

Doug Engelbart | 85th Birthday Jan 30, 2010 - Irresistible quotes and references.

  1. Gartner-Webinars-Logo.jpg  (19 KB)