Collaborative Thinking

Theorizing On Network Ties & Structures

In earlier posts ("Teams, Communities, And Social Networks"), I outlined some thoughts on how group structures are themselves social networks however the reverse is not always true:

"Teams and communities are social networks. In fact, you could basically say that all teams and communities are social networks but not all social networks are teams and communities. Treating social networks as something separate from teams and communities over-simplifies the discussion and can inadvertently mislead decision-makers and strategists."

Ties between members of groups provide those networks with cohesion that makes their structure more recognizable. There is also some type of event and state that exists over time (e.g., project) within the enterprise environment that causes these structures to form. The idea that team and community relations occur in a network context is important to note since we often treat them as "different" (that teams and communities are not social networks) when instead, networks underpin teams and communities. Extending this argument further (that networks underpin everything), we might consider how the enterprise, as a mediator, influences formation of a wide array of social structures well beyond teams and communities.

Whether we are examining reporting chains in a business unit that denote ties within a management structure or the formal workflow sequence that denote role-based ties within a process structure, we might consider these relations (ties) as enterprise mediated networks. The idea of the enterprise as a mediator that enables its employees to participate in formalized social structures might be interesting to juxtapose against the emergent social structures that employees informally participate in without the enterprise having any direct mediating role (although there may be varying levels of influence). Communities may form more voluntarily for instance. However even in the case of communities, what brings people together might be to share practices based on their participation and ties to activities that the enterprise in mediates.

If this line of thought is reasonable (re: everything in the enterprise occurs in a network context), then what we're really debating when it comes to E2.0 is the differences in the more explicit and mediated network structures that the enterprise influences vs. the emergent and self-organized network structures that employees influence on their own (and how employee behaviors differ within those network structures). This post is very much a "thinking out loud" post - somewhat academic - and thoughts here are definitely a work-in-progress. 

Social networks are generally defined (e.g., Borgatti, Wasserman, Wellman and others) as a collection of actors (nodes) connected by relations (ties) that denote how the actors are linked. Research has also show (e.g., Simmel, Granovetter, Burt, and others) that leveraging relations are an essential means for people to locate information, solve problems, find jobs, etc. When it comes to understanding “ties”, research often examines the strength of the tie in order classifies them as either strong or weak.  Factors that lead to a strong tie include time, emotional intensity, intimacy, and reciprocity (Granovetter). When studying social networks, both the structure of the relations as well as behavior of actors in those relations are often considered. This leads to discussions on such thing as “communication networks”, “collaboration networks”, “innovation networks”, “expertise networks” and so on. In other works, the context of the relation reveals the network structure, and visa-versa (the structure of the network reveals behaviors). This summary reflects my understanding of the research I’ve read in the field (feel free to point out where I might have misinterpreted things! I am still learning a.k.a.” the more you know, the less you know”). 

So where am I going with this? My interest is in understanding social networking within the enterprise more thoroughly. And in this context, there are a couple of points worth thinking about.

• "Social" has always been in front of our eyes, in many ways, we're just understanding it at a deeper level than our historical techno-centric focus on tools for productivity, collaboration, etc. "Social" did not start with consumer sites like Facebook, the science beyond social networks dates back many decades.
• If you look at an enterprise as a single social network, don’t be surprised that it makes little sense. There are many networks. You need to decide what you want to examine in order to make sense of them. We need to look at the formation of those structures and behaviors within those structures to better understand the context of people's relations.
• Which means, the network you want to see is the network you will see. In other words, when you decide to look for a collaboration network, don’t be surprised that you’ll find it. A "collaboration network" is a social network where ties are in the context of joint work by its participants.
• Because we tend to label social networks to categorize the array of interconnected nodes we are examining, we need to remember that there are a myriad number of other social networks that we are not looking at. 
• Even the networks we are looking at will change over time and space ? causing the structure and behaviors within the graph to change as well. Networks are dynamic, they can become dormant or in motion based on whatever triggers relations to be active.

Getting back to the “type” of network we want to examine ? we perhaps need to think more about the type of ties we want to learn from than the nodes themselves. This is not to say that nodes (people) are not important ? we want to look at social networking for a variety of people-centric reasons: talent, learning, expertise, etc. However, understanding ties has some “meta value” when we try to understand the role of the enterprise in mediating these ties (or when those ties emerge without explicit mediation).

For instance, much has been made about the ability of social networking to flatten the organization. I used to think along those same lines (that social networks and organizational hierarchy were different). However, some time ago Vladis Krebs (@orgnet) tweeted that reporting chains were simply a type of tie that enables nodes to be arranged in a hierarchical order (paraphrasing his tweet). That made a lot of sense and changed the way I looked at the issue. It also caused me to consider the role of the enterprise in creating visible, explicit, networks structured in ways the support the mission of the organization ? clearly, reporting chains as a social network fit this notion.

When you think about it in this light, the enterprise mediates a variety of network structures and conditions of expected behavior to serve its needs. Reporting chains are one example. Business activities (e.g., processes, projects) are other structures the enterprise leverages with participants performing in their defined roles. The enterprise might also classify employees into generalized audience segments based on other attributes (e.g., new hires). Perhaps as an over-simplification we can think of three types of structures and behaviors an enterprise mediates to define itself:

• institutional: often thought of in hierarchical terms
• process: often thought of in sequence and role-based terms
• class: often thought of in terms of formal attributes assigned by the enterprise to an audience of employees

Within these structures, ties emerge and we can visualize the resulting social graphs.  The context of the tie when it becomes active is often related to events and states related to communication, information sharing, problem solving, etc that I mentioned earlier.

The flip side of this line-of-thought is that the enterprise does not mediate all social networks. There are emergent social structures and relations between employees that evolve which are self-organized by its participants. These networks might be driven by needs similar to those mediated by the enterprise (e.g., communication, information sharing, or collaboration), but historically they have not been visible, or might be disconnected from formal structures (e.g., communities). These are the networks we often think of, and want to tap into, when we talk about Enterprise 2.0, knowledge management, or social business. But there are also networks that are highly personal and likely are purposely kept private (e.g., mentoring, personal support, etc). While there is tremendous focus on the more emergent types of networks by champions of E2.0 and social business, I believe that you also need to understand how those networks are intermingled with enterprise mediated networks to best leverage possible synergies or the unique value on has over the other.

Connection strategies also come to mind. An enterprise may or may not have the same intent to connect its workforce than the employees do themselves (and does that matter, if it does, to what extent - and how does culture help influence and align those connection strategies...). While not the focus of this post, personal connections strategies, group connection strategies (e.g., how a community itself what's to have its group persona to be connected to the enterprise, etc.), and enterprise connection strategies are perhaps a topic for strategists to consider. 

This is definitely a “thinking out loud” post - ideas here need to be refined or even discarded. The notion of enterprise mediated networks is a concept that I just wanted to share to illustrate some work-in-progress positions evolving in my head. I’m felt for some time that everything happens in a network context (even when we see hierarchy), that some social networks are mediated by the enterprise in a purposeful manner, however there are social networks that are emergent where the organization has little-to-no explicit role (although there is influence and cultural factors). We need to better understand how a more participatory culture can improve how people engage and contribute within network contexts. In some cases participation is conscripted via the enterprise-mediated network (e.g., by reporting tie, by role tie). However even when participation is directed, how can we influence people to volunteer beyond that which is conscripted (see "The Era Of Volunteerism?) - which leads us back full circle to those emergent networks that are the focus of E2.0 and social business. 

 

Enabling Participation: More Art Than Science

Over the years, I’ve talked to a lot of project teams and people involved in Enterprise 2.0 initiatives. What I’ve derived from those interactions is that the biggest hurdle to success has to do with the “soft” issues related to adoption. As a follow-up to my earlier post, I’ve summarized some of the techniques employed by project teams to encourage changes in people's attitudes and behaviors (e.g., the value of participation). My opinion is that there is no single right approach, no single best strategy that you can simply apply from one situation to the next. It remains "more art than science" as the saying goes. However, there are common practices that can help ? and the following list illustrates some of them at a high level ? but my advice is to treat your own circumstance as unique. Listen to experts in the field, but ultimately take ownership of the challenge and be prepared to mix-and-match a blend of the tactics outlined below ? and don’t hesitate to follow your own ideas.

I divided things up into two basic categories: high-level bootstrapping of the overall social network site, and some specific calls-to-action that might help jumpstart participation.

High-Level Bootstrapping

 Bottom-Up: Project teams employ a bottom-up strategy to encourage employees, teams, and departments to take local ownership of the social network site within a governance framework. The result might be a chaotic and inconsistent level of utilization and growth of the site but those groups that “stick with it” will shape the community environment and produce leaders that can help evangelize benefits upwards to management.

Top-Down: In some organizations, there is a cultural deference to management. A top-down approach enables project teams to leverage management as champions. Project teams often will encourage participation in ways that meets more specific needs of the sponsor (innovation, sales enablement, expertise-based solutions). If done well, the rollout is more structure where participation is linked to business processes.

Pull: In a pull model, rather than trying to force or otherwise persuade areas in the company to participate in the effort, project teams focus on those areas willing to work constructively on specific pilots. By focusing on making each pilot participant a success, it creates a level of scarcity - and hopefully a level of eagerness on the part of the next group in the queue. There’s a belief by some project teams that those groups will begin to improve their readiness in anticipation of being the next winning pilot.

Viral: Some project teams have also talked to me about letting the site “go viral” when faced with resource or budget constraints. The difference between a bottom-up and viral approach (to me at least) is that bottom-up is a designed intent. In the viral scenario, the site is literally is left alone (e.g., no formal governance). Only essential security and HR-related policies are applied. The hope is that an employee-led groundswell will attract management interest and desire to invest in the project.

Persuading People To Participate: 

 People-to-People: One technique that has worked for some project teams has been to bootstrap membership-building efforts by persuading certain people in the organization that are influential or known for their broad relationships with co-workers to join the social network site. These people may be viewed as “power users”, “evangelists”, or are simply trusted by colleagues for their judgment and high level of performance. The hope is that certain individuals will acts as catalysts for others to join, creating network effects that lead to more rapid uptake. 

People-to-Content: Another technique employed by project teams is to create compelling new content, or to move existing popular content, to the social network site. The goal is to create a reason for people to visit the site. Whether the content is embargoed (membership required to view) or restricted in some way is another choice project teams can make. For instance, if people want to comment on the content, they may have to create their profile. The idea is to create a sense of “membership privileges” that come to employees if they join the site.

People-centric Applications: Project teams often emphasize applications such as expertise location, discussion forums, or community spaces as another reason for co-workers to create profiles and participate on the social network site. In the past, much faith has been placed on community spaces and expertise location tools because they encourage creation of rich profiles. More recently, micro-blogging and activity stream features have emerged as other tools that make it desirable for employees to create profiles and participate on social network sites. 

Collective Events: Although not as popular in my experience as other tactics, some project teams I’ve talked to over the years deliver events (online chats, webcasts, even scavenger hunts) to encourage participation. Through play, please learn how to use the system in a relaxed setting. Events can create the change for interaction that might persuade people to join the site.

Existing Groups: Another practice cited by project teams has been to seek out existing groups that meet face-to-face with no online presence, or ones that use another online platform, or ones that use an external site such as LinkedIn, and recruit them to move onto the new social network site. These early adopters can provide immediate visibility to the site since their participation is a transition to a new environment rather than the longer bootstrapping effort needed to cold-start a community. 

Summary

In earlier posts (see "The Era Of Volunteerism", "Why Is Social Software Important", and "Categorizing Collaboration" way back in 2007 ), I've argued the degree to which an employee participates above and beyond what their job entails is a daily decision. There are times when we can direct people to communicate, share, and collaborate. We can basically conscript some level of participation based on an employee's role, nature of their work activities, and their expectation of getting something in return (e.g., a good review, being paid, keeping their job). However, as knowledge management strategists have learned long ago, there are limits to what we can command people to do - especially when it comes to what's in their heads, and asking them to volunteer in contexts such as a social network site.Understanding the psychology and sociology behind participation remains largely unknown within the enterprise. Perhaps an opportunity for people with those skills to be involved in Enterprise 2.0 initiatives. 

 

Changing IT Mindsets From Deployment To Adoption

I’ve always found it interesting why the various tools we’ve previously thoughts as the “right answer” are continually replace by tools we believe to be “the next right answer”. We used to love e-mail back in the nineties ? now we know hold it in disregard. We now think micro-blogging and activity streams will solve the e-mail problem. I wonder how long it will take for us to complain about those tools and pontificate eloquently about the next right answer that should replace them.

The point? Almost every widely deployed technology today that has failed to meet expectations over time, at one point was revered as the answer to our problems (productivity suites, content management systems, “groupware”, search, portals, etc.). While this might be the natural cycle of things, we might also have ourselves to blame based on the way we think about technology delivery.

One of the tag lines I’ve used over the years is that Enterprise 2.0 strategists need to think of their projects in terms of adoption not deployment. What I wanted to achieve with the catchphrase was simple ? to persuade people to think about their projects differently. We never seem to be happy with enterprise technology ? this is especially true when it comes to collaboration tools ? and might very well be the situation with tools associated with Enterprise 2.0 in a few years unless we alter our view on what it is that we’re “delivering” and what constitutes “being done”. We should not be so enamored by what we think is our current right answer from a technology perspective that we forget the non-technological things we need to enable so that people (and the organization at large) can realize and sustain the value derived from use of the tools.

Within many organizations, the plan-build-run philosophy still frames our view of IT ? once a system is implemented (i.e., deployed), the project is “over” ? resources are reallocated, budgets are closed out, systems go into some type of maintenance mode or await the next release cycle of new development. We then wait and watch for the results promised by the project (e.g., ROI). Often those results are based on metrics that examine cause-effect impacts and improved business outcomes. We want benefits to be self-evident quickly. We tend to struggle when project results are subjective, can only be inferred, or correlated to improvements that take more time to emerge than anticipated.

While the situation I describe above is somewhat of an over-simplification, and not applicable to every enterprise, it is a reasonable scenario. My perspective is based on talking to many IT organizations involved in collaboration-related projects since 1996.

When it comes to collaboration, knowledge management, and E2.0 efforts, “culture” is often cited as the reason results fail to meet expectations set when the project is approved. While some projects might acknowledge the need to support post-deployment activities early in the planning stages, strategists and project leaders have consistently told me that they were surprised (and not in a good way) at how they underestimated the effort necessary to gain “adoption” of their solution.

To make up for the shortsightedness, we respond (after the solution has been deployed and after the project has officially ended) with governance programs, user experience enhancements, change management processes, and community outreach efforts. We collectively hope that “better late than never” heroic efforts can rectify the original mistake. In my experience, it’s a toss-up as to whether you can salvage the project in a timely and effective manner at that point.

As long as we equate project delivery with the end of the project ? our frustration over time with “the new right answer” is going to follow the same cycle as previous techno-centric approaches. In many ways, what strategists and project leaders were saying is that delivery of the technology (e.g., blog, wiki, social network site, activity stream, micro-blogging) actually represented the beginning of the project from an organizational perspective. Some take-aways I hope you consider:

• Governance programs, user experience design, change management processes, and community outreach efforts must be treated as required components of the project. That means “time, money, and resources” must be forecasted upstream.
• Project completion cannot be viewed as coincident with technology deployment. That means thinking of people-centric initiatives like Enterprise 2.0 as part of an overall transformation program, not a one-off project.
• Metrics (and ROI) for people-centric solutions need to be recast. This remains a work-in-progress for the industry. We are in a state were we can find great stories of people working in new ways and in some cases, with real impacts. However, we're still in search of the right measures and ways to value people's participation.  

As an industry, we're still struggling with measuring E2.0 value. Some might call it a crock - some might say that the solution is to make all of E2.0 process-centric. Each argument has some level of truth. If we cannot define the business or organizational value then we are guilty of arguing for something that is academic, conceptual or a leap-of-faith (ala KM in the 90's). That does not make E2.0 wrong, simply difficult to "prove" (cause-effect). If we fail to include "social" with the context of actual work, then we limit how E2.0 can deliver real improvements. However, we should not hide behind process - or cede the value of participation outside a process context. All it means is that we're early into understanding the organizational dynamics in play when it comes to issues related to identity, social roles, formation of group structures, and social networks.

Note: The reason I am saying “as part of an overall transformation program” is to acknowledge that E2.0 is complimentary to the real business and organizational initiatives an enterprise might have. E2.0 for the sake of E2.0 is not the point ? that would be making the same mistake KM initiatives made in the nineties. E2.0 can help with strategic talent and learning initiatives, CRM and BPM efforts, and so on. It is additive, or a means to an end. It should not be positioned as an end onto itself.

 

Mapping Our Friendships Over Time and Space: The Future of Social Network Analysis

Very intriguing (re: applying time/space to SNA). So much can be misinterpreted by a snapshot of relations that may be based on transitory ties within the enterprise (projects, campaigns, etc). There is a "human geography" aspect to how networks emerge, form, and evolve over time that sometimes I think we miss.

Mapping Our Friendships Over Time and Space: The Future of Social Network Analysis

What new things could we discover if social network analysis took time and space into account, in addition to the raw connections between people? In most cases, social network analysis today is limited to discovering friend connections, community leaders and outlines, influential people and personal friend recommendations - in a static or snap-shot kind of way. If new factors could be taken into consideration, specifically changes over time and space, then social network analysis could discover things like emergence or decay of leadership, changes in trust over time, migration and mobility within particular communities online. That's very valuable information that the social web has barely begun to tackle capturing.

That's the topic of discussion in a new paper by Shashi Shekhar and research assistant Dev Oliver, spatial data scientists at the University of Minnesota, titled Computational Modeling of Spatio-temporal Social Networks: A Time-Aggregated Graph Approach (PDF). The paper was highlighted on the blog GIS and Science today.

via www.readwriteweb.com

Browse, Build and Share Real-time Streams with DataSift

An interesting read given my post today on Activity Streams:

A core feature of the real-time web is the continuously updating real-time streams of information. These streams are commonly generated by social networks and with the continued uptake of social networking the amount of information is only going to increase. This will continue to introduce opportunities for companies to create products and services that extract value from that vast amount of data. Some of the most common services built around these streams include trend and sentiment analysis, data storage, aggregation, sorting, search and filtering. DataSift is a service that offers a host of exciting features including the ability to let users browse, build and share their own real-time streams using social media data drawn from a host of sources.

DataSift launched its Alpha service at TechCrunch Disrupt in September and describe it as a “real time social media filtering engine.” The initial buzz around DataSift was generated when Twitter agreed to give them access to the Twitter firehose, but they now have access to a much wider range of data including the Google Buzz, MySpace, SixApart, WordPress, Facebook and Digg. These sources of data within DataSift, sometimes called input services, are defined as Targets in the DataSift knowledge base.

via blog.programmableweb.com

Activity Streams: Moving Beyond Event Aggregation

When it comes to 2011 trends, I posted earlier on "Enterprise 2.0: A Transition From Destination Site to Platform Services". Rather than publish a short list, I wanted to take some time to explore each trend in more depth. In this post, I want to examine the topic of Activity Streams.

Trend: Activity streams will continue to be a much hyped capability within social platforms. However resulting “stream glut”, interoperability, and security-related issues will threaten benefits unless better user experience design, filtering, standardization, permission models, and back-end analytics are applied. 

Level of insight: Inconvenient truth beneath the hype. Note: As a disclaimer, I am a huge fan of activity streams and the work being accomplished by those involved in the activitystrea.ms effort. I'm also optimistic that the effort can be aligned and integrated into OpenSocial.

Detail:  The concept overall is compelling ? activity streams allow applications to publish events that are captured by aggregators that serialize the items into a sequence of posts (listed in reverse chronological order, newest entry first). Often items include options for people to “like”, comment, or react to the item in some manner (rating). Aggregating events into a common stream enables people to easily subscribe (“follow”) a collective set of events from one or more publishers. There are many examples of “stream-based” platforms in the consumer market (e.g., Facebook, Twitter) although FriendFeed is often cited as the reason for a standardized approach. FriendFeed harvests information from a variety of sources (music, photos, status messages), forcing the company to develop/maintain custom integrations for many different publishers and slowing down the ability to add new publishers. A common integration framework based on standard interfaces and formats would enable solution scalability and allow publishers to be added more quickly. The enterprise faces the same situation. Benefits to subscribers (or to the organization at large) include greater productivity, better collaboration, and improved situational awareness. Situational awareness also includes the ability for subscribers to “self-synchronize” with the people or systems they are following based on information signaled to them in the stream. Activity streams can also mediate social networking and community building.

Activity streams also have an interesting intersect with identity. Depending on how someone sets up publishing of their own personal activity stream, the meta data shared about themselves creates a sense of presence enabling others to be aware of their actions. (Note: In fact I have often talked about activity streams representing the next generation of the “presence” capability we associated with enterprise Instant Messaging systems.) A person’s activity stream can contain meta data about their thoughts (via status messages), travel, documents, tasks, participation in social network sites, or contributions to communities. A steady stream of this information observed over time can create a type of peripheral awareness (or ambient intimacy) for those “following” that individual. That type of insight to someone’s actions also provides a means for organizations to move beyond the type of declarative identity we see on a person’s profiles within a social network site (e.g., hobbies, interests, skills, expertise). Activity streams can:

• Reinforce the claims made on a profile by showing that competency being performed
• Amplify the strength and currency of those claims by showing how those competencies are being performed (and possibly attested to by others)
• Add additional identity insight by showing attributes not contained on the profile at all

Potential benefits however are not just accrued by people-centric activity streams. Applications of all types can also generate activities into a stream to keep people aware of system events (e.g., a new sales win, an urgent alert of some sort). As the enterprise considers how activity streams can be leveraged, we see interest in role-based streams and process-related streams. The idea is that we can improve both productivity and collaboration needs by making events more visible and allowing people to take action more effectively (sometimes collectively) based on that level of event transparency (especially when compared to how people rely on their e-mail inbox for much of this type of group notification and work coordination).

Implications: However, the level of irrational exuberance in the market regarding activity streams deserves a pragmatic examination:

As more people and applications create events published into a common stream, the resulting volume and velocity by which events “stream by” can cause people to miss something relevant. Of course, you can “follow” people and applications but the more you follow, the closer you move to the original state of too much information flowing by. People end up spending a fair about of time scrolling up and down searching for things they might have missed. Depending on the way activities are aggregated, there may be limits as to how much information is actually kept around to enable historical review. You might be limited to events over a small time period, or just to a certain number of entries. The main point is that activity streams can become just as messy and burdensome as an inbox. 

The answer some will argue is better filtering ? a more advanced way to organize and view an activity stream. By creating virtualized views, or specific streams, we can reduce the “noise” and enable people to watch the activities that are most relevant to them. This is an accurate assessment and a very valid need. However not many solutions that I’ve seen offer enough options in this area. Additionally, simply adding filters solves only part of the problem; the user experience needs to also improve the way that activity streams are delivered and can be acted upon by people ? the activity stream event should not be seen as an end-point but as a social object that can be further manipulated (e.g., tags), curated (e.g., people may want to bookmark or “save” an event for later reference), or shared (e.g. a notification to a colleague that creates a collaborative action). 

Activity streams will also need to respect the permission models associated with the event being signaled from a publisher. How those security aspects are applied and coordinated with the source system is another area where I do not see enough work being done in the market. There are benefits to sharing sensitive information to people in authorized roles via activity streams as long as policies are enforced. Since items in a stream are likely to also become “social objects” (further manipulated by subscribers as described earlier), it is important to consider the needs for activity streams to be monitored and archived (e.g., for compliance reasons).

There is also the possibility that activity streams will be collected in some type of store within the system aggregating events from various publishers. This scenario reinforces the need for security coordination with source system since the data within the activity stream item might need to have access controls similar to those of the “system of record”. A centralized event store does offer benefits. While much of the current discussion on the value of activity streams focuses on its “immediacy”, there is a latent opportunity for back-end analytics to run against the store to offer more retrospective analysis. This type of business intelligence functionality can correlate activity stream items over time to infer patterns, make recommendations, or signal interesting situations. In many ways, there is a complex event processing aspect to activity streams that also needs to be explored more fully. 

Below are some key points to consider:

• Initial activity stream efforts by solution providers often aggregate events only within their own platform and likely based on their own APIs
• Efforts to aggregate events from external systems may be done via proprietary APIs by vendors seeking to leverage its own existing API ecosystem
• Publishers (unless systems delivered by the same activity stream aggregator) will likely support those internal APIs initially
• Specialized vendors will leverage the lack of interoperability and standards support by larger platform vendors to provide an "overlay" model that aggregates activities from multiple sources
• Pressure to support standardization will come from customers wanting to avoid activity stream silos
• Activity stream solution providers who see interoperability and standardization as a competitive advantage will support activitystre.ms and OpenSocial aggressively

If there is a key take-away from this post, it’s that everything mentioned above reinforces the need for interoperability and standardization. Without both, there will be isolated aggregators embedded within multiple enterprise platforms (portals, collaboration, social) with no effective way for organizations to federate events across these activity stream silos. Source systems, or activity stream aggregators or IT staff, will have to write to multiple proprietary APIs to publish events into each silo. Strategists will have to resort to specialized solutions that act as an “overlay” to different enterprise platforms that are competing on the idea of being the single activity stream solution. Without an architected approach, solutions will not scale and become unmanageable as additional publishers create an unsustainable integration overhead to maintain.

Thoughts On Salesforce & DimDim

Old habits die hard with this post. Real-time collaboration was one of my first research areas when I became an analyst ? specifically web conferencing tools. Last week, when Salesforce acquired DimDim, I scanned a lot of the initial reports and analysis of the deal. Assessments fell all across the board in terms of its implications ? some positive, some skeptical. However I have not yet caught an article yet that looked at the decision-criteria issues strategists will need to address. Below, I’ve outlined some of the those issues organizations should consider when this type of situation arises in the market:

Instant Messaging (IM) & Presence

Application vs. Infrastructure

 The industry views IM as an infrastructure service (rather than an application tool) and as a feature-set within a Unified Communications platform. An IM function within an application platform creates numerous overlap situations with existing IM and presence infrastructure (e.g., user experience, costs, security, help desk support, change management, development, etc). Decision-makers can allow for exceptions from IT standards (if they exist) when there is unique business value offered by an embedded IM/presence capability. However, the organization needs to realize that there is no displacement as a result ? that is ? nothing goes away with the addition of an application-specific IM/presence system.

Intranet Federation

There is no standard for how IM and presence platforms interoperate “behind the firewall”. Enterprise IM platforms do not naturally “plug and play” to exchange messages and share presence information. Integration requires vendor cooperation to deliver a supportable configuration. The implication to organizations considering an application-level IM/presence solution, is creation of a “walled garden” where users need to use two different IM/presence client experiences.

Internet Federation

There is a standard for how organizations can leverage gateways to interoperate with public IM systems (e.g., Yahoo, AOL, Google, Microsoft) and other external IM systems. Usually, organizations are looking for vendors to provide a gateway to act as a policy control and enforcement point. The reason for a gateway of some type is to apply security and compliance policies, as well as to control how the identity of internal users are represented to the outside world.

Records Management

In many situations, organizations need to monitor, log, audit, and keep for historical purposes, IM session information to satisfy communication, compliance or other regulatory policy. Often, IM/presence vendors work with third-party vendors that focus on this space to deliver an end-to-end archival and records management solution.

Application Integration

Organizations have come to expect IM/presence platforms to integrate with desktop productivity tools (office suites, e-mail clients). They also expect integration with enterprise portals. The ability to “presence enable” applications and offer a “click to IM/call/conference/etc” type capability is also a well-known requirement. UC platforms also need to offer a profile card of users that can be integrated and displayed across a variety of applications.

Web Conferencing

Many of the same collisions summarized above also occur in the area of web conferencing:

Web conferencing is considered part of a unified communications platform. Organizations likely already have a conferencing solution. Adding an additional capability that is embedded within a particular application creates overlap with existing investments (audio/video conferencing, VoIP) unless there is a compelling difference or specialized applications (e.g., e-learning/LMS integration).

Web conferencing vendors have been around for some time and many have added additional modules on top of their horizontal infrastructure to meet situational needs for sales, marketing, training, and other audiences. An application-specific solution can provide deeper integration with the processes owned by that platform but creates a tension with management desires to leverage existing infrastructure that is “good enough” for the majority of use cases.

Web conferencing vendors have had to integrate with office productivity suites, e-mail/calendaring clients and even with enterprise portals (“My Conferences”, “My Recordings” portlets). Users generally need browser and desktop integration to effectively organize and schedule meetings. Also, the ability to have pre/post workspace integration is also desirable so people can share information before and after the web conference. Application integration for campaign management or for customer service purposes can also be necessary depending on how the web conferencing system is used.

Social Tools

The newer area of opportunity for real-time collaboration is integration with social platforms. The focus of social software to-date has been mostly asynchronous (e.g., blogs, wikis, community sites). The natural progression of unified communication and social software is to converge in ways that makes sense (e.g., micro-blogging, activity streams). There are compelling hybrid use case scenarios emerging for a converged solution based on unified communications and social platforms that take advantage of mobility and social networking. However, such converged solutions do not eliminate the need for solutions to address many of the foundational issues outlined above ? especially those concerning integration, interoperability, security, and compliance. In other words, you still need a architecture that is not biased by a particular application workload or collection of workloads. A "platform" approach (cloud or on-premises or both) needs to handle a broad array of business requirements.

Summary

In summary, this event represents a classic horizontal versus vertical debate. When application platforms “own” capabilities that are considered common services (infrastructure), organizations need to identify the unique business value of those features and determine whether that value is greater than the overlap and complexity caused by adding redundant capabilities. Are those capabilities locked into the application itself, or are they going to become broadly available (and if so, is the application platform designed to do so). It is rare that something "goes away" when an application platform takes on infrastructure capabilities. In some cases, it may. In other cases, it may not. However, vendor due diligence is required and hopefully the points above will help decision makers in that regard.

 

Enterprise 2.0 Conference: Call For Papers Community, Voting Process

For the upcoming Enterprise 2.0 conference in Boston this year, I have submitted three sessions that I hope the community finds helpful and relevant. If you find them valuable, I hope you take the time to participate in the community process and vote for these proposals. Thanks!

Session Descriptions:

In this session, I want to objectively look at the use case scenarios that HR and their support teams in IT should examine when they consider the social networking aspects of E2.0. It is definitely not specific to any one vendor.  The session will connect the process, cultural, and tooling aspects of profiles, social graphs, etc. in the context of talent, learning, and community. There are interesting areas of how the combination of participation and tools enable employees to establish an identity different than the one assigned to them by the enterprise, and take on social roles (wiki gardener, idea person, answer person, expert) that augment formal structures used to identify talent. Employees can also leverage the participatory culture of E2.0 to create their own informal learning environments.

From Hire To Retire: The Role Of Social Networking

Whether you are a new or seasoned employee, our ability to leverage personal and professional networks helps us transition and excel in new roles, relationships, and collaborative work. This session will help HR and IT teams learn how social networking improves the effectiveness of strategic talent, learning, and community-building initiatives.

 Attendee Benefit

Attendees will walk away with common use case scenarios that they can use within their own organization to help: create a business case, identify potential solutions, or define criteria for selection of social networking tools.

In the session below, I wanted to bring together some pragmatic thought leaders to debate the different sides of how Enterprise 2.0 influences business and organizational strategies. Sara Roberts is very active in the area of transformation and Dan just finished a book (Management by Design). I will add at least one more panelist but this session looks at E2.0 through the lens of the multi-generational workforce - not just GenY but the implications of boomers (retirees, alumni). The discussion is non-technological - and more about topcis related to leadership, communication, dealing with change, and the synergies or tensions you might expect as different generations have different expectations and values. 

The Multi-generational Workforce: Navigating Culture, Behavior, & Change

Leadership teams face a multi-generational workforce with different expectations, values, and work styles. E2.0 efforts can help improve employee engagement, collaboration, and knowledge sharing. This session will debate the shifts that lay ahead and what organizations need to do about them: social networking, talent, learning, and changing notions of public/private.

Moderator: Mike Gotta

Panelists: Sara Roberts, Dan Rasmus, others TBD

Attendee Benefit

Attendees will understand key trends in the market related to HR (attract/retain employees, talent), innovation (employee-led ideation), career development (learning, expertise), and the implications of a growing digital lifestyle on the workplace (mobility, social networking).

This last session deals with risk. We have to balance the sometimes irrational exuberance with "all things social" with the need to mitigate risks. That does not mean "saying no" - it does mean understanding the use case scenarios, identifying the potential vulnerabilities, and defining the policies, practices, and tools needed to mitigate those risks to an acceptable level. For this session, I am "getting the band back together" by inviting some colleagues of mine. We should end up with 3-4 people on this panel. The goal is to raise awareness and offer practical advice.  

Social Media & Social Networking: A Cautionary Tale

Social media (Twitter, LinkedIn) and enterprise social networking solutions (profiles, activity streams, social analytics) can deliver compelling business value. However, benefits do not come without risks. This panel discussion with experts and practitioners will provide insight as to the policy, governance, and security issues warranted to mitigate risks.

Moderator: Mike Gotta

Panelists: Doug Cornelius, Alice Wang

Attendee Benefit

Attendees will gain an understanding of potential risk factors associated with social media and social networking and options available that can help mitigate risks within their organization.

Drawing Parallels & Making Connections Between Youth & Employee Learning

One of the things I like to do is to explore areas outside the enterprise space to see if there are connections, crossover transitions, or parallels that can be learned and applied back to the enterprise. Below are two videos that I thought have some of those attributes. They are not about the enterprise, E2.0, collaboration, social networking etc - but there are moments in both videos when you see an enterprise implication. While  new media literacies, self-learning, and participatory cultures may come across as esoteric topics, I might argue that addressing these challenges is fundamental for improving information sharing, collaboration, and decision-making (much more influential than throwing social tools out into the workplace).

Summary:

In this video, John Seely Brown (JSB) discusses the need to embrace change (in the context of preparing the younger generation for the workplace). What's important to have a strong sense of curiosity and a "questing" disposition. These attributes help drive a constant state of learning. Other topics include: the value of communities (interests, shared practices), the importance of situated learning. JSB makes a great point on the need to "learn how to join" - joining can be a frightening experience for many (think about this in the context of employees joining communities re: will people accept me, do I have the right background (identity), how do I gain "social footing" in this group, etc). Once people join, they learn a lot through osmosis ("dwelling in the experience").

The closing remarks are relevant to today's workplace re: rapid change, skills having a short self-life, how we need to create our own context, how we need to use our experiences as scaffolding for learning, how we need to accelerate what we know so we can improve our own performance. A final reflection on what you are doing now needs to be the platform for what you do next was a great point - metaphorically, think of your journey as a trajectory through life space not fixed points (e.g., Job A, Job B, Company X, Company Y).  

John Seely Brown from New Learning Institute on Vimeo.

Summary:

In this video, Mimi Ito asks an open-ended question (in the context of kids), as to why we assume that socializing and play is not a form of learning? Generationally we may look at what kids are doing with new media and consider it a non-productive use of time. However, Ms. Ito argues that media creation, and the participation that goes long with it, is a form of learning. She also points out that a lot of what kids do with online spaces and media reflects friendship-driven participation. However, in a study she found a minority that took participation to the next level where media and participation was "interest driven". When kids become engaged beyond friendship, they tend to use new media to developer specialized interests and improve literacies even further.

This is the type of situation that has more of a business context (interest-driven participation) where we want employees rally around a topic, network, join/create communities, etc. This is a skill often learned unconsciously through new media interaction. It also brings back the notion of "tinkering" mentioned in the JSB video. I thought the idea that new media, the "tinkering" process, and self-learning gets back to ways that people increase their own intellectual and personal development. How do we encourage "interest driven participation" within the enterprise might be helped by understanding how this skill emerges as kids grow up.  

Mimi Ito from New Learning Institute on Vimeo.

 

Social Network Sites As Connective Infrastructure

One of the more interesting articles I came across while on winter break was the dissertation abstract and presentation below on the role social network sites play as people adapt to different life transitions. The idea of "connectivity infrastructure" I thought was very relevant and influenced some of the points I made in an earlier post "Enterprise 2.0: A Transition From Destination Site To Platform Services". However, the organizational value is the more compelling aspect re: how these sites mediate the type of interactions and relationships necessary to master new roles and identities. For instance, within the enterprise, one of the more common value propositions of these type of sites is that they help onboard new employees - connecting them to experts, mentors, peers, and communities. When I've talked to folks in HR, the quicker companies can get their new hires connected into the fabric of the company, the more confident they are that the new employee will see how they fit into the organization, possible career paths, ways to get involved in various communities, etc. 

The topic of "transitions" and its influence on identity is interesting and perhaps not always an area of focus within the E2.0 community. Yet employees go through work-related transitions all the time: joining a new team, beginning a new project, starting a new role, preparing for an event, playing the role of a mentor for the first time, etc. Some of the transitions an employee incurs are formal and visible (and may have official support mechanisms) but some are informal and invisible (with no support, leaving the employee "on their own").  Do these types of sites help augment the personal networks of employees in ways that enables them to handle these transitions more effectively? It makes me wonder whether organizations that do a great job at handling this type of employee "adaptation to transition" process are those that also perform better in some measurable way or are thought to have healthy cultures. 

Title: Networked Information Behavior in Life Transition

Abstract : This study explores the supportive and informational uses of social network sites that facilitate adaptation to transition.  This study focuses on the transition to college, a major life event requiring integration into new settings, the negotiation of informational challenges, and the mastery of new roles and identities.  Adaptation to transition is a complex process contingent upon the management of stress associated with transition and general integration into the transitional environment.

Social network sites represent a connective infrastructure within personal networks. Because social network sites are inherently connective, they afford a location for provision and receipt of social support during transition, and a site for the acquisition of information necessary for integration into the transitional environment.  Drawing on data collected directly from a social network site that describes the networked activity of a freshman class over the course of their first semester at college, from a sample survey of freshmen with 1,198 respondents, and from 15 semi-structured interviews, this research has two primary components. 

In the first component of analysis, Fred explores the structure and dynamics of socio-technical networks during transition.  Using exponential random graph modeling, he identifies the role and magnitude of preference, socio-demographic, and configuration factors in structuring socio-technical networks during transition.  He then uses an econometric framework to demonstrate that certain types of information sharing and profile change are associated with socio-technical network growth. 

In the second component of analysis, he explores uses of social network sites that facilitate adaptation to transition.   Using multiple regression and structural equation modeling, he demonstrates that supportive and social-informational uses of social network sites in transition exert a direct and mediated positive effect on overall adaptation. He then draws on interviews to explore supportive and informational uses of the social network site during transition, finding that social network sites are useful in pre-transition preparation, for social adaptation, and for academic support throughout the transition.  Upon evaluation, he demonstrates that a social network site is a useful place to turn for the social and informational support that facilitates adaptation to transition.

Fred Stutzman's Dissertation Defense

Fred Stutzman Dissertation Defense (Slideshare)

View more presentations from Fred Stutzman.