Have we reached the end of Email?

Thierry Breton of Atos is a bold, bold man!  He is banning the use of email internally.  Wow!  If it works, this man is a KM genius.

I will watch this experiment keenly over there, but not rushing to implement it myself.  I am quite intrigued, but knowing my organization, which is a bit on the older/conservative side, a little skeptical. I note a key passage in the article:




When we don't have internal email anymore we will have fantastic new tools - a
cloud computing environment, social networks, instant messaging, micro blogging,
document sharing, knowledge community - these offer a much better approach for
an information technology company.

An alternate ecosystem for information sharing must exist and be well used before our more entrenched email users will start sharing their information in that forum instead of email. We have some of this, but I would argue it's not well used. This transition will be easier for the 30-and-under crowd, as the article alludes to, and very difficult for those who have already lived through the revolutionary change to embrace email.

You cannot take tools away without first providing not just a replacement, but it must be an EXCELLENT replacement. So excellent that people immediately see the utility and its benefit to them.


I wouldn't take a bone away from a dog, unless I had a steak to offer!



Any different slants on this idea?

What do Dinosaurs and Social Business have in Common?

I owe Christine Crandell a debt for her Forbes article, "What Do the Extinction of Dinosaurs and Social Business Have in Common?" because she perfectly explains the point of this blog -- "A failure to adapt is the failure to survive," she says and she's right.

Lotusphere 2012

Several colleagues and I attended this year's IBM\Lotus Software Conference. As always, the sessions were intense and very future-oriented. Some key themes they emphasized this year:


Social Business is the way of the future

The pace of business is speeding up substantially (you have 60 seconds to engage your customer -- that's all!) and being productive is increasingly harder these days. According to IBM, forward-thinking organizations are 57% more likely to allow their people to use social & collaborative tools to be more engaged and productive to meet future challenges. Social Business ties information, processes and resources together using collaborative tools to streamline the way people do business. Gone are monthly business trips, on-call pagers, and emailed tasks. Instead, we now see video rich teleconferences, cellphone text messages, and activity driven action items.

At this year’s conference IBM offered some good solutions -- browser based collaborative tools, social analytics, and applications -- that boost user communities to become more productive and social. Not merely allowing, but empowering people to be dynamic in how they retrieve, interact with, and convey information is crucial to making Social Business work. We saw real examples of how IBM technologies were delivering Social Business solutions for various organizations (Bayer, Polycom, Premier Healthcare, GAD, TD Bank) all over the world. Watch a 60-second snapshot of the hottest Opening General Session announcements. "Social" is the new business model. "Social" means engaged, transparent, and nimble. This feeds really well into the work the Bank Group is doing on the Millennium Development Goals, and even addresses our Innovative Knowledge Sharing and Transparency initiatives. Along with "Collaboration" and "Community," expect "Social Business" to be a hot new buzzphrase!


Activity Streams (IBM Connections) bring everything together

Lotus long ago transformed Notes into more than just email -- it's effectively a "collaboration platform" that WBG people use all day, every day. Since it acquired Lotus Notes, IBM repeatedly tried to insert new "Social" features in Notes, but has increasingly focused on a bigger collaboration tool: IBM Connections. In this broader web-based platform, "Communities" could correspond to formal WBG Networks but also less formal shareholder networks -- and "Activity Streams" shows you the important updates from relevant data sources you select, such as internal/external Communities, Social Analytics, Activities, Bookmarks, Profiles, Sharepoint, File system, Group Calendars, Wikis, Blogs, Forums, Microblogging (status updates) etc.. Email is only one source in many! It's a bit hard to describe in black and white, so click here to see what an IBM Connections homepage looks like. This, or something like it, may become your personal work dashboard some day.


Unified Communications

It's not enough to pull all the computer pieces together -- in a Social Business, meaningful communication and collaboration also come from phone calls, Instant Messages, videocalls, and videoconferences -- IBM Sametime Unified Telephony (SUT) endeavors to unify the experience. We agree with IBM that people want to have one client that gives us everying -- presence/chat/voice/video -- on our computers as well as on our choice of mobile device. At WBG, we are already in step, as we have ICP providing our Unified Communications strategy and solutions, so this was slightly less relevant to us.


The Cloud

There was a lot of emphasis on IBM's cloud service, which was rebranded from LotusLive to IBM SmartCloud for Social Business (or "SmartCloud"). 80% of the Fortune 500 use one or more IBM cloud computing capabilities. They offer their full suite of collaboration products (including email) and you can get a free 60-day trial if you are interested.


Mobility gets you there

68% of the population accesses social sites via cellphone and 36% have made purchases from cellphone. iPhone/iPad popularity and Android's rapid consumption of market share means we -- and IBM -- can't focus solely on BlackBerry anymore. IBM is working to bring the best of "Social Business" to all of the major devices however they can -- either by developing their own client or by feeding a native-to-the-device client. "Bring Your Own Device" (BYOD) initiatives in organizations like ours are driving this. We got some good XPages tips and some ideas for Sametime on iPhone and Android!


Oh, and I needn't have worried about lacking gadgets -- I took my Christmas Present (iPad 2) and fit right in!

"Social Business"

So there's social media and there's business, y'see.  And for the most part, businesses don't much care for social media because someone's told them they suck productivity out of employees like eating lemons sucks your cheeks in.  In fact, a lotta for-profit companies ban the use of social media (and games) on company-owned assets, while attached to the company network, and during company time.

Games? Yeah, Is see that, I suppose.  But it still goes back to the age-old Solitaire issue; you wouldn't have to spend the extra hours to strip it off every workstation if you had good managers who had a clue what their employees are doing all day.  Good management solves a lot.  But apparently it isn't found often.

But social media?  Sure, have a social media policy; limit time spent on social media to the exclusion of real work and make employees go through Corporate Communications before they post something about the company. But really?  In avoiding the possibility of a negative comment, you're precluding the good stuff.  You don't want Facebook to know that your employees enjoy working for you?  That they have good days at work?  That they feel trusted and empowered?  Your loss.

Undoubtedly every organization has a public-facing Communications person or department.  Undoubtedly that person or department is engaging in some form of social media to the good of the organization.  And undoubtedly that single entity cannot possibly convey the expertise that employees individually possess.  But Communications doesn't know what folks are up to (c'mon, if a manager doesn't, this crew has no chance) or even what kind of information the social sphere wants to know.

The best possible course of action for a forward-thinking organization would be to marry up the corporate social presence with their internal knowledge bank (employees).  That means letting employees say what they have to say to the world through whatever avenue is being listened to at the moment.  Even letting some of it be negative.  That's truth, baby -- TRUTH.  That kind of candor is gold.  Organizations can't PAY for that kind of honest, transparent public image.  Not even if they hire the best marketers.

Now you might think that embracing social media would add chaos to the organization.  And you might be a teensy bit right.  But embracing change (including a bit of chaos) is not only necessary in today's business world, but also smart.  Mark Fidelman wrote an excellent article about why IBM is in better market shape than Apple.  There were GRAPHS and CHARTS, so you know it's all true.  (wink)

This article alone should convince a tight organization to loosen up a bit when it comes to social media.

Evolve or die, I say.  Y'see?

The "80-20" Rule

I refer to this rule all the time, but never had the econo-mathematical backdrop for it.  Clay Shirky's TedTalk on institutions vs. collaboration is an interesting listen with relevant, reinforcing visuals.  And now I know why "80-20" is an institutional reference and not a new-age collaborative reference.  Dinosaur-->me.  Once again.

ChipIn - fundraising aid

"ChipIn is a Web-based service that simplifies the process of collecting money from groups of people. We make this process quick, easy, and secure, and we provide organizers with numerous ways to get the word out about their ChipIn event."

Enough vendors have finally mastered the art of securely accepting credit card or PayPal transactions, why not extend that to normal people who don't have merchant IDs?  And why not give them a handy widget to toss into their website to make it easy to hand-hold interested donators right to the donation process?  Slick!

Note: I have not used this service, just found it and like the idea of it.  If anyone knows of or has used a similar service, I'd be very much interested in your reviews!

Colbert on Social Media

Hoot!

Check out Colbert Nation!

Google+ and social media overload

I check Facebook news feed daily now.  Yes, it's a security pitfall (even if you lock it down), yes, they don't appear to care about MY content or MY privacy, but it's a calculated risk on my part -- I get a lot from it, so it's worth it.  It is there that I've found long lost friends, remembered how funny and interesting they are, and would miss not hearing about their daily travails.  So OK, I drank the Kool-aid.

Now comes Google+, appealing to all of us geeks, telling us they'll protect our privacy, that they respect our content, that they'll give us all the things we lamented about Facebook, if only we'll shift over. I'm curious, so I signed up.  Only they're not really ready yet -- they're not letting me in -- their pilot is oversubscribed or some such annoyance. A friend of mine (who made it in early) claims it's great, that he's already got 70+ connections on it in less than 3 days, which represents roughly 33% of his Facebook Friend entourage.  He feels that 33% in 3 days is a pretty good indicator that eventually he'll get most of the folks he's interested in.  I don't know. . .

It's taken some folks a long time just to make it to Facebook for a once-a-month check-in.  I don't see those folks being persuaded to check something ELSE.  For the folks who do check in more regularly, they've already done the work of finding and connecting with friends--why should they do it all twice?  For the folks who have exercised every security option Facebook offers, why would they want to get in on the ground floor of something likely to have just as many growing-pains security concerns as any other online community?  For the folks who simply like Google and their innocent, childlike primary colors, are you SURE?  I applaud their standing up to China in the face of its obvious state-sponsored hacking activities, but Google will not save us if it's not profitable. This is not Mr. Rogers' Google.

So yeah, I'll try it out and I'll keep an open mind.  I am a geek after all.  But I will also be looking for a lot of answers.  I'm not investing in "+" if it doesn't deliver.

Context over Content!

I love, love, love when concepts and data can be displayed in an easy-to-grasp way for those of us who are visually inclined!

Here is a great example from Valdis Krebs\orgnet.com of well done graphics -- but also a 2x4 to the head in terms of explaining a key tenet of social media:  context is more important than content!  It's a hard concept to convey sometimes, especially to old school database type people who still espouse the "Content is King" approach to IT. You can tell people, a statement may be true, but if I hear it from Anderson Cooper, I'm gonna give it a lot more weight than if Maury Povich is sayin' it.  But you see this graphic and you GET it.

"KM"

KM, or Knowledge Management, was a huge concept that turned into an empty buzzword in the mid-'90's.  The ideas held promise but no implementation ever really succeeded in delivering on that promise.

Recently I read an article by a colleague that got me thinking about KM again.  It says, in part:

Knowledge is always bound to people and impossible to digitalize. It's bit confusing Machiavellian challenge, as soon as knowledge is captured in a system it becomes information. This means that, "knowledge management" IT systems are not really managing knowledge but information.

So it seems we can either return to embracing Information Technology (accept that it's "only" information and deal with it appropriately) or embrace the person who HAS the knowledge (ostensibly via social media) and build systems to support that person. 

There's a whole group of folks out there who think social media should divorce itself from the IT department in medium-to-large organizations. This, I think, has more to do with traditional dissatisfaction with slow, lumbering, untimely IT department delivery of services than it does with whether these two are a bad fit.  Rather than limber up the IT folks (which, I grant you, takes work), just pitch all that infrastructure, forget about integrating, who cares about support, and to hell with security.  Short-sighted at best.
 
But let's say we get a receptive IT department that wants to provide social media outlets to users.  What's out there that makes sense?  Given the instinct to press forward instead of look back (despite Glen Beck's best efforts to the contrary), I ask you, which social media systems really support you, the person, in such a way that your knowledge is better used?  I'm puzzled by this.

Twitter\Facebook-style status updates are too brief to convey a lot, don't generate new information (unless it's aggregate stats on following or topics) or facilitate knowledge (other than managers wanting to know what their employees are up to).  Blogging has its uses, but might be a distraction from work, depending on what you're charged to produce.  Wikis?  Yes, I get why wikis are helpful and work-related, but how do you get folks to contribute and edit regularly?

I recall that the best KM "solutions" of the past included Affinity systems -- profiles of workers and the topics they're expert in + search engines that gave individuals credit for those topics they've published on.  That base of information combined with weighting and searching allowed others to search a topic and find not only the articles, but also the authors\experts.  I think this is a darned fine, quite clever idea.  I'm not sure why this single piece, all by itself, didn't survive the KM collapse.  Knowing that people aren't likely to update their profiles or to be entirely honest\accurate about their expertise (both on the bragging AND the downplaying side), a system that collects this information and uses it to help shape searches later is brilliant. 
 
This!  would help people find experts faster without annoying those experts by bugging them with electronic reminders to update this, update that.
 
Could we please have our Affinity engines back?

Market Justification for Social Media

A PR perspective, from Ogilvie Public Relations, on what social media is and how to use it. In particular, how to blog. You'd think that was self evident, wouldn't you? But apparently not - if you're a tween on MySpace, you're telling the world one thing. But if you're really USING blogs for business, you need a different, more polished and directed approach.

Next time I post, I'll be an EXECUTIVE Collabosaur. . .

From the mouths of babes. . .

http://steveradick.com/2010/05/12/screwing-in-the-lightbulb-before-flipping-the-switch-accepting-web-2-0-one-step-at-a-time/

OK, so I agree that people under 20 are more likely to intuitively grasp social media than people over 50. Absolutely. It's a way of life for them, really. In fact, I'm not sure they know how to distance themselves enough from it to really explain it as a tool.

But I really resent the notion that older folks have to have our hands held, one-on-one, by the youth of today. To re-use the lightbulb metaphor, screw that! Just frickin' EXPLAIN it to me.

Example: I have a Twitter account. I know how to post a tweet via the webpage. I WANT to know how to post a tweet by using my cellphone. I have searched all over the darn site trying to find an answer and not getting anything that means anything to me. And I GET social media. What I don't get is clear explanations. That's not all of social media's fault -- that's just poor anticipation by the Twitter folks.

I do NOT need a 15-year-old stapled to me to understand social media concepts. What I DO need are accessible FAQs and examples written for grownups.

Reverse mentor - I'll TELL you what you can do with that lightbulb!


[Disclaimer: I am just kidding - using "crotchety and cranky" as a style, not a real emotion. Please dear god nobody go and put a lightbulb somewhere so far that the ER has to remove it!]

Jay Baer's "Convince & Convert" blog

A massively HUGE thank you to Jay Baer (whom I don't know but now adore) for his blog posting detailing which social media tools he actually uses on a regular basis:

http://www.convinceandconvert.com/social-media-tools/the-39-social-media-tools-ill-use-today/

I love the practical applications. AND he writes well.

Now I wish he would produce a PC Magazine-just-for-social-media that would evaluate what's out there and compare and contrast them all. I suppose that's too much work, especially given that I'm not paying. Hmm. Any volunteers? Can't hurt to ask!

We've known for some time that teenagers have a totally different idea of what "privacy" means than do older generations. (They also think oral sex isn't REALLY sex, but that's another story for another blog.) But for them, privacy IS different. Much the same way people who grow up in a crowded living environment attain privacy by everyone else voluntarily looking away at times, teenagers feel it's the internet's job to "look away" when they're sharing intimate information.

This is going to get them in trouble if they think their SSN and their bank account are intimate information. Information security cannot possibly function in that expectation of privacy. I'll be interested to see how THAT hashes out!

But if we don't think about security for a minute--or if we successfully persuade teens that account information differs from intimate information and needs more vigilance--teens can teach the rest of us that social sharing WORKS.

Why I'm on this train of thought -
http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2010/04/why_social_sharing_is_bigger_than_facebook.html

Not everyone wants to hear everything. I just don't give a fig about 75% of what I read on Facebook's status feed. But if do care - a lot - about 25% of it. So much so that I will accept the necessity of wading through 75% dreck. And if I were a corporation trying to sell something, I would absolutely be interested. This is demographic data about my customers! I can use this!

My grandparents used to write long, conversational letters. My parents did too, but transitioned into quick talks on the phone (it was pricey back then and my grandparents scolded them for spending too much time on the phone much the way teens feel persecuted for spending too much time online now). When I was growing up, I hardly ever wrote letters, unless it was to make my grandparents happy, but I snuck much longer phone calls with my friends. I transitioned to email at some point because it was free (phone calls still cost something) and I could type fast.

But I don't pour my day-to-day heart into email anymore. Practically speaking, I use it for quick updates or delivering attachments. But I did miss knowing these little events and how my friends would interpret them. What we're doing now in social media is telling our friends (and the world) what's interesting to us right now. Facebook and Twitter are not capturing insightful, thought-out evaluations of events - they're capturing the raw, immediate reaction to events. The same impulse that drives impulse purchases, I daresay.

I say they're valuable. Capitalism says they're gold.