Trevor Cook

Harnessing the power of a team Wiki

Notes from conference presentation, "Enterprise 2.0 for Information Professionals", Sydney 14 August 2008.

The presenter: Andrew Mitchell, national Manager, Technology and Knowledge, Urbis.

Slides will be posted on slideshare.

Playing videos of staff members talking about how they use the wiki.

Use it as a project delivery tool.

Many beneficial behaviours naturally managed - weren't built-in.

Every day about ten per cent of staff use it for project work.

Wikis don't have to be like wikipedia and produce fully formed articles but can be partial, on the fly comments etc

Do need some structure but they let it emerge.

Need someone to do gardening - lots of little things all the time to finese the site. But some mess is OK and freeform is OK. It's also OK to be out-of-date sometimes.

Using Facebook in graduate recruitment - Ernst & Young

Notes from conference presentation, "Enterprise 2.0 for Information Professionals", Sydney 14 August 2008.

The presenter: Sharon Cartwright, Director, Impact Employee Communications (an Ogilvy PR Worldwide Company).

Link to EY-Australia facebook page.

Ernst & Young not fully open to facebook mainly just for recruitment purposes. (odd)

It's a form of marketing. Don't encourage conversations. Worried about staff sticking to approved messages. Everything is generated in-house.

There is a discussion forum but not being used at the moment.

900 positions available annually - number and quality of applicants are up.

EY trying to get good students as well as A grade because looking for rounded people.

They ask applicants where they heard of EY plus people on facebook site get recognised when they go to recruitment days etc.

Reasons for using facebook: A new way to engage with customers, make contact with people, drive web traffic, viral effects, staying in touch with people. See what people are saying about your brand.

Recruitment - 'fish where the fish are' ie young people use facebook

Fears of management that brand would be trashed were not realised.

People interested in E&Y can become a fan and get updates on the company of interest to young people.

Facebook customer service has improved dramatically in recent years.

Worked carefully with legal & employee comms to make sure their concerns about governance. So they come up with some clear guidelines eg about tone, style of language.

A full service page: Ernst & Young pays facebook for it

Devised a message matrix based on the questions students usually ask.

2,500 fans today like to be twice that by the end of the year.

Overcoming stakeholder resistance to enterprise 2.0 initiatives

Notes from conference presentation, "Enterprise 2.0 for Information Professionals", Sydney 14 August 2008.

The presenter: Kate Carruthers, Digital Business Group Pty. Ltd.

Dealing with internal stakeholder resistance.

Need to educate people and demonstrate the benefits from using new technologies.

McKinsey research - top five things - but also includes things like lowering purchasing costs.

Align with business strategy - how will it help senior managers meet their KPIs.

Engage with early adoptors to find out what is working and is not working; adopt a continuous improvement cycle (plan, do, check, act)

Metrics are very important to prove that it is working.

Cultural fit is a very big issue.

As is technological fit. Some organisations still use IE6.

Build accountability and transparency.

It's all about change management.

Why do we want to change stuff? 'a truth that influences their feeling'.

Against arguments - why change, don't have skills, etc lot of these objections come down to feelings. You need facts but you have to address the fear of change as well.

Corporate IT is often the roadblock. They are rewarded for keeping systems stable and running not for innovation and uncertainty.

Building online employee communities

Notes from conference presentation, "Enterprise 2.0 for Information Professionals", Sydney 14 August 2008.

The presenter: Alexei Fey, Senior Manager eBusiness, Savings & Loans Credit Union.

Traditionally, getting people together to brainstorm has been hard and expensive - want to do a lot more of that online.

Allow and foster popular technologies in your business and you will get a payback.

Microsoft has a good approach - normal employee guidelines are enough to cover social software participation.

Facebook - core functions are heavily embraced, more than 20% of staff use facebook, but games and other add-ons are blocked at work.

They want their staff out there with the savings & loan brand

Allows staff to get to know each other.

CEO's blog - here & now - launched about 2.5 years ago - invites people to ask him questions etc

They have had to moderate some comments. But have embraced a lot of member crtiicism which includes links to competitors.

They have learnt a lot about their business and its customers. Especially through discussions between customers. Some real truths have come out.

Internal forum. Includes tags. People discuss everything including football but lots of business related stuff as well.

It's good now but went some hard times to get the forum working properly.

Some early anonymous comments caused consternation, so management closed down anonymity, so people stopped posting. We stopped people talking in a realm we could hear them. Those conversations just moved - people bitching at the pub etc.

So introduced registered, semi-anonymous posting and introduced netiquette policy based on appropriate treatment of people, colleagues etc.

Recently introduced innovation forum.

Let them own it and they'll protect it.

Also wanted to connect with alumni - most registered but visits not as high as expected. Probably because they are not interested on a daily basis anymore.

Keeping costs low:

• open source eg google street view can be added for free
• bringing more web design in place, let them use new stuff when it comes out
• CEO blog is typepad - 150 bucks a year plus 500 for design at the start
• a few grand for forum etc

Don't fall for the cost of custom development.

Customisation for open source is quick, cheap and clean.

CSR site is also typepad.

Biggest takeout is 'let them own it and they will protect it".

Forums peak and trough eg launch of new brand - but that is good don't want people using it all the time.

 

Using social media to alleviate pressure on email

Notes from conference presentation, "Enterprise 2.0 for Information Professionals", Sydney 14 August 2008.

The presenter: Matt Moore, Chief Researcher, Innotecture - blogs at engineerswithoutfears and has a podcast

We use email as a default collaboration tool - bad idea

Steps to replace email:

• ban attachments, make people link instead eg share drive
• don't forward stuff to more than 5 people
• get senior managers to stop emailing to people through email all the time
• one step at a time - make some stuff available for some people to edit on wiki first

Don't call them wikis, call them writable intranets.

Security - emails are not secure because they can be easily forwarded.

Too much choice overwhelms them - the jam experiment

Email is not bad, it just has to know its place.

Understanding complexity science is important to understanding social software in organisations.

Comment: the lack of accountability in email is the problem (I sent you an email so I have done my job)

Drama triangles - relationship between client, IT vendor and IT shop. Many IT shops now playing the 'victim' role. People around the triangle and play different roles and is self-perpetuating. Winners triangle starts off by admitting vulnerability, admitting you don't know everything and reaching out to people. Replace persecution with perseverance.

Keep the faith, a long journey, not a painless one.

The golden rules of Enterprise 2.0 strategy

Notes from conference presentation, "Enterprise 2.0 for Information Professionals", Sydney 14 August 2008.

The presenter: Paul McDonald, Professional Support Lawyer, Gilbert + Tobin.

Paul's role is knowledge management

Their intranet is not good and they are trying to improve it. People are 100 times more likely to ask someone rather than try to find it on the intranet. Staff have little faith in what the firm posts but a lot more faith in what they can find through Google.

"You don't have to be a sewerage engineer to recognise shit"

Any web 2.0 applications in the firm are shit if they are not as good as google or facebook.

Google is now absolutely indispensable part of a litigation lawyer's job. Einfeld was caught out by a court reporter's google search. This happens all the time.

By-product is that they have become very good at finding stuff out on google.

Younger people who have been using google for many years are good at working out what is good info online and what is not.

They also reverse engineer to find the information they want. Search will point to a page which has the information and also points to the source of the information (eg relevant Act).

Not scared of facebook, images of him pissed on facebook will not hinder his career.

The idea of sitting down and watching 30 minutes of news on TV is bizarre and horrible, gets most of it online - facebook followed by the SMH.

G+T currently keeps people up-to-date once a month by creating a word document and emailling around. Not efficient or useless.

Suffer massive email overload, doesn't read anything that is longer than half a page.

Hates rules online.

Need to be ruthless in evaluating what will work or not work online.

If a search box is more complicated than google then there is something wrong with it.

News - the internet does it a lot better than emails. Lay it out quite nicely, you can put comments on it, you can update it.

Online has to be fun that's why people interact online because it's enjoyable.

Gives us a handout of 18 rules.

Don't forget the user - what do they already do? If they use facebook then let them edit their own profiles on a wiki. And think about the expertise in the firm - are there people who have new media interests and expertise already that can be harnessed.

Legal issues and Enterprise 2.0

Notes from conference presentation, "Enterprise 2.0 for Information Professionals", Sydney 13 August 2008.

The presenter: Allison Manvell, Associate, Baker & McKenzie

Deals with an increasing number of clients who are using web 2.0

Good to be aware of the issues and risks upfront and keep on top of developments as law gradually adjusts to new developments in this space.

From a legal perspective, losing control of the content is the issue. Law traditionally sees you as responsible even though content is not created by the organisation.

Jurisdiction is also worth thinking about. If its a login functionality you have some control over the content but more broadly could open you up to other legal systems.

Considering legal issues is not a necessarily a block on what you want to do if you get legal advice early on

Protections like 'safe harbour' and 'innocent dissemination' are quite limited.

Privacy is a big issue. Privacy Act is currently complaints based. (what a nightmare)

Copyright - if you are turning a blind eye it may be hard to satisfy the court that you are taking reasonable steps to comply and prevent breaches of copyright.

Defamation in many web 2.0 applications is a low risk but need to ensure that not turning a blind eye in the hope of claiming didn't know it was defammatory.

"Content" regulation / classification - there will be more requirements if you are charging people. Basically regime is a takedown following a complaint type process rather than classifying beforehand.

Know your service really well.

Intranets and social media

Notes from conference presentation, "Enterprise 2.0 for Information Professionals", Sydney 13 August 2008.

The presenters: Claire Johnstone, General Manager Corporate and Communications, Ministry of Transport, New Zealand. Stephanie Beath, IT business analyst, Ministry of Transport.

Intranets have to be fun as well as being a business tool

Intranets that don't work that are those dominated by bureaucracy and rules. Must also engage young people.

Started with business needs and developed strategy around that.

Worked with all areas of the organisation.

Killer app is staff directory and information.

Build it for future needs as well.

Tested the crap out of it.

Expect your design to fail the first time, usually take 6 or 7 iterations to get it right.

Don't have to test it with lots of people.

Has to be fast, just because you have a captive audience doesn't mean that they will cop it.

Appeal to the inner child - that's what sells it.

Need something that changes every day.

Evangelise - tell them what's coming up, what's in it for them

Encourage them to have ownership

Usability experts are extremely important and add considerable value to the project.

Fitt's law - things that are smaller and further away take longer to get to.

Don't try to introduce too many concepts all at once.

"The best companies are those that are losing control": Deloitte Digital

Notes from conference presentation, "Enterprise 2.0 for Information Professionals", Sydney 13 August 2008.

The presenter: Peter Williams, CEO, Deloitte Digital

IT shops are hopeless when it comes to doing blogs etc

Most of the information inside an organisation is unknown, its in people's heads but not captured.

CIOs have a whole lot of 'chicken little' problems, just like years ago when they were opposed to email and then internet email.

Besides chicken littles, there are toads arguing 'bring it on', like him.

Federal Dept of Education are going to have digital education revolution but they have banned social network sites: youtube, facebook. How can they talk about a revolution when they have banned everything that is part of the revolution. (great story)

Need to engage in CIO bypass.

CRM does not manage relationships it manages process.

There's all this stuff out there (web 2.0 apps) but not inside business.

The higher the hassle quotient internally the more likely you are to get maverick users.

Hide it in plain sight, stick it on youtube. Create your own website and pull it through from youtube. Stick stuff on slideshare.

The best companies are those that are losing control.

Deloitte has an Innovation Zone where people can put ideas 24/7 - the content creators tag it.

Tagging allows searching that allows the creation of communities of interest.

Got a wiki behind the firewall - put induction stuff for new employees on it; improve capacity to absorb new technologies. Wikis are driven by an ideology - eg 'if you have something to share put it in here', 'don't bullsh*t".

If you provide centralised platform it becomes a lot easier to capture searchable content.

Lesson one: do stuff off-brand

Provide the tools. Loves confluence. Cheap - $10,000 for an organisation. Used it to build 20/20 Summit site.

leadershipacademy.com.au - worldclass content used confluence sold $3 million in subscriptions in 6 months

When you select software - what was the metaphor it was built on.

External search tools - Brandwatch, sentiment tracker

Set up an acceptable use policy

Interested in Google Base - can leverage structured data with unstructured data. Pretty new but in five years could be very big.

A lot more will happen around looking for patterns in data in enterprises.

Sources of enterprise data - starting to consider that everything is content but how do I tag it, how do I identify it semantically.

Data security - who can secure data better a company in Australia or them

Freebase - help look for patterns in data

CIO is my friend - don't ban stuff people love, create sandboxes, don't do a business case when the prototype is cheaper

Linking internal and external comms: Telstra

Notes from conference presentation, "Enterprise 2.0 for Information Professionals", Sydney 13 August 2008.

The presenter: Jeremy Mitchell, Editor-in-chief, www.nowwearetalking.com.au

Telstra CEO says that one of the best things about Telstra's blogging site is the way it has helped encourage staff to be active in defending the organisation and participating in debates. Sometimes there are problems with people saying too much or getting things wrong but that is a small cost compared to the benefits.

Site set up to discuss regulatory issues and then became important in the broadband debates.

Site is obviously Telstra but not branded that way; not a marketing site but also made it easier to dump if it hadn't have worked. Comments are moderated, you have to register and login to comment.

Some inside see it as a learning exercise others as a public relations exercise.

Broadband campaign got readers to write to the Minister, head of the ACCC.

Site is much more interactive now then when it first started.

Answering questions that people have about Telstra eg changing billing arrangements as well as stuff like how many customers Telstra has.

Idea behind blog was to humanise Telstra. So important to get staff involved in blogging.

Their Gen Y blogger is one of the most popular.

Half the stories on the Intranet now point to stories on nowwearetalking.com.au

Got 40,000 people active on their behalf through the website.

Now they have nowwearetlking TV. Its a youtube channel. 54 videos, interviews, speeches

A good thing about the site is the capacity to experiment.

Telstra has 5,000 employees on facebook now using it for nowwearetalking to have conversations.

60% of Australians over 50 have a home computer and use the internet regularly.

Now want to take nowwearetalking into the business units.

Next step is user ratings of mobile phones etc

2.5 million people have visited nowwearetalking; 30,000 unique visitors each week would like it to rise to about 40,000.

Going to launch specialist sites eg FTTN & the environment (high speed, low carbon future)

Set up smaller communities within the nowwearetalking community.

The secret to the success is Phil Burgess

Massive sea change, now business communities are keen to get involved.

Qantas came and saw him last week.

He thinks Dell is doing it better overseas.

Going to do a self-help forum where customers can go in to get advice.

Two junior staff working on it full-time - a publisher and a web architect plus 10% of his job. Might have more staff resources soon. Otherwise, all the editors and so on are voluntary. Three of them share the moderating.

Looking to getting an automated moderating service.

Collaborative web: sharing & updating information in real time

Notes from conference presentation, "Enterprise 2.0 for Information Professionals", Sydney 13 August 2008.

The presenter: David Boloker, CTO of Emerging Internet Technologies, IBM Software Group, USA.

Focused on three things: DIY web 2.0 solutions; collaborative, media converged web; the emerging petabyte age.

Beginnings of web 2.0 go back to the nineties (CSS, java etc)

Amazon was big in this space because it wanted to get the whole effect of the 'long tail'.

iPhone biggest change in ten years - no longer tethered to anything

Web evolves: active presentation, ajax active gadgets, bi-directional push events; p2p hidef video and broadcast (eg live broadcasts from beijing to mobile phones)

Moving to collaborative, media converged web.

Doing a demonstration of people stuff together 'live' on the internet. Real estate scenario. (Looks good but aurora looks sexier to me). Got video in it too. Now doing a conference morningcall video.

So the idea is that people can interact easily and fast with text, maps, videos etc all at once.

"This is the web you really wanted it to be" - get info from everywhere, meld it together and share it.

Allowing an enterprise to get a better, more collaborative dashboard. That accelerate and amplify decision-making. Generic uses; virtual travel, e-learning, academic tutoring, real-time interactive meetings, telecommuting. Examples: traders desktop, long distance medicine

Works well for small groups.

Incorporating Enterprise 2.0 tools: Google Aust. & NZ

Notes from conference presentation, "Enterprise 2.0 for Information Professionals", Sydney 13 August 2008

The presenter: Jason Senn, Enterprise Lead Australia & NZ, Google

The big mantra behind web 2.0 is about choice, and about being able to innovate at your pace.

You can build your own gadgets and store at google.

Consumer expectations are changing

But 75% of budgets are spent on maintaining IT systems.

Best thing you can do is aggregate search across your enterprise.

eg finding powerpoint presentations

Cloud computing is inevitable.

Data should be kept in a place where it is secure but accessible (ie Google servers) just like keeping your money in a bank rather than under the mattress.

Google's biggest asset is a secure, scalable infrastructure

Google's user focus is right, designing technology that people want.

Customer tech is developing rapidly but business tech is lagging well behind and user satisfaction with their technology at work is declining.

Employee search is the most popular item on the Google intranet; neat demonstration of how to find an employee's office using the google maps app (I guess).

Google sites are massively used internally.

Social media and information flows - Heinz Australia

Notes from conference presentation, "Enterprise 2.0 for Information Professionals", Sydney 13 August 2008.

The presenter: Chris Knowles, Project Manager - Web, Heinz Australia.

Understanding your community is a key thing in social media in organisations.

Sharing opinions, experiences, insights, ideas and knowledge is an important part of any definition of social media; but also self-publishing and decentralised distribution (ie not through committees and centralised publishing systems).

Markets might be conversations if you're selling iphones but not if you're selling baked beans. But internally people are always talking about whatever they do; everyone inside the org. has an opinion about what is doing.

Lots of informal stuff in people's heads; everyone knows at least something that no-one else knows in the organisation.

Facebook groups can be used for alumni arrangements to stay in contact with ex-employees.

Spread responsibility for knowledge throughout the organisation - everyone can edit a wiki for example even if it is just changing one line they know to be incorrect.

Younger generations want to participate, contribute and put their opinions out there.

If you don't do it; others (maybe disgruntled employees) can set it up themselves.

Only about 200 people in the office; others in the factory or out in the field. Tend to recruit older people because they stay in their jobs longer.

Have an intranet running on sharepoint portal 2003. It sucks as a communication tool though good as a document storage tool. Have set up team sites to encourage groups to self-manage.

Blog called "spilling the beans" (seriously) for the field sales staff replaces; 12 contributors. Contributing to the blog has been written into their performance agreements (neat idea).

RSS generated newsletter (nouri.sh) email everyweek (a lot of people read this version). About 5 to 6 posts per week; sometimes three and sometimes eight. They use free version of nouri.sh; use squarespace for the blog, $300 per year, password protected.

No two communities are the same. Need realistic expectations; manage expectations of sponsors. Conducted an internal survey to identify super users of social media in the organisation because they are the ones who will drive social media in the organisation.

There is also a company wide blog, The Scoup, which seeks to involve as many as possible. It is the default homepage for everyone; it has replaced all-staff emails.

Looking at extending to twitter and some other stuff but don't want to go to a full social media platform. Want people to keep talking face to face and don't think they have a big enough workforce to justify it.

Wiki has proven to be better at encouraging people to generate content because it doesn't have to be finished; ongoing drafts.

Feels there is a pent-up demand for social media.

Euan Semple gives 8 reasons why your Enterprise 2.0 project is doomed

The Obvious?: Most companies who try to do Enterprise 2.0 will fail.

Study: Enterprise 2.0 generational divide largely a myth

Computerworld

Don't blame the old fogeys if your enterprise Web 2.0 efforts fail to launch. Young people may be demanding more collaborative Web technologies in the workplace, but the young/old divide is largely a myth, researchers said Tuesday at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Boston.

Interesting stuff.