For the ninth consecutive year, KMWorld recognized Traction Software by naming the company to their annual KMWorld 100 Companies that Matter in Knowledge Management. KMWorld’s list is compiled by KM practitioners, theorists, analysts, vendors, their customers and colleagues. This is the 13th year of the list. "Criteria for inclusion varies, but all companies have things in common. Each has either helped to create a market, redefine one or enhance one, and they all share two things—the velocity of innovation and the agility to serve their customers" says Hugh McKellar, KMWorld Editor-in-Chief. Greg Lloyd, Traction Software President and co-founder said: "We're honored that KMWorld consistently ranks Traction Software as a company that matters in Knowledge Management. Traction Software employees work closely with customers to build a stronger and more useful TeamPage platform." Lloyd continued, "Spring, Summer, Fall and Winter 2012 TeamPage releases introduced many user interface, performance, and Developer SDK additions and improvements to make it easier for customers to get work done."

"TeamPage 2012 highlights include: unified search to make lookup of spaces, people, projects and tasks quicker and easier; type-ahead completion for navigation, with optional index based type-ahead suggestions for content search; uniform work in progress autosave and finish later actions to avoid accidental loss of work; invitations to make it simple for members of a space to add new people to a TeamPage space by sending them an email invitation; an inline widget to collect and summarize selected tags, dates, and other standard or custom properties from all types of TeamPage content, making it easy to create dynamic tables for task summaries and other uses; new calendar event support to manage meetings and other dated activities along with project, task, and milestone dates; drag-and-drop editing of TeamPage calendar events; improved synchronization and notification for TeamPage and external calendar items; improved email digest, print, RSS, and Atom view styling, detail and context cues; improved Active Directory integration and caching; streamlined navigation header, dashboard, calendar and document tab interfaces; JMX-based metering of TeamPage server state; improved iPad, iPhone and Android support; performance improvements; Twitter style status that can focus on a selected project, milestone or task, as well as birds eye summaries organized by space or person. I thank Traction Software's employees and customers for earning KMWorld's recognition." » See the 2013 KMWorld 100 list

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Over on Quora, Ben Lopatin @bennylope has a best-answer to a question on the best ways to incentivize people to use E2.0 knowledge management and collaboration. He starts by shunning external incentives (as I do in Need for Incentives, and other Innovation Myths) and works through a few key principles which I've seen work time and time again:

• Focus on the problem for which the tools are to be employed. Most people don't care about enterprise wikis, they care about being able to do their jobs,
• Provide people with a working demonstration of an existing business process.
• Actively help people figure out how their processes, tasks, etc, can be accomplished with the new tools
• Get people up the ladder using the new tools... if you want to achieve pan-organization adoption you need leadership to show that they're using it, too
• Be careful about overestimating how easy the tools are for everyone. And not just the interfaces, but changes in underlying concepts.

I wish I had an Blog1326: Emergineering! badge to put on this answer because it captures the essence of understanding the problem and underlying process, figuring out how to address it in a way that enhances productivity, and finally getting the organization around the new approach. That's just what's needed for folks to figure out how to turn "social software" into "social productivity software" and really start using these tools for more than very basic and fleeting conversation.

I'd also hand out the badge to Catherine Shinners @catshinners for amplifying the benefits of social process transformation.

In her notes from the E2.0 Innovate conference, she wrote:

There are specific benefits of a social business process:

• immediacy - better access to the information
• serendipity - enabling discovery of new information
• transparency - supporting honest and ethical behavior through openness

A business process does not become social simply because it's in a social network. Hughes called out the different types of social business processes

• unstructured processes – the opened ended “hey I've got a question does anyone know the answer” or easy invitational “why don't we?” kind of interactions
• semi-structured – direct queries to engage a constituency or cohort in a group conversation or comment about artifacts i.e., “please review or provide feedback”
• structured – business process workflow kinds of structure “approve my expenses - request time off”

Beyond simple productivity gains of moving process from email and the water cooler to E2.0 platforms, or flexibility achieved by moving them from structured but hard to manage custom systems, this outline offers a clear sense for why a social platform is not only more ethical, its more effective because its observable and encourages team participation.

Stan Przybylinski - @smprezbo - of CIM Data advised an audience at Social PLM 2012 on inevitable social side of product lifecycle management. In the talk (video on YouTube here), he identifies companies including Traction Software (Minute 9:06) whose platforms are being used by product teams for everything from building requirements, to managing risks and simply discussing product issues.

I particularly liked his slide on "How Things Actually Get Done - Can You Say Ball of Confusion?"

The essence of this is that traditional PLM offerings capture some but not all work in progress and don't support the communication loops around project communication or problem solving. Social platforms are filling the gap, and in many cases are actually supporting the whole PLM cycle.

TeamPage Action Tracking can help firms manage informal tasks, track issues or risks, and manage entire projects. TeamPage is also used to manage documentation or work-in-progress and discuss anything that's happening.

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A column in ZDNet Japan covered the release by Applied Knowledge Co, Ltd, Yokohama of the TeamPage Cloud in Japan. They wrote "The greatest advantage of TeamPage is that it provides the virtual space to aggregate any information concerning the business and progress in the work space." The column discusses how companies in Japan can take advantage of collaboration tools like TeamPage to produce business value. Japanese companies can get started with Cloud and Download options as of the first of October 2012.

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Bill Ives, @billives, points to Nathan Eddy's eWeek column titled Businesses Still Reliant on Email as Social Media Use Grows. The column reminds us that Email is still the dominant go-to application of choice and that's not changing any time soon. Rather than run away from email habits, social software in the enterprise has to embrace it. Back in 2004, I gave a presentation at the INBOX conference advocating for the use of Email as an on-ramp for collaboration and an off-ramp for notification.

Dennis McDonald, @ddmcd, in a comment, concurred in a comment and pointed to his post on Social Media Engagement Tips where he said "Email operates as an extended user interface for many applications."

In TeamPage, we've steadily enhanced support for email as an extended user interface with hooks for Publishing from email including the ability to post new articles, status posts, and tasks. You can also setup notifications on any kind of addition or change. Changes can include edits, tag changes, and assignee changes (for tasks). There's also iCal links to permission filtered server, space, project and personal calendars. You can also reply to comment on notifications, so that you don't have to shift your user experience from your email client or smart phone when a notification needing your immediate response is needed.

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As we've put more attention to our cloud hosting (see Traction Software and Traction Software Japan) with free trials and an increasing hosted customer base, I'm seeing first hand how the customer relationship can become much closer, more interactive and more informed. In the last 24 hours, I was able to quickly help:

- a Global Logistics customer find a set of attachments which were removed when a page was edited 8 days ago.

- an IT / Management consulting customer determine the best way to setup a subcommittee dashboard where they can track issues, manage tasks, conduct discussion and share meeting agendas / outcomes.

This was possible to do asynchronously and quickly around our busy schedules because of a mutual bond of trust (so they allow me into their systems) and because their software is not buried behind a firewall.

Most customers still deploy software behind their firewall for a variety of good reasons. In those cases, we use web conferencing and issue tracking in TeamPage customer support spaces. This still works great, but I'm definitely seeing many cases where the cloud option opens up new opportunities for better support and better value for TeamPage software.

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I gave the following presentation at the first ever meeting of the Boston Chapter of the Knowledge Management Association today. As this was a first meeting, I thought I'd raise the issue that "managing knowledge" is about as daunting a task as "herding cats."

After we pick apart components of knowledge and understanding how context is critical to understanding it, I offered a two step process to bring an organization to towards a KM and collaboration strategy that starts with asking How? and relies on Emergineering to work knowledge management and context into daily social processes on platforms like TeamPage.

In John Seeley Brown's KMWorld Keynote (live streamed 17 Oct 2012 at kmworld.com), he makes an important point about how knowledge has no boundaries. @johnseelybrown #KM12 [:Blog:KMW12]

He goes on to say that the way to manage knowledge in today's age is about capturing context along with content. That's the driving point around Traction TeamPage: Connected Work. It's the reason to build wiki style knowledge bases, integrated with blogs, discussion and tasking.

He goes on to talk about the futility of building profiles and managing inventories of skills by bringing up a case at SAP where the average time to ask and get an answer to a question is 17 minutes. He highlights another case at MITRE where social bookmarking exposes the knowledge and interest areas of each of the employees, while they work.

That's why we built the Social Enterprise Web module, to make social bookmarking easy and to enable discussion and tagging right into the context of enterprise systems.

In JSB's words - this helps meet a goal he states as the need "to build social and intellectual capital" by capturing the output of emergent processes.

He calls sharing in this way as intimate legitimate peripheral participation. PIt's a way to be intimate within working groups, but allow for social listening at scale.

Another terrific example he raises is how to cope when an ERP calls out an exception condition. A social process has to take over.

Employees have to raise, discuss and resolve the issue. Exception handling is a key issue brought up by his work at Deloitte. A system process issue becomes a social process issue to be handled and resolved. Knowledge about the decision is brought together, from content, context and active problem solving.

That's connected work, and why it matters. That's why connecting context with content is relevant and why we could "inherently want to share."

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Ada Lovelace Day celebrates the contributions of women in science and technology. This year I've chosen to write about Suni Williams, NASA Astronaut and US Navy Captain currently commanding Expedition 33 on the International Space Station. I hope young women reading about Ada Lovelace Day now are encouraged by her example to pursue their dreams where ever they may lead - here on Earth or as the first Earthling to set foot on Mars.

Suni graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1987 with a B.S. Degree in physical science and was designated a US Naval Aviator in 1989. She served as a helicopter combat support officer and officer in charge of a H-46 detachment for Hurricane Andrew Relief Operations before being selected for NASA's Astronaut Training program in 1998. She served as crew for on International Space Station Expedition 14, setting new records for female astronauts in space (195 days) and spacewalk EVAs.

On July 14 2012 she launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome to join ISS Expedition 32 as Flight Engineer and Expedition 33 as Commander. On Aug 6, 2012 Suni and Flight Engineer Aki Hoshide completed a pair of spacewalks totaling more than fourteen hours to install a balky Main Bus Switching Unit, bringing her total EVA time for six spacewalks to over 44 hours. She is a member of the Society of Experimental Test Pilots and the Society of Flight Test Engineers. Read Suni's Why Did I Become an Astronaut interview for her personal story. Follow @Astro_Suni on Twitter.

Note on the Ada icon: I strongly recommend that you download the thrilling adventures of Babbage & Lovelace for your iPad (free), and enjoy more of their adventures on author Sydney Padua's 2D Goggles Web page.

See earlier

Ada Lovelace Day | Betts Wald, US Naval Research Lab 2011

Ada Lovelace Day | Fran Allen, IBM Fellow and A.M. Turing Award Winner 2010

Ada Lovelace Day | Professor Lee S. Sproull, Stern School, NYU 2009

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Traction Software partner Applied Knowledge Co, Ltd of Yokohama Japan today announced availability of cloud hosted TeamPage for the Japanese market. AKJ President Masayuki Kojima said: "TeamPage provides a new communication infrastructure for projects and multi-team organizations within your company - now available as a cloud service." TeamPage cloud pricing starts at 7,908 yen per month for ten spaces and twenty-five named accounts, see www.TractionSoftware.jp for price, ordering, and product details. TeamPage cloud options include Attivio Advanced Search and Social Enterprise Web. Traction Software offers cloud hosted TeamPage to customers outside the Japanese market, see TeamPage Pricing and Licenses.

www.TractionSoftware.jp

English translation of AKJ Press Release (by Google Translate)

See also Applied Knowledge Co Ltd - Bringing Traction TeamPage 5.1 to Japan

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We're working on new features for the next release of TeamPage that allow people to create events on a calendar. For the edit event dialog, we needed date and time pickers that allow people across different time zones to edit the dates and times of events. We ended up creating new GWT controls and adding them to our open source gwt-traction library .

Edit Event Dialog

It seems easy enough to implement using our own secret sauce of HTML/XML/SDL, some GWT, and a bit of CSS to make it look nice. I had almost everything working in an hour or so. Most of the fields use widgets provided by GWT or controls we've already written ourselves. I saved the Start Date and End Date fields for last.

I've used a bunch of different calendar applications and looked around the web for inspiration. Could there be a time control that I could just use? I found a lot of people with similar questions and a few decent solutions. I found this question on Stack Overflow. Eventually I decided that I was on my own. Not a big deal. I've written widgets before and we like to share them with the GWT community, so everyone wins.

I'd need two fields: a date input and a time input that together specify a time, independent of timezone. On the server we store them as the number of milliseconds since January 1, 1970, 00:00:00 GMT, the same value used by the Java Date object.

UTCDateBox

There's a nice date picker control that is part of GWT called a DateBox.

However, we noticed that it doesn't handle time zones very well, so we created the UTCDateBox. It makes it so that whatever Date you choose, you get a Long value as midnight in UTC of the date selected. The GWT DateBox control returns Date values and they are different values depending on the TimeZone in which you select the date. In the places we choose dates, we want a date independent of timezone.

For example, New Years Day is always Jan 1st even though it's still Dec 31st in the US when people start celebrating it in Japan. So using the UTCDateBox, if I'm in JST (Japan) and choose Jan 1st 2013, that will be the same as choosing Jan 1st 2013 in EST (US Eastern). They'll both have the same selected value (midnight Jan 1st 2013 UTC), independent of the time zone in which they were selected. We're happy with this solution for Dates and have been using it for years.

Time however, cannot be specified independent of TimeZone. I can't just say let's meet at 2pm on Dec 2nd and expect people around the world to show up at the right time. A time like 2pm is only meaningful in an associated TimeZone.

Since 2003, TeamPage has allowed users to create and edit articles, comments, files, tasks, etc. in their own TimeZone and Locale. It can be a little tricky to make sure everything is properly parsed and formatted, but we're used to the issues involved. It's important to keep the data that you store in a normalized format that you can query and sort.

UTCTimeBox

Here's the UTCTimeBox that I decided to build. It's a TextBox with some special parsing that allows time to be entered in the user's preferred time format or other common formats. It's pretty lenient about parsing, so 6 is 6:00 AM, 6p is 6:00 PM, 645pm is 6:45 PM, etc. When you click the box, you get a drop-down list of a possible times in 30 minute intervals, formatted in your Locale.

Even though we have two separate controls for date and time, we still store a single Long value on the server side as milliseconds since January 1, 1970, 00:00:00 GMT. Ideally, we'd just have a single composite widget with these two controls implementing HasValue<Long>. setValue would split the value into separate date and time values and set the value of each controls, getValue would combine them, and this would all work in the user's preferred TimeZone which might be different than the server or browser TimeZone.

I spent a while on this until I realized that there just isn't enough information about TimeZones available to JavaScript. Other people have reported the same problem. I hate wasting time implementing things that can't work.

Since we can't properly split a single Long value into date and time parts in the browser, we'll have to do it on the server. I decided that the UTCTimeBox would just edit a value of milliseconds since midnight, independent of time zone (e.g. 12am is 0, 12pm is 12*60*60*1000).

When a user submits the form, the server, which knows the user's time zone, creates the corresponding Date value. When we edit the form, the server will split the values into appropriate values for the user's time zone. Nice and symmetric and the client code is much simpler. We made the server-side processing code available here.

Now we can edit events and the value is properly stored on the server.

UTCDateTimeRangeController

The final piece is creating some interaction between the start and end dates to make it easier to create and maintain proper ranges. When you move the start date forward, the end date should move forward, maintaining a fixed duration. When you move the end date, the duration should adjust unless you move it before the start date. In that case it should move the start date back and maintain duration. It's the kind of interaction that you don't really notice but appreciate. This behavior is implemented by the UTCDateTimeRangeController.

HTML5 date/time inputs for iOS

HTML5 has new inputs for date, time, month, datetime, and more. iOS has particularly nice controls for selecting dates and times. Using deferred binding in GWT, we created a separate HTML5 implementation of the UTCDateBox and UTCTimeBox widgets. Currently we only present these to versions of Safari that support the "datetime" input (which is currently only iOS). While Opera supports these inputs, we think our text based controls work better than their dedicated date and time inputs.

As a developer using the UTCDateBox and UTCTimeBox, you don't need to do anything special to use the HTML5 versions in iOS. They will be presented automatically and use the same Long values described above instead of the standard HTML5 values.

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KMWorld recognized Traction Software's TeamPage as a 2012 Trend-Setting Product of 2012, citing TeamPage for "action tracking, Twitter-style status, threaded discussion, collaboration, social networking and deep search." KMWorld editor Hugh McKellar writes: "This year more than 700 products/product families were whittled down to the 89 listed in these pages. Each company whose products are listed below helped to define and enhance a market critically important to our readership by listening to and working with customers. They all represent a commitment to innovation and their customers." Traction Software is honored that KMWorld has selected TeamPage as a Trend-Setting Product for the fifth consecutive year. » Read KMWorld Trend-Setting Products of 2012

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"I am, and ever will be, a white-socks, pocket-protector, nerdy engineer -- born under the second law of thermodynamics, steeped in the steam tables, in love with free-body diagrams, transformed by Laplace, and propelled by compressible flow." - Neil Armstrong, The Engineered Century. I was sad to hear about the death of Neil Armstrong on 25 August 2012. I'll always remember meeting Armstrong at an event for high school science students in the spring of 1966. He'll be remembered forever as the first person to set foot on the Moon on 29 July 1969. He coolly navigated the lunar lander to the surface despite computer alarms, avoiding rocks at the planned site, and landing with gauges showing about 20 seconds of fuel left. But that wasn't his only close call as an astronaut. In March 1966 Armstrong and David Scott successfully returned Gemini VIII to earth after a runaway thruster spun the Gemini and attached Agena target vehicle to a roll rate of about 300 degrees per second, making chances of recovery "very remote".

Armstrong and Scott were scheduled for a brief question and answer session at the Pennsylvania state science museum auditorium in Harrisburg - squeezed between astronaut meet and greet events for the Governor and state legislators a few blocks away. A handful of high school students and their science teachers from local schools were invited to the event on short notice. I was lucky to be selected by my high school physics teacher, who knew I was a space nut - before nerd came into general use. There were a few hundred students, teachers, and a small number of reporters and photographers in the auditorium for the afternoon event.

A state official welcomed Armstrong and Scott, invited them to tell us about the Gemini VII mission, and cautioned that they'd only have a few minutes for questions before they had to move on to the next event. Armstrong and Scott thanked everyone for showing up on short notice, made a few brief remarks on the mission, and opened the floor for questions.

All hands went up. A local science teacher was the first person recognized - not Mr. Sault my physics teacher. He asked how they as astronauts would justify the time and treasure that the US spent on the space program. His question was a long, slow, philosophical speech. All the kids groaned and mumbled. Armstrong diplomatically summarized NASA's mission and suggested that although as a citizen he enthusiastically supported NASA's mission, astronauts executed policy, but didn't make it.

The next question went to the pudgy kid with glasses and camera jumping up and down in the tenth row - me. Maybe it seemed like a safe bet. Before the talk I reviewed everything I could read and remember about the mission and had my question prepared. Most of us in the room remembered when the spin began at about 4pm the afternoon of the 19 March 1966 launch since the launch and significant events like the Agena docking were covered on live TV, and of course we watched. So: 1) What in your training and experience enabled you to diagnose and recover so quickly? 2) How far along was the mission debrief and investigation? 3) Could you share any insights on the thruster issue and changes to avoid similar problems?

I got a smile and a nod from Neil. Armstrong and Scott ran out the short time remaining on the clock with a crisp summary and discussion on the thruster problem, test pilot skills, and new training procedures, which they enjoyed as much as we did. When Armstrong and Aldrin ran into issues on Apollo descent and landing I felt confident it would work out.

On Saturday 25 Aug his family posted: "Neil was our loving husband, father, grandfather, brother and friend. Neil Armstrong was also a reluctant American hero who always believed he was just doing his job."

They continue:

“While we mourn the loss of a very good man, we also celebrate his remarkable life and hope that it serves as an example to young people around the world to work hard to make their dreams come true, to be willing to explore and push the limits, and to selflessly serve a cause greater than themselves.

“For those who may ask what they can do to honor Neil, we have a simple request. Honor his example of service, accomplishment and modesty, and the next time you walk outside on a clear night and see the moon smiling down at you, think of Neil Armstrong and give him a wink.” - The family of Neil A. Armstrong, 25 Aug 2012

I hope this sky isn't cloudy, since I plan to spend some time looking at the moon. And winking.

A few links and references on the life and times of Neil Armstrong, including several that aren't so common. I strongly recommend his NASA Oral History project interview.

The Engineered Century - Neil Armstrong, National Academy of Engineering, Spring 2000, The Bridge, National Academy of Engineering. Edited version of remarks to the National Press Club, 20 Feb 2000

Neil A. Armstrong (1930 - 2012) - From the family of Neil Armstrong

Neil Armstrong | 1930 - 2012: Made 'Giant Leap' as First Man to Step on Moon - John Noble Witford's New York Times obituary, 25 Aug 2012

Gemini VIII Mission Summary - NASA Apollo Lunar Surface Journal

Apollo XI Mission Summary - NASA Apollo Lunar Surface Journal

Let's also revisit coding history's greatest moment - "TEMPORARY, I HOPE HOPE HOPE" in Apollo 11's Lunar Module code code.google.com/p/virtualagc/s…

— Tom Phillips (@flashboy) August 25, 2012

Lunar Landing Guidance Equations - Part of the source code for the Lunar Module's (LM) Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC), for Apollo 11. From the Virtual AGC and AGS emulation project

Oral History Transcript Neil A. Armstrong, NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project. Interview by Dr. Stephen E. Ambrose and Dr. Douglas Brinkley, Houston, Texas - 19 Sep 2001 (pdf 106pp)

We just posted 5 newly digitized Neil Armstrong interview transcripts. Read at: go.nasa.gov/Puiwt6 #WinkAtTheMoon

— NASA (@NASA) August 30, 2012

Catalog of NASA Oral History Collections - NASA Headquarters and Field Centers

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In the Pharma Chatter session at the SLA 2012 (Special Librarians Association) conference, I had the opportunity to talk about gathering and managing intelligence from social media. I was joined by Craig McHenry (Pfizer), Lisa Orgren (Septagon Research Group), and Heather Bjella (Aurora WDC)

On the internet front, I focused on traps to avoid when monitoring and leveraging social media on the internet. Enterprise social media, by contrast, can be use case focused and highly valuable for intelligence, topic area communities, project teams and knowledge management.

After highlighting a set of use cases where my customers have found success, I outlined one specific case where a team and their limited community of <100 managers and executives have proven their leverage with over 84,000 reads and an average of 35 reads per page posted in a year. This demonstrates the continued value to be reaped from wiki style documentation and blog style communication in the enterprise. Please enjoy the slides:

It's common to read about corporate culture as a big barrier to successful adoption and use of social software in business. It's easy to understand people's reluctance to change and adopt a new way of working. There are many good reasons to be wary of the promised benefits of change if you don't have relevant direct experience ("I've used this and it works"), clear examples, trust in your organization, and trust in your leadership. Books like Jacob Morgan's new The Collaborative Organization offer great practical guidance, examples, and answers to important questions. However, most social business advice makes a common and good-natured assumption that your organization is healthy - or at least has good intentions - but is just hard to convince. That's not always true.

The culture of some organizations ranges from ineffectual to poisonous, and it's difficult to turn such organizations around. I believe social software can be an amplifier of behavior - bad or good - and suggest reviewing a list individual and organization patterns of behavior to avoid from an interesting source: the January 1944 Office of Strategic Services (OSS) Simple Sabotage Field Manual No. 3 (declassified in 2008). I tip my hat to Michael Cooney for his July 13 2012 Network World story: CIA: Five particularly timeless tips from the Simple Sabotage Field Manual which includes Michael's own selection of quotes and a link to the newly released manual.

The purpose of the manual was to educate people in World War II occupied countries on techniques for simple sabotage, performed by ordinary citizens with no special training or equipment. In addition to physical sabotage, the manual offers suggestions on General Interference with Organizations and Production which should be read as an anti-pattern for Enterprise 2.0 behavior and methods.

Simple Sabotage Field Manual

OSS Field Manual No. 3
17 Jan 1944

1. INTRODUCTION

a. The purpose of this paper is to characterize simple sabotage, to outline its possible effects, and to present suggestions for inciting and executing it.

b. Sabotage varies from highly technical coup de main acts that require detailed planning and the use of specially trained operatives, to innumerable simple acts which the ordinary individual citizen-saboteur can perform. This paper is primarily concerned with the latter type. Simple sabotage does not require specially prepared tools or equipment; it is executed by an ordinary citizen who may or may not act individually and without the necessity for active connection with an organized group; and it is carried out in such a way as to involve a minimum danger of injury, detection, and reprisal.

c. Where destruction is involved, the weapons of the citizen-saboteur are salt, nails, candles, pebbles, thread, or any other materials he might normally be expected to possess as a householder or as a worker in his particular occupation. His arsenal is the kitchen shelf, the trash pile, his own usual kit of tools and supplies. The targets of his sabotage are usually objects to which he has normal and inconspicuous access in everyday life.

d. A second type of simple sabotage requires no destructive tools whatsoever and produces physical damage, if any, by highly indirect means. It is based on universal opportunities to make faulty decisions, to adopt a non-cooperative attitude, and to induce others to follow suit. Making a faulty decision may be simply a matter of placing tools in one spot instead of another. A non-cooperative attitude may involve nothing more than creating an unpleasant situation among one's fellow workers, engaging in bickerings, or displaying surliness and stupidity.

...

11. General Interference with Organizations and Production

(a) Organizations and Conferences

(1) Insist on doing everything through "channels." Never permit short-cuts to be taken in order to expedite decisions.

(2) Make "speeches." Talk as frequently as possible and at great length. Illustrate your "points" by long anecdotes and accounts of personal experiences. Never hesitate to make a few appropriate "patriotic" comments.

(3) When possible, refer all matters to committees, for "further study and consideration." Attempt to make the committees as large as possible - never less than five.

(4) Bring up irrelevant issues as frequently as possible.

(5) Haggle over precise wordings of communications, minutes, resolutions.

(6) Refer back to matters decided upon at the last meeting and attempt to re-open the question of the advisability of that decision.

(7) Advocate "caution." Be "reasonable" and urge your fellow-conferees to be "reasonable" and avoid haste which might result in embarrassments or difficulties later on.

(8) Be worried about the propriety of any decision - raise the question of whether such action as is contemplated lies within the jurisdiction of the group or whether it might conflict with the policy of some higher echelon.

(b) Managers and Supervisors

(1) Demand written orders.

(2) "Misunderstand" orders. Ask endless questions or engage in long correspondence about such orders. Quibble over them when you can.

(3) Do everything possible to delay the delivery of orders. Even though parts of an order may be ready beforehand, don't deliver it until it is completely ready.

(4) Don't order new working materials until your current stocks have been virtually exhausted, so that the slightest delay in filling your order will mean a shutdown.

(5) Order high-quality materials which are hard to get. If you don't get them argue about it. Warn that inferior materials will mean inferior work.

(6) In making work assignments, always sign out the unimportant jobs first. See that the important jobs are assigned to inefficient workers of poor machines.

(7) Insist on perfect work in relatively unimportant products; send back for refinishing those which have the least fiaw. Approve other defective parts whose fiaws are not visible to the naked eye.

(8) Make mistakes in routing so that parts and materials will be sent to the wrong place in the plant.

(9) When training new workers, give incomplete or misleading instructions.

(10) To lower morale and with it, production, be pleasant to inefficient workers; give them undeserved promotions. Discriminate against efficient workers; complain unjustly about their work.

(11) Hold conferences when there is more critical work to be done.

(12) Multiply paper work in plausible ways. Start duplicate files.

(13) Multiply the procedures and clearances involved in issuing instructions, pay checks, and so on. See that three people have to approve everything where one would do.

(14) Apply all regulations to the last letter.

(c) Office Workers

(1) Make mistakes in quantities of material when you are copying orders. Confuse similar names. Use wrong addresses.

(2) Prolong correspondence with government bureaus.

(3) Misfile essential documents.

(4) In making carbon copies, make one too few, so that an extra copying job will have to be done.

(5) Tell important callers the boss is busy or talking on another telephone.

(6) Hold up mail until the next collection.

(7) Spread disturbing rumors that sound like inside dope.

(d) Employees

(1) Work slowly. Think out ways to increase the number of movements necessary on your job: use a light hammer instead of a heavy one, try to make a small wrench do when a big one is necessary, use little force where considerable force is needed, and so on.

(2) Contrive as many interruptions to your work as you can: when changing the material on which you are working, as you would on a lath or punch, take needless time to do it. If you are cutting, shaping or doing other measured work, measure dimensions twice as often as you need to. When you go to the lavatory, spend a longer time there than is necessary. Forget tools so that you will have to go back after them.

(3) Even it you understand the language, pretend not to understand instructions in a foreign tongue.

(4) Pretend that instructions are hard to understand, and ask to have them repeated more than once. Or pretend that you are particularly anxious to do your work, and pester the foreman with unnecessary questions.

(5) Do your work poorly and blame it on bad tools, machinery, or equipment. Complain that these things are preventing you from doing your job right.

(6) Never pass on your skill and experience to a new or less skillful worker.

(7) Snarl up administration in every possible way. Fill out forms illegibly so, that they will have to be done over; make mistakes or omit requested information in forms.

(8) If possible, join or help organize a group for presenting employee problems to the management. See that the procedures adopted are as inconvenient as possible for the management, involving the presence of a large number of employees at each presentation, entailing more than one meeting for each grievance, bringing up problems which are largely imaginary, and so on.

(9) Misroute materials.

(10) Mix good parts with unusable scrap and rejected parts.

12. General Devices for Lowering Morale and Creating Confusion

(a) Give lengthy and incomprehensible explanations when questioned.

(b) Report imaginary spies or danger to the Gestapo or police.

(c) Act stupid.

(d) Be as irritable and quarrelsome as possible without getting yourself into trouble.

(e) Misunderstand all sorts of regulations concerning such matters as rationing, transportation, traffic regulations.

(f) Complain against ersatz materials.

(g) In public treat axis nationals or quislings coldly.

(h) Stop all conversation when axis nationals or quislings enter a cafe.

(i) Cry and sob hysterically at every occasion, especially when confronted by government clerks.

(j) Boycott all movies, entertainments, concerts, newspapers which are in any way connected with the quisling authorities.

(k) Do not cooperate in salvage schemes.

Strategic Services Field Manual No. 3

17 January 1944
OSS William J. Donovan Director
Declassified 2 April 2008
Download the full manual (.pdf) from the CIA.gov unclassified news archive.

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Traction Software's Jordan Frank will be speaking on Pharma Competitive Intelligence at this year's SLA 2012 Annual Conference in Chicago, Noon 16 July (see session summary below - and slides in Monitoring and Leveraging Social Media Chatter, on the Internet and in the Enterprise). You can also meet Jordan at the SLA 2012 McCormick Place INFO-EXPO Booth #4, Sunday through Tuesday. Follow @TractionTeam and @JordanFrank on Twitter, conference code #SLAChicago!

Pharma Chatter: Capturing and Managing Non-traditional Information for Competitive Advantage

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"All of this has led me to believe that something is terribly wrong with e-mail. What’s more, I don’t believe it can be fixed," writes New York Times columnist Nick Bilton - not pictured on right - in his July 8, 2012 Bits column, Disruptions: Life's Too Short for So Much Email. He's cranky just because he received 6,000 emails this month, not including spam and daily deals. Nick says: "With all those messages, I have no desire to respond to even a fraction of them. I can just picture my tombstone: Here lies Nick Bilton, who responded to thousands of e-mails a month. May he rest in peace."

Nick continues: "Last year, Royal Pingdom, which monitors Internet usage, said that in 2010, 107 trillion e-mails were sent. A report this year from the Radicati Group, a market research firm, found that in 2011, there were 3.1 billion active e-mail accounts in the world. The report noted that, on average, corporate employees sent and received 105 e-mails a day. Sure, some of those e-mails are important. But 105 a day?" Please read his entire column for a lively piece of Nick's mind on the subject.

Email is bad enough for incoming notifications, but when you try to use email for collaboration, multiple To: addresses turn it into something like the stateroom scene in the Marx Brothers A Night at the Opera.

Add the Cc: line and give up all hope! In 2008 Google engineer Kevin Marks referred to email as a "strange legacy idea" for the younger generation. I call it tragicomically inept for collaboration.

In 2003 Clay Shirky said: "All enterprises have more knowledge in their employees as a group than any one person, even (especially?) the CEO. The worst case is where one person has a problem and another knows a solution, but neither knows the other – or that the other knows. Despite e-mail’s advantages for communication, it falls down as a close collaboration tool on complex projects: E-mail makes it hard to keep everything related to a particular project in one place; e-mailed attachments can lead to version-control nightmares; and it’s almost impossible to get the Cc:line right. If the Cc:line is too broad, it creates “occupational spam” – messages from co-workers that don’t matter to everyone addressed. If the Cc:line is too narrow, the activity becomes opaque to management or partners."

From my 2008 blog post Email isn't dead - It's only sleeping ...

See Clay Shirky, Social Software: A New Generation of Tools by Clay Shirky, Release 1.0 Vol 21, No. 5, 20 May 2003 (pdf)

Caroline McCarthy, The future of Web apps will see the death of e-mail, CNet.com, Feb 29, 2008

Modern social software is now being widely adopted as an alterative to email collaboration, based on a pattern that Doug Engelbart recognized long ago, see Flip Test 1971 | Email versus Journal.

May I suggest Traction TeamPage?

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Mathew Ingram recently wrote Why links matter: Linking is the lifeblood of the web. He makes a strong case for the value of open linking - giving credit to original sources - as an ethical imperative. He also points out the collective benefit, quoting Om Malik:

"Links were and are the currency of the collaborative web, that started with blogs and since then has spread to everything from Twitter to Facebook to Tumblr. Links are the essence of the new remix culture. It is how you show that you respect someone’s work and efforts. It is also indicative that you are part of a community."

Despite the success of Facebook and mobile apps that attempt to maximize value from walled gardens (where your attention is the product being sold), I remain optimistic that the Web and behavior that rewards linking will continue to win.

And I believe that the same open link and search model will win for work and serendipitous discovery in the realm of Enterprise 2.0 (or Social Business if you prefer).

See Intertwingled Work, my two cents on why links matter in E2.0 - from 2010.

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If you're attending E20 Boston 2012, please drop by Traction Software's booth 418 to say hi and learn what Traction TeamPage can do. If you're interested in social task management, integrating systems of record and systems of engagement - or just using social software in the context of work, talk the folk at Traction Software who know how to help you succeed. That's where we started and that's our enduring goal.

TeamPage in the Cloud Jordan and I can answer questions about TeamPage's new Cloud options, starting at less than $2.50 per user per month for 25 user accounts - or see for yourself.

You can see TeamPage improvements introduced over the past year, including:

New streamlined Proteus interface makes summary awareness, status, task tracking, and coordinated activity fast and easy.

Unified search in the header makes looking up people, spaces, tasks or projects quick and easy. You see suggested matches based on name, email address and other content as you type, with a Show All choice if you want to browse more. Unified search also matches names and descriptions of all preferences and setup controls and takes you to the right spot in all setup and administration views.

Autosave and "finish later" saves your work in progress if you want to take a break - or if you accidentally click away from or close a browser window!

iPad and mobile access Monitor the pulse of your organization, stay informed, and work securely from the beach or mountains with your iPad, iPhone, or Android tablet. "I'd rather be sailing" isn't an mutually exclusive choice any more - ask Chris!

If you're early in line Tuesday or Wednesday, you can also pick up free, signed, pre-release copy of Jacob Morgan's excellent new book The Collaborative Organization.

If you're too late to pick up a free copy, you can still pick up a bookmark as a reminder of what Enterprise 2.0 is about - at least for me:

See Enterprise 2.0 Schism

The Future of Work Platforms: Like Jazz

Extending the fabric of work, or How to Be Emergent

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

Traction Roots - Doug Engelbart

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I've read an advance copy of Jacob Morgan's upcoming book, The Collaborative Organization: A Strategic Guide to Solving Your Internal Business Challenges Using Emerging Social and Collaborative Tools. I'm very happy that we decided to give Enterprise 2.0 Boston folk a chance to meet Jacob and get their own free, signed copy at Traction Software Booth 418 next week. Jacob says: "The purpose of this book is to act as a guide for executives, decision makers, and those involved with collaborative initiatives at their organizations". I believe he hits the mark with a book of lasting value, as do reviewers including Vivek Kundra, former Chief Information Officer of the United States; Erik Brynjolf, MIT Center for Digital Business Director, and others.

Jacob organizes his book into three parts: The Opening, The Middle Game, and The End Game. The Opening chapters talk to people in organizations who are just getting started with their initiatives. It covers business drivers, case studies, evaluating risk, and getting the right people involved. The Middle Game chapters cover topics including defining goals to match your business, developing a strategy, vendor evaluation, dealing with resistance, rolling out a platform, and developing governance. The End Game chapters talk about strategies for sustaining and maintaining these initiatives in the long term, including a bonus chapter on Enterprise 2.0 with Andrew McAfee.

Jacob's book is based on his own analysis and research, including interviews, case studies and survey responses from 234 individuals around the world, working for companies ranging from 1,000 to over 100,000 employees, with responsibilities ranging from mid-level to C-level executives. The Collaborative Organization is vendor neutral, involving actual practitioners who are implementing collaborative tools and strategies for their organizations - not vendors or consultants.

Each chapter includes analysis, examples and a well-written Summary and Action items section, with actionable advice that you'll turn to often. Chapters include case studies, examples and results drawn from practitioner experience, not hand-wavy fluff.

It's a handbook you'll have on your desk for the next few years. I particularly like:

• Chapter 2 - The First Step to Recovery is Admitting You have a Problem on business drivers and problems (20 pages)
• Chapter 7 - The Adaptive Emergent Collaboration Framework practical advice on choosing and adapting approaches to match your business goals and culture (27 pages)
• Chapter 8 - Resistance is Futile on barriers to success (13 pages)
• Chapter 12 - Measures of Success, practical advice on measuring soft benefits, hard benefits, and defining business value (19 pages)

Traction Software is the only source for full hardbound copies before the book's official ship date in July 2012! Show up in person at Traction Software's booth 418 during E20 Boston 2012 Showcase Exhibit hours. Follow @TractionTeam on Twitter for times when Jacob will be available for signing and to talk with him about business challenges using emerging social and collaborative tools.

Free copies are limited. I'll post rules for an online Enterprise 2.0 Twitter quiz you can use to put yourself first in line for a copy. You must show up in person to claim a book, but the Twitter quiz should be fun too! [:Blog:E20Conf]

Update: See E2.0 Boston 2012 Twitter Pop-Quiz for rules and quiz highlights.

Update: Thanks to the @e2conf staff and everyone who dropped by booth 418 to talk, and pick up a free copy of Jacob's book. After you read it, please post a review on Amazon to let others know what you think. Here's my Amazon review.

Also, after visiting us at Booth 418, don’t miss Robert Morison (@rfmorison), author of Analytics at Work: Smarter Decisions, Better Results at Talent Analytics Booth 232.

See 19-20 Jun 2012 | Traction Software Enterprise 2.0 Boston

The Future of Work Platforms: Like Jazz

Extending the fabric of work, or How to Be Emergent

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