7 May 2013 | Real Story Group's Updated Traction TeamPage Evaluation in Enterprise Collaboration and Social Software Report
The Real Story Group's Kashyap Kompella @kashyapkompella posted an update describing RSG's new version of their Enterprise Collaboration and Social Software Evaluations research covering twenty-five key software vendors. The new version includes a major update for the Traction® TeamPage section, including TeamPage project management, action tracking, TeamPage's ability to span and connect systems of record, and the ability to embed TeamPage discussions in other Web applications.
Lost Roots of Project Management: Think Agile that Scales
The Manhattan Project, Atlas, and Polaris projects are cited as roots for traditional phased stage-gate Project Management, but didn't use that model. New high innovation projects shouldn't either; think agile that scales. Read this fascinating 2009 paper by Sylvain Lenfle and Christoph Loch of INSEAD, cited on Twitter by Glen B. Alleman who calls it "breathtaking".
Big Data, Meet Long Data, Meet Blog Data
Big Data Meet Long Data by Jeff Bertolucci - @jbertolucci - column appears this week in InformationWeek to reminds us that "Long Data" or historical data is vital for analysis and comprehension of trends that span years.
1 March 2013 | Traction Software Named to KMWorld's 100 Companies that Matter in Knowledge Management
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 Traction® 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. I thank Traction Software's employees and customers for earning this recognition." See the 2013 KMWorld 100 list.
Problem and Process rather than Incentives for E2.0 Tools
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:
PLM Gets Social, Untangles Ball of Confusion
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.
25 Oct 2012 | ZDNET Japan on the TeamPage Cloud
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 Traction® TeamPage to produce business value. Japanese companies can get started with Cloud and Download options as of the first of October 2012.
E-Mail: an On-Ramp for Enterprise Social Media
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.
TeamPage SAAS / Cloud Hosting Helps Bring Customers Closer, Improves Support
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:
Carving a Path to Productive Knowledge Management: How?
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."
JSB on Capturing Context not Just Content
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
Ada Lovelace Day | Sunita Williams, Astronaut and Captain U.S. Navy
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.
1 Oct 2012 | Applied Knowledge Company Ltd Brings Cloud-hosted TeamPage to Japan
Traction® Software partner Applied Knowledge Co, Ltd of Yokohama Japan today announced availability of cloud hosted Traction® 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.
Creating GWT Date / Time Pickers That Work in Any Time Zone
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 .
1 Sept 2012 | KMWorld names TeamPage A Trend-Setting Product of 2012
KMWorld recognized Traction® Software's TeamPage as a 2012 Trend-Setting Product of 2012, citing Traction® 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
Remembering Neil Armstrong...
"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".
Monitoring and Leveraging Social Media Chatter, on the Internet and in the Enterprise
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)
Anti-Social Software
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.
15-17 Jul 2012 | SLA 2012 Annual Conference and INFO-EXPO
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!
"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."
"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."
Why links matter - for your business as well as the public Web
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:
Why we're here. TeamPage at Enterprise 2.0 Boston 2012
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.
The Collaborative Organization - Free signed copy, Traction Software Booth 418 E2.0 Boston 2012
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.
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!
NHS Part 3: NHS Orkney Board gets TeamPage and £28,000 Annual ROI
The Board of Directors at National Health Service's Orkney hospital use Traction® TeamPage and iPads to eliminate paper at board meetings. The move saves £28,000 per year in printing and related costs, and was covered by both The Guardian and BBC News. This use case follows a history of NHS Orkney innovation with TeamPage. They first used the platform to address a failing grade in a communications audit (See National Health Service Orkney (NHS Orkney) and expanded its reach to integrate their legacy directory with TeamPage profiles (see NHS integrates Intranet 1.0 with Enterprise 2.0 to get Social with TeamPage 4.0).
19-20 Jun 2012 | Traction Software Enterprise 2.0 Boston
Traction TeamPage makes it easy for people to communicate, work together, and stay on top of what's happening anywhere in their business, including line of business systems and the public Web. Learn more about TeamPage, now with new Cloud pricing options. The first 30 days are free and you can start with a monthly plan at less than $2.50 per user per month for 25 user accounts. Traction Software will be at Enterprise 2.0 Boston Booth #418 on 19-20 June. Line up early for a free, signed pre-release copy of Jacob Morgan's new book, The Collaborative Organization.
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