Deloitte and Sampson: Focus on process, the "why" not the "what", for social software

March 22, 2011 · · Posted by Jordan Frank

I found a common thread on process centric adoption in the Deloitte Center for the Edge's Social Software for Business Performance report and Michael Sampson's User Adoption Strategies book. This advice is reflected in my post on Emergineering from last fall.

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March 11 - Vannevar Bush's Birthday

March 11, 2011 · · Posted by Greg Lloyd

ImageThe Computer History Museum's This Day In History March 11 reminded me that today is the birthday of Vannevar Bush (born March 11, 1890), a distinguished educator, engineer, Vice President and Dean of MIT, and President of the Carnegie Institution. As World War II Director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development, Bush managed all US wartime research, reporting directly to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. After the War he was instrumental in creation of the National Science Foundation based on a 1944 request from FDR. Bush is also known as the author of a famous July 1945 Atlantic Monthly essay As We May Think, where he described a possible "new relationship between the thinking man and the sum of our knowledge" including the Memex - a literary machine which inspired the invention of hypertext twenty years later - and indirectly lead to creation of the Web. See the video archive of the MIT / Brown Vannevar Bush Symposium on the 50th Anniversary of As We May Think for a great collection of talks by Doug Engelbart, Ted Nelson, Andy van Dam, Tim Berners-Lee, Alan Kay, and others inspired by Bush and and his work.

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The Future of Work Platforms: Like Jazz

February 16, 2011 · · Posted by Greg Lloyd

ImageYesterday I read GigaOM analyst and editor Haydn Shaughnessy's Future of Work Platforms report (registration required, free seven day trial available). I commented: Haydn -- A very thoughtful and useful analysis – a combination that’s all too rare! I’m particularly happy to see your thoughts on observable work (see the full report for Haydn's excellent analysis).

Ever since Jon Udell coined the term, it struck me as good way to talk about practical benefits and a business purpose for collaboration. In my opinion it helps by pealing back issues of privacy in context and activity streams, along with subtleties required to support the social dance of getting things done, dealing with exceptions, and staying aware of what’s going around you without getting swamped. This is much closer to jazz than the world of canned business transactions. It requires a level of attention to ease of use and user experience that’s just as important but in many ways more challenging to do well in a business context than for the public Web.

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Applied Knowledge Co Ltd - Bringing Traction TeamPage 5.1 to Japan

January 21, 2011 · · Posted by Greg Lloyd

ImageOur long-time Japanese reseller partner Applied Knowledge Co Ltd has done a great job bringing Traction TeamPage to the Japanese market. They are an excellent sales and consulting partner for Japanese market customers. AKJ also has deep experience applying Enterprise 2.0 principles, the Traction TeamPage SDK, Japanese Language localization of the TeamPage interface, and Japanese advanced linguistics and faceted navigation capabilities of Traction's Attivio powered Advanced Search.

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December 2010 | Gilbane Conference - Portal vs. Enterprise Social Software Panel

January 18, 2011 · · Posted by Jordan Frank

Jordan Frank writes: At the Gilbane Conference last month I stood in for Greg Lloyd in the Portal or Enterprise Social Software: Which Collaboration Environment to Choose? panel with David Seuss (CEO, Northern Light) and Jay Batson (Co-Founder and VP, Acquia).

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Doug Engelbart's copy of As We May Think - with Doug's 1962 notes scribbled in the margins

January 6, 2011 · · Posted by Greg Lloyd

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The Doug Engelbart Foundation's 1995 Vannevar Bush Symposium video archive page includes a section on Bush's influence on Doug's work, including his copy of Bush's As We May Think with Doug's 1962 notes in the margins (pdf). Talk about deeply intertwingled living history. Per a note in the .pdf, the original hardcopy has apparently been donated to the Computer History Museum. Look for this paper when the Computer History Museum's Revolution - The First 2000 Years of Computing exhibit opens in Mountain View CA - and online on 13 Jan 2011.

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Good Titles/Headlines are Good Practice

November 19, 2010 · · Posted by Jordan Frank

In my role as an emergineer, I talk a lot about best practices and how they can be leveraged in a given customer deployment. One practice that works in any sphere from email to social software and journalism is to write a good headline.

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TUG 2010 Newport | Thank you!

October 15, 2010 · · Posted by Greg Lloyd

ImageTUG 2010 Newport just wrapped up after four busy and enjoyable days. It's hard to express how grateful I am to the customers, partners, friends - and the Traction Software team - who made this such an enjoyable event. First I'd like to thank keynote speakers Jim McGee, Chris Nuzum, Jon Udell as well as customers, friends and partners whose thoughtful talks and enthusiasm made Wednesday's sessions so rewarding.

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Fixing Enterprise Search

September 4, 2010 · · Posted by Greg Lloyd

ImageA few days ago the Enterprise 2.0 Blog published Venkatesh Rao's excellent post The Real Reasons Enterprise Search is Broken. When he hears ironic jokes comparing search on the public Web versus internal enterprise search, Venkatesh notes: "People move on because they seem to think that this is incompetence at work. Search is soo 1.0 right? It's been solved and we're just fumbling the execution, right?" He says: "I have reached a radical conclusion: broken search is the problem, but fixing search is not the solution. Search breaks behind the firewall for social, not technical reasons... Let's start with the blindingly obvious, and then draw some weird conclusions." I think they are perceptive conclusions based on sound analysis, and agree with most, but come at the problem from a different angle.

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Work you can see x Who you know = What you can do

August 24, 2010 · · Posted by Greg Lloyd

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Work you can see x Who you know = What you can do
With thanks to Jessica Hagy
Who created her great This is what 2.0 means drawing on Aug 14, 2010.

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29 July 2010 | Enterprise 2.0 and Observable Work: Brian Tullis and Joe Crumpler, Burton Group Catalyst 2010 Santa Diego

July 29, 2010 · · Posted by Greg Lloyd

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Brian Tullis and Joe Crumpler did a lively talk on Enterprise 2.0 and Observable Work at the Burton Group Catalyst 2010 North America conference in San Diego. For those of us who couldn't be there in person, see their Abstract quoted below and the enthusiastic Twitter stream from 29 Jul 2010! I'll add a link to their speaker notes and slides when they become available. Update: Brian posted Enterprise 2.0 and Observable work slides and speaker notes, see inline Slideshare below. Sounded like a super session!

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Intertwingled Work and Adaptive Case Management

July 6, 2010 · · Posted by Greg Lloyd

Tuesday July 6, 2010: As promised, John Tropea posted a comprehensive analysis and synthesis on observable work and Adaptive Case Management (and much more) titled: Have we been doing Enterprise 2.0 in reverse : Socialising processes and Adaptive Case Management It's a great post that's long for a very good reason: John pulls together many themes with well-sourced references and quotes [ another apology to the easily distracted ]. I won't use this comment to summarize all of the points I find interesting and valuable - there's a lot to come back to! I'll will try to summarize one theme John develops that seems directly relevant to Intertwingled Work.

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re: Enterprise 2.0 and Observable Work

July 5, 2010 · · Posted by Greg Lloyd

Monday July 5, 2010: For an update on the Observable Work conversation, see Blog1424: Intertwingled Work

Intertwingled Work

July 5, 2010 · · Posted by Greg Lloyd

ImageLast week's post by Jim McGee Managing the visibility of knowledge work kicked off a nice conversation on Observable Work (using a term introduced by Jon Udell) including: my blog post expanding on a comment I wrote on Jim's post; Brian Tullis's Observable Work: The Taming of the Flow based on a comment Brian made on Jim's post, which he found from a Twitter update by @jmcgee retweeted by @roundtrip; a Twitter conversation using the hash tag #OWork (for "Observable Work"); John Tropea's comment back to Jim from a link in a comment I left on John's Ambient Awareness is the new normal post; Jim's Observable work - more on knowledge work visibility (#owork), linking back to Mary Abraham's TMI post and Jack Vinson's Invisible Work - spray paint needed post, both written in response to Jim's original post; followed by Jack Vinson's Explicit work (#owork) and Paula Thornton's Enterprise 2.0 Infrastructure for Synchronicity.

To be continued Jim, Brian, John, Mary, Jack, Paula, Mark, Gordon, Rawn, Jose, JP, Tom, Deb and the rest of the World - over to you. The best way to follow the evolution of the Observable Work trail is Twitter's #OWork tag. All of the participant's seem to use Twitter as a commons linking posts that either directly respond to the Observable Work conversation, or are related in some interesting way, such as Tom Peter's Strategy: Space Matters ("who sits next to whom in your office can make a huge difference"), JP Rangaswami's Musing about learning by doing, Deb Lavoy's Common Operating Picture - share facts, debate possibilities, John Tropea's link to Keith Swanson's excellent slide set, and John's soon-to-be-published post on Adaptive Case Management.

Unfortunately, neither Twitter nor Google's hash tag search seems complete and reliable. So far as I can tell not all Tweets mentioning are found by either service. There's room for improvement on the public Web as well as the Enterprise 2.0 domain.

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re: Enterprise 2.0 and Observable Work

June 25, 2010 · · Posted by Greg Lloyd

Friday June 25, 2010: Observable Work discussion centered on Jim McGee's original blog post Managing the visibility of knowledge work, including a comment and blog post: Observable Work: The Taming of the Flow by @briantullis and a comment and analysis with several well sourced examples by @johnt, including this:

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Enterprise 2.0 and Observable Work

June 23, 2010 · · Posted by Greg Lloyd

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I really like Jim McGee's Jun 23, 2010 blog post Managing the visibility of knowledge work. Jim makes the excellent point that "Invisibility is an accidental and little-recognized characteristic of digital knowledge work." and points back to his 2002 post Knowledge Work as Craft Work to reflect on what Jim calls a "dangerous tension between industrial frameworks and knowledge work as craft work". Early in his 2002 post McGee says:

I believe that principles of open, observable work – like open book financial reporting to employees - is a simple and powerful principle that people at every level of an organization can become comfortable using. In my opinion, wider adoption of observable work principles can succeed with support and encouragement from true leaders at every level of an organization - as Peter Drucker defines that role: "A manager's task is to make the strengths of people effective and their weakness irrelevant--and that applies fully as much to the manager's boss as it applies to the manager's subordinates."

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gwt-traction project on Google Code

June 22, 2010 · · Posted by Andy Keller

ImageWhile building our new GWT-based Proteus skin for Traction TeamPage 5.0, we created some widgets and utilities that we thought other developers would find useful. Most of these are pretty simple, but we hope they save other GWT developers some time. As we factor out code that can be shared with others, we'll add more to this gwt-traction Google community project.

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re: Social Process Reengineering?

June 18, 2010 · · Posted by Jordan Frank

The title of this entry had three goals. First, I wanted to convey and play off the stark differences between Social Process Reengineering and Business Process Reengineering. Second, I wanted to leverage the similarities of SPR and BPR to explain that these two processes can, and need, to co-exist rather than compete. Finally, I wanted to ask the question about whether this is the right term of the process. After dozens of conversations with the best minds in E2.0 this week, I've reconciled to a a more targeted and appropriate term: Emergineering!.

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Emergineering!

June 18, 2010 · · Posted by Jordan Frank

ImageSince introducing the idea of Social Process Reengineering? earlier this week I've socialized it virtually and personally (at E2.0 Boston) with at least a dozen customers, bloggers, analysts and other leading thinkers.

Consensus on the concept was generally positive with a variety of feedback ranging from the matter that the "facebook" approach doesn't just work in the enterprise to the matter that the social, structural and business pain have to be taken into account for successful E2.0 efforts.

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Welcome to Traction TeamPage 5.0!

June 15, 2010 · · Posted by Greg Lloyd

ImageOn Tuesday June 15, 2010 we'll introduce Traction TeamPage Release 5.0 to the world at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Boston. TeamPage Release 5.0's new generation Proteus interface technology is fast, simple, and looks great. TeamPage 5.0 leverages this technology to add extensible personal profile pages, Twitter style personal status, group live blog technology, slick and simple Feed summary and more as a natural part of Traction's award winning Enterprise 2.0 platform.

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Social Process Reengineering?

June 13, 2010 · · Posted by Jordan Frank

As much as I hesitate to introduce this term into social software lingo, I think it's exactly what Enterprises are doing with social software on the road to Enterprise 2.0 - striving for a fundamentally new way to work.

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Q: How do I link to an Excel file? A: Why Would you Do That?

June 11, 2010 · · Posted by Jordan Frank

I talked to two customers yesterday, both who came to me with some questions about attaching and linking to excel files. Easy enough, but before responding with a simple answer I challenged them: Why are you using Excel?

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The spy who came in from the code | O'Reilly Radar | Carmen Medina interview

May 4, 2010 · · Posted by Greg Lloyd

ImageSee The spy who came in from the code for James Turner's excellent O'Reilly Radar interview with Carmen Medina who recently retired from the CIA after 32 years after serving in roles including Deputy Director of Intelligence, and Director of the CIA's Center for the Study of Intelligence. Carmen was the keynote speaker at Traction Software's Oct 2009 Traction User Group meeting, speaking on Enterprise 2.0 and the Context of Work (see slides and video). She'll speak at the Gov 2.0 Expo on May 26, 2010 Washington DC on A Match made in Heaven: High Reliability-High Risk Organizations and the Power of Social Networks. Don't miss her talk, and follow @milouness on Twitter!

Return On Information

April 14, 2010 · · Posted by Jordan Frank

Rather than thinking about communication, collaboration and KM software in terms of Return on Investment, isn't the real goal to achieve Return On Information?

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

March 23, 2010 · · Posted by Greg Lloyd

ImageFor the second annual Ada Lovelace Day, March 24, 2010 - celebrating women in science and technology - I've chosen to write about Frances E. Allen, IBM Fellow, Turing Award winner and pioneer in the theory and practice of optimizing compilers. I've never had the pleasure of meeting her in person, but I'll take the liberty of calling her Fran, as Dick Merwin and everyone I know called her in their Fran stories.

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