Author Archives: admin

Europe’s largest IT firm to scrap internal e-mail

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Atos, the largest IT services firm in Europe, is going to do away with internal e-mail. Atos CEO Thierry Breton says that only 15 percent of the 200 e-mails his staff receive on average are valuable, and that staff are wasting between 5 and 20 hours a week handling e-mail. Instead of e-mail, he wants staff to use instant messaging and other chat-like communications media.

via Europe’s largest IT firm to scrap internal e-mail.

Life Hack – The 30/30 Minute Work Cycle Feels Like Magic | Chetan Surpur

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From: Life Hack – The 30/30 Minute Work Cycle Feels Like Magic

“You might think it’s crazy and stupid, but it works for me,” he said. “I sit at my desk andwork for 30 minutes without distraction, completely absorbed in my work. Then, after the 30 minutes are up, I drop whatever I’m doing and go do something fun for 30 minutes. During this relaxation time, I don’t think about work at all – I play games, write, whatever, but no work. After 30 minutes, I go back to my desk, rinse and repeat.”

I think this would work for me from time to time when I am struggling to keep motivated on a project!

Enterprise 2.0 Case Study…

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…well sort of. This is the presentation I’ve pulled together to highlight the work of an unofficial group who explore and push web2.0/enterprise2.0 technology and culture at a global blue chip company. We started the group in July 2006 and have enjoyed a great deal of success (and enjoyment) in the year that followed. I’ve removed any references which identify the company, so sorry if some bits seem vague.

http://www.slideshare.net/slgavin/an-enterprise-20-case-study

Getting started with the corporate wiki

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I’ve already covered some of this in my last post It’s not always obvious, but a friend who works in local government IT recently asked me “how do you get started with a wiki?” He has just installed an instance of MediaWiki for his department, and is faced with ‘blank page syndrome’. So here are a few ways I hooked into the corporate wiki and in turn inspired others follow suit:

  • A personal bio describing who I am, what I do and links to current work/involvements
  • A link to the personal bio in my email signatures and presentations
  • Meeting agenda’s (link sent with invite)
  • Meeting minutes
  • Project outlines
  • Project landing pages (or shop fronts) linking off to all project resources/info
  • Status reports
  • Definitions of work
  • Definitions of systems
  • There’s lots more, but you get the idea…

The personal bio was the catalyst for my rapid wiki take-up. Having links to blank pages for things I am working on really got the ball rolling and provided the starting point I personally needed. It also helped me get a lot more organised (which there is always room for).

I think this post will get renamed ‘Getting started with corporate wikis part 1’ as there are loads more examples I can drill down on, but for now I hope that helps you Toby!

It’s not always obvious

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For the last year I have been evangelising the use of wikis, blogs, social bookmarking etc both within and outside of my current work assignment. For example I’ll often suggest using a wiki when a project team is just about to go off and start a new Word document, place it in the corporate document repository, send round the link and take it in tunrs to edit, followed by a painful review cycle. Following my recommendation I’ll usually distill the benefits and applied usage of wikis in general and for the particular scenario in question. I usually manage to convince people to give it a go, or at least take a look, but this wasn’t always the case.

It took me a while to really appreciate the power of wikis behind the firewall, and it wasn’t until I’d built up a handful of project pages which linked to various parts of each other and external sources, that I really started to see how wikis will transform information sharing and collaboration within a company.

Wikis are now default for me and I tend not to go near MS Word if at all possible. Everything from my bio, project documentation, status reports, project outlines, team to do lists, agendas, minutes and project resource catalogues are in the wiki.


To me the benefits are now obvious and the concept of company knowledge just sitting in a corporate repository with ‘check in’ and ‘check outs’ and layered security seem alien. However, I completely see why probably the vast majority of corporate IT users don’t instantly see why they should default to using a wiki, at least in the early information gathering stages of their work.

So I’ve started to build up a collection of usage scenarios and real life examples within the corporate wiki to pull out of my back pocket during a ‘sales pitch’. Something simple like a project landing page with descriptions of work streams, links to team member bio’s and a list of upcoming and past meetings will do. Then actually edit one of the pages in a ten second live demo, and you should have them hooked.

If you are out there evangelising any aspect of Enterprise 2.0 at your company, build up some of these real life examples, as the benefits are definitely not instantly obvious to most users. This included me at one point, and I know it includes a large section of the IT community at the companies I have contact with.

See also Microsoft Word is Dead by CorporatePunk.

 

Amazing response to ‘Meet Charlie’

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I just want to say a big thanks to everyone who has been in touch regarding the ‘Meet Charlie – What is Enterprise2.0?’ presentation. Within a week of producing the slide deck and uploading it to SlideShare.net I’ve had almost 1500 views and a whole bunch of emails from folk around the world.

So from producing a visually attractive and content rich set of slides, uploading them to a web2.0 service and sending the link out to a few people I have been:

  • contacted by CEO’s and IT managers to say they loved the slides, and now really get Enterprise 2.0.
  • contacted by numerous people from many countries just to say hi or to ask if they can use the slides
  • asked to give the presentation again at the company I work for
  • linked to by a number of blogs and sites

So this really demonstrates the power of web2.0, the opportunities it can present and the contacts it can create. What it also does is provide a glimpse into the potential of Enterprise2.0. So imagine your company has an equivalent of SlideShare installed within the firewall where everyone shares their slide decks within the organisation. If you were to post an equivalent of the ‘Meet Charlie’ presentation, and it were to be as popular, were to be linked to from employee and director blogs, were to be discussed at meetings, were to be sent round via email/messenger…..you’d be creating some pretty serious contacts and opportunities! Not to mention raising your profile, getting your message heard, presenting you ideas or passion to the whole company…………..This is what really excites me about Enterprise2.0…it’s fairly untapped, yet to be adopted by the masses, but bubbling with opportunity for better communication, collaboration and innovation!

I’d like to give a quick mention for Cheree Moore of Ethos 3 Communications and Presentation Revolution for providing the visual inspiration for a Meet _____ presentation.

http://www.slideshare.net/slgavin/meet-charlie-what-is-enterprise20

Meet Charlie – What is Enterprise2.0?

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Meet Charlie – What is Enterprise2.0? is the presentation I created for my talk to the British Computer Society on the 25th April 2007. It’s a generic look at what web2.0 looks like in the corporate environment. Even if you’re new to all this stuff it’s a quick, fun and visually entertaining intro to Enterprise2.0:

http://www.slideshare.net/slgavin/meet-charlie-what-is-enterprise20