Off to Boston for the Enterprise 2.0 Conference

Posted on May 8, 2009 by slgavin

It’s been a long time coming but I’m finally attending the Enterprise 2.0 conference in Boston, 22-25 June. For a few years now I’ve *almost* got there, once to speak and twice to attend, however things didn’t work out. This year I’ll be there as an attendee with Antoine from the Knowledge Plaza team. It will be good to catch up with the E2.0 crowd, many of whom I have been speaking to for years but not had a chance to meet.

I’m particularly looking forward to seeing R. Todd Stephens take to the stage and hear about his work at AT&T. It’s billed to be a great event and well worth the trip from the UK.

If you are going to be in town on these dates please do let me know and say hi!

Info:

ScotWeb2 – June 19th Edinburgh – 2009

Posted on May 8, 2009 by slgavin

I’m pleased to say that I’ll be attending ScotWeb2 on the 19th June in Edinburgh. I’ve heard good things about it and am looking forward to catching up with Alex Stobart and his associates. If you’re going, say hi!

We are very pleased to be able to bring you the second ScotWeb2 event on June 19th 2009 once again taking place in Edinburgh, Scotland, UK

Have you heard of twitter, Facebook and You Tube and want to know more ? This event will appeal to the following

ICT people ; teachers ; life-long learners ; communications ; marketing ; PR

ICT Developers. programmers ; social media ; digital enablers

Campaigners from NGO and third sector

Public, private and third sector employees

Business and social enterprises

Academics ; students ; FE and HE

Health ; Police ; Fire services

This follows on from the success of our first ScotWeb2 event last October

The event showcases enterprising, innovative and entrepreneurial behaviours in the web 2 world

It’s more important than ever to identify subject matter experts in your company

Posted on March 24, 2009 by slgavin

Over the past few months I’ve been speaking with and meeting more companies than ever before in my life. I’ve been submerged in conversations around business change and the economic challenges facing businesses today. From knowledge retention to knowledge management, information discovery to information publishing, the range of emerging (and not so) technology needs have been highlighted by the challenges faced in today’s economic climate.

However there’s one reoccurring theme I keep coming across and that’s subject matter expert (SME) identification.

Organizations now more than ever before need a way to identify the people they have based upon the knowledge they retain. Of course, this requirement has always been there but now there’s more to gain by being able to find experts on a given subject/topic area. Knowledge networks exist inside all companies, either explicit or implied but more often that not these networks are not accurately documented or identifiable based upon the loose nature of knowledge. For example, when I worked in Pharma I was an IT project manager in the clinical space, yet I also had Enterprise 2.0 related passion and knowledge. The only way for me to identify myself as a potential SME in this field was by contacting people, blogging about it, creating wiki pages etc and branding myself into them. Otherwise when senior management were on the lookout for someone to manage an E2.0 project, the work would have naturally gone to someone in the content management team, regardless of their experience/interest in collaborative web technologies.

So in today’s environment there are more reasons than ever to have the ability to find internal (and external) SMEs. Here are a few examples:

find people to work on new markets/products
identify gaps in knowledge which should be core to your company
identify what impact losing an employee in a given area would have – are there others with similar knowledge?
find all people who have interacted with a certain product/project
for regulated industries – identify everyone who’s worked on a certain drug/product

But how should SMEs be identified?

In my mind it should be a mix of self declaration, identification by others and by the real life information someone interacts with. As an example you might have Jason who identifies himself as and expert in ‘Karate’, others tag him with ‘Martial Arts’, yet he consistently works with information/content related to ‘Japanese Fighting Systems’. Jason should therefore be identified, by a greater or lessor extent, as an SME in all three fields. In other words you are not relying on just job titles and self declaration to find people.

What happens when you find an SME?

In the past it would have been fair to assume that if you used a tool to find an SME in your organization you would at most have access to their contact details. However new social tools will allow you to do more than just find an SME and see their phone number.

I’ll pick on Knowledge Plaza (naturally) to demonstrate how SMEs are found and used in such a social tool:

SMEs are identified with every search result in the system (full text, tag browsing or combination of both)
Users can see the profile of an SME
Users can see the recent activities on an SME in addition to their user defined network
Users are able to interact with an SME, including adding them to their network
The SME can be used as a filter

The most useful feature for me is the ability to use an SME in the system as a filter. Once you’ve found your SME(s) you should be able to use them as a means of finding information. i.e. if I find Jason in the system I would want to search through his eyes based upon the content he’s interacted with and the network he maintains. This means I’m using the SME, using his or her knowledge and accessing their intellectual capital directly in the system. I can then get a feel for Jason, his content, his interests and most importantly his real life interactions with information and people.

For knowledge retention this feature is so important. In the example above I didn’t say if Jason still works at the company or if he left 5 years ago. It shouldn’t matter! Even if he did leave, he still has a link to information, people, the company and his work still has value.

The ability to find and use a SMEs knowledge after they’ve left the company is coming up as a concern time and time again with the companies I have been speaking to. A new breed of systems such as Knowledge Plaza have some of the answers here and it’s now possible to do what some of the knowledge management systems of old promised but didn’t deliver.

Companies should be able to quickly find people inside their organization based on their content as well as their interests. Once found they should be able to do more than just see their contact details!

Links: Knowledge Plaza via Applied Trends

Launching Microplaza – Digg over Twitter?

Posted on February 26, 2009 by slgavin

Over the past 2 months I’ve been working with the Knowledge Plaza team to launch a new Twitter service.

This week we launched the beta of MicroPlaza. The service looks at Twitter and extracts all the shared URLs and presents them as thumbnails with associated tweets. It does this for your personal timeline as well as the public timelime and will allow you to sort items by popularity or date. You can read a more concise overview of what we’ve built on SitePoint or ReadWriteWeb.

The idea first came about just before Christmas 08 when a few of the guys realised that Twitter was becoming a kind of discovery engine for finding websites, photos or other web based resources. We wanted a way to extract these is a visually pleasing way based on your network or the network of a chosen user. Hence MicroPlaza was built.

I’ve been using the full service for a few weeks now and something interesting is happening. I find myself heading for MicroPlaza in place of Digg for my dose of news/discovery. I’m not saying MicroPlaza is going to relace Digg or become as popular (we can hope), but finding new stuff from the people you follow is definately addictive!

Soon I’ll post about the some of the challenges and insights from developing the app.

For now here are some invites!

Knowledge Plaza on ZDNet

Posted on February 13, 2009 by slgavin

Oliver Marks provides a good overview of Knowledge Plaza on ZDNet.

From the post:

Knowledge Plaza is a relatively new offering in the enterprise collaboration space and offers a very sophisticated set of tools aimed primarily at knowledge workers, and whose development has been influenced by a very large international consulting company. This product is essentially a seriously powerful and secure hub around which you can aggregate both internally created and stored content, as well as material from the entire internet, which can be tagged and contextually stored…. More here

John Chambers, CEO, Cisco Systems – Enterprise 2.0 Evangelist

Posted on February 4, 2009 by slgavin

John Chambers turns Enterprise 2.0 Evangelist – see video

For every $ spent on KM Accenture measures an average return of over $25

Posted on December 15, 2008 by slgavin

Download it here, and see the last slides for the figures, then work your way back.

Measuring the impact of knowledge management

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: knowledge management)

How one of the world’s largest consultancies influenced the development of an Enterprise 2.0 product

Posted on December 12, 2008 by slgavin

I gave this presentation at the Online Information show in London, Dec 08. It tells the story of how one of the world’s largest consultancies influenced the development of an Enterprise 2.0 Knowledge Management and Social Search platform. Unfortunately I can’t say who the consultancy is (although I nearly did in the presentation) until the whitepaper is published. The product is Knowledge Plaza, who I’ve been involved with since the summer. Enjoy.

Knowledge Plaza Case Study for Online Information 2008

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own.

A Social Media Firestorm

Posted on November 17, 2008 by slgavin

If you need proof that a) Twitter (actually social media in general) is not just for IT geek guys, and b) that it’s a powerful buzz monitoring and customer engagement tool, look here….

There’s a firestorm on Twitter about the advert below from Motrin which seems to have offended a whole bunch of people. Whilst I don’t really get why it’s kicked up so much fuss you can’t ignore the social media powers at work, especially all brand owners and PR folk out there.

Josh Bernoff sums up the whole saga very well:

By now you may already have heard about the Motrin Moms saga. In a nutshell:

Motrin put the ad you see above on its Web site. First mistake — the ad is wrong. Since my wife is affiliated with La Leche League, an organization that supports breastfeeding, I can tell you that if wearing your baby hurts your back or neck, you need positioning help, not Motrin. And moms who care about parenting are exactly the wrong people to offend in your ad — they talk!
Pissed off moms start a firestorm on Twitter (#motrinmoms is trending), followed by hundreds of blog posts. Notable ones include David Armano at Logic & Emotion, with a very complete early analysis, and Sarah Evans on Mashable, with advice on what to do next. And this satirical view is amusing.
A Facebook group attracts hundreds (in one day) requesting a Motrin boycott.
Johnson & Johnson takes Motrin.com down. Unfortunately, this stuff lives on the Internet forever.
Inevitably, the controversy pokes its way into the traditional media, in this case Forbes. And the parenting blog of the New York Times.

The Scoop on Knowledge Plaza

Posted on October 29, 2008 by slgavin

For free access to a special E2.0/KM community instance of Knowledge Plaza please see the end of this post.

As some of you know I spent a large part of the summer working with the guys at Whatever on their product Knowledge Plaza. I managed the GUI redesign and helped roll in some new features and views to bring the product up to release. Well I’m proud to say I think we did a great job. In my biased opinion, we’ve delivered the most exciting Enterprise 2.0 social productivity platform on the market. And with new development coming to fruition in the next month it’s just going to get better.

Here’s the Scoop:

Knowledge Plaza has been developed as a Web-based platform for enterprise search, social bookmarking, knowledge management, information brokerage and expert identification.

The platform allows you to add websites, emails, documents, contacts, references and discussions. Multimedia is on the way. You can tag, annotate and share anything you add. Using workspaces, your network and company facets sharing and finding information is at the core of Knowledge Plaza.

Some broad claims there so here’s how it breaks down: (thumbnails go to larger screen shots)

Terminology

Any item in Knowledge Plaza (websites, emails, documents, contacts, references and discussions) is called a Tile. You can tag, edit, comment on, rate, relate and send tiles from within the application. You can also group Tiles into a Mosaic. Apart from that everything else is as you’d expect.

Dashboard

The dashboard aggregates activity and content from people in your network and your workspaces. In addition there is a visual tab showing clickable images of recent websites and documents.

Dashboard

Plaza

The plaza tab is where you find and browse content. Quick actions let you tag, rate and bookmark

The Plaza

Clicking on any title takes you to the tile view where you can edit, tag, send, comment or perform other actions.

Tile View

Advanced Search and Browse

Within the plaza you can click to combine tags, facets and people into a search string, which is always displayed.

Explain Advanced Searches

You can also use the advanced search box (powered by Lucene) with auto complete.

Advanced Search

Saving Results

At any point in the application you can save your search or take an RSS feed. In fact, every aspect, tag and activity gets an RSS feed as standard. Saving results allows you to save your search strategies.

Save your Search or RSS

People Search

Finding people, be it Knowledge Plaza members or external contacts is easy. You just restrict your search to people. This will return those tagged with, have content containing, or have been identified as experts relating to your search.

Find Experts or Contacts

Profiles

Every member has a profile page where you can see their network, their activity or leave a comment.

Profiles

Using People as Search Engines

This is one of the most exciting features for me. On every profile, workspace dashboard and saved search, you have to option to use the resource as a search engine. In the case of a member when you use this feature and select ‘web’ you will perform a live Google search across all the websites the member has bookmarked, rated or commented. Selecting ‘plaza’ will perform a search inside of knowledge plaza for their matching content.

Experts as Search Engines (EaSE)

EaSE Results for the Web Search

The Significance of People as Search Engines

Example: You are in a Pharmaceutical company and need to research the web for Gene Therapy data. Who’s eyes are better to search through than Ian who’s an expert on Gene Therapy in your company!? You can instantly use his list of trusted and rated websites to conduct your search.

Workspaces

Each workspace has a dashboard providing quick links to the activity, members and search engine.

Workspace

Also, by using a workspace as a search engine you can combine the websites and content of an entire department….so like the example above, that’s the entire Gene Therapy project team.

Using Saved Searches as Search Engines

As already mentioned, saved searches can also be used as search engines.

Saved Search as a Search Engine

Mosaics

The next really exciting feature for me is the Mosaics. After creating a Mosaic (as a wrapper) you can add tiles to the Mosaic, either individually or collaboratively. So essentially this allows you to create containers of tiles (information resources) on core topics.

In addition you are able to add pages to the Mosaic adding context and annotating the content.

Finally you are able to export the Mosaic at anytime for sharing outside of Knowledge Plaza. The export creates a PDF of all the pages, indexes the tiles and saves copies of all websites (in PDF), contacts (vcard) and documents in an accompanying zip file. This is knowledge mobility.

Mosaic - Collating Knowledge

Mosaic Wiki Pages

Example Mosaic Export

Mosaic Export (without files)

The Significance of Mosaics

I’m going to save most of this for another post but let’s say you compile some research for one of your internal customers. You can do this within a Mosaic, perhaps with the help of others, then export it for sending to the customer. Whether or not an internal charge is put in place for this is open to discussion, but effectively the Mosaic puts a value and mobility on your knowledge.

Access Knowledge Plaza for Free

As mentioned earlier, the guys at Knowledge Plaza have released an invite only community instance to be used by (YOU!) knowledge professionals, evangelists, industry consultants and basically anyone else who’s interesting. This is called Knowledge Heroes.

The platform is currently only available within company firewalls, so this is the only way you will get a look until the public version is released.

You can use the platform to collate your knowledge, bookmarks, sources etc with the rest of the community. The team at Knowledge Plaza will post some of this content to the public blog, Knowledge Heroes so everyone else can benefit form a cross section of the content.

If you want access or a demo just let me know.

London Wiki Wednesday

Posted on September 11, 2008 by slgavin

The London Wiki Wednesday sessions are back in full swing. I’ll be attending the next one being held on the 1st October at The British Computer Society who are providing the food, beer and wine.

If you’ve not been before you can check out the format on the London WikiWed wiki.

I’ll probably be doing a 5 min talk on the wiki integration work we have been doing with the Knowledge Plaza folks. In fact, I’d like to see a dedicated session at some point discussing the finer points of wikis inside of broader applications.

See you there!

Franchise and Grow Your Business with a Wiki

Posted on September 10, 2008 by slgavin

How ideas set out in the E-myth combined with a wiki can improve your business

Having moved from being a full time Project Manager with Pfizer, to freelancer to setting up Applied Trends. I’ve been reading even more business books than usual.

Over the summer traveling back and forth to Brussels I read the E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber. It’s one of those books most Entrepreneurs pick up at some point.

One of the core topics in the book is to treat your business as the first of 5,000 franchises. This is the prototype. In developing this prototype you must design, document and continually perfect a central operating manual which details every aspect of how to run the business. This operating manual could actually be a number of manuals for different levels of staff, but the point is that you must have something that describes the procedures and processes for consistently delivering whatever it is you deliver.

One of the examples cited is that of a successful hotel where every detail is managed by such an operations manual. From the way the beds are made, to cleaning checklists, recruitment procedures, how to order supplies, what to say to the guests when they arrive to the phone numbers of local restaurants….it’s all in the manual. The author talks about his delight in how such a consistent and well delivered service is provided every time he stays at the hotel. Every member of staff knows exactly what they are to do and every detail seems to be practiced, refined and perfected on a continual basis.

Documenting procedures and practices is nothing new, and this book has been around for years. What is new is how technology can make this approach easy to apply, and how easy and cheap it would be to maintain. However before I step into the technology, let me give you another example of how successful this approach can be.

A friend and collaborator has recently performed some consultancy for what is now a very successful law firm in the UK. What’s unique about this firm is how they whole heartedly adopted the E-Myth approach as a mechanism for growing the business. Normally for a law firm in this sector the company structure would be something in order of 1 partner to 4 associates. This number is largely dictated by the the amount of management level guidance and oversight required per associate. However, the firm has grown to 5 partners with a total of 40 associates. That’s double the norm. They achieved this by documenting every detail of how the business operates in a series of interconnected Word documents. They used a Word document per process or procedure and hyper linked them together to allow the reader to follow through a set of processes without knowingly seeking out and opening a number of different files. When an update was required, it was simply a matter of opening the relevant document, making the change and saving it back to the central repository. Associates are required to use the ‘manual’ as a first port of call for any procedure or activity they do not know off by heart, thus freeing the partners up to manage more staff and business.

Of course, you can all see where I am going with this. What I’ve just described is a crude wiki. The law firm unknowingly developed a kind of wiki as their E-Myth inspired operations manual.

Doing this in a ‘real’ wiki would be much easier and would allow a greater level of flexibility, accessibility and scalability. In some ways most wikis set out to be a kind of operations manual. Whether it’s for a project, a team, an entire company or your own personal wiki. They are used to store information to guide and help others in the quest for knowledge or to perform a specific task.

During my time with Pfizer we were developing Pfizerpedia, a company wide wiki with very few content limitations. One day this resource could be THE go to guide for achieving anything in the company. Point a user to it and let them learn. At no point has anyone suggested it would facilitate growth similar to that of the law firm, but why not!? Done properly and by the right people, a wiki like this could facilitate many things if not just the ability to distribute knowledge and guidance to those who need it.

So, since the barrier to implementing the ideas put forth in the E-myth have been lowered, why not identify an aspect of your business to ‘franchise’?

This Month: Web 2.0 Executive Bootcamp in London

Posted on September 5, 2008 by delicious

Benefit from the very same material as delivered in private to a host of fortune 500 companies such as AOL, TIME WARNER, BEST BUY and SWISSCOM.

On the 30th September Dion Hinchliffe’s Web 2.0 University team will deliver the very first Web 2.0 Executive Bootcamp in the UK. Book your place now as space is very limited.

The Web 2.0 University is a direct product of extensive research by Hinchcliffe and Company and O’Reilly Media into the business models and design patterns being used by the most innovative companies on the web. The material and delivery is specifically tailored for a management audience with the focus on emerging business models, opportunities and analysis of real life business examples.

With a maximum of 40 attendees, delegates will benefit from a highly interactive and tailored delivery of the very latest research, case studies and opportunities presented by Web 2.0.

This is a chance for any executive, manager, innovator or decision maker to learn how to transform their products and services using Web 2.0 design patterns. The material presented really is the most thoroughly researched and actionable available in the UK.

VISIT THE WEB 2.0 EXECUTIVE BOOTCAMP UK WEBSITE

More Details

Designed by well-known Web 2.0 expert Dion Hinchcliffe, the Web 2.0 Executive Bootcamp is a strategic, one day event for a management, executive, and senior technical audience to gain a thorough briefing on the rapidly evolving world of Web 2.0 and why it matters to any business. Designed for Fortune 500 companies and start-ups alike, Web 2.0 Executive Bootcamp provides a thorough, formal grounding for creating highly competitive, next generation businesses.

Used by companies around the world to galvanize their online product development efforts, Web 2.0 University is the premier, strategic education event designed to take companies and their capabilities into the 21st century.

Lead by highly-rated, expert instructors, Web 2.0 Executive Bootcamp brings the very latest techniques that presents numerous proven approaches to building innovative and fast-growth online businesses based on peer production, rich user experiences, software ecosystems, strategic data capture and ownership, mashups, open APIs, social software, and much, much more.

If you’re building and delivering next-generation online products and services, this intensive, day-long course will provide you with a thorough grounding in the revolutionary world of Web 2.0—a set of design patterns and business models that are reshaping the face of the Web.

Join the over 4,600 graduates of Web 2.0 University today in the inaugural debut of Web 2.0 University in the United Kingdom by Applied Trends and Scott Gavin. Web 2.0 University is available in North America (http://web20university.com), United Kingdom via Applied Trends, Italy and Germany via Reply and Australia and New Zealand via Acid Labs.

Is SharePoint Social?

Posted on September 3, 2008 by delicious

This a good post on why SharePoint isn’t the social solution it was hailed to be. Jim Goings covers a lot of ground with real world examples of how SP does not foster a social workplace……SharePoint: Not the Social Answer — Jim Goings

My del.icio.us bookmarks for August 9th

Posted on August 10, 2008 by delicious

These are my links for August 9th:

OmCollab – MIKE2.0, the open source methodology for Information Development – omCollab is a powerful, Enterprise 2.0 collaboration product completely built on open source software. It provides a web portal environment to create, share and search Microsoft Office content, files, shared bookmarks, blog posts and wiki articles across the enterprise.omCollab integrates some of the most powerful open source software applications into a single collaborative environment. It enables organisations to drive innovation, collaboration and community building.
omCollab is a composite of a number of different products that provide a solution for collaboration. omCollab is used to provide the collaborative environment for MIKE2.0. – from Andreas

Refreshing….

Posted on July 25, 2008 by slgavin

See this post by Sam Lawrence : 10 Fantastic ways to f*ck it up

Are you still an Enterprise 2.0 Evangelist?

Posted on July 24, 2008 by slgavin

So what’s been keeping me from blogging lately?

It’s been a funny, yet exciting couple of months. On the good side things, I have been really busy working on some very exciting projects. One such project is managing the redevelopment of an Enterprise 2.0 start-up’s product interface. They have a great product and great team, yet the existing interface just wasn’t cutting it in this 2.0 world. The project has been challenging but great fun. We are in week 7 of 10, after which I’ll do a post and screen cast on the entire project. It will make a great case study and I’ll be proud to show off the new interface. The company is http://www.whatever-company.com/

Another thing keeping me busy is the Web 2.0 University launch in the UK. On the 30th September, Dion Hinchcliffe will bring the first ever Web 2.0 Executive Bootcamp to London. I’m working with Dion on the logistics and promotion. Full details are here: http://www.web2uni.co.uk/

What about the not so good things? Well, as I took a short break in conference attendance and speaking, I increased my consumption of online information. As a result I think I overdosed on Enterprise 2.0 topics, opinions and write ups. I started to get just a bit tired of all the SharePoint BS (which it really is), over inflated egos and brash opinions from those on the sidelines. I guess I suffered overexposure to the echo chamber. As a result I decided to bury myself in implementation and business development.

I’m now emerging from the other side and will resume normal service. I’m more passionate about Enterprise 2.0 and Web 2.0 than ever.

Technorati Tags: enterprise 2.0

Understand and Embrace Web 2.0 for Marketing Success

Posted on July 24, 2008 by slgavin

The following is a recent article I submitted to a marketing publication. Guess I may as well blog it!

Embracing Web 2.0 and social networks is becoming a key component to the success of many firms, especially those in the marketing industry.

Participation in social networks, blogging and online collaboration is no longer limited to the under 25′s, nor should it be limited to an outside of work activity. Firms need to embrace the desire and ability of their staff to use Web 2.0 tools and services and know how to facilitate and extract real business benefit from the activity.

From a marketing perspective, it’s about being where your market is, being part of your market and having visibility of conversations relating to your brand or products.

Yet where social networks such as Facebook are concerned, many employers block access and warn their staff against using such sites. An alternative would be to create a culture where using these Web 2.0 tools is permitted and encouraged in line with a Social Media strategy. Such a strategy would identify the benefits of using sites such as Facebook, Twitter and FriendFeed, and put in place a framework for responding to the opportunities presented. An example would be to implement an internal blog for employees to discuss the trends, contacts, conversations and opportunities they are seeing when participating in such sites. Managers can then act on any opportunities or threats.

The way brands interact with consumers is also changing. On sites such as Facebook and Twitter, we are seeing brands interact with consumers in a bid to improve loyalty and drive brand equity.

For a company looking to engage marketing professionals this kind of familiarisation of Web 2.0 is fast becoming part of the selection criteria. Marketing firms should be able to demonstrate their staff are keyed in to the most popular sites and services on the web and have a process for leveraging this involvement.

Any business wishing to learn more about Web 2.0 and the opportunities it presents can attend the Web 2.0 University on the 30th September in central London.

http://www.web2uni.co.uk/

Technorati Tags: enterprise 2.0