IBM outlines Web 2.0 initiatives, strategy at Enterprise 2.0
Category NoneIn addition to yesterday's announcements of Quickr and Connections availability June 29, IBM has been actively involved at Enterprise 2.0 this year. Early this morning (for us Midwesterners anyway) IBM held a blogger's Q&A call reminiscent of the 30-minute session we had at Lotusphere '07. During the call, Carol Jones, IBM Fellow (which is something like being "Michael Jordan, basketball player") and Rod Smith, VP of Emerging Technology hosted the lively call with several bloggers in the Domino community.
To be honest I could relate my opinions of the call but it's so much better if you hear it for yourself...Chris Miller took the initiative and did the hard work. The recording is here and his summary of the call is here.
I had one multi-part observation and couldn't find a place to fit it into the flow of the conversation so here it is.
Lotus Connections, which I've experienced both through Paxos - the Connections for partners site - and the Lotus Greenhouse, is one of Lotus's more intriguing Web 2.0 offerings. Yes I know about the other one
. I do have some experience with Connections
and Activities. I'm not converted yet on Activities...but have an
open mind...I have too much experience with the way people work to commit
to one model at this point.
However, my point about Connections is this - there are three unique paradigms (shoot me, I typed an MBA word without the degree!) to the adoption-to-value equation with Connections. What I mean by this is that it's accepted that the more a company adopts a system, platform, or unique way of doing things, the more they can derive benefit and value from it. Connections is no different. So with Connections, we have blogs, communities, dogear, profiles and activities.
The first three, blogs, communities, and dogear, represent more mainstream social networking constructs familiar to consumers. As such, their value is realized through voluntary and viral participation. The more people participate, the better, but you can't force it. That's the nature of the beast with pure social networking constructs.
Profiles represents the second model by which companies can derive value, and in fact will get the best return if it is centrally managed through policy. While corporate policy cannot mandate participation in the pure social networking models of blogs, communities, and dogear/tagging/links, it's completely appropriate with profiles to require updated information to benefit the organization.
So, this leaves us with activities - the most highly touted, most visible and most value-driven construct in Connections. It leaves us with a unique challenge. Simply stated, its adoption depends on a key success factor and a basic assumption. First, in order for the collaborative activities model to be successful, absolutely everyone involved in an activity must participate actively, be engaged and use the software. If a project, task or other artifact of an activity is missed, missing, neglected, or left out of the collective knowledge represented by an activity, that missing information could lead to decisions based on incomplete information. A branch of this logic requires us to consider the activity that incorporates external participation - the partner and customer angle - where other companies may not be able to or ready to participate in activities, leaving out a big chunk of their value. Second, the assumption, and this is where I believe IBM and its partners may have the most work to do educating customers. Activities assumes that participants view the concept of work within similar parameters - that work units called activities correspond to some universal truth about their scope. The challenge is, we don't. Some people view work activities in larger more broad categories than others. It's been observed that those with more responsibility tend to categorize their work in bigger buckets while others live day to day. I may consider an activity "produce a conference", while someone closer to the details might consider an activity "order pads and pens". See the challenge? Involving people who have different views of a container model of work that is defined by others could be a challenge. The value of social software in business is in its infancy, and IBM is leading the charge (good for them and for me!), and I look forward to working with customers, IBM and the partner community to "socialize" on the best ways to achieve the most significant value from Connections.
Comments
your point about activities is correct, but honestly is nothing new. It applies to any collaboration tool/software you want to use in your company. Is ages we can use QP to create places to work with colleagues, and even in this case if someone keeps himself out of the loop and do not participate, then the whole place can become useless.
What I mean is : it should be not hard for us IBMers and for you BPs to talk about this to the customers, we have been dealing with similar problems or years.
There is a point where I tend to disagree with you though, and is when you say "Activities assumes that participants view the concept of work within similar parameters" quoting the example of produce a conference vs buy pen & paper. In my view both those can be part of an activity, the latter being a small (but important) part of the first one. There is no need for everyone involved in an activity to have the same "parameters" as you say.
My 2c
RoB
Posted by Roberto Boccadoro At 05:47:29 AM On 06/21/2007 | - Website - |
My point about work scope though...I think you've actually illustrated it. You like I would assume that one is a subset of the other in my illustration. My point though is that people at work may view the scope of their work differently and hence initiate activities at these different levels. There much opportunity for overlap and fragmentation if individuals don't first agree on the activity-level container. And, there is the possibility of a clash in work styles between people who tend to put things in smaller buckets of work (and invite others to do the same) and those who work more strategically. Those people will find the "Move to tuned out" flag handy.
Like you say activities represents an opportunity for IBM and partners to work with companies on these concepts. I think our education challenge is a little more significant though, since activities isn't the voluntary, pure social software model -- it's "my work, on my desktop, in my face".
It should be FUN, though for all of us involved in the advent of this change in the way people can work. We're building QActivities (you can imagine what that is) this month, so I'm getting more and more familiar with activities. I like it - I have controlled my own activities so far. It's good to be the king. - Mel Brooks
Posted by Rob Novak At 07:24:51 AM On 06/21/2007 | - Website - |