Community Online

Bryant Park Hotel is housed in the gold-topped American Radiator Building. The Mercantile Building at 10 West 40th Street (with sloped green roof) was previously known as Chase Tower.

Photographed from the 24th floor of 1065 Avenue of the Americas (Bryant Park Corporation).

This is the first of a three part series on IBM Connections, their collaboration platform for social business. I recently had an extended conversation with Suzanne Livingston, Senior Product Manager for Connections. I have covered Connections before (see for example, Looking Closely at Lotus Connections) but it had been a while since I took another detailed look. We began by discussing Connections 3.0, released in 2011, that has expanded features to support communities.

This community support includes video and photo sharing and support for idea generation, including Ideation Blogs. It also provides the means to better manage a document library for communities through integration with IBM Enterprise Content Manager and IBM FileNet.  Community moderation is offered and communities can manage their documents within Community Pages. The document library services are provided through Quickr for Websphere Portal. This allows security setting, users, and groups to be synchronized between Quickr and Connections.

Expanded mobile capabilities are provided through IBM’s Social Everywhere mission, which has been a major part of each release since Connections 1. You can upload photos and videos from your phone. Now you can get native apps as well as hybrid ones through  a mobile browser. You can access all of your Connections data from mobile browsers or through free native apps. You can download native apps from the major app stores such as iTunes, Andriod Market, and Blackberry App Worlds.

IBM created a version of Connections specifically for the iPad that takes advantage of the new capabilities that a tablet offers over a smartphone. This includes editing while maintaining the gestural navigation found in both devices.

On the Web facing side, Connections 3.0 continues to support Websphere Portal 7 and 8 beta with better integration with the portal. This enables more robust use of Connections for external communities. With this release you can have community page portlets with blogs and profiles. This gives you the option of using Websphere Portal as your website UI but with Connections capabilities built in. You can also simply use Connections as your Web interface. The Spanish Red Cross is one example of this move. Connections 3.0 is offered through the cloud and on premise.

Connections 3.0.1 can  also be used for compliance purposes. All Connections posts, comments, blogs, etc. are logged instantly and available for eDiscovery.  IBM works with their partner Actiance to provide this capability.  There is real-time content monitoring, a keyword blacklist, and granular policies to map compliance requirements by user type. Alerts can be sent when posts contain blacklisted words. Mail security can be invoked before posting to avoid such things as SEC violations.

This collection represents a solid foundation for the evolution of Connections through the next major release of Connections that I will begin to discuss in the second post in this series.

• Technology is a response, not a point of departure! | Theknowledgecore's Blog
• The evolution of Knowledge Management? No, time to evolve the D-I-K-W hierarchy! | Theknowledgecore's Blog
• KM is dead! Long live knowledge! | Theknowledgecore's Blog
  http://johntropea.tumblr.com/post/17209314629/km-is-fuqed-and-as-a-strategic-movement-has-served
• KM is FUQed! (And what’s more, I just don’t like it!) | Theknowledgecore's Blog
  http://johntropea.tumblr.com/post/17209314629/km-is-fuqed-and-as-a-strategic-movement-has-served
• ...this terrible pain in all the diodes down my left side.
  http://johntropea.tumblr.com/post/17209314629/km-is-fuqed-and-as-a-strategic-movement-has-served
• The miracle of Knowledge Management: Managing ‘Justified true belief’ | Theknowledgecore's Blog
• They say that KM maturity models don’t work… | Theknowledgecore's Blog
• Knowledge Management – The newest cousin to an old lady | Theknowledgecore's Blog
• Making sense of complexity | Theknowledgecore's Blog

As I mentioned on this blog I am now helping OutStart with their social media efforts as part of the OutStart team. I am one of several people contributing to our OutStart Knowledge Solutions Blog (see: My New Role within OutStart’s Social Media Efforts). I will not be repeating my posts for that blog on this blog. However, once a month I will post links to my writing there. Here is the eighth set covering January. I am including posts by other members of the OutStart team. I welcome your comments.

Selection & Management of Outsourced Content Providers: Part 1 – Five Common Challenges

Selection & Management of Outsourced Content Providers Part 2 -Six Ways an LCMS Can Help

Mobile Learning Modernizes a Ghana University Making it Easier for Students to Learn and Communicate

Five Ways to Make Your Content More Engaging

Social Business Software as a Platform for the Connected Enterprise

Charles Jennings on the 70:20:10 Model for Learning within the Enterprise

Three Ways an LCMS Can Support Assessments

Five Key Steps for Course Translation and Localization

Six Ways to Use Mobile for Learning

Expanding the Scope of Learning in the Connected Enterprise

A while back I wrote about the new organizational structure for user groups within the EMC Information Intelligence Group (IIG). You can read the posting “New EMC Momentum User Group Site Now Available on EMC.com” in which I talked about the new site that was launched to support the user groups.

For years, IIG has had user groups throughout the world where the group focus might have been around Documentum, Captiva, and Document Sciences. The new Momentum User Group structure brings together everyone under one program so that customers, partners, and EMC all benefit.

In the past several months, we have seen registration for the user groups increase dramatically with several potential groups forming. To help customers identify an established group they want to join or a group that is just now forming, a new interactive map is available.

You can learn more about the new Momentum User Group program and register by clicking here.

Refer a EMC IIG customer

A new promotion was just announced in January where you can invite a fellow EMC IIG customer to become a member of an EMC Momentum User Group. The three (3) EMC IIG Customers who have the most customer referrals (minimum of 5 referrals to qualify) will receive a complimentary Momentum @ EMC World 2012 Conference Pass. The contest runs from 1/18/2012 – 3/30/2012. You can read more about this new promotion in the EMC Community Network: Documentum

Upcoming group meetings

There are two group meetings coming up in March. If you are not registered one of these groups, I encourage you join now. These groups are one of the best ways to stay connected with EMC, and also a great place to network with your peers. I periodically attend and speak at these meetings, and I found it to be a great place to get feedback from customers and to learn what they would like to see in future products. Here are the two upcoming user group meetings that you can click on and register for.

Southern California Momentum User Group Meeting: March 15, 2012

Houston Momentum User Group Meeting: March 22, 2012

We hope to see you there!

Photographed from the fifth floor of 123 Washington Street (W New York – Downtown).

As I have just mentioned in my last blog entry, the last few days I have been embarked on my latest business trip, coinciding with a wonderful visit all around to Helsinki, Finland, where my good friends from IBM Finland invited me over to participate on the IBM CIO Forum event, with the rather innovative initiative of “Redefining Work 925“, and a couple of other events, and where, after being there for about three days, I think I may have just experienced the future… The future of a fully networked and interconnected world… Our world. And what it would look like altogether. And, yes, it’s much more exciting and brighter than whatever I could have ever imagined!

As a road / air warrior, I get to travel a fair bit and visit not just mainland Spain, but a bunch of other countries in Europe, and North America. I have yet to visit South America, continental Africa and Asia, although I know it will all come together eventually at some point, but if there is anything that Helsinki, Finland, has shown me in the last couple of days is that you can have more than a decent Internet connection, and for free!!, while you are carrying on with your work and personal life helping it become ever so much more engaged, participative and interconnected with the Social Web available out there!

In another blog post I will detail some of the highlights from my visit to Helsinki, what I learned and what plenty of other folks are doing out there in the area of Social Computing, but for now I just couldn’t help thinking about putting together this short blog entry to explain why my expectations on connecting to the Internet, for work, or personal stuff, will never be the same again after this business trip. And here is why…

That’s a snapshot of the free wi-fi connection at the hotel where I stayed those days in Helsinki. And this is the one from the free wi-fi connection at the Helsinki airport, which is even much more remarkable:

For a good number of years I have always been complaining (Yes, I guess it’s complaining, because that’s probably what I have been doing all along…) about how poor the quality of wi-fi and Ethernet connections are in a good number of countries I have visited (US, Canada, Spain, France, UK, Germany, Ireland, Belgium, Portugal, Mexico, Netherlands, Hungary, Switzerland, etc. etc.) and on top of that how expensive it is for the quality of service that we get, even worse here in Spain, where the prices for ADSL, for instance, are some of the most expensive in Europe with the lowest bandwidth! And not just at hotels, conference venues, Internet kiosks, regular 3G connectivity, etc. etc., but also at our own homes! I was reaching the point of believing that we would have to get used to living through such poor quality standards of service with no remedy, waiting for our ISP providers to keep making big bucks while never delivering, and eventually give up on it all.

Ouch!! Well, see the difference? Maybe not! Maybe we should not get used to such poor quality standards on providing wi-fi connectivity, regardless of the venue. While In Helsinki, I certainly experienced the future. And it is just gorgeous and bright! It’s something that I never expected it would be quite shocking as it was, yet so rewarding and fulfilling. Have you ever heard about being empowered, as a human being, thanks to technology and the Internet, regardless of whatever you may be doing? Well, I experienced that! And so much more!

Yes, I guess that expectations have risen to a new level for yours truly, with regards to what a Decent Internet Access would be like, specially, while on the road, since, after having experienced a new wonderful world of fast, quality connectivity, things will never be the same. In fact, I keep questioning myself with such an amazing connected experience with the Web how come there are so few Tech related conferences taking place in the Nordics? I don’t think it’s about the weather, although last week surely was quite another experience!, but I know, for sure!, that is definitely nothing to do with the availability and accessibility of Internet connection, because over there, it just rocks! And I just can’t wait to come back to experience the future once again, … And perhaps with a bit of nicer weather I may have moved over there altogether!

Sameer Patel aka @sameerpatel pointed to an interesting article in the Guardian through Twitter. The title was: Twitter is harder to resist than cigarettes and alcohol, study finds. Now this is a topic I have covered before – see for example my 2009 post, Is Twitter Like Going Out for a Smoke? More on this older story later in this post but first the Guardian wrote, “Tweeting or checking emails may be harder to resist than cigarettes and alcohol, according to researchers who tried to measure how well people could resist their desires. They even claim that while sleep and sex may be stronger urges, people are more likely to give in to longings or cravings to use social and other media.” Powerful stuff this Twitter.

The research reported by the Guardian is not the first to tackle this issue. In 2009 I wrote about a Study of Social Media Addiction from Retrevo. It found that their sample used social media in the car (over 35 – 9%, under 35 – 40%), at work (over 35 – 29%, under 35  - 64%), on vacation (over 35 – 41%, under 35 - 65%), on a date (over 35 - 9%, under 35 - 34%), and after sex (over 35 - 8%,  under 35 - 36%). I am sure these numbers are increasing, especially if you include playing scrabble on your smart phone.

Twitter seems to be the most addictive. For respondents under age 35, 27% of those who use Facebook said they check it more than 10 times a day compared to 39% of Twitter users checking in on Twitter more than 10 times a day. Across all age groups, 56% say they check it between one and ten times a day. I certainly find Twitter more addictive than Facebook. The activity is very fast and real time so you want to stay connected and it is easy to make a quick check.

The biggest enablers of this new addiction seem to be smart phones and other mobile devices, especially if you are under 35. In a Gadgetology study only 19% of the 35+ group use a phone as the preferred device for social media services with 81% preferring instead a desktop or laptop computer. This is me as I never use a phone, even though I have an iPhone. Perhaps I will as I get more used to my iPhone. Over on the other side of the generation gap they found 46% of those younger than 35 indicating their preference for a mobile device for all things social media.

Returning to the first post I mentioned, Is Twitter Like Going Out for a Smoke?, I wrote about how smokers often formed informal networks as they had to go to designated spots for their habit. I added the following.

So if implemented right Twitter is more like the smoker’s group without the health risks. With Twitter there is also the timing factor as to whether your paths will cross which also applies to the water cooler. In both cases, the smart networker will know the patterns of his or her prey and look for the right times to engage. Since the smoker group is together for longer periods of time, there are also more likely to be established rules of contact than the newcomer needs to learn to be effective. Smoker’s groups might be more likely to meet at certain times. There are also patterns of high Twitter use to observe. I covered this combination of taking a break and informal networks in two other related posts:

Is Twitter Like Stopping at the Water Cooler? Is this Productive?

Is Twitter like Taking a Nap? But More Productive?

I do find Twitter to be a great way to stay connected and find out what is going on with people I like to stay connected to such as Sameer. In the month of April I will be working from a Greek Island but what made it possible for me to stay “away’ so long was the wifi connection in my temporary home so I will have Twitter, skype, this blog, etc. More on this later. Image from Hellblazer! Flickr creative commons. 

When we drive most vehicles, these have a dashboard with gauges telling us the important things we need to know about what is happening with the vehicle and how it is going. The dashboard may indicate speed, how much fuel is left plus warnings like temperature in case things are not going as well as they should be.

When executives want to know the status of what they are in charge of to help them make informed decisions based on the data, they could have a online dashboard with that information. This dashboard may tell them what they need to know about sales figures, units produced, project milestones reached, global growth by region or whatever information is relevant to them as it changes daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly and/or annually.

Computers have dashboards as well and so do some mobile phones.

Some DAM systems have dashboards too. Sometimes these dashboards are part of the DAM system and sometimes they are extra add-ons which may measure data from other related ECM systems as well.

Why have a dashboard? Would you rather be uninformed? Do like shuffling reports or spreadsheets instead? Would you rather script your way through this data because there is some illusion that this is easier to do on a daily or weekly basis, then filter to the information needed each and every time?

Does a frequently updated (or live) presentation of the information you need to make informed decisions (based on the actual data, not gut feelings) sound more useful? Why would you not want this? Are you afraid of progress or the lack of it? Do you fear having this measured for you in useable numbers and digital charts so you can find out what is not working as well?

To paraphrase Peter Drucker, we can not manage what we do not measure and we can not measure what we do not define. If we do define what we need to measure, we can add this to dashboard, analyze the data in a clear, manageable way and make informed decisions as we watch the changes over time.

In May 2011, I gave a presentation about DAM Reporting, Measuring and Auditing at the Henry Stewart DAM Conference in New York City. I spoke about how to measure what is happening within the DAM and the power of DAM reporting. Some might think it is a really boring topic. So did I, but it was worth talking about since no one else was. It was so boring that the room for this presentation was standing room only. Not so boring I guess.

How to measure what is happening within the DAM comes down to filtering and using dashboard. You could do that with reports with more processing and analysis. It is just more work.

Everyday, we are have more data, information and knowledge rain down on us. Managing this mountain of data is a matter of filtering to what is needed. If we are drowning in it, Clay Shirky put it best by explaining this is simply filter failure.

Being uninformed and ignorant of what is going on with your technology as well as your business is so 20th century. Filter. Analyze. Prioritize. Get a dashboard and use it to look at what the data and information says about what you define, measure and manage.

Once again, I am on the road on to my next business trip, this time around with two distinctive parts; one of them to Helsinki, Finland, where I will be participating in a number of IBM sponsored events around the Social Enterprise, a really cool, inspiring and rather innovative initiative on “Redefining Work 925” and, believe it or not, Living “A World Without Email” (One of my favourite topics du jour, as you can imagine …) and the other one to Paris, France, where I will be participating, and moderating a couple of panels, at the always engaging, entertaining and rather thought-provoking Enterprise 2.0 Summit, which starts next week on February 7th, and that this year promises to be quite an amazing event! But more on that one later on …

Yet, once again, since connectivity while on the road has got a lot to be desired for, I have picked up the good habit of pruning my RSS feeds (Remember RSS?), spice them up a bit and enjoy offline reading while I’m disconnected. And while I am doing that up in the air, I bumped into this brilliantly provocative blog entry by Tim Elmore on “Confessions of a Ghost Writer … for Students“. Goodness! How low can we, human beings, get? Or, even worse, how can we still allow that to happen?

Indeed, in a rather sharp article Tim comes to question not just the ability of ghost writing for students per se, but the ethics, or, better said, the lack of ethics and morale, in doing so when students are employing those ghost writers to pass on their exams on subjects that may be of interest to them, or not. Showing, at best, how laziness, and perhaps that lack of morale or motivation combined altogether, can certainly damage the true spirit of hard labour (Even on the literal sense of the word!) in delivering something for which one would feel very proud of. At least.

The story of the ghost writer that Tim exemplifies in that article will surely give you chills going through your spine big time, as it highlights all of those traits that a bunch of us have been wanting to wipe out from the corporate world as well for a while now: hypocrisy, lack of ethics and morale, unwillingness to do meaningful work (that’s truly yours, not someone else’s), lack of responsibility and co-ownership, laziness, instant gratification for the sake of it, not the value you may be providing, etc. etc. You know the gist…

What’s really troubling though from the article itself is not what Tim portraits quite clearly of what’s happening out there right at this very minute with students and the work they produce (Or don’t produce, better said), but a rather poignant question that I thought I would include as well over here to see the whole context of where we may be heading:

“What will our world look like if these students become our leaders?“

Whoahh! Sorry, but before we try to venture an answer for that rather provocative question allow me to comment on it for a minute: No, we do NOT want to have those leaders governing in our world. Sorry, that may have worked in the recent past, but as we moved into a (business) world that’s more interconnected, networked, engaged, transparent, public, nimble, collaborative, trustworthy, engaged, committed, authentic, and whatever else you can think of, along those lines, that is, the last thing we need is to have a range of generations who become our leaders by doing something that doesn’t match, really, any of those traits: cheating (due to lack of ethics and morale).

Tim’s article clearly reminds me of a recent internal conversation I had with a bunch of fellow IBMers where we were discussing the concept of ghost writing on blog posts and social networking sites, specially, with senior leaders in mind, as a way to allow them to enter the world of Social slowly, but steadily, helping them adjust to new ways of interacting with the help of others, who may be a bit more versed. Well, now more than ever, and after reading Tim’s piece, I’m not convinced at all that ghost writing, even for executives!, is a good thing!

The Social Enterprise has always demanded authenticity, co-ownership, responsibility, trust, transparency, commitment, engagement, motivation, being the real you, your self, the don’t pretend to be who you are not, etc. etc. Around the world of blogging, I have always found it very difficult to try to justify ghost writing when authenticity and trust kick in, even for senior leaders and that article surely confirms that belief. If you can’t be you, please don’t get someone to be you. No matter how important you are, how busy you may well be, how much of a thought leader you are (and perceived by others), engaging in social networks requires your personal you to do it. Sorry, no ghost writing.

Yes, I can imagine such activity may have worked in the traditional world of communications and marketing, and, to a certain degree, I can agree with doing such activity when you need to deliver a certain corporate message, whatever that may well be, but when it’s just you (your thoughts, your beliefs, your ideas, etc.) what you are delivering we want to hear, read, learn from you, AND interact and engage with you!, no intermediaries, please. We had enough of those in the recent decades and I am starting to think we need to move on from that discourse. To the point where I am more and more convinced by the day that if you can’t engage with your real self in social networking sites, your blog and whatever other means of living social, I think it would be much preferred that you don’t engage at all. We want the authentic you, the trustworthy you; we want to have the certainty that we are talking with the real thing: your own person.

I guess you folks may be thinking that I am a purist and all, and perhaps I am (Don’t think I will have any issues with that notion in this context, to be honest), but read Tim’s article once again, move that context into the corporate world, and try to answer that question again: “What will our world look like if these students become our leaders?” … with that mentality, but, even worse, with that notion of ethics and morale about meaningful work, inspired by their so-called role models that have already starting shaping up that wrong set of core values. Not sure what you would think, but I feel we need to stop it. And very soon, before it is just too late!

How can we possibly justify ghost writing / engaging in social networks today when that lack of authenticity, trust, openness and transparency, amongst others, will clearly not just damage your reputation as a business (Remember businesses are made of people!), but also your engagement with your peers, subordinates, thought leaders, customers and business partners alike?

Is this the new workplace of the future, we have been envisioning over the course of the last few years, that we would want to inspire within our younger generations, as well as our more senior knowledge workers? I surely hope not! There is something very wrong about this out there, in my opinion, and the sooner we all put a stop to it, the better. So next time that you may be thinking about doing ghost writing, or ghost blogging, please do think about it, think of the repercussions, of the implications, of the consequences, of the potential damage you will be creating. And, above all, be transparent and open enough about it and let us know you will be still carrying on with it… so that we can move on in search for those other leaders who want to be their selves inspiring lots of trust, authenticity, transparency, openness, engagement and whatever else, because, somehow, I feel we would ALL be much, much, better off altogether!

Business. Made Social. Earn it!

• 5 Insane Ways Words Can Control Your Mind | Cracked.com

As I mentioned on this blog I am now helping OutStart with their social media efforts as part of the OutStart team. I am one of several people contributing to our OutStart Knowledge Solutions Blog (see: My New Role within OutStart’s Social Media Efforts). I will not be repeating my posts for that blog on this blog. However, once a month I will post links to my writing there. Here is the eighth set covering January. I am including posts by other members of the OutStart team. I welcome your comments.

Selection & Management of Outsourced Content Providers: Part 1 – Five Common Challenges

Selection & Management of Outsourced Content Providers Part 2 - Six Ways an LCMS Can Help

Mobile Learning Modernizes a Ghana University Making it Easier for Students to Learn and Communicate

Five Ways to Make Your Content More Engaging

Social Business Software as a Platform for the Connected Enterprise

Charles Jennings on the 70:20:10 Model for Learning within the Enterprise

Three Ways an LCMS Can Support Assessments

Five Key Steps for Course Translation and Localization

Six Ways to Use Mobile for Learning

Expanding the Scope of Learning in the Connected Enterprise