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Should Knowledge Workers have E2.0 Ratings, Part 3

Mixed by Sam Van Campenhout (Business Development Manager @ Whatever) in Enterprise 2.0, Knowledge mgmt

27 November
An article originally posted on blog.hbs.edu

Andrew posts his answer to 3 questions that were regularly raised by people commenting the previous posts on this topic.
- If you measure activity, aren’t you just going to get activity?
- Why not measure instead what we’re really interested in: innovativeness, productivity, service levels, etc.?
- Wouldn’t some people treat ESSP contribution as a chore, doing the minimum necessary, and with minimal thoughtfulness?

Read the full article at blog.hbs.edu

In my opinion…

seeiing/using = believing (positive nature) vs pessimism
Andrew still believes that a multi-dimensional individual measurement program will help organisations to focus & reach goals, despite all negative comments (things that may go wrong while measuring) posted by people reading part I & II

Knowledge Plaza: La conoscenza aziendale a portata di click

Mixed by Gregory Culpin (Knowledge Officer @ Whatever) in Enterprise 2.0, Knowledge mgmt, Taxonomy

19 November
An article originally posted on www.socialenterprise.it

Knowledge Plaza offers without a doubt a new and extremely powerful platform for locating and capitalizing business knowledge, skillfully mixing advanced concepts such as social filtering, people tagging, the merge of taxonomies, tags and facets, the use of experts such as vertical search engines. (…)”

Read the full article at www.socialenterprise.it

In my opinion…

Emanuele Quintarelli, an information architect, user experience and social software consultant, wrote up this complimentary article about Knowledge Plaza. If like me you are not Italian literate, check out the following English translation.

Grazie mille per il relè Emanuele and we’ll be glad to gather your feedback for making the interface even more intuitive. ;-)

An Enterprise 2.0 Knowledge Sharing Platform

Mixed by Gregory Culpin (Knowledge Officer @ Whatever) in Enterprise 2.0, Enterprise search, Knowledge mgmt, Social software

17 November
An article originally posted on www.theappgap.com

Knowledge Plaza is a Web-based platform for enterprise search, social bookmarking, knowledge management, information brokerage and expert identification. Every tile, or piece of information, has its own page like members so you can see all the activity related to the information. You can also send a link to the page so others can see the context around the information. I like this in the same way I think the Mosaic concept adds value. You get the context surrounding information and you can share this context. This concept of providing context is pervasive in Knowledge Plaza and I think that is one of its greatest strengths. It takes knowledge management nicely into enterprise 2.0.”

Read the full article at www.theappgap.com

In my opinion…

Bill Ives wrote up this excellent article about Knowledge Plaza at the App Gap, after only a brief tour of the solution. We’re already looking forward to further interaction and collaboration during his next visit to Belgium. ;-)

Quantum Leap: Microsharing for Meetings and Events

Mixed by Gregory Culpin (Knowledge Officer @ Whatever) in Enterprise 2.0, Knowledge mgmt, Trends

12 November
An article originally posted on pistachioconsulting.com

Laura Fitton from Pistachio relayed this short business use case story for Twitter written by Gary Koelling of Best Buy and Blue Shirt Nation fame.

Image representing Twitter as depicted in Crun...

Image via CrunchBase

“We had a meeting today, about 30 of us in a room, where we heard from some very high ranking executives as they took us through their thinking on how to implement a relevant digital strategy. Sounds dreadful right? What was different was that there was a huge tv screen next to an overhead projection of the ppt. On the screen was a web app created by @benhedrington call spy. It was rolling every tweet tagged with #BBYCDS from Twitter. Almost everyone in the room and lots outside the room were tweeting thoughts and questions throughout. There were enough tweets, in fact, that the tag #BBYCDS trended on summize to number two right ahead of “sarah palin” and right behind “halloween.”

And what struck me was the dynamic of this meeting. It was participatory. No one was talking out loud except the guy presenting the ppt. But the conversation was roaring through the room via twitter. It was exploding. People we asking questions. Pointing out problems. Replying to each other all while the ppt was progressing along it’s unwaveringly linear path.”

Read the full article at pistachioconsulting.com

In my opinion…

Microblogging in a single room is the behaviour you’ll see at conferences nowadays, but I was thrilled to discover a company actually practicing this to manage all their meetings and presentations.

Whether you are 5 or 500 people, the ability to instantaneously share ideas and conversations without disrupting presentations almost sounds too wild to one day become common practice. My first impression is however that this could be slightly overkill for smaller groups/companies. Also the fewer the people, the closer the speaker and therefore the more potentially disturbing could microblogging become.

Should critical mass therefore be a requisit? Could we apply the same to web conference meetings and training sessions to dynamically gather feedback? Next step is now to convince the boss to try this out ;-)

What are your thoughts about this?

Does a unique “Enterprise 2.0 in a box” solution exist ?

Mixed by Gregory Culpin (Knowledge Officer @ Whatever) in Enterprise 2.0, Enterprise search, Knowledge mgmt

7 November
An article originally posted on www.socialglass.com

“Recent discussions at work have prompted me to re-iterate something very fundamental that often gets overlooked when it comes to Enterprise 2.0. An organization will never adopt a single social productivity tool. Knowledge will ALWAYS be scattered.

Enterprise search will unlock data and increase the propensity for information (and the knowledge workers who create it) to be discovered. Discoverability leads to recognition, and recognition leads to increased participation. Enterprise 2.0 must be approached holistically.

Clearspace doesn’t do this. Thoughtfarmer doesn’t do this. Mindtouch doesn’t do this. There is no “Enterprise 2.0 in a box” solution. Period.”

Read the full article at www.socialglass.com

In my opinion…

I recently stumbled upon Jeremy Thomas who stated a few months back on Twitter that “Data within the enterprise will never be unified in one place i.e. a wiki, community, KM platform” and that “Search is key”. This followed his post on Social Glass which had been followed up by people such as Jon Husband and Chris McGrath with whom I couldn’t agree more on the fact “Enterprise 2.0 is as much a mindset than tools”. However, I guess you realize that closing the door to new potential solutions actually opens a huge one for being challenged? ;-)

Search is of course important, but in its current state search alone is insufficient. Enterprise search is as broken as web search: too many different sources, too little context. The fact is although it brings silos together, unfortunately context is either left behind or difficult to homogenize when brought in from this diversity of sources and formats.

The only option left is to then give users the ability to build context themselves around all this information once it’s been discovered and/or retrieved.

Funnily enough Jon Husband mentioned PKM (Personal Knowledge Management) which we’ve believed for a long time to be an essential step towards proper adoption of EKM (Enterprise Knowledge Management) solutions.

“Personally essential, collectively critical” : these are actually thoughts which lead our team to develop a few months back what is being recognized as a very elegant I&KM receipe which gathers any form of information (docs, websites, emails, contacts, search tools), but which more importantly allows users to interact around these items. Not only is all your information searchable, but it becomes contextualised under a single coherent umbrella: “No more silos, just context”. Social interaction and productivity then kick in to give you (what we think is) an all-in-one enterprise-wide solution for EKM.

Either way, I’d be more than glad to share thoughts on this with you guys. We are getting very positive feedback about the platform, but it’s definitely a treat to get dubious people on board and convince them this is actually possible;-)

Human Centricity, Social Media and the Knowledge Enterprise

Mixed by Khalid Yagoubi (Developer @ Whatever) in Knowledge mgmt

7 November
An article originally posted on www.cioupdate.com

“Enterprises must reconsider and redraft their knowledge strategy for this “2.0″ world (…) the traditional deployment of centralized content management systems will have to be merged with this newer phenomena of community-driven content generation.”

Read the full article at www.cioupdate.com

In my opinion…

Human factor is often forgotten in knowledge management. This article shows that human is the epicenter of KM. But how to extract and manage knowledge from people ? According to Raj Datta, CKO at MindTree, the solution is in social media and web 2.0.
People need to discuss, give opinions, share and have the feeling to belong to a network, they are not computers. It is why the traditional process-driven approach of KM must be changed into a people-driven approach. Furthermore, the work style of new generations is more fluid and collaborative.
Social media seems to become more and more important for Knowledge Management and can bring innovation in enterprise, just look at open source communities …

Cool Idea: Using People as Search Engines

Mixed by Thomas Moreau (Head of Training @ Whatever) in Enterprise 2.0, Knowledge mgmt

31 October
An article originally posted on Broadband Evolved

“KP is definitely new and innovative and if you get a moment, I would recommend that you take a look. I especially love the concept of using people that you know and trust as a proxy for contextualizing traditional searches…”

Read the full article at www.broadbandevolved.com

In my opinion…

Thanks for this post, Matt. We call it the “EaSE” concept: Experts as Search Engines. Knowledge Plaza lets you perform Google searches inside the collection of Web sites or pages related to a user, and even to a whole group of users.

The Scoop on Knowledge Plaza

Mixed by Gregory Culpin (Knowledge Officer @ Whatever) in Enterprise 2.0, Enterprise search, Knowledge mgmt, Social software

29 October
An article originally posted on scottgavin.info

“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.

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.”

Read the full article at scottgavin.info

In my opinion…

Scott Gavin’s claims about Knowledge Plaza are indeed very broad, however we stand by them as his post and many others’ reveal e.g. Bill Ives’s recent post.

An authentic knowledge hero’s piece of work! ;-)

Social Media vs. Knowledge Management: A Generational War

Mixed by Gregory Culpin (Knowledge Officer @ Whatever) in Knowledge mgmt, Trends

11 October
An article originally posted on www.enterprise2blog.com

“Here’s what’s going on: KM and SM look very similar on the surface, but are actually radically different at multiple levels, both cultural and technical, and are locked in an undeclared cultural war for the soul of Enterprise 2.0. And the most hilarious part is that most of the combatants don’t even realize they are in a war. They think they are loosely-aligned and working towards the same ends, with some minor differences of emphasis. So let me tell you about this war and how it is shaping up.”

Read the full article at www.enterprise2blog.com

In my opinion…

A thought-provoking and captivating insight on how the structured KM approach will disappear to the benefit of Social Media, and how Gen X will cede its unremembered place to the creativity of the Millenials (Gen Y).

Adding Connections Between the Three Levels of Information Management

Mixed by Gregory Culpin (Knowledge Officer @ Whatever) in Enterprise search, Knowledge mgmt

30 September
An article originally posted on Michael Sampson

“Connecting the Individual and Team Levels : there has to be tight (”seamless”) integration between the team and individual levels. This means that the electronic environment that each user works in must support in-the-workflow integration between individual needs and team needs.

Connecting Team and Corporate Level Information to the Individual Level : the concept of “What’s changed that may impact me?” is a key question that drives a lot of our information-related activities. We read the newspaper to see “what’s changed?” We watch the TV news, read blogs, follow Twitter, etc. for this same purpose. And it’s my contention that this same fundamental idea needs to apply in our Intranet environments.”

Read the full article at www.michaelsampson.net

In my opinion…

In this post, Michael Sampson aims at matching his seven-pillar model with James Robertson’s three-level model of how information is managed inside a company. He also sketches a representation of these levels centered around an employee.

Giving employees the ability to be aware of “changes which impact them” not only helps for effective collaboration, but moreover it allows them to make better choices.

Just check out Michael’s draft as a basis for asking yourself “Which levels in my company does information flow well through (or not)?”