Bill: June 2008 Archives

When you run across an interesting article/blog post/site on the Web, how do you share it within your organization?

How do you collaborate on this shared information?

How do you manage this shared information?

How do you manage this collaboration?

Email

Email is by far the most popular way to share information within an organization.  Some people will find an article and send the link as well as comments to select colleagues.  Some organizations have aliases set up that help syndicate this information appropriately (e.g. marketing@companyName.com)

But email is messy.

How do you manage a discussion among two or more people on shared information? Back and forth emails are terribly inefficient.

Social Bookmarking

Social bookmarking is largely non-Enterprise.  Del.icio.us is great for storing my bookmarks and sharing comments with a friend, but it's user-centric--it depends too much on the individual to be effective for groups. 

Diigo, Mento and Fleck are social bookmarking tools--feature loaded and fun--but they too are user centric.

Still, these aren't secure and definately not built for enterprise use.  Cogenz may be a solution for some--social bookmarking specifically for enterprise.  It's fast, secure and cheap!  ConnectBeam also applies successful "Web 2.0" themes for an enterprise solution for online media sharing.

JotSpot (and other make-your-own wiki providers)

Internal wikis are great for knowledge management.  They're familiar to most, fairly easy to use and simple to implement.  Trusted providers are also secure.  They can be built into a repository of knowledge, share documents and provide valuable information for internal use.  Services like these are group-centric--the collective effort of the organization builds this asset. 

But they're slow!  They're nearly static.  They take a lot of time and effort (relative to Social Bookmarking) just to contribute something.  Realistically, few would use a wiki to quickly share a link and a few comments. 

Microsoft SharePoint (and other sharing/collaboration platforms)

SharePoint does it all and more.  Users can build a huge knowledge base, collaborate on documents and share media.  SharePoint, like an internal wiki, is also group-centric.  More and more, platform collaboration services are adopting the successful elements of Web 2.0 (i.e. tagging, social networks, profiles, etc) and applying them to the enterprise--socalled "Enterprise 2.0".

SharePoint is great for medium to large organizations that can justify the expense, but small to medium-size organizations can't justify paying $80 per user + server expenses for SharePoint.  Moreso, small organizations would rarely take advantage of such feature-rich and powerful environments.  They need something simple, lightweight and ready now.

Conclusion

So what's needed for small to medium-size organizations for online media sharing?  Something small, lightweight and easy to use.  Something that allows for, faciliates and promotes sharing.  Something that is group-centric and manages collaboration.

I call this something Noozroom...and it's almost ready.

 

This post is similar to the "want" vs. "would like" post a few months ago.  In other words, you get to hear my rant on self-help philosophy.

I find myself saying this all the time, and perhaps you do to: "I need to [get something done]".

• "I need to write this blog post"
• "I need to call that girl"
• "I need to be productive"

But saying "I need to" often translates into "when I get around to it"--there's no intention or motivation to do these things.

If you find yourself saying "I need to" and it rarely results in getting things done, there's a quick fix. 

If this is something you really must do, and not something you're planning on "putting off" anyway, try this: "I will..."

• "I will write this blog post"
• "I will call that girl"
• "I will be productive"

And to be even more effective, add a time, deadline, or call to action:

• "I will write this blog post today"
• "I will call that girl at 8pm"
• "I will be product now"

If what you need to do is really meaningful to you--meaningful that it gets done--then just changing a few words may change your effectiveness.

Thanks to TechCrunch Elevator Pitches, Internet entrepreneurs now have an outlet for their pitches...and an inlet for my criticism.

Do...

• ...get to the point
• a bad example of this
• ...create mental imagery (pitch)
  
• ...relate your startup/idea/concept to something people already know.
• "Kongregate is YouTube for games" (pitch)

Don't...

• ...be boring, mumble/speak softly, have a unibrow  (pitch)
  
• ...be a douche bag
• ...use buzzwords, especially not in large quantities (pitch)
  

Book Review: The Effective Executive by Peter Drucker.

This is the first Drucker book I have read.  I've heard so many rave reviews about his books that I just had to try one.  I've listened to a few audio programs from Drucker and gained a lot from those, but the book was disappointing.

Like many business books, I felt like this could have been summed up in a blog post or two.  Drucker gives long-winded explanations that consist of saying the same thing over and over again.  Simply bolding a sentence or two of the main points would have gotten the message across.  Further, Drucker backs up his explanation with weak examples that break the flow of his long-winded explanations.

Towards the end of the book I skipped most of the examples (conveniently provided in bullet point paragraphs) and attempted to extract only the main points.

Here are the two "nuggets" that he provided that I found enlightening:

1. Effective executives do NOT multi-task.  Effective executives focus on one thing at a time for maximum results.
2. Effective decisions are not based on the facts, they are based on opinions.  The facts are often too hard to find and not substantial enough to make a meaningful decision.  Opinions of those around the effective executive are more important because their outcomes can be determined by testing the hypothesis through a trial.
   

I've been neglecting this blog lately.  I'm sorry.

I suppose I followed the typical "I want to start blogging!" pattern--writing quite a bit at the beginning then quickly tapering off to nothing.  Womp Womp.

I do have things to say, so I am formally making the commitment to blog at least once a week.

As for Russ...?