Dave Pollard does it again.  Here's his recipe for helping business organizations consider, test and implement the use of blogs.

Very well done.  An excerpt:

I've written before about Blogs in Business and the role I think they could play. But my idealism -- the desire to have a better, simpler blog product with some better social networking functionality before we try to sell it to business -- is giving way to my impatience. A couple of business leaders have challenged me to develop a pragmatic strategy for effectively introducing blogs into a business today. Here's what I said. First, the strategy for doing so must respect some fairly unorthodox principles. If it doesn't, blogs will just end up being one more awkward and confusing part of already unwieldy and underused corporate Intranets.

...thanks to Hugh Macleod of Gaping Void:

 

 

From Ross' blog

 

... to start composing as the webfeeds keep rolling in ?

From Dave Winer's scripting.com:

Apple: "Safari RSS, a new version of Apple’s innovative web browser that provides instant access to the most current RSS information on the web." 

Apple also announced Tiger Server, which includes David Czarnecki's Blojsom weblog CMS bundled, an XML-RPC interface, as well as publishing content in RSS. 

Here's a really cool demo of their RSS reader. Based on squinting at this demo, it appears they did it right. It's not three-pane, it's one panel, with the items displayed, from all your feeds, in reverse chronologic order. This is the most efficient way to read for the user. A lot of designers think RSS readers should work just like mail apps, but that's too inefficient. With mail you need to keep spam and mail list content segregated. For news, you need a different interface. I've been saying it for years, the Apple designers apparently didn't get sucked into the design mistake so many have. One thing I wish Apple had done differently is respect the white-on-orange icon. Such a small thing, but so important. One would think Apple, of all, would understand the value of consistent user interface. 

 

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Via Earl Mardle's blog - an interesting story on the development of a tool that seems very very similar in concept to the tool we are developing.

I've even been testing out the metaphor of a "digital pencil" for the Knowledge Age with my colleagues.

Thanks, Earl.

Minority report - Here We Come

No, not the suspended animation stuff, the super cool gloves and the 3D holographic, interactive, all-enveloping display. This from the BBC Digital pen plus Pick and Beam

Dr Rekimoto's lab has extended the drag and drop technique used in most PC software to create a 'pick and drop' technique. So the owner of a handheld computer can pick up a file from their device, using a special pen, and drop it onto the screen of another computer, by placing the pen on its screen. These technologies are very interesting for truly intuitive interaction Ian McClelland, Philips He refers to this approach as 'direct manipulation'. It allows people to visually select and move information in physical space, rather than having to understand abstract concepts of networks and servers. The pick and drop technique would make it easy for two colleagues in a meeting to exchange files between their laptop computers, new acquaintances to pass each other electronic business cards, or friends to swap references to websites or music tracks they like.

Another technique that the labs has developed is referred to as 'pick and beam'. This uses displays projected onto tables and walls, using data projectors, that act as extended working spaces. Documents can be dragged using a special pen from a computer desktop into these spaces. There they can be spread out or exchanged, allowing people to work with them almost as if they were paper documents. Remember the mouse "These technologies are very interesting for truly intuitive interaction," said Ian McClelland, a senior design consultant at Philips Digital Systems Laboratory in the Netherlands.

Continue reading "Minority report - Here We Come"

On JOHO, a bit of  a pushback to Scott Rosenberg's dismal forecast:

I do agree that it'll take a long time for corporate public blogging to spread beyond easy industries, such as high tech. But, I think it'll happen faster than Scott does. First, internal blogging will happen relatively quickly because it's a great way for employees to build their reputations, a motive as powerful as the urge not to piss off your boss. Those internal blogs will go onto the extranet and eventually some will make it onto the Internet.

Second, the first public blogs we're likely to see outside of the sw industry will be more like the Dean blog than anything else: They'll be always upbeat but still lively, full of voice, and worth reading by enthusiasts.

[Note: I have never been right with a single prediction.]

 

 

From David Hornik on Venture Blog. 

As a pitch, it's a bit long, and so it probably wouldn't get any serious listening-to past about the third "blah".

As a point of view, it's what many software developers and technology business people have to look forward to - even though it's at least a reasonable bet that there have been many odd twists and turns in human behaviour due to sociology in the last few hundred years.  Business as we know it today, and the ruthless pursuit of efficiency and market share, are actually relatively new concepts for us humans, and only maybe a hundred-plus years old.  (See Scott Rosenberg's prognosis about blogging in corporate organizations - the item posted directly below this one).

And I think it's also a safe bet that VC's don't have all the answers - they tend, in my experience to lean towards the smug side of things.  But then again, money is power, and they don't have to listen and watch and see things changing if they don't want to.

Personally, I think it's an open question, and I would respons with the following quote:

The speed at which we innovate far outstrips the speed with which we integrate ...

and I wouldn't count out the compound effects of digital generations coming into the business and work world ... just yet.

And ... if most everything that ever gets funded in the IT/software field is all about efficiency and features and "where's the revenue", without any attention to sociology, in another ten or so years we'll all be in one of two camps - we'll be a corporate Borg or serving corporations in Borg-like ways, or unemployed (except for a few percentage points of population who are self-employed doing something they actually like).

 

David Hornik - A VC's point of view on social networking and social software:

Thanks to Seb's Open Research. 

Tom Smith comes up with a totally rockin' list of  formulas that explain the success of weblogs in learning / knowledge management. Via the social software channel.


    •     Bad Is the New Good ( It Really Is )
    •      Some Things Just Don't Work (And Never Did, Let's Get Over It)
    •      People need to PeripherizeTM, Not Focus ( There is Too Much Information )
    •      Thinking Out Loud ( The Best Place to Do It )
    •      Informality Fucking Rocks ( Everybody Hates the Suits - Really )
    •      You Don't Know What You Know ( Really )
    •      You Probably Know Too Much To Even Begin Writing It Down ( Really Really )
    •      A Little And Often is Best ( Your Mum Was Right )
    •      The Link is God ( Which makes Google the Devil )
    •      Person Centric not Place Centric (You can only be in one place at a time)
    •      Personal Taxonomies (Let Dublin Core catch up rather than dictate)
    •     You Own Your Blog ( You Are Your Blog )
    •      Information Exists in the Context of People (And Always Has)
    •     If It's Not Documented, It Really Doesn't Exist
    •     Democracy is the Least Worst of the Alternatives (Let's Get Over It)
    •     Reflection is the New Black (Who'd have thought?)
    •     Lets Plan To Start Now, Plan Later (That's The Plan Anyway)
    •     Passwords Blow Goats
    •     Distributed AND Centralized (not OR)
    •     Nobody Owns the Blog Concept
    •     If Blogs are the Songs, RSS is the Home-made Compilation CD (RSS is cool)
    •     People Can Cope With Simple ( Just about, but not always )
    •     Don't Try And Make The Computer Do Things It Can't And We Can ( i.e Manage Knowledge, Make            Sense, Inspire, See Connections, Make Jokes, Cock            Up)
    •      Google for "Small Pieces Loosely Joined"

Via Dave Winer's Scripting News:


Seattle Times reports that Bill Gates may start a weblog. "Bill's blog won't be all business."

Tim Jarrett: "Being linked by Bill will become the holy grail of blogging at Microsoft and will somewhat diminish the thrill of getting linked by Scoble."

From Seb Pacquet's Open Research


Did you know the US army has embraced collaborative weblogs on a private network? Greg Searle, who's the founder and chief scientist at Tomoye, explained how that came about. It's a very interesting story:  two company commanders -tony & russell - who lived next to one another in Hawaii discovered the incredible value of informal conversation among peers for learning.

 They ended up wroting a book titled "Taking the Guidon" which became wildly popular within the army and led to a guerilla knowledge management effort among people in that position. A community of practice enabled by PHP-Nuke sprang up below the radar and interest bubbled up over about two years.

Despite obvious resistance among people in the upper ranks, it was eventually recognized that you need a network to fight networks, and this internal blogging activity is now officially endorsed, which is quite an about-face for the military culture.

Greg said the passion of the participants was a key factor in the success of the CoP. Also, when the survival of your men depends on learning, it provides a powerful incentive to find effective ways to learn.


.

Blogging Talk


Blogging's recognition as an important medium is growing. I've gotten several calls lately from journalists writing about or discussing the phenomenon:
Business Week did a story called "Blogging with the Boss' Blessing" (my quote got truncated, but I did say it).

NPR's Talk of the Nation devoted part of yesterday's show to blogging, and had me join the discussion. (The NPR show was sparked by Time Magazine's recent story.)

Critical mass is approaching, it seems.

Note: I'll be speaking on a panel later this week at the Supernova conference in Silicon Valley. This is shaping up as an excellent gathering.

From Business Week, via the blog Future Hi


Digital Convergence

There's an interesting article in Business Week about the growing convergence between media and personal communication devices. Most of the article is pretty business-oriented but there are some interesting bits that tie in to our ongoing discussions about convergence, paradigm shifts, and technological evolution. It's especially interesting to consider the impact these technologies will have on communication and information in the emerging global brain. Just as the complexity of the human mind evolved to become self-aware, will the global mind have in the not-too-distant future a similar awakening?

Some excerpts :
That sets up a collision of three massive industries. In one corner stands the $1.1 trillion computer and software biz, with its American leaders. In another is the $225 billion consumer-electronics sector, with its strong Asian roots and a host of aggressive new Chinese players. The third camp is the $2.2 trillion communications industry, a behemoth that extends from wireless powerhouses in Asia and Europe to the networking stars of Silicon Valley. All three groups will have a hand in building the digital wonders that are headed our way...

The result is a Big Bang of convergence, and it's likely to produce the biggest explosion of innovation since the dawn of the Internet...Hossein Eslambolchi, president of AT&T Laboratories (T ), thinks the changes ahead will be as significant as the advent of commercial aviation in connecting people and communities. "This is going to be the most disruptive period in the past 50 years," he says...

Driving this long-awaited trend are two powerful factors: the relentless evolution of technology and the tech industry's hunger for growth. For decades, the mere idea of a computer company making Brazilian TVs or French phones would have been laughable. Those markets were cloistered behind varying standards and a maze of diverse technologies. But with the spread of digital technology and the rise of Internet standards, those differences are fast melting away...

As these technologies evolve over the next decade, a new digital world will emerge. Analysts predict that these nascent networks will speed up by an average of 50% a year, the historic norm... As networks grow and chips continue to strengthen, companies will work madly to come up with winning products and services. Within the next five years, industry analysts say, practically every machine in the wide realm of communications -- every gadget that sings, talks, beams images, or messages -- will sport a powerful computer and a network connection. And every bit of digital information, whether it's a phone call, a song, a Web page, or a movie, will flow among these machines in the very same river of data...

The dramatic shifts ahead are likely to shake up age-old concepts at the foundation of our economy. In the coming markets of moving bits, who owns what?

 Newcomers have defined each stage of the Information Era. And the age of convergence offers perhaps the richest yet. Why? The networks now taking shape will link together more than 1 billion people, not just with words or voices, but with music, video, games, and commerce. A vast chunk of the world economy is going digital -- and for the next few years it's up for grabs.

This revolution won't quiet down anytime soon.

.... More companies are helping employees to speak freely -- and bond with customers.

An article in the most recent Business Week about how companies are turning to blogs to communicate with and amongst employees and customers.

Source link: http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/83/open_thingsleadersdo.html
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