Gary Vaughan's Collaboration Times

The Formal vs. Informal Debate

I am struck by the differences in approach between formal and informal information systems and related technology.  While each "camp" and its zealous advocates often compete for attention within our organizations, in practice they often overlap in addressing practical business problems.  It seems to me that a mix of "best of breed" enterprise solutions can be drawn from both these "worlds."

By formal, I mean powerful, structured IT systems such as Microsoft SharePoint, or comparable COTS products from IBM, Oracle and others.  By informal, I refer to the unstructured and rapidly evolving area of open source collaboration and content management systems, as well as such proprietary products as Google Apps/Wave, LinkedIn and Facebook.

This spring an excellent  speaker (Tony Byrne) from CMS Wire addressed a D.C. Web Managers Roundtable about the continuum between more powerful, structured, and difficult to use proprietary systems and less powerful, more informal and more user-friendly social media and other apps.

A mirror to this technology debate is found in information management processes: 

• project management, in the structure of traditional project management (a la PMI's PMBOK guiding principles) vs. the fluidity of Agile Software development methods;

• or the "management" focus of KM with such tools as knowledge repositories, communities and after-action reviews vs. the more free-wheeling, conversational bent of the new, rapidly evolving social media tools such as Facebook.

My opinion is that any enterprise should be able to draw from both sides of this debate to meet practical business needs.  The challenge is where to strike the balance given pressing user demands as well as enterprise needs for standardization and efficiency. 

 

Experimenting with LinkedIn Groups

For about the past month I have been experimenting with LinkedIn Groups on the Web.  At present I am a member of some 16 groups, mainly in the areas of SharePoint, project management and international development, plus some others on Web 2.0, ECM and knowledge management.  See my LinkedIn profile for a listing of the groups.

 

In addition, I am a member of GovLoop and their discussion groups on project management, Microsoft Office and knowledge management.  I also have started using Twitter "micro-blogging" and Facebook threaded discussions, mostly for professional purposes, in addition to relying on email notices, newspapers, and continued face-to-face attendance at conferences, users groups and staff meetings.

 

I manage all these online discussions through alerts to my hotmail account, and to date I find I spend on average about a half hour reviewing or responding to them, mostly prior to the beginning and after the end of the work day, plus about 45 min each weekend.

 

The one "thread" that holds all this learning and interaction together is my personal blog, published on the Web on this Typepad blog.  My overall approach was inspired by consultant colleague Dick Davies' success in mixing blogging and group discussion (see my prior February 28 blog post).

 

Based on LinkedIn and other discussions I have engaged in to date, utility seems to be in two-way learning, making new contacts, and reinforcing existing relationships.  Downsides are multiple sign-ons and need to sift through email alerts to multiple discussions for points of interest and engagement. 

 

To be continued...! 

Web 2.0: Back to basics...

Here is a simple and succinct explanation of Web 2.0 technology in a paper by a company called MicroAgility and entitled "What every CXO should know about Web 2.0."I recently came across the paper through a posting on the LinkedIn Government IT Community.

The article provides a very basic description of Web 2.0 for either the neophyte, or for a manager prone to either dismiss its importance, or to not see the "forest" of Web 2.0 potential given all the "trees" of competing tools and vendors. Indeed, the article stays away from noting specific tools, and instead imparts basic technical concepts such as wikis, blogs, RSS, as well as the importance of customer business needs and process in driving technology implementation.

Dick Davies' Blogging Approach with Open Source Tools

I recently had lunch with a former college classmate, Dick Davies, to discuss his business application of Web 2.0 tools.

 

Dick is making excellent use of simple tools (LinkedIn, Google Apps, Blogger) in broadly sharing his expertise (he is an independent sales/marketing consultant) on the Internet. 

 

The heart of his approach is to publish an insightful blog with at least 2 posts a week.  He then replicates his blog message (along with other comments)  as posts among some 20 different Web 2.0 or sales-oriented LinkedIn groups.  He keeps in touch with reactions to his posts or comments by scanning alerts on his Gmail.  Using very lean web design, he also provides key information about himself and his work  on a simple web site.

 

What I found fascinating about this was how Dick was able to tie all these tools together, allowing him to sustain dynamic conversations with thousands of professional contacts, which are far beyond his normal circle.  His time investment in keeping up this web presence seems reasonable, but weekly discipline is key.  He balances this virtual outreach by personally keeping up past contacts along with attendance at D.C. area conferences, trade shows and meetings. 

 

I am still not sure how exactly one could apply this approach inside large government organizations, but I do plan to reactivate my TypePad blog on the Web... and in time broadening my participation in LinkedIn groups.

 

In the meantime, feel free to check out Dick’s integrated web marketing approach:  he sums it up in this chart.  His individual sites and tools are listed below:

 

· His web site (Google Apps)

 

· His LinkedIn profile page (LinkedIn)

 

· His blog (Blogger)

 

Recent conferences and key take-aways

Over the past six weeks I attended some interesting events worth noting:

- A seminar by Facebook's Director of Internationalization, Ghassan Haddad, on "How Facebook Makes Crowdsourcing Work: And how you can achieve a similar success" held at the IDB on Feb 4. An interesting presentation on how Facebook is applying crowd-sourcing to translating its social networking service to a wide variety of different countries and languages, and jump-starting its own growth in the bargain.

- An open discussion sponsored by DevInfo on "What’s New in Online Sources of Information on International Relations" and held at the NED in D.C. Area librarians exchanged views, web resources and applications on how to simplify users' access to data, often by a new approach of personalizing attention through the use of area specialists.

- A luncheon presentation/discussion on "Content and Records Management, Getting Stakeholder Buy-in", by John Montel, former senior director of General Dynamics and sponsored by AIIM in Rosslyn on Jan 14. My key take-away: records management for the federal government is a daunting proposition, and best attempted in small pieces that can show demonstrable results.

More later, as I prepare for my trip to Bogota, Colombia in early March, and my plans to research for State local public and private sector organizations on performance and useability for SharePoint and related social media technologies.

SUGDC SharePoint Conference a Big Success!

We had over 200 attendees, 18 vendor exhibitors and more than 40 speakers at our annual SharePoint Users Conference in Dulles, Virginia last June 26-27.  A good time was had by all!  Thanks to everyone who helped make this event such a success! 

At the conference, I gave a presentation on a "SDLC for SharePoint", and also shared a draft white paper on the same subject.  Given the great feedback from this event, I plan to repeat the presentation at SharePoint Saturday in Baltimore on July 25, and again at a meeting of the Richmond SharePoint Users Group on July 30.  I intend to post online my final slides and white paper later this month.

SDLC Presentation for SharePoint conference

I previewed my presentation on "An SDLC for SharePoint" at the last May 14 meeting of our SUGDC users group in Reston.  The talk focused on how one might adapt the System Development Life Cycle to help a large enterprise better plan and implement SharePoint by melding governance, project and program management concepts.  The session was well received, and I have been invited to repeat it at the July 30 evening meeting of the SharePoint users group in Richmond.

Reminder:  our SUGDC SharePoint users conference is shaping up to be an exciting event!  Over 45 speakers, 15 exhibitors, and growing...check out the program and pre-register at the extended early bird rate of $299 at www.sugdc.org! I will be teaming with i3SolutionsLinc Williams to talk further about "SharePoint Planning Overview and Lifecycle" on 11:30 Friday, June 26 in a Track 2 session for the Conference.

June Conference: Mark your Calendars!

The SharePoint Users Group of Northern Virginia (SUGNOVA) will be holding its third regional SharePoint users conference at the Holiday Inn Dulles on Friday-Saturday, June 26-27.  The conference will be similar in format to our event last June, with three topical tracks for managers, administrators and developers, plus a wide variety of exhibitors in the field.  Conference details should be available soon on the SUGNOVA site.

In the interim, anyone interested in speaking or attending the program is welcome to contact me, since I will again be assisting SUGNOVA in organizing this year's conference agenda.  We expect another "full house", so please sign up soon!

Next SUGNOVA Meeting in Reston February 12

I plan to attend the next meeting of our SharePoint Users Group of Northern Virginia on February 12.  Presentations will include one by Susquetech on SharePoint and social networking, plus a demo by Prosoft Systems International of how to apply their EBAX tool to enhance usage of Excel in conjunction with SharePoint.  Susquetech will also likely promote their upcoming conference (I have registered!) in Baltimore March 22-24.

The SUGNOVA users meeting next Thursday starts with networking at 6 PM, with the program about an hour later.  Location is at HireStrategy's offices in Reston (directions)...hope to see some colleagues there!

Growing Functionality of LinkedIn

As many of us examine the potential of various social network tools (e.g. SharePoint MySites, etc.), you might go check out LinkedIn.  This professional business network has added various new features over the last few months. A recent overview article from Information Today notes this professional network's functionality and popularity (20 million members), and another from ABCNews.com points to screen shots of how it works.  Membership is free, as are most basic services.

I have also started tinkering with it:  see my evolving online profile using document and slide-sharing features; people search to locate colleagues; and participation in a large (over 3,200 members) SharePoint discussion group, as well as other groups on Web 2.0 and project management.  Many other features and "widgets" are included on polling, workspaces, etc.