Library clips

Usually Business Units (BU’s) have a HTML profile page on the Intranet…this is where you go to read what a BU is about, what they offer, who the contacts are, etc…but these pages are usually slow to update and non-interactive.

Some BU’s suggested to me that since their online Community of Practice (online group) is taking off, perhaps they will just have a link on their intranet page to their Community of Practice (CoP)…basically the their intranet page just serving as an entry point (basically a re-direct link)

NOTE: Our CoPs are not just about communication; you can design the homepage however you like using HTML widgets, so they can look very informative like an Intranet page.

Now the problem with this scenario is that a BU online CoP/group is not really something a person not in that BU wants to see as an informative profile page for that BU

ie. online CoPs/groups aren’t usually about informing a general audience, they are about a group of members sharing and learning on a topic…or even doing actual work (yes I know ours are called CoPs, but they are just online group spaces really)

At first I thought BU pages on intranets need to be more like wikis, but then what about a news channel (to inform people) and a feedback channel (for others to ask questions)

How can we have some of the tools we see in our online CoPs/groups, but for a general audience like a BU intranet page serves?

Then it hit me, “Pages”!!!!

A BU will do work/share in online group spaces eg. Facebook groups

A BU will broadcast/inform, and gather feedback from the organisation at large by using a “page” eg Facebook Pages

A Facebook page is similar to a group but designed for a different purpose…a group has “members”, whereas a “page” is “liked”

Only it wouldn’t be Facebook, it would be IBM Connections or Jive or Socialcast or Yammer (yikes Yammer already called their docs/wiki, “pages”)

NOTE: It doesn’t have to be just BU’s, it can be any group who need an online group to enable members to do their thing, but also an online page to inform everyone else

Example

The Mechanical Engineers “online group space” is where members do work and share

The Mechanical Engineers “online page space” is where they broadcast communications to the rest of the organisation on recent happenings, and where people can post questions or share stuff (in Facebook this is called the “wall”)…and it also acts as an “about” page, just like the “Info” section on a Facebook page.

Another example

Our Document Management team have an online group space to do work…

…when they have new releases, they need to communicate to the power users of the document management system, these are the project assistants (PA) and document controllers (DC).

At the moment their online group space doubles up as a “page” in that it has an extra blog to communicate to these audiences (PA, DC) and an extra forum for these audiences to ask questions…when PA’s and DC’s visit the Document Management online group space, it’s really not catered to them at all, other than that extra blog and forum which don’t really get much real estate at all on the group space.

It’s true with our current technology, they could just create a new online group space to do this, and cater the whole space to PA’s and DC’s, but it just ‘aint the same purpose-design as a “page”.

So here’s my thinking…

Rather than a team having two online group spaces (one for them, and one for them to communicate to the org which also doubles up as their information profile/about page, like you see on Intranets)…

How about they have one online group space, and one online page!

So basically “pages” are the new type of Intranet/About page for teams…

…whereas groups are where those teams work, which generally speaking most others in the organisation are not going to be that interested in (remember with scale, ambient awareness can become noise)

Just like online groups are not just for teams (you can have a group about anything), same goes with “pages”; not only can teams use a “page” as their general audience page…but any type of event, topic, etc… could use a page

Eg. If I was running an event, I may use a group space to coordinate it with my team, and a “page” space as the actual event webpage that a general audience can read and interact…both spaces have different purpose, therefore are slightly designed differently.

Perhaps if you create a group space, there is always a link in the admin area for you to create a “page” for this group, and vice versa…this way group/page owners are aware of what’s possible.

Anyway this is typical of this space, where the consumer web is years ahead…and yes, often the functional/features do cross over.

NOTE: I came across this just before publishing Facebook Groups Vs Pages: The Definitive Guide

According to Facebook, groups are “for members of groups to connect, share and even collaborate on a given topic or idea”…Facebook Pages “allow entities such as public figures and organizations to broadcast information to their fans.”

GROUP - share/collaborate (member-based)
PAGE - broadcast/feedback (fan-based)

In other words the “page” is like the quarterly newsletter that is emailed out to the whole organisation telling them what’s being going on in their silo, only now it’s real-time, interactive and more of a social silo…yes the newsletter could still possibly be sent out as a curation of “page” content.

ADDED: I just remembered something, perhaps the concept of “pages” is what Socialcast is aiming for with it’s “Categories” feature, and for Tibbr with its “Subjects” feature.

I don’t post in this blog often as I leave it for long pieces, but don’t get the time lately…you can check out my daily posts at Snippets.

Anyway here’s a good excuse for a post…

Dr Peter John Chen, Department of Government and International Relations, University of Sydney is publishing a book in 2012 about the Internet and Australia, and politics.

As part of it he’s doing research on characteristics of blog readers…I’m happy to help out on his endeavor by asking my readers if they are interested in sparing 5 to 10 minutes on a survey about this topic

The survey is open to readers of the blog who live in Australia.

All responses in the survey are anonymous and confidential.

The survey can be found here: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/Australian_blog_readers

I will be gaining access to a summary of the results and will share them with those who are interested