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On my tumblr blog I posted about email being sucked into an activity stream (dashboard), and the owner being able to make it public, or replying to the email from within the stream, etc… The idea being that email, is just like flickr, youtube, delicious…it’s just yet another source…but it’s different in that people only see it, if you click a button to make it public.

I suggest you read the tumblr post to get up to speed.

Now…

Imagine an enterprise version of friendfeed as your social network/microblogging/activity stream eg. Socialcast

Firstly, let’s get this out of the way…when having a discussion, and you need to write an extended reply, you don’t need to use email as the enterprise activity stream allows more than 140 characters…which is good as this doesn’t split up the conversation.

Now imagine if an enterprise activity stream allowed you to follow your email client (of course no-one else could do this for privacy reasons).

Wow, bye bye email inbox, as the enterprise activity stream is the new inbox.

From within enterprise activity stream you could reply to this email which would send an Outook email, or if the receiver is on enterprise activity stream you could reply with a comment…look at that a conversation thread where each element may have happened on different products.
At any point you can cherry pick one of your emails that you see in your enterprise activity stream and make it public in your profile stream. People following you will now see the Outlook email title and click it to read it.

You could also do this at the time of sending your email from Outlook ie. when you send your email to someone it will also appear in your enterprise activity stream profile.

Same when replying to an Outlook email from the enterprise activity stream ie. when in the enterprise activity stream you send a reply to Outlook and it can also be made public in the activity stream

Hmm, not sure if you could send an Outlook email (not a reply, but a new email) from within the enterprise activity stream…that would be like sending a tweet from Friendfeed…not a reply tweet, but an initial tweet..or a direct message, etc…

Now imagine this…

You are using your enterprise microblogging/activity stream to do a task with co-workers.

If you need to liase with someone in your company who is not on the task, you can still use the enterprise activity stream
eg. in the comment of the task post you could @reply to this person on the edge of the task, and they can comment back.
This way your co-workers know what is happening on your leg of the task ie. you don’t have to tell them (report back to base), or narrate your work…in this instance, there is no such thing as an “update”, as they “observing” you work in the open.

Now this ain’t gonna work if the person on the edge of the task is an external party eg a vendor, supplier, client.

But what if you were in Outlook and sent the supplier an email and also chose for it to post in the enterprise activity stream as well….or perhaps you are in the enterprise activity stream and choose to create an email which becomes a post as well (or create an email which becomes a comment within a post)…this is sending the Outlook email from within the microblogging app itself so it instantly becomes a post or a comment.

Voila, your co-workers know exactly what stage you are at. They don’t have to ask you how you are going with the supplier, they already know, as you cross-posted the email you sent the supplier as a comment under the task post in the stream…this didn’t have to happen after the fact, this cross-posting can happen at the time you are sending the email (keeping in mind the email can be sent from Outlook or from within the stream).

Now when the supplier replies to your email you will see that in Outlook or your enterprise activity stream, depending where you are at the time…we hope that our head is no longer in Outlook as the enterprise activity stream is the new inbox/dashboard.

If you are in enterprise activity stream at that time, you can click a button to make it (the email reply from the sender) public so it appears as a comment.
If you are in Outlook at the time, you somehow have to also be able to make it send as a comment to your activity stream…I haven’t thought this through technically or how user-centric it is (ie. you don’t have to think). Making an email cross-post to the stream as a post is easy enough, but to cross-post it as a comment within a post means you need to email it to the post email address (or something like that), which sucks as it means you have to hunt around for this emailID, which is not smooth and user-centric…it would be a hassle…drag and drop would be nice

This is a follow-up to my post Enterprise microblogging needs a facelift to rival email.

In that post I talked about adding an item in the stream to your Watchlist

• This way you can keep in the loop about a conversation without you having to be a poster or a commenter

I also talked about communally grouping items via contributors tagging them with a hashtag

• This way you can keep in the loop about the greater task that is generating all these items

Differences

• You are not being cc:ed, rather you "pull" the content to you (filtering your own information)
  • you can be @mentioned which is like the to: or cc: field
    • but this won’t happen in every post and comment, so it’s up to people to add it to their Watchlist
• The sender has an understanding of who needs to be involved in a conversation, but this is not always apparent at the start of a task, and there are plenty of people on the edges who need to be consulted that emerge
  • Now anyone can find a conversation, add it to their Watchlist, get involved

Deeper than In-the-flow and Above-the-flow

A while back a defining post was made on the difference between working Above-the-Flow (volunteering to share information and experiences based on engagement, trust, audience, reciprocity), and In-the-Flow (communicating and asking questions about tasks using social tools rather than email…doing what you are already doing in new tools).

Well what I want to describe here is going deeper than In-the-Flow…to the artifacts of the activity itself.

Example

We have a web conference about a task that involves people across teams.

We set up a group space.

We use this group space to ask the task team questions.

We use this group space to communicate our individual progress to the task members.

Why do I have to go to a blog to describe to other task members about my progress?

Let me explain…

An action item that came up in the initial meeting was for a member of the task to contact someone in IT to find out where we can host our database.

Once he found this out, he communicated back to the task members by fowarding his email conversation with the IT guy

OR

By blogging about this email conversation he had.

But you kind of feel silly blogging about something when you can just easily fwd it…it’s just easier.

Yes blogging it stores it for all to see, and keeps the conversation centralised…but it needs to feel natural. One positive step is to forward your email to the blogs email address, this way further comments about this is centralised around the blog post.

Deep In-the-Flow (Embedded In-the-Activity)

There is a better way…

Why report your progress by updating task members about it (whether in email or a blog)…

when instead they can see your conversation as it happens.

MICROBLOGGING AND HASHTAGS

Watch what happens when all task members follow the hashtag for this task:

Notice here how Task Member A does not have to write a blog post or forward an email to Task Member B or any of the other task members.

Why? Because all the task members are following the hashtag.

Task Member A is no longer the middleman to report the conversations he/she is having at the edges when doing their part of the task. They don’t have to forward an email or report progress as everyone can already know "as it happens."

ie. when on a task we don’t just converse with task members, we need to speak to random others in the organisation to get information from, authorise, or simply consult with as part of a task member doing their bit of the task

All task members (and anyone else) can now see the conversations each member is having with both task members and with indirect task members they need to consult with.

Indirect task members such as @ITguy can get involved at anytime without having to go through a task member; as long as they use the hashtag all task members will be in the loop.

What I’m getting to is you don’t need to report status or progress, as everyone can already see the conversations you are having.

Traditionally, if I were to report back to the group the progress of my task I would examine all my email conversations and write an email or a blog post on my progress…kind of like a real informal reporting. Or I would upload my emails which no-one will read.

But now people can have access to the artifacts without me having to forward them, or without me having to report about them.

This is a major difference between a closed system like email and an open microblogging system with the use of hashtags.

To reiterate the two main theme’s here:

1. People can now see the raw conversation as it happens, you no-longer have to report back to base…as people at base are privy to your conversation as it unfolds.

2. As a task member I am no longer a middleman in interpreting and communicating the progress of my part of the task, as you can see what I’m doing. Plus other task members can interact with the people on the edges (indirect task members) on the details of my part of the task.

Where it doesn’t apply

I’ve made clear that this works as a replacement to email, but when doing your part of a task you may have phone and face-to-face conversations with 3rd parties…in that case you do have to write a status update reporting your progress

Work products Deep In-the-Flow (Embedded In-the-Activity)

Aside from open conversations with both members of the task and people on the edges that are consulted about various parts of the task; we also have output documents eg. deliverables and supporting materials.

We no longer have to communicate (email or write a blog post) to people that we have just added a document related to our task. We simply do this at the time of adding the document.

The Activity stream of the microblogging app will suck in items added to the Document Management System (DMS) via an API

If we take another look at the hashtag stream we will see that the act of adding this document and a description has resulted in posting a new item into the stream (see the 5th post down)

Summary

This post focuses on a sweet spot in performing tasks.

Why?

It’s as easy as email.

You don’t have to set up a group space.

All you need to do is use microblogging (utlising Watchlists and Hashtags)

But the real focus of this post is about what happens on the edges.

All people on a task go off and do their bit and either report back on progress via email or a blog. They are the middleman between the task members and people on the edges who they are consulting with in doing the task.

Now we don’t have to report back, as task members (and anyone for that matter) can see the the raw conversations with people on the edges as it happens. Both other task members and people on the edges can interact without having to go through a particular task member.

Related

This is taking my ambient awareness post to proper task use, and brings back into fashion Jim McGee’s post on the loss of observable work.

Paula Thornton talks about artifacts of work, and this is exactly what I’m tackling:

This post is not so much the difference between conversations and the end product (deliverable), but more so how the conversations happen, and how we don’t have to report progress on our daily work on achieving our task.

Well let me clear that up, sure if I’m doing my own brainwork I will report my results, but if I’m having conversations with people that I need to consult with to achieve my task, well then I don’t have to report that this took place, as other task members already know, due to me using the task channel (defined by assigning a hashtag) to converse with people on the edges…all without them having to be part of an official group space.

OK, here’s the solution upfront. You can read the rest of this post to know why this needs to happen.

SOLUTION

About 18 months ago I posted on how the way I communicate and am aware of the lives of people I know is much different to my parents-in-law…to me it’s the new normal.

I’m not referring to explicit communication (sure this happens), but I’m referring more to just being aware without necessarily having to directly communicate or push a message to one or multiple people…directly communicating can often happen once you become "aware" of something.

In that post I mentioned that my inlaws swap long Christmas letters with their friends (once a year), so basically at the end of the year in one big gulp they become aware of what a family has been up to.

Sure they could be aware of many points shared in a friends Christmas letter if they had phone contact throughout the year, but you are not going to ring, SMS or email every person on your Christmas list each time something happens in your life…and ringing them to tell them about minor events like "I just landed in Hong Kong" seems ludicrous.

The difference here is that online platforms like my Facebook network operate on a different paradigm, we become ambiently aware of each other. Sure we can have directed conversations like phone calls, SMS and email, and in the Facebook context we can send direct messages, leave comments on updates and photos, but the big shift is that we talk about ourselves or something that has happened to us out loud, we broadcast this to a spot, and whoever subscribes to that spot, ie. our network, will see that in their stream. This is a shift in how we communicate, and an off-line version of doing this would make you seem a bit crazy, but in the online realm it works.

In fact, we are so ambiently aware of our friends lives via Facebook that when we meet up offline, we don’t have much to say to each other in the way of "how you been?"…this kind of becomes a non-question.

The other day I was on the phone to my mum and she told me my cousin landed in London. And I said I know. And she said, oh, have you talked to her. And I said no. She said well who told you. And I said she did. She was a bit confused. I then told her she broadcasted this on her Facebook profile, and people in her network like me get to pay attention to these updates, if we choose not to pay attention it just streams by. I said I can also choose to leave a comment on her update, or a gesture that I like it. If my mum were to ask, I wonder how long the plane trip took, I would say well the flight was split in two, earlier on she updated that she landed in Hong Kong. My mum was so amazed that I knew this stuff without having to be personally contacted. And from my cousins point of view, broadcasting it is much more doable than sending an SMS to a hundred people each time she wants to say something, and then one-to-one comments splintering the conversation.

In fact without these new online networks you wouldn’t have this type of awareness, it’s as simple as that…technology and it’s use affects and changes culture.

As you can imagine this happens all the time. My mum telling me on the phone about photos or a family friend having a baby. And I already know all this by being ambiently aware, unlike my mum I know this without having to have one-on-one contact (direct communication), or waiting to hear it from someone else.

I told her I even know what others say about my cousins update, even from people I don’t know…all without having to be in a tele-conference or email chain conversation. I told her when someone leaves a comment on an update it will appear in my stream that this happened. I told even when my cousin adds a new friend to her network I will also be updated about this, in this case my cousin doesn’t even need to broadcast this, she wouldn’t have any motivation to do this anyway, but instead the system automatically posts this update. Further to this I can leave comments on this update ie. we can have a chat around the fact my cousin has added a new friend.

I mentioned that whenever someone in my network uploads a new photo to the system they appear in my stream and float on by, but if I’m in one of the photos I am more explicitly notified of this.

Anyway, my point is why do I have close to total awareness of people in my personal life that requires low effort, but yet in the workplace I don’t have this ambient awareness!

In my personal life the “how you been?”, translates to what we hear in work meetings or weekly tele-cons eg “let’s go round the world, starting with Perth, John update us on what you have been up to in the past week”

In fact it may be more crucial to have micro-blogging/activity stream networks in the workplace as we share and work on the same/similar/related goals and tasks within our teams, across teams, workgroups, and enterprise wide…so the more we are aware, the more we can be on the same page, and have better coordination, cooperation and collaboration…surface opportunities (emergence), have the best people on the right tasks, and generally have the ability to be more responsive and adaptive.

This is impossible to do with email, phone, face-to-face…these all have their place, but now we can really do something new, or enhance what we do or what we have always wanted to do, that doesn’t require centralised coordination. Now our classic organisational problems of communication and awareness can for once realistically be addressed. Further to this it cascades into self-organising social productivity, much better than email which is our current self-organising tool.

I said once before we are moving from PC to SC ie. from Personal Computing to Social Computing.

And we are moving conversations from private by default to public by default.

Hopefully this comparison by story in describing this concept is useful in explaining online networking to people in the workplace as an alternative or a pre-cursor to: what it is, the benefits, how it works.

I’ve posted before on how I think micro-blogging is a low threshold to participation as it merges the concept of reading, blogging, sharing links, chatting, connecting; into the same window…kind of like we do all sorts of communications through the email window. But more accurately the low threshold to participation refers to the level of effort it requires to contribute. Basically, my dad uses status updates in Facebook, but I ain’t gonna see him using a blog or wiki in a hurry.

In Michael Idinopulos’s post, Launch E2.0 broad, then go deep, he talks about how different tools require a different type of participation effort on the micro level. For example micro-blogging requires great participation (network effects) to take off at the macro level, but at the micro level it doesn’t ask much of the user.

Here’s how Michael says it:

This got me thinking about the recent use of Yammer by a few of us at work…I was thinking about Buy-in vs Just do it (Proof of Concept)

At work, like anything, to buy a new product and implement it requires you to get buy-in and all that goes with it…most often something like micro-blogging won’t be seen as important. It’s a hard sell…but once you use it you can’t do without it…people have to "feel" it to understand.

Here’s another approach.

Start using Yammer as a Proof of Concept. It’s free, they host a secure network for you based on your email domain. Then invite someone, and they will invite someone else, and it goes on.

If it takes off and people become hooked, it’s hard for management to point the finger as no one person is responsible for it’s use, and rather than taking it away, they will see that it must obviously have value, and they can offer an installed version.
NOTE: This assumption is based on people actually using it to sense-make at work, and not for personal chatting.

And get this, you can continue to use Yammer or another product like Socialcast, Socialtext Signals, etc. as micro-blogging is different than other content platforms in that there is no need for migration. As it’s more about the moment, once posts are a couple of weeks old they don’t really matter that much (I’m generalising here, but it’s more true than not). This means you can jump to another system without a worry.

When you use free tools as your Proof of Concept, and get people to "feel" a product, and hopefully hooked on it, there is more chance of fulfilling your vision, rather than the big and slow approach of getting hierarchy buy-in, strategy documents, charters, implementation and training requirements.

Grassroots DIY Proof of Concept is how you can creep something into the organisation without being faced by a wall.

Participants in such an informal program are called IT Rogues, but they are just trying to do their job better, and this should be noticed. Something like a rogue wiki is easier to be shut down and point the finger at as it will have an owner and a group using it…whereas if micro-blogging takes off, who do you point the finger at…and how can hundreds/thousands of people be wrong.

The only way I see my advice as a problem is if people use Yammer for non-business use…and if the business will have the problem of not trusting Yammer with their data being leaked.

But if they can see beyond this and want to penetrate the hierarchy, then this experimentation and failure approach is how to cleverly penetrate the hierarchy.

This approach doesn’t have to be done without consent, part of the strategy with the powers that be may be the use of Yammer as a Proof of Concept as a first step, and if this shows signs of success and value, then a second step will be taken

You don’t have to use a free hosted approach, there are many free download and open source micro-blogging products. This addresses the security issue, but then the finger can be pointed at the person who installed it. In this case hopefully instead of getting buy-in, mention that it’s free, and you will get an approval to test it out…little do they know this test may go viral, and become a tool people can’t do without. The power of hosted freemium.

But, what’s for sure is that the problem is not investment. Like Euan Semple says, "if you make the ‘i’ small enough, no-one will care about the R”…as long as the concept is understood.

Why spend time and money on the usual buy-in, strategy, implementation, etc…when you can just get a product download for free and experiment right now….cut to the chase.

The point of this post is that requests for a new product will be slow, may be disapproved, may be implemented the wrong way…instead now we are empowered to demonstrate proof that this is a really good idea buy using a free-hosted service…this wasn’t possible a few years ago

At a meeting 6 months later you may mention to your manager that micro-blogging is a good idea. They may agree or disagree, but either way not have any leadership or time in harnessing the value and passion of your suggestion. That’s when you can say, you want value in seeing how it supports knowledge workers to sense-make, check this out, we are already doing it

In a way, we now have the tools and type of service available that allows knowledge workers to disintermediate management as we have access to the resources we need and make the decision to use them…again this wasn’t possible a few years ago

The goal isn’t disintermediation…humans are self-organising, we do what it takes to create conditions for better sense-making, to be more productive, to be more aware

Yammer seems to have a great business model, as they allow people to get hooked for free, and then offer a premium version if organisations want their own secure version…it’s win win for both Yammer, and organisations.

List of "free enterprise" micro-blogging platforms (either secure hosted or install)

• Yammer
• present.ly
• status.net (formerly Laconica)
• Rev.Ou.com (install only…oops not free)
• co-op (hosted only)
• twingr (not sure if secure hosted)
• ESME
• Oratweet
• CubeTree (hosted only)
• ididwork (hosted only)
• communote (hosted only)
• OpenMicroBlogger (install only)
• Engage (free and hosted for 200 users)

Sources

• Open Source Microblogging
• Twitter on your intranet: 17 microblogging tools for business
• Enterprise Microsharing Tools Comparison
• List of Enterprise Microblogging Tools: Twitter for the Intranet

[ADDED 10/06/10 - Another idea is to join the vendor community. Our document management vendor has a new microblogging/activity feed module. They drink their own champagne by using this module on their customer community. If it’s a selling strategy, it’s only by accident, as we “the customers” find it very useful that we can connect with lots of the vendor staff and other customers like ourselves…good from an engagement, help, and co-creation point-of-view.

Now if I want my work to buy this module, “show and tell” is the most effective way…you have to “feel” micro-blogging. So I could simply show my boss how we work on the customer community using microblogging (getting things done, sense-making, engaging with people, building relationships, sharing)…my boss could even give it a go to get a real taste.

There’s nothing that says “Yes” to buy-in like “seeing and playing” what you want in action, it makes it less a prediction of success for your boss and more a certainty (given cultural constraints of your organisation)]