Library clips

Stewart Mader from Grow Your Wiki is guest posting on Wikinomics and his lastest post is on the effectiveness of wikis enabling tacit sharing.

Documents that are open and dynamic allow people to evolve the documents by direct editing or leaving comments…ie. people are sharing their experience and what they know can add to the richness of the document.

Right away I thought of the How-To Guides I’m writing for our Communities of Practice (CoP) at work.

If my guides are on a wiki rather than PDF, people who use the guides can leave comments, or people with permissions can edit the page itself or a new page to add what they know.

This way they can help me evolve the document, even though it’s finished. Well, that’s the idea, it’s never finished…I may miss a feature, and I can’t experience every context, so there’s stuff that happens when people use Communities that I may not know up front. eg. a new way to use blogs, a workaround (exception to procedure) page for Document Control as each client has different needs.

They may leave a comment about a feature of our CoPs where they have a workaround, or a use case.
eg. someone might say everyone in our team has a status blog, so when we go to a meeting we already know what everyone has been up to, our meetings are more about action.
Another person visiting the guide may see this and use this idea.
A simple comment box on a wiki has enabled the sharing and receiving of know-how by two people that don’t even know each other, plus this is perpetual as another person may come along and get value or an idea from reading the same comment. In fact another person may leave a comment back and say that they found it more manageable having one group blog for status. The original person my see this and comment back saying, that is a great idea, I didn’t know that was possible. Oops, that’s because I may have not put that fact in the guide, lucky that comments allow for others to help where the guide fails.
And as Stewart mentions I can go and refine the guide and leave a comment saying thanks.

In the end we have this explicit type deliverable that has to be formal and succinct as it has to cater to many audiences, and can’t be too explanatory (long), and try to cover every context possible, as people won’t bother reading it. But on top of this we have a layer of collective know-how and feedback via the comments which inturn we feed back into the document (via edit) some tacit know-how.

The point is having perpetually live documents (editing and comments) harnesses the collective wisdom, where people can share their know-how, and benefit the user experience as a whole. It’s a win win situation.

A while back I mentioned that I like the idea that after a conference, conference-call, presentation, meeting, workshop, etc…you can continue the conversations online.

For a big conference like the Web 2.0 Expo, they used CrowdVine as a social networking tool…I’ve posted about it before. And of course this same tool can be used to continue the conversation once the conference is over. Vyew is another tool that saves your conference in a book where you can continue to collaborate and discuss asynchronously, it also has a widget so this book can be embedded anywhere.
Stewart Mader suggests a wiki rather than a conference showbag.

What I found in my last conference call is that most of what we talked about in the call can also be done online, in our community page, when we are not present at the same time (asynchronous).

These are three types of things we did in the conference call, that cover blogs, forums, and wikis:

1. News, and status around the globe from each team member [BLOG]

Each team member had a turn to update the team on their status

- why do this in the conference call, when we can subscribe to the group status blog, or each others personal blogs
- any conversation can be carried out in the comments
- all can read and/or take part in conversations on their own time
- this saves time on the call to do other stuff
- to recall something just go to the blog archive

This is put nicely from the wiki perspective by the Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein case study:

“The teleconference used to be one and a half hours long, with much time wasted on bringing people up to speed on the week’s events. Now team members update themselves on the wiki, and that part of the teleconference takes five to ten minutes.

The rest of the teleconference is used for ideas generation, being innovative, talking about problems and looking at solutions, which is what the meeting should be about. It shouldn’t be about updating people as to what’s happened, but thinking about our clients and how we can service them.”

2. Discussion about issues people had since the last call [FORUM]

The team was asked if there was anything to discuss.

This is what a conference call is all about…conversation.

But, we should not wait for a conference call to discuss things, why not use the community forums everyday.

3. Brainstormed an idea for better usability for one of our systems [WIKI]

What we basically did was come up with a list for things to appear in a drop down menu, that would cover all reasons when a user logs a support call.

It was good to do this synchronously as we could discuss whilst we made the list, nothing beats this.

But I’m sure we could of started this list in a wiki, and used the comments for discussion, and then perhaps join the conference call to finalise our list.

Summary

I realised in one meeting that we covered the use of 3 of the most important social tools.

Why do we need so many meetings, when we can be collaborating and conversing perpetually?

The more we use social tools, the shorter our meetings can be.

Nothing beats synchronous group chats to discuss out issues, but we can sometimes do most of this discussion, updates, and collaboration online, and call a short meeting to finalise and action our findings.

Next time I talk about social tools adoption, I can tell people you are doing it anyway, only this is doing the same thing when we are not all in the same room.

We can still collaborate, discuss, update when we are not in the same room.

The fact is people are fine to physically participate in informing their status and what they’ve been up to, discuss issues, and collaborate…but when it comes to doing this online they feel weird being social (open and visibility). Instead they use email as it’s more closed and private, and they do all three things with email (status, discuss, collaborate) that they do in person at a meeting, it’s like email is their asynchronous voice.

Part of the adoption process is to help people get over the awkwardness of being social online, we have to guide them by informing them social tools are not extra work, it’s what you are doing anyway.

Rough Example 1

“In a meeting you share your status, well here is a blog to do the exact same thing…you can even share any experiences, or whatever you like here.” (Above-the-Flow)

“In a meeting you take part in discussions, well here is a forum to do the exact same thing.”

“In a meeting we collaborate and brainstorm, well here is a wiki to do the exact same thing.”

“Email is for private correspondence, whereas these three tools above are the online version for what we do in meetings.”

“An easy way to think about it, is if it’s not private information, then a community tool can be used. The next step is to work out whether you need a blog, forum or wiki.”

“Please use these three tools when the context of what you want to do is about, status/experience, discussion, or collaboration.”

“These social tools will live in a community website, which assimilates our meeting room, this allows us to still communicate and work together when we are not in meetings.”

Using the approach above we are introducing social tools not for the heck of it, or as a knowledge sharing drive, etc…
We are introducing them to solve issues specific issues, that way people will be more serious about them, and these are issues that effect the whole enterprise.

If the reason of introducing social tools was-we need to collaborate more, and share knowledge-people are going to say “yeah, I’ve heard that before”, “I’m not sharing what I know” (power/trust), and “I haven’t got time”.

Instead if we put it across as solving particular issues, it is received in a more welcoming way, as it’s like we are going to deploy tools that we help them with their problems…it doesn’t come across like we want something out of them as much.

Rough Example 2

“The company is experiencing email stress, as part of this company-wide problem we are introducing communities and social tools in order to relieve this email overload.”

“The company is also wanting to save money on global conference calls, and save people’s time by making these calls shorter and less frequent by using community tools.”

“Within a community will be status diaries, discussion forums, and group brainstorming pages.
Please use these tools in replacement of less time spent in meeting, and please don’t use email if you want to have a group discussion, brainstrorm/collaborate or tell others about your status…instead use the correct community tool.”

“Our introduction of communities are intended to help tackle two serious issues in our enterprise that effect everyone: email and meeting overload. Please use communities for any of these three types of action, rather than email or having yet another meeting.”

“These are two serious issues affecting everyone in the company, and if we don’t all do the right thing, we won’t be able to overcome our issues. The company is one big group, and if a few seeds ignore this message, it will spoil the intentions and dynamics of the group. So remember your behaviour is going to affect the whole.”

“As part of this initiative we will be looking at recognising people and groups that use communities, we feel there will be self recognition anyway. We will also look into this as being incorporated into our company aims, and job performance reviews.”

“To kick all this off I introduce the whole office to the “Office community”, the only communication via email will be a notification to visit an entry at the “Office community”.”

“Business units, interest groups, and task rooms will be set up on request in order to use community tools to get your work done.”

I’m more for a viral bottom-up approach, but even so at some stage you may want to get the message out to the whole company. Perhaps have it in your back pocket in case the bottom-up approach isn’t quite working as expected.

This office-wide approach has to be repeated to staff within their own teams, community leaders will be champions, facilitators, role models…

From the above example I did not once mention: social, enterprise 2.0, web 2.0, knowledge sharing, collaboration (oops, I did mention this), we need to capitialise on opportunities for competitive advantage, getting stuff out of people’s heads, blogs, wikis…
Instead I raised issues like email overload and shorter/less meetings (time) that can be alleviated using social tools.

The sell is about not doing anything extra, it’s only offering substitute tools, it’s focused on specific problems, and it hopes to come across as doing people a favour to help them work less frustrated.

To finish up here’s an excerpt by JP Rangaswami in relation to Facebook, but to me it covers what social tools and the use of communities are all about, this is the engagement we are trying to achieve…social productivity by leveraging the social capital:

“…you’ve taken what happened at the water cooler or at the coffee shop and made it persistent, made it shareable, made it teachable, made it learnable […] Now we have the ability to actually understand what these relationships are, how information and decision making migrates horizontally, laterally through an organization, rather than through the published hierarchies, how people really work, and what people do as part of that work […] to look at the flows that matter rather than the flows of the politics”

We are piloting communities at work, the gist of it is:

Blog - broadcast, experience, ideas, feedback, status
Forum - discussion
Wiki- collaborate, document, website

Step 1

The concept is, it’s much easier to do work using these new tools rather than using email to do all three of these things (broadcast, discuss, collaborate).

Let’s not mention that content is open and centralised for others to see, all have a voice, conversation can evolve into new knowledge, tune into your social filter to ask questions and finds things…pretty much a way to get things done.

Plus all your interactions, contributions, and readings happen in a contextual place. If I want to see the forum contributions I have made on the KM forum, I just go to the KM CoP, or goto my personal dashboard.

For me this beats trying to find this stuff in my email. I like my content to live in context eg. comments about a wiki to be in the wiki itself rather than be separated (disconnected) in my email client.

Jack Vinson talks about context as providing you with a “frame of reference”, he says:

“The better I understand the particular frame of reference (context), the better I can understand what this information or knowledge means.”

This is kind of different to the context I’m talking about. I’m talking about the context of a place, he is talking about seeing data in a context setting (even better if it’s a familiar setting) to help you use your current knowledge to create new information…I guess metaphor is another way.

In a way it does relate to what I’m talking about as reading a forum reply you found in your email, makes much more sense when you see it in the bigger picture of the actual forum.

Anyway so I call the use of our communities as Step 1.

We can now learn to use social tools to get work done with much less confusion, and of course this creates a perpetual open dialogue where knowledge is continuously created and re-used in the open.

Another benefit is that you end up with less email to deal with, as now what would of been email lives at the context of the place (as a blog post/comment, forum topic/reply, wiki contribution/comment).

Although, without an inbox for each community (private messages), one-to-one messages are done in email. I’d rather these emails as private or public messages that live in context, ie. at the community…see more.

Step 2

Does this really give you less email to deal with…I don’t think so.

It’s great we are attempting to no longer just rely on the intelligence of the email system to do our work, these social tools enable us to work easier and content is no longer siloed (a centralised and flowing corporate memory). But we are still using email.

How? Notifications, that’s how.

In our communities we currently have RSS disabled for some reason, maybe it’s a good thing for now, to prevent scaring people with too much new stuff to absorb.

For each blog and forum you can get new content delivered as a new email, and this is not just a notification, it’s the full-text of the blog post or forum topic.
When you subscribe to a blog or forum you are also subscribed to blog comments and forum replies (personally I’d like a choice).

Also, each blog post and each forum topic has an email address.
This means when you get an email for a new blog post, you can hit reply and it will post your comment to the blog…nice one.

You can also publish a new blog post by writing a new email and sending it to the blog email address (you can include non-subscribers to your blog in the to: or cc: field, that way they will get the content even though they don’t subscribe to your blog…nifty!)

OK, first thing.

I really like this email interoperability, it’s bringing the use of new tools to people’s comfort zone. But at the same time I would also like people to visit the actual community to experience the whole realm. There’s more chance you are going to read something else or contribute, if you are at the community itself.

So right now, this email interoperability is both good and bad.

The more concerning issue that some people have been talking about in the forums is since the introduction of communities they are getting just as much email.

They allude to “what’s the difference to my inbox overload if someone writes an email or publishes a blog post which I get in email anyway…isn’t communities meant to help with the inbox firehose.”
They also mention that community content gets lost in their inbox amongst all other types of emails.

This just screams RSS Reader.

But it also may scream our community Watchlist page.

The Watchlist page is a stream of the lastest stuff you are subscribed to, so throughout the day you can go to this page to see what’s new in the stream. The saves you visiting every blog and forum that you like from every community you like…instead it’s in one personalised page.
But I think I have to have an email subscription in order for this stuff to be on my Watchlist…darn (gotta look into this).

Whether it’s a Watchlist or an RSS Reader, it becomes a second dashboard.
You have your email dashboard and your what’s happening dashboard.

You can read RSS feeds within your email, but the idea is that email is a tool for personal correspondence, and that’s it, and an RSS Reader is a tool for the latest updates.

Perhaps a startpage could combine both into one dashboard, or Outlook could have an RSS Reader module that is just as important as the email inbox…in fact Outlook would no longer be an email client, it would be a personal productivity dashboard.

Conclusion

At the moment we are in the pre-introductory stage of Step 1. - a social way of doing work
(lots of learning, and culture change issues to go with this)

We also need to be prepared for Step 2.

And it’s Step 2. that may win the KM team acclaim in reducing the common email overload problem.

Any department that can reduce the email overload problem is going to get kudo’s, will it be the KM team.

In a past post I talked about Re-purposing email, and after that I was going to give some examples, but I got sidetracked on what blogs an enterprise would have when it would come to communications, see Enterprise blog channels for communications.

If these examples seem universal, then perhaps we can start a “Re-purposing email wiki”…I’m sure Luis Suarez would agree.

Emails are not just about communications, sometimes they are about collanoration, tasks, sharing tips, etc…

This post is not just focusing on communication type blog posts, in fact it’s not focusing on blogs at all. It’s going through example emails and proposing how that email could be re-purposed.

What I have done is listed the email under the social tool it could of been delivered in.
Any notes have been denoted by an (*).

BLOG (team/project/personal/office-wide/community)

Announce

To:OFFICE-WIDE
From:IT
A new security patch on 25-12-07 will be implemented when you login, please let the PC do it’s thing

* This is an easy one, the general IT Office blog

To:OFFICE TEAM LEADS
From:Training Lead
We are running courses, on Access database training, please ask your team members if they are interested.

* All my boss would have to do is publish a blog post on our Team blog pointing to the post on the Corporate Training blog
- this would work as she would be subscribed to the CorporateTraining blog, and we would be subscribed to the Team blog
- in fact if I came across the training blog post (if I had access), I could potentially know before she even told me

To:TEAM and 2 other closely related teams
From: TEAM LEADER
A new banner and overview sheet has been included in our toolkit.
Please let others know.

* Perhaps this could be posted to our Team External blog, where we publish stuff that other team leads can see
- since our team and other team leads subscribe to this blog we will all be in the know
- each team lead can then let their members know by posting a brief blog post on their Team blogs, pointing to our TeamExternal blog.

To:OFFICE-WIDE
From:IT
There is now a colour printer in the office

* This is an easy one, the general IT Office blog

To:OFFICE-WIDE
From:Admin
Please welcome the new global manager for “social software” (hehe)

* This is an easy one, the general Office blog

To:PROJECT TEAM
From: A Project unit manager
The new project workspace has been set up at this URL.
Here is the getting started overview.

* This is an easy one, the general Project blog

To:TEAM
From:1 TEAM MEMBER
Here are the usage statistics for December

* This could be published on the Team blog
- then again this may be of no value to the Development team, or another sub-team, this is what lead me to my post on mesh blogs

To:OFFICE-WIDE
From:Admin
The trains are on strike this afternoon, you will need to make alternate arrangements

* This is an easy one, the general Office blog

To:OFFICE-WIDE
From:Admin
A staff member was mentioned in the national newspaper today for a job well done on one of our projects

* This is an easy one, the general Office blog

To:PROJECT TEAM
From: A Project unit manager
Our main repository does not support media files, please assist clients by using this alternative

* This is an easy one, the general Project blog

Status

To:OFFICE-WIDE
From:IT
We are having problems with internet access, we are speaking to our providers to resolve this

* This is an easy one, the general IT Office blog

To:OFFICE-WIDE
From:IT
The internet is now working

* This is an easy one, the general IT Office blog

Work

To:SUB-TEAM
From:1 TEAM MEMBER
If anyone is interested, here is a workaround to this problem

* Perhaps this could be posted to a Sub-Team blog,
- other sub-teams in the team can subscribe if they like

To:SUB-TEAM
From:1 TEAM MEMBER
The solution to this issue was a setting in Outlook

* Perhaps this could be posted to a Sub-Team blog,
- other sub-teams in the team can subscribe if they like

To:TEAM
From:1 TEAM MEMBER
I’m finding I’m learning a lot about our industry in Africa from my work on this deliverable….

* Perhaps this could be posted to a Sub-Team blog or personal blog
- others can subscribe if they like

FORUM (team/project/personal/office-wide/community)

Question

To:OFFICE-WIDE
From:Admin
We are looking for someone to offer their expertise on….

* Perhaps this could posted in a few community forums
- this way the whole office is not spammed

To:TEAM
From:1 TEAM MEMBER
Does anyone know how to do this excel formula…

* Perhaps this could posted to your team forum
- otherwise search for an excel or Office tips community that may have an excel wiki or excel blog

To:TEAM
From:1 TEAM MEMBER
Where can I find a file for our team logo?

* Perhaps this could posted to your team forum
- or IM blast a portion of your network

To:TEAM
From:1 TEAM MEMBER
What do people think of Windows Vista, what are your experiences?

* Perhaps this could posted to your team forum, or a community forum, it depends which audience you want to ask

To:TEAM
From:1 TEAM MEMBER
Where would I find information on…

* Perhaps this could posted to your team forum, or a community forum, it depends which audience you want to ask

To:PROJECT TEAM
From:1 PROJECT TEAM MEMBER
Does anyone want to car pool, I live outer eastern suburbs?

* Perhaps this could posted to the project forum, or the office forum, it depends which audience you want to ask
- or IM blast a portion of your network

IM

To:WORKER
From:WORKER
Can I use the Adobe writer on your computer?

* This is a quick question that can easily be done in IM, rather than an email in each inbox

To:WORKER
From:WORKER
I forgot to ask you was it cold when you were just outside…I’m about to go out.

* This is a quick question that can easily be done in IM, rather than an email in each inbox

To:WORKER
From:WORKER
The conference is about to start, where are you?

* This is a quick question that can easily be done in IM, rather than an email in each inbox

To:WORKER
From:WORKER
Are you free for a chat, I have 3 others that are free now.

* This is a quick question that can easily be done in IM, rather than an email in each inbox

WIKI

Collaborate

To:4 TEAM MEMBERS
From:TEAM LEADER
Can you all make a list of issues and email them to me and I will put them in one big list

* This could be a wiki task, see my post

To:4 TEAM MEMBERS
From:WORKER
Can you all review this attachment and send me the changes

* This could be a wiki task

To:4 TEAM MEMBERS
From:WORKER
Sorry, here’s another addition to the meeting agenda

* This could easily be added to the meeting agenda wikipage without emailing people

Knowledgebase

To:7 TEAM MEMBERS
From:1 TEAM MEMBER
If anyone is interested, here is a workaround to this problem

* This could easily be added to the solutions wiki
- or perhaps Tips and Tricks blog

To:7 TEAM MEMBERS
From:1 TEAM MEMBER
I can’t find the documentation on…where is it kept

* This wouldn’t happen if there was a centralised team wiki or a wiki that lists documents in the repository
- otherwise ask the question in the team forums

To:7 TEAM MEMBERS
From:1 TEAM MEMBER
When you load this in the database remember to change this element as the template is not yet fixed.
This is not documented in the procedures.

* This is a reply-email to someone who didn’t need to send the email request if there was a Workarounds wiki or blog
- otherwise ask the question in the team forums

Event

To:7 TEAM MEMBERS
From:1 TEAM MEMBER
I can’t find the email for when that workshop is taking place

* This wouldn’t happen if there was an Event wiki
- otherwise ask the question in the forums

To:TEAM
From:1 TEAM MEMBER
The workshop is kicking off today.
Here is the agenda.
This person cannot make it.
I will further email you the presentation attachments

* This wouldn’t happen if there was an Event wiki, with a wiki blog
- perhaps a community could be set-up for the workshop

Task

To: SUB-TEAM
From: 1 TEAM MEMBER
Could everyone please sign off that the new features have been tested and work

* This could be a wiki task, and perhaps posted on the wiki task blog
- rather than once person sending out an email to about 10 people with an attachment
- then each person sending back an email to say they have actioned it

To:7 TEAM MEMBERS
From:1 TEAM MEMBER
The test server will be going down for 3 days to be patched.
I will let you know the moment it is back up

* This could perhaps be posted on the wiki task blog
- or if it’s part of a bigger picture like a project where the wiki and blog could be in a community

To:3 TEAM MEMBERS
From:1 TEAM MEMBER
I am currently at stage 3 of my report, I’m now doing field research for stage 4.
Tomorrow I will fly to China, and need to find accomodation.
I will meet with client and let you know of the results.

* This could perhaps be posted on the wiki task blog
- or if it’s part of a bigger picture like a project where the wiki and blog could be in a community

To: SUB TEAM
From: TEAM LEADER
A new advanced editing feature will be rolled-out on 25-12-07
Please test this and report back.

* This could perhaps be posted on the wiki task blog
- or if it’s part of a bigger picture like a project where the wiki and blog could be in a community

To:3 TEAM MEMBERS
From:1 TEAM MEMBER

The server has been set up and the program installed, you can now proceed.
I had issues with the subscription module, so it’s not installed yet

* This could perhaps be posted on the wiki task blog
- or if it’s part of a bigger picture like a project where the wiki and blog could be in a community
- only members of this community will be subscribed saving other team members not having to be spammed
- so in fact this example is more a project communication, rather than a team communication
- I think it’s important that quick short-lived communities are set up to achieve tasks

To:1 TEAM MEMBER
From: TEAM LEADER
Can you please do this task, and report back and then contact Bill do take it onwards.

* This could perhaps be posted on the wiki task blog
- or if it’s part of a bigger picture like a project where the wiki and blog could be in a community
- just have to put up with other subscribers of the blog getting this post that is only intended for one person

To:1 TEAM MEMBER
From: TEAM LEADER
Can you please update the appendix on this report

* This could perhaps be posted on the wiki task blog
- or if it’s part of a bigger picture like a project where the wiki and blog could be in a community
- just have to put up with other subscribers of the blog getting this post that is only intended for one person

I’m finding with a lot of these tasks a more focused tool like Activities from Lotus Connections would be more appropriate.
Or a commuity or wiki that has social networking so you can message a member in the inbox of that wiki task, rather than your email inbox.
This way the task request is not separate from the task itself, you would only get a notification in your email inbox or perhaps a dashboard to alert you of your task.
It’s also bringing to mind Foldera…but then again there are heaps of task, workflow type tools.

The ultimate scenario is for a team to have a community site that includes:
- sub-communities
- social networking
- blogs
- forums
- wikis
- IM
- tasks

All your work and communications are together. The idea is not to have stuff in your email related to where the work lives, it should all be open and together…no siloes and no people out of the loop.

Request

I was sent an email today along with 5 other people.

The email read something like, “Can everyone please email me a list of issues with [our system] and then [this person] will go through all the emails make a list in a document.”

This just screamed wiki to me.

This was an In-the-Flow collaborative process that could put email to shame.

I emailed Reply-to-All with a request to use a wiki, a good idea I thought, especially since we are piloting wikis.

I got the go ahead to create a wiki…”but hurry because we need this quick.”

Right on, a wiki is hawaiian for “quick” (a private laugh with myself at the time)

I created a wiki

I listed all my issues on the wiki index page.

Then I published a wikipage for each issue.

I had to go to a meeting so I left a note on the wiki index page that I would be back at 2.30pm.

When I got back I noticed some others had made contributions.

Someone made a contribution by Reply-to-All to the initial email.
They said that my contributions to the wiki covered what they would of contributed, but they also wanted to ask a question and also add one item to the list…so they sent an email instead of contributing to the wiki
I took the essence of it and put it on the wiki on their behalf…we need to discipline people out of old habits.

At this point I’m feeling that the lack of a comments module on the wiki is making our collaboration only half successful, as whatever the object is; a document, a wiki, you need to converse about this object, and you want this inhouse next to the object.

When I was finished, I left a note at the end of the index page

“John - I have finished all my contributions”

Later on I remembered another issue, so I whacked it in.

Then I discovered another issue and added it.

I decided to look at recent changes and noticed someone left a comment within a wikipage I created
(our wiki doesn’t have comments, instead at the end of a wikipage we are creating a line and under that line we can write comments/notes)

Later on I was with a colleague and noticed they were emailing the person in charge about a wikipage, ie. they were leaving a comment.
I suggested they still put it in the wiki in our workaround comments thread, and also email the person that way you are pinging that person, and other users of the wiki can visit and notice your contributions.

Again, I’m finding comments 50% of what makes a wiki work.

What we feel we really need

Comments
-The wiki use case was creating a communal list, so scratching a linear comment thread at the end of each actual wikipage was OK, but if the wikipage was something more presentable like a communal glossary then we don’t really want comments scratchings on the actual page, we’d rather a comments module.

Notifications
-If we do scratch a comment on an actual wikipage, we want to be notified by email (or RSS)
- and what about subscribing to the page itself it see if anyone has made changes to a page (you can go to the recent changes page, but having this as a delivered notification digest would be good)

eg. Wikispaces

Notifications for whole wiki
- Edits and Discussions
- Edits Only
- Discussions Only

Notifications for a wikipage
- Page Edits
- Page Discussion

What I liked about using wikis

It was never too late to add issues.
If I emailed my contributions, I would of had to email another two times for my two extra contributions.

I also didn’t have to email that I was in a meeting and I would resume my contributions at a later time.
And again I didn’t need to email that I was finished.
The person who left a comment/note on the wikipage I created didn’t have to email me, as he wrote it in the wiki.

I also discovered issues others contributed.
Which I would have not seen if we did not use a wiki, as they would have emailed it to the person in charge.

Yeah, no crap emails!

I just visit the wiki to see the progress and conversations.

In the ideal wiki I’d also be able to be notified of new edits and comments.

No need for the person in charge to spend time compiling all the emails, deleting the duplicates, and cutting ‘n pasting a list into a document.

The wiki is used for the process and is also the finished product, you can even export to another file type.

Yeah for wikis!
Yeah for no unnecessary emails!
Yeah for collaboration!
Yeah for visibility!
Yeah for conversations!
Yeah for notifications!
Yeah for a central home!
Yeah for transparency!
Yeah for simplicity!
Yeah for a ready-made end product!
Yeah for wikis!

UPDATE: I just realised I experienced the classic CommonCraft Wikis in Plain English

Here’s a summary or clarification of my last couple of posts on Above-the-Flow and In-the-Flow.

A blog can be used for all types of posts like news, announcements, status, etc…this post focuses on using a blog for support know-how.

Blogging a unique solution I have on a support call is In-the-Flow, because it is directed, it’s part of my job duty. If an error is resolved all support staff should know about it.
I’ve started blogging this stuff (seeding), and once I introduce the rest of the team to the blog, hopefully they will do the same.

Support staff are directed to use the support database (where users log calls and we manage our calls) so why not the support or solution blog.

I may use the Support database to record this call and solution, but this database isn’t as free-form as a blog or wiki.

So what I have begun to do is complement this by writing a blog post which is more: human like, it’s personal, it contains the nuances, it may compare to other situations, include extra explanation and workings out of how I got to the solution.

The more context the better, and in some occurrences this extra explanation, rather than the solution, may help you on a similar call.

Whereas the support database asks to fill in some fields, and give the solution, it doesn’t want to know anything else, it’s very formal and to the point, no colour or personality about it…see more.

Another reason to complement support solutions with a blog post is there is no way to subscribe to closed calls, and why would you…if the calls are not unique, I don’t want to be informed of every menial closed call.

Yet another reason is browsing and searching the support database is yuch…at the least.

So why do we use it?

Well it’s good at reporting, we can generate great statistics, people can log calls, we can change the status on a call, pass a call to someone else, etc…you can see that a support database is neccessary.

But I don’t think it’s a good solution database that just contains the gems.

Perhaps a unique solution that is entered into the database can also have the option of being sent as a new blog post.
But then they are not interoparable, and the database doesn’t have rich text and manual categories, etc…

Plus as mentioned earlier the solution entry is not as expansive or intimate as a blog post, it’s more direct to the point…I guess a blog post is more contextual.

What about experiences?

If I have a unique experience about our software or a user or another department, this doesn’t qualify as an entry in the Support database.

This is another reason to use a blog, but this is more an Above-the-Flow scenario, this is a harder thing to get people to do, as it’s not definite like a solution, it’s more soft. It’s a pity because when you read about experiences it sticks with you, you absorb it, when you encounter a similar situation you can be familiar with what to do, or not to do.

Sharing these experiences are vaulable, and a blog can enable this.

At the moment

If I have an experience that everyone should know about or have just closed a support call with a unique solution…no one really knows this has happened.

Why do I want to document and disseminate this information?

…perhaps for my own benefit, so I don’t forget what I know.

Some of us like to share, especially if it’s a solution, we want everyone to know, not really an ego thing, rather a friendly thing to do.
So we usually shoot off an email, we certainly don’t put our solution in a word document and upload it into the DMS.

As I mentioned a group blog is hopefully going to become the new substitute.

I see people will use the blog for solutions to common errors, etc…(In-the-Flow/Directed) but may perhaps use it less for experiences, workarounds, or “did you know if…” (Above-the-Flow/Volunteered).

As mentioned in earlier posts if a volunteered blog post helps someone with their job, then hopefully they will return the benefit and volunteer their own experiences. In addition to this, comments get conversations going that could spur people to want to express themselves more and write an actual blog post.

Blog as database

The blog is going to be the solution database and more…you can browse by date, category, search, use the sidebars for useful stuff, and even subscribe.

Why subscription is powerful?

If I get an an alert update from a new blog post that describes a solution, I now know that this solution exists…I’ve been educated/informed, just like reading daily news.

If I were to later on come across a situation that requires this solution, I can search the blog database knowing that an answer exists. I’m not blind searching hoping there is something documented, as it has come across my eyes before.

This really taps into Dave Snowden’s principle: “People don’t share knowledge in the anticipation that you need it”
- if you ask people to put tacit knowledge in a common data store for a possible need in the future, on the basis you might need it…it just doesn’t happen.

Somehow blogs overcome this has they are dead simple to contribute and they are conversational, they are a place to hang out…it’s more about participating.
This type of framework or ecosystem is all about flow, just check out Ray Sim’s latest slidedeck:

“Slide 20 Stocks
- codifying, capturing, harvesting, storing (STATIC)

Slide 20 Flows
- conversations, fragments, connections (FLUID AND DYNAMIC)

Slide 22 - Why Flows?
- Speed of change versus speed of codifying
- Continuous versus something that happens at the end of the project
- Small pieces loosely joined, context preserving
- Broader participation, with more connections
- Weak signals perception
- Results: innovation and better decision-making”

Another good thing about subscription is if I want to add an entry to the Support blog, I’m not going to publish something that’s already there, I’m not going to create a duplicate entry as I already know that entry has been made as I subscribe to updates.

Our Support database reporting captures all calls, even if the nature of the call has been logged a 100 times, this way we can make decisions on more training for staff or users, or fix bugs and features, etc…
The tag cloud of the support blog can also display patterns that emerge, but of a different nature.

How do wikis fit in?

I’ve decided the group support blog will be for solutions, experiences, tips and tricks, workarounds, did you knows, etc…

The forums will be to ask questions and discuss matters.

Now I am piloting wikis, so how will this fit into the equation?

Maybe the wiki can be a contents page for the gems in the blog support database, kind of like a gateway page.

Or perhaps the wiki can be the solution database itself, just like the blog, each wikipage being a solution.

I kind of like this solution as pages can be re-edited (I suppose a blog post can as well), and you can also have comments (well not in our wiki, but generally).

Hmmm…I do like that you can subscribe to a blog…and a blog is about currency.

Subscribing to a wiki may be painful, especially if lots of changes are made…I have limited experience in subscribing to a wiki.

Perhaps we can use both:

- the wiki can be for solutions
- the blog can be for experiences, insights, announcements…

This means that solutions will not be published as a blog post, but rather in a wikipage.
Instead the blog can be used to publish quick news to notify support staff of a new solution in the wiki.

Maybe this is the way to go.

I also want to make an error image gallery wiki, clicking on an image will take you to the solution which lives on another wikipage.

Another question is how open are both the wiki and the blog?

I’d have them both open with modify access for the whole support team…gardening can be done later, rather than getting through a gatekeeper upfront. They both need to be open to capture things as they happen, and for everyone to feel they equally own the knowledge base.

What do you think, can anyone shed any light on this scenario?

This post is a continuation from the thought on the two types of macro ways social tools can be used in the enterprise. My other posts are Collaboration, Emergence and Culture, and Free-form structure and In-the-Flow process can lead to more.

Using social tools is making contributions more: transparent, centralised, visible, smoother collaboration, inventive, re-usable, offers inbox relief, and the obvious…emergence.

In-the-Flow refers to “Directed” contribution

eg. wiki for a meeting agenda/minutes, blog or announcements or news.
Anything you do that is part of your functional duties.
You are sometimes substituting these social tools over traditional tools like email.

As mentioned in an earlier post by the Transparent Office, you don’t need a collaborative culture to adopt In-the-Flow contributions, as you are not doing anything extra, you are still getting your task done, but just using a new tool or two.
It concluded that when it comes to “collaboration” (not to be confused with emergence), culture is a destination, not a starting point.

This is not “knowledge sharing”, it’s just using the right tool for the job, see more.

And it’s not just “collaboration” eg. using a blog for project announcements rather than email is not collaboration…it’s a directed In-the-Flow use of social tools.

What it is…is more “knowledge visible”; others can come across this information as it’s more open and not siloed.

This is not extracting anymore tacit know-how than before when email was the main tool to get things done…but indeed it may be, as visibility provides exposure of content to more people, rather than just the people in the email to: field. In turn someone may decide to contribute some insight.

People from all over the enterprise (permissions considered) can come across these social objects, and can read what’s happening (like reading the news), or even leave a comment.
This visibility has created the opportunity for someone to actually volunteer some shared insight…this is “knowledge sharing”, or it could be “learning” if the nature of the comment is a clarification or question. A subsequent clarification by the originator could be “sharing know-how”, and this exchange may evolve into new content.

All this demonstrates that “conversation” is where all the gold lives, actually where all the gold is made.
Here’s a quote to remember from Jon Husband (very Snowdenesque):

“how to create a knowledge sharing culture?,” is not the right question. It’s more important to ask and understand “what you can do to encourage and facilitate connections?”

Above-the-Flow refers to “Volunteered” contribution

eg. a wiki glossary, blogging ideas, experiences, work in progress, insights, opinions, reviews, thinking out loud.
Any sharing that is not really contributing to your functional duties…ie without doing it you can still do your job.

Sure it may help (social productivity) with you and your teams functional duties by having a wikipage that lists links to pages you regularly visit, but this isn’t essential to get your task done. This is in the realm of personal knowledge management (PKM), but extending PKM in a more visible and social way.

This is closer to the concept of “knowledge sharing” as it’s volunteered, you are taking time away from your job, to contribute your know-how in general.

But sometimes it’s very closely related to your job, you may contribute some of your personal know-how in a blog for personal reasons; so you don’t forget what you know…like keeping notes.

If this content is visible, others can benefit from your personal notes, and in turn you can benefit from an insightful comment, and a visitor can benefit just by reading it…all about leveraging social capital.

Is this type of Above-the-Flow contribution, precisely “knowledge sharing?”…I think it’s just “participation” and “visibility”.

“Knowledge sharing” has a connotation of effort, something extra, whereas “participating” feels more like “being”, it’s just what you do…you learn by participating.

Does public or open equal sharing, or is sharing a more altrustic thing?

I think it’s a bit of both.

When you blog post about an idea, experience, work in progress, this again may be a personal diary, but at the same time you are making it public on purpose, as you welcome any reaction that may reafirm, evolve, clarify your content…I do think this is “knowledge sharing”, but perhaps “participating” is a better description.

More pure sharing is when you publish a review, opinion, latest rumour/news/links…this again becomes an entry in your personal database (blog) for future reference, but the purpose of publishing is more to inform others and to provoke reaction and discussion.

An even more pure form is when you find something that is of no interest to you, and send it to someone else…this type of thing still happens in email.
Sure people can tune into my social bookmarks, but I may not want to bookmark something that I know about, but still want to pass it on to you.
I’m certainly not going to blog about it, because the blog is about me, so I could send it to your public wall profile so others may see it as well, but perhaps even better I could send it to your social bookmarks inbox, as this inbox is the right context for web links.

In-the-Flow to In-the-Flow
Due to visibility, a visitor can come across a piece of In-the-Flow contributed content to perhaps use as their own In-the-Flow contribution. What you have found out elsewhere may help you with your task. You may post to your team about a lead, an innovation, a way to cut costs that came to your attention.

In-the-Flow to Above-the-Flow
An In-the-Flow contribution may lead to an Above-the-Flow contribution, like leaving a comment or a volunteered blog post (even though it’s not their task, they are just being social and helpful).

This model is dynamic, as long as content is visible, it allows conversation to happen at any moment…people are participating in public rather than in closed email sets.

Above-the-Flow to Above-the-Flow
I could volunteer a blog post about a client in the news, and someone else could volunteer a comment or publish their own blog post, there could be great discussion…this is all Above-the-Flow.

Above-the-Flow to In-the-Flow
If I blog about my current reflections (understanding/what I’m learning) about a work in progress, I may get feedback that helps me get my task or deliverable done better, perhaps less time and cost…not to mention I have been educated…and why, all because I participate.
Or I could come across a volunteered blog post about a client, and that Above-the-Flow contribution could be just the information I need to complete my job, so I blog post an announcement to my team (In-the-Flow).

Driver

As mentioned at the start of this post, In-the-Flow adoption is easier, what is harder is the Above-the-Flow volunteered contributions, as these are not neccessary to get your job done.
But still if you experience such an ecosystem, you will see that it indeed helps you get your job done, more than ever before.
- you can read what others publish for new insight
- if you publish others can help you out

The more you get benefit from reading volunteered contributions the more chance you may want to participate more seriously and start publishing. Plus conversations are infectious, and social creatures like us will take to tools that can be an extension of your voice box.

The main drive is to get those pioneering Above-the-Flow participants, to kick things off, and hopefully all else will follow.
This is not an adoption post, but the main kicker is for champions to just go at it, and serve as a role model, and generate examples of successes, as well as getting senior people involved…a lot is about change management.

The benefit we do have is, In-the-Flow to Above-the-Flow…hopefully it can be seen that the same new tools that we will be using for directed contributions are also handy to express whatever you want, and to have conversations about general work stuff.

The “work in progress” magic

Earlier on I mentioned, “work in progress”, meaning: “what I’m currently up to”, “the current state of things”, “my musings or understanding”, “what I just learnt along the way.”

As you can see “work in progress” is a vague term, and I think in another perspective you could see it also as, In-the-Flow, as it could be a substitute for some meetings, or the progress (status) email you send your boss/colleagues.

The part that is Above-the-Flow is not really about progress per se, but more about what you are exploring, your research thoughts, anything you find interesting (don’t want to have to wait to read the final report), anything interesting about your process, research methods, etc…

“Work in progress” is a great term that may blur the line between In-the-Flow and Above-the-Flow. What it means is that the more In-the-Flow contributions are more (Above-the-Flow) characteristic to casual and intimate know-how, the more chance this will spur volunteered contributions.

So maybe we could stress “work in progress” blogging and using wikis for collaborative constructing documents before they become formal deliverables, as a prime method to get your work done more productively, and also in extracting tacit knowledge…and creating conditions for conversation-leading to emergence, and ultimately innovation.

It’s not just wikis and blogs, in the end of a recent post I mentioned that the micro-blogging format is closer to expressing tacit know-how and conversations, which is what KM has always been about.

This excerpt about “conversation”, from Matthew Hodgson on the AppGap blog, sums it up in respect to how social tools can create a conversational environment, which is where the know-how lives and is exchanged:

“Many vendors in the 90s touted their products as providing ‘knowledge management’ without regard to the true and underlying issues for effective knowledge management – that sharing knowledge is a social activity, not a technology-based one. When we have news to tell friends and colleagues we usually meet them for coffee or pick up the telephone and have a conversation. When we need to share ideas about how to make a process work more effectively we meet in a little room for a little while and brainstorm ideas. When a project finishes we often have ‘lessons learned’ in a hope to tell others about the successes and failures in order to learn from them. Enabling these activities to occur easily and encouraging them is real knowledge management in practice. The only problem is that the people you want aren’t always around and we’re not good at recording the truth and meaning behind these activities adequately because processes the processes for recording what we have in our heads is typically just too slow.”

“If we look back to the rich oral history of many of our cultures, blogging is a reflection of the need to story-tell, carrying with it important information not only on the what – the facts like the reports we typically store in our recordkeeping systems – but also the meaning behind the why and how.”

Just finished listening to an interview with Peter Evans-Greenwood from Capgemini on Des Walsh’s Social Media Show.

Peter talked about a plain and simple bottom-up innovation by workers on a Toyota production line.
When an item came down the line they had to grab various parts, but they sometimes did not grab them all or the right ones. They went to the shop and bought some coloured bins…now when an item comes down the line, they go to the corresponding bin which will have all the parts for that item. [UPDATE 15/04/08: read this in the blog post, Change Me]

To me this is a classic In-the-Flow (Directed) way to get your work done, as it’s part of your workflow.

In an earlier post I mentioned how wikis can be used In-the-Flow.

The difference between the wiki and a bin is that bin is serving one function, whereas a wiki can be used for other things.
Eg. give a knowledge worker a wiki and show them how to use it for meetings.
With this same tool they may decide we can use it for gathering ideas for a proposal…then with a wiki again they may decide to draft the report in the wiki.
Later on they may decide to use a wiki to make a best practices page, or an ideas page…this example is when it gets interesting as this use case starts having less to do with functional duties and more about volunteered Above-the-Flow stuff.
What once started as using wikis to get your tasks done is now being used to volunteer tacit know-how.

But what I get from this is like email and blogs, wikis are free-form unstructured tools, they can be used in a bottom-up way just like the Toyota example to solve a workflow problem. But even better it’s a tool that can be used again and again to solve or assist in other problems.
My point is a wiki is more than that bin solution, I won’t even say re-usuable, it’s moreso a tool that can be many solutions.

Peter also talked about getting wiki usage by integrating it with other tools, making it a part of the current lancscape, rather than only being a standalone tool…perhaps this is the similar thinking behind Wetpaint wikis as widgets.

He also mentioned deploying social tools as a way to solve issues, rather than calling it Emterprise 2.0, call it “email overload solution”, “work around solutions”, etc..for others see Mike Gotta and James Robertson.

When implementing social tools, they may be deployed with the message that conveys:

- As we all know email overload is slowing us down and causing much frustration
- We have a solution to relieve at least a quarter of your email overload
- Communal webpages (wikis), and news channels (blogs) will be used rather than email for particular types of communications
- Wikis will now be used to set up meeting agendas, and to house minutes
(you can set up a webpage and everyone can edit it, subscribe to changes, leave a comment for discussion)
- Blogs will be used for broadcast email eg. announcements, news
(publish an entry and peope who subscribe to that blog will receive that new entry)
(you can also publish a post by sending an email to the blog email address, if there are people who don’t subscribe to the blog, but you want them to read this entry, then put their addresses in the cc: field when)
(you may want to put a link to the blog home page on the end of your email-like a blog post footer-so hopefully the people in your cc: field will subscribe to your blog)

Generally, it’s:

- Blogs for news
- Wikis for meetings
- Forums for discussion

All types of managers can reject an email if it’s sent for one of these reasons above…people need to get into the habitual routine, and a little discipline helps.

It would also be mentioned all the various other ways you can use wikis and blogs, especially to get the flow of tacit know-how moving.

Other social tools would be social networks, bookmarks, podcasts, micro-blogging, etc…

More

While I was writing this post I read Abbie Lundberg’s, The business value of Twitter…it triggered some thoughts that seemed to weave into this post.

Something interesting would be internal micro-blogging like Twitter, but it could be called “watercooler” or the “listening ear”

This is to be used rather than email, blogs, wikis, and forums; if it’s brief (a couple of sentences), more immediate and conversational.

The watercooler is most commonly used to post a couple of words or sentence on a thought, idea, insight, question…

Eg. if you have an excel issue with forumla’s, post a one liner question or frustration, someone may be listening, and give you an immediate answer.

In this respect I think Twitter is more prone, easier, less commited than blogs to express tacit know-how, and to offer help which also shares tacit know-how. Actually conversation is where it’s at, and an internal Twitter marketed the right way will be the optimal example of what we want out of KM 2.0 (conversation exchange).

I expressed this in my Tumblr a little while ago:

“Twitters value contribution to the knowledge flow-spontaneous, unpolished, work in progress, thinking out loud-lends itself to this type or quality of participation due to its brief, immediate, and intimate publishing format…let’s hope internal blogs generate the same calibre of tacit value without being hindered by their format.”

The only internal uses or developments of Twitter like services I know of are IBM’s Bluetwit, and Janssen-Cilag’s Jitter.

NOTE: Capgemini have a paper called Enterprise 2.0 for the Rest of Us. You need to register, I couldn’t be bothered, but if someone else has please send it my way.

Like in email, there’s lots of conversation that happen on the web; threaded forums, distributed blog discussion, micro-blog conversations, etc…

The good thing about this over email is that it’s all in the open for you to see, but the problem is that once the conversation is over it becomes buried in the openess.

I’ve written on distilling blog conversations before as they are distributed and hard to piece together or know they exist unless you are tuned in at the time they are happening.

When the conversations are within the domain of a network it’s a little easier to follow, but still, conversations roll of the radar into the archives, then what…

Email conversations are a little easier to piece together as they are more threaded, but then you may not have access to these…forums are similar with the difference of being more visible.

Regardless of the nature of threaded or distributed, what happens is that at the time they happen they are visible, current and of great value, but in time they become buried-the value is still there but they are more hidden from view.

A while back TalkDigger tried to distill blog conversations via bookmarking an link search URL for a given blog post (eg. imagine Technorati allowing you to bookmark the URL of a link search, and to be able to tag, and then even more conversation can happen in the comments of the bookmark).
But then this is not curated enough, for now the manual human touch is the best bet.

Picking up on a thread from Nancy White, Brad Hinton and Joitske Hulsebosch is the need for a harvester and garderner to make sure the conversation gems are still visible.

Even though web 2.0 content is open, conversations are rarely packaged neatly, so just like past email and forum discussions we need to distill the gems to the surface…kind of a flow and stock thing.

We do this with repeated forum questions into a FAQ, well why not do this with valuable tacit conversations…more from Nancy:

“There are often amazing threads on email lists and web based discussions. Often they get lost due to the tyranny of recency over relevancy. We remember what we last read. How many times have you heard people say “hey, we discussed that before… where IS that conversation?” Some tools make it easy to search within message, but then you have to reconstruct a thread. There may have had subject line changes, interruptions, etc. It is hard work. That’s why it is useful think about practices to pull out useful stuff so it can provide wider and easier benefit.”

And from Brad:

“Sometimes, when changing applications, the existing text-based information is archived or just deleted. The new application starts afresh as if there had been no information and no learnings that preceded it. By taking the existing information from the listserv and reusing that knowledge in the wiki, there is now the opportunity to reframe the information via the wiki format and to maintain the knowledge learnings and knowledge history.

The value of the existing information is retained and rearticulated for re-use. New discussions will emerge and radiate within the new format. The process will be ongoing and regenerating, just like in the natural world with sowing, nurturing, growing, and harvesting.”

A lot of people write these types of blog posts, just like I am doing now, right now I am reviewing/collating/distilling a discussion, but I’m doing it in my regular blog, which means my review of the conversation will just be again buried in the archives. I could use a tag/category called “discussion summary”, but even better is Joitske’s idea of using a “discussion summary blog” for just this type of content…where each blog post summarises a discussion into a neat package.

Nancy mentions a “discussion summary wiki” as a way to collect and publish these conve