November 2003 Archives

There's a lot of information about Social Networking and SNA on the IBM website.

Cross and Prusak. The People Who Make Organisations Go - Or Stop. Harvard Business Review June 2002 [PDF file] is a great, and gentle, introduction into social networking, focused on social networks within a business context. Required reading for SN novices ! The key types mentioned in this article are:

• The Central Connector
• The Boundary Spanner
• The Information Broker
• The Peripheral Specialist

I'll give a quick explanation of these terms later, and also briefly talk about what social networking analysis can do in a business environment.

One of the action points from our initial meeting was to come up with a "weblog policy" - some guidelines about how we should be posting to this, non-company, weblog. Ray Ozzie, creator of Lotus Notes, and more recently founder of the collaboration company, Groove Networks, posted some guidelines on his blog a while ago. Probably a good place to start:

Please make it clear to your readers that the views you express are yours alone and that they do not necessarily reflect the views of the company. To help reduce the potential for confusion, we would appreciate it if you put the following notice – or something similar – in a reasonably prominent place on your site (e.g., at the bottom of your “about me” page)

• The views expressed on this website/weblog are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of my employer.
• If you do put a notice on your site, you needn’t put it on every page, but please use reasonable efforts to draw attention to it – if at all possible, from the home page of your site.
• Take care not to disclose any information that is confidential or proprietary to the company or to any third party that has disclosed information to us. Consult the company’s confidentiality policy for guidance about what constitutes confidential information.
• Please remember that your employment documents give the company certain rights with respect to concepts and developments you produce that are related to the company’s business. Please consult your manager if you have questions about the appropriateness of publishing such concepts or developments related to the company’s business on your site.
• Since your site is a public space, we hope you will be as respectful to the company, our employees, our customers, our partners and affiliates, and others (including our competitors) as the company itself endeavors to be.

I think this is relevant, but I am aware that the guidelines above were aimed at individual employees creating their own personal weblogs. This is a group weblog purposely intended to help us explore stuff specifically for work.

Does this make a difference ? Thoughts please.

At our meeting last week we agreed that the group needs to work around a clear value proposition for both individuals participating and the business. My starter for ten is as follows: 1. What's in it for you? The chance to exchange ideas, views and information with like-minded (and a few unlike-minded but equally enthused) individuals. The buzz you get from doing something new and different. Ultimately, if this work leads to new/different ways of doing things, the recognition that you contributed to something significant and worthwhile. Ultimately, the real reason for being involved is if you're interested, engaged in and motivated by the subject to want to know more. 2. What's in it for the company? The creation of new products and services. Innovation without over-engineering. Knowledge contagion - if it catches on with this why shouldn't it catch on with other subjects? The motivation of the people who take part. Marketing opportunities - the creation of Communities of Practice around our core content area of internal communication. Let's play around with this but I think if we have a set of objectives such as these we can measure our progress against them. Nick

(Melcrum's Knowledge Management Review Jan/Feb 2003) I've summarised these in my own words! Lets keep these in mind going forward. 1. Clear business proposition 2. Good Leader 3. Clear knowledge map 4. Easy process for sharing knowledge 5. Website or similar for collaboration 6. Communication and training 7. List of CoP members - kept up to date 9. Measurement of success 10. Agenda for first 3-6 months Also, remember the 'Goldfish Principle' from this article. Too much food or lack of food = poorly fish! In other words, if you over or under police a CoP it is likely to fail.

This edition of the IBM Systems Journal has a number of useful articles about Knowledge Management and Communities of Practice, including Communities of practice and organizational performance, which shows how communities fit into and enhance wider organisational performance issues by viewing these communities as engines for the development of social capital.