December 2003 Archives

Taken from the Dec/Jan edition of "The Business Communicator" by Martin White - managing Director of Intranet Focus Ltd http://www.intranetfocus.com/intranets/communities.html 1. RESOURCES COME FIRST - you won't get far without management support and funding. Management cannot enforce a CoP but they can kill it off Not sure I agree with the first bit - we have managed without management support and funding so far. How would management support and funding be beneficial to our CoP? 2. YOU NEED A LEADER - a leader that defines scope, quietly encourages other members or builds links with other CoPs. They will need training in order to stimulate good minds to work on a problem well Agree that a leader will enhance a CoP but do they need training or should they have these traits naturally rather than be trained in them? 3. USE THE BEST TECHNOLOGY - or rather that best meets users' requirements. These change with time, topic and membership. Don't lose sight of f2f and don't substitute f2f with IT. 4. BEWARE OF INDIVIDUAL AGENDAS - CoPs work within two extremes of behaviour: market logic (the needs of the organisation) and group logic (the needs of the group). A CoP often starts with market logic and moves to group logic, putting needs of team members first. Be alert to hidden agendas An interesting thought - I shall now be deeply suspicious of you lot going forward! 5. BE PREPARED FOR FAILURE - Not all CoPs will be successful. If they fail, look at why but remember it could be due to personality differences. Remember sometimes CoPs don't die, they hibernate

1. We reviewed the value proposition 2. We reviewed the 'ten traits' 3. We fed back our thoughts on the weblog so far: Nick - his job is quite fragmented so this kind of knowledge sharing is not 'natural' to him. He has also struggled a bit with the new technology Lindsay/Anu - Use it as a diary, rarely go into the website itself. Anu mentioned that there are other methods of viewing entries (via Outlook, Feed demon) ACTIONS ALL: Each to look at a different news feed and report back on ease of use at next meeting Nick to trial Outlook news feed Lindsay to continue with weblog Anu to trial feed demon ALL: To continue to review "ten traits" at CoPs meetings ALL: Speak to others to see if they would be interested in being involved with this weblog Nick - Brendan (Internal) Lindsay - Neil Munn (Knowledge Manager, CSTIM) Anu - Matt Stephenson (Internal) ALL: We agreed it was too early for a client measure ALL: We agreed that we could act as a catalyst for other groups keen to set up Cops ANU/NICK: To look at setting up a weblog for a client (e.g. HBOS) ANU/NICK: Prepare article on CoPs/Weblogs/Social Networking for SCM. Anu to draft, Nick to speak to Mandy Thatcher who edits SCM. NICK: Update value proposition and pick out key success measures. Clarify roles. Add 'sharing knowledge' and 'acting as a role model for the rest of Mercer' to it. ANU: To set up a brief 'training' session on the weblog with Lindsay and Nick

Collaboration & The Problem With E-mail

"I've used Groove, Drupal, Sharepoint, Convea, and other collaborative spaces in an effort to create a place to brainstorm ideas and share information. Most often, these tools (while great in theory) don't get results like a simple email will. For some reason, only a small percentage of people will embrace these tools...and even then, involvement in the collaborative space is usually sporadic. The article presents the notion that the problem with these collaborative tools is that a change in habits is required in order for users to experience their potential. Email we're used to...collaborative tools we're not."

Just to let you know that I am still alive and haven't disappeared off to the great Community of Practice in the sky. I must admit that I am still trying to get used to this new form of communication, which requires a different way of looking at things. It's a kind of drop in everyday/chat at the coffee machine medium and I'm just not yet into the habit of it. I'm also trying to get used to the technology - I posted a comment with roughly the same contents as this and it disappeared into the ether somewhere. I think it would be useful for us to record our experience of getting to grips with this new form as we go along. In a couple of months it will be very difficult to remember what it was like when this all seemed very new (Anu, you're excused this last comment as the most experience Blogger amongst us). I volunteer to be the Blogging ingenue who asks the daft questions and owns up to any frustrations or inability to make the thing work for me.

So, what does "scale-free" mean anyway ? This article - Scale Free Networks offers up a good explanation. In a nutshell, a scale-free network is a network where links between nodes aren't added or distributed randomly. Iinstead of random attachment, you get preferential attachment - ie the more links a node already has, the greater the probability of a new node attaching to it. Applied to the internet, you see this in super-connected sites such as Yahoo, Google, etc. In a social networking model, these hubs are generally known as "connectors", and are normally responsible for bringing together disparate groups.

Friday 5th December 2pm-3pm Comms Pod My suggestions for our agenda: 1. Thoughts/progress to date (incl. actions from first mtg) 2. The Ten Traits 3. Value Proposition 4. Widening the weblog 5. Actions for next meeting Please let me know if you would like to add anything else to the agenda See you there!