Shiv Singh from Razorfish announces that the Razorfish report on intranets has been wikified and is available at The Intranet Maturity Framework. Nice idea, we'll see how it plays out, and whether a better report comes out of it. I'm also interested to see how the rights (and credit) issue gets played out. I've suggested they clarify terms by adding a Creative Commons license - which in itself might be an internally controversial idea. Haven't really read the report, but I did notice that it looks as if Razorfish have got a big downer on internal blogging:

Some employee blogs will last, but, unfortunately, most won't. Many companies that enthusiastically set up employee blogs ignored the two most important ingredients for blogging success. The first is that the blogger needs to have something important and unique to say. According to a recent survey by America Online, the most popular blogs are the most personal and opinionated ones. Most organizations have cultures that subconsciously encourage information hoarding and group think. These organizations will find that their employees are reluctant to share their knowledge and personal insights unless they see tangible benefits to doing so. As a result, most employee blogs will be superficial and boring unless, of course, they are anonymous.

The AOL survey was about external blogs. We're discussing internal use here. Apples vs Oranges ? I think so. I agree there will be many cultural issues (and frankly, the companies with those sorts of cultures probably won't even green light a company wide blogging infrastructure), but a blanket prediction of most internal blogs failing is, I think, a pretty big leap. And finally - could I have chosen a worse title for this post ? [tags]internal, corporate, razorfish, wiki, blogs, intranet[/tags]

Phil Linden - CEO (or should that be EarthFather) of Linden Labs, developers of Second Life posts the first page of the Linden Labs employee handbook: the Tao of Linden on his blog. Interesting reading - choose what you want to work on, be incredibly transparent, weekly progress, no politics. All sounds good, and is what I was going to point to initially. But..there's more... Unfortunately, Second Life is running massively unstable at the moment after the most recent set of updates. So, a couple of SL power users have weighed in on the comments telling Philip that his employees may be happy, but his customers aren't - with plenty of detail. The recurring theme seems to be: if employees can choose what they want to work on, they will add features, rather than fix bugs - and that's certainly something I thought when I read the post...there are *always* unpleasant jobs, and if there's no pressure, who's going to volunteer - especially when the guy next to you has decided to work on "fun" stuff. I did login a couple of times last week and found SL nearly unusable in certain sims, so haven't logged back in since. I've been on SL for a couple of years, but my RL isn't dependent on my SL ;) so not a huge problem for me. It'll be interesting to see what the response is from Linden Labs, a standout example of how the new world is going to operate. [tags]secondlife[/tags]

Thomas Otter - SAP

I once worked on a project at a Railway, and they had different pay rates depending on whether the train route was mainly uphill or downhill. This sounds really dumb, but if you think back to when trains ran on coal and steam, uphill meant much harder work for the stoker and the driver. This rule became enshrined in the union structured plans, and because there were still several 100 guys still on this form of contract, we needed to set this up in the system. Real life business is not all about knowledge workers and clouds and tags, but really complex, messy and often illogical business processes.

Something I need to keep reminding myself ! [tags]web20, enterprise, corporate[/tags]

In my continuing quest to ensure that my environment is replicated as easily as possible to any machine I'm using, here's a nice idea:

Even better was a pointer to the PortableApps.com version. I loves me some portable apps. Why? Cause I throw all portable programs on a FolderShare folder and use Launchy to launch them. No start menu clutter, no installation, and my applications roam to all my PCees. Sweet.

Omar Shahine - Portable FileZilla

Definitely a good solution - I like the use of Launchy (which allows you to specify folders outside of the Start Menu structure to index, and if they contain apps, they become part of the index) to ensure there's no Start Menu clutter. Bit of a shame that FolderShare only allows one folder (and its subfolders) to be automatically synced - so that instead of picking and choosing from your existing folder structure, you have to change the way you work and create a "Foldershare" folder, or something like that. I know, moan moan. And while I'm moaning, where on earth is Google Notebook's "post to blog" feature ? [Update] Actually Foldershare can allow up to 10 "libraries" - a folder and its subfolders - to be synched. So, that's even better - although I think the UI on the website needs a lot of work - I don't think it's the most intuitive it could be. [tags]foldershare, launchy, googlenotebook, portableapps[/tags]

David Tebbutt in The Register

Think of social computing as a platform upon which people can collaborate in ad hoc groups, where they can share their expertise with others, possibly strangers, and where the by-products of their activities automatically add to the wealth of retained corporate knowledge. Sounds like knowledge management doesn't it? Well, it's not. There's none of the coercive aspects of that particular discipline. And, before you ask, it's much more free-form and less centrally-directed than groupware. In fact, social computing is a curious mix of top-down initiation and bottom-up implementation.

Via Neville Hobson [tags]social, web2.0, explanation[/tags]

Okay okay, I've teased you enough. Exactly what is it that I'm going to be doing when I leave Mercer ? Well, I am extraordinarily happy to be able to announce that in early September I will become a Headshifter, or is that Headshiftee...hmm, maybe Headshiftette ! Yup - I'm joining the Headshift crew, and am thrilled about it. Why Headshift ? Well, they're doing a lot of cool stuff that other people are just talking about, and by the sounds of things doing it very well indeed. They've got a great set of projects, lots and lots of interesting work, and are a smart, creative and passionate bunch of people. Oh - and they got bunnies :) What's not to like ? I'm really looking forward to it, and just hope I can make a decent contribution. So - now you know...let the festivities begin ! [tags]headshift[/tags]