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April, 2007:

Attention!

Apr 15th, 2007
by Lou Paglia.
10 comments

Information overload has been and will continue to be a growing problem due to the natural growth of the web and the exponential growth of valuable user generated content such as blogs. New technologies and methodologies to deal with it and I believe we’ll see a wave of solutions hit the web in short but due time to deal with it.

My friend and colleague, Daniela, was the first to bring to my attention (no pun intended) with her post on Touchstone, now called Particls, which is an application leveraging APML. APML stands for ‘attention profiling mark-up language’ which allows an application to build a dynamic attention profile based on what you look at and read.

APML

The idea is interesting and Particls is making some headway. I am an alpha tester of the software and while intrigued, I’m still not sold on the idea as of yet simply because I think for it to work, you have to have an engine tuned quite well for it to predictive of what you want to look at based on what you’ve done historically. I believe the ultimate question is do most people really read the same topics or themes all the time?

Chris Saad, founder of Particls, had an interesting post yesterday on attention management and Web 3.0. While I think attention management software may find its place in the overall web scheme, I agree with Chris’ point that it is not Web 3.0.

First I agree with Chris’ point attention management software has its place in the current web, it processes what you read and puts up-front-and-center predictively what you would want to read. Secondly, I believe the Web 3.0 is going to be the ‘Semantic Web’ or the semantic web will be a very big piece of it. We simply need to get to the next level where the data within web content can be utilized at the data level and not the document level. Let’s take the leap where APML extends to profile your attention on the data within documents and not just the documents, at that point APML would be very Web 3.0.

How do you know? Answer: Parking Lot Test.

Apr 14th, 2007
by Lou Paglia.
4 comments

How do you know when you are posting something on your blog that would be considered acceptable with your employer or that you are posting something that you really shouldn’t be. Well, first off, while I’ve been an avid blog reader for quite some time, I’ve only been blogging for a short time. However, for the fact that I’ve gotten a question about it twice in the last week since starting this blog, it is something that I’ve been thinking about. And in this world of connectedness, it is something that all bloggers that have corporate responsibilities have to keep top-of-mind.

Of course, you should always adhere to your corporate blogging policy, such as IBM‘s. And with the latest O’Reilly’s blogger code of conduct being the topic du jour, there is even more to consider. However, my answer is simple: apply the parking lot test. What? Yes, if you need to ask whether you should be blogging about something, ask yourself whether you would feel comfortable saying it out in the parking lot in front of strangers.

It is a simple rule and it fits quite well. If you would not feel comfortable saying something out in the open in front of others (i.e. out in the parking lot), you shouldn’t feel comfortable putting it out on the web. The web is an incredible place to disseminate information but it is also a place that you can cause reputation damage to yourself, others and your company if you don’t think twice before blogging sensitive information. Global Neighbourhoods, formerly “Naked Conversations”, has a whole category dedicated to the topic of “corporate blogging” for those who are interested.

Challenge of Enterprise Wiki Adoption

Apr 13th, 2007
by Lou Paglia.
No comments yet

There is a lot written about the challenges of wiki adoption, particularly in the enterprise. Looking at one of the most successful wiki implementations, Wikipedia, even its active user penetration is quite low as compared to overall internet usage. However, even with an overall low user base, Wikipedia still leverages the benefit of a having a wide pool of passionate and attentive users. This is something that enterprise teams do not always have when trying to get a wiki off the ground in an enterprise setting.

Being about four months into our team’s use of wiki software, we clearly have seen both the benefits and challenges of successfully using a wiki in the enterprise environment. At Dow Jones, we have an open wiki environment and when there is time (right, when is there time?), I take the opportunity to see some of the interesting ways in which other groups utilize the wiki environment for collaboration. And I have to be honest, there are some really great examples to see.

But with all the wikipedia success (and hype) and the great examples to mimic, the real challenge is winning over the teams to use the wiki rather than the work flows they’ve created for themselves. And this is where all the multi-angle debate occurs…

Debate #1: Will Enterprise 2.0 technologies such as wikis really take hold? Tom Davenport, President of Information Technology and Management at Babson, has a interesting article on the topic.
Debate #2: Is it any more valuable than what we have today? Are enterprises trying to use wiki technology simply for the technology’s sake? (This is a response I get often). Andrew McAfee has a response to Tom regarding this.
Debate #3: What is the best way to get wikis rolled out into an organization (not from a technology sense) but most importantly into a team environment where it will be used. As a manager, what strategies do you employ? Jerry Bowles, has a great post as to whether you want to become a wiki champion or wiki bully and how wikipatterns is here to help.

There are probably more than three debate lenses to take here and you may have stories of success and failure about trying to gain wiki adoption. It would be great to hear them…

Interesting Enterprise 2.0 Event

Apr 11th, 2007
by Lou Paglia.
2 comments

Saw mention that there is a very interesting E2.0 event coming up in NYC. Two blogs I read often, Fast Forward and Andrew McAfee, both mentioned that a 24-hour Enterprise 2.0 Rave where topic leaders will getting together with early E2.0 practitioners. It is geared towards practitioners only and not for vendor pitch, even though I believe they will have slots where vendors or players in the space can have a few moments to show themselves. Professor McAfee speaks about it more in depth in his post.

Sounds like a fantastic idea for an event. The Enterprise 2.0 paradigm seems like a game changer but we’ve seen it before. The key again is going to be whether these new technologies such as blogs, wikis and other collaborative engines can ‘cross the chasm’ and get into the hearts and minds of the enterprise mainstream. That is what the entire event seems to be about, how to gain adoption, understand the pain points of roll-out and really isolate on the tough issues to make this work. Getting everyone together to discuss these issues is critical to get collective mind share on how to make these new tools work for organizations, not for the sake of technology but for the benefit of the organizations’ ROI.

[UPDATE: If anyone is interested in attending the event, use "bloggers" as the discount code during the registration process to get a $250 discount.]

Little Social Experiment Over

Apr 11th, 2007
by Lou Paglia.
No comments yet

It took only one day for Correlate to be discovered. My colleague, Daniela Barbosa, found it quite quickly. And all it took was a name mention and an alert set-up on the term.

A little of 24 hours is not bad, especially considering Daniela just got back from vacation. She found Correlate with an alert looking for mentions of her name and her blog. That alone shows how interesting the web has become and how each individual user finds their way to extract the value from it. Even in the days of information overload and the endless web, if you know what you are looking for, there are tools you can leverage to find it. Sometimes the tools are simple like a simple alert and others the tools required will be much more powerful like mining applications.

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