Dion Hinchcliffe ran this great tutorial on the basics of Web 2.0 and how those principles can be translated into Enterprise 2.0
Dion ran through a history of the internet and transformation to Web 2.0. The web has moved from a publish/read only model to one that combines published content and user generated content. He noted a Forrester research paper that in 2005, there became more user generated content on the web than published content. Web 2.0 is not about technology, but a change in the behavior and scale of the web and its audience. [Sounds like knowledge management] This change was highlighted by Time Magazine in its Person of the Year 2006: "You." He also cited to the O'Reilly report on Web2.0 for definitions.
One of the basics to the operation of Web2.0 is the "Network Effect" which is when a good or service has more value the more that other people have it too. I saw this in 2001 when email took off in the legal industry. He cited Reed's Law that the utility of large networks, particularly social networks, can scale exponentially with the size of the network.
Dion then moved onto Web2.0 Strategies and Business Models. He started off by pointing out the importance of syndication and feeds. He cited the principle that the user is going to spend most of his time somewhere else. RSS pushes your content to where the user is.
Next he moved onto blogs. He keyed on the controversial point that a blog must allow comments, or else it is just a personal website. Without comments it is a monologue, not a dialogue. The blogosphere went from zero blogs in 2003 to 57 million today. He also noted that after the London bombings in 2005, the BBC admitted it stopped becoming the source of news and instead was a facilitator of the information poring in from the scene from crowd.
Then onto Wikis, being web pages (1) that anyone can edit, (2) can link to anywhere on the web or intranet, (3) a version of every change made is saved, and (4) the user does not need to know html. He put forth the history of Wikipedia. It started life as Nupedia that had an open submission process for articles to create an online encyclopedia. After a few years it had only 19 entries. They added a wiki model in January 2000. Within 10 days after the switch, they had 5,000 articles. He pointed out that Wikipedia had a similar rate of accuracy of traditional material: Wikipedia averaged 3.1 errors per entry, but Encyclopedia Brittanica had 2.9 errors per entry. He demonstrated the self-correcting power of Wikipedia. He vandalized the Web2.0 entry on Wikipedia by changing a 2003 date to a 1893 date. Within 30 minutes, it was corrected back (along with a nasty message).
He ended the Web2.0 into with Social Networking and tagging.
Then onto Enterprise 2.0, which he credited to Andrew McAfee's seminal article: Enterprise 2.0 - The Dawn of Emergent Collaboration. He defined the E2.0 checklist of SLATES: Search, Linking, Authorship, Tagging, Extensions and Signals. Enterprise2.0 is non-interruptive and leveragable. As opposed to use of email as a collaborative tool which is interruptive and not leveragable.
Dion went onto a case study for a German bank that was one of the case studies for Prof. McAfee's article. When they deployed wikis, uptake was not automatic. It took three months before anything happened. Initial efforts confused employees. It was not clear when to use email and when to use the wiki. Finally a manager said "don't send me email, put it in the wiki." They found that viral adoption worked. You need a simple, clear message about the tool. You need to recognize that it is a new type of collaboration.
He moved on to Avenue A | Razorfish and how they used wikis and tagging to populate their intranet.
Next, he moved onto an investment management company that need to compile information for tax season, the primary audience of which was a phone bank. They locked down policies, but allowed the workers to comment and make notes on the policy. They measured a reduction in call response time of one to two minutes per call.
Onto Enteprise2.0 platforms and products. Wikimatrix compares 100 wiki products. Weblogmatrix compares 20 blog products. There are a lot more wiki products than blog products.
Some key things for an Enterprise2.o strategy:
- You need a single sign-on for users
- can't fire people for producing content (even if it is negative content)
- Must be easy to use and adopt
- IT worrying that E2.0 will put them out of work (but we still need them)
- The "Empty Quarter" the senior management who are non-adopters. You need them on board.
- The 2% troublemakers. You need to deal with flame wars.
- The 9X problem. New technology needs to be 10 times better to get users to switch.
- Productivity concerns. Are workers going to spend more time on the wiki or blog than doing their job. [I wrote about this earlier]
- Security Limits. Does this make it easier for someone to copy all of the firm's knowledge?
More on Dion:
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