Participation on Online Communities : can we beat the “natural law” ?

April 9, 2008 By Leave a Comment

It seems that question of participation rate on online communities is coming back as a major issue. I’d rather say that people are wondering if the rate we notice on the web are still relevant within the enterprise, that’s to say if in an organization where people are supposed to be involved and use the tools they’re provided with to do their job, the 1-9-10 rule is a relevant metric.

This makes us ask different questions

1°) What would be an ideal rate ?

100% of course ! It would mean that any project that won’t reach 100% participation would be a failure. Stop being dishonest ! Let’s look at how people participate, for example, in a meeting, in a project team ? Do they all actually participate ? Of course not. I’m more likely to think that social media platforms within the enteprise only formalize reality. What they show are more HR and management issues than anything that has to do with the concerned tools. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Management & HR, Software & Tools Tagged With: , , , ,

People are more likely to share information if they know why

March 29, 2008 By 2 Comments

Companies know their performance depends more and more on their ability to use information. But information that’s not harnessed can’t be used.

There are two kinds of information : company generated information that’s harnessed (even if people within the organization don’t know where to find it), and employee generated information that remains informal and is only known from its owner and some few people around him, because it’s not harnessed at the organization scale.

Harnessing this informal information is one of enterprises 2.0′s purposes. As said in this Gartner’s post, this kind of information exists and is available as flows, contrary to what people used to know, that is more about stocks. That’s quite destabilizing because the liquidity of this information, the fact it’s owned by employees, and the fact that employees share it and make it available for the whole organization only if they want is the exact opposite of everything that’s been known till then. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Enterprise 2.0 & Social Business, Intranets and digital workplace, Knowledge & Information management, Management & HR Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

How Finaref managed to get both innovation and web 2.0 within the organization

February 1, 2008 By 1 Comment

I never write anything about my projects and clients in my job at blueKiwi two reasons : first the company has it own site to communicate and, second, there’s always a suspicion about objectivity when you talk about your employer. But sometimes, I need to find examples to illustrate what I say and I don’t feel like searching elsewhere what I have under my eyes.

So, when a lot of companies are wondering how they could improve innovation or how to implement successfully web 2.0, perhaps you’d be interested in knowing how Finaref managed to do both.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Enterprise 2.0 & Social Business, Innovation, Intranets and digital workplace, Management & HR, Web & Usages Tagged With: , , , , , ,

So Web 2.0 doesn’t work…or misunderstandings about communities

April 25, 2007 By Leave a Comment

Some where waiting for it…we got the news last week : web 2.0 don’t work. It’s the conclusion of a CNET article : nobody collaborates on the collaborative web.

Have we been fooled ? Are all the alleged benefits of web 2.0 only a cloud of smoke ? Sure this kind of conclusion can scare people at the time the need for evangelization is still very important.

In my opinion, web 2.0, should it be inter or intranet is not collaborative or participative by definition. Web 2.0 is community web, and because it’s community web, people share and collaborate. A slight difference in the definition that finally has a lot of importance.

It’s not because you provide people with tools to publish, share, collaborate… that they will do so. People need to know what to use it for, publishing, sharing etc… must help them to reach a goal. Where there’s no goal there’s no need, and not much uses of the tools. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Enterprise 2.0 & Social Business, Intranets and digital workplace Tagged With: , , ,

Looking for 2.0 indicators

February 25, 2007 By 2 Comments

Sorry, this blog is very late compared to my french one and I’ll make everything possible to have it updated more frequently. I have a scheduled note dealing with indicators in enterprise 2.0 but it was supposed to be published after my series on “what’s an enterprise in 2007″ and I can’t wait to introduce this subject since I read this very interesting post. It deals with participation in communities but I’d like to tell you a few words about one of its assumptions :

“Given limited time and resources, where do you spend your time to increase participation?”

Ok time is actually limited but can we find a way to “unlimit” it a little. According to me time is limited but in the whole working time, time allowed for participation is not only limited, it’s often equal to zero.

Why ?

The time I give to participation lowers my productivity that’s evaluated locally by my manager. But this time, once converted in money (that’s the real point) may create 10 or 100 times its value in another part of the organization : little local loss and big global earn. But since my manager is in charge of local indicators he has not interest in global, and letting me participate is a logical nonsense for him (despite he knows it’s goog for the organization)
At the community era, do you think we can deal with post-Taylor indicators anymore ?

Does the fact people are evaluated  locally since creation of value is global (with the assumption that in any enterprise value making is the main and only goal) seems to be a nonsense for you ?

Filed Under: Enterprise 2.0 & Social Business, Management & HR Tagged With: , , ,
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