Social Media | Social Media University, Global (SMUG)

ALI Conference: Chairperson’s Address

Michael Rudnick of Watson Wyatt is the chairperson for this conference. I met him when he chaired another ALI conference, in Chicago. He did a great job facilitating that event and tying the presentations together.

We started with obligatory (I guess) safety warnings about what to do in the event of an earthquake. Not something that’s typically a big concern in southern Minnesota.

Michael’s presentation was on The Read/Write Intranet: How to Drive User Engagement and Productivity.

Employees want personal, straightforward, relevant information they can trust. They’re increasingly skeptical, though, of anything “corporate.”

They also want a “consumer-grade” user experience. They see great UI on the Web, and wonder why their companies have such a clunky interface, lousy search, and no ability to interact with (or help create) the content.

Key issues for Communicators:

Content – demand for immediacy and ease of publishing. Targeting content (enabling users to get the information they need, delivered to them.) Translation into non-English languages. Multi-media.
New technology – keeping abreast of changes
Operations and governance (guidelines, ROI/budgets, redundant or competing web initiatives
Phasing and transitioning to a new portal. Michael says communicators need to take a patient approach, and understand that it may take 3-5 years to implement a complete change.
Integration of third-party sites/data/content

Too many corporate intranets are in the Web 1.0 mindset, which indicates (to me, at least) that we don’t have a problem with people taking the long-term view. It’s fine to have a long view, but you need to at least start implementing some things to avoid getting bogged down.

If TechCrunch can keep busy covering start-up companies that can launch with as little as $50,000 in capital, why can’t Fortune 1000 companies fix their intranets?
Web 1.0

One-to-many
Preach/Spin
Command & Control
Formal and pre-determined

Web 2.0

Multi-directional
Advocate
Influence and persuade
Informal and dynamic
Presence

Facebook isn’t “just for kids.” The over-35 demographic is the fastest growing. And large companies are saying, “So Far, So Good.” He cited a McKinsey study of companies that have adopted Web 2.0 tools, and most of them are saying they wish they would have started earlier.

Michael says that by the end of 2008:

At least 70 percent of companies without official support for blogs and wikis will have multiple unofficial deployments. Just because you say “no” doesn’t mean people won’t do it, just because you won’t provide the official infrastructure. They’ll form Google groups, or WordPress blogs or use other free services.
Enterprise social software will be the biggest new workplace technology success story of this decade.

In response to a question about using Facebook-like services for employee directories, Michael said there are several companies that offer “white label” products. He says one obstacle is that most companies would want them hosted on their intranets, fully behind the firewall. Actually, Jeremiah Owyang has a complete listing of these vendors.

Michael seems to be a big fan of Microsoft Sharepoint. You can see the demo here, but he says it doesn’t really show how you would incorporate this into your workflow to get things done. One idea he has is to have hands-on demos for whatever your technology initiative is…like the Apple store…so people can interact with your geeky “geniuses.”

That’s what Social Media University, Global is all about. Not many people will actually get to visit “Old Main,” but hopefully through the online curriculum they can get some ideas for how these tools can be used practically.

Michael’s Key Lessons:

Have a strategy, vision and 18 month road map.
Attain and maintain legitimacy — executive support and business case (and necessary funding)
Line up content owners, provide a usable cms and continuous training and support
Focus on ongoing support and resource commitment — implementation is only the beginning
Thing big, start small, scale up — implement in phases — tightly prioritize and continually reassess
Plan for continuous evolution — content, user interface, user preferences, software, search

We had lots of great Q&A with Michael. Please continue the conversation in the comments below.

For information about auditing SMUG classes or applying for admission, click here.

Social Media 103: Intro to Wikis

Note: This course is part of the general education requirements for Social Media University, Global (SMUG).

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A wiki is a great tool that enables groups of contributors to work together to quickly create and edit documents that pool their collective knowledge.

You’ve no doubt heard of Wikipedia, which is (to paraphrase the former Iraqi dictator) “the mother of all wikis.” The richness of this resource, produced entirely by collective voluntary effort, is truly amazing. Check out its entries on the Virginia Tech massacre and the 35W bridge collapse, and you’ll get a sense for the power of wikis to facilitate collaboration.

And these are only two of the more than 2.2 million articles in the English version of Wikipedia. So just how is Encylopaedia Britannica supposed to compete with that?

You’re no doubt already using Wikipedia. In fact, if you Google almost any relatively prominent proper noun, it’s highly like the Wikipedia entry will show up on the first page of results. So that’s one wiki already making your life easier (unless you work for an encyclopedia publisher.)

But how can wikis help you complete your projects?

If you have a work team, you can use a wiki to produce documents much more quickly and easily than you can with a Word document via email.

For example, say you have a 10-member team and you need to produce a two-page document. In the old way (or maybe what you’re doing today), you would produce a first draft and send it as an email attachment to your team members: Ann, Bob, Cindy, Doug, Eunice, Frank, Gail, Hal, Irene and Joe. You play it smart and turn on the track-changes mode, so edits are apparent.

Ann adds to the document, hits “reply all” to the email, and sends her revision to the whole group.
Bob bounces your original directly back to you with some modifications, but doesn’t copy the rest of the team.
Cindy changes Ann’s version and hits reply all.
Doug deletes Ann’s additions and inserts his own, and likewise sends to everyone.
Eunice edits your original and sends it on to Frank for his thoughts on one particular section.
Frank fails to respond, so Eunice’s edits are lost to the team.
Gail groans at Cindy’s changes, adds her own ideas, and copies the whole team on her changes.

So at this point in this illustration you have 52 Word files in various team members’ email inboxes, and figuring out which is the latest version is, well…problematic at least. And even if you can track down the various versions, it’s a hassle to compare modifications in separate documents.

Feeling cross-eyed yet?

That’s why wikis are wonderful. Instead of sending an attachment, you send a link to a special Web site. You and your teammates make your edits in one common place, and each version is saved in the document history. So you capture all of the information, and you as the editor can compare the various versions.

Homework Assignments:

1. Watch a Wiki Video. Honorary doctorate candidates Sachi and Lee LeFever again have an honorable contribution, with their Wikis in Plain English video. See it below:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dnL00TdmLY]

2. Participate in our Class Wiki Demonstration. Visit the SMUG Curriculum wiki, and add your course ideas. This gives you hands-on experience with a wiki, and it also will help strengthen our curriculum.

3. Set up a wiki for your team or some other group. You have options to get these for free, like everything else in the SMUG curriculum. The one I picked for our class project is wikispaces. Using wiki technology to accomplish a practical project takes your experience to the next level.

4. Discussion: Please share your thoughts or questions about wikis, or what you’ve learned through your experiences with them, in the comments section below.

Extra Credit for Honors Students: Read this review of Wikinomics for broader background on the new ways of working made possible by technology like wikis.