My research brain is exploding with ideas and I have recently did a enterprise 2.0 experiment and below are the lessons learnt. I am sorry I can’t disclose the details of the experiment but I can tell you what I got out of it.
1) Technology is important. Clearly the tool must meet the requirements (Duh!). However, what I mean here is that usability is EXTREMELY important. Average is not good enough. It must be so simple baby bommers can learn it quickly.
2) Collaboration will not work if no collaboration is needed.
3) Teams working at the same location sitting beside each other tends not to use collaboration tools. They rather talk about it.
4) Collaboration requires “champions” within the teams to push and evangelise the benefits of Collaboration. They also work as a role model for collaboration.
5) Advanced messaging is a requirement just like “The Wall” on facebook. The tool must be able to send private and public messages to everyone or just a specific group.
I have been getting many incoming search strings to this blog on SharePoint and KnowledgeTree and I would like to address this question people might have.
Interesting enough, I actually asked KnowledgeTree this question last night but after the meeting, I felt I had asked a rather silly question. Sharepoint and KnowledgeTree are two different products. Traditionally, Sharepoint was a document manager and until now they are still a document manager. However, Sharepoint has added new collaborative and Web 2.0 features into it. However, KnowledgeTree is a document manager with some collaborative features, it doesn’t have the enterprise content management, business forms and business intelligence components that Sharepoint has. If you ask me, Jive’s ClearSpace is probably Sharepoint’s competitor (P.S. Clearspace does a MUCH better job).
KnowledgeTree is Free (pay for support if you want for the community edition. There’s an option to pay for the commercial edition where you get extra features and support – see comments section for more. Thanks Natasha) and Sharepoint, like many Microsoft software, is horrendously expensive. If you are looking for a excellent and cheap document manager, KnowledgeTree is the way to go. If you are thinking about Sharepoint, think again and again. There are many other super excellent options out there. KnowledgeTree has many great features and good extension capabilities. I believe KnowledgeTree has positioned itself as a excellent open source document manager but not a full Enterprise 2.0 suite.
I have one little tip: make sure everyone do their in depth requirements gathering process for any system you are thinking of building / implementing.
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Just to add a point, KnowledgeTree is a fit for purpose Document manager and I totally recommend it to everyone.
Mike and myself is in a Mindtouch frenzy at the moment. We have both looked at Mindtouch previously, felt that its easy to use, pretty, great navigation and all, we actually missed out exploring in depth into the extension side of things until a few days ago. Read Mike’s review here.
I have to admit, I am not the best of programmers nor a code crunching nut – in fact, I don’t even consider myself as an amateur. However, if I can do it, then ALOT of people can do it. Its that simple. I have spent half the weekend playing with the extensions and its great fun, powerful and most importantly – simple.
Having said all these, I spent the other half of the weekend looking for a wiki – preferably a free one. This is a personal wiki for my post-graduate studies (for my supervisor and myself to collaborate on and a online repository for my thesis) and I looked at a HUGE amount of Wikis. TikiWiki, PhPWiki, SocialText, WetPaint, MediaWiki and Mindtouch. I have personally either installed or tried the online versions of all of them and decided on Mindtouch Deki Wiki hosted on Wik.is. Even though that means I have to pay $99 per year for only 10GB of space. Oh well, good things comes at a price.
I cannot emphasise enough how simple Deki Wiki is. Creating content is simple, managing the Wiki is super easy as well. It also has the power to extend its platform to add almost anything under the sun is something NO OTHER WIKI can do. Simplicity and power at its best!
After one weekend of Deki Wiki, I am surely a convert now. Keep up the good work MindTouch ROCKS and keep up the good work.
Sam previously wrote about the Enterprise Octopus and now he has introduced Norman Naysayer. To understand my post you would have to read both the above links – if you haven’t.
I actually do think that Norman Naysayer, to a certain extent, can be a good person. I have met a few Normans in my company and after explaining and demonstrating Enterprise 2.0 to them, they saw the benefits of it and got more interested – some even got “converted”. I do not think many of Enterprise 2.0 / social media enthusiasts got excited about it at the first instance they read/experience it. They would have read, experienced, explored and understood much about Enterprise 2.0 and social media and believed that it can actually help improve an organisation. My point is Normans exist because of the lack of education of E2 and have probably never experienced the power of social media before. Many employees are deeply entrenched in their hundreds of emails a day and stuck reading senseless CC’ed emails everyday. Email is a fantastic tool but people have abused it and Enterprise 2.0 is here to help.
I am a consultant and my job is not to evangelize Enterprise 2.0 or social media. My job is to make sure that companies benefit from a better information flow, ease of information search, increased connectivity and streamlined communication. I must address the issues that Normans have and make them understand the beauty and benefits of Enterprise 2.0.
Having said this, I do know of a few hard-headed Normans and they drive me up the wall – their problem is that they do not listen. Urgh…
As usual, great post from Sam!
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25/05/2008 1705hrs (Melboure)
Oh just to add, Norman Naysayer generally loses. What a wonderful post!
I found this series of videos in the depths of youtube. This is a nice change for me from reading the countless articles, blogs, wikis over the past year. Its fantastic and you can flick it to your senior directors and let them watch instead of reading stuff. Enjoy!
Blue Ocean Strategy talks about creating brand new markets and making your competitors irrelevant. I think its a great concept and surely doable. However, doesn’t mean that you buy the book, read it and process it, you would be able to come out with a great strategy that will make competitors irrelevant and make heaps of money. Its just not that simple.
While your organisation is working on that, Enterprise 2.0 can help pool together all the tacit knowledge held within your organisation and get people together to collaboratively work on a strategy. Many strategies were created within boardrooms with senior executives using their perceived perception of the company’s operations to formulate a strategy. However, with senior executives being far from the actual front line, they might be out of touch with the reality of the company.
Enterprise 2.0 can capture this tacit knowledge through wikis, blogs and funky tools – the best part of it all, you can search for it. It can also provide a platform that allows a bi-directional communication that allows some employees to provide feedback on the strategy thus ironing out any loose ends.
Having said all these, the culture of the company plays a key role in the success of this and Enterprise 2.0 experts must be hired to provide the implementation strategy, change management advisory, provide education to employees and evangelise the power of Enterprise 2.0.
A collaborative, supportive and transparent organisation can help provide that competitive advantage many organisations have seek for.
Some people only know Wikipedia and thinks that there is only one wiki software in the market. Well, I know that there are a few around but when I went to WikiMatrix via ReadWriteWeb, I was shocked… there are like 50 different wiki software around! Anyway, enough of ranting.
Wikis are great and I have been using various Wikis for a while now. However there are some things that I would like to see in Wikis more. Let me explain.
Wiki is a place where you write about serious stuff. You talk about real topics related to the topic/environment of the wiki (if any). See OpenGarden or Game Programming Wiki or Mike 2.0. Contributors do not generally deviate too far from the main topics of the Wiki. However, not everyone wants to be serious or wiki might not be conducive enough to cultivate new ideas or general ranting. Therefore we have a blog.
Also, I do see value if a document manager is integrated with the Wiki, the latest updated version of the document can be found on the Wiki. As documents always change, having a integrated platform will always be helpful.
G'day, Sean here. I am a senior consultant at PricewaterhouseCoopers and also a PhD candidate at the University of Melbourne and my proposed thesis title is "Implementation of Enterprise 2.0 and its Value in Organizations"
This blog is dedicated to topics surrounding Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, Collaboration, and IT strategies for organizations with the aim of increasing efficiency, increasing profits and reducing costs. Hope you enjoy this blog.
Disclaimer: The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent my employer's and/or University of Melbourne's positions, strategies or opinions. I have not been compensated in any way for the content.
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