On the four rings of enterprise social tools

This a short post to alert people to an interesting item from Thomas Venderwal on enterprise social tools.
One of the difficulties of applying social tools in the organisation relates to how well they mesh together. Vanderwal illustrates the issue with his four rings of enterprise social tools: the tools themselves, interface and ease of use, sociality, and encouraging [...]

On the ties that don’t bind

This article from the Australian Financial Review(subscription required) discusses a recent book by human resource management academic, Lynda Gratton, on the power of weak ties in the network. Having read Gratton’s Living strategy, I was intrigued to learn more about the new book, Hot spots, albeit written for a more mass market audience.
Weak ties are people who [...]

On conversations

Well, my first day in my new job at the Fred Hollows Foundation was really very good. The travel time to work was better than I expected (so that was a great start!) and I met some wonderful and committed people. The feature of the day was conversation - the largely informal conversations with people [...]

On business and social computing

This blog post pretty much sums up the benefits of social computing for business - couldn’t agree more!

On breakfast, lunch, and tea

There are a number of ways in which information and knowledge can be disseminated and exchanged, including breakfast, lunchtime or evening meetings. These meetings can be internally or externally based. Organisations, like the Society for Organisational Learning Australia (SOLA) for example, have run morning information sessions for members featuring a special guest speaker. I first heard Dave [...]

On snack drama

Expect to hear more about snack drama in the future. Snack drama represents a niche product that will entertain a growing subscriber base using mobile communication platforms. Consumers’ increasing use of mobile communication for news and entertainment will provide the market momentum for this new communication product. And time poor consumers will support the snack drama format if the content is [...]

On SXSW 2008

I am really disappointed that I wasn’t able to get to Austin, Texas, this year to attend SXSW Interactive. I will get there one day (I hope) but in the meantime we are fortunate that the organisers provide podcasts of the presentations and discussions.
Check out this interview with Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook fame - some [...]

On being in touch

The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) has just released a report based on a survey, How Australians spend their time. The section I want to comment on says this (from the media release):
“Time spent on recreation and leisure activities has decreased by 1 hour 45 minutes per week since 1997 (to 29 hours 31 minutes a [...]

On what’s in a name?

You may have heard that in the high definition DVD format ”war”, Blu-ray has emerged victorious over its rival HD DVD format. In fact, HD DVD is in its death throes. Anyone left holding a HD DVD player is trying to offload them on to ebay.
The popularity of Blu-ray discs over HD DVD in Australia (and elsewhere) is [...]

On real work

A couple of weeks ago Euan Semple wrote a blog comment about real work. I made a hastily scribbled note to come back to the sentiment at a later date.
The prompt for me was the notion held by some people that social computing activities (blogs, wikis, virtual communities, social networks) are not of value for real work. And this negative [...]

On tagging and the enterprise (and RSS)

I want to conclude my blog summary from the presentation I gave last week on tagging and the enterprise. The previous three entries should be read in conjunction with this instalment, if you haven’t followed the story so far…
I used IBM’s dogear as an example of an enterprise using tagging within the firm. However, instead of me explaining all about [...]

On HR and knowledge management

One of my favourite podcast sites is HBR IdeaCast. And one of my favourite podcasts that I have listened to recently is called The new science of human capital, IdeaCast No. 76. The podcast is an interview with one of the authors of the book Beyond HR. The gist of the podcast concerns talent management within organisations. [...]

On conversation

One of the questions I am often asked is why people in knowledge management are so preoccupied with conversations. Why does conversation need to be facilitated, is another question.
Let me answer with the following points:
1) Sometimes conversations inside organisation need permission since there is still the belief that conversation is just idle chatter. Knowledge managers like [...]

On poetry

I had a coffee and a chat with Matt Moore last week and he told me about his poetry project. He has been blogging about it recently but this post is the one I want to think about today.
When I was at high school my favourite subject was English. Naturally, this education included novels, plays and poetry. [...]

On internal communication

Continuing my unplanned theme on communication types, I wanted to make a couple of comments about the importance of internal communications.
The responsibility for internal communication often sits with Marketing, a position that invokes the spectre of PR and political spin. In other cases, internal communication is expected just to happen, miraculously, without much thought, planning, or quality [...]