Dave Pollard on Social Tools @ KMWorld

I’ve just met David Gurteen and Jon Husband… put a smile immediately on my face. Now Dave Pollard is up and i”m a little behind. He’s covering a list of social apps. It’s a good list. It’s interesting to feel the crowd response for which most of this seems foreign. The room is the fullest I’ve seen it. That’s scary given the number of notes people are taking. I expect all my reader. It’s a summary. It doesn’t introduce KM2.0 in my view in the end.

1. Social Networks

• LinkedIn: He’s discussed Linked In. Not everyone.. particularly at the top.
• Now on Orgnet.com By showing the connections within emails they show the defacto relationships in an organization. So instead of mapping just the connections you need to look at the perceived quality. it can show bottlenecks and isolation. The disadvantages are subject to office politics and they may penalize those that are most connected externally.
• Dodgeball Orginially set up as a non-stalking dating system. You enter all the people you want to meet. Then indicate where you are the system tells them when you are in the vicinity. Thinks is has applications for business environment for serendipidous meetings. This is a way to capture this for a self managed meeting system. Biggest problem is it is opt in.
• nTag: Used in conferences to define like minds. You fill in the form for all the things you are interested in. Then the coded tag connects you with those that have intersets in common. Hallway introductions. Dave suggests it may be added to Second Life.

2 Category:

• Journals Blogs / Podcasts Assigning junior person to post on subject matters blog (ouch!) Internal newsletter producers. More versatile and timely. COP leaders / coordinators have been used effectively.
• Social Bookmarking eg delicious? self-tag by subject. example http://del.icio.us/b0z0mind/energy Downside it is just links.
• Graphics Sharer: Flickr. A picture is worth a 1000 words.
• SlideShare: Share you own powerpoints. These slides for this presentation. See slideshare.net/davepollard/ tagged by subject matter. So far there is no audio track you can put along with it.
• Meme Digger: Digg - what the majority sometimes tyranny of the crowds. Could be useful inside the organization. In the organization use an organization like this. then you will get a consensus on what is really good. Disadvantage is majority of people have bland tastes.
• Product Evaluator: ThisNext it is a rating system for anything that is physical. Lots of asthetic design type of stuff. The downside of this type of tool it can be rigged to support your own product and services. It provides an interesting source of new ideas.
• Facebook: It is an example of a personal webpage. Instant presence! There is a need; allowing each to have their own personal webspace has definite appeal. More tools liek this coming for intranets.

3 Collaboration Tools

• FluWiki: This is an interesting wiki to look at. This is about pandemic influenzas. Shows the power of a wiki when there is a group that wants to fill it.
• Forums: Yahoo Groups example. Advantage they are open to everyone. They are a last resort. A tedious way to converse. They tend to get stale quickly.

4 Project Collaboration Tools

• BaseCamp: You end up with too many different products and communities. Most were not active. High cost of support. Basecamp is one of the better ones. (agreed).
• GoogleDocs: Handles PPT slides too now. Simply a web based replacement for Office. You can access your documents from anywhere. It’s free of charge etc. You can permission your documents. The qualms are privacy fears. Do you trust google.
• MindMaps. FreeMind: The standard way of documenting meetings it is often a standard way of covering a meeting. Quick way to capture a quick set of meetings. Helps when vidoe conferencing is used too.
• Video Conferncing. GoToMeeting: Document shared or the image of the screen being shared. List of all participants. Usually have a private chat function as well. Participants help each others. You can use to que questions.

4 Mashups:

• Disease Outbreaks mapped onto Google Earth. Flash in different colors. App combines the wiki with GIS system.
• Sensor GIS or Photos and clickable maps. Makes easier to see / understand places to visit. Let the visitors do the write-ups. Will see more in terms of DIY social network applications. He postulates. SecondLife and OpenSpace. Does it need to be physical?

Key Factors for Success

• Use simple technologies.
• Experiment with pilot groups.
• FOcus on real time applications.
• use Stories and future state visions to persuade to executives. TELL THEM A STORY OF HOW IT WOULD BE DIFFERENT!

Find out ways to do it outside the firewall! Go do it and then ask for forgiveness… Then tell people you can trust? When it come for a lack of urgency you must start with people that have passion. Let them play with it.

Things that work.

1. Just in time Destop video conferening. Use with people that are used to travelling. Get them to do it via desktop video conferencing.
2. Instant messaging pilot:
3. Google Desktop and the other simple PCM tools
4. A JIT convassing system
5. Self Managed “Know-who” directories - key to these is get people to self-identify
6. RSS Aggregators pages for specific CoP’s
7. Blogs for a)SMEs, b)COP coordinators c)e-newletter editors
8. MIndmaps displayed for real-time meeting documentation.
9. GoogleDocs for collaboration with people outside the organization.
10. Open Space event for addressing an intractable organizational problem.

Get a pilot group. Do a needs analysis and then keep it simple and use stories re what works.