How was it for me?

I created this blog as part of an assignment for a Massey University paper, Social Media Networks for Business. It’s been a valuable experience. There’s nothing like applying knowledge to make it stick.

Image via Flickr by Gmacqueron

It’s easy to read something and think I understand it but the real test is whether I can write about it. Reviewing readings and researching until I can blog about a topic has ensured a better understanding of course content and writing in my own voice, rather than worrying about my academic writing skills, has enabled me to put my full focus into understanding the content.

The other thing I’ve found really valuable is actually blogging, not theorising about blogging, or writing an assignment as if I was writing a blog.

The experience of creating the blog, settling on a name and a corresponding url, thinking about and organising tags and categories and even using the draft and publish tools has been a little bit trial and error, even with an intuitive tool like WordPress. Far better for that learning curve to take place on my own blog rather than a work blog.

Can I use that image?

Another good lesson for me has been sourcing images to use on my blog. I haven’t done this before. I use my own photos for my other work, and in the workplace, my organisation uses images they own or have purchased a licence for.

Image via Flickr by Chinmay

Because I hadn’t needed to, I hadn’t spent any time on Flickr before starting this blog. Now I’m hooked. This doesn’t seem uncommon; the Flickr Addicts group has over 60,000 members.

Checking out my earlier and later blog posts will show how much images add to visual interest and readability. I could go back and add images to my earlier posts, but I haven’t – they illustrate part of my learning journey.

Image sharing is great. Imagine, if you’ve created an image professionally, sharing it can enhance your online reputation by showcasing your skills further than your own networks – everyone wins. Someone gets to use an image they want for free, and the image creator extends their online reach. Now that’s pretty cool, and definitely in line with the principles of Web 2.0.

Licensing such as Creative Commons makes this possible. Creative Commons came about because traditional copyright licensing just didn’t cover all the ways people want to share their creative efforts in the digital space.

It can be confusing figuring out if you can use an image but a quick Google search will throw up a lot of information on the topic. Techsoup has an informative article, Finding and using images from the web, that also gives a list of sites to search for images.

Basically, if you want to use someone else’s image, check they allow it to be shared in the way you want to use it, then acknowledge where you sourced the image. The acknowledgement and a corresponding link back to the original image is what makes the whole sharing thing work by giving the image creator recognition from a wider network. Besides, it’s polite to say ‘thanks’.

If you’ve used the image in a really cool way, why not let the image creator know? Again, there’s win-win potential – if they choose to promote that image use within their networks, your site gains visitors from beyond your digital reach.

Getting social at work

If you’re tasked with implementing social media tools in your workplace, I’d definitely recommend trying out the platforms you’ll be using personally – gaining knowledge and experience in using the tools and on touchy topics like photo sharing will increase your confidence. This is likely to mean you’ll be more comfortable sharing that knowledge with colleagues and encouraging them to do their own research and to communicate it back to the team.

Image via Flickr by isbg6

Set up a wiki or a blog or some other tool where the team can add their experiences and findings and before you know it, you’re demonstrating the four Cs of social networking – you’re communicating the knowledge you gain, connecting to information from others, cooperating by all contributing on the same platform and collaborating by working on the same project. In this instance the project would have the dual purpose of gaining the knowledge and skills to enable your organisation to make successful and productive use of social media tools and creating a knowledge base for future reference.

Web 1..2..3!

In the beginning, there was…

Businesses began to see the benefit of having a website to present information to customers. Information was static; the website owner could present information however they wanted. Soon, as Internet users, we had more information than we needed at our fingertips. We became more discerning. If we were researching a product to buy, we expected to see the real story, not just the information company marketers thought we should have. We wanted to know what other people thought of it. And if we saw a great website, or had bad service, we wanted to share that.

Along came…

Advances in technology mean the Internet is now an interactive space. Social networking and data sharing technologies are only part of the picture though – Web 2.0 isn’t defined by the technology so much as the way we use the technology. Online, we’ve undergone a cultural shift.

Image via Flickr by SalFalco

No longer are we satisfied with being served up information; we want to interact with that information – we read and write reviews, connect with friends and make new connections, both professional and personal. We share anything we find interesting and relevant, be it good or bad. If we have an opinion, we can climb onto a soapbox in the comfort of our own home.

Image via Flickr by Steve Rhodes

Online, our potential audience is larger than the traditional soapbox audience “passers-by in the town I live in” so the chances are someone will hear what we have to say. Our influence could be far-reaching if the topic goes viral, or if we are, or have in our network, social influencers with many connections. Businesses and public servants consequently must pay attention to our comments.

Open data is now a common phrase with the public sector actively on board – see the NZ government’s Open Government Data and Information Reuse Programme.

Again, technology enables this – information can be taken from one source, repurposed and presented on another platform, generally with the intent of making it more relevant and accessible to a wider range of people. This combination of data and technology is often called a “mashup”.

So many of our information sources, business transactions and even our social interactions are online now it’s hard to comprehend how isolated we’d feel if there were suddenly no way to access the internet.

What next?

It is fair to say our virtual and physical worlds are beginning to converge. Theories vary on what form web 3.0 will take. Concepts like the semantic web, or web of data, where the focus becomes more on available data than web pages, seem feasible.

Image via Flickr by semanticwebcompany

With advances in technology, and the corresponding Web 2.0 culture of sharing, both formally and informally, that has evolved, we have the data and the technology to present that data in ever-increasingly more sophisticated ways. If those ways become more standardised due to the publishing languages used, machines become more able to do some of the work in finding targeted and relevant content for users.

The MindGrub presentation Emerging Web 3.0 Technologies You Need To Know on Slideshare  says that with Web 3.0 “Information is searched for, filtered, personalised and delivered to end users based on preferences, biofeedback and location.

Image vie Flickr by The|G|TM

Sound far-fetched? Much of this technology exists or is in development. Think of the way Google uses targeted ads. For those with the vision, the technology is available in many content management systems to build a website that “learns” its users, so the next time you visit the website, you see different content surfaced than the person sitting beside you, whose interest in the same website has a different purpose.

In an online article by John Spivak, Web 3.0, The Third Generation Web is Coming,  Spivak says that the innovations, improvements and upgrades that have been happening for some time will result in the Web transforming “from a network of separately siloed applications and content repositories to a more seamless and interoperable whole”.

His conclusion, that “Web 3.0 will be more connected, open, and intelligent, with semantic Web technologies, distributed databases, natural language processing, machine learning, machine reasoning, and autonomous agents” doesn’t seem beyond reach.

Already there are some very Web 3.0ish examples of technology in existence, from internet television to location-based services. Google Glass is definitely what I’d call a convergence between the virtual and physical worlds.

Then there’s apps, which are continually evolving. I was going to say there’s an app for practically everything but making your coffee…then a very quick Google search revealed that actually, there’s an app for that too. Yes. Really.

Image via Flickr by caseorganic

Web 3.0 is coming? I suggest that not only is it knocking on the front door, it will soon be kicking back on the couch with the aforementioned cup of coffee.

Let’s Talk About the “C” Words

Communication. Cooperation. Collaboration. Connection.

Niall Cook describes the above as the 4Cs approach to social networking in his book, Enterprise 2.0 – How Social Software Will Change the Future of Work. He uses the 4Cs to categorise social software tools.

Communication

Image via Flickr by Tony Dowler

Cook says that many organisations use the intranet as a downward communication channel – a place for management and HR to provide useful and essential information to staff such as policies, procedures and company news, with perhaps a space for staff to post social event information.

That’s not to say informal communication doesn’t happen within an organisation – of course it does, via emails between colleagues or groups and via that good old-fashioned form of communication – talking, be it over the desk dividers, over coffee or over the phone.

The idea of moving towards a social intranet is that all staff can then benefit from the useful information that is often shared in those conversations, perhaps using tools such as discussion forums, or blogs with comments enabled.

Connection

Image via Flickr by Jlhopgood

In my last post, I discussed tagging and categorising – these are forms of connection. Connecting isn’t just about connecting people with people; it’s about connecting people with the information they need. An example of connection could be enabling tagging within a corporate intranet, then educating people as to how to tag pages.

Tagging, or social bookmarking, could be an easy way of starting a cultural shift towards social tools within an organisation – adding a tag is a low-risk way of sharing and if enough people collaborate by contributing, all staff will see some quick wins as search results become more targeted and relevant.

Cooperation and Collaboration

Image via Flickr by Nazarene Missions International

Is it cooperation or collaboration? I confess; I’m a word nerd, and I spent some time Googling this just for fun. The English Language and Usage section of Stack Exchange has perhaps an oversimplified explanation. Cooperation is described as working with someone to enable them, whereas cooperation is defined as working alongside someone towards something.

There’s also a really interesting discussion on Harold Jarche’s blog, Life in Perpetual Beta, triggered by his blog post, In networks, cooperation trumps collaboration.

In a nutshell, collaboration is about working together towards a shared goal. Resources, risks and rewards are shared. Cooperation is also about working together, but there is still a division of labour, tasks and responsibilities, with each piece separate, but part of the whole.

An example of cooperation in a social networking sense could be a project site on the intranet where each person involved in the project could add their information and contribute to discussions. The whole team then has all information at their fingertips, not just the minutes of a weekly progress meeting to refer to.

Jarche says “collaboration happens around some kind of plan or structure, while cooperation presumes the freedom of individuals to join and participate”.

This is an interesting point.

You can cooperate without collaborating, if collaboration is not the end goal, but can you have any form of collaboration without cooperation?

A wiki is an example of a collaborative tool – all approved users can add or update information and share the knowledge instead of keeping individual notes. An example could be a customer service team with a wiki knowledge base – instead of sharing topical information for customer enquiries via email or on a noticeboard, team members add information to a wiki. Information is searchable, easily accessible and up-to-date.

However, even a collaborative tool such as a wiki involves a degree of cooperation – the collaborative plan or structure could be said to be that everyone ensures content is up to date and relevant, but for this to work a certain degree of cooperation by individuals is assumed.

In closing, I wanted to share a collaborative discovery tool I found – Opinion Space, developed by  University of California Berkeley

One central question is posed, then users “rate” others’ responses, using a sliding scale. Users then create their own response to be rated by other users. The colour, size and location of each opinion on the “map” all mean something, for example the ideas rated as insightful feature prominently.

The Opinion Space website gives links to past and present opinion space projects by different users. One such organisation is the US Department of State – their current question is, appropriately, about using technology to enhance open public dialogue.

This is just one tool I found. What other cool collaborative tools have you discovered or used online?

To Tag or to Categorise?

This blog, Let’s Talk – From Conversation to Collaboration, is my first experience of using WordPress. Aside from a few teething issues with the way the theme treated my graphic, I’m pretty impressed.

There are quite a few settings to come to grips with, but it’s fairly intuitive, with a lot of online help at your fingertips. Really, you could set up a decent blog without having to tweak much or spend too long learning about different settings but I’m the type of person (yep, there’s a name for it, two words, second word retentive) who likes to try all the settings and to understand as much as I can about the tools I’m using.

Gaining this understanding has included researching the difference between tags and categories. Okay, I know the concept behind metadata is to make content more searchable and discoverable, but when I published my first post I had to decide how I was going to categorise and tag it, which made me realise that while it’s easy to lump the two together in your head, they actually fulfil different purposes.

This WordPress support page: Categories vs Tags gave a good, clear explanation of the differences between tagging and categorising and why WordPress added tagging functionality to its blogging toolkit.

The simplest explanation I found was to think of categories as a table of contents, and tags as an index – I read this on several different blogs but here’s a nice simple way of putting it from Anthony Brewitt at Designbit: WordPress: The Difference Between Categories and Tags.

My tags and categories

A glance will show my category list is a work in progress – my blog is new so I haven’t covered many topics. My categories are broad and cover topics I’m likely to post on again.

My tags are more relevant to specific posts – for example the tags for this post are tags, categories and WordPress newbie.

How could tagging improve intranet searches?

In Enterprise 2.0 – How Social Software Will Change the Future of Work, author Niall Cook refers to tagging as a folksonomy, where users identify content how they see it, as opposed to a taxonomy, that is likely to be set by an organisation.

I can see the benefits of enabling content tagging on an intranet. Staff can be easily frustrated by an intranet search tool that just doesn’t do what Google does.

Adding to that frustration is the fact that the company-driven taxonomy categorises information the way management or the subject experts see it rather than the way everyone else sees it.

Enabling people to tag information themselves could solve two issues. Firstly, it would give people the power to do something about their frustration. Secondly, as more information is tagged, the search experience would improve for everyone.

Cook states: “It is perfectly possible for taxonomy and folksonomy to peacefully co-exist in organisations with formal metadata structures already in place.”

That’s great news for website administrators as everyone’s happy – management and subject experts still get to categorise information the way they see it – but suddenly other users have a whole lot of more relevant ways to connect to the information they need. As Cook identifies, connections to information are also part of social networking and can improve business efficiency as much as connections to people.

Think of a time at work you spent ages looking for something because the organisational way of categorising the information you wanted didn’t hold much meaning for you. Feel free to share.

Why should you learn about web accessibility?

If you’ve got something worth saying isn’t it worth making sure everyone knows about it? Web accessibility is about making sure everyone can access your website. If you don’t understand the principles behind accessibility it’s time to do some research – there’s plenty of information online.

You may think the issue of accessibility doesn’t affect you, but it does. What if someone decides accessing your site is too hard, and moves to another, more user-friendly site? Did you just lose a sale?

What if that person was your mother, or your best mate? Are they not worth making the effort for? How about if that person was your boss’s mother? And think about this: if you broke your mouse wrist, would you still be able to navigate your own website?

Where do you start?

Accessibility is a broad term. WCAG 2.0 guidelines state that information must be perceivable, operable, understandable and robust.

• The NZ Government Web Toolkit gives good, clear details of the NZ Government Web Standards 2.0 in plain English
• See the post: The POUR Principles: The Starting Point for Creating Accessible Blogs on Blog Accessibility for a good, easy-to-understand overview of these principles
• Also on the same blog, there’s a great post called Surf a GB with Glenda’s Thumb in which a user shares some of the common accessibility issues she experiences.

Why it’s worth paying attention to accessibility guidelines

You want to make sure all your site visitors have a good experience, and you care enough to make things easier for them.

For example, I don’t have a disability but I do get migraines so if the first thing I see on your website is a flashing graphic, even if it’s within WCAG 2.0 guidelines, I won’t care what you have to sell or say; I’ll be out of there. Equally, if your text is hard to read, I won’t bother – I’m busy and there are plenty of other websites with similar products or information. I wouldn’t say I’m fussy; I’d say I’m a typical user.

While WCAG 2.0 guidelines are designed to ensure those who have a disability can access information online, meeting these guidelines is really just the start – if you think about the online experience of your website or blog from a user’s perspective, you may find you can take things a whole lot further. Here’s where collaboration comes into play – because we’re all unique, some users may experience problems not covered in the guidelines – see the blog post above: Surf a GB with Glenda’s Thumb. Opening up a conversation and collaborating with users who are having problems navigating your website will help you enhance your website in ways you might never have thought of alone.

Don’t forget how easy it is for your customers to share their experiences

Another reason you want to make your website accessible is because you’re smart enough to realise people might share their bad experiences on their social networks.

For an example of this, try a quick Twitter search for #accessibilityfail and you’ll see tweets on everything from poor building design to poor website design.

What does accessibility have to do with opening up channels of online communication within the workplace?

Just like users on a public website, some staff may use alternative or assistive technology to access information. Others may struggle with reading small text, or have trouble using a mouse.

Accessibility can also be about understanding – most workplaces will have staff with varying technological comfort levels. If you really expect the nearly-retired manager who still often hits “reply all” in Outlook to be comfortable using the same digital platform as the young bloke in the mailroom who was practically born online, then it’s your job to make sure everyone understands how to work with the tools you’re providing.

Think about who in your workplace has difficulty online, and why. How could you make things easier for them? What might make your company website or intranet easier for you to use – a new design, or a bit more help text explaining how things work?

Getting Social at Work – When They’re Just Not That Into It

The intranet’s got Web 2.0 capabilities so you have the tools, now management have agreed in principle, so it’s official; you’re getting social at work!

You get your solution set up – maybe it’s a blog, or a discussion board, quite possibly on a topic driven by management – but it’s pretty clear after a couple of weeks that colleagues are just not that into it. All that talk of employee empowerment and giving everyone a voice has faded to a whisper. Even the first post or discussion thread that basically just fulfilled the function of a digital suggestion box has had about the same impact as its real-world counterpart – a sad lack of comments, although apparently human resources did get one note from someone who preferred to make an anonymous suggestion…

What’s gone wrong?

The Brainyard has an interesting post by David Carr: 10 Enterprise Social Networking Obstacles. David lists ten reasons social initiatives within the workplace can fail; all are to do with perceptions and technology.

For example, management may have agreed around the boardroom table, but back in the office, their actions don’t align with their decision and staff feel the boss thinks this new social networking initiative is just a place for people to post silly pictures of cats and discuss what they had for dinner.

Perhaps people don’t know how to use the tools and aren’t comfortable asking for a lesson, or maybe your enterprise solution just doesn’t have the cool functionality or look and feel of Facebook, Twitter or their favourite blog.

Maybe the reason for the lack of uptake is as simple as the fact that public participation can be a bit like getting up first on the dance floor at the Christmas part; aside from the occasional exhibitionist, few people want to be That Person that gets up first and dances alone while everyone else whispers about them from the sidelines.

It’s all a bit disappointing and you’re left thinking that actually, it would have been more gratifying setting up a site for people to post silly pictures of cats and discuss what they had for dinner. At least they’d use it.

No matter how cool something sounds, regardless of the research you’ve done, and despite your passion for how your initiative can make things better for everyone, you’re still looking at a change in process and culture. Even if you’re starting small, there’s going to be pain involved.You’re asking people to become comfortable with a new way of doing things, in front of others, at work. It will take time, and they’ll need to understand how stepping outside their comfort zone will benefit them.

In an Elearn Magazine article, How To Fail When Using Internal Social Media, Kevin Jones identifies three areas that need to be addressed when implementing a social solution at work. Again, the significance of culture, and of management buy-in is stressed, as is the importance of employees “getting it” – understanding the tools, the purpose of using them and the potential benefits for all.

If you tried to “get social” at your workplace, what would be the biggest barrier in your organisation? How could that be overcome?

Social Networking – There’s Nothing Like the Deep End

It was only a mouse click – why did I feel so much like I did that time I’d deliberately stepped off an 11-storey building attached to an abseiling rope?

The reason for the rapid heart rate and twitchy hands: while no heights were involved, I was about to step way out of my comfort zone and show a piece of my creative writing to others and invite them to comment on it. Not only that, I was doing it online and I’d never met any of the people I’d be interacting with!

That was several years ago. Years of travelling had left me a late digital immigrant; not only was that the first time I’d ever exposed my writing to the scrutiny of others, I’d only just got an email address and my trawling of the internet had been restricted to quick web searches for specific information in internet cafes; I’d never before even tiptoed through any kind of social network and here I was, expected to actively contribute as part of my first Massey paper – Creative Writing. Posting and critiquing online wasn’t optional; it was a course requirement.

The first time I posted work was terrifying – what if people didn’t like it? What if they were mean? Worse, what if no-one cared enough about it to comment?

Even more worrying was my first critique of another’s work – what if people thought I was mean? What if they didn’t like what I said or if they thought my comments were stupid?

Through communicating on the forums I became aware others felt the same. Together, we got over it and got on with it.

Our interaction began cooperatively – if you reviewed my writing I’d review yours, for example. Soon, critiques graduated from gently pointing out a typo to more comprehensive and useful analysis. We learned to accept and learn from constructive criticism; to understand it wasn’t a personal attack and paying attention to others’ suggestions really did improve our writing.

Before we knew it, we were collaborating. Each of us realised that while the initial piece of writing would always be the writer’s, the input of others didn’t dilute the work. Instead, it opened us up to new ways of presenting our stories, and allowed us to step back and see through another’s eyes which parts simply didn’t work. We responded to writing that spoke to us, or writing that was sitting alone without a review, moving beyond the quid pro quo of “you comment on mine and I’ll comment on yours”.

The honesty of those critiques was far more valuable than praise. The connections we developed were real; we had a sense of community. Many of us never met or spoke on the phone, but we developed trust and respect for one another’s work and opinions.

While the online space was moderated, we’d all invested in the community by sharing our writing and this seemed to keep our online community self-regulating – critiques were made with empathy, not brutality and participation levels were far beyond course requirements.

Could an online network in a workplace foster those same kinds of bonds? Would people be so willing to contribute if there were a risk that someone would criticise, rather than critique, their opinions and ideas? What could inspire individuals in a workplace to contribute willingly – how could they gain from their contribution?