BizTechTalk

6 Months Into Business - Update

Gone Dark? Not Exactly... Shifting Channels

For those who haven't been following me in the world of Twitter in recently (@dankeldsen), while I have not been nearly as active here on BizTechTalk, I've busy with client work, and most recently having the wonderful experience of being with some of the smartest minds I've had the pleasure of interacting with at this week's Front End of Innovation (#feiboston or #fei09) just a 10 minute walk from my office.

I was talking (as you can see in the YouTube clip above) on the topic of Enterprise 2.0 and Innovation, and had a great audience, and incredible and ongoing conversations before, during and after the session.

Full slide deck below - audio coming shortly:

Do You Have the Strength to Embrace Innovation in a 2.0 World?

View more from Dan Keldsen.

The Business of a New Business

And for those who may have forgotten, or indeed, not known, Carl Frappaolo and I have been busy gents in our new (as of December 2008) company, Information Architected.

While the economy could certainly be in far better shape than it is, we have been quite busy with some attention getting SharePoint research, case studies and presentations (free subscription to the information - dripped over 2-3 weeks) out the door starting in January, as well as taking all that we've learned over the 15-25 years we've been doing work in the process, innovation, content, knowledge and search worlds, to provide very targeted educational offerings tied tightly to the consulting capabilities we offer.

Fantastic Clients

For those clients who have seen fit to work with us in the 6 months out of the gate, I sincerely thank you for the work (and would name you, if not for the NDAs, although I understand the reasoning, no worries).

Good to have new clients as well to have circled back to past clients to help continue the work we had begun from the Delphi Group days.

And for those who are in need of no-nonsense analysis, consulting or education services - please don't hesitate to get in touch.

Coming Up

Unless I am on the road, I look forward to seeing people at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference again this year (also a mere 10 minute walk from the office - sometimes being Boston-based is a very good thing), and otherwise, see you online and offline wherever we might next meet.

Don't hesitate to get in touch, and if I can help you at all in YOUR business, let me know, I'd be happy to see if there is a good fit, and if not, the cast of thousands in my LinkedIn and Twitter networks are likely to hold suitable candidates.

Augmented Reality - Real Meets Virtual

Always interested in seeing what innovations companies are using to bridge the gap between the real and the virtual worlds.

Carl has blogged on interactive and personalized digital content in months past, but this takes interactivity between the "real world" and the "virtual world" a bit farther.

General Electric, and their "Ecomagination" division has created what they call an "Augmented Reality" interface which combines a printed piece of paper with a special symbol on it, Flash 10 (you may have to upgrade, they'll let you know), a web cam and browser, in order to allow you to interact with a virtual world by triggering and controlling that interaction with a piece of paper.

Not a clue what I'm talking about?

Take a look at the video below:


Or, better yet, go to GE's ecomagination site and take it for a spin (literally), and see what you think.

Now if only someone could create those holographic/animated business cards I've been thinking of for a good decade or so... Anyone?

Any other examples of scenarios like this (directly or vaguely related), feel free to post - much innovation to be done in ALL worlds.

SlideRocket Player (Beta v.69) - usability comments

SlideRocket Player (Beta v.69) - usability comments
Originally uploaded by dankeldsen

Have you tried SlideRocket yet? It's a web-based slide creation and presentation package. For all of you Windows OS users who are jealous of the Apple Keynote presentations you may have seen (slick transitions, very crisp photos, effects, text) or who are tying to move to an "Office 2.0" (all your "office" applications on the web), you really need to give SlideRocket a try.

That said, while I'm talking it up, let me provide some quick commentary on their OFFLINE capability. It's a separate AIR-based (Adobe) application, that allows you to then download/cache any presentations that you might want to present while disconnected - such as when buried in the bowels of a conference center with non-existent wifi (not that that scenario has happened to me).

I'm in a usability frame of mind lately - as I've been going through and revamping some materials on findability, ECM, search, portals, information architecture, and yes, usability in and of itself.

I've labeled my commentary on the graphic here - but in short, sometimes the "stripped down" (simple) interface is perhaps a bit TOO little.

Why not make it clear which presentation I'm caching?
Why not show how much of the total presentation is left to cache? Percentage at the least, # of megabytes? And I'm not sure if the graphic listed as being downloaded here was actually named "d72322e9-5e5f-43b2-8569-0a6b03807839.jpg" or that's an internally generated filename, but in either case... uh... WHAT file is that? How about what slide # it is from? Or a tiny preview? Or something that would be useful at any rate.

Would any of this prevent me or anyone else from using the product? Probably not. But in an otherwise very slick experience, this just seems to me that it needs a bit more attention to detail - and none of it would take that much effort to do.

Your thoughts? Are you using SlideRocket, or similar web-based options? Let me know what your experiences are, and perhaps we can help steer the ship a bit as it blasts off.

aiimALERT: Amazon Content Delivery Improvements Coming

I've been testing out various Amazon cloud services for a few months, and received a message as an AWS customer today. Interestingly, our Q4 Market IQ will be discussing Content Delivery, and we're in the midst of refreshing our ECM Training Course to (potentially) include more about the options of SaaS and cloud computing. Timing is everything, eh?

New AWS Service Under Development for Content Delivery

Dear AWS Customer:

Many of you have asked us to let you know ahead of time about features and services that are currently under development so that you can better plan for how that functionality might integrate with your applications. To that end, we are excited to share some early details with you about a new offering we have under development here at AWS -- a content delivery service.

This new service will provide you a high performance method of distributing content to end users, giving your customers low latency and high data transfer rates when they access your objects. The initial release will help developers and businesses who need to deliver popular, publicly readable content over HTTP connections. Our goal is to create a content delivery service that:

• Lets developers and businesses get started easily - there are no minimum fees and no commitments. You will only pay for what you actually use.
• Is simple and easy to use - a single, simple API call is all that is needed to get started delivering your content.
• Works seamlessly with Amazon S3 - this gives you durable storage for the original, definitive versions of your files while making the content delivery service easier to use.
• Has a global presence - we use a global network of edge locations on three continents to deliver your content from the most appropriate location.

You'll start by storing the original version of your objects in Amazon S3, making sure they are publicly readable. Then, you'll make a simple API call to register your bucket with the new content delivery service. This API call will return a new domain name for you to include in your web pages or application. When clients request an object using this domain name, they will be automatically routed to the nearest edge location for high performance delivery of your content. It's that simple.

We're currently working with a small group of private beta customers, and expect to have this service widely available before the end of the year. If you'd like to be notified when we launch, please let us know by clicking here.

Sincerely,

The Amazon Web Services Team

Sounds to me like their going to seriously start encroaching on Akamai, Mirror-Image, et al. Hope the "old guard" (disruptive innovation anyone?) have been prepping for this moment. Still amazes me that Amazon has made this long slow journey from virtual bookseller to virtual infrastructure, and may end up being THE provider of choice. Of course we'll have to see how that pans out - but it's interesting to see Amazon step up to provide what many people are already attempting to do with AWS and S3.

Anyone thinking of dropping their current Content Delivery Network (CDN) once this is available? I haven't been an Akamai customer for 6 years or so - so don't have hands-on experience with the current state of integration there.

If you're interested in our upcoming research on Content Creation and Delivery, fill out the form below, and we'll notify you once the research is available in Q4.

Re: Enterprise Search Still Sucks...

Always interesting to see what happens when you release some new findings out into the wild. What will people key on? Who will pick it up? Do they get it, or regurgitate misunderstandings and misconceptions?

In support of our upcoming Market IQ on Findability, and the free public webinar coming up next Thursday June 26th at 2pm EDT, we've released some early findings (see press release).

One shocking finding  (to me at least - you?) is that 69% of respondents (to our survey of over 500 companies, executed in May 2008) report that less than half of enterprise information is searchable online. Ouch!

For those who believe that search is going to solve their "can't find it" problem, that's very bad news.

And in that vein, a fellow analyst (for Enterprise Strategy Group), Steve Duplessie (Founder and Senior Analyst), provided the following commentary on our press release yesterday (this is going to be surreal - me quoting Steve quoting us):

[Dan's Note: Steve's blog post]

Enterprise Search Still Sucks…..

This is absolutely brilliant.  This is what makes my (pseudo) job worth it.

I just opened an email from Beth Mayhew, Director of Marketing for AIMM.org that says this:

[Dan's Note: Quote below of the entirety of our press release, minus the links. I thought blogging was about providing links to what you're commenting on, so users can form their own judgement. Or is this mere ivory tower mudslinging?]

"Enterprise Search Frustrates and Disappoints Users

69% of respondents report that less than half of enterprise information is searchable online

Silver Spring, MD – June 17, 2008 – In a new study on Findability to be released by AIIM, 49% of survey respondents "agreed" or "strongly agreed" that it is a difficult and time consuming process to find the information they need to do their job. The new survey of over 500 businesses conducted in May 2008, suspects that a prime culprit for the failings of Findability in the enterprise is the admission that 69% of respondents believe that only 50% or less of their organization's information is searchable online. Given the ready access that users are supposed to have in this "Age of Google" – how is this possible?

"Findability has been a common source of frustration in the enterprise for decades," states AIIM Vice President Carl Frappaolo. "As information has become more and more digital, from it's creation through to management, the pain of finding enterprise information has moved from the piles of paper on the desktop and in storage cabinets, to the digital landfill of file servers, e-mail inboxes, digital desktops, and content management systems. Despite the advances made in search on the internet, enterprise search leaves most users frustrated."

Finding content digitally is only possible if pointers to content or the content itself is in native digital format, made available for indexing by search, and/or accessible by information organization and access techniques (such as navigational structures, taxonomies, bookmarks, etc.). The lack of such functionality in the enterprise is at the heart of user frustration.

But fault does not lie with technology solution providers. Most organizations have failed to take a strategic approach to enterprise search. 49% of respondents have "No Formal Goal" for enterprise Findability within their organizations, and a large subset of the overall research population state that when it comes to the "Criticality of Findability to their Organization's Business Goals and Success", 38% have no idea ("Don't Know") what the importance of Findability is in comparison to a mere 10% who claim Findability is "Imperative" to their organization.

The lack of strategic understanding, implemented plans and technological pros and cons to address Findability in the enterprise continues to cause pain in most organizations, although slow progress is being made."

[Dan's Note: Steve's comments follow]

Several Points:

1. Duh. You can't find diddly in an enterprise or out. When does 2 zillion responses to search end up being helpful? It's ridiculous how much internal corporate knowledge is totally wasted because your own people can't find what they need.
2. "Findability"?
3. Not one to nitpick but "from it's creation" should be "its creation". 
4. Perhaps best of all – try to find out in this press release what AIIM stands for! The irony is superb. Better yet, go to AIIM.org – it still isn't obvious. When you search AIIM in their search bar, it takes you off site to Google, who promptly displays 326,000 results, none of which actually define AIIM as far as I can find.

So the organization assembled to deal with the issues associated with finding information does a survey that tells us that users are not happy when they can't find information, but uses Google to not find information that its members (or me) might like to find. I almost don't want to ask, but where do they keep these survey results? Have you seen 'em? Nope, have you?

You can't just make this stuff up. It would have been much better if they slipped in something like "48% of all data is entirely fabricated, but 98% of the time we can't prove it because no one knows where any of the information is".

So if this little brilliantly perfect example doesn't get you to realize that without an entirely different data-centric approach to categorizing and classifying data – ideally at creation – you are completely and utterly hosed, nothing will. E-discovery my butt.

And my commentary to Steve (he moderates comments [so much for transparency], so I'm posting here as well as tracking back to his post):

Steve - Interesting take on our research, thanks for the humorous commentary. Or was it serious? Hard to tell.

So apparently the very first link in the upper left navigation of AIIM.org, "About AIIM" wasn't good enough for you? Seems like a fairly obvious location to find such information, and if there are any best practices for website navigation, that would be at the top of the list.

Findability is NOT just about search. I couldn't have made the point clearer than that - so thank you for the beautiful illustration. Expecting search to solve all ills is a major failing for enterprise information management. Sometimes it's exactly the tool you need, and other times, not so much.

And yes, of course you're going to find thousands to hundreds of thousands of pages if you search for AIIM directly on our site. It does appear on every page after all. Perhaps you should stick to commentary on data, hardware and storage (which I will happily stay away from, except for those times when it intersects with my commentary on information, content and knowledge - that stuff that "data-centric" people would like to pretend doesn't exist or matter), since you clearly don't understand the way that unstructured (or semi-structured) information is indexed for search engine consumption and result display.

Incidentally, AIIM is no longer an acronym (or is it "AIMM" as you misspelled it in the 2nd line of "Director of Marketing for AIMM.org"?). Just as IBM is no longer "International Business Machines" (or worse I.B.M. - where does AP get it's guidelines for these things?), CA is no longer "Computer Associates" and the Web 2.0 API "standard" called REST is no longer "REpresentational State Transfer."

But again, if only you had looked at the "About AIIM" (at the top of every page on the site), you could've easily discovered that AIIM has (in the past) been an acronym for the Association for Information and Image Management. We've been around (with various name changes) for 65 years, and have around 50,000 associates and members in our non-profit association flock.

Lastly, you are nearly correct when you say "it takes you off site to Google," but not quite - but that's a failing on our part. That is the Google Search Appliance (note the subtle bolded "appliance" tag in the upper navigation), and the search results haven't been re-skinned for the site redesign that launched last week.

It could all be handled more gracefully and seamlessly integrated to be sure (although I'm an analyst - and not responsible for our own search implementation), but again, you're using the wrong tool for the job. Particularly if you searched only on AIIM (or AIMM), rather than a more targeted search.

Incidentally, if you had searched on "About AIIM," the page already referenced is hit number 5. Perhaps you are one of the search users who only looks at the first 3 results?

Thanks for making MY day - even though I've been helping to teach findability-related topics for 8 years now, I frequently wonder "Doesn't everybody already know this stuff?" Then along comes commentary like this, and it's clear that we're a long way from universally solving these problems.

Ah well, back to work! Much to be done.

Cheers,
Dan

So, dear blog readers - am I simply suffering from crankiness on this hump day (Wednesday), or does this just exactly illustrate why search is not the (only) answer?

There are many paths to the stuff you want to FIND - search, taxonomy or other navigation techniques, dynamic clustering, social recommendations, bookmarks, "pinned" results, visualization techniques to allow discovery of an information space, etc..

Would love your feedback on this, and if these types of problems are causing YOUR organization issues, please sign up (for free) to the Market IQ on Findability, and the free public webinar coming up next Thursday June 26th at 2pm EDT.

'Till next time... Dan

 

This is absolutely brilliant.  This is what makes my (pseudo) job worth it.

I just opened an email from Beth Mayhew, Director of Marketing for AIMM.org that says this:

[Dan's Note: Quote below of the entirety of our press release, minus the links. I thought blogging was about providing links to what you're commenting on, so users can form their own judgement. Or is this mere ivory tower mudslinging?]

"Enterprise Search Frustrates and Disappoints Users

69% of respondents report that less than half of enterprise information is searchable online

Silver Spring, MD – June 17, 2008 – In a new study on Findability to be released by AIIM, 49% of survey respondents "agreed" or "strongly agreed" that it is a difficult and time consuming process to find the information they need to do their job. The new survey of over 500 businesses conducted in May 2008, suspects that a prime culprit for the failings of Findability in the enterprise is the admission that 69% of respondents believe that only 50% or less of their organization's information is searchable online. Given the ready access that users are supposed to have in this "Age of Google" – how is this possible?

"Findability has been a common source of frustration in the enterprise for decades," states AIIM Vice President Carl Frappaolo. "As information has become more and more digital, from it's creation through to management, the pain of finding enterprise information has moved from the piles of paper on the desktop and in storage cabinets, to the digital landfill of file servers, e-mail inboxes, digital desktops, and content management systems. Despite the advances made in search on the internet, enterprise search leaves most users frustrated."

Finding content digitally is only possible if pointers to content or the content itself is in native digital format, made available for indexing by search, and/or accessible by information organization and access techniques (such as navigational structures, taxonomies, bookmarks, etc.). The lack of such functionality in the enterprise is at the heart of user frustration.

But fault does not lie with technology solution providers. Most organizations have failed to take a strategic approach to enterprise search. 49% of respondents have "No Formal Goal" for enterprise Findability within their organizations, and a large subset of the overall research population state that when it comes to the "Criticality of Findability to their Organization's Business Goals and Success", 38% have no idea ("Don't Know") what the importance of Findability is in comparison to a mere 10% who claim Findability is "Imperative" to their organization.

The lack of strategic understanding, implemented plans and technological pros and cons to address Findability in the enterprise continues to cause pain in most organizations, although slow progress is being made."

[Dan's Note: Steve's comments follow]

Several Points:

1. Duh. You can't find diddly in an enterprise or out. When does 2 zillion responses to search end up being helpful? It's ridiculous how much internal corporate knowledge is totally wasted because your own people can't find what they need.
2. "Findability"?
3. Not one to nitpick but "from it's creation" should be "its creation". 
4. Perhaps best of all – try to find out in this press release what AIIM stands for! The irony is superb. Better yet, go to AIIM.org – it still isn't obvious. When you search AIIM in their search bar, it takes you off site to Google, who promptly displays 326,000 results, none of which actually define AIIM as far as I can find.

So the organization assembled to deal with the issues associated with finding information does a survey that tells us that users are not happy when they can't find information, but uses Google to not find information that its members (or me) might like to find. I almost don't want to ask, but where do they keep these survey results? Have you seen 'em? Nope, have you?

You can't just make this stuff up. It would have been much better if they slipped in something like "48% of all data is entirely fabricated, but 98% of the time we can't prove it because no one knows where any of the information is".

So if this little brilliantly perfect example doesn't get you to realize that without an entirely different data-centric approach to categorizing and classifying data – ideally at creation – you are completely and utterly hosed, nothing will. E-discovery my butt.

And my commentary to Steve (he moderates comments [so much for transparency], so I'm posting here as well as tracking back to his post):

Steve - Interesting take on our research, thanks for the humorous commentary. Or was it serious? Hard to tell.

So apparently the very first link in the upper left navigation of AIIM.org, "About AIIM" wasn't good enough for you? Seems like a fairly obvious location to find such information, and if there are any best practices for website navigation, that would be at the top of the list.

Findability is NOT just about search. I couldn't have made the point clearer than that - so thank you for the beautiful illustration. Expecting search to solve all ills is a major failing for enterprise information management. Sometimes it's exactly the tool you need, and other times, not so much.

And yes, of course you're going to find thousands to hundreds of thousands of pages if you search for AIIM directly on our site. It does appear on every page after all. Perhaps you should stick to commentary on data, hardware and storage (which I will happily stay away from, except for those times when it intersects with my commentary on information, content and knowledge - that stuff that "data-centric" people would like to pretend doesn't exist or matter), since you clearly don't understand the way that unstructured (or semi-structured) information is indexed for search engine consumption and result display.

Incidentally, AIIM is no longer an acronym (or is it "AIMM" as you misspelled it in the 2nd line of "Director of Marketing for AIMM.org"?). Just as IBM is no longer "International Business Machines" (or worse I.B.M. - where does AP get it's guidelines for these things?), CA is no longer "Computer Associates" and the Web 2.0 API "standard" called REST is no longer "REpresentational State Transfer."

But again, if only you had looked at the "About AIIM" (at the top of every page on the site), you could've easily discovered that AIIM has (in the past) been an acronym for the Association for Information and Image Management. We've been around (with various name changes) for 65 years, and have around 50,000 associates and members in our non-profit association flock.

Lastly, you are nearly correct when you say "it takes you off site to Google," but not quite - but that's a failing on our part. That is the Google Search Appliance (note the subtle bolded "appliance" tag in the upper navigation), and the search results haven't been re-skinned for the site redesign that launched last week.

It could all be handled more gracefully and seamlessly integrated to be sure (although I'm an analyst - and not responsible for our own search implementation), but again, you're using the wrong tool for the job. Particularly if you searched only on AIIM (or AIMM), rather than a more targeted search.

Incidentally, if you had searched on "About AIIM," the page already referenced is hit number 5. Perhaps you are one of the search users who only looks at the first 3 results?

Thanks for making MY day - even though I've been helping to teach findability-related topics for 8 years now, I frequently wonder "Doesn't everybody already know this stuff?" Then along comes commentary like this, and it's clear that we're a long way from universally solving these problems.

Ah well, back to work! Much to be done.

Cheers,
Dan

So, dear blog readers - am I simply suffering from crankiness on this hump day (Wednesday), or does this just exactly illustrate why search is not the (only) answer?

There are many paths to the stuff you want to FIND - search, taxonomy or other navigation techniques, dynamic clustering, social recommendations, bookmarks, "pinned" results, visualization techniques to allow discovery of an information space, etc..

Would love your feedback on this, and if these types of problems are causing YOUR organization issues, please sign up (for free) to the Market IQ on Findability, and the free public webinar coming up next Thursday June 26th at 2pm EDT.

'Till next time... Dan

 

Enterprise 2.0 FTW!

Whew, Carl and I had some fun this morning at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Boston - and from the limited view we had from the stage (ah, blinding stage lights!), and the laughter (at pretty much the expected spots), I'd say it went over well.

Ran into a ton of people who recognized me from Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, this blog and other social sites - including on my ride in on the train... it's getting to be a really interesting world where the boundaries between the "real" and the "virtual" are awfully blurry (in a good way).

At the moment I don't know where the videos for keynotes are being hosted/posted, so I will instead point you to the presentation itself, in "raw form" (minus our stunning banter). Pop forward to slide 12-13 or so to get into the intelligible "meat" of the presentation. The early portion won't make a whole lot of sense without commentary.

You can view the presentation embedded below, or directly on slideshare.

| View | Upload your own

Test Drive our Enterprise 2.0 Training

By this point, most readers of this blog have probably had a chance to download if not digest the 90 page Market IQ on Enterprise 2.0 that we published at the end of March 2008.

If not, please go grab a copy (provided free via the generosity of the underwriters of the Enterprise 2.0 research project) - and then pop back here for further Enterprise 2.0 resources.

Back? Great. Good to have you back (and those who never left, thanks for humoring me).

If charts and analysis were good but not enough for you, and you're looking for further information to drive interest and adoption for Enterprise 2.0 in your own organization, take a Test Drive of our Enterprise 2.0 Training.

The content was created by my colleague Carl Frappaolo and myself, with the input of our advisory panel, the data and analysis of our research in Q1 2008, and the many years of training and consulting that we have done on topics such as Knowledge Management, Enterprise Portals, Content Management, Enterprise Search, Business Process Management, and more.

What is the Course?

The new Enterprise 2.0 (E2.0) Certificate program provides students with an understanding of industry best practices and existing and emerging technologies for Enterprise 2.0.

Course attendees receive access to supporting online courses and exams, and are awarded the AIIM E2.0 Practitioner, Specialist and Master designation after passing the online exams (and case study for Master candidates).

Students learn about the evolution and definition of Enterprise 2.0 technologies; frameworks and concepts; worker models for Enterprise 2.0; risk and control vs. collaboration and innovation; assessing organizational readiness; and best practices for implementing Enterprise 2.0.

AIIM has classes scheduled across North America and provides online courses for attendees’ convenience. For more information about the AIIM training program, visit www.aiim.org/training.

Enough of the Marketing - How Do You Get the Free Test Drive of the Enterprise 2.0 Practitioner Training Program?

You may test one of the online training modules of this new training program by using the campaign code X3B4C below your login on the AIIM website.

Go to www.aiim.org/Education/CourseDetail.aspx?courseid=226 select "Enroll Now,"  then log in (if you've already download the Market IQ on Enterprise 2.0 for example) or create a new profile where indicated and, enter the campaign code - X3B4C to drop your your price to zero, complete the "purchase," and you'll receive and e-mail with your login information.

E2.0 Practitioner Certificate Program has the following modules:
  1. How to Position Enterprise 2.0 in Relationship to IM, BI, KM and Web 2.0
  2. Enterprise 2.0 Techniques
  3. Enterprise 2.0 Frameworks and Concepts
  4. Business Drivers for Enterprise 2.0
  5. Worker Model for Enterprise 2.0
  6. Evolution and Definition of Enterprise 2.0 Technologies - Enterprise 1.0
  7. Evolution and Definition of Enterprise 2.0 Technologies - Enterprise 1.5
  8. Evolution and Definition of Enterprise 2.0 Technologies - Enterprise 2.0
  9. Overview of Enterprise 2.0 Extensions
10. State of the Enterprise 2.0 Market

Your free test drive is for E2.0 Practitioner Program Module 5: Worker Model for Enterprise 2.0. Please contact training@aiim.org if you have any questions or to learn more about the full course.

I would love to hear your feedback here as well. Have at it!

If you are in Boston for the Enterprise 2.0 Conference, our training department has a booth at the show where you can get even more information about our training offerings in person, and Carl and I will be around to discuss the training, our research, or any other aspect of Enterprise 2.0 that you might want to discuss.

The Long Tail of Presentations (Be Findable!)

I've posted my presentations from time to time here on my blog, and typically hosted (in the end) at slideshare.net.

Although I've been a reader/viewer of presentations on slideshare.net for some time, I only began posting presentation to the site 7 months ago.

Why is that?

There were many reasons why I believed this was worth a bit of experimentation:

1. For content that I've already shared publicly already, this is a good central location for me to refer people to. Any time I present now, I simply point people to slideshare.net/dan.keldsen and away they go. Solves the problem of conferences or other events that do not have a presentation sharing location, and even if they do, provides the ability for people to see what else I'm yammering about (context and discovery is awfully handy).
2. Experimentation with "2.0" tech, and the ability to easily share/embed content, in my blog, YOUR blog, or anywhere else - makes it that much easier to get even more life out of my presentations. Re-usability and broad distribution is a great benefit of where we are in the state of the web these days. Simple standards and mechanisms win out over complexity every time. Please, feel free to refer to my presentation as you like - simply attribute appropriately, and link back to the slideshare repository (or wherever I've posted it).
3. If I'm sharing information already, for example a presentation I gave 6 months ago in Denmark entitled "Who's the Boss, MOSS?"- I'd be willing to bet that the majority of people on the planet didn't make it to that presentation. So why not open the information to a much larger audience? There were perhaps 50-75 people in the room - yet on slideshare, 1861 views have totaled up since I'd posted it the day of the presentation. That's a nice magnification of the audience - and in this case, that "Long Tail" is one heck of bigger audience than I'd had at my disposal in the live audience.
4. Like many of the other things I do, blogging and podcasting for example, you don't have to take my word for it that I know what I'm talking about - you can go and experience it for yourself. So rather than reading what I have to say about myself on a resume (or LinkedIn) about my experience and expertise (and I try to be as truthful and upfront as possible, but nobody is perfect - and as Seth Godin says "All Marketers are Liars" - see video of Seth on this topic)

There are many more reasons, and I'd love to hear what others are finding as either useful or useLESS about such a resource. There is almost no downside to posting your presentations - as long as they are meant to be public at all, the broader reach you can gain, the more usefulness that content will have to you and your potential customers, next potential employer, existing customers, etc..

And to simply whack you over the head with my point, and tie this to our current research - the Market IQ on Findability (due out in June, pre-register for the public webinar) - you can't FIND what isn't available in some findable form.

You may have some brilliant presentations sitting on your desktop/laptop - but unless it's out there, somewhere, in a format that allows it to be searched or otherwise navigated to, nobody will ever know about it. As I said in a somewhat controversial post recently, ideas are nothing - it's executing on them that's the trick. Take it another step, and even execution on the idea isn't enough. If you have a 100 MPG car that's in production, but nobody knows it exists, then you may as well not have bothered, as the end effect is ZERO. That's marketing, folks, and it applies both for the outside world (to consumers or other businesses) as well as internally to your organization (making people aware of what you can do as an employee).

Search isn't magic - and this business of the "Long Tail" which has gotten considerable hype since Chris Anderson's article in Wired and expanded missives in the book released in 2006 is not just applicable to consumer-facing services, and specifically about SELLING.

Much of the content that should be powering your organization is stuck in silos (such as your inbox) which might be of incredible value within your organization. And merely lamenting that information is in your organization, and going about in recreating a sales proposal, a PowerPoint presentation, or pursuing a line of research isn't just a bad idea, it is a huge waste of the existing resources of your organization.

Re-invention/re-creation is a tax on your organization that isn't adequately accounted for by typical financial accounting methods. Findability plays a key role in breaking that cycle - take a listen to a podcast interview I had done with Stan Garfield a year ago on "Reinvention Prevention" - which discusses this issue of findability for knowledge and innovation purposes.

To wrap it up - we've closed the survey for the Market IQ on Findability, stay tuned for the final report, and please feel free to pre-register yourself for the free public webinar where we'll be discussing the findings.

In the meantime - what is YOUR personal experience in the "Long Tail" - whether as a consumer (the "traditional" sense of the Long Tail), or within your enterprise? Are your colleagues understanding this? Is this a reason that gets people to contribute their content into a content management system, wiki, blog, etc.? Has it had any affect at all? Would love to hear how people are thinking and acting around this type of thinking.

Comment away!

Are You @#$!ing IT? Most Aren't...

Roughly 45 days after we've released the Market IQ on Enterprise 2.0, and we've passed 1,000 downloads. Seems to be accelerating - perhaps because we're speaking at the upcoming June Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Boston?

Who knows - but for those of you who haven't already downloaded the report, feel free to do so, it's a free download, so fairly few hooks attached to the bait! :)

On that front, wanted to call attention to one piece of Enterprise 2.0 that doesn't get much attention - and that is the topic of Mashups.

See the video on Serena's site (the embedded video appeared to cause delays in loading the page, so I've removed it) before I go further.

Don't worry, I'll wait for you to get back...

Back? Good, so...

Great video, and I'm sure Serena is getting a nice bit of viral buzz from it. Of course they're oversimplifying just a bit on how easy it is to "Mash It" but by virtue of the standards that Enterprise 2.0 is built upon, and the approach to usability and "instant solutions" that Web 2.0 interfaces and SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) have brought us, it sure beats the pain of creating mashups in the MUCH more technical pre-cursors to this, which came from the Web Services world.

Mashups are extremely early in adoption (see chart below, from the Market IQ on Enterprise 2.0) - which is not to say you should feel free to ignore the possibilities of mashups, just that it is very early days, and while it would be nice to think that "mashup power" can be put in the hands of the "average business user" (even someone in finance! watch the video clip if you haven't already), and all problems are solved, it's not quite the simple.

I'd love to hear more about what people are doing with mashups however, and would be glad to eat my words if uptake of mashups at large and the creation of mashups by "normal" people is much larger than I'd thought. So please, weigh in and tell us how you're using mashups, and succeeded or for that matter, failed, in your efforts. Prime-time? Dream-time? Somewhere in-between?

Open up and let it out - certainly without more stories of use, mashups are going to continue to lag the other Enterprise 2.0 technologies.

Innovation - There's More to it than Crowds

Having spent 2 years diving into innovation and idea management, I know there is more to innovation than getting together in a room once a year and breaking out the post-it notes.

There's also more to innovation than simply asking the crowd to provide ideas, and assuming that all of those ideas are good to great, and executable within a reasonable timeframe, or monetary investment.

Neither of these are bad, they simply aren't sufficient.

Also, having just spent several months analyzing the data that lead to our Market IQ on Enterprise 2.0 which followed on our Market IQ on Content Security - collaboration and sharing of content cannot and should not ALWAYS be out in the open.

Financial Services companies get this - that's why they are prohibited from sharing information across the "chinese firewall" between the research and sales arms - it's called collusion, not collaboration. That's why pharmaceutical companies lock away their R&D - the FDA will tear them apart, as will their competitors, if there are not tight controls on their processes (including collaboration, reporting, etc.). There's a time and place for total transparency, total secrecy, and the gray space in between.

Which is why it's all the more troubling to hear a fellow analyst jump in and declare a decade old market NEW, and a single solution as "the only enterprise class solution" when it hasn't even existed in a production state for 2 years (perhaps not 1, hard to trace from the info I'm finding).

As Dan Farber wrote about the launch of Salesforce's IdeaExchange in 2006:

"Benioff calls it an 'IdeaExchange,' an 'entirely new way to listen to customers on how to build great enterprise software, and satisfy their needs.' What’s entirely new about a blog-like site with comments and voting is somewhat of a mystery..."

That's perhaps a bit harsh, although he has a point. A shiny front-end is only part of the game, which is what troubles me about people who are obsessed with AJAX, widgets, rounded corners and cool company/product names.

In any case, see Jeremiah's "Build your own 'IdeaStorm' with UserVoice" entry, and make your own judgement.

Below is the comment I'd posted on Jeremiah's blog, with live links, and for archive purposes. Presumably the comment will pass moderation and be live on his blog shortly as well. I see that Matt Greeley, CEO of Brightidea is a bit fired up about this as well.

My comments:

The "suggestion box" approach can provide some value, and I'm now trying out UserVoice and IdeaScale as well. Interesting timing in the blogosphere on this one!

A completely open suggestion box, can however have some major downsides - even though I'm a believer in participation, openness and transparency, the stats on innovation show that focus is needed to maximize the value of these efforts.

As @DellDawn suggests, the whole management process itself is significant. Creating the front-end, vote up/down, commentary and status isn't rocket science. Nearly any blog can do that right now with a few widgets to provide ranking, combined with typical commenting and categories/tagging.

Innovation Management and Idea Management imply and end-to-end process, including the idea generation component on through filtering for duplicates, dumb ideas, things that have already been done, as well as genuine useful and relevant ideas that can be taken to market.

And I have to say, Salesforce.com is not nearly the first or the most successful "open innovation" solution.

This entire movement is born out of the Voice of the Customer movement, itself coming from marketing techniques that go back to the earliest days of focus groups. It's just at a different scale - small i innovation (incremental) rather than radical BIG I INNOVATION (brand new, never been seen before).

Some other competitors that have moved beyond the web-enabled open suggestion box: BrightIdea, Imaginatik, and MindMatters. All of which existed well before Salesforce commercialized their solution.

So, I'd say it is patently false to say that "IdeaExchange is the only enterprise class version" of anything. It's a logical extension of the Salesforce platform - pulling data in from the outside (consumers, users), and marrying to their traditional datasource, handled by marketing and sales people and processes feeding in the CRM/SFA engines. Not "the only" by a long shot.

For someone else's thoughts on the open innovation, wisdom of crowds front, see Mark Turrell's recent YouTube video which describes more of the pros/cons of various approaches. He's CEO of Imaginatik, so hardly unbiased, but he's been involved in this type of work for nearly 10 years, and can provide far more detailed anecdotes on the hard results of these systems.

The Forbes article on Suggestion Box 2.0 is a reasonable introduction to this topic as well.

I'll close with the wisdom that venture capitalists know all too well. Ideas are nothing. It's execution that counts. How do you execute on 100, 1,000 or 10,000 submitted ideas? You can't wing it, you need processes and systems in place, or you are toast.

Innovation at the enterprise-level is hard work, even when tapping the crowd. And as Henry Ford said "If I listened to my customers, I would've bred a faster horse." Suggestions frequently (but not always) require interpretation.