Digital Landfill

Today We Released Andy McAfee's 3 reports on Social Technologies and Business Process

The three reports can be downloaded directly from the AIIM web site (you need to login, but they are free) at THIS LINK.  

Here's the press release...

New Research Shows That Enterprise Social Technology Gets Work Done

Research scientist Andrew McAfee and the AIIM Task Force track the adoption rate of social business and reveal social business/Enterprise 2.0 best practices for three key business engagement models

 

Silver Spring, Md., January 25, 2012 - AIIM, the global community of information professionals, today announced the release of a three-part white paper series, titled “When Social Meets Business Real Work Gets Done” authored by Andrew McAfee, a principal research scientist at the MIT Sloan Center for Digital Business and the AIIM Task Force on Social Business and Innovation.

The research, conducted over the past six months, revealed that companies are realizing significant, measurable benefit from the adoption of social technologies in the areas of marketing and sales, open innovation and enterprise Q&A, which is defined as the capability to let people ask and answer questions companywide. Despite the growth of external social networks for personal use, the adoption of similar social business technologies has lagged.

Based on this new research, businesses may want to re-consider this “wait and see” approach toward social business. The key findings included: 

• More than 60 percent of firms who did invest in collaborative frameworks achieved big gains in knowledge sharing and communication accuracy between marketing and sales.
• Open innovation delivers beneficial changes to both internal processes and external products, and is meeting the expectations of its sponsors. Open innovation helped realize major changes to the internal processes of 48 percent of responders and to the external offerings of 34 percent of responders.
• A 60 percent satisfaction rate was reported for organizations with a rewards-based enterprise-wide Q&A. Respondents said high-quality answers often come from unexpected sources indicating that social tools are cultivating advanced knowledge sharing. 

“All three areas addressed by the Task Force demonstrate that when people engage properly with each other and with technology, trust, self-organization, and good business results emerge," says Dr. McAfee. “The three use cases are true examples of social business because they depend on people with strong, weak and potential ties to organize their own workflows, roles and credentials."

Recommendations include “socializing” marketing and sales assets to reduce search costs and redundant work; focusing open innovation environments to improve both products and processes; and adopting enterprise Q&A structures that are frictionless to remove company-wide communication hurdles.

"We are clearly moving into a new phase in social technologies, one in which the critical success factor
will be the integration of social technologies into key organizational processes,” according to AIIM President, John Mancini. “The end objective should not be to simply set up social networks inside our organizations, but to actually make our organizations social. There is still a lot of work to be done to fulfill this potential, but the three use cases suggest that significant progress is happening inside business."

The “When Social Meets Business Real Work Gets Done” research papers on Connecting Sales and Marketing, Fostering Innovation and Enterprise Q&A are available to the public for download at: http://www.aiim.org/SocialMeetsBusiness.

Led by Andrew McAfee, the task force, launched in June 2011, included 18 executives from social business and content management companies. Its mandate was to study the implementation of social technologies in business and focus on three areas demonstrating success. The research included survey data published in the recent AIIM Industry Watch on Social Business Systems - Success Factors for Enterprise 2.0 Application. This 2011 Task Force built upon the 2010 Task Force, led by Geoffrey Moore, that resulted in the ground-breaking paper “Systems of Engagement and the Future of Enterprise IT”, named in Forbes as the “Best Social Media Idea of 2011”.

About Andrew McAfee
Andrew McAfee (http://www.andrewmcafee.org) is a Principal Research Scientist at the Center for Digital Business, part of the MIT Sloan School of Management in Cambridge, MA. McAfee is a researcher, writer, and teacher about technology’s impact on the world of business. His book, Enterprise 2.0: New Collaborative Tools for your Organization’s Toughest Challenges was published in late 2009 by Harvard Business Publishing.

About AIIM

AIIM has been an advocate and supporter of information professionals for nearly 70 years. The association mission is to ensure that information professionals understand the current and future challenges of managing information assets in an era of social, mobile, cloud and big data. Founded in 1943, AIIM builds on a strong heritage of research and member service. Today, AIIM is a global, non-profit organization that provides independent research, education and certification programs to information professionals. AIIM represents the entire information management community, with programs and content for practitioners, technology suppliers, integrators and consultants.

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I also put together a short powerpoint with some of the major findings.  CLICK HERE for the direct link, or check out the embedded version below...

McAfee and AIIM Task Force Findings

View more presentations from John Mancini

 

Get that Christmas shopping done early; yes Virginia, I do have a life outside AIIM

Looking for that perfect holiday gift?  Look no further than Will's Christmas List.

Imagine if you will, the following reviews.  If they had actually occurred, would you be likely to actually buy this book?

"I laughed until I stopped." (New York Times Book Review)

"This book could help bridge the gap between liberals and conservatives." (Barack Obama)

"The pages as well as the chapters are numbered sequentially. Amazing." (Kirkus Book Reviews)

"If there was a movie made of this book, the father would be played by Colin Firth and the mother would be played by Amy Adams." (Mary G. Mancini and John F. Mancini, in order to satisfy our respective fantasies)

This is a labor of love that I wrote over a number of years for my kids.  It has literally sold tens of copies over the years, assuring that the massive royalties I receive (in some years, well into double digits) will not be a threat to AIIM's continued claim upon my services.

I do like to do a bit of experimenting each year with the Long Tail Phenomenon and watch how modest numbers of units affect my ranking within the long tail on the best seller list.  

So here's the starting point.  Right now, per Amazon, Will's Christmas List is #4,210,041 in Books. Let's see where it winds up; I'll report back.

Have fun.

 

Some #social, #local, #mobile presentations you may have missed...

OK, here they are.  Check 'em out.

For those whose email servers screen out embedded content, the presentations are first listed as links...(I'll be posting more from my colleagues next week)...As usual, feel free to borrow with attribution...

• Content Opportunities in Revolutionary Times
• What is an information professional?
• How Can Social Technologies Be Used to Drive Processes and Innovation?
• World Paper Free Day
• If SharePoint is Your Answer, Do You Khow What Your Question Is?

Content Opportunities in Revolutionary Times

View more presentations from John Mancini

What is an information professional?

View more presentations from John Mancini

How can social technologies be used to drive processes and innovation?

View more presentations from John Mancini

World Paper Free Day -- Oct 27

View more presentations from John Mancini

If SharePoint is your answer, do you know what your question is?

View more presentations from John Mancini

The Cool is Back in ECM

What has happened to the old stodgy content management space?

One way that I think you can measure the coolness of an industry is to look at who is doing the entertainment at industry functions (I know, frivolous, but stick with me).

Let's be honest for a minute about the kinds of bands one would see at ECM user conferences in recent years. Gladys Knight and the Pip (yes, there is sadly only one Pip left). Earth, Wind, and Fire. Fortunately for everyone concerned, at least no one booked Bachman Turner Overdrive despite the potential attractiveness of a "Taking Care of Business with ECM" theme.

Well, judging by 2 recent user conferences I attended last month, the times they are a changin' (OK, I realize this is a dated reference).

I was lucky enough to go to Box's Boxworks conference and IBM's Information on Demand event. The bands? Third Eye Blind and train. Bands my kids like. Bands my kids have heard in concert. Clearly an inflection point. This ain't your Father's content management; content is cool again.

I can't think of two more different companies on the content spectrum than Box and IBM, and yet the coolness factor not only applied to the bands, but to the value proposition being articulated.

Box's focus on content management in the cloud is clearly striking a chord with those looking for file share replacements and document centric collaboration and simplicity of implementation. The 18,000 seat P&G implementation they announced represents something of a tipping point for me in terms of the viability and relevance of cloud-based content management.  So too did the investment by Salesforce.com in the company.  At the other end of the spectrum, IBM's extension of the Watson technology set into real applications and the broader case studies focused on the power of analytics and big data were, frankly, way cool. 

All of this is not to say that Box and IBM are better or worse than any other solutions, because that's not my job.

But I am excited about what these events say about the coolness factor of content technologies as an industry and what these two user conferences indicate about the future -- in wildly varying content spaces. I'm doubly excited that a centerpiece of BOTH of these events was the work that AIIM did with Geoffrey Moore on Systems of Record and Systems of Engagement (http://www.aiim.org/futurehistory).

Social. Mobile. Cloud. Big Data. They are all reenergizing and redefining content management.  Here are some of the themes we're teeing up for next year...

• Process Revolution: Moving Your Business from Paper to PCs to Tablets
• Big Data: Extracting Value from Digital Landfills
• Solving the SharePoint Puzzle: Adding the Right Missing Pieces
• Faster, Simpler, Smarter: Collaborating and Processing in the Cloud
• Social in the Flow: Transforming Processes

So get rid of those bell bottomed jeans. Download some of your kid's tracks from iTunes (they probably charged them to your account anyway) and get ready for the future of content management.

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Speaking of cool, I'm keynoting OpenText's Content World November 16 (My peeps save $300 w/ code CW2011KEY - http://bit.ly/unc4le) and also running an Executive Social Business Seminar with Oracle in NY on November 10.

Have you signed up for the new AIIM Conference March 2012 in San Francisco? For solution providers, almost all the premium slots are sold - get moving! For attendees, mark your calendars!

 

 

SharePoint Saturday "The Conference" quick recap - #spstcdc

Part conference. Part networking opportunity. Part selling space. Part tribal gathering. Part evangelical tent meeting. With a liberal dose of serendipity. And a talent show.

That was SharePoint Saturday The Conference on Thursday through Saturday at the Northern Virginia Community College in Annandale, VA. Who knows exactly how many people there were, but I am told the pre-reg was about 1800.  At a sub-$100 price point for a 3 day event with 250+ presentations, the price was certainly right. For those used to more "formal" events, the ever changing room assignments and last-minute changes could be a bit overwhelming. But this chaos was balanced by an awesome volunteer commitment.

Founder and Chief Organizer Michael Lottner is to be applauded for this gathering of the tribe. It is really fun to see so many focused -- and young! -- people gathered in one place and talking about, of all things, content management!

Thanks to Dux Raymond Sy (@meetdux) for inviting me to speak; it was a lot of fun and inspiring. Here's a link to my presentation, and for those who can view active content, have also embedded my presentation.  The presentation focuses on the need to be clear on exactly what you are trying to do with SharePoint and why, and the changing nature of enterprise IT.

If SharePoint is your answer, do you know what your question is?

View more presentations from John Mancini

What the hell is Google+? Here's an answer...

One of the things I find hard to explain to people who are not active on social networks is the incredible and serendipitous way information flows TO you.

This is admittedly not the most efficient of processes right now. But it is getting better and better. Let me give you an example.

Earlier this morning, I tweeted this...

A few hours later, I received this reply from Daniel Mealo, and I have to admit it's a pretty damn good answer.

Daniel noted the following in thinking about his personal and professional networking. I must say these are thoughts that I've wrestled with as I think about whether my family is REALLY interested in ECM updates on Facebook (hint: THEY'RE NOT) and whether my work contacts really want to be exposed to my fab nephew Ben's fart jokes (OK, maybe.) My own personal dichotomy -- weaker by the day -- business stuff on Twitter and LinkedIn, personal stuff on Facebook, but with lots of fuzziness.

Here are Daniel's thoughts... Here's what he posted to alert his Facebook contacts about where he's headed...

On 7/31/2011, Google+ is expected to come out of its limited beta release into open availability. When this happens, I will stop posting updates to and monitoring Facebook except on very rare occasion.

What will be found at twitter.com/dmealo?
My Twitter account (twitter.com/dmealo) will continue to be used for newsfeeds and trivial banter, mostly of a nerd-type nature.

What will be found at Google+ (profiles.google.com/daniel.mealo.us)?
Google+ will replace Facebook as my preferred way to post pictures and personal updates to those in my "friends" and "family" circles. 

If you would like an invitation to the Google+ beta test before the 7/31/2011 official launch, send me your email address and I will sign you up for an invite.

Daniel then kindly gave me his list of 9 reasons why he is moving away from Facebook.  It's got me thinking...

1. Data Liberation. This means that, at any time I want, I can export my Google+ pictures and conversations into a zip file on my local computer and leave their service. Facebook tries to trap that data much like AOL did years ago, and it is a model that has never sat well with me. People should own their own data. Nobody should hold it hostage.
2. Unlimited Uploads. One of the main reasons that I started using Facebook for personal content was the ability to upload unlimited amounts of photos for sharing. Google has now caught up. With the introduction of Google+, you can upload unlimited photos in fairly high (2048x2048) resolution, along with unlimited videos. This upload service integrates tightly with Picasa photo management and editing software.
3. Instant Upload. Using the Android App for Google+, all of my photos and videos automatically upload from my phone to a private album online to protect them and make them easy to share when and if I want to. This is a killer feature. It likely will come to other mobile phone platforms soon.
4. Circles. This is what Google+ calls its "Groups" or "Lists." Facebook is built around a lack of privacy by default. While it has the ability to set up and maintain lists of contacts by type and share certain content only with certain groups, it doesn't make it easy to do so. This is especially true of Facebook's mobile application. Google+, on the other hand, makes it simple to select the circles or individuals that you want to share an item with on the fly. My friends have little to no interest in Enterprise Content Management, so those posts go to the work circle only. My colleagues at work have no place in my personal life, so personal posts go to family and friend circles only. Google+ makes this easy to manage.
5. Huddle. This is a mobile feature with Google+ that lets you send and receive text messages with up to 10 people at once, with everyone in on the conversation.
6. Hangouts. This is Google+'s video conferencing feature. Unlike Facebook's recently announced Skype integration, Google+ allows video conferencing with multiple people all at the same time. I probably won't use this a lot for personal use, but it sure is handy for business meetings.
7. Geotagging. Google+ makes it easy to share (or choose not to share) your geographic location with posts and pictures.
8. Sparks. This is Google+'s built-in news section. You set your topics, and it pulls stories that you might be interested in. I am a news junkie, and I love this concept.
9. It isn't commercial (yet). So far, there are no brands allowed on Google+. There are also no fake farms, organized crime families, sororities, cake shops, pet shops, or other Zynga-type games. Brand pages will be allowed in about six months. I am hoping that the games never make the leap.

Wow. Talk about getting intelligence out of the social grid. 

Daniel's got me thinking.

I wish Google had thought through the user interface a bit more -- I had the same feeling with Wave. I constantly find myself thinking, "where the hell am I?"

I hope the beta-ness of this -- especially the confusion during this interim period between people who have Google+ accounts and those who don't (I just got a note from a staff colleague telling me that in trying to reply to a Google+ post I did to both Google+ people and email people, she just gets an error message) doesn't alienate people prematurely.

But I can also say after fooling around with this for a about an hour that the Circles concept is WAY better than the clunky way that Facebook does it and exactly consistent with how real people think about their different social universes.

Stand by.

6 Presentations you should look at if you don't believe that mobile changes EVERYTHING

Since I have a number of email readers and many email systems strip out embedded content from blog posts, I'll run links for all of the presentations first, and then follow with the actual presentations.

• Top Mobile Internet Trends -- Mary Meeker -- my favorite datapoint -- in Q42010, shipments of smart phones + tablets > PCs
• A look at M Spots Around the World - Tomi Ahonen has more fab data about mobile than anyone I know - and not just "smart phone" mobile - check out his other presentations too.
• Mobile Trends 2020 - Not pretty, but a nice collection of all sorts of prognosticators re mobile.
• Mobile Megatrends 2010 -- I especially like slide 13 showing where the major players are playing and the quote - "Operators/carriers are moving at half the clockspeed of the handset OEMs."  And the slide 25 predictions for App stores.
• Trending the Future - I like the style of this presentation - and a GREAT quote - "The iPAD only does less than a regular computer to us geeks. To everyone else it does more."
• Why Mobile Social Media Matters - I increasingly think it is mobile drives social, not the other way around.

 

Top 10 Mobile Internet Trends (Feb 2011)

View more presentations from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers

Tomi Ahonen

View more presentations from Mark Tapley

Mobile Trends 2020

View more presentations from Rudy De Waele

Mobile Megatrends 2010 (VisionMobile)

View more presentations from VisionMobile

Mobile Trends - June 2011 - Trending The Future

View more presentations from space150

Why Mobile Social Media Matters - Statistics, Trends, Technologies

View more presentations from David Berkowitz

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We'll be talking about these trends -- and much more -- at our Social Business Virtual Conference September 8 - register now; seats are limited.

10 (not 8!) darn good articles on content management

Hand-print or Handwriting, HUGE difference! by Chris "Imaging Savant" Riley Sr. ECM & Document Capture Architect

Capture:   Here is another roll-up your sleeves down and dirty post. When it comes to forms processing and data capture working with documents that have hand-print vs. handwriting is a huge difference. Han... read more

Migrating to SharePoint 2010: Home Makeover MOSS Edition by Marc Solomon Knowledge Planning and Coordination

SharePoint:  It's snowtime ... no, showtime. What I mean is migrating +100 GIG of documents, schematics, and media files from our MOSS production server to our looming SharePoint 2010 launch. The snow me... read more

Getting to Know Your Users by Joe Shepley Principal Consultant

Social Business:  In my previous posts, I’ve talked a lot about how E2.0 has less to do with technology than with people, that it’s really about enabling more effective people-to-people relationships, not simply ... read more

Can We Automate Retention? by Susan Cisco Director

ERM: In her recent post @ http://aiimcommunities.org/erm/blog/retention-needs-enema, Julie Cogan noted that some innovation in developing and implementing retention schedules is happening in the cont... read more

Disposing of Electronic Records with “Triggering Event” Based Retention Periods by Susan Goodman Senior Vice President, Bank of America, Enterprise Digital Records Program (EDRP) for Bank of America

ERM:  BACKROUND One of the greatest challenges faced by firms when implementing retention rules is effectively managing records that have retention periods predicated upon “event based triggers.” ... read more

The Gift of Anticipation by Mimi Dionne Consultant for Mimi Dionne Consulting

ERM:  What gift do you think a good servant has that separates him from the others? It’s the gift of anticipation. And I’m a good servant.  I’m better than good, I’m the best—I’m the perfect servant. ... read more

Ready For Prime Time by DANIEL ANTION VP INFO SVCS for American Nuclear Insurers

SharePoint:  I love it when somebody does something that inspires a blog entry. Trying to write two SharePoint blogs each week, and keeping them useful, can be challenging, so it’s nice when someone helps. W... read more

Drive for Show, Putt for Dough – a Lesson for Enterprise 2.0 Platforms by Steve Radick Lead Associate for Booz Allen Hamilton

Social Business:  Ever hear the phrase “Drive for Show, Putt for Dough?”  It’s  time-honored sports cliche that refers to the oohs and ahhs that a huge golf drive off the tee will elicit from the crowd. However, ... read more

Users losing permissions? This might be the reason. by Michael Doyle SharePoint Architect for Waggener Edstrom Worldwide

SharePoint:  This is something that came up recently and I thought I would I would share in case you are running into the same problem. The scenario is this. A user is deleted from AD and then a profile impo... read more

Stealing Your Content for Fame and Fortune by Dan Elam VP for IQ Group

ERM:  We spend a lot of time in this industry talking about how to capture information and, through good records management practices, dispose of content when appropriate.  But we don’t talk about how... read more

 

 

Thinking about implementing social business responsibly

Just back from keynoting the Newsgator Collective (#ngcollective) conference. Lots of interesting end users building social systems on top of SharePoint 2010, and also some with an implementation background from the Tomoye acquisition.

Thought I'd share the keynote slides below. Feel free to Retweet them, embed them on your own site, or send them to your friends (Creative Commons). Also, please feel free to contact me if you have keynote needs centered around content management or social systems.

Lots of great sessions. Especially enjoyed the "speed dating" session to get attendees talking (see picture). 12 networking sessions in 60 minutes. (A concept I've wanted to try for some time at some of our meetings.)

Sponsors of the event were Ascentium, Aspect, Avanade, Cognizant, HiSoftware, OrbitalRPM, Microsoft, Rightpoint and Slalom Consulting.

You should also check out our new briefings on building a social strategy...

Session 1 - Improving Decision Speed and Collaboration Among Knowledge Workers

Session 2 - Using Social Technologies to Engage Customers

 

Thinking about Technology, Risk, and Change Management Through a Social Lens

View more presentations from John Mancini.

There are revolutionary uses of technology, and then there are actual revolutions

Those of us in the tech space like to talk about the revolutionary uses of technology. Well, that's all well and good, but there are also actual revolutions.

I got back a couple of weeks ago from a trip that included a trip to the Conciergerie in Paris.  Per Wikipedia...

The Conciergerie...had an unpleasant reputation before it became internationally famous as the "antechamber to the guillotine" during the Reign of Terror, the bloodiest phase of the French Revolution. It housed the Revolutionary Tribunal as well as up to 1,200 male and female prisoners at a time. The Tribunal sat in the Great Hall between 2 April 1793 and 31 May 1795 and sent nearly 2,600 prisoners to the guillotine. Its rules were simple. Only two outcomes existed — a declaration of innocence or a death sentence — and in most cases the latter was chosen. The most famous prisoners (and victims) included Queen Marie Antoinette, the poet André Chénier, Charlotte Corday, Madame Élisabeth, Madame du Barryand the Girondins, who were condemned by Georges Danton, who was in turn condemned by Robespierre, who was himself condemned and executed in a final bout of bloodletting. En route to the tumbrils, the victims walked through the Salle Saint-Louis, (Saint Louis Room), which acquired the nickname of the Salle des Perdus, the "Room of the Doomed".

So perhaps this question of revolutions was on my mind as the events of this week unfolded -- and as it became clear the role that social technologies have played in those events.

As I look at the torrent of tweets under the hashtags #jan25 and #egypt, a couple of observations come to mind.

1. The effort to track those protesting on-line through GPS and through their IP addresses gives me pause to think more seriously about all those privacy compromises we make every day in the name of expediency. I was recently using the beautiful new Washington Post iPAD application.  Great app; they might even have the business terms right when it moves from the free trial to actual payment next month. But when I go to tweet an article from the Post app or post it on Facebook, I encounter what seem to be an overly aggressive set of conditions exposing my data. My data. And to do something that is not in my interest, but the Post's. I think I'm going to think twice.
2. The attempt to shut down the internet and cellular access by the government reminds me that it is not a bad idea to continue to be skeptical about attempts by any government to interject itself into the internet. No matter how well intentioned the reasons may be. No matter how useful a "unique internet identity" might be.
3. The traffic that has continued to flow despite everything the government has done to shut it off reminds me that decentralized systems will find a way. The Huffington Post did a great graph visualizing the Egyptian internet blackout. The chart shows the traffic essenially falling off a cliff as of 5 PM on the 27th. And yet despite all of this, a quick look at either the #jan25 or #egypt hashtags continues to flow out at 100+ tweets per minute.  Remarkable.

Wow.

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Some other recent posts...

Social Soft Underbelly Redux -- Attention Mark Zuckerberg, You'll Be Getting a Lot of Calls

Poking at the Soft Underbelly of Social Media