simondelliott

How to understand collaboration tools quickly

Too many cooks spoil the broth, but many hands make light work,

If you are a natural leader, using a tool that can allow lots and lots of people to work on the same thing at the same time could be a really good recipe for success.

If you have not used collaboration tools before, the quick start is working out how to make google doc work for you and your team.

This is what to do.
Make the next document you make a google doc

Go to http://docs.google.com

Signup and that nonsense,

Then write your document (its just like a simplified version of word)

Then instead of mailing the document to you team, use the “share” button instead.

See how your team get on with this,

After you have the hang of one collaboration tool, you will get really into the whole thing, and the tools are pretty much all the same kind of thing.

Innovation competition – win your prize!

Just print out and complete this form to win your prize

Social Networking and RACI

RACI Networks – a way visualize todays problems

When you are kicking off a program a RACI matrix is a great way to work out who is going to do what, and more importantly who is responsible for any … lets say … issues.

It’s also a great tool to put pressure onto suppliers and individuals to either sign up, or sod off.

When you are working on a program its the combination of good relationships, fast communication and a common goal which really helps your team to be productive and enjoy their jobs. The social networking and communication tools set really helps with this.

In the real world things go wrong, they always do.

The RACI is about responsibility, and therefore ownership.
Where as Social networking  speeds up communication and allows greater cohesion with functioning groups.

The result ….

A faster way to blame suppliers

Maybe there is another way?

Each square in a RACI matrix has an owner, each owner or team communicates over the social network. Now imagine overlaying a social networking visualization tool such as we feel fine ontop.
>the squares in the matrix could glow with the positivity emanating from owner
>you could click on the squares and see which other squares are important
>you could apply a filter “only show me conversations about CR69″

now you have a power full tool that shows you what todays problems are, you could quickly identify supplier relationship, or communications issues. But most importantly of all you could identify cultural issues, and culture clashes between suppliers. You could target your efforts to change the culture, and really help individuals and groups to colaborate.

Essential reading list for the architect

This is the message in it hardcore engineering form.

Lots of small changes on the inside make a positive effect to the public impression
http://www.refactoring.com/

Enjoy doing it and apply it to a team, structure process and control, shared goals
http://www.extremeprogramming.org/

Clean, simple and disciplined.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_C_Programming_Language_(book)

Use technology to work together
http://subversion.tigris.org/

You operate in a political world, it is only victory if everyone wins
http://www.chinapage.com/sunzi-e.html

Use convention over regulation
http://rubyonrails.org/

A good experience comes from both form and function
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helvetica

Why Social Network Analysis needs to look at the signal to noise ratio

As someone who is a borderline sociopath, I feel confident that I can speak about this subject with some authority.

If you attend to a car accident, the victims who are making least noise are in the most trouble.
If you look at an engine its the alternator that makes the least movement but has the most control.
If listen to a choir the loudest voice is not always the best.

Social Network Analysis is being heralded as a tool that can help managers identify key communicators within their operation, If cost saving they can work out where to cut, if looking for growth they can look where to reinforce.

however …
You simply cannot just look at the volume of communication

But the current bread of social sensory software, or SNA tools cannot distinguish between noise and value.

We all know how the team dynamic changes when someone important (to the team) leaves. Could the SNA measure the amount of problems that these people solve, or create, simply by looking at traffic volume?

The SNA computer program could identify the person who internally promotes a new technique and communicates it to others, But could it find the person who innovated it?

Here is a sample conversation,
Tom: Have you seen that idea that Dick has for making the production line go faster.
Harry: Yeah, its really cool. I don’t know how he does it.
Tom: Dick should be in head office we could do with that kind of innovation in the management team.

A stupid SNA would score like this
Tom -> 2
Harry -> 1
Dick -> 0

If the SNA could semantically understand message content then you would have something of real value, for example
Tom -> 2
Harry -> 1
Dick -> 111 (1 for the mention) (10 for the positive response) (100 for the endorsement)

Why waste time on categorization?

If you store your information in folders or on a network share or even in some document mangement systems then you may be at a disadvantage …

Filing behaviors such as tagging, categorization and placement within a hierarchy are a cost on your time and therefore a form of waste.
However, If the time to recall the item being stored is reduced by more than the cost of filing then it’s a worth while activity.

Hierarchical solutions to information storage have a high upfront investment in waste (the hierarchy itself), where as denormalized “broad and flat” solutions have a low initial investment in waste.

The reason that there is a swing towards the later solution is because modern search engines have a greater semantic understanding of the content and can recall faster, offloading the manual input needed by the operator onto a machine.

If you look to the future you will see that there is a massively increasing number of web based features for authoring and collaboration. These are either very low cost or GPL products. The idea that we would choose not to use this functionality and ignore efficiencies and cost reductions that it offers is unrealistic, the idea that a single supplier can meet the demand for all this new functionality is also unrealistic.

To have more business agility and lower costs a company must embrace a heterogeneous environment.

List of products that have been successfully marketed using social networking

This is a list of things that social networking has successfully helped to market

• Knitting – and all the associated bits and bobs
• Scrabble – I dont care what any one says, facebook was good PR for scrabble
• Live Music – Its inconceivable to imagine a live gig that is not promoted by facebook and myspace
• Ubuntu – The support for this product and the Buzz is all on the social networks
• Print media – Although nearly every book is available online the cumulative effect of visual book shelf, amazon wish list, etc … is massive

The commonality is that the brand is not important, nor are any brands from the days of mass media in the list.

Technology predictions to 2030

Ive been gazing into my crystal ball, thinking about the future and trying to make some sense of whats happening in the techno world. The long and short of it is that I have come up with some technology and social predictions.
They are based on market analysis, trend extrapolation and good old fashioned intuition.

Some of these predictions are contraversial (deliberatly so), but times are changing and things happen fast.

• 2010 Microsoft give up on vista
• 2010 Ubuntu is home standard
• 2011 IT becomes all about mobile
• 2011 silverlight dies
• 2011 3d standardization
• 2011 Windows applications disappear
• 2012 Hacking event causes world turmoil
• 2012 Cloud replaces servers
• 2012 Diverse office computers is standard
• 2012 International security database
• 2012 Designers take over from developers
• 2012 Email becomes obsolete
• 2012 flexible screens on packaging
• 2012 low cost genetic sequencer
• 2012 MRI scanning in doctors surgery
• 2012 News papers will die out
• 2013 Online democratic systems
• 2013 AI services emerge
• 2013 removable media becomes obsolete
• 2013 Systems Integration de-skilled
• 2013 Television replaced by online
• 2013 Google not top search provider
• 2014 Media overtake computing companies
• 2014 VB script dies
• 2014 all software is either service or open source
• 2014 Virtual worlds used by business
• 2014 Apple becomes biggest content provider
• 2015 brain pace makers become common place
• 2015 Employees use their own computers
• 2015 flexible screens become standard
• 2015 getting lost is impossible
• 2015 Google is top enterprise software provider
• 2015 governments stop buying servers
• 2015 handheld genetic sequencer
• 2016 Human lands on mars
• 2016 implants into humans become common place
• 2016 IT services becomes about data meaning
• 2016 It will be possible to index video
• 2016 Linux becomes is standard OS
• 2017 Full scale cyber war
• 2017 opensource hardware
• 2017 programming is obsolete skill
• 2017 Relational databases are obsolete
• 2018 business delegated to AI services
• 2018 Imagination more valuable than skill
• 2018 The office becomes history
• 2018 Call center becomes the past
• 2019 Automomous robotic toys
• 2019 Printers disappear
• 2019 Mobile phone becomes history
• 2019 weather news mega important
• 2019 Semantic web services
• 2019 Opensource car
• 2020 Talking computers
• 2020 HUD is fashion item
• 2020 Petrol Engine abolished
• 2020 Tabacco smoking illegal
• 2020 riding a bicycle becomes the norm
• 2020 Office blocks repurposed
• 2021 Ubiquitious internet
• 2021 Intelligence in almost all devices
• 2022 global state controlled media
• 2022 the depression is over
• 2023 Paper outlawed
• 2023 All knowledge electronic
• 2023 Autonomous vehicles
• 2024 natural language programming
• 2024 English replaces all lanuages
• 2025 world covered by CCTV
• 2026 querty keyboard dies
• 2027 most work from home
• 2027 Writing not taught
• 2028 Astro Holidays

Who the hell thought this is a good way to work?

Trisha, Can you pass the stapler?
As an organic life form Im so at odds with this  environment Im going to
try and staple my self to death.

Team, I have an announcement we are loosing market sector,
I need you all to get back in your boxes and start thinking out of your box.
(even the carpet has a box style design)

If  offices are great places to work why do you hate them so much?
will we miss them when they are gone?

Will Starbucks plays a central role in the green revolution?

I was thinking about our futuristic green and sustainable world. Where to cut out carbon emissions on the way to work, we all telecommute instead.
Ovcourse there are many tools that we can use to communicate better, social networks, collaboration tools and all that jazz.

However you cannot get away from our genetics, over a million years evolution has made its so that when we sit down with a real live person, we start to communicate .. and guess what we do it really well, and we have a genetic and real need to do this.

So in this brave new world how can we work and communicate without traveling?

The answer is simple, have local places where people can get together, and work in a comfortable secure way, with access to a massive internet pipe, and is within walking (or bicyceling distance) of your home.

Hold on! someone has already invented this its called starbucks.