Reading from news (http://news.cnet.com/8301-13577_3-10368956-36.html) today, a survey has shown that 54% workplaces block social networks completely. I'm glad to be in a company which is the 10% which allow social-network use at work so I can stay connected with my external partners and industry peers. It seems the debate on whether social media is a effective business tool or a productivity drain is still going on.

In Intel, we are embracing social media as a mean to transform collaboration in Intel. We see the opportunity out weights the potential risk. We are deploying a social media platform for our employees. You can find out more about our social media strategy from our recent white paper (Developing an Enterprise Social Computing Strategy) and the blogs from Laurie Buczek (Why Intel is investing in Social Computingand Intel's Enterprise Social Computing Strategy Revealed).

Personally, I think social media is going to repeat the history of email and instant messaging (IM) at work. Few years ago, there were skeptics about IM at work. Our CIO at that time, John Johnson, took the risk and deployed IM in Intel. Today, it's a productivity tool that I cannot live without. This morning I was troubleshooting a problem with a colleague waiting to broad a plane 16 hours away thru IM. I frequently talk to my colleagues around the world. They could be anywhere in office, at home, or on the road, when I need to connect with them. Whenever they pop up online, I can get hold of them. Without IM, life will be much more difficult and less productive.

I have been participating in a IT pilot program testing out Windows 7 in our environment. We have a Windows 7 group setup in our social media platform where we share BKM and help each other. I got workarounds from the forum for issues I ran into with the beta version of the operating system. I also contribute my findings and solutions back to the group. Together we are creating a rich knowledge base for the Windows 7 program team. The pilot users around the world were helping each other and saving each one of us a lot of time learning about the new OS, troubleshooting and finding workarounds. This is an excellent success story for social media at work. (Find out our Windows 7 experience here: The Value of PC Refresh with Microsoft Windows 7*)

What is your view of social media at work? Is your company putting up a strategy to adopt the technology?

Among the projects I am working on recently, one of them is deploying video conference solutions in Intel. Video conference has been gaining a lot of attention recently here. When I was talking to the CIO of a large organization in Hong Kong a few weeks ago, video conference was also a topics that came up in the conversation.

From what I have heard and seen, there seems to be a increase interest in this subject. There are three factors I believe are driving this. One is the impact of the current economy, which drives down travel budget. Video conference is a lower cost alternative to meet people when one cannot be physically there. The second factor is the increased focus in sustainability. By replacing travel will video conference, one can reduce the carbon footprint of the organization. The third factor is probably the advance of video conference technology. The systems have been getting better in terms of performance and cost. Many of them have gotten much more user friendly and Support more usage models. Some of them also work reasonably well on a laptop PC.

In Intel IT, we have a program that is trying to make video conference capabilities pervasive to our employees. We have deployed some high end solutions in a number of large sites during last year. We are going to deploy some middle tier and lower tier solutions during the rest of this year. We see these video solutions will bring benefits in areas of travel reduction, sustainability, employee productivity, enablement of new business models, and enhancing collaboration.

A simple survey for the pilot users of a table top solution confirmed that the video conference capability had increased team collaboration comparing to audio only meetings and increased engagement from remote participants. The survey also revealed that some tips and tricks needed to be advertised to use the solution effectively, although the system might appear intuitive to use.

How are you using video conference solutions in your organization? Do you have any experience and best know methods to share?

It's inevitable… a few times a week, my system slows to a crawl doing seemingly mundane tasks. Moving from one application to the next, or even navigating our intranet becomes a trial of patience. Originally I thought it was the application set I was using on a daily basis. Enterprise resource planning, internet browsers, development studios, mail and instant messenger clients. Each of these a known resource hog vying for what little available scraps of memory my system would cough up.

After some hallway grumbling with my co-workers, I turned my attention to not what I was running but what was being run for me. Automatic backup utilities, automatic patching software, and in the anti-virus suite with its omnipotent host intrusion protection. These applications lurk in the background, helping to keep us safe from the pitfalls of the electronic age. They are absolutely necessary to protect our company and its stockholders, but the value can come at a high cost.

Any one of these apps coupled with your normal application load can bring an older system to its knee's on its own, but how about your backup utility kicking off while your antivirus software is in mid-scan as you happen to be running collaboration software sharing out a debug session in your development studio. Not pretty.

The productivity loss is cumulative... two minutes here, five minutes there, ten minutes for a reboot after a hard crash. Soon you've lost an hour or two over the course of the week, or a day or two over the course of a month. These things can be minimized by having systems capable of handling the multiple application loads that both the users need, and the ever shifting security environment requires. The threats won't ever go away. More than likely, they will get worse and the applications needed to stop them will get bigger and more resource intensive.

I look forward to sharing my thoughts related to the areas of collaboration and office productivity. I currently manage three teams within our engineering world. First, I will start with our office productivity team that is responsible for the client software packages for our Intel users. This team works in very broad spectrum from focused Microsoft Office products to extended office products from a variety of suppliers. Next up is our collaboration team that is focused on social media, async collaboration like meeting workspaces, team sites and much more. Last but not least, is the Learning and User Adoption team. This team is focused on providing content for training and focus on helping with users adopting the tools that could help them within their jobs.

I feel that we (IT shops) are being asked to keep the lights on, infrastructure running smoothly and doing this with the lowest possible budget that we tend to leave out the help that we could provide the end user with improved productivity and collaboration solutions. Within my world, we have been slowly introducing these items with mixed impact and effectiveness. Is it the products? Training? Acceptance from the users? Old dogs, new tricks? Boomers to Generation Y'ers? Too late to the party?

I am wondering what others experiences have been? Please share the good, the bad and helpful not the too ugly...

In the future, I am planning on each area in more detail. I look forward to discussing my experiences and gaining new knowledge from those that would like to share.