The early morning dew glistens as the light of dawn wakens the cactus blossoms of the Arizona desert. Of course, at this time of the year, it never gets cool enough for dew to build or blossoms to go to sleep. During the late summer there are winds that blow through the sands, kicking up dust, and filling the maddening clouds with thick rain. These winds blow hard. These winds cause the desert to change.

There are other winds that have been blowing through the business world enabling a convergence of technology and usage patterns. What was once firmly outside the firewall, and considered only for those on the fringe, is now being embraced and pulled inside.

Social Media (corporately named Professional Media) can be used to enhance your work force like no other tool/technology/use ever has. In the past, when you were looking for an expert, trying to solve a problem, or interested in posting a solution, you did so within the confines of your close personal network. Today, as many of the common social media tools embraced by the business world, that personal network is expanding to involve the whole company. In my case that number approaches 100,000 people.

My specific opportunity involves the forming of a company-based, professional society of software developers.

Why is this important or even needed? Let's say you are starting a new project to create a web-based sales system. While going through the design process you decide upon a certain software platform, specific languages and messaging mechanisms. After the design is approved you then need to setup your development and testing environments as well as any compilation/deployment mechanisms necessary to manage your processes. For just about every project, this has been a large chunk of time and effort because each individual group had become their own pocket of excellence.

What is a pocket of excellence? This would be the team, or individual, who does their job really well, because the processes (and tools) they have in place correspond to the needs and expectations of their immediate team. It is the single person doing it the same way because that way works and meets the customer’s needs.

A pocket of excellence is a personal (or private) network based solution to their local problem (software development).

My goal is to start a society of loosely coupled software developers willing to share their thoughts and ideas in order to allow those private networks to become global in scale. In sharing their data from their pocket of excellence, they begin to gain a wider insight regarding their approach. They may get input to improve it or in turn may see something which makes sense and simplifies their own solution. It should resolve itself into a library of processes and a network of people, in order to help make their jobs better.

Some of the focus areas that I have targeted in our society are:

• Education
• Standards
• Technologies
• Tools/Utilities
• Design
• Testing
• Deployment
• Supportability

There are so many social/networking/professional tools out there, but they all have a common purpose (or should), and that is to create a community.

• Professional tools target professional communities - many of them based on the knowledge of a technology, software, product suite, etc. That might be an ERP community, professional group affiliation, or one based on a programming language like C#.


• Networking tools create a wider set of communities - perhaps based on common interests like group affiliations (Camping/Hiking Clubs, Religious Clubs, Fan Clubs, etc.). They focus less on a professional grouping and more on overall populations, but still with the intent of connecting people.


• Social tools tend to focus on interactions that, in my opinion, are a bit more coffee shop, telephone, local park. In other words, they are less about connecting people and more about chatting on day to day stuff. They don't necessarily focus on people who might want to coordinate a camping trip or ask technical questions, but they offer an online watercooler for socialization and gossip and play.

Each tool has a user base, with some overlap, but they tend to tailor their offerings based on the type of user they really want to visit. Take a look at MySpace*, for example - you can completely customize your profile with music, videos, flash animations, colours, whatever. You can't do that on something like LinkedIN* because that's not primarily what it's about.

When I'm at work, I focus on the Professional or Networking tools - places I can go to ask questions about a technology problem I'm having, or to find someone who not only likes the Sci-Fi Network* show Eureka but wants to chat about geek gadgets for the digital home.

When I'm at home, I think less about work and so I shift my focus to Networking and Social tools. I'm more inclined to look for people who want to chat about the latest episode of American Idol, or perhaps go read the latest deliciously sarcastic blog from TV icon Bobby Rivers.

I'm part of any number of communities that are dynamically created based on my hobbies, interests, and likes. It's exponential the number of communities I'm a part of on any given day, but I thought it might be interesting to figure out just how many.

So here's what I consider to be 10% of the communities that I am a part of:

First, I will boil it down to the lowest common denominator and eliminate things like: human being, on planet Earth, inhabitant of the Milky Way Galaxy, and anything that would be consistent with every other person on the planet.

So what does that leave... US Citizen, NC Native but CA resident who lives in the Sacramento area, employee of a high tech company, team manager, user of an overloaded laptop. Alumni of a college that gave me a BSBA in Information Systems, formerly a member of a professional organization at said college, alumni of my high school and the marching band, child actor (used to be in a lot of plays when younger). Camper, book reader (sci-fi, horror, comedy, adventure), bike rider, gardener, writer of books, lover of reference materials/trivia, bicentennial quarter collector, RPG game player, movie watcher (sci-fi, action, comedy, thriller), music listener (ambient, jazz, soft pop, 80's), caretaker for three cats. Sushi eater, coffee drinker, non-American sports car driver, and lover of diet Pepsi* vanilla.

Now that I write all that out, I don't even think that's 10% of the communities I'm a part of. I can think of a hundred other aspects of my personality/life that would lend themselves to larger communities...so how is this at all useful?

The example that I'm prone to use when asked about the value of Social Networking/Communities is this... I want to find people of any gender and any race, working at the same place I do, who like to eat sushi for lunch, who are fans of Stephen King novels, have some experience in wiki's and online document repositories, and have a background in organization development. And then I want to schedule a lunch with those folks so we can discuss putting together an internal website on org development BKMs, and after we're done talk about the latest novel from our favourite horror writer, all the while enjoying unagi and maguro.

That, to me, is the power and usefulness of the community. Where do you find value?

As the person responsible for driving social media within our enterprise, I have come to realize that the best darn enterprise social tools don’t magically turn your company into a social enterprise. There is a core foundation that must be present or else you cannot reach social enterprise utopia. There are realizations that must occur or else you will not succeed. There are (sometimes) painful things you must do.

• Silos must come down like the Berlin Wall:
I bang into silos on a daily basis. Corporations love silos. I remember clearly one of my university professors stating that a threat to innovation is that people hoard knowledge. Knowledge is power. In order to become a social enterprise, sometimes a significant cultural shift has to occur. Power must shift from teams, groups, organizations, individuals to the masses. Knowledge needs to make the enterprise powerful versus silos within the enterprise. For example, I recently happened into 3 proposed silos in our marketing organization. One team wants to build a knowledge sharing and collaboration system to vet through innovative ideas.. Another team is budgeting to put in social networking software for all sales and marketing personnel, mainly for the field to “find experts”. And lastly, the marketing organization as a whole will have an exclusive best known method (BKM) sharing and networking solution that just marketing will use. If you are making the assumption that all the innovative ideas and expertise you will need is housed within one organization- then you are sorely mistaken. Applying a social tool over a silo doesn’t suddenly make you more innovative. Smashing down and not allowing any new silos serves innovation up to the company Social media routes around those silos and traditional boundaries. It connects people based on interest, not position in the hierarchy. True social enterprises apply social tools that allow wisdom of crowds and six degrees to prevail.

• Consumerism affects what you do inside your four walls:
How people use technology to interact, collaborate and communicate outside of works DOES affect what they want to do inside work. There is a very clear bar that have been set by expectations because of the consumerism of social tools. For example, if your social networking tool isn’t as intuitive to use as external sites, employees won’t use it. This doesn’t mean employees want a “wall” to write on or widgets that allow you to throw pies at each other. They just want a similar ease of use and utilitarian enjoyment that we receive externally but appropriate for business. Read What Gen Y Teaches Us About Enterprise Social Networking for ah-ha’s out of a focus group with recent college graduates.

• Understand that people will go down with the email ship:
We are not delusional and think that any of these social tools will replace email for people. We all know that email was never meant to be a collaborative tool, but somehow it is reality. Social tools need to be engrained into current business processes. For example, email alerts should occur when I am asked to join a community or someone comments on my blog post. My profile that I have in my social networking tool should be the unified profile that everyone sees in the company directory, email, instant messaging, blogs and wikis (to name a few). The Wiki should be incorporated into team workspaces and easily accessible. Implementing social tools in a disparate way or thinking that you can replace current knowledge management tools – will be a barrier to adoption.

• If it takes a manual to use it – throw it out the door:
When was the last time you read a manual? Seriously. Does any software or computer even ship with one anymore? Can you even find an online manual with Digg, LinkedIn, Twitter or the like? If you answered no to these questions, then you will need to say “no” to manual required for pulling social capabilities inside the enterprise. It all comes down to usability. Ease of use has to be your #1 criteria. We are recommitting to user driven design. We have painfully realized that the complexity of our enterprise architecture has the capability to turn our social software into mush. Our users are guiding us to rise above the complexity and to focus on simplicity without sacrificing feature richness.

• If IT doesn’t act now, then someone else will:
Social media tools can quickly “go wild”. Listening to your business customers and becoming keenly aware of what people are doing within external applications or what is housed on a server under someone’s desk, is critical to tame the wild beast within social tools. Just like instant messaging (IM) got into your enterprise, so will social tools. We have some taming to do…particularly with wikis. We are at the critical inflection point of deciding to pull in enterprise grade social networking. If we in IT don’t act swiftly, I guarantee you someone else will. It is a reality IT cannot run from.

So far my key learning comes down to the above. I fight these challenges daily. It all boils down to the fact that at the end of the day, social media isn’t about the tools….it’s about people.

I've got profiles everywhere these days, and not just on the internet, but on the intranet as well. I'm sure we've all got a variety of external faces, whether on Yahoo*, MSN Spaces*, Facebook*, myspace.com*, LinkedIn*, or the myriad of other social networking sites out there.

But what about on the corporate intranet? It can get just as complicated there, especially if you are trying to find someone who knows something about something that no one in your organization knows anything about!

We're starting to see social networking tools for the enterprise show up in evaluations, and I really do hope we implement something within the company - there's incredible value in knowing that I could search for organization development and find a person who is in another division that did an OD project last year that's exactly what I'm trying to do now. But we're not quite there.

Right now I've got a pseudo-profile on my internal blog, another on our internal wiki, another on our document collaboration environment, another that's part of my email signature line, and I'm sure there's yet another floating around somewhere. If someone wanted to know what I've been up to for the last 12 years at Intel, they would have to look around in three or four different places to get the full story, or just ask me for a copy of my resume.

Part of that is my fault - I just need to pick one place to keep updated and point everything else to it, but the problem there is that now I'm sending people to sites that might not be their PREFERRED location for social networking. As an external example, let's say you've got a personal blog on wordpress.org, but you've also got a myspace account and another on MSN Spaces. All three have blog functionality, which do you pick? Do you post to all three at the same time, or do you point people to one or the other? What if one of your friends prefers MSN Spaces, but you keep sending them to wordpress.org to read your blog?

It's profile overload! Not only do you have profile/personal info in 10 different places, but you're trying to communicate redundantly based on other people's preferences. Stop the madness!

I'm now to the point where I'm shutting down my profiles on sites that are just secondary or tertiary, and if people want to know who I am and what I'm wearing, they will go to the one site that has it all, because realistically, whichever site you choose will have another competitor in 6 months that everyone will flock to and add 500 friends they've never actually met before. In my mind, I'm seeing a group huddled together moving in unison from one corner of the room to the next as the latest social media site pops up.

Will it settle any time soon? I doubt it. There are many competitors that are getting into niche areas and offering more for your money (which in most cases is free). It's a challenge outside and a challenge inside. At least within the company you can create a "mandate" that says here is the site to create your profile and it's what the company is going to use.

Maybe some day everyone on the planet will have an ID number and their own website. I want to be 0100100001000101010000010101010001001000.com.

• Websites and locations mentioned in this blog are trademarks and properties of their respective companies.

As social media adoption is beginning to gain ground, "the" requests are starting to trickle in. "I want to start blogging/wiki/forum internally or externally....but I only want a certain group to have access to the blog/wiki/forum." The enterprise and marketing social mediaites have done our due diligence and attempted to find solutions to meet the business needs, but it typically means advising them that social media may not be the right fit. Then, I read today that a company called Mixx (Digg equivalent) is adding private email and group message boards to its offerings. Whoa! Stop the presses. I am challenged by what appears to me to be counter intuitive. Stepping back and looking into the enterprise I ask, "Can social productivity really be social productivity with velvet ropes?"

I have always been of the mindset that in order for community to be built, innovation to be fostered and collaboration to be achieved, that everything needed to be public. If you started to form "silos" of private groups, private messages, private forums, private blogs then your ability to leverage the power of the community would be lost. As Steve Bell in Social Networking - Bookmarks - Social Productivity and Sam Lawrence have referenced in previous posts "Social productivity...is about getting work done outside the team of like-minded people you work with everyday....an idea is introduced and all sorts of people get to chime in...your idea has developed openly by all sorts of people who bring their own valuable perspective." Sam cites Wikipedia as a prime example of nontraditional collaboration at it's finest. Intel started internal blogs & forums in 2004; built Intelpedia, our first internal wiki, back in 2005; and subsequently launched the internal IT Innovation Zone, collaboration & sharing site, in 2006. These are open to the entire company and we have had strong success with these tools. So is IT now getting requests to go smaller, go private because these tools aren't meeting business needs or because we as a company haven't fully embraced the culture shift to social productivity? With the Mixx announcement I am giving deeper thought to what social media looks like within the enterprise; the desired results of social productivity and whether private subcommunities are necessary for optimal collaboration and communication. I still say "no". I beleve that velvet ropes and social productivity are like oil and water. They don't mix. Am I wrong?

With the old year grinding to a close and opportunities of a new year opening before us, it is a good time to take a moment and make some new year's information security resolutions. Some are good holdovers from last year and a few are new to the list. I think all are good practices to promote security and hopefully will keep a smile on my face throughout the year (no matter what cyber meltdown may occur).

1. Vigilance. Maintaining effective legacy security programs is critical. Loss of such capabilities opens the door to old, known, and well refined attacks
2. Embrace/Beware of disruptive technology. Double edged bleeding technology can be a blessing and a curse. It can reduce costs, increase efficiency, open markets, and change your way of thinking, but is also like walking into a darkened room in a horror movie. You never know what may jump out at you and in hindsight you may think "well that was painful". On the hot-list:
   • Virtualization technology in all its glory
   • Smart-phones and other PC OS/application based portable devices
   • Social media sites, tools, and accompanying behaviors
3. Careful with my PII. Our Personally Identifiable Information (PII) is more important than anyone can measure. I will handle mine with care, insure others do the same, and simply say ‘no' more often than not, when asked.
4. Don't be a fish. Just say no to phishing and spam. Filters are wonderful but a few will creep through. If it looks suspicious, it probably is. Don't be shy, even with the weird stuff sent by people you trust. Just pick up the phone and call them: "Hey Ralph, did you send me this executable attachment via email?" Is it not that tough.
5. Give an effort for disaster preparedness. Regular backups and encryption are my friends. Nothing huge mind you, but at least apply where it makes sense
6. Choose not to be a victim and let common sense prevail. Two types of victims exist: those with something of value, and those who are easy targets. Therefore, don't be an easy target and protect your valuables
7. Talk and share security. We are stronger as a team striving for security, than alone. The bad guys are working together; it is about time we do the same. Talk about security and share what works or doesn't. Don't be shy.

As Bob Duffy mentioned inSocial Media panel blogcasted live for Office 2.0... IDF livecast next., IT@Intel is hosting and doing a live stream of a social media panel, "Social Media: IT Friend or Foe?", on September 18th during IDF 2007. We are priviledged to have Tom Foremski from Silcon Valley Watcher moderating the panel of IT web 2.0 mavens inside Intel. Who are the mavens you ask?
Jeff Moriarty, one of Intel IT's key creators of Intel's internal social media strategy.
Eleanor Wynn, expert on social networking technologies conducts social research for Intel IT
John G. Miner, a methodologist who has studied the disruptive effects that web 2.0 has on the classic IT processes
Don Conant, senior legal representative addressing the legal & ethical challenges as IT pushes further into web 2.0

In addition to Intel's IT experts, Pete Kaminski, CTO & Co-founder of Socialtext, the first wiki company and leading provider of Enterprise 2.0 will be a voice on the panel.

Come to discuss your thoughts on how social media is a friend, foe or both of IT. See you on the 18th in San Francisco. P.S. If you haven't registered yet, and want to save some money, check out the discount codes I mentioned in Getting Ready for IDF