Intel Open Port: IT@Intel Blog : Tags : social

Today is the first day of participating in an IT Consortium around collaboration. The hot topic seems to be around Enterprise 2.0. Not surprising. I am speaking tomorrow around how Intel is using social computing tools to transform collaboration. I will admit that I entered this discussion with a misperception about other company's state of maturity in "going social." An open conversation began with discussions about whether companies block access behind the firewall to any social media sites. An unbelieveable 75% said "yes" to sites like Facebook and YouTube but a bit more were receptive to LinkedIn. I asked "why"? Answer: Business groups don't want their employees to "goof off" doing non-business activity during work time. Also expressed were security and information control concerns. I followed-up with a question asking of those companies that block social sites, how many have external corporate blog sites. Zero. I think corporations are trying to control something that no longer can be controlled.

I flashed back to a great post on Go Big Always. The article captured historical reactions to disruptive software and technologies to corporations. If you answered "yes" to blocking social sites and not finding business value in social software, then this is a MUST read! It shows that sometimes reactions to change are more out of fear, than logic. We are taking it as food for thought as Intel attempts to take our investment and usage of social software to the next level. Below are the article's key takeaways (re-published):

Email has no place at work (1994)
It’s clearly used for goofing off. The last thing I want are my employees wasting my money emailing each other. What’s the use case for email at work? What’s the ROI? Who else is doing it? See industry article

Internet access has no place at work (1996)
Giving employees access to the internet would be a massive productivity problem. Not to mention there are huge security concerns. What’s the reason employees should be allowed to cybersurf? See industry article

eCommerce is too high a risk for our company (1998)
Our company can’t afford the risk associated with opening ourselves up to new, unproven channels or even hacking. There are a lot of thieves online. Why would someone buy our products on the World Wide Web? See industry article

Instant Messaging has no place at work (2002)
It’s a massive distraction. Interruptions cost billions each year. Employees shouldn’t be allowed to spend time chatting all day work. Instant messaging has massive productivity loss implications. See industry article

Social Software has no place at work (2005)
It’s clearly used for goofing off. The last thing I want are my employees wasting my money blogging or networking with each other. What’s the use case for social software at work? See industry article

If IT is truly a strategic business partner, then let's start advising our businesses that not only can we not stop scary software, but that the software may not be that scary after all.

4 Comments Permalink Tags: social_media, social_computing, social_productivity, social_enterprise, social_tools, laurie_buczek

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?

* Company and/or product names are copyrights and trademarks of their respective companies.

1 Comments Permalink Tags: social_media, networking, communities, social_tools