Jul 10

Jul 10 Enterprise Expertise Management Systems and Organizational Reality

Some of the early feedback I’m getting while researching and writing about enterprise expertise management systems is that some types of organizations might view them as disruptive. The purpose of this brief article is to discuss how this might be true in certain situations.

Jul 7
Jul 7 A Master's Dissertation on Blogs and Project Management

Dennis D. McDonald

Blogging, Project Management

Here’s a dissertation worth looking at: Design, Implementation, and Evaluation of Weblogs as an Enterprise Project Management Communication Tool, by Marcus J. A. Peaston. It’s a Master of Science dissertation dated February 15, 2006 submitted to The University of Liverpool.

Jul 6
Jul 6 Jumping On the Amanda of Rocketboom Bandwagon

Dennis D. McDonald

Industry Analysis, , Web 2.0

OK, call me clue less. But I don't care if Amanda is leaving Rocketboom. It's about as important to me as Katie Couric moving to the network evening news.

Jul 5
Jul 5 Ed Felten's "Why Do Innovation Clusters Form"?

Dennis D. McDonald

History, Industry Analysis, Innovation

Ed Felten in the Freedom to Tinker blog has an interesting post called Why do Innovation Clusters Form? where he comments on a recent conference he attended devoted to high tech innovation and public policy.

Jun 30

Jun 30 Comparing Eras of Innovation: 1950's Aerospace Advances and Today's Web

Dennis D. McDonald

History, Innovation, Media, Web 2.0, Cold War, Bestech23

We are now in the midst of a very innovative period of social and technological change that is being partly driven by the increasing availability of web based tools that support the development of relationships, the sharing of information and experiences of all kinds, and the manipulation of information on a scale that was difficult to contemplate just a few years ago. The experiences we have online are taking on increasingly important roles in terms of individual emotions, financial consequences, and personal relationships. There have been other periods of intense social and technological innovation. One of my favorite ones for study is the post Word War II aerospace industry.

Jun 28
Jun 28 Have We Reached an Enterprise Web 2.0 Tipping Point?

Dennis D. McDonald

Enterprise 2.0, Industry Analysis, , Web 2.0

Have we reached a "tipping point" for enterprise acceptance of Web 2.0? According to Martin LaMonica's Corporate America Wakes Up to Web 2.0, published June 26, 2006 on ZDNet News, we may have.

Jun 28
Jun 28 So You Want to be a Forensic Accountant?

Dennis D. McDonald

Blogging, Linkedin

Tracy Coenen’s FRAUDFILES blog is this week’s Linkedin Bloggers Blog Boost target. I’ve read a number of the postings on her blog and have learned a lot in the process about “forensic accounting” that I did not know before.

Jun 27
Jun 27 Using RAW SUGAR as a Research Tool

Dennis D. McDonald

Expertise Management, Management Tools,

I'm using Raw Sugar as a research tool. Here's what I added to my Raw Sugar directory as a description:

Jun 27

Jun 27 Expertise, Skunk Works, and Project Management

Dennis D. McDonald

Expertise Management, Project Management

I've been researching concepts like "expert management systems," "expert location," and "expert locator systems." My goal is to get a handle on the state of the art as it might be impacted by current social networking and collaboration technologies.

Jun 22
Jun 22 Duke Law's Copyright Comic, "Bound by Law?"

Dennis D. McDonald

Copyright, Media, Publishing

Duke Law’s Center for the Study of the Public Domain has published a comic book titled Tales from the Public Domain: BOUND BY LAW? A cross between a superhero adventure and the Crypt Keeper, the comic tells the story behind the knotty copyright, public domain, and fair use issues associated with contemporary documentary production.

Jun 21
Jun 21 Business Networking 1.0 and ... Name Tags?

Dennis D. McDonald

Best Practices, Linkedin,

Every now and then it helps to be reminded of the basics: * Make the phone call. * Get the face to face meeting. * Thank the prospect. * Have your elevator speech ready. * Offer to help. * Keep in touch (Garrison Keillor's suggestion). * If you can't say anythng nice about somebody, don't say anything at all (My mom's suggestion).

Jun 21

Jun 21 Expertise Management and World of Warcraft

Dennis D. McDonald

Ethics, Expertise Management, Knowledge Management,

While researching the topic “expertise management” as a follow up to earlier articles posted here, I came across a fascinating article concerning the automated construction of an “expertise database” that I think has some relevance for enterprise expertise management.

Jun 16
Jun 16 Expert Knowledge and Patent Review

Dennis D. McDonald

Expertise Management, Knowledge Management, Patents

I recently wrote here about using social networking and information technology to improve access to expert knowledge within the enterprise. Luis Suarez has also commented about the "knowledge management" aspects of this idea. An interesting experiment incorporating some of these ideas is already underway here in the United States -- the Peer to Patent Project.

Jun 13
Jun 13 Bringing Knowledge, Relationships, and Experts Together in the Enterprise

Dennis D. McDonald

Blogging, Collaboration, Enterprise 2.0, Expertise Management, Governance, Knowledge Management, Network Effects, , Web 2.0

In the first article in this series I commented on the web based evolution of systems for matching up experts (and their expertise) with users based on relationship management and social software technologies. In this article I discuss the implementation of such systems within large organizations

Jun 13
Jun 13 Bringing Knowledge, Relationships, and Experts Together

Dennis D. McDonald

Expertise Management, Knowledge Management, , Web 2.0

Remember near the end of the first MATRIX movie, our heroes were fighting it out on the roof of an office building. They needed a helicopter – fast: * Tank: Operator. * Trinity: Tank, I need a pilot program for a V-212 helicopter. Hurry…. Let’s go. Trinity, already a member of a tightly knit community, knew the right person to call, got a download of her program, and the rest is history.

Jun 12
Jun 12 Podcast Roundtable Discusses HP Telecommuting, Corporate Marketing Departments, and Identity 2.0

Dennis D. McDonald

Industry Analysis, Security, Web 2.0

We (Martin McKeay, Dan Sweet, Robyn Tippins, Jeremiah Owyang, and I) had fun schmoozing about three topics last Saturday: (1) HP's planned reduction in telecommuting, (2) Technological threats to the continued relevance of corporate marketing departments, and (3) Increasing incompatibility in how individual web based accounts are handled.

Jun 8
Jun 8 The Inevitability of "Too Many Gateways" Part II

Dennis D. McDonald

Governance, Industry Analysis, Standards

I've been thinking some more about the issues raised in my earlier posting The Inevitablility of "Too Many Gateways". One of the reasons the situation exists, as Ismael Ghalimi described where he has to maintain many separate accounts to manage different internet gateway services for feeds and data exchange, is that it's becoming increasingly possible to create such services and to make then available on the web.

Jun 7
Jun 7 Is Times New Roman Being Handed Its Hat?

Dennis D. McDonald

Industry Analysis, Typography

Bloggers are commenting (e.g., here) on the replacement of Times New Roman as the default font in the beta version of Microsoft's Office 2007 released earlier this year. An initial lamentation is that the new font sets may not be available for the Mac without separate licensing. The deeper significance of this move may be that a serif font is being replaced by a sans-serif font, perhaps because the sans-serif font is easier to read on screen. So, who cares about fonts, anyway? Well, I certainly do, ever since my introduction to the Mac back in the 20th Century.

Jun 6
Jun 6 The Inevitability of "Too Many Gateways"

Dennis D. McDonald

Governance, Standards, Web Office

Given the types of issues that Ghalimi raises in this article, it is interesting to speculate on the role that a corporate IT department might play in "selecting and enforcing" standard for the use of Office 2.0 applications in the real world of business. Is this a role that IT is able to play? Or would users feel "put out" by IT's heavy handed demands for standardization?

Jun 5
Jun 5 HP Announces Cutbacks in IT Staff Telecommuting

Dennis D. McDonald

Governance, Industry Analysis, Management Tools

According to an article in The Mercury News, HP is cutting back on the practice of telecommuting among IT professionals. I've worked both sides of this issue but have to give the nod to HP on this one, especially in these areas: 1. IT's interaction with business units 2. Team building 3. Training of younger staff