It's interesting to compare and contrast the rough-and-tumble publishing experience that is the blogosphere with the formalized system of peer review that has existed with scholarly journals for many years.
Recently I’ve begun thinking about how the systems and processes we typically refer to as “social networking” or “social media” are threatening — or could strengthen — the underlying rationale for joining large professionals memberships organizations.
So this morning when the Skype tone was heard I checked the caller’s Skype profile. It was Benny in China (not his real name). I admit I thought to myself, “Oh great, another crank call,” so I kept working. But I started to think about the call and thought, hey, what if it’s real? I have great memories of working in China. Why not answer the call?”
The Edelman public relations company, it was revealed recently, has been supporting the publishing of blogs masquerading as private efforts when, in fact, the blogs were actually developed to promote the commercial interests of Wal-Mart.
The Peer to Patent Project has published a series of technical documents that describe requirements for the test system that is under development to expand "public participation" in the patent prior art research.
Chief among these documents is the Use Case Model. This describes a series of actions that need to be supported by the new system.
One of the more interesting blog comment series I've read recently is the ongoing discussion about Lotus Notes over at Rod Boothby's Innovation Creators blog.
A couple of weeks ago Rod posted Lotus Notes - The Asbestos of Enterprise IT. In it he lambasted Lotus Notes' usability, among other things. This has led to some back and forth - and mudslinging - that when read in the right light tells us a lot about the advantages entrenched platforms have in large corporations when they compete with up-and-coming Web 2.0 "newcomers."
Mike Stopforth called me from South Africa last week to chat about Web 2.0 in the enterprise. We talked about a lot of things. One topic that piqued my interest was how different technologies are adopted at different rates in different cultures.
Let's Get Real about Enterprise Web 2.0
As I talk with friends, prospects, and clients, and as I cruise the blogosphere, it’s beginning to look like some sanity is emerging into the world of “enterprise web 2.0.”
I learned yesterday that last night a Writely “planned outage” was planned so I rushed to make necessary modifications before I emailed the sponsor tha a new version was available for his inspection.
I need not have worried. The planned time, midnight Eastern time, came and went without a hiccup. One moment I was using Writely. The next moment I was using “Google Docs & Spreadsheets” and Writely was no more.
Luis Suarez recently blogged and podcasted about social bookmarking services. He highly recommends BLINKLIST, a service that I have not used.
I have been using RAWSUGAR, COGENZ, and CONNECTBEAM, so I also have been forming some personal opinions about social bookmarking.
I learned basic data analysis techniques by studying the relationship between demographics and political opinion poll responses. As an undergraduate in a graduate Political Science course at Ohio State University I used 80 column punch cards (send me an email if you don't know what that means) to instruct an IBM mainframe computer to crosstabulate age, sex, income, and race data with voting behavior and political opinions.
Now you can do the same stuff online with little more than an Internet connection and a browser.
I read today on TechCrunch about SlideShare, a web based service that enables you to share PowerPoint and other types of slide presentations.
To test it out I applied for and received a SlideShare membership, I uploaded a recent slide presentation (Expertise Management Systems), and within ten minutes I had a working version and URL to share.
Well, it's official: according to a special report in Ziff Davis' "CIO Insight" magazine, Web 2.0 is coming to an enterprise near you!
While the date on the main page of the report is October 2, 2006, though, the articles in this collection actually stretch back a couple of years.
IBM’s “Building a New IP Marketplace” Report Promotes Openness in Patent Related Business Processes
Reading IBM’s Building a New IP Marketplace report, based on a wiki developed by several dozen international patent and technology experts during the Spring of 2006, helps explain why IBM recently announced it will be going public with its patent filings.
Perhaps one of the main drivers in IBM's decision to go public with the patent filling process is the acknowledgement that competitive advantage is generated not only by technological innovation but also by all the other ancillary systems and processes that must be orchestrated in bringing a new product or service to market.
Introducing Collaboration Technologies to the Enterprise is a Challenge
One of the interesting topics that came up several times at last week’s The New New Internet conference here in Northern Virginia was the challenge of how to introduce collaborative tools into an organization. This is a topic that is well reviewed in a recent post by Shawn Callahan in the Anecdote web site titled Why People Don’t Use Collaborative Tools.
I've had some time to ponder this past Wednesday's ExecutiveBiz New New Internet conference in McLean, Virginia. It was organized by Dion Hinchcliffe and other Web 2.0 luminaries to discuss corporate applications of a wide range of collaboration, social networking, and software development technologies and processes.
Given the difficulty of doing Return on Investment (ROI) analysis for IT projects, how do you justify an Enterprise Web 2.0 project?
In a comment he left on my How Much Will Your Enterprise Web 2.0 Project Cost? post, Vinnie Mirchandani suggested that one place to start would be to look at the criteria used in the past for evaluating large IT investments.
Proposed Definition for "Expertise Management Systems"
In a recent slide presentation I proposed the following as a definition of an “expertise management system:”
Washington Post Staff Writer Rick Weiss reported on September 13 that a major Federal Government-wide electronic grant submission system operated by Department of Health and Human Services requires a Windows computer to access the web site, Grants.gov.