IE: Our site focuses on the future of the Internet. How do you view the future of the Internet? What emerging or yet-to-emerge technologies will be prominent going forward? What will die out or lose influence?
Lee: I think the patterns of ubiquity of technology, the long tail of specificity, those will continue to accelerate. You'll see more and more contact services capabilities being built. What's going to be the next wave is, how do you make it relevant? You're starting to see this with blended feeds across different social networks. The first step is aggregating -- but then it's like, that's too much and not specific to the problem I'm trying to solve. So while it's nice to know someone just read this book or someone just gave someone a hug, in the work environment I want to know who just answered my question, who was tagged with the expertise I was looking for, who actually has worked with this client before and can help me with this client problem I have now. Aggregating, and then making it relevant, and managing all of that is the next sort of challenge.
Recently by Ross Mayfield
Eugene Lee Interview on the Future
Ross Mayfield June 26, 2008 - 8:41 AMAlexander Wolfe of Wolfe's Den on Information Week posted a video on Socialtext Turns Wiki into a Killer Web Platform, including footage of me demoing the latest stuff on the tradeshow floor of Enterprise 2.0:
SocialCalc = Social + Spreadsheet
Ross Mayfield June 15, 2008 - 11:42 AMWhen I co-founded Socialtext over five years ago, the insight was that tools emerging on the consumer web had better social dynamics than enterprise software, were a fun way to get things done and could be adapted to the context of an organization. I'm proud to finally see our partnership with Dan Bricklin come to fruition (see his post, and the history of the project) -- and the result is something truly new and solves real distributed multi-group collaboration problems.
Many at the conference told me SocialCalc was the best thing they saw, one said finally, a real Enterprise 2.0 application. I'm not afraid of overstating the difference and potential of SocialCalc:
- Most people play email volleyball with Excel attachments, spreadsheet hell, where its hard to work off of the latest version and error rates are as high as 90%. Recently, web spreadsheets have turned it into tetherball, but they largely are reimplementing a single worksheet on a single webpage.
- Enterprise work involves numbers, and the conversations around numbers support key decisions, assumptions and model
- The combination of a robust wiki and spreadsheet not only enables
this conversation, but all the things you love about wikis and define
Enterprise 2.0:
- Search
- Linking
- Authoring
- Tagging
- Extensions
- Signals
- Spreadsheets are not just about numbers, is the most popular tool for
- lists,
- tables,
- two-dimensional layout,
- databases,
- scratchpad applications,
- working around the structure of enterprise software, and
- working with structured information in an unstructured way.
- Enterprise work is distributed, multi-group, often asynchronous and with varying permissions. Working with SocialCalc across multiple spreadsheets, multiple pages and multiple workspaces supports distributed work.
- The deep integration and integrated user experience of SocialCalc and our Business Social Software platform creates capabilities even web spreadsheet plugins for wikis can't match.
- Distributed collaboration is essential for core use cases such as project management, planning, budgeting, forecasting, reporting and more. But in particular, it supports Socialtext's four core solution areas.
To put it another way:
I need to point out what SocialCalc should never be, function equivalent to Excel. Today it supports the ODF small group of functions. David Greenfield and Rafe Needleman see this as a weakness or a long way to go, but as Dennis Howlett points out, its a strength and we've come a long way because the approach is different. We would rather support 80% of calculation needs and focus on social software properties that give it a 10x benefit for distributed work.
For some it may be the simple availability of secure onsite deployment, given enterprise policies or the uncertainty of datamining in someone else's cloud. While the latter doesn't present as great a risk, the former is not changing as fast as you think.
In my last post, wrapping up the Enterprise 2.0 Conference, I made the argument that Enterprise 2.0 is just scratching the surface of process-specific solutions that are in-the-flow of daily work. SocialCalc lets people work with people and structured data in an unstructured way and is a real proof point for the potential of Enterprise 2.0. If you are interested in a demo or our private beta, contact us.
Enteprise 2.0 Conference Wrapup
Ross Mayfield June 15, 2008 - 11:37 AM
Interesting times at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference
in Boston this week. The conference has become the core of our little
but growing industry. Recall if you will that it started as the Collaborative Technologies Conference in 2005, when organizer Jen Pahlka noted in the kickoff:
Interop is the genesis of this conference, even the first shows had a collaboration thread. But most of Interop focuses on IT. Business side of collaboration is the harder problem to solve, the focus of this event and one of the goals is to credentialize the concept of collaboration.
Shortly after, collaboration emerged as a strategic imperative for enterprises. And the state of the art for solving line of business collaboration continues to evolve.
E2Open
In stark contrast to the vendor sports and paid speaking slots was Enterprise2Open.
Two people tried to hold sessions pitching their companies, and the law
of two feet worked against them. There were solid conversations on
adoption, use cases, business cases and edge cases like gaming. It
provided a pressure relief valve for the structure of the commercial
event, enabling Booz Allen Hamilton and BearingPoint to share their
implementation stories that didn't get on the program for example.
About half of the attendees has been at a Barcamp before, some came
only for this free portion of the event and while there were
self-organized hiccups, participants valued the experience.
Adoption and Markets
A common thread for customers, facilitators and vendors was on adoption and culture. There were a lot of IT managers in attendance sharing the failures of their utility deployments. One open space session spent most of the time listing barriers to adoption.
AIIM research presented the results of their adoption survey in the keynote before mine. Among their findings was age doesn't matter (Boomers vs. Milennials), some early IT adopters are frustrated and those who adopted KM were more inclined towards Enterprise 2.0. Other analyst firms (Gartner, Forrester) have psychodemogaphic profiles of organizations that can aid vendors in identifying earlier targets.
But
as I remarked in my keynote, if we limit the market to the KM-inclined,
we will go the way of KM. I believe there are several issues here:
- Early IT Adoption frustration comes from IT-driven deployments. Previous bottom up demand from PCs, Spreadsheets, LANs, email and instant messaging was met by rolling it out as a utility. But unlike email or IM, this isn't a communication tool, collaboration requires engagement with the line of business. IT is good at the engagement required for process modeling and hard coding structured workflows. But the unstructured and collaborative nature of these tools requires line of business leadership, partnership with IT and applying best practices that are deeper than patterns. Simply opening up a wiki utility for people to consume results in a 1,000 dead wikis.
- Generations may not matter, but they are different. While there is no doubt about the social software proclivity of NetGens, and their demand for working this way, a more blended solution needs to address all generations.
Some of the best implementations are happening where they shouldn't.
One of our favorite customers has a self-described command-and-control
culture. The best sessions at the Enterprise 2.0 conference were the
case studies of cultures where people get "slapped down" for sharing
(the CIA Intellipedia), highly regulated (Wacovia) and security-conscious (Lockheed-Martin).
Flow and Solutions
In my talk I noted the evolution of Enterprise 2.0 use cases:
- 2002: techies for project communication
- 2004: business user alternative to email
- 2006: internal Wikipedia
- 2008: process-specific solutions
The
Wikipedia-inside use case is representative of most Enterprise 2.0
implementations today, not just wikis, what Michael Idinopolus calls above-the-flow:
- In-the-Flow wikis enable people do their day-to-day work in the wiki itself. These wikis are typically replacing email, virtual team rooms, and project management systems.
- Above-the-Flow wikis invite users to step out of the daily flow of work and reflect, codify, and share something about what they do. These wikis are typically replacing knowledge management systems (or creating knowledge management systems for the first time).
Above-the-flow generally has a softer ROI, involves what can be at least perceived as a side activity and different and more difficult adoption characteristics. Adoption is closer to community building, but in the context where many forces want to work against the community. When it does succeed, and with the right practices it does, the benefits are worthwhile. But I believe that above-the-flow is less than half the opportunity for employees, partners and customers.
This is where in-the-flow solutions come in. They speak to real business problems, can be repeatably implemented and adopted with the right practices, have harder ROI and are process-specific. Making them work requires coaching and management consulting services that are rare today.
Through in-the-flow and above-the-flow solutions, use of Enterprise 2.0 tools and practices will be as common for knowledge workers in ten years as the PC is today. In 2.018, feel free to fact check me on this.
Process and Practice
Clay Shirky said business process is an embedded reaction to prior stupidity.
Traditional enterprise software serves the goal of automating
business process to drive down cost. I've held for some time that your
average knowledge worker spends most of their time handling exceptions
to process not executing it and augmenting those activities is an
opportunity for social software.
Mike Gotta chatted some golden nuggets during my talk that process
is the way work should be done - work practices are how work is done
(localized to a given situational context ... Some processes need work
practices to be precise, other processes have more elasticity ... the
more elastic a process is, the greater the opportunity to apply
participatory applications.
And he is right, especially about work practices, except we have to consider:
- Most processes are out of date almost as soon as they are defined because of changes to the environment
- Many processes are defined in ways that current executors can't understand and nobody knows who authored them
- Many more processes are barely written down
Broadly, software that supports work practices, implemented with best practices, enables better decisions, faster cycle and resolution times and adaptivity. I no longer believe we are headed towards an end of process (although that was a stimulating conversation). Because of social software, I do believe that we will redesign most processes with more transparency and participation -- and work practices will finally have context-aware tools that augment them and best practices will gain continual improvement through execution itself.
This post is too long
I was going to conclude with how SocialCalc relates to all this, but that's for the next post. Here you can find my presentation at the conference.
Socialtext Unveils SocialCalc, the First Social Spreadsheet
Ross Mayfield June 10, 2008 - 6:42 AMSOCIALTEXT UNVEILS SOCIALCALC, THE FIRST SOCIAL SPREADSHEET
Wiki Pioneer Socialtext Incorporates Spreadsheet Application From Dan Bricklin to Create a Distributed Spreadsheet
PALO ALTO, CA - June 10, 2008 - Socialtext, the leading provider of enterprise wiki and social software solutions, today announced SocialCalc(R), a multi-user wiki-based spreadsheet program that simplifies version control, reduces errors and increases productivity. On the heels of its recent announcements -- Socialtext Dashboard and Socialtext People and its four new solutions areas - the SocialCalc announcement underscores the company's vision as the innovator and leader in business social software.
"SocialCalc is the next room in the Business Social Software house we are building on our enterprise wiki foundation," remarks Socialtext CEO Eugene Lee. "This announcement is exciting because that the social spreadsheet effortlessly bridges the generations of the existing workforce and the upcoming workforce and does not require that individuals need to re-learn an existing application."
"The timing of SocialCalc is perfect - we were in need of a wikified spreadsheet that had all of the utility of Google Docs without the datamining," remarks Brandon Stafford, Principal Engineer at GreenMountain Engineering. "The SocialCalc interface is easy for anyone who knows spreadsheets. The automatic revision tracking eliminates the emailing of spreadsheets. That kind of simplification is crucial for our engineering consulting business."
- Socialcalc - through its integrated editing, discussions and current version control the program prohibits errors from centralized aggregation changes because the user always has the correct and current content accessible. Compared to a traditional spreadsheet sent via email, a sheet on a shared drive or document management system, this program can break work into workable increments and provide a closer to synchronous serial process. Individuals can work on their own section(s) and have a roll-up dashboard, an audit trail of changes and simple notification updates.
In 2005, Dan Bricklin, co-creator of the trailblazing VisiCalc spreadsheet program, announced that he had started working on an Open Source spreadsheet that "combines some of the ease of authoring and multi-person edit ability of a wiki with the familiar formatting and data organizing metaphor of a spreadsheet." Socialtext co-founder Ross Mayfield wanted to evolve another Personal Computing application into Social Software. In 2006 they announced an agreement for Bricklin to finish his initial standalone server-based product, which was released in 2007 as SocialCalc. Using what was learned in this product, Bricklin embarked on a complete redeployment of just the editing and calculation part of SocialCalc in a much more polished and robust, client-based Ajax implementation. Socialtext engineers have worked with Bricklin to integrate this new spreadsheet "engine" into the Business Social Software platform -- giving it the benefits of sharing, tagging, version control, and enterprise-level security and permissioning.
"Traditionally, wikis have centered on paragraphs of text and have proven invaluable for dealing with information in that form," said Dan Bricklin. "I am thrilled at how we have been able to bring spreadsheet editing into the wiki environment. Business people get the familiar layout, formatting, and calculation functionality of a spreadsheet together with the organic multi-page building and sharing functionality of a wiki. The spreadsheet metaphor has proven to be one of the most popular ways to organize, analyze, and store a vast range of types of information. With the addition of SocialCalc, Socialtext now has an even more powerful tool to let groups develop and keep track of their important data and ideas."
The SocialCalc spreadsheet engine is also a project on the One Laptop per Child Program, a non-profit directive to empower children of developing countries to learn by providing one connected laptop to every school-age child.
SocialCalc is currently in private Beta on the Business Social Sofware platform with Socialtext customers and will be commercially available within 90 days. To learn about the Beta program or get a demonstration, contact Socialtext sales. Further information is available on the press wiki www.socialtext.net/st-press/
VLAB Event: Cloud Computing for Web 2.0
Ross Mayfield June 5, 2008 - 9:38 PMModerator
Ross Mayfield, Chairman, President and Co-founder, Socialtext
Speaker
Jonathan Bryce, Co-founder, Mosso, a Rackspace's company
Panelists
Paul McNamara, CEO, Coghead
Ping Li, Partner, Accel Partners
Michael Crandell, CEO & Founder, RightScale
Lydia Leong, Research Director, Gartner
Cloud computing increases capacity and expands computing capabilities without heavy investment in infrastructure, training or software licensing. Most importantly though, it democratizes Web 2.0 application development. With the removal of two significant barriers to entry - cost and capacity access - suddenly, even small, lesser-funded entrepreneurs can dream big and bring their grand Web 2.0 applications to market.
What are the ramifications of democratization? How are entrepreneurs exploiting cloud computing and leveraging Web 2.0? What challenges do these entrepreneurs face? Are they making money? What are the hot areas of development today and what will the next areas be? Will offerings from these new, small, nimble, creative thinking entrepreneurs change the Web 2.0 user experience? Will cloud computing live up to expectations?
And I always thought these infrastructure guys were below me, stack wise, apparently with this cloud thing we should all look up. For background, I suggest Nick Carr's blog and book. Sign up here, and the Facebook event is here.
Enterprise 2.0 in Boston Next Week
Ross Mayfield June 3, 2008 - 7:38 AM
Next week is the Enterprise 2.0 conference in Boston and we hope to see you there. We'll have a booth and be giving demo of our latest releases, including Socialtext People and Socialtext Dashboard. I'll be giving a Keynote on the State of Social Software. And Socialtext is the official Enterprise 2.0 wiki.Tuesday afternoon, I'm hosting Enterprise2Open, an open space format where any participant can be a speaker.
Enterprise2Open is the "Barcamp-style" portion of the Enterprise 2.0 Conference and is open to anyone who would like to attend. This open event blends some pre-scheduled content with an open grid where the attendees fill in the sessions they either want to discuss or present themselves. It is the perfect space to provide the community at large with a place to connect with other attendees and share your knowledge and experiences.This is a great opportunity to connect more directly with your peers and a potential forum for industry issues such as standards and best practices.
Contact us if you would like to meet at the event.
Interview: How Social Media Changed Public Relations
Ross Mayfield May 28, 2008 - 3:30 PMJustin Kistner of Voce Nation just posted an interview with me on How Social Media Changed PR.
I think what he said would be of interest to some of our other clients as well as to other PR professionals. There is some good fodder in here for further discussions about:
- What is the big shift in PR and why are people split about whether or not to be happy about it?
- What is the role of a modern PR firm?
- Tactically speaking, how has the PR process changed?
As a leadership team, there were a lot of approaches we could have taken for teambuilding -- games, exercises, workshops, and other special events. Instead, Eugene led us to learn how to become a team by working together.
Good thing too, as we are a startup, otherwise known as a business that grows without perfect resources, especially time. But for businesses of all shapes and sizes, I see an interesting trend -- less side activities and more social interaction while getting work done.
Consider if you will the field of knowledge management systems, a relative failure which I parodied thusly:
Manage Knowledgement is a way of describing KM that's backwards but works. With KM, users were supposed to fill out forms as a side activity to extract their tacit knowledge. Then some form of artificial intelligence would extract value. Turns out, users resisted and the algorithms didn't match reality. With MK, through blogs and wikis, the principle activity is sharing, driven by social incentives. Contribution is simple and unstructured, isn't a side activity and there is permission to participate. Intelligence is provided by participants, both through the act of sharing and simply leaving behind breadcrumbs of attention.Every organization wants more knowledge and better teams. And yes, some side activities are very effective towards these broad and fairly intangible goals. However, when times get tight, like today's recession, side activities get cut.
Wikis and Social Software offer an opportunity for sustainable team building. Not just when you have gained adoption through effective practices so people share and connect while doing their daily work. But specific team activities.
Team building begins with vocabulary -- developing a shared language. Eugene joked that half the team was wiki purists and the other half were old school emailers (which aside from language also meant we needed agreement on what modalities to use when). There was five years of social software learnings documented in our wikis. And a practical understanding of how most corporate users actual work. Some of it meant learning other's definitions and some new terms had to be developed.
Now all of that could have occurred in meetings, and some of it did, but this is where the wiki comes in. Wikis ask users to share control over a commonly editable resource. They also ask groups to gain agreement on how to use the tool to be effective. And when there is a well defined goal for the collaboration it even generates value.
Simple conversations occur that lead to simple agreements like "let's use these four tags, for these four kinds of information -- and lets agree to pay attention to pages and posts with this tag on a daily basis." While it seems mundane at first, the team not only develops a shared language, but a way of working with it.
A major automobile manufacturer customer used Socialtext for long term strategic planning. Beyond effective lightweight collaboration, they valued how it made transparent the ideas and preferences of team members -- but also enabled them to gain agreement faster.
What's also interesting is how this scales into mass collaboration. You can't really call a group larger than 150 people a team, or pre-define the teams that really work at that scale. But you can develop a shared language at scale. One interesting facet of this way of working is what the inventor of the wiki, Ward Cunningham, calls "happy accidents." When a person creates a link to a page that they don't think exists yet, but finds someone has already created a page by that name. They not only discover existing work to build upon, but use of language to agree upon -- and the people behind it.
Next time you have a new team member, and thusly, a new team, consider these simple practices for team building:
- Project shared notes in a wiki page while meeting
- Start an initiative to document best practices, kicking off with a conversation about basic language and how to structure information architecture. Revisit as a group on a regular basis until it takes off on its own.
- Augment your next leadership offsite with an Wiki Eventspace to
- flush out the agenda beforehand
- have participants create profiles including answering topical questions
- organizer communication
- shared notes and in-session conversation
- structure new initiatives on the fly
- Look for major exceptions to business process to rapidly form an expert group focused not just on resolution in rapid time, but documenting learnings in the process
- Look for common editing exercises, from mission statements to press releases
- Encourage rich profiles, blog posts and wiki expression not just about work, but the things that help others understand the identities behind their words and work. Even if its blogging about cats. If you clamp down on tone, it wont be fun (especially compared to paintball). This is not a directed side activity, and these conversations occur in the lunchroom and by the watercooler anyway, just with less distribution and persistence.
Tonight our London office is co-hosting a social software dinner with Headshift. If you are there, I hope you can join us.
