Toluu

Collaborage

Integration of Collaborative and Social Technologies within the Enterprise: Delivering Enterprise 2.0.

Where Does that Leave the Organization?October 31

It is no secret that the world of business is changing. Even prior to the Sub-Prime debacle, the world of business was going though some dramatic changes. I heard on the news that 80% of new jobs come from small business and roughly 70% of the workforce in now employed in small businesses. If you add in the unemployed (6.7% - 11%, depending on how you measure it) and government workers, that doesn't leave you much room for those of us working in large organizations. And, seeing what is happening to the Airlines and Auto companies, one has to wonder about the future of organized employment. So what’s changing? Clearly, the mechanism of production has moved away from the large organization. We see this in the enormous amounts of outsourcing and specialty firms. With Web 2.0, we see the means of production moving to the individual as describe in the book "Free Agent Nation". Whether its architecture work (Slim Devices), design work (Threadless T-Shirts), production work (iStockPhoto), or information management (Wikipedia), the crowd is an emerging force of business. With the advent of FedEx, Amazon, eBay and the Internet, the means of distribution has moved to the hands of the individual. The distinction between producer and consumer isn't as clear as it was a few years. In fact, one can argue the distinction between employee, customer, client, share holder, and consultant has blurred as well. If someone approaches me in the grocery store and ask who do you work

Traffic Jams Need Social SoftwareOctober 27

What is the value of information? Many would say the most valuable information is accurate information that is delivered at the exact moment when it’s needed. I might argue that knowing the current traffic environment is the most critical information that I need on my drive home. Waiting 10-15 minutes for the next report could put me in a traffic jam that could have been easily avoided. Or, what would be the value of knowing that the dog that attacked my son over the weekend was aggressive and had no business being in a public location. The problem with most mechanisms for delivering information is that they are controlled by entities with different objectives. Those of us on the South side of Atlanta know very well that the media will focus more on the north side and downtown; leaving us to defend for ourselves. The owner of the dog wanted to save on boarding and vaccination costs while putting small children at risk. Both parties accomplished this be controlling the flow of valuable information from those that needed it the most. What happens when our control systems fail us? In the past, people that went outside the bounds of traditional rules were called heretics. One can argue that Martin Luther was one that wailed against the controls of the church. We still have these control systems in place and most are very valuable and needed; as our current economic crisis points out. What would happen if you could collect immediate feedback from all those commuter

Would You Electrocute SomeoneOctober 2

Why do people cut you off in traffic? Why would these same people never do it standing in line at your local Wal-Mart? Perhaps the exception to this is the man that punched a teenager this week after she accused him of cutting in line at McDonalds. That being said, most people are civil and obey the unwritten rules of our society. That is, until they can become anonymous where many people change over to Mr. Hyde. This past week, the southeast saw what it would be like to live in a world of scarcity. Normally, we live in a world of abundance where you can go out and buy anything you want; even gas. On the south side of Atlanta, I didn’t have much of a problem finding gas with short lines. The other sides of town reported up to an hour wait, assuming you could actually find gas to begin with. The vast majority of the people were nice and willing to wait their turn. That is until they got back on the highway and then it's back to "Get out of the way you #$%^& idiot". Anonymity seems to make us do things that we wouldn't normally do. I started to think about using the 1980's Streaking fad as an example but common sense got the better of me. The idea of people doing bad things because they can remain anonymous isn’t really new. In the 1960's, Staley Milgram ran an interesting experiment on 1,000 subjects. Prior to the research study, he polled the experts that said only 1% of people would actually go so far as to electrocute another human being. Although th

Too Much Stuff...August 28

We can sometimes get lost in our "communications" world where there are only 2-3 competitors or the belief that the battles of today are all bi-polar; Microsoft vs. Apple or Democrat versus Republican. The reality is something much different in that we have endless choices. When I was in my early teens, my grandfather would take me down to the Grocery Store in Midville, GA (Think Mayberry, R.F.D.). Grocery store may be a stretch by today's standards in that the store wasn't much bigger than a CVS Pharmacy. You had three choices for cereal and my grandfather seemed to love Rice Krispies which was good since that was one of the brands they carried. They had a couple brands of toothpaste and maybe a couple brands of chewing tobacco. My grandfather didn’t live long enough or have the desire to travel but I wonder what he might have thought about a Wal-Mart or Kroger with 45,000 products to choose from? The cereal isle alone is 60 feet long and five shelves high. The local news store only carried a couple hundred books which is a far cry from the 4 million books on Amazon.com. I remember reading an interesting quote a few years ago: "We have more cars than drivers, more homes than families, more phones than talkers, more TV's than members of the family.." I can't remember the rest of it but you get the idea; we live in a world of local abundance. This is possible for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that of technology. While there are 4 million books

Can We Ban Customer RelationshipsAugust 25

People are always asking for the business value in social media but few seem to ask about the consumer value of social media. Last summer, we had an interesting story emerge from the UK. It has been a long standing bank tradition to offer interest free overdraft protection for college student up to two years past graduation. The protection was limited to around 2,000 pounds. In July, the HSBC bank announced that they would no longer honor the policy and would discontinue the program by August 8th. In typical business speak, the bank responded to the outrage by saying: "We are helping graduates pay off their debt". Normally in this type of environment, we would complain and mumble to our family about how unfair life is to the little people. Maybe we would write a letter or email the President of the bank which would get intercepted by some gate keeper. This would result in some form letter being sent or simply ignored. After a week or so, the world would move on and the bank could start collecting their 9.9% interest and celebrate the new revenue stream for the company. However, this wasn't 1985 and Wes Streeting didn't just sit around waiting for some formal chain of complaint. Wes was the Vice President of the National Union of Students and he turned to Facebook; a social software application. He created a group called "Stop the Great HSBC Rip-Off!!!" which drew 2,500 student sthe first few weeks. This got a little bit of attention from the media but after 5,000