Then I read it.

To be fair, it started badly and got better. Here are their two “definitions”.

“Knowledge management” is what company management tells me I need to know, based on what they think is important.

“Social media” is how my peers show me what they think is important, based on their experience and in a way that I can judge for myself.

The basic precept presented in the article was that Knowledge Management is about collecting, classifying, and distributing knowledge while Social Media is chaotic and a source of concern for organizations afraid of losing that control.

I will admit that there are likely organizations that have that fear. I also believe that these same organizations would have that fear even if they didn’t have a Knowledge Management program. Social Business is a different mindset that take time to adopt.

It is the mindset, not the technology, that has to evolve.

Knowledge Management systems are the way they are because when the idea was conceived back in the day, that is the tech that was available. The technology for knowledge to be emergent wasn’t around. Information had to be submitted, categorized, and disseminated in order for it to be readily leveraged in the pre-2.0 applications.

I worked on a few Knowledge Management projects. The challenge was encouraging the submission of good, focused, content and then reliably making it accessible to people. With all the tools in the social media toolkit, this can be automatic.

Sure, curated knowledge is still valuable, but now you can use a wiki for most of the traditional curated knowledge. Ad-hoc information works well in forums, discussions, micro-blogging, and comments. Blogs are great for expanding on items that just don’t fit in 140 characters.

When you throw in social sharing, rating tools, and some basic gamification to encourage participation, one of the largest challenges to traditional Knowledge Management falls by the wayside.

Social Media is the future of Knowledge Management. People need to stop drawing a line between them, implied or otherwise, and work to evolve the older Systems of Records into Systems of Engagement.

The target is Social Business and it is built on the systems of the past.

• The first answer is “No”, but that is not the typical Enterprise 2.0 opinion, and not necessarily the final answer. Not a magic bullet.
• The answer is dependent on the definition of culture.
• Culture is only one part of KM and is heavily steeped in people. Only one of four interdependent components. There is also Technology, Process, and Business Strategy.
• Culture is most powerful part of KM.
  • Culture reflects Strategy or Blinds it.
  • Culture drives Process or Circumvents it.
  • Culture leverages Technology or Sabotages it.
• Types of cultures:
  • Islands of Me: Success defined by what a person does. Silos.
  • One-way Me/E1.0: User collaborates, goes out to seek knowledge. Structured team lifecycles.
  • Team Me: Team focused. Shared repositories. People try to seek out knowledge. Get some cross-team collaboration.
  • Proactive Me/E1.5: A major part of a job function is to be a team member. Portals, dashboards, and agents.
  • Two-way Me: Proactive about building communities. KM is driven from the top. Collective Intelligence.
  • Islands of We: Senior management buys into socialness. They view socialness and collaboration as core competency. Virtual teams.
  • Extended Me/E2.0: Full transparency. Participative. Emergence is important. Agility.
• Important to determine where your organization is before trying to role things out. You have to talk to multiple levels to determine where they may sit. They may be in multiple areas.
• Align the technology with the culture. Don’t use tech to change culture.
• Technology Map to KM
  • Intermediation (Tagging, Blogs, SNA)
  • Externalization: How do I capture the knowledge? Wikis, blogs…
  • Internalization: How do I shape what has been capture around me?  How do I find others that do what I do? Mashup, Search…
  • Cognition: This is the output, trends and emergent information. Folksonomies play well here.
• Evolution, not Revolution (Damn Straight!)
• Resistance is real.  Numbers are from last fall, numbers got worse in last 6 months.
  • IT is resistance 49%
  • Management is 64%
  • Users is 72%: hardest to overcome, Change Management
• Enterprise 2.0 is low training, not no training. Seeding content helps.
• Revising the answer to “Yes”, but only to some degree.
• Things to do:
  • Create a Vision (Ah, Vision.)
  • Sell, promote, and Market
  • Leverage needs and Culture
  • Nurture and promote champions
  • Learn from History
• Things to not do:
  • Don’t ignore resistance
  • Don’t focus on IT
  • Don’t be Rigid
  • Pilots do not equal Solution
  • Don’t boil the Ocean

Off for more caffeine and to catch the keynotes. Will not be blogging the keynotes as they will be viewable online and amply covered by tweets. (#e2conf)

Disclaimer

All information in this post was gathered from the presenters and presentation. It does not reflect my opinion unless clearly indicated (Italics in parenthesis). Any errors are most likely from my misunderstanding a statement or imperfectly recording the information. Updates to correct information are reflected in red, but will not be otherwise indicated.

Here is their requirements as presented.  The highlights are theirs.

leverage consumer applications proven to augment existing work processes (parity plus)

specifically targeted to business requirements and opportunities

access with only a browser and an internet connection

no reliance on proprietary systems or technology

development based on open industry standards

built upon a semantic web framework

embraces and enables BYOC model

no operating system dependency

provides web service capabilities

tuned options for mobile devices

no browser dependency

no net cost increase

no desktop footprint

100% cloud ready

Vision into Reality

Okay, very pretty and exciting, but we all know from experience that idealistic visions are usually really good on slides, but falter in reality.  Can this be made to work in a large (multi-billion dollar), established company with a full suite of legacy products?

After what I saw, I would say Yes.

They had looked at their existing systems and if they didn’t meet the requirements, the vendors were told the issues and given a chance, over 1-2 years, to update their product.  When they didn’t, they were replaced.  This isn’t the act of rash adopters.  This is planned and thought-out.

For new functionality, like blogs and enhanced collaboration spaces, they identified new products, many of them open source, that met their requirements.  With open standards, like CMIS, they were plugged-in to the architecture.

They are building a private cloud that allows them to install applications into either Amazon’s platform or locally based upon their needs.  They are currently using Amazon’s cloud primarily for development now, but will start mixing it up shortly.

Someone brought in a Mac and said that he now did all his work on it.  He had one Windows image to work with a legacy piece of software that needed IE, finance related I believe, but he demonstrated the freedom from the tightly configured company-owned laptop.  With a browser and Internet connection, he was good.

They are looking into Semantic capabilities.  They want to uniquely adapt the social web with the semantic web in context of [their] business processes.  They have a firm grasp of what they are trying to accomplish and are talking to multiple people about how do execute.  They aren’t leaning on one “expert”, but seeking a complete picture.

How Do You Measure Up?

I’ve read a lot of people talking about transforming the Enterprise with new technologies.  I’ve seen them talk about enabling people to work.  This is a complete transformation.  Will users leverage the new stuff?  Well, they’ll have to use a lot of it because it will be where critical information is stored.  The champions have also been selling the idea across the company as the technology evolved to meet their requirements.

It is some cool stuff, potentially the coolest I have seen in technology world to date.  I wish them all the luck in the world and hope that I get an opportunity to help out.

This is one project I would not delegate to my team.  I’m not worried that they couldn’t deliver, I just want to play with the cool toys in the beautiful architecture.

One of the discussions is whether Enterprise 2.0 is evolutionary or revolutionary.  The simplest answer is yes. How others answer this question is most likely directly related to their belief in the importance of the technology in the equation of building Enterprise 2.0 success.

The Evolving Technology…

I would hope that most people would agree that the technology involved is just the next step in the evolution of collaborative platforms. Let’s look at a few components…

I could have written a Blog back in the 1990′s.  I almost did for a game that I played. I just didn’t have the time to really sit down and update a website with the latest “news/stories” that I wanted to publish.  I had to update links, move things around, archive my old content…it was a hassle. Now I just pull out a little rich text editor, type up my post, and click publish. Links are Web 1.0 stuff and comments are just small discussion forums associated directly with a post versus an interest area.  All those cool widgets, portal technology from the early part of this decade.

Blogs are clearly evolutionary.

Wikis are just rich-text documents with version control, simple linking, and a mechanism to handle edit conflicts. Each item is nothing new. At this point, Wikis aren’t new.

Twitter, just a way to use the SMS protocol to group and sort statements. My “feed” is nothing more than the results of a search of all tweets that mention my name or are from a list of people I follow.  Each of their names is just a search term on the “author” field of a tweet. Nothing complex in concept, just some good technology to implement.

Tagging…advanced keywords.

Web 2.0 tools are evolutionary.  Placed in the workplace on an Enterprise 2.0 platform, still just the next step. The revolution is HOW we use them.

Worker of the World Unite!

I think the revolution comes when the tools are given to organizations that already collaborates.  They might not collaborate across different operational units, but if they work together during the course of their day, the roots of the culture are there. Maybe they chat over the water cooler or wander down to each other’s offices, but they work together.  The culture is there, ready for better tools to enable better collaboration.

For those organizations it is only a shift in the mindset to open up and work with everyone with an interest and something to contribute.  If you give them the tools and make it easy and intuitive for them to use those tools, you can drive adoption. If you get the adoption, you’ll get the revolution.

The Enterprise 2.0 revolution is about people working together in ways that weren’t possible, or at least not feasible, in the past. The Enterprise 2.0 evolution is about the technology. Without the people and the technology working together, you may as well go back to trying to collaborate in email and live with all of those problems.

Here is the relevant portion of his comment:

…one of the key items I am trying to address in it is managing meta-data. I am sure you are aware of the two schools of thought – One – save content in content server and meta-data outside of the content server in a “custom” meta-data repository (assuming that the world doesn’t revolve around Documentum). Two – the traditional approach to save content and meta-data in the content server…

My quick answer…It depends! Before you shoot me, read on…

Why Have Metadata?

Before we answer this question, it is important to remember why we have metadata in an ECM system. Originally, metadata in the ECM world was used primarily to find information in document management systems. Part of the whole Knowledge Management problem is finding information. Metadata helped to address that problem.

As those document management systems evolved into the current crop of ECM systems, metadata began storing other information. Business applications where built on top of ECM systems. Sometimes they stood-alone, other times there was some integration, tightly coupled, with another system. Metadata began to store information about the business functions in which the content was involved. Sometimes, it just replicated information from another system so that the user could work effectively in both systems.

Of course, the world is changing. So the question remains, where should it reside?

Metadata in the ECM 2.0 World

In the ECM 2.0 world, the ECM systems are the backbone of an Enterprise Architecture. It stores content for multiple systems and provides content specific services such as Records Management. In this world, there are several questions to ask.

• Will users access the content directly from the ECM system? If no, then only the information needed to support the access of data is required. This isn’t as simple as an case number or object id. If users are going to use a search from the business application, then it is important to automatically populate the relevant fields from the application to the ECM system in order to facilitate search. If yes, then you need more information depending on what tasks the user will be performing when they directly access the ECM system.
• Are you going to enforce any compliance rules on the content? If yes, then all the information necessary to allow the retention policies to make determinations on how the content is to be treated. In no, get a good lawyer.
• Are you going to just use the ECM vendor for every business solution? If yes, then it needs everything, for performance and CYA if nothing else. This is also ECM 1.0 thinking. That still works, and is necessary for a while longer, but isn’t the world that people are moving towards. Oh, you will also need some good ECM consultants, so drop me a note.

In the ideal world, the answers are No, Yes, and No. The nice thing about that approach, a lot of the metadata is automatic. The metadata comes from the business application automatically or is derived from the environment. The user select the type of document and the name and the system takes it from there.

I do have one system where we are going to have all of the metadata. We have a Web Service that receives metadata for every case and stores it in the repository. Then, as documents are added to the system, they are associated with a case and all the relevant metadata is there, as read-only. This allows users to research multiple cases in a stand-alone ECM portal with all data available to them. The case system is in flux, unlike our ECM system, and isn’t ready to surface the content directly in their application, so we took this approach. While not the long-term approach, it works well for now.

Back to the Question

My answer is simple. I am firmly against a stand-alone meta-data repository. I have no problem with the metadata being stored outside of the ECM system as described above. My point is that the metadata about the context should be stored in the business application and the document specific data should be in the ECM system. What is that document specific data?

• Name
• Audit information (dates, users)
• Security (need to keep it secure)
• Source information (for example, if scanned the where, who, and original location)
• Business Application link (may not be necessary, but is always useful)
• Searchable metadata fields (optional, but allows for better searching within the repository)
• Retention metadata fields (any fields that could impact the retention or records policy)

That may seem like a lot, but take a background investigation system. The system would have lots of information on the person being investigated, interviews being conducted, forms submitted, approvals, reviews, and notes from the investigator. The submitted forms, such as the fingerprints, might be scanned into the system and stored in an ECM system. The ECM system needs to know that they are fingerprints, the investigation number, and when the investigation is completed. The name doesn’t matter and could be automatically generated. The investigation completion date will trigger the beginning of the retention policy. Users should spend their time outside of the ECM system to do their work.

It was a little rambling, but those are my thoughts on the subject. I, and Sumanth, would love to hear what your experiences are.

KM is Dead, Long Live KM!

Everyone knows that KM died. The term became a very scary thing for executives to hear. It meant money and time gone. It meant undelivered promises. It did, and still can with the wrong approach. Let’s start simply with what is Knowledge Management.

Knowledge Management isn’t the Management of Knowledge. That just sounds nice and fits well with all the other buzzwords from the 90s. It is a means of capturing an organizations knowledge and allowing others to access it. You capture it so others can find it. Simple. Everything else is details. So lets look at some details on Capture.

What are you trying to Capture? Well, some knowledge is stored in the content of an organization. Other knowledge is distilled in the many structured systems like CRM. How successful projects and teams work is also knowledge. Let’s not forget what is sitting in people heads and shared over a water cooler. I’m sure there are other items as well.

Storing content is easy, and the bedrock of any good KM, Social Media, and many enterprise applications. Content is distilled knowledge from one or more authors. Once Captured, this content becomes potential knowledge for others if it can be discovered. More on that in a minute.

Data from the CRM system, or other enterprise applications, is even easier to capture than content. Capturing how successful projects work requires them to either write lots of things down, or to have them work online so it can be observed and captured. As for what is in people’s head…still manual and difficult. Discussions, wikis, and blogs can get some of that knowledge captured by turning it into easily contributed content. Incentives can help increase that percentage even more. (Forget the carrot though, I work for either cookies or frosty beverages.)

Now that I have “Captured” everything, how to I find it for use? Assuming you had a smart Change Management plan in place and people use the system at all, this is where things fall down. Search engines are stupid. They are smarter than they were 10 years ago, but they have a long way to go. You can remedy this problem with tagging and metadata, but depending on all users to spend the necessary time can be a risky gamble.

Then there is all of that information in the various corporate systems. It is just information until it is analyzed and placed into reports and charts showing trends and usable tidbits. It needs to be easy to access and it needs to be served-up in context with other relevant information. That information can be anything that has been captured. Mash that stuff together.

As for the last two captures listed, that is what good, advanced, collaboration tools can provide. They work much better when other items are integrated into the whole, like ECM behind a Social Media application or eRoom.

The Challenges of Discovery

This is the biggest problem for Knowledge Management in my book. Solving this also led to the older beliefs of what a KM project entails. Taxonomies, hierarchies, and meta data libraries are the tools that were available to use in the beginning. Users understand putting something into a folder structure, they do it all the time. If a taxonomy is well-defined, then users can find content much more readily.

That wasn’t the only factor that was needed for success, but that is the defining characteristic that people remember about KM systems. The collaborative solutions of today, linked with our re-envisioned ECM platforms (plug for ECM 2.0) can provide new approaches to cataloging information. Ratings, recommendations, tagging, and linking can help identify content in such a way that search engines are almost useful.

KM isn’t dead. KM is evolving. Things have continuously evolved in the capture arena, but the advent of Web 2.0 technologies are allowing KM to be reborn into something that is easier to use. Enterprise 2.0 isn’t the realization of Knowledge Management. Enterprise 2.0 is the next stage in the evolution of Knowledge Management. (Did I just try and define Enterprise 2.0? I thought I wasn’t going to do that? Oh well, back to the main thought…) Like the introduction of the opposable thumb, Web 2.0 technologies are making KM look around and find new and better ways of using the information that was already around us.

As for the discussion about SOA and Enterprise 2.0, the correlation depends. If you accept the premise that Enterprise 2.0 is the evolution of KM, the SOA is right in there. Remember, KM needs information from all sources put together in context. SOA allows that information to more readily be surfaced.

Mashups and Knowledge Management is a beautiful marriage. SOA makes it happen.

Everyone get out your bingo cards, its going to be a wild ride.

The What…

Bex begins by offering a definition of Enterprise 2.0. For handy reference, here it is:

Enterprise 2.0 is an emerging social and technical movement towards helping your business practices evolve. At its heart, its goals are to empower the right kind of change by connecting decision makers to information, to services and to people.

Pretty simple and straightforward. I like aspects of it. I love the word movement as that pushes the effort beyond the technological. It does beg a lot of questions, such as, “What is the right kind of change?” In the end, I think it fails because of its vagueness. Kudos to Bex though for even putting forward a definition, something I’m not willing to attempt.

Bex’s post spends a lot of time on what Enterprise 2.0 isn’t. This part of the post holds great value. I agree with every single of the five points. I have a few comments on each:

1. Too much information can be a problem. Information needs to be transformed into knowledge. With structured data, this can be done through reports and business intelligence tools. With unstructured data, aka CONTENT, this is best done by people tagging and collecting. As search technology matures, it will be able to do this for us, at least better than it does now. This is an old-fashioned Knowledge Management goal.
2. End-users need solid business applications. They may consist of Services, but Users consume Applications which consume Services. It is a food chain. My only problem here is wondering if this is Enterprise 2.0 or just smart Enterprise Architecture design for the SOA world. Like point 1, this isn’t a new concept.
3. This point is Enterprise 2.0 to the core. Let’s face it. I could be connected with 1000 people, but if nobody will collaborate with me in solving a problem, what is the point? If I have 10 good connections, I can filter out the junk and we can focus on solving the problem at hand. The interaction with Bex and Billy is more valuable to me than it is with some senior Documentum architects (not referencing Craig as he is pretty darn useful) because they actually engage in dialog. It isn’t enough to be have things in common, but to contribute to the whole to create something greater.
4. Evolution is always the goal. Change is good. A way to manage the change and allow for change to continue as required is better. In ECM terms, if I implement an ECM system, it will only last as long as the initial initiative if a governance mechanism isn’t put in place to oversee it for the future.
5. This is simple project management. Bex implies an extreme, but it is a valid concept. Take a small pilot and see if it works. If so, GREAT! If not, then learning why has value. The person may not earn a promotion, but they should earn a chance to apply the lessons-learned. Too often, these failed pilots have no follow-on effort where the lessons would be useful.

Hmmmm, not as much Enterprise 2.0 as I thought. Of course, that is just my opinion. Let’s look at…

The Why…

Bex talks a bit about “Why”. It isn’t stated right out, but Mark Masterson asks Why is Enterprise 2.0 is a Good Idea in a post to which Bex links. The fact is that the question, much less the answer, is missing from most discussions that I have read. Why is Enterprise 2.0 good? It sounds progressive. So did the web in the mid-90s. Most of websites sucked. Some were cool, and that led every company to want external sites and web-enable their applications. “Why” was left in the dust.

Now we have the Whe for the web. Internally we can deliver applications to a wide audience without fussing too much with the state of their desktop. The ability to write one application, deploy it to a few servers, and have it work is much better than directing people to a shared network drive and install an application, or pushing it down to each desktop. It was a good time to run a helpdesk.

Nobody asks why you need an external website now or what purpose it is trying to serve. Usually the focus is on which Why to address first.

So let me ask you this, what is the purpose behind Enterprise 2.0? What problem is it trying to solve? Until we hash that out, we aren’t going anywhere. I have a few thoughts, but I want to explore the concept of structural holes in more detail first. I’d also like to see if anyone else is going to play. (That is a hint, Chuck and Gordon.)

Enterprise 2.0 as the Next Phase of Knowledge Management

I’ve seen this theme a few times and I can understand why Bex is not enthused. I’m not ruling it out. Aside from helping frame the “Why” a little better, it is still a good goal. Bex talks about efforts 20 years ago. I remember efforts 10 years ago. There will be more efforts in another 10 years. The thing that Bex points out, but misses at the same time, is that these iterations provide value.

Be it full-text search, ECM, portals, social media, or mashups, these technologies all help to solve the “knowledge problem”. It isn’t just a matter of storing and retrieving knowledge. It is also a matter of enabling the creation of that knowledge. You need people to be able to connect and work together. I learn a lot by stopping by someone’s office and talking to them. What if they are in a different part of the building, campus, country, or world? Swinging by the office can become expensive and time-consuming.

Does Enterprise 2.0 help us address those gaps? Maybe. Is it more than that? I think so. How much of Enterprise 2.0 is Web 2.0? (BINGO!) I would say it is the part that makes it new, but not the foundation as Bex alludes.

That is why we need to work on the Why of Enterprise 2.0.

My basic challenge is simple. A company decided that they needed to consolidate their knowledge (their word) and implement ways to both expand and re-purpose their information. I’m thinking Enterprise 2.0=Knowledge Management. I’m thinking cool new technologies. I’m getting all excited.

Then during a requirements session I hear, What is a Wiki?

Generations X and Y

James focuses on the fact that those in the Web 2.0 mindset are more fluid and dynamic. They think laterally and not necessarily hierarchically. As James puts it, the Web is a bottom-up approach while BPM and existing solutions are more top-down. He then spins it as a Generation Y versus the established mentalities around process.

I think James has defined the paradigm problem. Changes like this aren’t instantaneous. The lines around the problem are not just Gen Y based.

Let’s take Generation Y. For the most part, they get it. They live it in their daily lives. How will that translate at work? Gordon over at Infovark pointed out a little reality:

[T]hese people will join the workplace as wide-eyed and impressionable new starters, and they’ll do their best to work within the framework that they are given with the tools that are allocated to them. Then, slowly, their own ideas will become part of the way people work, including their favorite tools and technologies.

The Millenials, as Gordon calls the Gen Y crowd, are not going to have the power or the authority to do much, at first. Oh, they will find some companies that will let them work with those tools. They can also form startups, but a majority of them will have to learn the old ways before they can change them.

Next comes Generation X, my generation. We were a bunch of disgruntled, disrespecting people with no focus or direction. That isn’t true anymore. Oh, there are holdouts, but the ones that have adapted are the ones leading. As a whole, the technical GenXers “get” the whole 2.0 thing. We may not use the tools to the degree that the Millenials do, but we see them as valuable tools and can use them.

Last is the group of non-technical GenXers and those that pre-date Generation X. While there are exceptions, they are more married to the “tried and true” methods for getting things done. They rely more on the methods and processes that they have helped develop over the years. The methods are comfortable and they “work”.

One Step at a Time

You can’t force change. Okay, in a company you can, but it breeds resentment and attrition. Some think that the Millenials should be given more control to change things. My basic question is, Into what? They don’t always understand the business or know the best way to apply what they know to the business.

Experience provides that knowledge. A good collaboration system can allow that knowledge to be shared, but what if those with the knowledge aren’t ready to dive in?

Chuck Hollis has been guiding EMC through this internally. After nine months, the system hasn’t had the adoption that he had hoped for at this point, though it is successful. They are making progress and it is growing, but it hasn’t been a revolution. His blog’s title on the subject says it all, A Journey In Social Media. His biggest tip, the initiative has to be driven top down. But if it isn’t supported bottoms-up, you’ll get nowhere.

You have to have that grassroots support to provide the foundation. It needs to grow until you have critical mass and the success that comes with it.

Getting to 2.0

Back to the company. How do you push-out a system that is very 2.0 when the organization is at 0.0? Simple, you don’t. You find something, like SharePoint, that will be inexpensive and start building the proper behaviors and attitudes. Teach them how to share information. Preach the value of emailing links and not document drafts. Show a little process can provide control without limiting creativity.

EMC was at 1.0 when they started their journey, and it is taking time to move to a 2.0 mindset. They have a solid foundation and it is growing. They have an evangelist helping. I think that is key. Repeatedly exposing users to the proper concepts will help users see the benefits in a more advanced Collaboration solution.

As users at the company in question start to learn about proper 1.0 collaborative behavior, they can slowly start thinking about the benefits of even more dynamic collaboration offered by social media.

Let the people grow, adapt, and realize that there is more. They will become hungry for the next step. It just takes time and a gentle touch.

Well, KM is back, but under a disguise. Enterprise 2.0, using the Social Media on Web 2.0 in the business world, enables Knowledge Management. When I took my adventure through Chuck’s Journey, it was like a light bulb clicking on in my head. All of this Social Media tech solves some of the key issues that have plagued KM systems.

Knowledge Management and Philosopher’s Stone

KM is a wonderful dream. The goal, simply put, it to capture the knowledge of the people of your organization and turn it into a organizational asset. Consultants and organizations have been pursuing this for years. Like many claims made by people to turn lead into gold over the years, KM has continued to elude the world at large.

Back in 2001, I presented at Momentum 2001 a basic concept: take a portal, throw the content on an ECM platform behind the scenes, and get some solid Enterprise Search. I didn’t claim that we had true KM with this approach, but it was a solid step. We had a single interface with all content in a centralized, searchable repository. Search was federated and could return results from many systems at once.

There were weaknesses to the solution. Search wasn’t intelligent enough. It still isn’t. Anyone who says otherwise is selling you something.

Context was also poor. On my screen, users could see email, Siebel information, and their latest pieces of content in separate portlets. To group information by context, and not by source, users had to search and hope for the best. It was purely pull. Push wasn’t possible without taking several systems down and investing more resources than was available at the time.

The largest issue was how to gather knowledge. It is one thing to have design documents, proposals, and manuals in a system. How do you capture the thoughts behind the creation of that content? How can you enable people to add nuggets of information without having to author a document? Portlets could be created to capture ideas, but the collaboration wasn’t there.

Enter Web 2.0

Mashups, Wikis, Blogs, and Discussion Threads. Threads are old-hat, but everything else is pure Web 2.0.

• Mashups are Context! Enterprise systems are getting to the point where this can be done. With SOA standards simplifying the aggregation of data, I can now realistically anticipate have separate portlets for Clients A, B, and C with information spanning all my corporate applications. I can’t tell you how excited I was when I learned what mash-ups were a while back. It was my old Infodata white board come to life.
• Wikis provide a way for people to all contribute to building a body of knowledge. FAQs, hot-to guides, and lessons learned are great uses for wikis.
• Blogs allow people to quickly share information and experiences in a way that can lead to revelations in others. If someone learns a neat trick, they can write it up on a blog so that it is now searchable for the next person.

The problem we were trying to solve in 2001 was how to take knowledge and turn it into content, capturing it for all. With Enterprise 2.0, the resulting content enables the creation of knowledge. This can enable knowledge to grow in the organization exponentially once you get enough participation.

Too Much of a Good Thing?

The new problem is the need to filter and search all of the new content and information. This isn’t so much a new problem as it is the evolution of one of the three key weaknesses, weak search.

During my Momentum presentation, I basically told the audience that I would never be able to give them a true KM system because search would not be ready. I did promise them that my kids would sell it to them. I may be a little off on that prediction as I think it may be ready before my oldest kid finishes college. The point was valid though. It wasn’t here, yet. It still isn’t.

I said it then, and Chuck is saying it now, It’s a Journey. The light at the end of the tunnel just got a lot brighter though.

These are posts that I found particularly insightful or useful. If you don’t have time to read the whole sequence, you can jump around.

• Why Me?: Chuck starts with a simple introduction to himself, explaining why he is leading the initiative and his initial strategy in getting started. My favorite line is, I had to informally recruit (hijack!) a few people who were as passionate on this topic as I was becoming, especially during the formative stages. Having recently started leading a few initiatives in my own company, I like the accurate portrayal. The key is to recruit those that will contribute, but may have been hesitant to volunteer due to various reasons. I’m trying to make sure that they get credit and rewarded for that work so they are still willing in the future.

• Guidelines For Creating A Community: This defines how to build a community. The first thing this reminds me of? The goals of some Knowledge Management initiatives several years ago. We were trying to do the same things with the lesser tools of the time.
• Avoiding The eRoom Debacle: This isn’t a slam on eRoom. This is commentary on all Collaborative environments. Essentially, let people work together, but monitor to keep things manageable. The same rules apply to SharePoint, Lotus Notes, and Social Media suites.
• What is Collaboration?: An interesting post on the differences between document and conversation centric collaboration. Right now it is a pick your poison kind of world. Pick your focus and go. His project picked conversation-centric, eliminating SharePoint and eRoom.
• What the Market Needs: Chuck realizes that content created in their new collaboration environment needs to be part of the central ECM platform. If only there was an easy way to plug an interface into Documentum with minimal coding. DFS could do it, but with an ECM SOA standard, he’d already be done.
• On Conversational Collaboration: Chuck talks more about Conversational Collaboration and how it is useful in the Enterprise. It is a good read in to the what of their approach and I think a good description behind the purpose behind Enterprise 2.0.

There is some repetition over the months regarding the goals, but that is in my blog as well. It is worth it to skim the blog as a whole for topics that appeal to you.