Social Media in Plain English No comments yet
Another excellent video from Lee leFever over at Common Craft. This one explains Social Media in plain English.
Equality and diversity monitoring – should we be concerned? 3 comments
I wonder what it is about Non-Departmental Public Bodies (NDPBs), Non-Government Organisations (NGO’s) and other Quangos that somehow feel compelled to monitor and report on socio-demographic data that is not part of their brief?
I encountered this first hand when I was contracted by LSC and DIUS last year to set up the Information Authority. This afforded me some brief (albeit heady) power over the Individual Learning Record (ILR), which is the process by which schools, colleges, universities and employers working in the further education (FE) sector report on courses they’re running, the trainees on the courses and the training outcomes. I am reminded of one particular request from the LSC to modify the ILR for 2008/9 to start collecting information from the FE sector about age, ethnicity and sexual orientation of trainees. When probed about why they wanted this information, it was “to ensure compliance with equality and diversity legislation”. Fortunately I was in a position at the time to reject this request, mainly on the grounds that the LSC had no statutory right to monitor and report on this data. They were there as a funding body – full stop! It’s the duty of the schools and colleges etc. to comply with the legislation, not for some other self-appointing authority to report and regulate.
I was therefore mildly alarmed when I heard that the IDeA wanted to start collecting data on ‘equality and diversity’ of users of the Community of Practice platform. I understand this only extends to age and ethnicity of users, which is not quite as pervasive as the LSC example. The main concern here though is opaqueness of purpose, i.e. what the data is needed for and what would happen to it once it became available to other organizations working in the local government sector. I’ve so far managed to head off a proposal whereby this data would be compulsorily provided as part of the CoP platform registration process, but I don’t think the requirement has quite gone away.
It may be that the motives are entirely innocent, but I don’t understand why there is this perceived need to categorise and label people when there is no distinction made as to who and how they use the CoP platform. It’s the same interface, the same applications, the same support procedures etc. I remain suspicious of any organization that wants to start putting people into pigeon holes, particularly when this is done under the banner of ‘equality’. After all, isn’t this an oxymoron?
Enterprise 2.0 Social Search and Discovery 1 comment
I attended (and presented at) the Butler Group “Information Management and Collaboration” event that was held in London on 14-15 May. Regrettably I couldn’t get to the first day of the event, so missed presentations on topics such as:
- Document collaboration using Sharepoint, and
- Next generation collaboration through BEA Systems portals
Hence, I was left to ponder how much emphasis was given to creating and developing a collaborative culture in these presentations, or whether (as I suspect) the assumption is that this shiny new technology would resolve all the Enterprise’s collaboration needs. Excuse the cynicism, but this seems to be the pattern on just about every vendor presentation I’ve seen or heard since the Web 2.0 bandwagon started rolling.
I was therefore pleasantly surprised by the presentation from Rob Gray, UK General Manager of blueKiwi Software, who clearly understood that without a collaborative culture, the technology would be nothing more than an expensive anachronism. Maybe this new wave of realism will begin to permeate some of the ‘traditional’ software vendors who have conveniently migrated to the Web2.0 space. We’ll see!
The blueKiwi software was something of a revelation, providing a fully integrated suite of social networking and social media tools for supporting communities of interest or practice. I’ve done much research in this area myself as part of my Technology Steward role for the IDeA CoP Platform, and was impressed by many of the features and its overall ease of use. Quite clearly it has been developed by people who understand this market and how communities (of interest/practice) work.
A brief aside here, because I feel there is some confusion about the use of terms such as social networking and social media, which are quite often used interchangeably.
Social networking is where users interact creatively. Sites such as Myspace or Facebook being the most popular for this genre.
Social media is where users publish and share information. YouTube is probably the clear winner for this genre.
In a similar way to the IDeA CoP platform, the blueKiwi software is both a social networking environment in that it enables new connections to be dynamically created, and a social media environment in that it provides a variety of tools for publishing and sharing information (e.g. forums, blogs, wikis). The company itself is French in origin, as you will see from the website. I’m informed an English version is imminent. Certainly worth keeping an eye on this particular company/product.
Back to my presentation, which was entitled “Putting Enterprise Search and Discovery to Work”. The presentation describes how social networks (and specifically communities of practice) can be used to improve the relevance of search results by using customised (i.e. thematic filtered) web searches. You need to use a search API to make this work. My case study was based on what we’ve implemented on the IDeA CoP platform, using the Exalead search service. The slides are available on Slideshare.
Plain English Campaign releases Drivel Defence No comments yet
The Plain English Campaign has just released a JavaScript-based application called Drivel Defence.
The authors of the application allege that it will help authors assess their writing for Plain English as part of a general effort to improve accessibility. The idea is that you cut and paste your ‘drivel’ from a Word document or web site into the applet and you will get an analysis of words per sentence, average sentence length and the longest sentence.
There are two options for download:
Drivel Defence for Text. This allows you to check text by copying it from any software or document. It’s ideal for letters or reports.
Drivel Defence for Web. This is a tool specifically to help website developers check whether the content of web pages is in plain English.
Right – so where shall I start? I think maybe the HMRC website is as good a place as any. I may at last be able to have a version of the self-assesment form that I can understand!
New links for Communities and Networks 2008-05-04 @ del.icio.us 1 comment
Tools for Communities Wiki A companion piece to a forthcoming book Stewarding Technologies for Communities of Practice by Etienne Wenger, Nancy White and John D. Smith. It collects knowledge about how Communities of Practice use different tools. Like all Wikis, this is a work in progress. It collects knowledge about how Communities of Practice use different tools. The vision is to provide a community perspective on these tools and their key features.
GroupTweet GroupTweet piggy-backs on the Twitter service via the Twitter API. It allows you to set up a private group on Twitter for sending and receiving text messages (tweets) to members of the group. This tool might be a great introduction to Twitter as quick information sharing tool for a small community of practice and people who are new to Twitter.
Charted growth of communities of practice in local government No comments yet
I thought I would try out Google Gadgets as a way of showing the growth in usage of the IDeA CoP platform. It was simpler to set up than I imagined. A straight forward process of adding the data to a Google Spreadsheet, inserting the Gadget to the spreasheet, and then selecting the option to ‘Publish Gadget’. The resultant html code is pasted into your web page – and hey presto – your chart. Full details of the process here.
Next step is to find a way of keeping this updated in real-time. Watch this space!
Total Registered Users
Yellow, Pink and Green 1 comment
Something light to start the day. Unfortunately this has a ring of truth!
Mujibar was trying to get a job in India .
The Personnel Manager said, ‘Mujibar, you have passed all the tests, except one. Unless you pass it you cannot qualify for this job.’
Mujibar said, ‘I am ready.’
The manager said, ‘Make a sentence using the words Yellow , Pink and Green.’
Mujibar thought for a few minutes and said, ‘Mister manager, I am ready’
The manager said, ‘Go ahead.’
Mujibar said, ‘The telephone goes green, green, and I pink it up, and say, ‘Yellow ‘, this is Mujibar.’
Mujibar now works at a Bombay call centre for a large multinational software company.
No doubt you have spoken to him. I know I have!