Organisations rely on collaboration in order to be successful. Imagine your workplace without any knowledge-sharing or team working. What would happen? Probably very little, as most people rely on collaboration with others in order to be able to do their jobs. If every member of your team attempted to work without drawing on the knowledge of others, they would find themselves unable to do anything pretty quickly. Despite this heavy reliance on collaboration, many people find it difficult, and do it only reluctantly and sometimes ineffectively. How can workplace leaders help their teams to collaborate better?

Why People Don’t Collaborate

We live in a very individualist culture. Throughout our lives, we are encouraged to work towards personal goals, and to put our own needs before those of our community. It is therefore not surprising that many workplaces also encourage individualism. When we plan our careers, we do so as individuals. When we take a job, we are given a job description with a list of tasks that are assigned to us alone. Many job descriptions do include something on them about teamwork and collaboration, but it often usually couched in general terms and found towards the bottom of the list.

Individualism can be a very positive thing. It can help people achieve, particularly in jobs that are relatively solitary. For individualism to be positive, though, it needs to be supported by a culture of collaboration. This may seem more relevant in some businesses than others. Take a courier company like ParcelForce, for example. They rely heavily on collaborative working at each of the stages it takes to get a parcel from the Post Office, to depot, to delivery van, to the recipient. There is a long chain in which the success of each stage depends on the success of the previous stage. In another company, workers’ tasks might be much more discrete: take a proofreading business, for example: each worker has assigned tasks that they do alone, without the help of others.

Those who work in businesses that do not rely obviously on collaboration sometimes fail to recognise its value. Competitive workplace cultures can discourage collaboration, as team members are worried that it will mean their efforts are not recognised. Where team members lack trust in each other, collaboration suffers. People often feel they lack the time to collaborate, that it is just ‘one more thing’ on their to-do list. Workplace leaders sometimes fail to collaborate themselves, and so they fail to encourage a collaboration culture.

Encouraging Collaboration

Competition and lack of shared goals are barriers to collaboration. Mutual trust and shared goals help encourage it. Research shows that collaboration and co-operation in the workplace helps strengthen the business. It encourages innovation and helps the business meet its goals. Collaboration isn’t just a nice thing to do: it helps keep a business in profit. Sharing knowledge and ideas helps individuals to work better and more successfully. A collaborative workplace is greater than the sum of its parts.

Getting people to trust and believe in each other requires a change in culture. Easy to say, not so easy to do. Things like workplace social events and awaydays can help, but they need to be backed up by something more tangible. Use of social media in the workplace can be a great way to encourage collaboration. Because it works from the bottom up, rather than being imposed from the top down, social media helps create a shared body of knowledge that is open to all and that everyone can feel comfortable using. It helps encourage trust and understanding, as everyone can see the contributions made by everyone else. Rather than asking one individual to help with a question or task, a team member can log on to social media and get advice and help from various people, many of whom they might not have considered contacting. It can help encourage collaboration between seemingly unconnected areas of the business: improvements in the accounts system inspire project managers across the organisation, for example.

Leaders need to lead by example and work to encourage and reward collaboration across their organisations. Rather than only valuing individual achievement, team and organisational achievement should be valued. Some people will always feel more comfortable collaborating than others (either because of their personality or the nature of their job), but using social media or other media to demonstrate business benefits and show leadership can help encourage everyone to collaborate better.

Introduction

This is a summary of one of the breakout session I ran at the Cisco Public Services Summit, Oslo 9-11 December 2011.  It describes the role of Communities of Practice in supporting more effective collaboration and knowledge sharing between organisations working in the public sector. It notes the key lessons learnt from a 6-year journey, starting from the launch of the UK local government CoP platform in 2006 and how this led to an ambitious attempt to create a new kind of platform for online collaboration and data sharing – the Knowledge Hub.  The slides are embedded at the foot of this post, and also available at Slideshare.

Project Purpose

The main purpose of the project was to break down some of the silo’d work practices both within councils and across the public sector. Local councils were delivering the same set of services, but were not learning from each other about good/best practice. This was also the first time that communities of practice had been used within the public sector environment as a process and methodology for encouraging knowledge sharing and personal development.

I’ve made clear in the slides the difference between “Communities of Practice” (CoPs) and “Social Networks”. Put simply, CoPs operate from a sense of shared values and objectives. Social Networks support a far more personalised agenda, or in other words, its “we” as opposed to “me”.

The following points correspond to the slide presentation, and as noted previously, represent the lessons learnt from a 6-year journey.

Communities of Practice – Lessons Learnt

1. Don’t expect everyone to join in.

Command and control structures are alive and well, particularly in public sector organisations.  Joining a CoP where status and rank mean nothing, and where the free-flow of knowledge is encouraged can be a bit of a culture shock for some people.  By all means encourage colleagues and managers to join, but accept that collaboration and knowledge sharing doesn’t come easy to some people. Concentrate efforts instead on building trust between those who want to be there and create a safe haven for knowledge.

2. Community Facilitation is essential.

You need a community facilitator or moderator to provide cohesion and maintain direction for the CoP. Almost without exception, the most successful CoPs had a good and effective facilitator. Some of the roles and duties of a facilitator include:

1. Supporting sociability, relationship and trust building
2. Seeding and feeding discussion topics
3. Maintaining and sustaining the community ‘rhythm’.
4. Curating and signposting knowledge artefacts for capture and reuse
5. Helping to connect community members
6. Providing help with the CoP tools and facilities
7. Ensuring the community space is kept “tidy” and navigable
8. Reporting CoP activity – metrics, evaluations, newsletters
9. Monitoring success criteria and impact.

3.  Establish your KPIs.

Be clear about what your CoP is trying to achieve. Remember this is a “community” so engage with the members to agree purpose and intended outcomes.  Once the purpose and outcomes are agreed you can identify the metrics that will measure progress. Try to use a combination of qualitative and quantitative data for the metrics you measure.

When monitoring the metrics, remember that each CoP will have a particular rhythm or cycle. Some will be light on discussion and strong on shared document building and vice versa. Others will be ‘one-shot’ supporting a single challenge.  Not all communities will be a hive of activity; some will support its participants at a low level of interaction over a long period, others for short bursts around face-to-face-meetings or events.

Key lesson: Don’t rely on metrics to claim your community is successful; use metrics and indicators to understand your community better. 

4. ROI can be measured.

You can guarantee that someone, sometime, somewhere is going to ask about return on investment. I’d much prefer to consider the “I” in ROI as meaning “Impact”, but we live in a world where – for some – value can only be measured in terms of cash saved.  Be prepared for this and consider how ROI can be quantified. In the example for local government CoPs we identified cash savings for online (virtual) conferences compared to physical (face to face) conferences and found that on average £8000 can be saved for each on-line conference.  Online conferences have now become a fairly regular feature, so the potential savings continue to accrue.

5. Hotseats generate heat!

Hotseats are where you invite a recognised expert or illuminory to spend some time answering questions from the community. The event should be promoted and advertised in advance to generate interest, and the person invited into the hotseat can seed the discussions by issuing a statement or question (possibly controversial) prior to the hotseat starting. Questions and answers are posted in the forum. The event can generate a lot of interest and discussions within the community usually continue long after the hotseat has finished.

6.  Use stories to promote the benefits

Don’t just rely on newsletters, statistics or case studies to promote the benefits of the CoP. Bring it alive through stories and anecdotes from the community members. Publish, promote and reward these stories. There is no better endorsement for the success of a CoP than from the CoP members themselves.

Knowledge Hub

The final part of the session was devoted to the thinking behind the development of a “next generation” community of practice platform – the “Knowledge Hub”.  What problems were we trying to fix with this new platform?  Briefly stated these were:

• Over 80% of the CoPs had been set up as private spaces (gated access via the Facilitator as opposed to just being able to join).  In effect these were silo’d knowledge repositories. We wanted a system that would encourage more interaction between CoPs.
• There was lack of permeability with external (outside the firewall) conversations. We wanted a system that could easily integrate with external web services.
• We wanted to address the perennial issue of information overload, perhaps more accurately described as “filter failure”.  Using explicit data provided by the user in their on-line profile, e.g. where they work, their area of expertise, what groups they join, etc., filters could be established to improve the relevance of information received.
• In a similar way to the way that Amazon works, we wanted to track user behaviour (their digital footprint) in order to “push” relevant information – e.g. conversations, events, and documents to the users.
• We wanted active and guided navigation to help users find and access relevant knowledge.
• We wanted to tap into the emerging market for mashups and apps; providing users with the tools to combine and link data to create value-added apps for improving council services.
• We wanted to reduce development costs and open up the architecture to enable developers and entrepreneurs to create additional value. We would use open source software and adopt open standards (e.g. OAuth, OpenSocial, OpenGraph etc.).

However, as with all things public sector, the budget was radically scaled back early in 2011 and consequently not all of these features will be implemented. The cut-down version of the local government platform was launched 27 October 2011. (http://knowledgehub.local.gov.uk).

But the dream lives on. With support from PFI Knowledge Solutions (Knowledge Hub developers) a roadmap of future enhancements for their innovative Intelligus platform may eventually deliver all of the original requirements. More on this later; a matter of “watch this space”!

I’ll be happy to answer any questions about the Community of Practice project mentioned above, or the Intelligus platform that may realise the original vision for the Knowledge Hub.

The Management Innovation Exchange(MIX) is “an open innovation project aimed at reinventing management for the 21st century. The premise: while “modern” management is one of humankind’s most important inventions, it is now a mature technology that must be reinvented for a new age.”

One of the MIX initiatives is the Harvard Business Review/McKinsey M-Prize for Management Innovation. There are two types of entries: an instructive case study (a Story) or an experimental design (a Hack).  The goals is to show how Web 2.0 values (including transparency, collaboration, meritocracy, openness, community and self-determination) can help overcome the design limits of Management 1.0—and help to create Management 2.0.

I have submitted a case study (story) about the Knowledge Hub, a project I initiated over 2 years ago but only now being rolled out for UK Local Government. The concept was part of a 3-year Knowledge Management Strategy I was commissioned to deliver for the Improvement and Development Agency – an organisation that  has since been integrated into the Local Government Group. The underlying idea was to provide a central ‘Hub’ that would collect and aggregate data and information from many sources (including blog and Twitter feeds) and use semantic technology to link and categorise the content. The system would then match and push relevant content to users according their interest graph and their social graph.

Although the project was spec’d over 2 years ago, I’ve noticed that many of the features being rolled out in Google+ are very similar to features being delivered in the Knowledge Hub, e.g. Circles (social graph) and Sparks (interest graph).  It’s just a pity I didn’t have their resources available to me when I started this project!

I hope you will take a a moment to look at the article and let me know what you think. You can comment on it and/or rate it. Your views would be appreciated.

NB: For anyone interested in the technology, the Knowledge Hub is an open system, using open standards and open source software.  It is hosted on the PFIKS Intelligus platform.

I presented the Knowledge Hub at yesterday’s (21st May) OpenTech event. The following is a synopsis of the project; the slides are available for download from Slideshare and include notes. Previous blog posts on this topic:

http://steve-dale.net/2011/04/06/introduction-to-the-knowledge-hub/

http://steve-dale.net/2009/09/21/knowledge-hub-part-1/

http://steve-dale.net/2010/07/06/knowledge-hub-part-2/

http://steve-dale.net/2011/01/31/the-knowledge-hub-and-user-experience-ux-3/

http://steve-dale.net/2011/03/10/knowledge-hub-4-social-graph-and-activity-stream/

The Knowledge Hub (KHub) is a “Web 2” social media development that builds on the LG Improvement and Development Community of Practice initiative (www.communities.idea.gov.uk)  which, with over 85,000 registered users, is already the most advanced online practitioner group in the public sector.

Imagine the social networking aspects of Facebook , the recommendation element of websites such as Tripadvisor,  product and service comparisons similar to websites such as moneysupermarket.com, access to value-added ‘apps’ similar to the iPhone app store  and a serendipity engine to suggest useful content, like on-line retailer Amazon, and you’ll start to get some idea about what this innovative project will deliver.

The KHub’s matching engine will trawl through online and user-generated content and using semantic web techniques it will suggest communities, people and content you might like, utilising data from your user profile and your digital footprint (on-line activity).

As well as all this, the KHub will be an interactive information exchange where users collaborate online to solve problems, with facilities for uploading datasets, enabling users (e.g. councils) to compare and benchmark their performance.

Best of all, the KHub is being developed on an open platform, using open standards and will be published to the open source community under the GNU General Public License, hence this huge investment will be available for use and re-use by the open source community.

The KHub is being delivered by PFI Knowledge Solutions and is built on their innovative Intelligus platform.

The KHub is scheduled for Beta release later this month (May), with new features being added in a series of releases between May and October 2011. See the Local Government Group website for further details.



I’ve had a few people asking about the Social Media Game that is mentioned in the “Web 2.0 Tools for Facilitating Knowledge Management” training event that I ran earlier this week. The game was originally developed by Beth Kanter, David Wilcox and Drew Mackie, and has undergone a number of iterations and refinements, resulting in the “Social by Social Game“, which is the version I use for these training events.

The Facilitator’s notes for running the game can be found on the Social by Social website, reproduced below with a few modifications for the way that I run it.

You can play the Social by Social game in two ways – as a simulation around a situation that you invent, or “for real” in relation to a place or an organisation

In each case the sequence is much the same:

Delegates are asked to describe or invent a situation (a problem, or project)  that they are facing. I try to encourage delegates to think about a real work-related situation as opposed to inventing something, otherwise later stages of the game can become a little abstract if there isn’t a real-world context. This then is the scenario.

Delegates are split into groups of not more than eight people, around a theme or set of issues. Then each group:-

1. Defines what they are trying to achieve:  the goals.
2. Identifies the people they wish to engage, choosing methods from a set of cards. Cards have budget points as costs – so you have to prioritise.
3. Think about the communication and engagement methods that are needed to achieve the goals, and choose the social media tools or other activities from another set of cards.
4. Review the plan that is being developed and think about the resources that will be needed, and the roles to carry it out.
5. Choose a number of the characters who figure in the scenario, and tell the stories of what happens to them over some months, or longer.
6. If there is time, the Facilitator can throw in crises and opportunities for the groups to consider – e.g. key resources being pulled from the project, or funding being reduced.

Numbers

You can play with any number from a few people upwards. Ideally you need two groups, so six is a realistic minimum to get useful discussion. If you have large numbers you just split into lots of groups. The effective limit is set by the time it takes for groups to report back – but there are ways around that: see below.

Facilitators

One or two people, respected by participants, should act as facilator(s). They should ensure that participants are briefed; organise the room; manage the flow of the game without being directive; and make sure that any report back and final discussion relates to the purpose of the exercise. They should check that people are clear about the purpose of the workshop, and help them reach useful conclusions.

Equipment

You will need flip chart paper, preferably on easels, marker pens, one set of cards (engagement, tools, resources, roles), blu-tack, post-it notes. If you want a record, you’ll need a camera for photos and maybe video.

Establishing goals

Give groups a planning sheet, and ask each group to write into the top left quadrant their goals – what they are trying to achieve in the situation they are addressing.

• Identify who you wish to engage
• Ask groups to think about the different interests they need to engage with, and make a note of those in the top right quadrant.

Using the cards

Offer the groups the cards that they will use to plan their engagement, and then to develop their plan using the different tools and activities. I split the cards into the various categories and issue them in the following order as the group’s plans develop:

• tools and methods (yellow marking)
• engagement  activities (green marking)
• roles and resources

Each card has a “budget” of effort/cost – 1, 2 or 3. Set budgets so groups can’t choose all the cards: say, 10 for engagement, 15 for tools. Ask groups to stick engagement cards top right, tools bottom right … adding their own ideas on blank cards or post-its, and amending cards if necessary. They are really just aids to conversation … so encourage as much discussion as possible, not just a mechanical exercise of playing the numbers.

After groups have chosen engagement and tools cards, ask them to consider what resources they will need, and what roles.

Reporting back

At this point, invite groups to report back. That could be to the room as a whole or just to the group that provided the challenge, if that’s the way things were set up.

By posting the flip chart sheet to a wall, then inviting people to wander round and review. That’s a good way of doing things if you have a lot groups, and limited time.

Variations of the game

1. A slight variation of the game is that after the scenario and goals have been defined, the “challenge” is swapped with another group, i.e. the other group are now acting as consultants to the first group in delivering a solution that meets their goals, and vice versa. This can lead to some interesting dynamics and forces each group to think about how they present their recommendations to their “customer’ group.
2. The Facilitator can introduce Resource cards where delegates need to consider how the project will be funded and maintained.

I’ve attached  copies of PDF’s containing all the material for running this game, that is:

• Planning Sheet
• Tools/methods cards
• Engagement cards
• Roles cards
• Resource cards

I’d be interested in getting feedback from anyone who has facilitated or took part in this game and whether it achieved the objective of thinking first about the problem and then what tools are required, and not (as so often happens) to implement the tools before really understanding what problem they are meant to fix. I’d also be interested to hear about any other variations of the game that people have developed.

Below is a photo I took of the output from the game from the “Web 2.0 Tools for Facilitating Knowledge Management” training event.

I’m privileged to be chairing this year’s Online Information Conference, which starts this Tuesday, 30^th November and runs until 2^nd December. The conference is linked with the Online Information Exhibition, with over 200 international exhibitors and more than 9,000 attendees from over 40 countries across the globe. The exhibition covers 6 different subject areas: Content Resources, ePublishing Solutions, Library Management, Content Management, Search Solutions and Social Media.

It’s hard to believe that 12 months have elapsed since the previous conference. Where did that time go?

The social media revolution continues apace, with many hundreds of new apps and web services appearing each day. The technology we use at home or in our pockets is often far more advanced than what we use in the workplace. We’re using mobile devices (iPhones, iPads etc.) that give us instant access to the web, and have a choice of literally hundreds of thousands of applications that support our on-line activities and lifestyles – over 300,000 apps for the iPhone alone.

Some commentators have likened the disruptive effects of social computing to the industrial revolution of the early 19^th century. The main difference now is that whereas large Enterprise used to lead technology innovation, it’s now being driven bottom-up by users and consumers. We’re now all connected and far more willing and able to share knowledge and co-create.

I’ve lost count of the number of start-ups and services that have been spawned on the back of Twitter, which maybe demonstrates the inherent scalability of the intranet and the web, where potentially millions of users can be supported by a teenager with a PC working from his bedroom. Delivering services with minimal infrastructure is one of the new paradigms of the social web; the threat to traditional red brick business models is no longer confined to their traditional big business competitors, but also lightweight “micro” businesses that use web services to provide scalability and agility.

We’re also seeing a revolution in the use of open and linked data. Driven primarily by the public sector in response to the expectations of citizens for greater transparency in government, which in turn has spawned a whole new breed of Social innovators and armchair auditors. Everyone is now a data analyst. We’ve never had so much data and information to play with.

Coupled with this we have the “Google effect”, with users now expecting almost instant access to information as it happens. Accuracy and objectivity is becoming less important than speed and accessibility.

All of this is driving rapid behaviour change in both society and the workplace. Whether we’ve realized it or not, consumers are now driving the technology revolution and business is trying to keep up.

How are users and business adapting to this changing information and technology landscape? What innovative new products and working practices are emerging from the disruptive effects of these changes? This year’s conference will be looking at all of these issues, with presentations and an insight from some of the industry’s leading thinkers. This year we have four tracks or themes that will look at many of these industry trends and issues:

1. Exploiting open and linked data. Introduced as a track in its own right in 2009 and of growing importance especially in the public sector; open and linked data is creating new opportunities for information professionals and the creation of new information services and products.

2. Harnessing opportunity from the social web and the cloud. Although the use of social media is now mainstream in many organisations there are still barriers and limitations that are preventing the benefits of social media to be fully realised.  This track gets to the heart of the issues with many real world experiences.

3. Information Professionals demonstrating value and impact. In economically straitened times when information services are under scrutiny information professionals need to be able to demonstrate value and impact to justify their existence, focus will be on challenges facing academic libraries and new projects that are using cutting edge technologies to deliver positive bottom line results.

4. New platforms and user behaviours for delivering content. Focusing on using mobile and “the cloud” to deliver information services, how are libraries and organisations using these technologies, what are the opportunities, how will these technologies change the future role of the information professional?

We also have a great line up of speakers, with special mention for our keynote speaker Dion Hinchliffe, an Internationally recognized business strategist, enterprise architect, author, blogger, and consultant on Web 2.0, enterprise architecture and co-author of the book ‘Web 2.0 Architectures‘.

So, I’m hoping that all of the delegates will make the most of this year’s conference. The quality of the papers and presentations submitted to the organizing committee has established a new benchmark, and I for one will be looking forward to attending as many sessions as I can. If you are a regular reader of this blog, or know me in either a social or business capacity, please do come and say “hello”.

Stephen Dale

The Online Information Conference is scheduled to run from 30th November to 2nd December. This is my first year as Conference Chairman, so mixed feeelings at present of anticipation and trepidation! The following is a pre-conference interview I gave to Knowledgespeak.

1. Can you briefly talk about the Online Information? Also, can you share with us any interesting events / trends for the 2010 Conference?

Online Information is the largest UK event dedicated to the information industry, providing an annual meeting place for more than 9,000 attendees from over 40 countries across the globe.  This unique free-to-attend event consists of an exhibition with more than 200 international exhibitors, an extensive educational show floor seminar programme, plus a range of exciting and stimulating show features.  Focusing on new technologies and key sectors, the show covers 6 different subject areas: Content Resources, ePublishing Solutions, Library Management, Content Management, Search Solutions and Social Media.

Online Information feature areas are set to be a major highlight of the 2010 event.  The XML Pavilion, launched in 2009, is back and the Library Management Zone is being introduced for the first time, adding a new dimension to the event.  The all new Library Management Zone plays host to exhibitors covering Library Systems, Library Security and RFID, and offers visitors the chance to view a wide range of library products.  The Library Management Zone has been introduced to give exhibition visitors the opportunity to get to grips with new systems and technologies designed specifically for library environments.  Other established and highly popular feature areas include, Global Business Information Forum and the European Librarians Theatre and International Forums. There will be a high percentage of new services and products for attendees to see with many regular high profile exhibitors showing new and evolved products plus we are delighted to welcome a high number of new exhibiting companies to Online this year.

2. The 2009 Online Information conference focused on innovation and emerging technologies. Briefly talk about this year’s theme – Discover new ways of working in the linked and social web.

I think most of us will agree that the velocity of change, both social and technological – has increased over the past 10 years and shows no sign of slowing down. The internet is giving us unprecedented access to information, and knowledge. New tools, applications and social networks are opening up opportunities for people to connect and collaborate far more effectively than ever before. Traditional red brick business models are gradually being replaced by lightweight “micro” businesses that use web services to provide scalability and agility.

Coupled with this we’re seeing a revolution in the use of open and linked data. Driven primarily by the public sector in response to the expectations of citizens for greater transparency in government, social innovators are using this data to create value-added applications, e.g. linking socio-demographic data with maps to show visual hot-spots.

All of this is driving rapid behaviour change in both society and the workplace. What can we discover from users and organisations that are in the midst of these changes? How are users and business adapting to this changing information and technology landscape. What innovative new products and working practices are emerging from the disruptive effects of these changes? This year’s conference will be looking at all of these issues, with presentations and an insight from some of the industry’s leading thinkers.

3. The 2010 conference features four tracks that will address important industry trends, technologies and other pressing issues. Can you briefly talk about these individual track sessions?

Of course I would be glad to, in no particular order:

Exploiting open and linked data
Introduced as a track in its own right in 2009 and of growing importance especially in the public sector; open and linked data is creating new opportunities for information professionals and the creation of new information services and products

Harnessing opportunity from the social web and the cloud

Although the use of social media is now mainstream in many organisations there are still barriers and limitations that are preventing the benefits of social media to be fully realised. This track gets to the heart of the issues with many real world experiences.

Information Professionals demonstrating value and impact

In economically straitened times when information services are under scrutiny information professionals need to be able to demonstrate value and impact to justify their existence, focus will be on challenges facing academic libraries and new projects that are using cutting edge technologies to deliver positive bottom line results.

New platforms and user behaviours for delivering content

Focusing on using mobile and the cloud to deliver information services, how are libraries and organisations using these technologies, what are the opportunities, how will these technologies change the future role of the information professional?

4. How, in your opinion, have the needs of information-consumers evolved in the recent few years? How is the Online Information Conference evolving accordingly?

As noted earlier, the internet is giving us unprecedented access to information, and knowledge. Over the past several years we’ve seen the barriers to publishing lowered, which has triggered enormous growth in non-curated information, e.g. from personal blogs and Twitter feeds. Consumers now expect information to be delivered in almost real-time, which continues to be a challenge for the traditional publishing models. We can perhaps recall that the first pictures and information from the 7/7/05 London bombings came from people at the scene, via blogs and tweets from mobile devices. Everyone is now a potential news reporter. Coupled with this we have the “Google effect”, where the perception is that information can be found within seconds of a search query being submitted. Accuracy and objectivity of the information has become secondary to speed and access.

Curated knowledge and information sources, e.g. media, information vendors, academic institutions, have come under increasing pressure to show their value. This is driving innovative ways of delivering information and new products (e.g. Library services) through digital channels, with many of these organisations tapping into the social web to connect with and get closer to potentially new consumers.

The Online Information Conference maintains links with people, experts and organisations across the whole spectrum of knowledge and information creation, curation and publication in order to identify emerging trends and innovations. This ensures that for each conference we have a blend of practice-based experience and thought leadership from recognized experts. In this way, we maintain an eye on the future whilst utilizing the vast experience of the present and past to provide context to where the industry is headed, and how information consumers will be affected.

5. Lately, we have seen that new leaders are emerging with the vision to adapt or change their business models to embrace the opportunities created by the social web and the cloud. What are the implications of these generational changes in technology and online networks and do you see the Online Conference as a venue for sharing information about these changes?

Take-up and adoption of social computing is following the standard Rogers Adoption/Innovation Curve (Innovators, Early Adopters, Early Majority, Late Majority, Laggards). Cloud computing is probably still at the early adopters stage, though one could argue that the social web is now well within the bell curve of early and late majority. Some commentators have likened the disruptive effects of social computing to the industrial revolution of the early 19^th century. The main difference now is that whereas large Enterprise used to lead technology innovation, it’s now being driven bottom-up by users and consumers. We’re now all connected and far more willing and able to share knowledge and co-create.

The technology we use at home is often far more advanced than what we use in the workplace. We’re using mobile devices (iPhones etc.) that give us instant access to the web, and have a choice of literally hundreds of thousands of applications that support our on-line activities and lifestyles. Some business leaders and organisations (e.g. Amazon) recognized this shift to consumerism long before we used the term “social web” or “Web 2.0″ and developed or adapted business models that could leverage this increasing connectivity and scalability of the web. The phenomenon was adequately described in Chris Anderson’s book “The Long Tail”.

So, whether we’ve realized it or not, consumers are now driving the technology revolution and business is trying to keep up. Organisations and businesses that fail to grasp the opportunities of the social web will be at a disadvantage to those that do. We’re already seeing evidence of this in various research reports.[1]

We can therefore anticipate further and rapid “socio-technology” change going forward. One emerging trend is the increase in “micro-businesses”, i.e. those that can service large numbers of customers with limited resources, utilising web services to provide scalability (e.g. witness the number of businesses that have been created on the back of Twitter).

The Online Information Conference will continue to monitor and analyse the knowledge and information management landscape, and through our extensive network of industry practitioners, academics and thought leaders, will provide a place and time to share knowledge and facilitate honest debate about the impact of the social web.