I’ve picked up on a couple of blogs recently referring to
Ning, a platform for creating individual social networks or
communities of practice.
It allows you to have your own site to which people can sign up and
leave blog posts, have forum discussions, upload photos and videos and
publish RSS feeds. The most recent commentary was from Dave Briggs over at
LGNewmedia.
I sometimes wonder whether it would be preferable to abandon the bespoke work we’re doing with the IDeA CoP paltform
and use an off the shelf development environment such as Ning. Not sure
yet what the right answer is, since I also have to ensure the IDeA CoP
solution is fully integrated with other (legacy) platforms, such as the
IDeA knowledge web site. I can see that the technology trend - call it Web 2.0, mashups, Ajax or whatever - is bringing sophisticated content integration and publishing tools within the reach of anyone with a broadband connection.
Scoble has a couple of videos up about Ning if you want to know more.
Bruce Mason over at TNN - Tags/Networks/Narrative has some interesting things to say about folksonomies, taxonomies and ‘collabularies’ (I choke each time I mention that word!). I’ve also learnt a new term - ‘feral hypertext’ - now I like that!
I came across Picnik - a web site providing free photo editing and special effects. The site is still in Beta, and some of the creative tool tabs are annotated with ‘Coming Soon". However, the photo editing tools all work, the interface is quite slick, all photo editing is done within the browser and there is seamless integration with Flickr. There’s also no sign of any advertising (yet).
For anyone considering purchasing a photo editing application - don’t! Try this first.
I was drawn to this item on the Phronesis blog by Bev Trayner. The Knowledge Management for Development Journal (KM4D Journal) has issued a call for papers on “Stewarding Technologies for Collaboration, Community Building & Knowledge Sharing in Development”, for their KM4Dev Journal Vol. 3, Issue 1, June 2007 publication. It appealed to me with respect to the work I’ve been engaged on at the IDeA for development of a Community of Practice strategy, which included a technology component (web site) for support of on-line collaboration. An abstract from Bev’s blog:
The ‘Knowledge Management for Development Journal’ (KM4D Journal) is an open access, peer-reviewed, community-based journal on knowledge management in development – for and by development practitioners and researchers. The journal is closely related to the KM4dev community of practice, and can be read and downloaded at: www.km4dev.org/journal
Vol. 3, Issue 1, to be published in June 2007, will focus on innovative practices and uses of ‘technologies for knowledge sharing’. This focus comes on the wave of new web based tools and processes supporting knowledge sharing, knowledge management and organizational learning that have emerged. Sometimes called "Web 2.0" technologies, these tools allow people to collaborate over time and distance in both new ways and in new networked forms. It builds on previous issues on the importance of networks, working across boundaries and even sustainability.
Guest editors are comprised of Nancy White, Beth Kanter, Beverly Trayner, Partha Sarker and Brenda Zulu, in combination with Chief Editor, Lucie Lamoureux.
Proposed deadlines
- Submission deadline for the title and abstract 28 February 2007
- Acceptance of paper proposal 15 March 2007
- Submission of paper 15 April 2007
- Peer-review completed 15 May 2007
- Author revision completed and final version of paper submitted 31 May 200
- (e)-publication date 15 June 2007
If anyone wishes to submit a paper, or be actively involved in this initiative in any other ways, you shoiuld send your abstract (minimum one paragraph – maximum one page) or your message by email to km4dj-editors@dgroups.org
I was reading an article by Martin Veitch in last week’s IT Week about the release if IBM’s Lotus Connections, a set of tools that brings MySpace-like social networking to big business. IBM has been reported as saying that …"Connections will offer a way to automate knowledge management through the usability of social software combined with security, authentication, directory, storage management and integration with enterprise software such as Lotus Notes". This coming hot on the heals of Microsoft providing wiki-like functionality to Sharepoint.
What I’ve not been able to detect with all this Enterprise 2.0/Web 2.0 hype emanating from the big vendors is any real understanding of the human side of social networking and how to cross the divide between the hobbyist and fun culture underlying environments such as Myspace and Flickr, and the culture of big business or government. Control and command cultures still dominate, particularly in the world of central government, where the very thought of having self-organising communities of practice that might threaten the unitary culture is tantamount to encouraging revolution! Encouragingly, there is growing evidence that social networking and use of software to facilitate more effective networking and knowledge sharing is gaining some foot holds in local government. However, even here, interference by IT departments (wherever they detect some loss of control) and managers who ‘just don’t get it’ can still deter all but the resolute. Maybe its not quite a revolution yet, but the natives are definitely stirring. The IDeA’s version of Enterprise 2.0 - its Community of Practice platform - has grown from nothing to supporting 29 CoPs in only 4 months. My own experience during this time has been that developing the software tools is the easy bit; getting people to understand that this heralds an entirely different way of working is the challenge. I’d like to see some of the big vendors in this space, such as IBM and Microsoft, devoting a bit more time and attention to the cultural shift that must occur before there is any significant take-up of social software within business or government. The revolution is coming, but the rebels need some help!
I notice that eGov Monitor has partnered with Socitm for the launch of GovXchange, which, according to the press release is “a knowledge-sharing platform that can support communities of interest around specific topics. GovXchange will not only collect and disseminate published information (like its forerunner, egov exchange), it will also enable users to create and share new knowledge and information by building private or public ‘spaces’ around their professional interests.”
Sounds great, but having signed up to several of these ‘spaces’ back in December 2006, I’ve yet to see any sign of collaboration or knowledge sharing. Despite having an average of twenty or so other members in the communities (spaces) I have joined, there are no discussions, no forum entries, no wiki contributions and nothing in the ‘knowledge’ sections – in fact, they are probably better described as ‘empty spaces’. And before I’m taken to task on this, I have started the one and only forum thread in the ‘spaces’ I have joined.
The key issue here, is the belief that a community of interest or practice can self-germinate. This is not the approach we’ve taken in developing the IDeA Communities of Practice. Similar in concept to GovXchange in terms of providing a platform for providing (and encouraging) knowledge sharing, but with no commercial baggage, and with each community being professionally facilitated. There is little risk of having empty spaces, because the facilitator ‘seeds’ the forum and knowledge library as part of the pre-launch planning activities.
However, this might prove an interesting experiment in community dynamics – i.e. how effective is a non-facilitated community compared with a facilitated one? I’ll keep an eye on this and provide an update in a month or so.
Catching up on some recent blogs (have been out of circulation during the Christmas break), and picked up an interesting article on the Definition of a Technology Steward on the Learning Alliances Blog by John Smith. The definition given is:
Interesting from the prospective that I guess I’m fulfilling this role for the public sector Communities of Practice environment being managed by the Improvement & Development Agency - IDeA. The current release (Phase1) provides fairly basic functionality for the social media toolkit, though with the advantage of providing a fully integrated environment for community collaboration. The next release, due to be implemented in February 2007, will deliver improved editing tools, support for RSS and newsfeeds, better alert facilities, tag clouds and synchronous collaboration (e.g. on-line meetings) - amongst many other things.
John goes on to say in his article that …"nobody wakes up spontaneously and says to themselves “I’m a technology steward!” Very true in my case, but would agree that having such a function or role does ensure that the technology supports rather than leads the development of the community. It’s important to remember that the community will be a mix of users familiar with social media tools (wiki, blogs etc) and those that are not. I’ve tried to ensure that all of the facilities are simple and intuitive to use, quite often at the expense of building in elaborate functions that would only be of benefit to a very small number of users. An over-elaborate, feature-rich interface may suit the ‘expert’ bloggers, but can be at best a distraction, and at worst a disincentive to engage for those who are fairly new to this form of virtual collaboration and knowledge sharing. The technology steward has to ensure that the environment meets the needs of the majority of the users. and not just the techies.
This will be my last posting for this year, so I’d like to wish all of my readers a very happy and peaceful New Year!
It’s getting difficult to keep up with the plethora of social networking tools, but have just stumbled upon StumbleUpon. Looks like it could be nifty little tool for discovering new sites and shared interests.
Interesting post by David Wilcox today about digital inclusion in the era of social networking. I have to admit to some concerns that there is an implied need to fully engage with the ‘digital world’ in order to be an effective social networker. The digital medium might present more opportunities for social networking, but doesn’t create an effective social networker. But perhaps I’m over-simplifying the argument.
David goes on to mention a workshop game he is developing for the Digital Challenge Inclusion Network that
will help people play through the design and development of
a digital inclusion strategy. He suggests a set of propositions for this game:
1. Digital inclusion is social inclusion.
2. The main social benefits stem from interaction.
3. Digital inclusion technologies must be personal.
4. Personal social benefit occurs in a network environment.
5. Inclusive networks require support roles.
6. Walled gardens offer limited benefit.
7. Digital inclusion requires a collaborative culture.
8. Civil institutions must join in.
9. Technology is not the starting point for design.
10. Go with the Web 2.0 flow.
11. Staff need to be digitally included too.
12. Walk the talk.
13. Co-design rather than consult.
For a more detailed explanation of the above, best to read the full posting.
Have just picked this up from Mike Gotta’s Collaborative Thinking blog. Microsoft’s plunge into the social networking and collaboration space doesn’t look too bad. Aggreg8 is for the use of the IT community, but it’s not so much the type of community that interests me as the overall functionality of the collaborative workspace. Very similar in many respects to the community workspace recently released by the IDeA, which I was was responsible for - e.g. you can keep track of your trusted network, find others through your network with similar interests, create sub-communities etc. Plus a range of collaboration tools, allowing members to create postings, post files, share events etc. The IDeA version has some additional features - such as a wiki and a self-contained blog, but lacks the autonomy at member-level to create their own groups. I’m not sure whether the public sector (most likely non-IT) is ready for this degree of flexibility… yet.
The IDeA community workspace is only in it’s first release and further functional enhancements are planned. I’ve now handed over responsibility for the site to my colleagues at IDeA, who I will encourage to monitor and learn from what is happening at Aggreg8.
