5 Important things to do in social and digital media apperance in 2012

Jan 2, ’12 1:11 PM

So what do So what do you have to do in 2012 to be on top in the social and digital media revolution, that is just going on?

1. CONVERGENCE of DEVICES

Todays usage of the Web will not be tomorrows usage of the web. As we are fully leveraging the investments in mobile infrastructure, so are the users. It won’t be long and more hits on your company website will come from mobile devices. So design for a multitude of devices. Ensure this whilst you are redesigning your sites. First, consider which content is important in mobile use cases. There are good samples, like Twitter, Facebook or Evernote.

Think also about the availability of data and information on all those devices. It is important to restart, where it ended before.

2. BE ONLINE AND OFFLINE

Whilst Offline is no longer a state you know, consider it. If you create your mobile apps, make sure that the user sees something. It is so boring to wait and get an error message (#Tagi). There are good samples like BBC or CNN, that to that very lovely. If you create Offline Content, please make it easy to get it your device. Well done by NZZ, differently done by the Süddeutsche Zeitung.

3. Make Social a Universal Principle

Social will be everywhere. So add value to it. Make it an interaction. Make it fun.  A few examples:

Allow the interaction between people in open, semi-open and confidential manner

Distribute points for actions done, when your customers and employees have to continuously fill out the same old boring forms.

Recognize the „most-pointed“ and „most commented“ employee.

4. ADAPT YOUR COMPANY AND THE EMPLOYEES

Give access to the new media, let the community do things, let them be quicker than the organization. Allow them to do things. They will apply common sense.

Most of the time, the IT-Department are not the „Bad guys“, but are made to execute what management have decided. To block platforms like Facebook, when every employee can use it during work time with their smartphones is absolutely fruitless and appears helpless.With younger employees and recent graduates, there is a chance that such rules will push them to prefer other employers. Unlimited Facebook use during work times must be curbed through good leadership.

5. MEASURE WHAT YOU DO
As usual, social media activities can be measured. So do it! Her applies what we always knew: If we don’t measure it, we cannot change it.
Do this and you will have a lot of fun in 2012
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2012 Technology Predictions

Dec 23, ’11 6:05 PM

So 2011 was the year of “Social” in any aspect. And now Social has arrived in companies. There are better or worse examples, but it is here.

Alan Lepofsky has written a wonderful summary from the employee stand point of what this might mean for you.

Consumerization continuous infiltrating the businesses

With that said, we now have Social Media tools in the businesses arena. But which problem did we want to solve with them? I know social software is the solution to all our collaboration and social networking needs.

It helps connecting people and content we need to get our jobs done and make our businesses successful. But why do we try to make “social” tools into “technology” gadgets. It is all about change, about crowd, about community, but not about IT. Sorry, it is a tool. It might help. So please let the community decide, give them what they had on the consumer side of things: The freedom of choice.

If you do not do that, you will fail and as Alan puts it: Employees start hating social software.

Big data is getting big 2012

The next prediction is an easy one: Big data is getting big this year. But what is the fuzz around Big data. What is the use of it. Again what is the problem someone would want to solve with it? It will help the business to make more out of the data. It will help to drive better and easier analytics. It might give you more information about the thoughts of clients, if you interlink all there available data together.

So lets Hadoop our way into big data. Lets try and learn. Be aware of regulations which might or might not contradict the things you are doing with the data.

Virtualization gets into the cloud 

Up to now, we have done virtualization of Compute, Storage. We have added reliable WAN to distributed processing of large data sets across clusters of computers. So we are going cloud. Or as I would put it: IT starts the industrialization of itself. This means that we can choose to “use” infrastructure (IaaS) or platforms as a service (PasS). We can buy it and pay for the usage. Something we were not able to have until now. There are specialized companies, like Amazon, Google, Microsoft, IBM and others that will give us the needed infrastructure

Important to know if one still wants to administer these solutions, if so you are opting for infrastructure, if you are willing to just use standardized platforms.

At the end, we will see Hybrid solutions of sourced and own-produced IT services.

End User Experience becomes important

With all the trends outlined above end user experience will become more important. How will the business handle the need for freedom with data privacy issues, with regulations and service needs in a partly sourced environment?

As attention to privacy will reach a peak, it justifies a closer look at which regulations are emerging and which have matured, and which technologies are deployed to deal with legal requirements and cultural expectations.

What will be the glue in such a complex environment, where powers are shifting to the user and away from the IT department? How to handle consumerization and the challenges from there?

Businesses need to answer those questions in due time. Otherwise the backbone of the company will suffer.

Anytime, anywhere, anyhow or device proliferation is happening 

Today most knowledge workers are probably using 4 different devices (PC, Phone, Business Cell Phone, Smart-phone). But are they really will to carry so much devices? What business are seeing the wish to cut that to probably two: A tablet and a Smart-phone. At least one of them can still be wired, but must not. The ability of having WLAN every where or worst case through Smart-Phone Tethering will solve that issue. So start to plan for those effects. Otherwise your business will choose a supplier able to do so.

Need more insights? Drop me a note. Merry Christmas and a happy new year.

 

 

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Jives goes IPO

Dec 13, ’11 3:31 PM

Jive Software sold its shares today in a very well received IPO. Jive is the continuous leader in Social Software in the workplace and Social Software for CRM. In both areas Jive is close with the expected partners.

If you intend to introduce Jive, please think about it as a social project, IT is your very last concern in doing such a thing. If you believe in communities you have to do things in this way. As usual in the workplace there some interesting elements:

  • Jive supports communities and crowds, hence make sure that you work that way. This means you don’t have the “Uber”-Administrator that can access and check. It is all done for and by the community.
  • Work posted into Jive should belong to your company, if you cannot prove that the employee was aware of that, you can get into trouble
  • Jive integrates well with other tools, so think about the things you want to use the tool for.

Thinking about this and other obstacles, make it clear why companies are slowly adopting Jive. If used wisely Jive has the ability to replace your “known” Intranet 1.0 and become the software of choice.

A very good sample of a Jive Introduction is the one from Swiss Re. It was a change project driven by the HR department. It believed in the community and it worked. This case study should give you some good insights.

More information can be provided.

 

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Startups that might do an IPO next year

Dec 4, ’11 8:54 PM

Aside of the big ones, like Facebook, there are some more decent companies looking to do an IPO. Following Goldman Sachs, this is the list of them:

  • Airbnb
  • Beachmint
  • Birchbox
  • Bluekai
  • Badoo
  • Box.net
  • BranchOut
  • Coupons.com
  • DropBox
  • Gogobot
  • Hipmunk
  • Instagram
  • Jawbone
  • Klout
  • Ness computing
  • Pinterest
  • Polyvore
  • Quantcast
  • Quora
  • Rent the runway
  • Rue la la
  • Rovio
  • Shopkick
  • Specific media
  • Survey Monkey
  • Square
  • TrialPay
  • Tumblr
  • Uber
  • Warby Parker
  • ZocDoc
  • Zoosk

Some personal additions:

  • Facebook
  • Sportify

Have a look. Some of them have rather clever business ideas. We will discuss some the companies and their ideas here.

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Assumptions are the start of any problem

Oct 12, ’11 10:28 PM

There is nothing to add to this

When You Assume, You Make An “Ass” out of “U” and “Me”

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8 rules which ensure the deadlock in the enterprise

Sep 24, ’11 7:11 AM

The following 8 rules will ensure the deadlock and non-delivery in any organization.

  1. Executives should entirely stay out or try to have everything under dedicated control
  2. Discussion of objectives and content changes should consistently be included at the informal level only
  3. Many activities will be instigated at the same time.
  4. Only the fittest survives
  5. A persistent and  relentless search for the causer of the problem should happen
  6. The sense and senselessness of existing rules should never be discussed publicly
  7. Decision-taking on the formal level should be very quick and must end in a consensus, that then informally can be called into question.
  8. The rate of change at the decision-making level should be always higher than at the implementation level.

It works successful, believe me! The source of this.

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Management by …

Aug 28, ’11 7:52 AM

We have all heard them. This little sentences, reminding us of things we do or dont:

  • Management by jeans
  • Management by helicopter

OK, it should be more serious:

  • Management by objectives
  • Management by delegation
  • Management by walking around

Just take a minute and think about your management style. What makes it special, what is its weakness.

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Get things done

Aug 11, ’11 9:46 PM

Get things done. Easy said, complex to do. What is the base idea behind it? Do it once, do it right! But how to judge and how to manage. There are several tools I tried. And there is one I use. So what is your experience in these respects? Ever worked with GTD?

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Speech – Act – Theory

Jul 5, ’11 5:35 AM

Yes there is a theory, that tells you what your speech might bring in terms intention to act.

Lets start from lowest to highest:

  1. Opinion
  2. Assertion
  3. Assessment
  4. Promise
  5. Request
  6. Commitment (rather private)
  7. Declaration (mostly public)

The assumption is that from promise up you can be sure that speech is followed by action. If you look at your working environment, you might see that there are moments where people are allowed to through in their opinions or assertions.

This then leads to management by assertion. This newly discovered style allows you to have a say in everything, whilst not having to action it normally. It leaves you in the wonderful position of judging after the fact somebody else has to deliver.

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There is nothing worse than a sharp image of a fuzzy concept

Jun 15, ’11 5:20 PM

There is nothing worse than a sharp image of a fuzzy concept.

Quoting Ansel Easton Adams (February 20, 1902 – April 22, 1984) who was an American photographer and environmentalist, best known for his black-and-white photographs of the American West, especially in Yosemite National Park.

Also quoting a friend in supply management, who is using this term often to describe a lack of conceputal work in management areas. Normally he uses this quote to describe their unability to describe the meta area of an issue. Most of us engineers tend to see the world just from one side, and when something is there, with some magic we can re-engineer it. Even if it is the result of a coincident.

If you don’t understand the concept, please don’t try to make a sharp image of it. It normally shows only the lack of oversight. Try to know the basics and derivate from there.

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