E L S U A ~ A KM Blog Thinking Outside The Inbox by Luis Suarez

Social Networking Attracts the Big Iron Boys – Where Re-focusing on the People Is a Must

(Previously, on elsua – The Knowledge Management Blog at ITtoolbox)

Tags: Matthew Ingram, Social Media Today, NYT, Cisco Systems, Tribe, Social Networks, Social Networking, Social Computing, Social Software, Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, Knowledge Management, KM, KM 2.0, Collaboration, Communities, Knowledge Sharing, IBM, Lotus Connections, BlogCentral, Roller, Activities, Activity Centric Computing, Dogear, Fringe, Weblogs, Wikis, Social Bookmarks

Last week Mathew Ingram, one of the folks participating actively over at the Social Media Today group, of which I am a member as well, created an interesting and thought-provoking weblog entry where he is actually questioning the business value of large enterprises entering the world of social networking and, perhaps, work their way through social computing within the enterprise. The article is titled Social networking attracts the Big Iron boys and you can find it over here. It is actually an article that relates as well to a piece of news published over at NYT, Social Networking’s Next Phase, on a recent announcement that Cisco Systems will be purchasing Tribe.net.

As I have mentioned above, it surely makes for an interesting read as Matthew actually questions whether large enterprises would be able to pull it off and adapt to, and adopt, social computing in order to help people connect with one another much better than whatever they may have been doing thus far by diving into social networks and providing their own takes on the overall effort.

His conclusion is rather enlightening and, certainly, spot on:

"What makes a social network function isn’t so much the tools as it is the attitude. You gotta have the “want to.” And that isn’t something you can get out of a box."

Yes, indeed, that is something that I have been saying all along myself in both of my Internet weblogs around the world of knowledge sharing and collaboration and how it is shaping up the way things are happening in Knowledge Management at the moment. Yes, that so-called KM 2.0 that seems to have brought Knowledge Management back into the spotlight (And about time!). It is no longer about the tools, nor the different processes involved. It is actually on something that we haven’t been focusing on quite a lot in the last few years: the people! That is right, that is what makes social networks successful in the consumer market, but also within the Enterprise.

So as much as saying that, we should also take into account that apart from building the different tools and technologies around social networks, we also need to make the necessary investments and place the focus on the people themselves. Help them to understand the key points of a social network, the benefits, the business value (Not only for themselves but also for the businesses they work for and the customers they support), how to get things going, how to find the time to be able to dive into the conversations, how to get around the different tools, how to connect out there with everyone else and the list goes on and on and on.

There is no denying that having just a social network for the sake of having one, which is what most businesses are probably thinking about at the moment (Just good for the hype and the buzz!), is not the right approach. Businesses should also think what they are going to do to place the focus on the people, to actually give them the chance to try out the social network(s) and engage with the rest of the knowledge workers. Without looking into that and addressing it well ahead of time, there is not a single social network out there that will survive over time and for an extended period of time.

It is a cultural thing, to say the least, for sure. Knowledge workers need to be shown how to work and operate in social networks, so that they understand how much they differentiate themselves from the traditional and standard way of knowledge sharing and collaboration they have been doing all along and up until now. Take, for instance, the example from IBM itself and its recent announcements of such social computing offerings like Lotus Connections and Lotus Quickr.

IBM is not coming around to social networking and social computing within the enterprise just now. It has actually been going on for years! Most of the components from Lotus Connections, for instance, have been up and running behind the firewall for several years already. Such is the case of the weblogging component (BlogCentral running Roller), Activities, Social Bookmarks (With Dogear), Profiles (With strong influences from Fringe) and Communities. There are already behind the firewall thousands of webloggers, weblog entries, social bookmarks, tags, profiles, several hundred communities, thousands more of activities and it keeps growing further day in day out.

What has been happening all along during this time was basically preparing the way for us to provoke that cultural change / shift ourselves (Again that focus on the people!) and start thinking that social networks can provide a business value while at work. We have been having the tools for a while now and throughout all this time it has been an inspirational path towards adopting most of that social computing tools in such a way that knowledge workers have been in control of the flow of information and knowledge all along, which is where it should have been from day one. To such extent that nowadays quite a few of us would probably not know any longer what to do without them.

They have integrated so much into our day work stream that thinking of having a day pass by without connecting with your own social networks is just another wasted day! That is exactly what Matthew is referring to in his article! The fact that for social networks to survive in the business world knowledge workers need to breather, nurture and soak in them. The more, the better. They are the ones who can change the rules (Already happening!) and shape up the way they would want to share their knowledge and collaborate with others.

So what are you doing in your day to day work? Are you connecting to your social networks behind the firewall and beyond? Have you helped provoked the cultural change yet? Will it ever happen? Your choice.

Informal Learning by Jay Cross – Part Deux

Tags: Learning, Informal Learning, Informl, Jay Cross, Learning 2.0, Knowledge Management, KM, Collaboration, Communities, Social Computing, Social Networking, Social Software, Learning Technologies 2008, Don Taylor, YouTube, Participatory Web

No, that is right. This is not the second take from Jay Cross on Informal Learning. Actually, this is a follow up to a previous weblog post that I have shared over here not long ago where I actually included the links to three video clips stored in YouTube by Jay Cross himself in which he gets to talk about Informal Learning. Quite some interesting stuff! Well, it gets better. Much better. Not long ago, I discovered another video clip that Jay has put together. I found it through the Learning Technologies 2008 weblog that Don Taylor currently maintains and if the first three were really good ones this other take is just as good. If not better.

It lasts for a bit under 10 minutes and for those folks who are interested in finding out some more about what Informal Learning is all about, and how to get a good and descriptive overview, this is certainly one of the best options out there. In it you would be able to find out how Informal Learning is "everything that is not Formal Learning". Yes, I know that is going to sound pretty much like common sense, but Jay has got a good point actually. Informal Learning is something that we are all going to be making use of all the time, as opposed to formal learning where it has got a much stricter set of rules that would need to be followed. One of which is a specific and fixed period of time for that type of learning. It is not necessarily a continuous process, like informal learning is.

One of the things though that I have enjoyed quite a bit from the video Jay has put together is the fact that he establishes a very close connection between Informal Learning and social networks, the latter becoming really key and paramount for the success of the former. Because after all, "The most powerful instruction technology ever invented is human conversation". Does that ring a bell? Anyone? Yes, indeed, social networking at its best! Who would have ever thought about that, right? Something so relatively simple, yet so powerful, and underutilised. Get involved with your own social networks and pimp up your own informal learning while at work. I doubt it would ever get better than that!

Check out as well his recommendations on how different businesses can adopt informal learning techniques by improving the way conversations flow with some real and concrete examples of what businesses could make use of. With some really good quotes as this one: "Learning is an act that you do yourself [..] People can train you but they cannot learn you".

Finally, the last part of the video tries to address the mix of Informal Learning with Web 2.0, i.e. "the participatory Web" and how they are actually coming together quite nicely by helping address growing issues like when the baby boomers generation starts making its way out of the workforce. Certainly, making use of social computing and Informal Learning you have got a pretty good chance of being able of retaining most of, if not all, of the knowledge from those baby boomers before it is too late. So what are you doing to retain that knowledge? Are you making use of social networks and Informal Learning to address some of those different issues? Here is the embedded video from Jay so that you can get to check it out for yourself. Totally worth it the 10 minutes he has put together. Thanks much, Jay! Lots of great stuff in there! Thanks for sharing it with us all!