I've been avoiding my blog...or have I just been tweeting?

I knew it was a while since I posted, but really, since March is kind of embarrassing.

I have been doing a lot of thinking about it, and also reflecting on the use of micro-blogging and communally watching television via Twitter.

For those in Australia, this has been particularly evident in Masterchef. This show was a creeper for me. I watched some of the earlier episodes, and then maybe twice a week, then all of a sudden, I couldn't stop. Then I discovered that others were likewise addicted to watching - and sharing their experiences via Twitter. The show finished last Sunday, and the conversation continues.

I find fascinating this expression of getting together and in actuality, talking (and sometimes yelling) at the TV together. I joined in myself - and quickly found that I had to manage my twittering to be only in ad breaks, so I could concentrate on the show itself.

People tweeted about their favourite (and non-favourite) contestants, what they cooked on the show, shared photos of their own food creations, kept others up-to-date about progress and just generally revelled in the shared experience of what good food (and a competition around it) means to us.

So to what end, and what function? Well, community around shared experience springs to mind. Also, similar to conference/event tweeting, I found the updates very useful one night of the finals when I couldn't watch the show. I did get a sense of the atmosphere, activity and progress through the collective thoughts of a diverse group of people. And it was fun.

It's interesting to note too the spread of Twitter - more and more it's a mainstream activity - every day I see another established organisation promoting their Twitter handle and see increased use of it in general. And particularly for television shows. It's a great 'low barriers to entry' conversational tool.

For me, it's taken the place in many cases over my blogging....hence the long hiatus here!

Distilling my thoughts on the Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum

A month on, I continue to reflect on the content and conversation from the Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum (also known by the Twitter hashtag e2ef); and observe how this plays out.

There are a number of interrelated themes that have stuck with me:

• People and technology: it's culture change and trust in people
• The need for executive support; and the ‘grass-roots’ business ready to adapt
• The myth of ‘it’s time-wasting’ compared to the real business value to be gained
• Work/life balance: the blending of the work and personal
• Make the tools easy to use: If you have to ‘train’ people to use them, there’s something wrong
• Implement through rapid prototyping, iterative cycle, i.e. ‘Have a go, find what sticks, make it better’

What’s been sticking with me lately is the culture of trust and people, and how issues surrounding this can be a barrier to using Enterprise 2.0.

My thinking around this is that in business today, there are so many standard or traditional type procedures which have been in existence for a long time, in some cases decades: where both internal and external communication for an organisation is easily controlled and managed; where systems have a long implementation and testing process. And Enterprise 2.0 shakes this up, where the tools flatten the entire control aspect and make things visible and easy.

That can be confronting for many people, and not only those in management. Old habits die hard, even if a better option emerges. Open minds more readily try out and accept a new way of doing an established activity and I believe that this is where we are now – finding those open minds.

There are so many new ways of doing things, to communicate, to get work done. We’re in the midst of a phase that has some parallels with that earlier killer app, email. I’m thinking back to the recent past where, in the absence of alternatives, email became the default communication tool for pretty much everything. An essential business tool.

Yet I remember when email came into use (at least where I was working) in the 1990s. At the time, the company had one (that’s right, one) external email address. A few times a day someone had the task of checking the email account to see if any messages had come in.

The underlying thinking seemed to be that if everyone had an email address, they’d be wasting time emailing their friends and not working. Like it is with the phone at work. And the web. There are so many tools and distractions.

Again, the underlying assumption seems to be that people can’t really be trusted to focus and do their work. But what if people are using these new tools to do their work, and more efficiently?

So coming back to the e2ef and the conference program and speakers. Here are some of the many things that resonated with me…

• Enterprise 2.0 is creating the next phase of organisations, helping us create new organisations. You cannot map this out – it’s experimentation. It’s about learning lessons and applying what was learned. (Ross Dawson)
• Rigid controls discourage participation and serendipity (Peta Hopkins, Bond University)
  
• Don’t be afraid, just be honest (Nathan Wallace, Janssen-Cilag)
  
• A new era that challenges our concepts of hierarchy, privacy, and what’s in/out of the firewall. A culture of sharing rather than blame. Get people to focus on the value of the outputs rather than the inputs – this helps deal with the ‘myth of time-wasting’. Email has become the electronic equivalent of snail mail. (JP Rangaswami, BT Design)
  
• Bandwidth and security issues are people issues, not technical issues (Peter Williams, Deloitte Digital)
  
• Expect that people can handle social interaction – we’ve been doing it for a long time. Expect to have a group of people who are adults. The dynamic around people and technology – it’s connecting people, so it’s about how they interact and how they feel. (David Backley, Westpac)

(On the Enterprise 2.0 blog Ross Dawson has provided links to speaker presentations)

So to me, all of this says that no matter what the technology, there are human beings behind it. We have needs, we work things out, and we engage and are effective to the level of our own capacity and desires. It doesn’t matter if new tool comes along and people start using it – the behaviour and the culture (for good or for bad) would have been there all along. The tool simply makes it more visible.

And in all of this, failure is part of the equation. Human beings learn from their mistakes. This is no different in the environment of Enterprise 2.0. And this environment is providing us with a huge opportunity - to do things differently, to find the knowledge and advice we need quickly, and collaborate and learn from each other, no matter where we might be located.

I tweeted a whole lot during e2ef; and on reading back, I found this one: “sometimes need to put things out there and see what happens, how it works. Culture change – ‘fail fast, fail cheap' - and learn”.

Keep tweeting it up

I’ve been musing lately about Twitter. Particularly going home on the train. Twittering or reading tweets is a good diversion on public transport, way better than the MX (free afternoon newspaper). I also wrote a blog post in my head going home on the train, but didn’t actually write it down, so I’m trying to reconstruct it here.

I was talking to some of my work colleagues recently and showing them Twitter. I showed them some tweets and described how I use it to stay in touch with people, information and up-to-the-minute thinking. While showing them the Twitter screen on my mobile phone, I used the now-familiar (to me) terms like '@ handles', ‘followers’, ‘following', ‘retweeting’; or ‘RT’, and didn’t think much about it. Then one person turned to the other bemused, saying "it’s a whole other language, isn’t it".

I have friends who aren’t yet on Facebook, so when I talk about Twitter, I can get eyes going momentarily blank – as I see them trying to comprehend what I’ve said…I’ve gone too far into the language of the tool (think about the meaning of ‘I wrote on their wall’, ‘poked him’ or ‘status update’ if you’ve never seen Facebook).

At work with my team, we’ve noted that in a time period of 10 minutes we could communicate any number of ways: face-to-face, Yammer, email and Twitter. This may seem absurd to the uninitiated, but it happens so frequently that often I don’t even think about it. For us, these things have become regular work tools.

So it’s interesting to me that when I discuss these new communication/collaboration/learning tools, some people express in wonder where do I find the time, or have an immediate negative reaction to the concept, or are even offended. Yet I’ve also seen this change when they try it out and see what works for them, i.e. they find their own meaning and context (and their network of people online).

I’m not a particularly early adopter; it’s just that I find it fascinating how people communicate and collaborate – what they say and do, what works, what doesn’t. And how we work it out together. And how often these networks, in particular Twitter, operate on ‘the kindness of strangers’.

In my case, I’ve grown to know people through Twitter. There are some I’ve met briefly face-to-face and then follow. When I do see them in person again, conversation is easy, there is more personal context because we’ve been seeing our conversations online. I’ve met people through Twitter and then later on face-to-face, and with some I don’t remember how I met them first. There’s a blurring between the virtual and the F2F. I’ve had Twitter exchanges with people on the other side of the world, who I probably never will meet.

And since I’ve had web access on my mobile I’ve understood more and more the power of these social networking tools and their potential to connect people – anytime, anywhere – you don’t need to go to a desktop and take the time to log in.

Several recent examples show the real and practical use of Twitter on web-enabled mobile devices. I’m thinking about the bushfire crisis in Victoria, where both ABC Radio 774 and cfa_updates posted (and continue to post) alerts and information via Twitter that can help people keep informed.

Twitter seems fast approaching mainstream. In my local newspaper The Age, there have been many recent articles about it (including a good one explaining the ‘how to’ and why to’).

This article also talks about celebrity twitterers, and quotes Stephen Fry’s thoughts on Twitter in his blog, which I like so much I’m going to RT it here: “I love how Twitter confirms my all too often assaulted belief that most humans are kind, curious, knowledgeable, tolerant and funny. The absurd constraints of the 140 character tweet seem oddly to bring out the best in wit, insight and observation.”

Thanks Stephen, I agree. :-)

(and BTW, I'm @helmitch on Twitter)

Onward into 2009

Back to work tomorrow after three weeks’ glorious break and recharge. I needed it after a very big year of projects, discoveries and learnings in Web 2.0 and social media.

During my downtime I consciously decided to also take a break from participation online, including mobile, as much as possible. It was a test to find out what draws me in most. So what happened?

Well I did stay pretty much away from things, but after a while, I was drawn back to the web, because…I like it and use it to stay connected to what people are thinking and doing – both for work and personal.

I lurked quite a bit, and could stave off those feelings to participate…until today.

So on reflecting about my experiment, here’s what I found over the past few weeks. It’s not exhaustive or scientific, of course:

• I really like Facebook to find out what people have been up to, particularly personal friends and their updates – and I did respond occasionally. For me it’s a virtual access point with people I already know face-to-face.
• I like Twitter so I can stay across what people are thinking and doing in my areas of professional interest. Often there are great tip-offs about blog posts, links to information, etc. Twitter’s great for providing an access point to people who do what you do, as well as leading thinkers, authors and practitioners who tweet. I may not have met these people F2F and they may not know me.
• I played around on Linkedin a bit updating my profile, etc. I did this too with Facebook re my profile.
• I took the time to read blog posts more fully than I normally do, including watching videos. Great way to immerse myself in a topic area when I had few time constraints.
• I did look at my work email now and then on my mobile, although I resisted doing anything with what I saw (apart from one urgent thing). The magnetic draw of having the BlackBerry email there is just too tempting to resist looking at it from time to time!
• I thought about other things I’m connected to (e.g. Second Life, Flickr), but didn't really do anything.

I noted in my lurking that quite a few people were cleaning up their RSS readers and so forth.

That is something I will need to do – I have way too many RSS subscriptions to meaningfully get across them all. Realistically I read about a third of my 51 feeds. Will I have the courage to edit??

So tomorrow it will be full on into things again, with 2009 bound to bring lots of change, challenges and connections along the way. Happy new year!

Looking back, and looking forward to participation

I recently had one of those experiences of looking back with fresh eyes on some work that I did more than two years ago...and thinking it was OK! ;-)

In this case, I re-read parts of a mini-thesis I wrote for my masters study in virtual communication at RMIT University in 2006. Back then, I found the emerging landscape of Web 2.0 and user generated content fascinating (and I still do).

During my research scoping, I found that ‘participatory media’ was becoming increasingly influential on the web. As I needed to make the paper have a business focus, I chose to research the impact of participatory media on brands. What’s happened now is that this term has been overshadowed by its alternative ‘social media’. (I think because it’s easier to spell and say!)

Apart from a few people at work and some friends, I’ve never really shared my research paper, so I thought I’d do so now. Feel free to take a look, tell me what you think.

It's called 'Brand engagement through participatory media'. Some of the examples might be old, however I think they're still useful and relevant. Here’s a few bits from the abstract:

• "This research paper examines the influence that participatory media such as blogs, online social networks and virtual worlds can have on the effectiveness of an organisation’s branding strategies. It considers the history and suitability of the web for participation and the relevance of participatory media for branding, particularly in a highly competitive and media-fragmented environment. It explores the shifts in consumer behaviour, technology and the growth of online communities that are driving the changes to a ‘participatory culture’. "

• "The research shows that through using participatory media, opportunities can be created to engage and build relationships and a deeper connection with an organisation’s brand. The analysis culminates in a set of starting points to guide an organisation in formulating participatory media strategies to develop positive relationships with consumers, therefore contributing to engagement with the brand."

Research paper - Brand engagement through participatory media

NB: One of the examples I used in my paper was Weird Al Yankovic’s video clip White and Nerdy, which landed on YouTube in August 06.

Apart from being completely hilarious (especially for Gen X I think), at the time of research the video was tracking at around 10 million views - a lot by any measure. Looking at it today, White and Nerdy has well over 41 million views – that has to be a record somewhere!

More angles on learning and collaboration

This week I presented at Comview, the annual conference of the VCTA, (business and commerce education). They wanted to hear about real life examples about what we (i.e. CPA Australia) were doing with blogs, wikis, online learning, etc with our members.

Each time I present I learn something about my audience. Interesting, yet unsurprising stats with this one. In a room of about 65 accounting teachers, I had a handful who’d blogged, a few who had used social media / web 2.0 tools in their classrooms, one who’d gone to Second Life and about a third of the room on Facebook.

Nearly all hands went up when I asked if their students or children were on Facebook.

I learned too that there is a growing movement among teachers (including accounting teachers) to use social media / Web 2.0 in the classroom. Comview had a number of sessions dedicated to engaging students using Web 2.0 tools. Questions and conversations during my session also showed this growing interest.

Those 'early adopters' recognise that their students live on this type of communication, and there are teachers who are 'evangelists' about using it to engage their students in the learning. To me, this shows a great opportunity for teachers and their students to engage and create an immersive and 2-way learning situation…and make it really fun.

Not necessarily age-related, there seems to be a 'technology adoption generation gap' where some teachers feel too time-poor to use these type of tools with their students - even though the benefit leads to students' greater attention. (this issue of course is not isolated to teachers only)

The whole online collaboration movement using social media, networks and Web 2.0 is fast evolving in the workplace, and more and more I see clear patterns in how it’s being used (or not used, or trying to be used), over and above pure social interaction.

I hear this a lot when discussing using social media in the enterprise for ‘real work’…. “But when will I find the time”, and “Where do you find the time for all of this”. We're in the midst of how to 'prove' the business value.

I think the key that we will find soon enough is – “What does this replace – where is it better, how does it help me to do my job more effectively?” and by doing this – save time, more engagement, better results.

After all, what did we do before the web? Before email? Before mobile phones? Before personal computers? Before answering machines? Before the telephone?

Things do find a balance, and I think we’re in the real midst of change with all of these virtual communication, connection and collaboration tools.

Going virtual in Second Life - why?

Last week marked the launch of a significant project that our team have been working on for months – our first ever event in a virtual world. I’ve been a fan of the potential of virtual worlds for a while. I was first fascinated by it in 2006 for research, then became a user in 2007, then on to immersion in 2008 with our event. Here's a snapshot of the venue (photo credit: Marcus Coghlan).

One of the aspects I love about the web is its ability to connect people no matter where they are in the world. One of the challenges with virtual communication is that not everyone experiences it in the same way, and the variation in the richness of the experience is widely skewed.

For example, if you’re in a chat/IM, you experience each other as a line of text and a user name. Especially if you have had no previous contact with each other, you can be left wondering who this person is and what they really mean. There are very few non-verbal clues.

With a teleconference, at least you have voice quality and inflection, but it’s disembodied. A videoconference is better, but like all before it, it’s two dimensional, and doesn’t work well with a large group.

In my experience too, often videoconferences include groups of people who are face-to-face in a meeting room, with one or two others brought in from the various locations. This means that all experience their meeting environment differently.

Some cannot see the other VC participants properly (e.g. if it is a large group and the lighting is not adequate in the room); plus if you are the only person remote on videoconference, you have an inferior experience to those who there majority of people are sitting. And to me, this is where virtual worlds come in.

The promise of virtual worlds (and I recognise that we are not quite there yet), is that you are all in the same environment together. It is an immersive, visual, rich environment. In the case of Second Life, you have a number of communication tools, including voice and IM.

This becomes four options as you can have one-to-one IM and voice call, as well as many-to-many voice and IM, where all can hear and see. Plus as a participant you experience each other as a physical presence through your avatar.

For our session, participants responded well. Feedback to date shows they valued the event, content and experience – we had them logging in from all over Australia and the world, including the UK and USA. Broadband and other technicalities aside, they all experienced the same environment, no matter where they were logging in from.

And it was in real-time, 3D, where each person’s avatar provided a visual and spatial indication of them as a person; and the event as an occasion, where interaction and Q&A were a natural part of proceedings. A much richer experience than if this was a webinar, videoconference, or video recording of a session.

In the case of our event, we had two speakers hosted in our conference venue:

Lindy McKeown (Decka Mah) presented on the educational aspects and uses of virtual worlds in a learning environment; while Lee Hopkins (Lee Laperriere), spoke about how business and accountants were using Second Life. I will post again with more info on their presentations, as we’re presently having our machinima of the event edited.

For myself (Helene Markova), I MC'd the event. More on this later too – I learned a lot from this experience, it was great!

For more reviews of the session, you can go to Lee Hopkins' wrap-up on the event, as well as our team members Alex Dalidakis and Mick Leyden, who have blogged their thoughts.

Also see our Flickr tag cpaaustralia-sl for photos, and watch our promo video below of our SL environment fly-through. And do visit our CPA Congress Centre in Second Life.