Just thoughts …

Category: Blogposts

  • Google+ has landed …

    Well something had to wake me up! It arrived this morning, courtesy of an invite from Paul Hobson which worked! I guess it’s connected to having your Google language set to English(US) – yes it rankles but it has its benefits. Anyway, I’m up and running and have given it the once over.

    I like Circles – they look a much better alternative to Facebook Groups in two use cases (at least):

    1. For closely defined groups that you want to keep reasonably leak-proof for people you trust (ie family and REAL friends) or who have a coherence of their own (ie a volunteer group, charity, etc), it could really work as a virtual meeting-point and archive of activity.
    2. For corporates frightened of Facebook and never having taken to Yammer, then Circles could be the answer as you can define your own circles and again (and I haven’t checked the security model in detail yet) retain an element of firewall to the circle. [I’ll report back on that in a later post.]

    In addition to Circles, I do like the way Google+ is presented; the way your profile is shown, the way you can edit it and the detail you can change so that you can really present yourself, the way you want to be [I haven’t quite worked-out the various communication symbols yet … but I will by the end of the day!]. I also like the presentation on the iPad – the mobile version – it’s really clean and passes usability tests (for me). Finally (and here I’m speaking as a Chrome and iGoogle user) the integration with the rest of the Google stuff on the desktop is really good. In my Chrome taskbar, I now have a David+ tab, and a notifications button, and the same is true of iGoogle – a new tab has appeared.

    You can see the future on the Google desktop therefore – this is what it will look like. I think, just possibly, Google may have got this right – perhaps the time and effort in getting it wrong with Wave and Buzz might have not been so bad a thing after all.

    Finally, the integration with Picasaweb is also very good and I wait to test the video chat functionality – this could be the real killer functionality. I think Facebook have got a real competitor this time, and for corporates (as long as the security model is granular) there may be a good entry-level collaboration suite to add to the increasing Google in the Cloud offering.

  • Emergent enterprise (and disruptive technologies)

    [Originally posted on “Lofty thoughts …” 28th May 2009]

    I was pointed towards this article from a non-traditional source – retail banking. I think there are some lessons to be learnt from it, foremost amongst those being “have a little courage”.

    Quite a while ago I posted my first blogpost on what was being called then “disruptive technologies”. I didn’t like that term then, and I still don’t. I said at the time that there was no way one was going to get Web 2.0 technologies adopted in any organisation – if you called them disruptive. I used the term Information Services 2.0 to describe the type of changes that I felt need to occur within a central IT Services organisation if it was going to be able to “consume” web 2.0 apps into its service offering. Since then we have seen Library 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 emerge as terms describing very similar ideas. I refer you to Brian Kelly’s really excellent blog for further discussion on these and other web-related matters.

    However in James Gardiner’s blogpost he makes it clear that giving employees unexpected freedom to express themeselves can have unexpected and to be welcomed consequences. He says …

    “Unsurprisingly, a year on, none of the doomsday scenarios
    hypothesised when we made it possible for staff to create their own
    internal communities have come to pass. Of course, such a fortuitous
    outcome would largely be expected by everyone who participates in broad
    web based communities externally. It was not, however, to long term
    traditionalist used to iron control, but they have largely been
    mollified by the lack of significant negative consequences.

    But now we are beginning to see a new phenomenon. I call it
    the Emergent Enterprise: staff are not only having their say, they are
    actually changing the way things work in material ways.

    You see, along with social media, we gave our people the
    ability to create rudimentary business process and publish those as
    well. The idea was that workgroups would be able to automate things
    they did on a day to day basis easily, and without any input from the
    central IT function.”

    Now you can see that this has a distinct hint of “lean thinking” in it, so yet again a concordance between the lean and the emergent enterprise as typified by Cardiff University’s Modern Working Environment programme. James goes on to say …

    “My real interest in this “emergence”, however, does have
    to do with the strategic questions which face us going forward. As
    innovators, we know the biggest long-term threats to institutions
    rarely come from large, established competitors. No, it is the start-up
    crowd, with their nimbleness in responding to boutique opportunities
    and niche segments which are the competitive issue here. The problem is
    there are so many of them that a strategic level response is neither
    possible nor appropriate.

    But an “emergent” response, forming and norming by itself is
    just what is needed. Then, when a competitor becomes strategic, our own
    response will have grown to the point where it can be strategic as
    well.”

    … and this strikes a real chord with me. The Emergent University in a post credit crunch world will be a nimble university, one that has enabled its staff to effect change and one that is fully equipped (and that means educated and trained staff) to make full use of its strategic technological investment. James’ closing comments are these …

    “What I don’t doubt, though, is that emergent behaviours in enterprises
    – especially banks – will be one of the most powerful competitive
    weapons we’ll have in the future. You see, everyone always says that
    “people are the most important resource” and that “the war for talent”
    will be one of the great competitive battlegrounds in the coming years.
    The thing about the Emergent Enterprise is that it allows all that
    great resource to actually make a difference.”

    And I say amen to that too!