Synesthesia

Shared bookmarks for del.icio.us user Synesthesia on 2007-06-08

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Technorati Tags: BlogWalk, InformationArchitecture

Over at Headshift Suw Charman has done a great job of capturing the 11 core themes from the Blogwalk “Window Wiki“. As people reflect on the event there is discussion about how to best develop the ideas from this session and how to ensure better learning next time. Here’s my three-ha’porth, modified slightly from my own comment to that discussion:

Reflection and Memory

Memory-wise I find the “little black book” with a few key phrases or bullet points essential to remember the flow of the day.

However I’m not keen to have a formal plenary “writing it down” session; partly so as to make best use of face-to-face time; partly because I find that writing a too-detailed set of notes tends to freeze the thinking at that point rather than allow the ideas to ferment and mature over time. Ian Glendinning strikes the right chord here for me.

I do think that a reflection period at the end of each session would be a good way to surface and anchor thoughts without over-formalising.

Developing the Ideas

The converse is also true - to continue the conversations amongst a geographically-dispersed group we are going to need to write it down on blogs, wikis, emails, IM etc. etc. - perhaps that is where we will begin to express a written emergence of our thinking?

I’m beginning to think that as well as having the “seed” themes (the 11 groupings from the window) to work with it would be very helpful to have some candidate “research questions” in each of those areas to focus our output. Each question should combine a focus for the thinking with a “how could we test this in real life?”. Food for a later set of posts?

Technology

Of course we already have one target output in terms of defining the right toolset (the [bliki]IntraBliki[/bliki]).

The overwhelming majority of issues discussed on the day were around people, interactions, emotions and the psychology of blogging in business - indeed as David Wilcox notes many of these issues are those that relate to any organisational change. However I think it would be dangerous to think that there are no technology challenges left at all. In my experience unless the technology hurdle is very very low then it becomes a great hook for people to hang their “resistance to change” issues on. Anu Gupta has picked up on this by referring to this Harvard Business School article

Don’t forget that we are, by definition, a self-selected group who have been prepared to deal with the technology to get our ideas “out there”. The use of social software in the workplace will only succeed (what’s more should only succeed) if it is successful in letting people do what they need to do more easily - a means not an end.

Technorati Tags: BlogWalk, Meta_Blogging, Organisations, Social_Software

The theme of Blogwalk IV was the use of social software inside the firewall.

We noted that there were certain technological barriers to be overcome before the tools were sufficiently invisible to support a wide acceptance of corporate blogging / wiki etc.

I agreed to start some work to define the requirements of the ideal internal corporate blog / wiki tool so I’ve started writing some initial user requirements in the wiki. The root of the notes is at [wiki]IntraBliki[/wiki], please join in if you are interested.

Technorati Tags: BlogWalk, Organisations, Social_Software, Software_Development

Yesterday was Blogwalk IV - a very enjoyable and mind-stretching day talking with other bloggers on the theme of “How will the world of work change as a result of social software use inside the firewall”.

Thanks to the excellent “light touch” facilitation from Lilia Efimova and Johnnie Moore we covered a range of topics technical, cultural, managerial, commercial and more… (there will be more posts over the next few days as I and others get on with our agreed actions!)

Some of the other people there: (apologies if I’ve left you off)

• Ian Glendinning
• David Wilcox
• Anu Gupta
• Riccardo Cambiassi
• Suw Charman
• Martin Roell
• Chris Macrae
• Ed Mitchell
• Louise Ferguson
• Lloyd Davis
• Desiree Gosby
• Omar Green
• Mark Brady
• Paul Goodison

Lee Bryant dropped in for lunch
and Matt Mower joined for dinner…

Disappointed that George Por couldn’t make it but I’m sure we will catch up again soon George!

Technorati Tags: Bloggers_Meetups, BlogWalk, Organisations, Social_Software