Building Social / Collaboration Platforms

I started my trek designing, developing, and managing social / collaboration platforms in 1996. Over those years I've been part of a lot of different projects, development of platforms, long term and short term strategy and planning with vendors in the space, and in recent years back helping design, and product management (from an advisory role and mentoring). I have also been framing product needs and flows for new systems (either plugging into existing social platforms for new major releases, adding these capabilities into existing platforms with distinctly different focus to augment them where other existing services can't fit, and / or building platforms from scratch). I have also been continuing to advising organizations by helping them understand their needs better and problem sets they are trying to resolve before they get into the selection process, so to best fit product to their actual needs.

The focus of this piece is for organizations looking at social and / or collaboration platforms or services for internal and / or external uses. This is to help provide some understanding when considering a build versus buy consideration, but also some background on platform and services design and development

Lessons Learned

The lessons learned aren't new lessons learned for me, but I'm finding they are still relevant and haven't shifted all that much in the last 7 to 10 years.

Build vs. Buy

The build versus buy question is oddly still asked. I had figured about 15 years ago that by 2010 organizations would mostly just consider buying a service or platform to use. Many organizations still are considering building, as social and collaboration seems easy. But,nearly always you want to buy a service or platform rather than building.

Why? Time. This is comparison is for getting things up and running and working smoothly at a somewhat foundational level.

On average, after going through needs assessment and right fitting a purchase decision a service or platform can be up and running optimally in around 9 months, with the usual range being 6 to 18 months. That is getting the service running, getting test groups in the service, optimizing and iterating the service, modifying the design and UI to meet needs, building taxonomies that work, getting onboarding created and honed, work through some lasting workflows based on needs, and getting community managers comfortable working with the service and patterns honed for the cultures they are working with. Most services and platforms can be up running and functional in 48 hours for very basic functions, usable in 2 weeks, working through initial groups and integrations in 3 to 6 months, and iterations and scale often span the 3 months to 18 month difference.

If you are building your own it is 2 years to 3 years on average to get something up and running and working smoothly. This 2 to 3 years is the comparison to the 9 month mark. Many well funded product development attempts are getting to feature parity with something they could buy in that 2 to 3 year span.

Why Build?

There a few reasons to go down the longer and more painful build path: 1) There isn't a product that remotely covers the complexities you are experiencing and have documented in your needs assessment (more than likely a good chunk of what you need to build can be bought); 2) The identity model and adaptive needs aren't supported by existing offerings (this is one of common reasons as identity models with adaptive use on most platforms are limited - most often limited on the free or bundled services - and in many platforms rather stiff and restrictive); 3) You are building or integrating a large collection of services that don't interconnect well and collaboration, social interactions, communication in and around them is essential; 4) The social components are internal to another platform you own and have built end-to-end. There are a few other edge cases to build rather than buy, but these four are the most common of the rare cases where buidling makes sense.

If building what is needed? The most important things needed is teams who have done this before a few times (yes not a team as this isn't a light effort). Building social platforms is hard and complex, it isn't adding commenting to content on an existing site, nor building a simple messaging system, but dealing with adaptive systems that will need to embrace and support many cultures and sub-cultures that intersect with their different mental models. See the roles needed in Team Roles Needed for Social Software Projects. If you have those covered, particularly the social sciences, and with people with serious depth on these, not just watched TED Talks, nor read light blog posts, nor the TLDR versions, but actually had years doing this on top of serious depth of understanding, then you may be ready.

How Can This Still Be So Lengthy?

Social software is hard and complex, which is the simple answer. There is a lot to build and account for. I've watched and worked with teams who have built a few platforms for social and collaboration in the past and sold them off. They have started anew and getting to a good platform with basic feature parity with some new functionality to move things forward it has been 2 years at a minimum.

In the past couple of years there have been quite a few new services surfacing that have design and development teams with nearly all members having 5 to 10 years of prior experience building and managing social platforms and in 6 to 9 months they have something decent, yet still a clumsy beta. The product isn't open to everybody. It normally goes through heavy iterations and most of them shut everything off for a few months for rebuilds and reopen beta again. A decently good and useable service and platform often hits that mark at the 2 year point, if not farther out.

Another reason it takes time is the adapting to changes and norms of use. Most organizations are looking at systems that will be relatively easy to understand for their employees and or customers so they spend minimal amount of time training and onboarding. The interaction patterns that are common and norms are rather fluid and shift a little or a lot every 9 months to 18 months or so. Patterns that were fine at the product development start, may have changed quite a bit in a year.

Social Interaction Design / User Experience is Complex

A few years back I framed out 20 social roles for different interaction model roles people fall into in social platforms / services. When I started talking about it vendors responded that they were lucky if they had two: User and Admin. In the past 6 years things have changed a little for vendors as they are trying to embrace more social roles. But, for community managers they are commonly working with 6 to 12 different roles and or personas, which has vendors working with a broad set of personas, sometimes beyond 15 (the social role is just one element of a persona and it is common in reality to have people with 4 or 6 different social roles they embrace across a few groups in a community or network.

Having those designing and developing a platform working from this understandings helps smooth some of the complexity. But, having solid familiarity with this diversity has become essential if building a service or platform that is expected to work broadly, which is what social platforms do.

The Wrap

Hopefully this helps a tiny bit when thinking through "should I build or buy" or "why is my social product development taking so long" questions.

Team Roles Needed for Social Software Projects

I have a lot of hands-on designing, developing, and managing of social / collaborative platforms since 1996 and regularly advise product makers, vendors, and buyers around right fitting and understanding then working on solving problems they may have. One of the things that was regularly surfacing around 2007 as enterprise social platforms were getting taken seriously. But tool selection and roll out of them was often bumpy at best as there was a lack of the breadth of understanding around many services. This was the case with many vendors, but also really much the case on the customer side of things. When working through discovery of the problems that customers were having, usually in the “One Year Club”, many of the issues correlated to the lack of understanding the breadth of perspectives important to social and collaborative work and environments.

Looking at situations where products were right fits gave insight into what works well. The success factors surfaced where vendors with well rounded products that were correct fits for certain customers [commercial social platforms that understand social interactions at various scales and get their products right for specific users] and roll outs that have rather solid adoption. These all had breadth and depth of understanding. Looking at what helped them be successful it wasn’t one or two things, nor five, it was they had most of 14 different roles with roles in their selection, development, strategy, planning, launch, and running of their offering covered.

If you wanted to have success it became clear that having breadth and depth with these 14 roles would provide a good team that could help work through many, if not all the difficult struggles most social software / services rollouts and programs running face at one point or another. When looking across many of the projects I worked with in the One Year Club category (or colleagues who were working with programs that needed help) most of the efforts didn’t have the 14 roles covered. Most had 2 to 4 roles covered at best.

This gap was glaringly apparent when large parts of a rollout were in the custom build model, much like many organizations were struggling with around Microsoft SharePoint or other build your own solution platforms. Organizations weren’t buying finished products, but a platform that focussed on heavy customization (often with difficulty getting what they hope to do working well). Part was what came out of the box from SharePoint was a bit rough (3rd party solutions like Newsgator/Sitrion were quick ways to get things working well for social and collaboration needs in SharePoint with little hassle). What the teams working on SharePoint were lacking were 10 to 12 roles that they desperately needed for depth of understanding around how humans are social, how things function, ease of use in contexts, and other essential needs.

Moneyball of Social Software Teams

This breaks down the 14 roles at a somewhat high level. At times myself and others have called this the Moneyball system of social software. In baseball, which Moneyball focussed on, they focussed on what made the Oakland Athletics team with a low budget able to compete with large budget teams. Big budget teams focussed on home runs and star pitching along with other simple understandings of analysis. What the Oakland Athletics did was look at what makes a winning team and how to measure things based on outcomes by understanding things more broadly and deeply.

What I ran into was similar, though understanding the roles and needs to have a solid well rounded social software team, so to get solid successful results. Most solutions were rolled out with 2 to 5 roles with depth, but what are the other factors that also have deep value and because they were missing had a less than positive impact? Over the last 6 years or more I’ve shared this list of 14 in workshops and with long engagement clients (but at a deeper level), but also help them cover the ground across a few of them where I have that depth and breadth (from 20 years of experience with social software and formal learning).

One last thing to realize with this list, particularly if you are on the customer side, is you may not have these skills and roles, but your software or service provider cover some you are missing or help narrow the gaps for roles missing.

The 14 Social Software Roles for a Solid Team

IT Development

IT development is usually the one role that social software rollouts have covered. The development portion and getting the code right is often not an issue. This role covers development, integrations, stability, and upgrades / patches.

Content management

Content managers are incredibly helpful not only with content management practices and needs, but could also cover content strategy needs as well (if content strategy isn’t there working with communication specialist helps close this need). Most social environments have professionally created content that are part of their offerings as blogs or other more planned content models. But, content also surfaces out of conversations and cooperative activities in communities and groups. This content can be repurposed as it is or honed for other targeted and / or broad uses. Content managers also often works with document management and taxonomy roles for ease of finding and helping keep content well structured and easily found.

Community management

The community manager is a role that some organizations and services understand the need for to be successful. Others have yet to understand the need for this yet. Having a solid community manager who can help set the tone and culture of the community and groups, as well as help set good skills and practices in place for members of the social offering is a great asset. The community manager is the guide, host, and facilitator, but often has good depth working with difficult situations and turning them into very good outcomes. Good community managers are also adept at seeing needs and gaps in tools and services that need attention. A good community manager can’t fix a tool that isn’t a good fit for an organization, but can help get through that state to one that is a better fit, then help the better fit thrive.

Communication management

Solid communications management folks help with finding solid messages and well created content into a social environment. But, from a social perspective they also should have strength seeing content from users in the social environment that needs attention (as it is positive and needs more exposure, or it is negative and needs a calm way handling of it). Understanding the life cycles of content and workflows around finding, creating, honing, and right fitting content and messages shared from the organization as well as from the users is powerful and helps bring life to the social environment. Setting good content guidelines is another way the communication management role contribute to social environment success.

UX general design

User experience design is essential and has long been overlooked in enterprise until lately, as the focus services being designed for use and ease of use weren’t considered as needed when you could just send people to hours of training. But, with social offerings there are a lot of diverse elements that people are having to work through, besides how to get something done in a platforms or service. Good usable design with regular user research (prior to taking steps, as well as while designing potential options, and honing what is in place) helps take the rough edges off that get in the way of people using as well as understanding what a service does, and can do.

Social interaction design

General UX design isn’t enough with social platforms as there are a lot of interactions with the service and system, which is used to interact with others (which is difficult for many on its own). Understanding the design of social interactions (what is clicked and then what happens after it) so that the tools aren’t getting in the way, but also some of the rough edges of human social interactions are also eased is badly needed. There are broad options for buttons, forms, profiles, reactions, likes, etc. and social interactions designers work to understand what are the best fits for the contexts at hand and what the impacts will likely be with distinct user groups. User testing around social is a little different from general user testing as the situation requires working with a diversity of end points (people) at either end of what is put in place that need to be understood. Testing also needs to include various depth of use and maturity with the service. These help find a good fit in the social interaction design that works well.

Data analyst

Data analysts are essential to help understand benchmarks prior to starting down the path with social offerings, but also are needed to dig into the data to see how people are and aren’t using the services. Many platforms have decent data analysis, but it only scratches the surface and much better analysis is needed; particularly in larger solutions, more mature use environments, scaling, as well as those that have a diverse user segmentation. Social environments change drastically as they grow and act differently with more diversity as they scale. Data analysts should have good understanding of Social Network Analysis (SNA) / Organizational Network Analysis (ONA as well as many social analytics capabilities for seeing diversity, clustering, social scaling changes, etc. Having a solid data analyst helping with capturing the data that is needed, keeping privacy in mind, and slicing and making sense of the data with clarity has a big impact with what deeply matters in early stages and as use scales and matures.

Change management

Change management is not only essential for preparing organizations and people for a new service and offering, but deeply needed for the changes that come along with using these services. Digital social environments help enable normal networked social patterns that are well covered in Wirearchy as the shifts in ease of connecting in a digitally enabled networked environment can be disruptive. This is mostly in a positive way, but is not always perceived as positive if it is not known the changes may be coming. Helping people understand what the new services do and the needed mental models for working in this way are areas change managers can help with, as well as work with others around legal and compliance issues that need consideration.

Document management

Document management, with a solid understanding of social environments, helps with working through how to archive valuable content and conversations, but also how to ease finding and connecting to systems of record from inside a social offering. This connection needs to work in both directions, one is surfacing documents and resourceswell (within permissions guidelines, compliance, and connecting to the right / latest version), but also working out how to show the document or record is being discussed and used. This use activity around a record can be a valuable indicator that it may be getting updated, or caveats have surfaced that are valuable to all who view and need the record.

Social scientists (ethnographer, urban planner, sociologist, etc.)

The social scientists are often overlooked, but should be one of the first roles included. Social scientist, particularly those who have graduate school level of work, see social environments differently than most who don’t have that background (this may be a personal bias, but talking with others with similar background the “how was this essential understanding not seen” is a common phrase in reviewing social offerings). Social environments are under constant change and morph as (sub-)cultures intersect and social environments scale. The questions asked by social scientists, along with framings with models around how humans interact, while watching for conflict and the patterns that surface in constant change and are not seen are nothing less than essential. One of the common downfalls with social platforms is around they often don’t allow people to be social like humans are social. There is no better way to keep an eye out for that to mitigate for it, but also understand how humans are social at various scales than having social scientists involved.

Taxonomist/folksonomist

Taxonomies are essential for easily grouping information, conversations, and content and for helping people find relevant and related matter. But, language and mental models for what things are called and are related to are often far more diverse and emergent than taxonomies allow for, so embracing folksonomy is also essential for social environments. Having a taxonomist involved will help set categories and information structures in place that will enable the capability for solid finding and refinding. If that taxonomist also embraces folksonomies (and the service has the foundation for it) the ability to have emergent taxonomies that take less work to keep up to date than traditional taxonomies can happen. Also embracing folksonomy helps new ideas and mental models (these emerge through new members, training, cultural shifts, etc.) be included in the ease of finding and grouping of findable and refindable information.

Knowledge management

Knowledge managers seem to be in and out of fashion in organizations these days, but no matter what the rest of an organization believes having solid knowledge management as part of the social software team is essential. Early social platforms were around 20 years ago were being built on understandings for how knowledge is created and honed, as well as changes over time. The social platforms had issues, but the foundations in knowledge management are solid. The knowledge manager provide understanding in what the services need to capture knowledge and resurface it when needed. But, in social platforms the “who” around knowledge is helpful as well. Often there is more than one person with expertise who has honed a different dimension of a full understanding, so it isn’t just one answer that is sought and one expert, but likely a few or many.

Search specialist

With all of the conversation, content, information, and knowledge created, shared, and pointed to it doesn’t matter much if it can’t be found. Part of it getting found is helped by content managers and taxonomists / folksonomists, but search needs to be solid as well. Most platforms have search built in to their offerings, but evaluating if that search will suffice at various scales will need a search specialist. But, search in platforms is also often tied to other search systems and how those integrate to find, hold onto, and surface information, content, and resources takes solid search specialists to get right. A lot of information and resources inside an organization is difficult to find (not by intent, but it is trapped in systems that aren’t searched easily nor integrated well) and social environments often point to these resources and frame what is there, which enables that content and resource surface in searches. Your whole organizations gets smarter and has more available resources if the social environment and search is well matched.

Legal

Legal resources are often not thought of until it is late in the process. Working with lawyers to help understand compliance, privacy, security, and risks in general from a legal perspective. Working with a lawyer who can help understand not to just say this can’t be done, but how to meet compliance and other needs and still have a great service is an amazing benefit and one that saves budget and time down the road helping meet needs and provide a solid offering.

How to Fill These Roles

Yes, 14 roles isn’t something that is easy to fill. But, this doesn’t need to be 14 different people. By knowing what to look for a lot of roles can be found and covered by one individual. Knowing what you need, often at a little deeper level than the high level outlined here, and how it fits in to the team can help shape a team of 5 or 6 people, or who can move in and out of the team at various times to help provide the breadth and depth needed.

Also, many of these roles can be and are covered by vendors who are doing things well. As walked through in The One Social Way or Not to Doing Social Really Well in Enterprise user research and other skills are being covered on the product side. Understanding from vendors how they test with users (what types of users - domain, roles, skills, etc.), how they understand social models and social scaling, build taxonomies or enable co-existing folksonomy for emergent taxonomy, enable search and integrate with existing search, have open models for data analysis, etc. can help see what roles are still needed.

Many of these roles (even if they are covered on the vendor side) are really good to have in the evaluation and selection process as well, so having these roles in a review and strategy team up front is a really good idea as well.

These roles also can be filled by integrators. This is rather rare these days, with the exception of a few small boutiques who have approached their offerings for integration and consulting by filling gaps they regularly saw as well. Many integrators are strong on the technical side and today often have good general UX people, change managers, and search integrators, but other roles with more depth around social science and social interaction design is not a focus most have had nor have considered.

Between vendors, good integrators, consultants, strategists, and in-house resources and hires it shouldn’t be that difficult to get the 14 roles covered in one way or another now that you know to look for them.

Slack is more than chat: Why it is the trojan horse to better enterprise

During the last couple of years, since Slack has been publicly available, it has taken off like wildfire. To many it is "just a chat service", which gets derided and belittled like most chat services do. This is until they find that chat has not only a place in organizations it has lasting value in organizations, proven out over the last 5 to 8 years (if not longer). Slack, much like prior chat services, do really well in organizations. As a "presence service" (is the person at their desk or available) and a means to ask a quick question or have a quick discussion (synchronously or asynchronously). Over the last 5 to 8 years chat and messaging services took off in organizations. This is not they took off and became popular in pockets of organizations, but have become standard tools everywhere. Messaging not only became the norm, but in many (if not most) organization the messaging platform is second most used service behind email (often Outlook) that is centrally supplied and supported (I know a few organizations where messaging is used more than email and is their most used application / service).

If the email client is Outlook, more than likely the messaging service has been Lync (now rebranding to Skype for Business). The downside to Lync isn't that it is used heavily, but it isn't supported well enough with archiving and with solid search capability. Many IT shops say all the messaging (even if just text based) would eat loads of space to store it. It is a capacity problem in IT's perspective, which when broken down on a per person level it is less than a few gigs of text per year that are created from active users. The last few years Lync has been used heavily for internal voice and video (where allowed) messaging, which not only eats storage at a faster rate, but voice search is still not commercially available with good enough accuracy at a low enough price to be viable for voice in practice. The last issue has little to do with capacity, but is compliance focussed and storing of messages isn't seen as compatible with the organization's policies, which means many of their other knowledge capture capabilities are likely crippled to some degree as well. But, for organizations that believe storing messages and supplying really solid search is limited by capacity constraints a tool like Slack becomes the organization's dream.

So, Slack is a better messaging service?

Well, Slack didn't become popular (these days try and find an organization that isn't using Slack in it somewhere and paying to use it) because it was just another messaging service. There are loads of chat and messaging services for business and enterprise, like HipChat (the largest most similar product), Lync / Skype for Business, Jabber based services, or other less capable services that were developed by those who misbelieve chat is just simple and easy to make. What has Slack standing out is (similar to HipChat) syncing across all platforms, from your pocket, to your desk, or on your coffee table / sofa. But, unlike HipChat, Slack stood out for being not only easy to use, but fun to use. Part of this is the helpful Slackbot that guides users and provides assistance with a playful, yet helpful personality (personality that fits a service and need is incredibly helpful with bots is it help discern with service and bot you are interacting with in our lovely human brains) as well as the myriad of other bots that are available to add in.

Why is Slack people's buddy?

But, this isn't the whole reason Slack is being used, spreading widely, and relatively quickly. Slack is more than chat, which can be used quickly to interact with others and keep information out of email. But, Slack and its personality(ies) address some most acute pain points that are in every organization: Knowledge capture and retrieval; Search; and Interoperability / integration. All three of these organizational maladies not only have long been problematic most of the "solutions" for them over the years suck (to put it politely) for the people using them.

It is important to keep in mind Slack is founded and built by game developers who focus on creating fun and engaging environments. They deeply get staying away from creating pain points for customers / users, as well as reducing them - this isn’t the clicksperts gamification, it is real game mechanics and game design models / theory at work.

Knowledge capture and retrieval

Email has for more than a decade or two been known as the death bed for knowledge in organizations where things are captured and shared are never to be seen again. Yes, think of the cesspit that is email (we've known this problem for 20+ years) with each email little envelope not as that nice friendly symbol but as a tombstone for the dead / never to be live again knowledge within it. It is now you have got the reality of the last 20 plus years. But, more open systems that allow for capturing, sharing, and most importantly searching have really good value to move things forward.

Many organizations value capturing the knowledge they create and have within it. They also have interest in having that knowledge shared and found by others who can benefit from it, so the organization gets smarter faster. The key pain point is capturing what is known, often this is set as a separate set of actions and activities from what people do in their regular workflows and conversation / interaction models. This separation of flow and spaces decreases the use of the knowledge services. These separate services have their place and value as spaces and places for focussed (either team task focussed, project relevant investigations, or subject interest focussed) discussion and development of ideas. But, the conversations that happen in the flow of work are valuable to capture as they happen, then have them addressable / linkable and searchable.

Services that capture conversation and communication in open, historically captured, and addressable spaces have long been far more valuable than email. This value is replicated often with the ever present situation of bring somebody new into the team, project, and / or conversation. The context and history is there to be seen, the important items can be marked or pinned in a manner so they stand out as well as getting context around those items in their original context. Getting a new person conversant and in the flow of things (as well as not out of the loop in conversations that are current) is incredibly valuable when trying to get things done and done well.

Slack provides that means to capture the conversations as they happen. It provides the means to pin (and now with emoji responses, a hackable means) relevant valuable chunks of the conversations and streams.

Good search (yes, you read that right)

Search in and across enterprise, is often painful as it is not very good at finding things. One of the benefits of Slack for many is the search is quite good. Not only is Slack good at retrieving past messages and conversations, but anything that is linked to in Slack or attached as shared objects (text related or with text metadata) in Slack all become searchable. When the linked items or objects are returned in search they are surfaced within the context of the conversation they were shared. People using Slack in organizations have been amazed with the quality of search for finding and refinding shared knowledge and resources, but also relating the item to why and how it was shared. To those who are deprived of viable search in organizations Slack is a real treasure.

Most enterprise search provides success in only 4 of 5 attempts (this adds up to being roughly $375 of cost for unproductive / counter productive time per employee per year when looking at it through an extremely conservative lens (others estimate 4 to 10 times this cost per employee per year). Just the value of improved search, as well as bringing information into context and having it searchable ads greater value from moving the dark matter into the searchable light.

Search in Slack is most often better than the enterprise search that people use across their organization. But, it also is often better than the search that is built into various platforms that are used in and across the organization, including enterprise social networks (some exceptions to this include KnoweldgePlaza, which has really good search within it, as that is a large part its purpose). This improvement in search finds what is needed and the search result surfacing the item in context is really special. Slack has also designed this really well, which adds to the ease of use and enjoyment.

Integration and Interoperability (What? Really?)

Another big pain point in organizations is integration and interoperability. There are disparate systems which many people have to pay attention to metrics, messages / alerts, and charts from various services across them, which is not efficient and rarely is there an integrated view (nor a means to interact across different systems from one interface). But, rarely is there a means to search within and across the services to do quick comparisons or easily bring those things into a more unified view. Often IT has the integrations far down on their prioritized to do list or in the "can not be done category" for reasons of feasibility or difficulty. But, one of the beauties of Slack is it integrates with other services relatively easily through a variety of methods (many can be done in a day or two in side-project time), if there is access to an API or even a means to see a screen so it can be parsed for values and meaning. Groups have been able to pull together their own aggregated and searchable views (sometimes in their own channel to view / review and search within or as a system with an identity that chats and shares things out as a bot). The solution that is cobbled together in side-project time to meet the needs of employees meets their jobs to get done and need that access requirements, which make Slack far quite efficient and usable. While IT has their requests slowly (if that) moving through the prioritization process, employees have been able to drastically reduce the pain points that nudge them to consider looking employment opportunities that value their getting work done.

Sane payment models

One of the last, often overlooked, elements goes completely against the trend of "evil" enterprise service payment models of paying for seats (used or unused). This model is loved by nearly all enterprise software vendors (or their boards - somebody has to love it as it surely isn't the customers who know they are being taken for a ride).

Slack treats paying for their software / services differently. It runs on a freemium model, but has high conversion rate to paying customers for its offerings. It is not that paying users get full search of the a complete archive and more plug-ins, but also quite good support (yes there are a few others that give quite good support - though this isn't the norm). The pay model provides improved search powers and interoperability / integration, which being severe pain points in organizations make it worth paying for and the pricing per user makes that a bargain (hey Slack don't go changing the price though).

Yet, what really makes Slack's payment model special and different is you only pay for accounts used that month. (Did I hear a collective "WHAT?") Yes, you don't pay for the number of prospective seats nor tied into long contracts that go beyond the needed time span. Ever try to get a reduction in seats paid for after a few months when you have realized only 60% of the seats paid for are used and that doesn't look like it will shift over the next 18 to 30 months of the life of the lock-in? Slack understands that pain and opted to not partake in that model of pain.

In short Slack reduces pain and increases efficiency and value

So, the reasons why Slack seems to be at the tip of many business and enterprise tongues (as an inquiry or recommendation) is focussing on what is delivered, its ease, and the value people get.

Slack aims at delivering a usable (and friendly) service as a means to communicate to get and share information and knowledge. But, in doing this also knocks out some nasty pains people in organizations really don't like and have long wanted resolved. Slack is basically the un-enterprise solution as it focusses on being easy to use, reduces pain points, and tries to be friendly. Yes, this is software for the enterprise, or for the parts that don't relish pain.

So Slack is perfect and the cure all?

Um, no. Slack is far from perfect. It isn't trying to be everything. So, you are wondering what are the pain points or limitations?

Slack isn't going to scale to meet your hundreds or thousands of employees needs today

Slack works relatively well up to a few hundred people (there are many hundreds using in one installation (instances well over a thousand as well), but that isn't optimal). And even with keeping an installation under a couple hundred people it is still going to be a bit noisy. Many of these installations with more than 100 people in them use the channels for creating smaller groups / teams / projects / targeted conversations.

While improvements are need to get to solid filtering, this does help so important things don't get missed, or conversations that could use a person's input gets their attention when they weren't specifically called out. The ability to move conversations to and between channels (in a manner that leaves a trail behind where the conversation started).

It also needs the ability to more easily tie conversations threads together and tie related discussions together through tags (yes, I said the tags word) [the addition of each entry now having the ability to get emoji responses has been getting used to aggregate related content in some organizations in a "visual tagging" way, but lacks clarity in understanding, even with "what each emoji means" charts]. Also, finding related threads and discussions across channels can be cumbersome in search when different terms (synonyms / fungible technical terms) are being used, even if search is good.

Not everything nor everybody works in the open

In organizations there are viable and valuable reasons to have some things not shared openly. Legal, regulatory, compliance, and some things are best tested and considered among a few people and honed / vetted before sharing more widely and other needs for improving social comfort are often lacking in the enterprise social platforms.

Many mature social platforms for enterprise now offer private spaces for groups to share information, and if it seems viable or gets honed / edited it is shared it out more broadly. Many even follow the social progression of fire model where trends in the messages / sparks and comments are seen as being connected and possibly need more investigation, then moved to or collected in a small comfortable space / campfire to investigate before sharing more broadly / campfire (if it is deemed worthy of moving it forward), and then honed through collaboration and perfected to be put into production / torch.

By the way - Slack does offer the capability of not remembering things for paid users as some organizations require this for compliance. There is a forget quickly, forget in a week or so, and keep everything capability to meet a variety of needs / requirements of organizations [this forgetting negates the incredibly helpful search, but organizations that require this often have bigger troubles that they are dealing with]. But, global forgetting isn't the same as quiet comfortable groups with permeable walls that work well for many people in larger organizations with cultures heavy on the Western European and North American sensibilities.

Slack doesn't replace everything

There have already been some rather poorly considered (mostly through the lack of understanding the diversity and complexity of social - no it isn't simple nor just complicated) "we are going to use Slack to replace..." attempts. Understanding the category / class of tool that Slack falls into is essential. It isn't a replacement for the collective, curation, nor team / group workspaces like Jive and others (yes, there is one service in this category / class that nearly everybody wants to move away from as fast as they can, but Slack isn't the tool to move to as a replacement). Slack does well to sit alongside those services for conversational interactions and sharing results out of them. It isn't going to replace a social search and collective aggregation service like KnowledgePlaza. Slack not only integrates things into itself, but also can have what is in it as fodder to integrate out, so conversations and things shared in Slack can be honed and more deeply framed and considered in other services and then have results and outcomes of those considerations shared back into Slack.

Slack is not going to replace your document management service. It is a good partner for it to add context and easily drop documents that are relevant from the service into Slack. But, Slack isn't going to replace document management, even if its search is good, the versioning, permissions, and access controls for compliance and other valid needs aren't there in Slack. Your document management service could become more pleasurable to use though.

Enterprise is a complicated beast

Having worked in and around social software for enterprise for about 20 years now, it is a wicked space. There are a lot of "needs" that Slack doesn't comply with yet. There are a lot of issues that aren't on Slack's horizon yet, it may not want to place them there.

Enterprise also brings with it a diversity of needs, mental models inside, use cases, workflow models, and more that should be and could be addressed, but Slack isn't there yet. I'm not sure Slack even has all of them fully on their radar - many organizations don't centrally have them on their radar yet either. But needs arise when divisions and groups underserved by centrally chosen tools in an organization that doesn't fit their needs. When this happens groups often will go in search of services and tools that meet their needs to help them get the job done.

Working with enterprise means working with organizations that don't understand how they themselves actually work nor operate in workflows nor knowledge flows. Many social platforms aren't in the business to help organizations understand their needs, problems, pain points, and gaps yet these are the first steps to understanding the right fit for tools. Analysts, for the most part, aren't in this business, nor are most consultants (selling solutions based cookie cutter decision models makes more profit than the deep understanding the problems before considering solutions model). Perhaps Slack could embrace this model of helping organizations understand themselves, as they aren't focussed on "winning" as much as helping solve problems and address needs (another reason Slack stands out and has a good helpful product).

So what should you do?

The first step is to take Slack seriously. It is doing a lot of things really well, as well as weekly and monthly iterations making things even better.

Also understand not only what Slack is, but what it isn't. Understand how your organizations works (if you need help with that reach out to me, as helping organizations see clearly through the fog of complexity is what I do) and sort out how a service that focusses on reducing pain points and increases people's ability to get things done can fit.

Second, start early thinking about filtering to cut through the noise for alerts and reducing "noise". Work out a community guide and plan. Also, sort out the flow models that can work well with the other services in the organization.

Running Podular Teams

Running Podular Teams

One of the things that has brought happiness from the Connected Company book being out for nearly three years (now in paperback), is getting the idea of podular teams and organization out there for a wider understanding. From 2001 onward I ran my product and project teams in a podular manner. Since then I have helped many organizations I have worked with as clients adopt this approach so to be more nimble, efficient, productive, and keeps the teams members happy as well as management.

This works well where there are a diversity of projects that have different cycles that need different skills for a duration, or are short to mid-range in length (less than 6 to 9 months). This does work well for longer projects as it helps with staffing when their is any turnover in the pod.

What is Podular?

When I started running my teams I had a fixed set of people working under me in my program area and a wider set of projects. The team members had a wide variety of skills and various depths of strength and experience in those skills. The simple overview is, to stay on top of my team and project needs I set up a simple spreadsheet with the names of team members on the horizontal rows and skills running along the top of the columns. In each cell I put a 1 to 5 ranking (5 being the highest) for that person’s skill and expertise level. To build a project team I would assess the skill needs of the project and the project timeline and review the program’s team to right fit a team to each project.

Other program managers and my upper management called this matrixed team management, but outside of this the term matrixed organizations had a very different meaning. When working with Dave Gray on the Connected Company book he brought up the conflict with the term matrix (matrixed organizations were in the “bad thing cycle”) and started calling them podular teams, which worked well as that is how they functioned, as a self-sustained pod.

The teams when set up could mostly run themselves autonomously, mostly because of the people I had in the program team. But, often there was a person senior enough that could keep an eye on how things were progressing. If things were not running well I would get a heads up as a manager and help sort out a solution. Many times I was on the team, not as a manager, but taking one of the roles that needed depth of a skill set for a duration.

How to Set It Up

Setting up podular teams can be done in a spread sheet, but a couple times I have built quick web applications to serve the purpose. The assessment of skills (all of them) is essential. This can be through professional assessments, team review by peers, and / or a managers assessment. Keep in mind that over time the skills ratings will change. It is best not to work off of job descriptions as those are most often very off target. It can be good to sit with each person and run their assessment by them. Keeping to a 1 to 5 rating makes the reviewing with people a little easier. Don’t assess the top rating for a skill based on their being the best in the pool of talent as there may be a need for somebody with deeper skill and experience at some point.

When you have the individuals rated on their skills and you are sure you have all the skills listed (keeping to relatively broad categories can be helpful) it is good to color code the ratings and look to make it easier to see the gaps or potentially thin areas in the pool.

Next take a couple projects that are have been running and map the people to the the team and look at what sort of skills are needed. Look at the make-up of the teams as well as the pool of candidates. Look at where there may be weaknesses in the pods at times based on cyclical needs. You may find that there is two days of work for a skill at a level 5 each quarter, so starting to map the pod over various durations of time is helpful, from weeks, months, and quarters.

Next Steps

There are a few of things that running a podular team environment needs that make it a little more complicated. The first is maturity cycles of a project. Projects have three distinct stages: 1) Creation; 2) Iteration; and 3) Maintenance. Initially when I added this I kept it as a column in the spreadsheet for each person, but I found it really applies to each skill. The skills and capability to fit into the stages is essential as each stages takes very different mindsets and approaches, as well as personality type / temperament to handle that stage well. Shifting somebody with a “4” skill rank that has only done maintenance to a creation stage role is often a quick way to start trigger problems in the pod on a project.

The second is growing skills. One of the things that quickly jumps out when running teams in podular environments is overlap of skills, as well as gaps at various levels. Another thing over time is the skill levels for individuals change, which changes the make-up of the podular teams and the pool of people over time. I started keeping a second sub-column in each ranking to track this change over time. At one point I turned the second column into the individual’s goal column, which was set during formal reviews and casual reviews to learn what the skills that person had a desire in improving. Eventually, this turned into a third column and I brought back the rating change column. This meant I had a “Last Review”, “Current”, and “Goal” column for each person’s skill ranking. The “Goal” column really helped with setting podular teams to take somebody with a high skill ranking and pair them with someone wanting to improve their skills in that area. The person there to shadow and get some hands on experience form someone with more skill and experience nearly always was in that pod because of some skill they had a skill match for on that project.

Tracking things in this way also means traditional reviews are relatively easy to do as progress can be tracked as well as contributions. In working with other organizations, those that have team members providing feedback across a project makes review and assessment easier as well.

The third is hiring into the pool. Running any group over time leads to hiring people. This can be to replace somebody who is leaving or for newly created roles / positions. Running things in a podular manner and keeping track of projects, pods, people, and their skills means there is a really good view into what skills are needed at what level to fill that new opening. With monitoring people’s growing skills (as well as atrophy) looking at a pool of people, their skills, and the needs on projects means seeing the needs of the new hire is rather clear. This can be difficult in organizations with strict job descriptions and roles that are only updated every two to five years. But, most often it means the role is easy to write and right fill, if skill levels and other fit can be determined well.

Building Pods

When the framework is set the next is taking projects and teams and converting them to pods. The big shift is going to be the pods most likely are going to be a little more fluid than they were prior, so to match changing skill needs over the life cycle of a project or team needs at various points. Turning them into pods often means these pods will run a little more autonomously over time.

This means the role of the person managing, if they are are not a contributing member at all, is going to change. Their role is going to be less managing what happens in the pod and focussing on clearing the way for the people in the pods to do their work. The manager will openly check with the project owner as well as those in the pod to ensure things are running smoothly and assess upcoming needs or smooth out any bumps that arise. Often the number of people and projects that are being managed will rise. The manager is often the person who will work to help get resources and answers to needs as they arise. The manager is also the one keeping an eye on budgets and burn rates, which becomes essential when bringing people in and out of the pod to get the best skills mix as needed.

The pods will need a really good platform for team communication, coordination, and collaboration. This needs to be open to the person managing as well as fully open to people that drop into the pod to fill in roles. Email doesn’t work as a part of podular environments. Getting a tool that works well can be a less than easy task, but it is an important task to ensure the right fit. The client or project owner may or may not have full access to the tool, but a good view into progress, deliverables, needs, and probability of completion is a good view to offer.

Putting a pod together can be done in a self-selected manner, in a curated approach, or one that is mixed. While many organizations find success with self-selection, where the pod has the opportunity to self assemble, the downside is this only works with some skill sets, personality types, and work environments. Where self selection really falls flat, if not fails spectacularly is skills that are often strong with people who are introverts and needing those skills in the pod. In many organizations this can be more than 70 percent of the teams and pods that are needed to be assembled. Self-selection also tends to favor those who have working knowledge of others, which makes new hires and others that don’t have experience in the pool on the outside, with pods often choosing a known, but poor fit, rather than a better fit that is unknown. The upside of self-selection is pods get built with people who tend to work well together.

The curated approach where a manager or pod builder works to assemble a pod with the right skills, levels, and availability. The availability is often tricky and can take some negotiation to get a key role filled with the right person for a duration that is needed. The curation approach mixed with some self-selection can work well also, and is often a really good way to do things over time.

Really Understanding Needs

The biggest hurdle to this is deeply understanding needs. This is understanding all the roles needed and skills. One thing that becomes quickly clear is there are often skills needed beyond what traditionally has been considered. With podular environments the ability to bring in people with skills that fill these gaps becomes second hand and seems natural. This leads to the pod looking to optimize their output and try to understand things that are less than optimal. This short fall in skills and gap in skills continually arises when implementing and deploying social / collaboration / communication platforms in organizations as there are 14 essential roles needed and most are trying to cover it with 2 or three of these skills roles.

Over time the skills needed in the pods becomes clearer, but often bringing in a consultant with experience in podular environments and the domain areas becomes a huge time saver to get things running smoothly early in this transition.

Getting Good Case Studies in Today's Competitive World

Efficiency and business advantage is what many businesses see as their differentiator. A week or two back while following the Twitter Stream and some live blogging of Enterprise 2.0 Summit: London I kept hearing how there were no new companies talking about their own case studies than there were a few years back. Many presentations pointed to the same limited set of case studies. The worry derived from this was concern stagnation in the space.

The odd thing is when you talk with consultants, strategists, and advisors out doing work companies and other organizations in this space the list of organizations doing social business or working out loud well and looking to get the next bump up from the value they are seeing is really huge. There are more than the handful of organizations using social platforms extremely well in their organizations and getting great advantage.

Why So Quiet?

But, why are they not talking? There are a few reasons, but one of the biggest is the first sentence, “efficiency and business advantage”, how they work and get the job done is their differentiator, or a perceived differentiators. Many organizations will not allow their employees to talk about how they do their work at conferences. Talking at conferences about how they do their work gets stopped by legal. In the past 4 years I have talked with about 15 companies who would have made for great case studies and they submitted them at conferences, but they were not permitted speak.

Tied to “business advantage” (competitive advantage and manner of doing business) often has a piece of it tied to the market, if they are a publicly traded company. Most organizations that are publicly traded do not reveal publicly who their main technical solution suppliers are for their internal work to ward of an negative impact to their stock price from a problem from one of their suppliers (technical problem or corporate perceived problems). The markets are fickle and not overly rational, so most organizations see it as not wanting collateral damage being publicly tied to a supplier. Additionally, most organizations have a diversified supplier base for redundancy and familiarity to enable a rather swift change to another vendor.

So, how do these stories get out? Most often these stories get out second hand and are not attributed to any company. The organization is generalized, but distinct stories roughed out to get a point across. Most companies looking for case studies are looking for names of companies and people that can give the case study sharp reality. This is particularly true when finding a company in the same industry vertical.

Another large factor limiting new case studies is vendors will put forward organizations who are doing great things with their platform. But, the reality is most organizations are doing really well, because they are using more than one platform to get the job done. Most vendors don’t want to tell that story as they want to be “the only one”. When vendors find organizations that will talk the vendor most often wants to ensure the organization is telling their vendor friendly story. Homogenous organizations are becoming incredibly rare these days. While many vendors have a much broader range of “darling” clients at their own vendor sponsored events (clients usually only talk about vendor focussed use), but at non-vendor focussed events the spotlight is how they found success, which is rarely just with one vendor to get the job done.

Improving Conference Case Studies

Of the two limitations, corporate silence and vendor approval, the only one of these two that is malleable is vendor approval. This means of the companies that are willing to talk it takes conference organizers going beyond their usual circles of influence and sounding boards to find good stories to tell and bring in.

Many organizations are also not seeing the value of being a focus of a case study. The limited number of case studies out there has far far less to do with the number of organizations having success with social business and any of the more forward ways business work today than it does with organizations no longer finding value with being the focus of a case study. When I talk with other consultants, strategists, and advisors we have lists of 30 to 50 organizations who are great examples and we use generically as examples. When needing specific examples of niche use the list runs into the hundreds. This is far wider than the limited set case studies that are over used today.

Many of us who are on the outside of organizations and know there great examples and lessons learned, if not a full case study, often ask if it is possible for us to write-up and publicly share. This is often the best method for getting things out and shared, but most organizations come back after checking with legal, that they do not want to be the focus of a case study and often don’t want to be mentioned in one. But, occasionally we get a yes and this is the way forward and we get another example that can be shared.

Listening to the Audience

At KM World in early November the audience questions and insights were as good or not better than a lot of what was being stated from the panels or talks. KM World is a practitioner conference and the social business or working out loud model has spread quite broadly for most organizations who have practitioners attending. The attendance at KM World was over one thousand attendees and from audience participation in the social business related sessions there were more than 100 organizations that have been finding quite a bit of success with social and collaborative methods or working and are looking for tweaks to what they are doing so to get even more value. None of these companies speaking up in the sessions with success stories are case studies and none were seeking to be. In my workshop of just over 20 participants nearly all of them had rather successful social or collaborative platforms running and were looking for ways to get more out of them and to better support the diverse ways people are working and being productive today.

The feedback from some of the presentations where the limited case studies that are out there as the focus was brutal. Mostly, because not only are the case studies well known in a large segment of the KM World audience, but their own practices out pace the case studies and they are farther along than the case studies repeatedly pointed to.

It well could be we are not only at the edge of a post-document business world, but also at the cusp of a post-case study business world. Our model of having one shining example at the front of the room, has become thousands of shining lights in the room sharing at a smaller level, because they are not permitted to share officially from the front of the room.

The One Social Way - Or not - to Doing Social Really Well in Enterprise

One of the interesting things, having been at the heart of social and collaboration for business a good long while (since 1996, no I'm not kidding), is seeing how large organizations who are doing and have been doing social well (more than 80% of employees are active users (more than once a week (often daily) checking in and taking an action (setting status, commenting, posting something, etc.)) with many of them doing a majority of their interacting with team and work colleagues inside the tools and services) actually do this.

The interesting thing is most organizations who are doing social and collaboration well are not using just one service or platform. They are using two or three, often with some small solutions for niche situations (niche for them). They are also not planning on migrating to one solution, well at least for any foreseeable future.

There is No One Way

The reality of doing social well is embracing the understanding there is no universal, no master narrative, and no one right way. Yes, we are all human, but we are not all wired exactly the same. The different personality types, different mental models, and many different cultures in an organization (and world outside their doors) that comprise reality, which requires embracing that reality with more than one approach.

No organization started out to do this, it just happened. What IT often wants to do is have just one solution that works for everybody, as that makes their job more manageable. But, many organizations needed something far better than the mess that email created in their organizations so to clearly communicate with and within their teams and departments. Reality is people roll in and out of projects and people stopped using just corporate sanction tools to get work done with colleagues. Often what IT provided for the organization didn't work well enough for them, as it didn't meet their needs nor mental models. The last 5 to 8 years getting a good social / collaboration solution for a team up to a division that ran in the cloud (didn't need IT) and could fit on a credit card for the team or a division's PO that was small enough to fly under the radar has been easy. Not only was it easy, but it has worked rather well, as it fits the needs and people use them rather heavily.

Where this has ended up after 2 to 8 years is many different social and collaboration services in an organization, that haven't really talked to each other well. Teams, groups, divisions, etc. need to talk and work together and so IT was getting back involved to get everybody on one solution. The trouble is, you can't remove what works.

Why There is More Than One Solution Working Well

When you try to remove a well used solution you realize it is really difficult to move to one platform. It is not the porting of the data, interactions, and differing privacy models that is hardest, it is a pain, but not the most difficult piece. It is not retraining people (if heavy retraining is needed something is really not right, but this is just a symptom of the real issue).

The biggest hurdle is there isn't one universal model. There will never be a universal model that works, unless is it heavily based on adaption and no vendor remotely close to that yet.

Most of the well used social and collaboration platforms have understood they need to really understand their users well. They did user testing and mapped their products to their user's mental models. But, the thing is their users are not universal and are tied to the people and personality types that have long bought their software / services. The users they researched and tested on have been those parts of the organizations that buy their products. This is not the whole of the organization that they focussed on, but the slice that is their customer base.

This is why Salesforce Chatter works really well for sales and marketing, but the other 65% to 80% of the organization won't go near it nor live in it the way sales and marketing people do. Similar for Yammer and SharePoint as they are honed (and really not well) for tech centered folks who are willing to work with less than optimal tools. Jive works really well for knowledge workers (and even information workers), and for the innovation and leading edge teams and groups (no it doesn't scale up yet) there is Slack (there is no chance in hell you can remove Slack and they are likely the best minds and change makers in one's organization whom you really don't want to piss off and have leave - if you don't think you have Slack users you either don't have highly productive innovation folks or you aren't looking hard enough). There are a myriad of smaller targeted solutions for a wide variety of roles and personality types that are perfect for their niches (some with millions of users - with around 2 billion technology enabled people on the planet it is quiet easy to have a niche of a few million users).

So, What Do We Do Now

Organizations that are moving toward doing social and collaboration well fall into two camps: 1) One social platform that has good, but not great usage (Jive is a solution that adapts the most broadly and is one of the few actually pushing forward to improve and get to do a better job at having a product that is social as humans are social) is doing great in parts of the organization, but untouched in others; 2) There are many many platforms in the organization and there is a strong need to get people working together across the now disparate groups.

The first step is realize there is no getting to one. Be fine with that.

Now, the harder goal, which is getting things to work together, which is beyond just simple traditional integration. To do this well it takes deeply understanding the different personality types, roles, and mental models in the organization and not just following a tech schematic that most integrators use as their blueprint.

The first step is to bring in people who understand the differences between social platforms beyond what the checkboxes say. These people usually have strong social science backgrounds, have worked in large organizations along the way, and have been working (helps if managed, designed, and / or developed) with social and collaboration more than a decade. Outside? It is rare this person will be inside, but if so many organizations have rules against using platforms outside the organization that there will be a need to have an external party research to get honest insight and feed back with good research non-disclosure guidelines in place.

"We Have One Solution" Organizations

If you are one of those "we have one solution" organizations, I'm hoping that one solutions is one that plays well with others, as those are a great starting points. Right now the best of these is Jive, as it seems they understand they are not out to rule the world, but play very well with the world and all the needed tools and services that employees use to get the job done. Jive also has a well laid out plug-in and module mindset that includes Open Social (this only is a partial solution so far as it isn't full interoperation capable yet) to get outside content in. But Jive and Salesforce Chatter can integrate and work relatively seamlessly with each in their own platform and well honed interface for their own user's mental models. This is a really good example of where the future resides.

With the one solution that may not have really broad adoption, work to sort out who in the organization is not participating or has lower use rates. Spend time gathering the data and mapping patterns. It will likely start to frame divisions, roles, and personality types that are rather clear to see for those not using it (also refine the understanding of who IS using it, as you don't really want to mess those types of employees along the way).

Mapping the gaps where people are not using the tools, as well as why not, will help be a guide. In this mapping and research, particularly if done by people outside the organization, there will be other solutions used that may not be known (sometimes these are used widely - beyond 10% of the organization is where wide starts) and capturing and understanding what they are and why is going to be essential. Finding and understanding the myriad of options out there to map to roles, sub-cultures, and personality types, as well as interoperation will be essential. Trying a few different options and having change management and internal communications involved will help things as well.

"We Right Fit Solutions" Organizations

The first step with many known solutions is to do a full capture and audit of all platforms and services used, as there are likely more than what is known. Also be comfortable with the reality that there will likely be more than one solution at the end, but hopefully they will play well together.

In the capturing what is being used and by whom, learn what they do, how they do it, and why. Learn, what could they live with out and what is essential. Watch people work. One of the most important things is discern if they are working in closed groups, open groups, or if they are using one of the rare platforms that allows reseting permissions so to start closed and once honed share more openly (this is a valuable capability in a solution). Map the differences between groups and tools (a serious benefit of having outsiders do the research and mapping).

Once everything is captured and mapped the hard work begins. The solutions is going to be different for each organization, but interoperability is going to be a key component. There will likely need to be a tool or service at the center that other in, out, and around. Understanding the cultures, differences, capabilities, privacy, security, user work needs, underlying data models, and availability of APIs are going to play roles in working through to a workable solution. Depending on the organization mobile, what tools (the non-collab and social services) it integrates with and how, organizational make-up (including if an organization that has been acquiring other companies and / or has plans to), virtual work environments and needs, data / document storage models, adaptive to change, and much more are going to play very important roles in working to a good way forward.

KM World 2014 Is a Real Gem

I’m sitting Saturday morning a little bleary (I don’t sleep well around good conferences) waiting for my coffee that can’t brew quickly enough.

This past week I spent most of the days at KM World 2014 in Washington, DC giving a workshop on the first day (Tuesday) “Improving Knowledge Flows: Using Lenses to See Needs in Systems of Engagement”, which started rough (thanks to insane DC traffic that went above and beyond its usual bad) but smoothed out. The workshop was somewhat similar to ones I have given in the past, but the participants were fantastic. What set them apart is, nearly all of them have been running social and collaboration systems of engagement for a year or more and know the difficult task it is and they were asking great questions from understanding that struggle.

Repeatedly through out KM World this year the questions from experience and needing to learn more from people with real experience and living with less than optimal solutions and offerings from many vendors. The sessions this year were very good with a few great sessions (there were a rare few really poor sessions, but those were really exceptions). I didn’t make any of the keynotes as I am local to the event and chose (again) not to stay downtown to be closer to the event and still keep family priorities front and center and there was good things in those that had people buzzing.

KM World Meetings and Informal Small Groups

The meetings around KM World this year, along with dinners and hallway conversations were some of the best, not only at KM World, but any other conference I have been in a long long time (perhaps back to 2006 at a one off conference). I also got to see fantastic friends and colleagues I have grown to know over the last 10 years or so of putting serious outward focus in this area from conferences and client work. I also met people I really should have known and been deep tight buds with for years prior.

Shell Played it Smart

On the subject of meetings I was really intrigued by Shell, who had bought one of the conference rooms and ran a Wednesday through Friday session / demo out of them. The session was showing their system of engagement as intranet that is founded on the Work Out Loud model that Bryce Williams kicked off years back as a framing and many others, including Ian Jones of Shell, have embraced and extended since.

Shell was doing demonstrations of what they had built and was answering questions about how to do similar and lessons learned. One of my workshop attendees asked me to come by and set up a one-on-one session with them. Where I got a descent deep dive. In the session I noticed some things they had managed to do in Sharepoint that is really difficult to do (something that is part of the Sharepoint marketing pitch for compliance minded folks, but like many things in Sharepoint it is buggy and many times not achievable). I liked what they had pulled together as it was a good solid first to second stage social / engagement service (of about 8 to 10 that can be achieved), which many organizations struggle getting to that first stage successfully.

What was curious with Shell is I couldn’t sort out their motive. I couldn’t sort if they were consulting outwardly and this set-up was a really good smart way to show capabilities and offer that to others or if it was a showcase of their capabilities. What I missed (talking with other senior folks around the conference we all seemed to miss) was a third possibility they were crowdsourcing gaps and next steps. They were showcasing what they did, but also getting feed back from other organizations and vendors about how others have done things, but they were pulling the experts at the conference into deep one-on-one sessions. It wasn’t until Friday at lunch, when I sat with one of the Shell guys and he explained that. I then offered another set insights and we had a great chat about where things are headed with enterprise tools (things the “future of…” folks haven’t stumbled into yet) and I got some great insights into some small capabilities Shell folks have found make differences in people’s work life as well as the organization as a whole.

The Shell approach of getting feedback broadly and deeply is so obvious and genius, it is surprising other organizations with budgets for such haven’t done this. I don’t know how quickly this sort of thing would become utterly annoying if there were more than one or two organizations doing this at a conference year after year, but it showed really great thinking on the part of Shell.

Sessions that I Loved

My favorite sessions at conferences are the ones that hit on something I wasn’t expecting and provide a perspective I’ve been missing. I also love good presentation craft and slide craft, which is missing at most business and tech conferences, so seeing that with great content presented with good arcs and pace I also fall for. These that follow are the ones I went to and liked or loved.

The “10 Mistakes to Avoid When Purchasing Digital Workplace Technology” by Jarrod Gingras of Real Story Group was fantastic. Tech purchasing is insanely difficult and most organizations end up with something that really doesn’t fit them well. Part of the issue is they don’t understand their needs and problems well, which is often where I help framing things and setting understandings of what things they will need to know so their 6 month, 2 year, and 5 year versions of their organizations can grow with their selections today. But, once you know your problems and needs well enough, sorting through the minefield of potential vendors and implementers is a whole different story. Jarred’s session was one of the best framings of how go through purchasing process well in vendor / tool selection that I have ever run across (I have run across well over a hundred in the past 10 to 15 years).

I really liked Stan Garfield’s overview of “Practical Social Media Tips”. There wasn’t much new for me, but Stan has great framing of tools services for people unfamiliar and stating simply the value people and organizations can get from each. It is conversational and incredibly helpful. This is an approach I tend to gloss over as I love to go deep and to the difficult stuff, which many new to things are not ready for. Stan’s sessions are always a great reminder for myself on how to get things right for those new to things. (I also love the conversations with Stan where we can go deep). There is a fine art of making things simple for entry to the complicated and complex realities beyond. Most consulting firms and solo consultants try to prove their brilliance and depth (they miss the mark on this front on getting that right) or they lack the depth and only know the simple and can’t go beyond. So, watching Stan is a great pleasure as he has serious depth, but conveys things simply with a light touch.

The half of the “Creating Learning Organizations: Commitment not Compliance” session by Nabil Keith Durand on The Learning Organization: Creating Commitment Not Compliance was utterly fantastic. Not only was the slide craft and presentation craft as near perfect (there were many presentations with slides that were far from readable with content too small or dense for the room size and the hallway conversations and backchannels were insanely brutal hitting on this) as I have seen in a non design / communication professional conference or a something Duarte has worked on. His content and framing was fantastic and talk about the cognitive foundations for understanding how people learn and work, but also how to embrace this to have far more successful projects and programs. I got to chat with Nebil a bit after thanking him for a great presentation, but found he is another with great breadth and depth from a quite diverse and multi-disciplinary background that really shines through.

The session on Cognitive Computing by Sue Feldman may have been my favorite of the whole conference. She clearly mapped out the transitions from the traditional computing and search to the approach cognitive computing has been shifting us to. I loved this as I have been coming at this from other trajectories the past three or four years with approaches with complex adaptive systems modeling, friends and clients building in AI (artificial intelligence) into their tools / services / offerings, and similar working on offerings that offer great solutions through agency (tools working on our behalf in the background). Having a full framing of the dimensions, components, and models and the communities around this side of things was fantastic. Finding a community where things go deep and broad is always a gem, particularly when I haven’t known what things are called (ironic for cognitive computing as it is mostly anti-taxonomy) and finding the thread to pull on to get to the gold mines. This talk may have opened up a door for inquiry that may last me a long long time, so am deeply grateful for it. It is also going to be fodder and sanity checks for some of the Shift Happened series pieces I am writing (now about 14 of them that could be the full series).

Outflows

KM World this year not only had great content, great meetings, fantastic collecting with like minds and colleagues, meeting many many new people I really want to know better and work with, and had sparks for new things to flesh out, but it helped me hone all of the content I have been sitting on and working to hone and reprioritizes it. A lot of things in my work that have been shown and talked about in workshops and client engagements need to get out into the more open world. KM World was another big kick in the pants to get this moving.

In August I got a few big “welcome back!” messages from past clients, colleagues, and buds in the business and technology communities. They hadn’t seen me as easily reachable in those contexts for a few years. KM World had those August messages echoed even more loudly and with many steps to start to engage for assistance and help moving things forward in their organizations.

Shift Happened - Part 2: Small Apps Loosely Joined

What are Small Apps Loosely Joined?

There has been a large shift in how many people work today and part of that is in the tools that they use to get work done. This shift in work patterns mirrors the shift that many had in their personal lives around social interactions and productivity.

Late one night many years ago (long before the iPhone), a group of us were talking about web and mobile and opportunities to work in a variety of similar tools that were all interconnected. The mash-up culture was a year or two behind us with Paul Radamacher’s first map mashup HousingMaps and the salient understanding that surfaced from that was the ability to have different interfaces for different needs and uses that could work as a workflow, or even similar interfaces for different personal needs of the users. We talked about Twitter and its heavy reliance on third-party developers to build web and mobile apps and services on top of its services and the Twitter API (the application programming interface, which is a standard data and interaction layer that sits behind the scenes bring data back and forth between the service). This approach allowed anybody to build an interface for seeing and interacting with Twitter or create an interface that provided greater ease of use for tasks. With tongue in-cheek (paraphrasing David Weinberger’s “Small Pieces Loosely Joined”), I said this model was small apps loosely joined.

What joined these apps together was a common data layer that fits a standard data model (or, as is common in APIs, a data model that self describes). The Twitter model allowed people to interact with the service through a mobile app with full functionality of the Twitter site, or to see many different Twitter lists in something like TweetDeck, or monitor and respond through different accounts in something like HootSuite, while tracking follows and drops in other monitoring services.

This same idea is more prevalent now across our mobile devices and the apps and services that they connect to and use. Not only are today’s mobile apps and services interacting with the APIs on the internet, but they are working with standard file formats on the backend and apps that meet the needs of users’ context and workflows. Some of the common app and service types that people have been shifting to the small apps loosely joined model are: Calendar, email, photos, text / documents, and to do lists / reminders (a closer look at these follows).

Who is Doing This?

The small apps loosely joined concept is nothing new in the technical geek and productivity nerd community (as part of both tribes, i use the words geek and nerd lovingly), as well as for early adopters. These uses and patterns with small apps loosely joined started surfacing around ten years on the web and mobile devices, all interconnected to the internet.

We understand innovation and broad adoption can take quite some time, roughly 10 years for innovations and new ideas to take hold broadly. We are about 10 years into this way of working and interacting with information and applications, so it was not exactly a surprise to hear research (done in-house to better understand the mobile market) that 60 to 70 percent of military members and their families surveyed use more than one app for a task types. They used calendars, email, and weather as examples. I checked with others who do surveys of employees inside organizations if they were looking at the question and found that they were. Their responses were also in the 60 to 70 percent range for calendar, to do, and text apps on mobile devices.

So, while this small app loosely joined focus and obsession within technology and productivity communities has been more than a decade old, it is something that is now rather mainstream. Over the last five years or so, when I am traveling or in a dank gym for club basketball, I often ask people next to me what apps and services they like the most on the mobile devices that is in their hand. Their answers often surface apps related to tasks and workflows for a data type (calendar, document, etc.) and the person would qualify how and in which circumstances they use it. Quite often, the app did one or two things really well that others didn’t cover or did not do well in their perspective.

Why are People doing this?

There are a lot of reasons why people started embracing small apps loosely joined. The primary driver has been mobility and looking for small mobile or tablet apps that do a specific, needed task. Mobile and tablet uses often have quite different contexts for use, including a mix of creation and consumption, but the affordances and agency in these apps is a driver too. Having applications work across platforms is helpful, but it is more essential to have open file formats and standards that work with apps that can pick up the file and provide use on another device with the constraints and augmented capability mobile and tablets provide.

There are additional relevant benefits of the file formats and standards working across devices. The ability to easily share files with others with whom you are working or communicating is a great benefit, as the platform doesn’t matter, just the ability to grab an app (often inexpensive and sometimes free) to read and modify the file is key. Being able to easily share files leads to always having needed files accessible, as they can be kept of an internet directory (the kids, okay grown-ups, call this cloud storage).

The last benefit that is driving people to the world of small apps loosely joined is the value of non-proprietary files, which isn’t as hippy and give-it-to-the-man as it sounds–it’s really about ensuring that the files will work on any device with an application that handles that type of object. Having to keep two or three versions of the same software around so one can work across file differences, or open files in a different version of the software so it can be saved down into an older version, is silliness we can leave in the inefficient old days. Many of the file structures that are based on around text, including calendars, can be opened in any text application and read and edited there.

Where are People Doing This?

Most people (particularly outside the geeks) started down this path when smartphones and the modern class of tablets entered their lives. They looked for ways to replicate how they worked on laptops and desktops, but often the same apps weren’t there and they had to improvise. Word of mouth also spread ideas and options for getting things done. But, often people go exploring small, focused apps that are inexpensive or free to see what they do. The small targeted apps, often in the “does one thing well” class of app or small app that is does a few things simply and easily, have filled made it easy to try quite a few different apps to find something that works. People often find a few apps that fit into a workflow that targets a few small tasks to get things done while standing in line, stuck in traffic, or sitting at your desk waiting for one’s computer to finish updating and reboot.

As a result, often people find that this small focused app model helps them do the things they need to do, and it can be more efficient than digging around large cumbersome software. Often this can be more efficient as the person is not digging around large cumbersome software. Once this becomes a habit or a way of working on mobile, the expectation is that it should also work on the desktop / laptop as well. People look for similar apps and services that fit their more efficient workflows that started on their “devices that are too small and limited to do any real work on” and want that same type of focussed application where they “do their real work”.

This change is also being driven by more than just shifts in devices–people are trying apps and services in their personal life to help manage their schedules or work simultaneously with club or event organizers crafting an email or newsletter. Our personal lives used to trail our work lives as far as technology and services
augmenting what we do, but now what we’re doing in our personal lives has greatly surpassed the capabilities of many of our work offerings.

The Types of Apps that Often Fit the Bill

The starting place for many people who try a variety of apps on their mobile and tablet devices are weather, text, and calendar. We don’t modify weather apps as they are mostly just a display of provided content, but there are much variety among the offerings, such as <give a good, standard example> and DarkSky, which offers micro-location weather with how many minutes until precipitation starts or stops.

Text apps

Text apps is where many start seeing the concept and value of small apps loosely joined. People want something more than just simple notes application to jot ideas and sync them to other devices. They want to be able to read and do a little editing of text that they or others started writing on their “work” devices, all while standing in line or during other available moments that permeate our day. Soon this “little bit of editing” seems like it isn’t all that bad to do and they start picking up things they started writing elsewhere and knock out more on their mobile device or tablet. Or, they have an idea when they are not near their “work” device and start jotting a few notes in a text app, and soon it has turned into a couple or few paragraphs. The accessibility and convenience of these capabilities has switched on a lightbulb. Talking and comparing notes with friends and colleagues, they find there are apps that are not just simple text, but can add annotations for structure (headers and outlines), hooks for style (bold and italics), and more. This often leads to learning that some apps have more robust writing tools (dictionary, thesaurus, writing analytics, etc.). Those who write with a workflow of first getting ideas out of their head and then working with them to hone them are often most prone to the small apps loosely joined way of doing things. But, others also like the ease of just getting words and ideas out in one app, then editing elsewhere by just opening another app and grabbing the same text file from a cloud sync service or sharing between apps directly. These text apps, particularly when those that are markdown friendly, can take that initial text and turn it into a styled PDF, a Word doc, HTML to post, RTF (rich text format), or more.

Calendar apps

Calendars are another gateway drug, er application type, that leads to embracing the small apps loosely joined way of doing things. The calendar files are a set file type that is easy to move from app to app (except when working across platforms that have proprietary hooks that break compatibility). Smartphones and tables all come with calendar apps, but they rarely fit the full range of needs. Some people want a calendar to have a certain look or layout format that helps them see and evaluate their day, and there is an abundance of options on all platforms for visual display. But, the real gems are the small apps that shine with certain tasks like Fantastical does on Apple products with its natural language parsing that turns spoken words into an almost always bang-on calendar entry.

Other calendar apps start adding other intelligence and agency (applications doing things on our behalf to ease our work). Donna (rest her digital soul) was a favorite of mine for evaluating time between events and different modes of transport and calculating time to leave based on weather and traffic conditions (and if you were really stuck in a jam, it offered to help you get Uber). Donna was a gem for the space between meetings, but was an incredible help with coordinating kid pick-up and leave times related to their various events. Other apps that are helpful agents are Tempo (it came out of the same SRI lab as Siri), which is one of the fullest featured and most helpful calendar apps around. Tempo monitors your mail not only for events, but pulls the relevant emails, documents, location and contact information, and relevant transportation needs into one simple calendar entry–and all you had to do was place it on your calendar or say yes to an event invite. Tempo offers the ability to send an “I’m running late” notification to those with whom you are meeting, as well as the expected arrival time.

One the the interesting things about calendars in the small apps loosely joined set is that most of these class of apps do something else–they augment and clean-up the calendar entry. Say I open Tempo and it doesn’t recognize the location that is in the calendar entry - say it only has Ray’s Pizza in NYC (oh, you too have gone down this crazy path of meeting somebody at Ray’s Pizza in NYC only to later realize (not soon enough) that there are more than one and nearly a billion permutations of Ray’s, Ray’s Original, Original Ray’s, etc.)… so Tempo offers suggestions to sort out the exact location and then enters the address in the calendar file’s location field. Bingo! We have clarity, but not only does your calendar have clarity within Tempo, but in all other calendar apps that read that event file. Not only does Tempo do this, but other apps may also do this. We learn quickly the apps that don’t play well with others and hoard the clean up information (Mynd app has done this in the past, but it seems to be more friendly after its last update). Additionally, some apps give you the option as to which mapping and directions app you would like the calendar to open when you are actually on your way.

Email apps

One of the things that mobile and tablets reinforce is how painful email is in our lives (on both the work and personal sides). Being able to live in email and work with it easily in some managed way from a mobile device or tablet is critical. The small apps loosely joined concept really takes hold with email for many people. Some tools work as easy, light triage, such as Mailbox, to quickly filter through your email based on importance and time-relative needs. Also, some tools that manage attachments in email (or, more appropriately, files that would have been attachments, such as Hightail (formerly YouSendIt), which stores files and documents for your email to link to securely. The only requirement for most of the email apps is the email account must run on IMAP, which is pretty much the norm these days.

Photo apps

The quality of photos has improved drastically on many mobile devices and even tablets. This along with the adage, “the best camera is the one you have with you” (and most people always have their phone with them), has led to the reality that a lot of photos get taken on mobile devices and tablets. The photos are a common file type and there is an abundance of apps that can take a photo and modify it to improve its quality, add filters to change the look, add text, or turn into something that looks a lot like a watercolor painting. The photos can also be scanned and OCRed, as well as uploaded as a document and later searchable (as many do in Evernote.

Standards and Access

The key to many of the apps loosely joined use types mentioned (and the many not covered here) is that the files passed among apps follow a set or ad hoc standard. Text files that use Markdown (or Multi-Markdown that extends the capabilities to add footnote, tables, and more) are all human readable, but also any text app can read them and edit them. The file sizes are small, which is incredibly important for mobile devices and tablets in limited mobile bandwidth locations (be that Manhattan at 5:15 on any weekday or the outer suburbs of Accra).

Access to the files is the other important characteristic of small apps loosely joined. Working between apps may not require internet access, but working between devices that are not in bluetooth range, or sharing files to collaborate requires data access (most often through the internet). Small file size, which those of us working with mobile a long time know is still an essential for actually getting things done reliably.

Common Use Traits

These apps have a core set of functionality that stem from the capabilities of:

• Viewing
• Creating
• Honing
• Agency
• Features / functionality augmentation

Viewing is a common characteristic of all the apps, but the ability to create is where the real difference in these apps start to have real value for people using these apps and working in a small apps loosely joined workflow. The small apps can also provide the ability to hone what has been done in another app or on another device. This honing may be editing or adding data or an element to improve use. Agents that look out for us and do work we would be having to do is quite helpful, particularly when they are getting to the near bulletproof reliability some are approaching these days. The features and functionality augmentation in apps really helps when working with light apps that are focused and easy to use. Adding grammar checks and tools that can improve our work or creations, much like we would at a laptop or desktop, have shifted many people to this small apps loosely joined life.

App Traits

There are a few core traits in these apps. First off, as mentioned, they work on open document types that are are commonly used as actual or de facto standards.

Another trait is the apps are light (a few features and functionality sets), focus on simplicity, and are easy to use. Mobile devices do not have the screen space for complicated or complex interfaces, and, in reality, given where and how these devices are used, the user’s full attention is not on the app or device. Good mobile and tablet designers and developers understand this limitation very well and understand just how far they can push the limited human constraints that come into play when interacting with the apps.

The last related trait is that the apps are focused. When listening to how people use and interact with their devices and apps, it is interesting how they understand and parse functionality that fits their needs across apps. With calendaring, some people love Fanstastical’s UI for display of the day’s and upcoming events, while other people love how easy it is to input information and create events from a chunk of copied, typed, or spoken text (and getting it right). It was interesting talking with other Donna calendar app users as many of us would open Donna to get just travel-related information and / or honing the address, then close it and open another calendar app for its different functionality. The apps do a few certain things really well and those that live in the small apps loosely joined workflow are quite fine with that.

Wrap-up

The small apps loosely joined workflow and expectation has moved from mobile devices to the laptop / desktop world. The small apps that were just on mobile devices are showing up on the more fully powered devices. The output created from these apps have supporting services on the web that can augment this practice much further. Many who work in small apps loosely joined have learned to like the focused task and mindfulness of that targeted approach–they get things done far more efficiently and are more productive more of the time, and, as a result, they can often get more uninterrupted time to focus on living life beyond devices and apps. The goal going in was just to get things done on the device I have with me, but it is not a bad benefit for those whom value it.

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Shift Happened Series

• Part 1: More Productive Not Using Productivity Tools
• Part 2: Small Apps Loosely Joined
  
• Part 3: Capturing Decisions in Social
• Part 4: The One Social Way (Or not) to Doing Social Really Well in Enterprise

Everynow

We are living in a time where there are not only many concurrent realities existing at once, but our understanding of “Now” is perhaps broader and more broken than most any time since the Middle Ages started sprouting into the Renaissance. This is nowhere more prevalent in our understanding of the future, particularly the near future. Future technologies and future living have been part of reality in and around us for decades. But the time gap between the few edge cases who are living with what most consider future technology and life to when it hits mainstream is ever increasing.

The Future is Here…

This stretch of living with future technologies as a regular part of our lives and those who are not there yet, or even living a generation of reality behind all while living in the same culture is something I’ve called the everynow. Everynow started about 2004 as a tongue-in-cheek riff on Adam Greenfield’s everyware term use. Everynow is the breadth reality in William Gibson’s “The future is already here - it’s just not evenly distributed” statement from 2003, which is an idea many have discussed for years prior, but with out such nice phrasing.

Breadth of Adoption Reality

It seems the everynow is about 20 years in breadth.

For years it seemed it was about 10 to 12 years and it was nice to see it in Steven Berlin Johnson’s wonderful book “Where Good Ideas Come From”, he talks about the reality of ideas taking about 10 years from inception to getting them into relatively broad public use. When you think of internet based email in the 90s and the use of corporate email internally and out through internet gateways to better connect freely and more unencumbered, it took about 5 years for email to get to roughly 99% inside the organization (many organizations were much closer to that 10 year mark). But, in the last couple years in particular that 10 years.

Internet of Things

This past week with Tom Coates’ Twitter account for his house, @houseofcoates getting some mainstream media press the difference from what Tom is doing (and thinking and playing with for a very long time) rather echoes things like MisterHouse which started in the late 1990s using X10 devices and services and internet enabling them using Perl. The demo site for MisterHouse allowed those on the web to see the live status of lights, messaging, home music service, and things like window shade open status, but also for quite a while allows any of us to modify them right from the web. Tom’s long interest and work with his House of Coates is the latest iteration and extension of this and his long work on web of data and internet of things. (By the way Tom’s work is quite good and worth tracking down.)

The chatter around the Internet of Things, which is far from mainstream exposure and partial understanding is nearly 15 years old since its first usage by Kevin Ashton, really took off around 2002 and 2003. Bruce Sterling’s still incredibly valuable framing of the Internet of Things in his Shape of Things book from 2005 added the incredibly helpful concept of Spimes to conversations (actually he seeded this in 2004 in a SIGRAPH presenation, “When Blobjects Rule the Earth”), thinking through, and development many of us had been wading in for a few years.

Information for Use and Reuse on Mobile

Another example is around mobile… When I think about this mobile explosion that has “taken place recently” there is very little that is different from the thousands of handfuls of us living with smartphones in the early 2000s and thinking of the capabilities and potentials and building them and living them, all while the many many thousands of us were swimming in the same pool of live with the billions of others around us. Many of use in the U.S. and Western Europe felt we were deeply behind those living in Japan and Korea and their understanding and living the realities of living a life with mobiles that augmented their reality as the devices and services enhanced their lives lived with the devices in them. As we developed use of our web based information for use on internet connected Palm and other similar devices in the 90s

But, from a consumer and early adopter framing the reality of what is potentially doable in the future and having that in place and in use for some time know then trailing all the way back to those living in prior realities and the frustrations (although they think they are manageable, but not realizing how poorly the tools and services are working for them) is pushing that everynow to a very confounding nearly 20 years.

Mistaking the Edges for the Norm

One of the best lessons from social quantitative analysis in grad school (public policy) was learning to understand if you are viewing edge cases or the norm (mainstream). Humans have some common traits, but when you start to design or develop any sort of program (be it government services or social software) you start to realize that social at scale has many variations to how humans are social.

When taking that deep understanding we must understand if the trends we are seeing are the edges (or even outliers) or the norm. The common elements that cause the variation (often very large variations) are often driven by culture (as well as sub-cultures) and personality types.

Many of us who were early to blogging and many other social platforms were very much outliers and at or beyond the edges. We built and designed tools and services based on our personality types and traits. When you have 1.5 billion people the internet getting 70 million or even 200 million people that are similar to the edge case traits can be somewhat easy. What is really difficult is that next 90 percent. Keep in mind people use social tools very differently. What has worked for the very early innovators through early adopters is extremely different from the different personality types that will follow.

This gap in understanding that the world is not like us has not become real to many building social tools. But, to some it has hit hard, very hard. Much of the early Web 2.0 theories about social web patterns were looking at the edges and mistaking them for the norm. This was relatively easy to see if you have a background in social analytics and adoption trending through a society at scale.

To get beyond the edges you have to go deep, very much like danah boyd has done with her work. The work danah has done is deeply helpful as it surfaces the difference in understanding across personality types, age ranges, and many cultural influences. She deeply understood the problem that most people on line (youth and adults) were not openly social as was (and sadly still is) the common assumptions of things to come. Privacy and small groups is much more common. Today we see Facebook privacy setting with 70% or more with “Friends Only” or tighter for sharing information ([Pew’s Privacy management on social media sites” report).

Gamification

This understanding the edges and norms differences is also incredibly helpful for things like gamification, which can cause really nice upticks in usage of social services with the innovator and early adopter types (in the Technology Adoption Lifecycle, that is the core of Geoffrey Moore’s Crossing the Chasm framing). But, for the rest of the users it is either non-influencial or is deeply problematic. The mix of benefit and loss is essential to understand. At IA Summit I had quite a few discussions with UX people trying to fix the communities that were damaged by gamification in the long run after a nice initial uptick. It is a tough problem and a real issue to grapple with. This is incredibly noticeable on inside the firewall communities as there is a fixed user base and you can easily see who participated and how over time and the shifts (well, you do need access to the data, which some vendors don’t provide access to).

Today many of the one year to four year old social software deployments in organizations have gone through the edge types and been finding gaps in their services and tools offered as they work to get to the norm types.

The tools must change and adapt to the edges and the norms and the two user sets don’t really work in the same way. We have a lot of seeing, thinking, understanding, and building a better path for the mainstream folks as we bring people along on this fantastic transformation those of us on the edges have been through the last 20 years and more.

Related:

• Cooperation, Coordination, and Competition

Getting Beyond Simple Social

“Social is hard!” is something I hear repeatedly by most of my clients and those I talk to. It is one of the issues I continually run across in my work with organizations trying to better understand social software and collaboration tools for their organization as well as helping vendors better understand their gaps and how to close them as social scales.

I have my “40 Plus Social Lenses” that I use to set foundations and understandings to better see issues, gaps, and understand the potential ways forward. Everything requires testing and rarely does the good solution work everywhere as there are no best practices, because what we are working with is humans and how they are social. Humans and how we interact is not simple, we are not simple social creatures.

In January I quickly cobbled together a presentation for the UX Camp DC (a Washington DC User Experience community BarCamp) that I quickly titled “Getting Beyond Simple Social”, which I used as a frame for why most organizations are stuck with social (it is embedded at the end of this). Most organizations are stuck as they came to social thinking there are just a handful of things to understand and this social stuff is simple. I had a meeting with the senior partner at a huge global consulting firm who only wanted to know the best tool and if I could just boil down the 40+ Social Lenses to 2 or 3 as 40 is a bit tough (not only did the meeting end in my head at that point, but so did much of my respect for that firm), I explained to the end users and customers social needs to be simple, but in reality it is very complicated and complex and somebody has to work through that, which is what people hire consultants to work through for them and guide them through.

So, I cobbled together a few items from the 40 social lenses that I have presented prior, but included 2 new slides of things. The first is “Getting to Mainstream” (slides 4 through 8) and “5 Beginning Social Questions”.

Getting to Mainstream

Much of my work is helping organizations with social inside their firewall, which means bringing it to mainstream. In my years of working with social and collaboration services and platforms (since 1996) the tools haven't really changed much, other than now the tools get out of the way much more (in the 90s the answer to improving the tools was adding form fields, which is rarely ever the right answer, our technology has moved beyond that, we should too). But, the following are the reality setting steps I take with organizations and that took me years to grasp.

Inside the firewall the goal for social is ultimately 100 percent of the employees and/or partners. The measuring stick is often email, which is ubiquitous and a very familiar tool for everybody in the organization. Email is social and is something that everybody understands and has their face in at some point during the day. Many look at what is happening in social web services and seeing ease of communication and interaction, often in the open, which solves some of the pain points that are tied to email and email is everywhere.

What is lacking in the 100 percent goal is the understanding that email often took 5 years in most organizations to reach roughly 100 percent adoption and use. Having lived through the inception of email in a few organizations and then talking with friends about their organizations where they worked or consulted, the 5 year threshold was fairly normal. I don't know anybody who was actually measuring this broadly in their organization (Connections: New Ways of Working in the Networked Organization is a great book that will get you close to this as it walks through adoption and use patterns of email in companies).

Focus on Social

The focus is often on social by those looking for a solution uses the viewpoint of social web. But, much of what they see and have explained is not mainstream usage, but usage by early adopters and innovators (in the framing terms of Geoffrey Moore's Crossing the Chasm which uses a modified version of the Technology Adoption Lifecycle). The downside of much of the understanding around social through the view of early adopters or innovations, from their own perspective or others watching, is that is far from mainstream. The personality types and traits of this roughly 5 to 10 percent of the population are quite different from the norms of more mainstream users who follow later. Much of the understandings of the clicksperts who followed the trends and tried to make sense of things (often labeling themselves “social media gurus”) failed to grasp they were trying to explain the edges as the norm.

One of the most telling examples of this is from Twitter who explained 40 percent of our active users simply sign in to listen to what's happening in their world..

Understanding How the 90 Percent are Social

If we are going to focus on social for everybody we need to understand how the 90 percent who are not innovators and early adopters are social. Most people do not interact the way social is described by the clicksperts, social media gurus, or most of what is written up in Mashable (I spend so much time undoing what is written in Mashable as “understanding” - this was the impetus for my coming to grips with Popular - Thinking about it, which also applies to so many other things).

As we saw with email in the 1990s, social tools can reach the 100 percent. The BBCs wiki usage passed 100 percent adoption after 5 years of use. It takes time for adoption to happen, but it also takes guidance and modifying tools for use by mainstream. Euan Semple, who started and guided the BBC initiative as their head of knowledge management as a fantastic book out now, Organizations Don't Tweet, People Do: A Manager's Guide to the Social Web, if you want a good understanding from somebody else who has been living this.

5 Beginning Social Questions

Where I started getting to the reality of social and collaboration in 1996 I was managing a private Compuserve forum for 3,000 lawyers for a legal trade organization. I was continually running into issues pertaining to social problems. Having a solid academic background in social sciences with organizational communication and communication theory undergrad and public policy for grad school looking at human social interactions, particularly at social scale scale was something I had training for and experience with. But, having a mediated interface through a whole new perspective to think through.

I quickly realized there were a high level set of 5 questions I was continually coming back to so to try and solve some of the issues I was seeing with use and non-use of the service (I also spent a lot of time with the Compuserve product people talking about issues and means to resolve them). The 5 questions I asked started with trying to resolve, “Is it:…”

• The person
• How humans are social
• Cultural influences - or cross cultural issues
• Organizational constraints
• Problems with the tools / service

Never was the problem just one of these elements, but it was a mix of two or more of the elements. On very rare occasions it was just the person, but like many things where there is one instance there will often be more. These 5 simple beginning social questions get intermingled and tangled very quickly and are just the tip of the iceberg for all things social software that would follow for me.

The Person

The person is often the most common place to point with there is a problem or issue with social software. If it is seemingly a one-off problem keep good track of what it is, as quite often you are looking at social software's equivalent “patient zero” (also known in epidemiology as the index case) and understanding that one person's problems and issues as much as possible will help sorting out the real issues then if and what could or should be done to resolve the issues.

The downside with focussing on just the individual is everybody is different with their make up is different and has different experiences, has different cultural inflections, is a different personality type, has a different social role, as a different work role, and many other variables that influence who they are and their social interaction needs. Many of these variable or elements can be clustered with others with similar traits so that we are not dealing with an “every snowflake is different” syndrome, but need to at the core of it understand why every person (snowflake is different).

How Humans are Social

Understanding with some broad and unfocussed grasp of human sociality we need to look at if the problem at hand or the need in front of us is viewed from how humans are social. When we think in this perspective it is best not to use an innovator or early adopter perspective as they do things that are out of the norm (think of Mark Zuckerbergs egregious claim that people want to be openly social and nothing can be farther from the truth for most of human social experience, most humans normally are not wired to share everything openly and looking at those of us who are broken should not be mistaken for the norm). Thinking of how humans at scale or broadly generalized are social can help is a helpful perspective, but knowing what the real norm is, or the norm is for the relative cultures is helpful.

Cultural Influences - Cross Cultural Clash

How humans are social is often problematic as the norms we consider do not really translate well across cultures and particularly inside organizations. We do know that people with interact with others in smaller more comfortable venues, but who is included nor not included in the conversation or even simple sharing of things doesn't universally translate. I have twice run across people who have been working to solve lack of use of collaborative platforms that are shared between US/UK portion of the company and their Japanese counterpart. The core problem is in the forum groups the US and UK employees will share more openly and freely if their managers are not part of the discussion and do not have access to the group, but in Japan not having your manager in the discussion is seen as highly disrespectful and is something that employees should never do.

Not only does culture come from global cultural differences, but understanding an organizations culture is also essential as many times the organization has its own ingrained ways of handling things and its culture is broadly adopted through learning or other less formal enculturation patterns. Understanding what happens in the organization when something goes wrong is often a really good pulse point. Having the depth of understanding from change management professionals is helpful for sorting through an organization's baseline culture and the possibilities for modification to that existing perspective.

How and organization is managed and controlled is really helpful to understand as it often is echoed in how social software and collaboration tools are used and adopted. How malleable that corporate culture is will be very important to grasp at the stage of tool selection, because each tool and platform has its unspoken social interaction model that it echoes. Getting the wrong interaction model mapped to an organization's culture that runs counter to that organizations broad culture you will have issues. It is also important to keep in mind most organizations have many subcultures, which often makes one social interaction model difficult for adoption and optimal use.

Organization Constraints

Every organization not only has its own cultural fingerprint, but it is often constrained by external pressures, particularly if it is a publicly traded company, an organization in a heavily regulated industry, or has a lot of oversight as governmental and NGOs have with their public view and those that gave and review their charter. The external oversight along with rules and regulations as to what can be said, who can see it, who shouldn't see it, and formal record keeping all play an important role in use, as well as tool selection and its implementation.

This is also often intermingles with cross-cultural issues of roles in organizations as some, by their role (legal, HR, mergers and acquisitions, etc.) are far more restrictive and not prone to sharing or cooperation outside the bounds of their small trusted and approved collaborators working within their known bounds of permissions and sharing. Where as those in marketing roles are often far more comfortable interacting more openly and broadly and are willing to cooperate, but you take the sales slice of that marketing and you hit people who are heavily competitive and often have personality types prone not to share and are also rewarded and encouraged to be competitive (often with the mindset, you share with me as much as you want, but I'm am still competing heavily and sharing is not in my best interest at all - yes, heavily stereotypical and often for a reason).

Is it the Tool or Service

The medium that all of this social interaction takes place to get the work down plays a tremendous role in what works and doesn't work. As I pointed out recently in Social Reticence of a Click things as simple as a star to favorite things (as the only option for one of three different social intentions) can lead to serious problems (serious if getting fired is serious)). Most (I have yet to find one that actually grasps this, but I am open to being surprised) of the analyst firms out there have simple check boxes that do a tremendous dis-service to social software and collaboration services as the things that actually matter and are needed to be understood are not included in any of the check box mindset understandings of the world. The magic quadrant and other farcical measures don't help understand what is needed to make good choices and this often leads organizations to purchase the wrong tools for their needs.

Often the tools get in the way from our optimal interactions as many of the elements that are important to grasp as put forward above (as simply and thinly as they have been conveyed) were not grasped in the consideration, selection, purchasing, nor implementation and honing of the service. Far too often the tools have been created outside of the depth of understanding of human social interactions and implemented by IT whom, as was brilliantly broad brush stated by Maciej Ceglowski of Pinboard, is as relevant to do the work as having a Mormon bartender (having spent much of my professional life within IT and dealing with social this is as apt a metaphor as any).

The tool is often one of the pain points, as most do not embrace human social needs as they run counter to how humans are social. But, the tools is not always the part to blame.

It is A Mix

As it is with many things, it is not the individual pieces of this 5 part question looking to find a simple answer, but it is almost always a mix of some, if not all of these five elements. Our poorly thought through understanding that social is simple quickly hits reality that we must get beyond simple social understandings to understand how it is complicate and complex to we can move beyond. Looking at these five elements knowing which ones play what roles as part of the foundation of the problem set is essential, but having good data and understanding is needed, but also a solid understanding in of this panoply of intertwingled elements and how to best make an adaptive service that meets the needs of the people who have been waiting for a long time for a good social and collaborative service that meets their needs of business as it takes a larger step to better interactions in the work environment. Yes, most don't know they have been waiting, but most know the tools they have been strapped to in the past and often currently are not anything that they should be and often the tools and services are not really usable and IT spent money to create a problem rather than taking large strides to solve it. It is time to get beyond that, but doing so takes moving beyond the model of simple social.

Getting Beyond Simple Social

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Social Reticence of a Click

A few years back I was talking about problems many people having problems with social interaction elements in their work social platforms (where it really clicked were many early adopter types who have used social web tools for many many years running into issues). The problems related to activities they thought were private were showing up in the public stream. People were finding that their own understanding of many social interaction patterns and use of features had many, and often unknowable, variations that made their intent for an action often broadly misunderstood.

As I have talked about this over the past four years or so at in client projects, presentations, and workshops there seems to continually be problems of interpretation. This isn’t really surprising that problems of misinterpretation occur as most understanding around activity and actions have meaning constructed by and within the culture the actions take place.

Problems of Favorites

One of the design elements from social web services that made its way into many social work platforms is the simple star for favorites. It is simple and innocuous it means the person favorites something. But, in many social web platforms it isn’t or was not easy to see these actions publicly. The act of clicking the star on Twitter often only was seen by the person who clicked on it and it put the favorited item in their collection.

The Twitter favorite star is now more problematic as it is now broadcasted and the person who has had an item favorited gets notification (if they so choose, and it is on by default). Looking at other people’s favorites has for years been public and likely has been from the day it was added. The reality is it required RSS or using a service that notified you when somebody (and who it was) favorited an item. Not having the favorites be easily found nor broadcasted created an easy environment for people to create their own social meaning of what the favorite does and means, much like the over all broadly correctly answerable questions, “what is Twitter and how are you supposed to use it”.

Meaning of actions is often a social construction by the community that uses a service. But, it also can have many sub-communities creating alternate and conflicting meanings and understandings. Where it really gets fun is when the service’s desired or stated meaning, “Clicking the star means you like it and put it in your favorites” directly next to the star or as a tool tip (hover notice), often is the second social understanding and the communities using the service opt for their own explanations and understanding of meaning.

Since Twitter made the notifications of favorites public, it has caused considerable concern and problems for many who had never considered their favorites to be public. The act and collection of their favorite items was theirs, not the domain of others.

Source of the Reticence of a Click

The problem isn’t germane to Twitter or any other service it is rather broad. It is one of the big reasons why use of social platforms inside organizations can take a while to get adoption going. Why things are stuck is unclear meaning. People are getting easily stuck with the lack of clarity around:

• What a interactive element on any of the pages does
• How broadly is the action shared (public or private or something between)
• What does the action mean
• Who is the action really interpreted

Three of these four need to be clarified much more clearly in services. Sadly, many services are people who do not understand the limited adoption and even more limited use of the services they are echoing the interactions from. All of this keeps people guessing, and not wanting to get it wrong they opt not to try seemingly simple features and functionality.

Why is Something So Simple So Hard to Grasp?

The action of clicking a star to favorite something is easy. Just as easy as clicking a “Like” button, which also has the same problems.

What happens after that simple click is where things get really goofy. These simple social services have stayed simple, but how people use them and how people think of the actions they take is far more diverse and complicated. There are four meanings that can be individually be construed by the clicking of the favorite star:

• One can favorite something so others can see it is one of their favorite items
• A person can click the star to note they have seen this and approve
• One can mean I have read this and is sharing that publicly
• A person can hold on to some thing for later review and doesn’t mean like or dislike nor approve

This variety of meaning is very common. The problem is that one button is used for many purposes as the service is simple with a simple uncluttered interface that doesn’t have options for alternate meanings, say an anchor to hold on to something, and a “+1” for things that are approved of or liked, which the star for a personal favorite for one’s own purposes can stand on its own.

What Could Go Wrong?

This is all just simple silly social software, what could possibly go wrong. For some of us it was clear that things could get muddled and muddy from the beginning. But, what could go wrong rather often has gone wrong, some with more problematic consequences than anticipated. Often these community and sub-community derived understandings lead to poor understanding and miscommunication through assumption. But, lacking functionality or means to account for the variety of meaning people intend socially or personally this will continue (see clearly labelled and hinted meanings above for reality of how social meaning works with only one option available).

In the past couple years the stories I would hear from my work or speaking engagements grew more dire. Until I talked with one company that had an employee fired things got so confused. But, not long after that first story another company had nearly the same thing happen, while other organizations have similar issues with out the dire outcomes.

In both cases a person saw something float through their internal microblogging service and it piqued their interest. They looked at what had been shared and saw problems, but were swamped with existing tasks and heavy workload so they added the favorite star to put it in their own collection and come back to it in a couple weeks to provide the needed insight and feedback. In both instances their companies rarely moved quickly on anything, as ideas would floated and draft white papers go around, with about a month or more for feedback. But, the social platforms had made the floating of ideas and getting feedback go much more quickly. Those who had floated the idea saw the person has put a “star of approval” on the idea and since many of the people who they wanted feedback from or approval from has responded with feedback or approval they started acting on the plans within weeks not the month plus that things normally took.

In both cases the people who had critical feedback related to gaps or large problems they saw in the proposal or white paper responded when they saw or heard actions were taking place based on those ideas. Both spoke up that they had critical information to provide, but people had been hired or received notification their job was changing and contracts for resources has started to be signed. Upper management was furious as the change had already started to happen in days with commitments behind them. Upper management liked the idea of being more nimble and agile so to move more quickly. But, this was not an “oops” situation it was one that somebody needed to be let go and somebody was let go in both instances.

Resolution?

The problem is not the the tools were use nor how quickly things happened and commitments made. The problem is the clarity of meaning and intent was lost because the actions and activities that have divergent meanings were packed into one design element. Understanding from a design and engineering perspective what people not only want to do, but actually do and mean by that action is essential. Our work tool have long been over due for cleaning up and focus on use so that they become more simple. But, good design and understanding that goes into it, or needs to go into it, can be short cut. Copying a service and its interactions without understanding the social interaction design and meaning of actions, be it intent or by social construct is essential.

It is best to start with a solid platform, which may require bringing in somebody to help frame what that is in context to the needs as well as the social and technical environments you have.