The People Part of Working with People You Can’t Be With

• Chuck from EMC reflects on a recent interaction with GE about SupportCentral, a social productivity platform that GE has been working on since 1999. “ … it became apparent that they had successfully rewired GE’s corporate DNA to function very effectively as a social computer. Yes, they do the blogging, wiki, discussion thing — that’s just for starters. We debate on ideal SM models occasionally — people-centric, community-centric, discussion-centric, document-centric, process-centric, etc. They had support for every one of these models — seamlessly integrated. People can engage in any mode that makes sense to them. As one example, personal workspace content can be part of a community, discussion, process, etc. Presence? Just part of the environment, thanks. They described themselves in a “post-email world”. Nice. Mashups? Deployed for quite a while, thanks — all corporate repositories could easily be accessed. They’d lost count of the umpteen thousand mashups people had created. What really blew me away was their integration of process tools. Business processes can be defined by anyone, refined by anyone, instantiated by anyone, measured by anyone. As a result, they could count 50,000 different business processes that were captured on the platform in some form or another. That one made me think for a moment … They also had done a nice job of putting a somewhat formalized workflow layer over an essentially social environment. Some things are more important than others in a business setting.” See Chuck’s learning points at the end.
• Ron reminds us about the four fatal assumptions of executive communication: “(1) Constituents understand what has been communicated, (2) Constituents agree with what has been communicated, (3) Constituents care about what has been communicated, and (4) Constituents know how to act against what has been communicated.” Swap both “executive” and “constituent” for “virtual team member” and the four assumptions remain fatal.

The Technology Trends of Working with People You Can’t Be With

• Microsoft unveiled the pricing plans for Microsoft Online Services, its subscription service offering for Exchange, SharePoint, Office Communications, Live Meeting and Dynamics CRM. “Microsoft is introducing Exchange Online Deskless Worker and SharePoint Online Deskless Worker. These new offerings are designed to meet the needs of deskless workers, those people who typically spend a small portion of their workday using a computer but still need to communicate and collaborate with colleagues and partners. A Deskless Worker Suite, including Exchange Online Deskless Worker and SharePoint Online Deskless Worker, will be available for $3 (U.S.) per user, per month. Customers can also subscribe to each service independently. Exchange Online Deskless Worker will provide e-mail, calendars, global address lists, anti-virus and anti-spam filters, as well as Outlook Web Access Light for access to company e-mail. SharePoint Online Deskless Worker will provide easy access to SharePoint portal and team sites and search functionality, giving employees read-only access to important information such as company policies, training and benefits.” For $15 per month, a user can get Exchange, SharePoint, Office Communications and Live Meeting. That’s pretty compelling pricing, and if nothing else, every IT department should go through a costing exercise to see whether it still makes sense to have inhouse infrastructure. See coverage at PCPro, ZDNet, and PC Magazine. In terms of partner support (partners get 18% of revenue in a sharing deal), Unisys is onboard.
• Elguji Software is preparing for the commercial release of LinkJam (PDF), its social bookmarking tool that runs on Lotus Domino. “LinkJam is a social bookmarking tool that allows teams to save, share and organize their bookmarks. LinkJam makes it easier than ever before to share web bookmarks and accelerate innovation. With LinkJam, you can discover where people get their information. You go straight to information that a member of your community has already vetted and found appropriate and useful.” LinkJam enables organizations with Lotus Domino to leverage existing infrastructure for social bookmarking, rather than deploying something new and additional.
• Collanos released a point upgrade to Collanos Workspace 1.3, its team workspace offering. “Collanos Workplace 1.3.0.3 contains some new features, many improvements to existing functionality, as well as various minor enhancements and bug fixes. The focus of this release was to further improve the day-to-day work of users by filling in small but essential capabilities, as well as to lay the groundwork for supporting additional language translations.” Anything that improves usability for the end users is good in my books. Collanos users, go get it!
• A variety of companies sponsored Aberdeen to research the benefits of collaboration and Web 2.0 at work. Key findings: 34% average reduction in project completion time, and 26.7% increase in revenue per employee. “This research provides a roadmap that all organizations can follow to improve workforce collaboration initiatives and advance towards Best-in-Class status. It also educates the market on the myriad collaboration and Web 2.0 software tools that Best-in-Class organizations use to share knowledge and information, connect workers to achieve common goals, and positively impact talent management efforts.” The first figure is directionally accurate for such tools; the second one is harder to get good figures on, so a detailed analysis of the methodology is in order before believing it.
• If you make the decision to embrace an online document sharing tool, say Google Docs, Kevin says that having offline capabilities through Google Gears is critical. This mitigates against the risk of such services going down. He writes, “In my opinion, anyone using Google Docs should also have Google Gears installed. This allows you to have access to your documents even when you don’t have a web connection, or in this particular case, when Google Docs is down. Offline, you have access to edit and save changes to a document, or view a spreadsheet or presentation.” Full agree, which is why Pillar 2 says what it says … see 7 Pillars.
• MeetingSense released Version 3 of MeetingSense, its meeting management and team action item accountability software and service. “MeetingSense 3.0 is an affordable Software as a Service (SaaS) solution that empowers users to easily capture, instantly distribute, and then collaboratively track and manage meeting information, action items, and files online in real-time. Since 2006, MeetingSense solutions have proven to eliminate an average of seven hours of wasted time per week per user, save thousands of dollars in operational costs per user, and provide organizations with standardized meeting structure and best practices. MeetingSense has helped to optimize meetings and projects at more than 500 organizations–serving thousands of users –at companies like, Cisco, Dell, Pfizer, HP, Deloitte & Touche, Honeywell, Visa, and the National Institute of Health.” That’s an impressive list of customers — are you using MeetingSense? Learn more at EContent.

Insights on Being Productive and Effective

• Just because you work from home and work doesn’t feel like work, you should take regular breaks to recharge mental focus and disengage from go-go-go. James says “I find that if I don’t take regular little breaks in the work that at the end of the day I find myself mentally wiped out, and that’s not good. Breaks keep that from happening just like they do for office workers so whatever you do don’t forget to take them.” Are you doing it?
• Five things not to say when you are trying to be productive: (1) I don’t have time, (2) I am being pulled in all directions, (3) I’ve got too much to do, (4) I can’t find it, and (5) I’m just not organized. Stop making excuses, and do something about it. Nicholas has ideas.

Other Noteworthy Insights

• Vodafone NZ released the pricing plans for the iPhone 3G. The NZ Herald “Your Views” web site is filled with very upset Vodafone customers. Steve from Australia offers cold comfort: “Wow! What a rip-off! If you factor the initial $449 into the 500MB plan, it comes to $148.70/month for the 8GB iPhone over 24Months. Optus Australia will give you a similar plan for $61/month over 24/months, all up! And this AUS plan isn’t even that good compared to other countries. Come on Vodafone NZ, open your eyes!” No, I won’t be buying one.
• The world lost a great lady yesterday. I wasn’t part of Grandma Major’s extended family, but she knew how to show an interest in young people and be an encouragement.