5Cs of Social Technology

There are 5 key ways in which one can participate in the Social technology movement. Create, Co-Create, Collate and Curate, Comment, Consume. 

Disclaimer: I have a vague feeling I read something on these lines more than a year ago in a blog, but don't recall the details. I am using this idea because it is an easy way to explain how one can be a part of the Social movement.


So, when you consider leveraging on the social technology platforms, it would be a good idea to consider what you are good at what you could possibly do more of based on your expertise and role.

Do you want to:

1) Create: Create white papers, PPTs, blog posts, tweets etc (Tools: Repositories, Blogs, Microblogs)

2) Co-Create: Create a bigger and collective body of knowledge via Wikis or Conversations (Tools: Wiki, Networking Tools, Workspaces)

3) Collate and Curate: Combine things you read from various sources, analyze, filter, add value and put them together for your own as well as others' benefit (Tools: Blogs, Repositories)


4) Comment: Leave your comments on others' blog posts, conversations, documents and tweets (Tools: Blogs, Workspaces, Repositories, Microblogs)

5) Consume: Simple! Just be open to content and knowledge from others and acknowledge it whenever you can! :-) 

The SN Story

PeopleBrowsr Presents A Brief Cartoon History of Social Networking 1930-2011

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Cute representation of the social networking story! The world is definitely changing.

KM India Summit 2010

Knowledge Management and Social Networking

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Conversations that Click...!

I had an intellectually stimulating conversation with a friend from the IAS (Indian Administrative Service) this morning. Such conversations don’t, however, come too often. Left me wondering “why not?”. Obviously, if you know me well, you might have guessed by now that I am likely to view such a topic through the “KM-glass” (knowledge management).

KM passionately advocates the sharing of knowledge. But the sharing of knowledge is definitely not a one-way process. It is about two-way interaction and conversations. It is not enough to just share what you know. You need to follow up to know if what you shared has reached the other person. You need to encourage questions, be open to the other person’s views and be ready to learn from her. You need to be totally engaged in the conversation in order to transfer and enhance the knowledge that you started with and create new knowledge. But, admittedly, things are not as easy as they seem. To document what you know may be with you the work of a moment but letting that evolve into something else via intense conversations is a challenge for many of us. More often than not, conversations are either abandoned, or result in no meaningful outcome, or are dominated by one of the parties, or involve two parties on two altogether different tracks that refuse to merge etc. On rare occasions, the conversations click and begin to make meaning. On unique occasions, such conversations further lead to a Eureka moment - what might be called an inspiring outcome that subsequently results in effective action or learning. So, what does it take to be involved in conversations that click? Or rather what does it take to create an environment that make conversations click? What does it imply for KM?

• A lot of us use the term “wavelength” pretty frequently when it comes to conversations and relationships. We supposedly get along well with people who “share the same wavelength”. I believe that this does not necessarily mean people who have a similar cultural or educational background. I think it goes beyond that and into a spiritual realm. There are some people that we can relate to irrespective of whether we share their views or not. We find it easy to listen to them and vice versa. We are able to have a strong argument without contemplating gifting a coffin at the back of our minds. Maybe it revolves around what we think are the intentions of the other person or the respect that we have for that person or something else on these lines. Which, by the way, is closely related to the topic of (natural and unconditional) trust.
• A lot depends on the frame of mind that we are in at the time of the conversation. What time of the day is it? What else is on your mind? Is something else bothering you and not letting you concentrate on the current conversation? Are you physically/mentally tired? Do you have the energy needed to be completely involved in a conversation? Are you in the “flow”?
• Obviously, your involvement and interest in the topic are major criteria. It not only decides the time you’re ready to invest in the conversation but also the ideas that you are capable of generating. Sometimes, it is the other person’s ability to draw your attention and inspire you into the conversation even if it isn’t a topic you understand too well. If the topic really excites you, you might even persist until the conversation clicks
• Another obvious factor that determines whether the conversation will click or not is based on the prior knowledge you have on the topic and more importantly your ability to understand your knowledge levels and accordingly dictate or listen to the other person

So, is there something that organizations can do to make conversations click or at least make them more tangible? Is it possible to get everyone on the same wavelength? That sounds ridiculous but not everything that sounds ridiculous is actually ridiculous, what? It may be quite possible to ‘find’ people who are tuned into the same thing and yet keep the population diverse enough for creative thinking. After all, this is the art and science of many start-ups.

One immediate thing that comes to my mind is the role of knowledge and social networking tools such as Linked In, Facebook, and Twitter. These can help people find others who share the same wavelength from anywhere in the world. Organizational equivalent of such tools can help find people from within the organization (especially when it is a large one). [Meanwhile, some people are lucky enough to bump into humans in the same wavelength zone in their own teams/neighborhood etc but that’s a rare thing]

Increasing the frequency of conversations is something that may help improve the opportunities to have conversations that click. This will have to be via conferences, workshops, mixed-audience training programs etc. Encouraging a culture that values and celebrates conversations would certainly have an impact. The management must not only promote such a culture but also allow employees to act upon what is invented/discovered amidst such conversations. It may influence employees to engage in serendipitous conversations and act upon their pet ideas. [Google is a universal example for such an atmosphere – 20% employee time on pet projects]

Any thoughts? Stories about stimulating conversations you have had with people? What do you think is required for conversations to click?

Social Media...Nectar or Poison?

Life is such an irony at times! In other words, it is a totally paradoxical world whichever way you look at it.

Social Media and Networking was originally meant to deliver us from ignorance. We were and are being advised to stay in touch, keep running, reading, and having conversations so we will be able to make sense of this complex world. And many of us oblige obediently. Because we want to be in the know. We want to run along with the world and not be left behind. We email, we blog, we tweet, we facebook, we digg and we what not. Some of us have the stamina and bandwidth to manage more than some others....but, eventually, we are all exhausted by the constant bombardment. It becomes so tiring that we don't see/process something that's happening right under our noses. After all, how on earth can we practically keep up with billions of people and events that happen every time we blink? I've, more than once, pondered over the dilemma of having to catch up with too many things and the inability to focus on and get deeper into one of the many things that come to us from the ever-growing virtual world. It is, all in all, a chaotic and fragile web of distractions that we are stuck to or rather dangle from.

So, when @VMaryAbraham tweeted a link to this article, I was amused. [I saw the article only because I happened to be catching up with tweets. Heh.]

Here comes more of the irony I referred to at the start of this post. I saw the tweet, read the article (for once I did not skim through but actually read the whole thing steadily), re-tweeted it to my circle on Twitter, bookmarked it on Delicious, posted it to my colleagues on our own internal equivalent of Twitter, posted it on the Indian KM Community website for feedback from other KMers and then headed over here to talk about it! Mother of all ironies, don't you think? [Could even be a mild form of schizophrenia ;-)]. And before I forget to mention, this was not a continuous process. I obviously got distracted by a dozen mails and plenty of tweets. [Mirthless laugh!]

Getting back to the article, the author starts off with the question, "What are the consequences of exposure to a constant, high-volume stream of media and information?" and goes on to answer it herself. She says - and I agree because it's quite logical - it reduces your attention span, makes you stupid, lazy, turn into a jerk, an annoying companion and gullible. She fortunately finishes the post with some suggestions on how to avoid the impact that addiction to SM tools could potentially have on us.

In the article Nicholas Carr is quoted as saying "Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski." I couldn't have put it better.

And I must now make the deadliest of confessions. I actually liked the pictures in the article and was chuckling at them (the kitten, the shiny things etc). They served their purpose and distracted me enough to be able to get back to reading the article as soon as I'd seen them. Speaking of which, it's high time I get your attention back on this post. Take a look at this pic and take a deep breath. Nice pic, right?

Calvin and Hobbes

But I seriously think that it is only the IT world that is so distracted and interrupted by social media tools. People in most other professions (especially the ones that don't involve staring at computer monitors and require the mobile phones to be switched off) are away from this chaotic web when they're at work. Makes me want to go away from IT and get into painting or something.

Which reminds me. Before I read the article under question, I actually ended up deleting a lot of pending RSS feeds that I was unable to catch up with for the past one month or so. I should, I suspect, feel relieved about having done that.

If you remember, I said I'd posted this article on the Indian KM community website. Just reaped the benefits of doing that. Even as I was busy writing this piece, I got to read another very useful article that @dineshtantri shared on the thread. This post's author puts it well too - "The speed with which information hurtles towards us is unavoidable (and it's getting worse). But trying to catch it all is counterproductive. The faster the waves come, the more deliberately we need to navigate. Otherwise we'll get tossed around like so many particles of sand, scattered to oblivion. Never before has it been so important to be grounded and intentional and to know what's important." Of course, there are times when we don't know whether something is important or not until we follow it through and, more confusingly, somethings turn out to be important only when we follow it through! It's a complicated world.

PS: I just traced this post (that is, MY POST) back to its beginning and re-read it and have this strange feeling that it is not a continuous post but a loose collection of thoughts from different parts of the brain. Does that reflect something? Eeeks. Scary. Focus. Meditate.

Wassup Doc?

Three things that are capturing people’s (and my) attention of late!

Zoozoo

Google Wave

And…..Bing!

H’mm. The world needs its Zoozooz, Wavez and Bingz! :-) Have you been following any of these or, even better, predicting how the world is going to change after being subjected to one or more of these? Ah..well, Zoozoo may not necessarily change the world but it could definitely change the face of advertising!

Google Vs Wikipedia

Bill talks about Google's potential decline in the wake of more sophisticated versions of Wikipedia. Being a big fan of Google, I am not sure I know how to respond, without getting a bit emotional. But then I am a fan of Wikipedia as well. :-) Coincidentally, the other day, when I was in a local KM community meeting, someone spoke about an article that apparently suggests that the birth of effective and meaningful social networking hints at the death of search. That was surely an Aa..ha! moment for me and I continue to entertain the idea. (After all, it is akin to organizational KM's shift from repositories to communities...isn't it?) Only time can tell how true this prediction is going to turn out to be. But here's some food for thought....whenever I want to learn about something brand new, I tend to visit the Wikipedia while I go to Google if I am looking for a specific article or ideas on something I am somewhat familiar with. Does this tell you something? And, btw, how do you choose between W and G?

Bill points to this elaborate article on Google Vs Wikipedia 3.0.

Update: Atul's interpretation of this post has made this debate/dialogue even more interesting. Go here to read his thoughts and my response to them.

Social Media in Business

This is a brilliant all-in-one list of how organizations are making use of Social Media (Blogs, Wikis, Microblogs, Communities: discussion boards, networks, second life, Video, Podcasts, Photos, Mashups, Voting, Crowdsourcing, Meetup, Bookmarking, Widgets). The most popular, not surprisingly, seem to be Blogs, Microblogs and Communities. Goes a long way to show how social media can change the face of business. Be it communication, branding, interaction, feedback, innovation et al. I am ready to bet my last rupee that these things are and will continue to be brilliant for businesses (and non-profit), really. But only if the entity under question is so passionate and innovative that it stands out of the crowd and knows exactly what it wants out of the web 2.0 paradigm. It cannot be there to just join the bandwagon. There is so much information out there in the WWW that it will turn out to be nothing more than a sticky and horrifying mess of posts, tweets, questions, discussions, forums, files and utilities if there is no method to the madness. (What a paradox, eh? Leveraging on crowd power is by the show of leadership and highlighting differences from the rest of the corporate crowd!).

Hat-tip: Thanks to Dina for her tweet pointing to this list! :-)

Social Intelligence

Zeph pointed me to this wonderful resource - not surprisingly, from HBR - on Social Intelligence that Dan Goleman is now working on. It has a video, an article and a quick summary of the parameters of Social Intelligence. I found it to be fascinating, motivating and exciting. Thanks to my work roots - KM and Collaboration. I think this will find great use in the field of KM & Collaboration...as a framework for enabling such a culture. Social Intelligence is not just required in leaders but also in every employee if one is looking to nurture a culture that is rich in knowledge management and collaboration.

Here is the table (Summary of the SI parameters) that HBR has on the home page of the link that I've provided above. You can watch the video and read the full article on following the link.

Empathy	Understand what motivates other people, even those from different backgrounds? Are you sensitive to their needs?
Attunement	Listen attentively and think about how others feel? Are you attuned to others’ moods?
Organizational Awareness	Appreciate your group’s or organization’s culture and values? Understand social networks and know their unspoken norms?
Influence	Persuade others by engaging them in discussion, appealing to their interests, and getting support from key people?
Developing Others	Coach and mentor others with compassion? Do you personally invest time and energy in mentoring and provide feedback that people find helpful for their professional development?
Inspiration	Articulate a compelling vision, build group pride, foster a positive emotional tone, and lead by bringing out the best in people?
Teamwork	Encourage the participation of everyone on your team, support all members, and foster cooperation?

Do organizations today have the purpose, intent, motivation and time to pursue such skills? Or will most business leaders trash this as rubbish and fluffy?

Networking the 80/20 Way?

Posted this at Patti's. Occurred to me that I could put it up here as well.....for some insights and responses from you. Especially if you're a good networker. PS: This has become an area that derives questions from me perpetually....the many conversations I've had on this topic don't seem to be really sealing things in my mind.

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Hello Patti! :-)

My comment isn't quite relevant to this particular post but a generic one on social networks. I'd love to know your views on what I am about to share with you - I've been reading the book, "Living the 80/20 Way" by Richard Koch. Koch says that we're good at creating strong relationships only with a finite number of people (which maybe something like 10 or so for most of us) and that we ought to focus on spending more time with these top 20% of our friends and relatives for a happier and more fulfilling life. I tend to agree with this view. To be honest with you, I must admit that I am not a natural networker and I tend to keep in touch only with really close people or people who've had a significant impact on me. I find it somewhat draining and tiring to spread my arms and get to know more and more people and then keep in touch with them. Random connections and exchange of ideas are OK at times. (Because) For me, it is not sufficient to just know people - if I really want to keep that connection going, I need to keep in constant touch with them...else the relationship is not a relationship at all. And this is not possible if my network is too large. But I very well understand the importance of networking and knowing more people....for purposes of learning, getting things done etc. Do you think technology can really come to the rescue to help people like me? I do believe that once you become popular and famous, you don't really have to network. People then follow you wherever you go....your network follows you and keeps in touch with you without you having to put in a lot of effort.

Basically, I am thinking aloud and don't even know if I've made myself clear....nevertheless, if you can see through my rambling and share your thoughts and suggestions on this confusing question of mine, I'd be thrilled.

:-) Nimmy

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I'll come back and post Patti's response to my 'question' if she decides to take it. :-) Meanwhile, let me know what you think.

Social Networking in Organizations

I've not - so far - had the opportunity to experience or see Social Networking being implemented in the context of business (organizations), but I am keen to find out how exactly it would make a difference to an organization and whether it will cut across barriers like reluctance in the workforce (as they've to expose their mail transactions for such a software to be effective). Anyways, I've prepared a quick mind-map of the basics in case you're interested. If you've had the opportunity to work on/use SNA tools, please do leave your comments and experiences here.

The Craft of Connection!

During the recent break I took, an idea that sprang to my mind is an unconventional method that may be used to promote and make serendipitous networking happen within the organization. I’ve built on the idea a bit and proposed it to the concerned people. As I wait eagerly to find out whether the idea will be considered worthy of implementation and whether it will then see the light of the day, there is this article on social networking that I just came across. It talks about networking initiatives in general and their benefits. Life is full of coincidences. If you’re active on the blogosphere and exploratory on the World Wide Web, you must already be aware of the article. I am referring to “The Craft of Connection”. It has been authored by two people one of which is Rob Cross, the author of the book - The Hidden Power of Social Networks. It is a good article if you’re looking to know more about the applications of SNA. Very useful if you’re a beginner in SNA and want to know how your company could benefit from it.

Coming back to my idea, it may sound bizarre and wacky to some. But one particular case that this article refers to is way ahead of what I thought of in terms of use of technology! So, for those to whom my idea sounds bizarre, this one would be bizarre and expensive. :-)

Here is the extract of the case from the article. It left me smiling. And I personally think the idea is a breeze.

Recently, a large consumer products company held a global meeting of its researcher community. Each participant’s name badge contained a radio frequency identification (RFID) chip, coded with data about that person and his or her work: some personal background, some areas of expertise, and current research interests. As the attendees mingled during the cocktail hour, their name tags glowed whenever two people with common or complementary interests passed. As people responded to the lights and made introductions, a computer tracked the connections and continuously updated a sociogram of the participants on a large projection screen. Although a natural extrovert may find such a technique gimmicky, it resonated well with the generally introverted and technology-enamored scientists and researchers. By the end of the evening, a poorly connected network had evolved into a richly linked community of practice.

Necessity is the mother of invention. Indeed. Being an introvert, this idea appeals to me as it would make networking so much easier. The glow of the RFID tag, to me, would seem like a smile. It would give me (and the other person) an obvious reason to connect without either of us having to wonder what to start with or start an ambiguous conversation.

Meanwhile, I believe in learning from totally unrelated fields (this case only talks about connecting similar or complementary areas of expertise) as well. In fact, radical innovations spring from many of such conversations if only we let our imagination go wild. But that is a different kind of networking and ought to be a different post altogether. :-)

Collaboration...Connection

Lots of people have been talking about IBM's rendezvous with collaboration software a la web 2.0 style. I finally caught up with what IBM is offering in its Lotus Connection suite. Looks interesting! Knowledge Management professionals can look forward to some interesting competition between IBM and MS, eh? Guess MOSS 2007 doesn't harp about communities, bookmarking and tagging. Lotus Connection covers these as well as blogging and activities. Is the latter on the lines of a personal things to do tool or something a lot more sophisticated? Uh?

Ray Ozzie must be looking on....for more than one reason! ;) :D

The Human Network-Post #2

As promised, here's the detailed post on The Human Network...

The Human Network is undoubtedly something very intriguing. Cisco is on to something for sure. It’s an admirable endeavour on their part to say the least. Ages ago people spoke about the world coming together. People spoke about the global village. The internet certainly has what it takes to create a global village and it is doing so in many ways. People are finding each other, helping each other, sharing with each other, working together….all through the internet. The Human Network and many other such initiatives are undoubtedly some things that will influence the future of the world. It therefore merits some retrospective reflection and analysis. I am no expert in the history of the collaborative online world. But I’ve attempted to randomly recall relevant developments and jot down what could have been the precursors and trend-setters of the collaborative online world.

Linus Torvalds created a revolution by getting passionate people across the globe to work together and share their work with a growing community. CKP in his book – The Future of Competition: Co-Creating Unique Value with Customers - spoke about a completely connected world in the context of commercial as well as the non-commercial ventures. Then came Blogs resulting in a situation that meant uninhibited self-expression that had the potential to influence the world. It also meant that one could keep in touch with thought-leaders and ordinary professionals alike and learn from and share with them as easily as speaking to one’s best friend – on almost a daily basis. Wikis went one step forward and allowed people to create something together. Wikipedia became an excellent knowledge repository that had answers to almost everything. Skype allowed people to get in touch through text and voice……for free. Regular Instant Messengers like yahoo, msn etc made it possible to chat with and leave messages for people in the opposite corner of the world. Google entered the arena of email, instant messaging, blogs, social networking et al and when Google enters something everybody looks up and the circle of influence undoubtedly widens. Flickr made it easy to collaborate on photographs. Social tools like LinkedIn, MySpace, Orkut attracted more users. Web 2.0 players like Delicious, Digg It, YouTube etc made it possible to share articles, posts, comments, and videos. There was almost nothing else that could not be shared on the World Wide Web.

Earlier attempts by a handful of companies to tap into collective intelligence to solve problems while adopting an innovative revenue-sharing mechanism evolved into Prediction Markets. Now, there is talk of social lending, collaborative books, social network analysis in organizations to enable effective collaboration etc.

Is all of this a clear case of United we stand, Divided we fall? Or is it the harbinger of absolute Mayhem on the World Wide Web? Who will organize everything? Is it ‘organize’able in the first place? If organizations don’t already have their own Internet Consultants, will there now be a new team of internet consultants in every organization, helping the latter to make sense of this absolutely amazing but chaotic World Wide Web?

What are the overall implications?

For organizations? I recently learned about the Second life initiative from a friend and colleague. So, will this be a perfect platform for finding a dream audience resulting in enviable revenue growth? The other implications related to employee-finding etc are obvious and can already be seen.

For politicians? Is it no longer going to be easy to fool the populace or take it for granted? CKP says “We are seeing the emergence of an economy of the people, by the people, for the people.” Now, is this the real democracy that we dream about?

For the media/news industry? Will they have to be really creative, quick, smart to be heard amongst the millions of genuine and closer-to-reality voices?

For People Technologies? There already is and will continue to be mind-blogging growth in day-to-day electronics that leverages on the internet. Such technologies are popular and will be increasingly ubiquitous and easy to own.

But I’d like to end with a googly. Will all this pull people apart as much as they try to bring them together? You don’t have to think hard to relate to what I said. How do you communicate with your friends, family and colleagues whom you can probably meet personally on a daily basis if you want to? Is it more on phone and emails, even if the person is sitting right next to your desk? How often have you seen people give incoming calls on the Mobile a higher priority over the person he/she is talking to in person….?

Related articles/References:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_network?pcontent=hn_us&cat=Learn&pagename=Wikipedia

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_25/b3938601.htm

http://www.forrester.com/Research/Document/Excerpt/0,7211,38772,00.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_intelligence

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_networks

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2.0

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folksonomy

http://www.whatshouldireadnext.com/books/search

http://www.howwesee.com/ (Cisco’s website…)

http://www.thelivinglink.net/ - a collection of various resources

PS: Food for thought. All this inspires me to say that it certainly may take one person to start something…..but it becomes reality only when everyone joins in.

Social Networking and its Implications

What will happen when social networking infiltrates all levels of the society? I put some thought into it and arrived at the following points…

Positives: (I may sound naïve at times but nothing will deter me from being idealistic)

- Disaster recovery – People can get together very quickly to tackle a crisis
- World camaraderie – Just what we need for world peace
- Everyone shares and learns at a faster pace – I can see that happening already though it can be overwhelming at times
- (You may want to debate with me on whether this should be classified as something negative) Individual edge as related to information access…may disappear gradually, because the possibility of getting to know from one source or the other is very high and in most cases the time lag may not be very significant either – Those who get ego boosts out of knowing that they know something that others don’t know will have reasons to feel displeased
- Community building happens naturally – Finding all the people that have common interests happens naturally
- Business implications – Lot easier for employees and employers to find each other and what’s more, at a much lower cost than otherwise
- Matrimonial implications – Closely linked to world camaraderie and finding people with similar interests etc
- Taking anti-social elements to task – This will be made a lot easier because of the potential that collective forces have

Negatives:

- Rumors spread faster. Can lead to losses in cash and kind if wrong decisions stem from these rumors
- Confusion may rein supreme at times. Who’s saying what? What’s the truth? Who’s saying the truth?

What do you think? Hey, I am not actually a blogger who craves for comments….I can go on blogging irrespective of whether people are coming back to me or not because blogging helps me learn and I love to learn. But I may learn a lot more if you give me feedback…...So, if you’re reading this now and have some independent or borrowed thoughts on this topic, please express yourself…and continue to do so at least once in a while! What? :) I know you will. Thanks in advance.

Update: Feb 22nd - I just found this article on the implications of social software from Fast Company Now...!