Exploring the adjacent possible and liquid networks

As I was reading Dr. Brewer's blogpost on Spreading Good Ideas using enterprise microblogging platforms, I started thinking about ways to faciliate and catalyze the exploration of the adjacent possible and creation of liquid networks. I think one way is to abandone the pre-concieved notion of the "groups" and not re-create (or import) the corporate groups in Yammer or Chatter that reflect the corporate heirarchy. Let the users create groups as needed and take them down when no longer needed. There will be Yammer Communities or Chatter Groups that will include employees from an entire organization, but I don't think it is a good idea to create a Yammer Community for each individual group in the company. 

Please notify me

We have been using Salesforce Chatter at work. It is an excellent micro-blogging platform with many features. However one thing it lacks is notifications of incoming chatter posts and responses. The only way to get notified is by email. But that is like sending somebody an email, and then calling them up to tell them that you sent them an email.

Salesforce Chatter needs to provide better notifications.  I would prefer to get notified of incoming posts and replies through the push notifications on Android / iOS, that appear in the status bar. Or may be a Chrome extension that shows number of unread chatter posts in the status bar. Or something similar to what Facebook / Google+ provide. 

Gmail and Google Reader notifications in a Chrome Extension

 Google+ notifications in Gmail 

There are many to provide notifications without utilizing email.

Here are some of the interesting ideas posted on the Salesforce IdeaExchange for improving chatter notifications:

https://sites.secure.force.com/success/ideaView?id=08730000000K8JMAA0

https://sites.secure.force.com/success/ideaView?id=08730000000JhxkAAC

https://sites.secure.force.com/success/ideaView?id=08730000000XoYjAAK

https://sites.secure.force.com/success/ideaView?id=08730000000Yq0JAAS

https://sites.secure.force.com/success/ideaView?id=08730000000g1TfAAI

https://sites.secure.force.com/success/ideaView?id=08730000000KcuxAAC

So if any Salesforce engineer is reading this blog, I would like to request them to take a look at the aforementioned ideas and provide a better form of notifications.

Sincerely,
an avid chatter user 

What counseleth ye?

Need advice on your Social Media strategy? Gartner has scheduled a discussion on Oct 4th to discuss and answer questions Social Media. However, this discussion is unique in that instead of a teleconf+webinar, the discussion will take place on twitter. You will need to follow the  #GartnerChat hashtag and @BradleyAnthonyJ, @CRozwell, @EliseOlding and @Gartner_inc  on Twitter to participate in the discussion and/or ask questions.

Here is the description:

In this Gartner Twitter Chat, we’ll explore the critical trends that are upending social programs as business get social. Key topics will include:

1. What makes social media so powerful?
2. How can organizations take a strategic approach to social media?
3. How can social media transform how you do business?
4. How do you measure the value of social media?
5. What are the major best and poor practices that mean the difference between success and failure?

This Gartner Twitter Chat will take place October 4, at 3 ET (noon PT) on Twitter with Anthony Bradley, Carol Rozwell, and Elise Olding. Please join us on Twitter using  #GartnerChat. Follow our hosts: @BradleyAnthonyJ, @CRozwell, @EliseOlding and @Gartner_inc

More info here.

Update on Thursday, October 6, 2011 at 11:40PM by Saqib Ali

Curated archive of this #gartnerchat is available here 

Personal Blogging at Work Increases Productivity. Really????

Susan Adams of Forbes, recently published an article titled, Personal Blogging at Work Increases Productivity . She essentially talks about some study that showed that productivity increased when employees were blogging about personal stuff on their corporate blogs. The article concludes with a rather hasty conclusion that personal blogging is good for productivity.

Good read, but I feel like article makes a very blanket statement with insufficient data. Data from one study with the name of the company and the type of data collected withheld makes me question the the conclusion reached. These types of studies are very dependent on type of industry studied. For example, in travel industry, company wide sharing of personal photos and stories from vacation trips is not only allowed but also encouraged. This is their business. It makes sense for them to share this stuff widely inside their organization and use it to improve their business. So if the study queried a travel industry, for example, than the conclusion would make sense.

I personally don't think sharing personal experiences on a corporate blog is such a good idea. Occasionally it may be fine. For example, if you are using a personal story to tie it to something work related. But that connection has to exist. Pure personal stories would cause the blog subscribers to unsubscribe overtime. Our CIO maintains a internal IT related corporate blog, and I subscribe to the blog. But if he starts talking about this personal life on that corporate blog, without making it relevant to work, I will unsubscribe quickly.

Just my opinion. I would like to hear what others thinks of this.

Interesting Tweets from Enterprise 2.0 Conference

Speeches from the Enterprise 2.0 Conference in SF are available on [E2 TV]. I posted some interesting tweets from the conference attendees earlier, here are some more:

1. When people talk about “breaking down” silos they add fuel to the fire that E20 is a crock. Silos collaborate they don't break down. (@mikojava)
2. Change agents have always existed, 2.0 tech brings agents together (@nitinbadjatia)
3. Knowledge Management used to be a dusty destination, ent 2.0 allows it to be dynamic and responsive to individual requests (@paulmirvine)
4. @CarolineDangson: E2.0 should perhaps be considered more like digital dna, the knowledge backbone of an organization (@paulmirvine)
5. Start behind the firewall, open to all employees, educate rather than prohibit, trust is returned (@dcoleman100)
6. Clara Shih: people are using FB and Twitter so their friends can serve as social filters for content. (@cjnash)
7. @nenshad: “Marketing creates the brand, Support keeps the brand alive.” (@JuliaMak)
8. Luxury hotel implemented Six Sigma and eliminated it because it didn’t allow them to overdeliver on Customer Service (@uwehook)
9. E2.0 culture change: “Imagine if a store with low sales accused their customers of “resistance”!” (@timoelliott)
10. Adoption is not a matter of resistance. If your store that wasn’t being trafficked, would you blame resistance?(@marciamarcia)
11. “When you grow up on the internet, client-server looks like green screen today.” (@nenshad)
12. Nike talks about “lessons shared”, rather than “lessons learned”. (@lehaweslive)
13. @rotkapchen: Why do so many people use the term “enterprise-wide” then? Why not “enterprise-deep”? (@richardveryard)
14. @rotkapchen: The first sign that someone has absolutely no clue about E2.0…when they keep referring to “users”. (@ekolsky)
15. @marciamarcia: If culture eats strategy for breakfast, how do you feed culture? (@ajeanne)
16. Innovation occurs at the intersection of contextually disparate concepts brought together creatively and with an open mind(@paulguyandersen)

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