A Matter Of Degree

Multitasking - Not Just For Webinars Anymore

20090622 - Audience Multitasking at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Boston, originally uploaded by sadalit.

At the Enterprise 2.0 Conference last week I was struck by the amount of multitasking going on during the sessions. This was a Twitter-oriented crowd, so there was a lot of lively conversation going on in the tweetsphere, and the conference organizers' inclusion of a hashtag for each session made it convenient to join the party online. Tweeting during the sessions was not only expected, in some sessions it was encouraged.

I saw lots of folks using applications like TweetDeck or TweetGrid to monitor multiple streams at once - for example, tuning in on the session they were sitting in as well as the one going on down the hall.

I also saw a fair amount of attendees getting work done - half-listening to the session while they responded to email or tweaked documents and presentations.

I will admit, I was one of the multitaskers. In the sessions where I abstained from opening my laptop and searching on the hashtag, I felt uncomfortably cut-off from the hive mind.

But I was also uncomfortable about all the multitasking. I know I didn't catch everything the presenters said. In some ways I got more out of the sessions by reading audience members' observations in real-time, but what did I give up to get that? And what did it do to the presenters, trying to keep their energy level up in front of large audiences whose attention seemed mostly elsewhere?

As a society, we are definitely heading in this direction: multi-channel communication, always-on, etc.. For all the employers who are worried about social tools in the enterprise being a "distraction" to employees, they may be. But those same employees are doing plenty of work outside the workplace - in airports, in conference sessions, at night in front of the television set, and on the weekends while they're with their families.

Why are we doing this? What if we stopped? Is relentless multitasking an addiction we could break, or is it an evolutionary drive?

I don't have the answers, and I'm certainly not the first to ask these questions. I'd love to hear from others on this - does this trend seem more beneficial or harmful overall - or is it pointless to question what simply is?

Read more about multitasking here:

Rubinstein, Meyer, and Evans study "Executive Control of Cognitive Processes in Task Switching:"
abstract:
http://www.apa.org/releases/multitasking.html

full text:
http://www.apa.org/journals/releases/xhp274763.pdf


NPR - John Hamilton proposes that we're not really as good at multitasking as we think:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=95256794

The Atlantic - Walter Kirn on "the task of trying to be free:"
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200711/multitasking

Vickers exhorts SharePoint and competitors to "step up their game."

Development Opportunity, originally uploaded by Camera Slayer.

I'm at the Enterprise 2.0 conference in Boston this week. Many of the sessions have included a lot of common-sense information ("Align your enterprise 2.0 strategy to your business strategy!") as well as definitions of the differences between organization 2.0 and web 2.0. Most of the attendees I've spoken with are familiar with these concepts and are looking for more out of the conference - for example, real-life stories about how obstacles have been overcome, and a more in-depth next-level discussion of these technologies.

Amy Vickers of Razorfish was one of the few presenters I saw who went to this next level. She discussed many of the common pros and cons about SharePoint and its competitors in terms of what they offer for Enterprise 2.0, and then said "These are the usual arguments... and I think they're the wrong arguments, completely."

She presented a long list of the common functions that are receiving the focus in the discussion of these technologies (blogs, wikis, search, tagging, etc.), and then switched the focus to a shorter list of "Business Activities" for which she exhorted all providers to "step up their game." I found myself agreeing completely with her recommendations - we've got the basic functions covered, but there are some areas which still aren't optimal, or aren't even part of the conversation (yet). Following are the six topics she identified for improvement:

1. Communications (including branding) – Top down, bottom up, and laterally

2. Collaboration (dynamic views) – Both asynchronous and synchronous.

3. Community (internal and blended) – Formed around affinities.

4. Findability of content and people – multi-faceted, relevant, social

5. Crowdsourcing – Helpful information, ideas, tasks.

6. Knowledge Networks – Capture of fleeting and tacit knowledge, and connection within system.

Twitter-Like Tools for the Enterprise

caged chicks, originally uploaded by zen granny.

I'm attending the Enterprise 2.0 Conference session on "Twitter-Like Tools for the Enterprise," moderated by Gil Yehuda, with representation by:

Ross Mayfield of Socialtext (product: Signals)
http://www.socialtext.com/products/signals.php

Tim Young of Socialcast
http://www.socialcast.com/

Yoshi Maisami of Intridea Inc. (product: Presently)
http://www.intridea.com/2009/3/25/presentlycom-twitter-meets-linkedin?blog=company

Travis VanderZanden of Yammer.com
https://www.yammer.com/users/new

Mark Dowds of Brainpark Inc. – just launched this weekend
http://www.brainpark.com/

Great discussion on such topics as:
Will companies pay for these tools in the enterprise?
Is 140 characters relevant for the enterprise?
How do you get people to use these tools when political/emotional barriers to sharing are in place?
Do employees own their data or not?

Additional tool mention from audience member @danyork:

Laconica (product: identi.ca)
http://identi.ca/

Twitter stream from the session:
http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%23e2conf20

How to make "This Site" the default SharePoint search scope

A client recently asked how to make "This Site" the default SharePoint search scope from the simple search box on all pages.  "This site" does not appear as an option when you try to manage this via the GUI (Site Actions | Site Settings | Site Collection Administration section / Search Scopes), so you can't set it as the default there.

I found the answer on this thread on SharePoint Blogs / SharePoint University:

http://www.sharepointblogs.com/forums/t/16293.aspx?PageIndex=2

and I wanted to reproduce it here with a few additions.  User Monty Myers (monty.myers) posted the following; my additions are in red:

Add or Modify the following line in the OSearchEnhancedFeature.xml file located in 12\Template\Features\ : (The full path is C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\12\TEMPLATE\FEATURES\OSearchEnhancedFeature, then open the SearchArea.xml file in NotePad)

This is the line of code you will add:

<Property Name="DropDownMode">ShowDD_DefaultContextual</Property>

The bold line below shows where the line of code needs to be added: 

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<Elements xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/">
    <Control
        Id="SmallSearchInputBox"
        Sequence="15"
        ControlClass="Microsoft.SharePoint.Portal.WebControls.SearchBoxEx" ControlAssembly="Microsoft.SharePoint.Portal, Version=12.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c">
 <Property Name="GoImageUrl">/_layouts/images/gosearch.gif</Property>
 <Property Name="GoImageUrlRTL">/_layouts/images/goRTL.gif</Property>
 <Property Name="GoImageActiveUrl">/_layouts/images/gosearch.gif</Property>
 <Property Name="GoImageActiveUrlRTL">/_layouts/images/goRTL.gif</Property>
        <Property Name="UseSiteDefaults">true</Property>
 <Property Name="FrameType">None</Property>
        <Property Name="ShowAdvancedSearch">true</Property>
 <Property Name="DropDownMode">ShowDD_DefaultContextual</Property>
    </Control>   
</Elements>

After making the change, save the file and do an IISreset. 

Important:  when you customize the SearchArea.xml file, it is unghosted, meaning that future patches and upgrades could overwrite your changes.  As a best practice, you should create a feature to install this unghosted file to current site collections and deploy the change in this manner.

How SharePoint Can Foster Negotiation Within Your Organization

Demotivator - Negotiation, originally uploaded by hypno_bedhead.

You hear a lot about how SharePoint enables collaboration, less about how it can foster negotiation, but I have a client who's making great use of it for that purpose.

This organization has a busy IT department which had been tracking work requests (i.e., requests for changes or new projects from the organization's internal customers) internally using an Excel spreadsheet.  At the beginning of this year we converted the spreadsheet to a SharePoint Tasks list, and added many custom metadata fields including Requestor, Executive Sponsor, and Estimated Hours to Complete.  I used Christophe's technique of color coding the list items based on status to put a colored indicator on each task, and the client was thrilled with the ability to expose work request status graphically on the department's home page.  Now, anyone in the organization could see right away how busy the department is just by seeing the number of active requests and the work in progress.  (At this point we're moving forward with a custom workflow which will route each request through the approval process and update its task status automatically, but that's another post for another time!)

But more than this, the list can now encourage conversation within the organization.  By making requestor name and executive sponsor name visible and obvious, the vision is that a requestor will go to the list, see other projects in the stack, and, instead of wrangling with IT to force the new request into an already full pipeline, that requestor will approach other requestors or sponsors directly: “I see you have this project in the queue – can you put it on the backburner so my project can receive the resources?”

This new system is bringing a lot of hope to my client because the truth is, we don't always collaborate with a single purpose in mind.  Often, prioritizing projects can get political and the person who screams the loudest wins.  (I imagine that exposing richer business data, such as revenue by project team, practice area, or geographical location, would generate negotiation as well - for example, around recruiting and hiring.)

Is negotiation like this (based on a sunshine principle of allowing everyone access to departmental or business information) happening in your organization?  If it is, how do the tools and culture support it?  If it isn't, how might they be changed to facilitate more debate and compromise?

Visual Display of Information in a Restaurant Menu

20090606 - Alinea - Menu, originally uploaded by sadalit.

This weekend I had a Restaurant Experience where the menu was such a good example of the visual display of information that I wanted to share it.

To give some background - the restaurant offers two fixed price menus - a shorter "tasting" and a longer "tour," plus wine pairings for each. When you're seated, you are given a wine menu but no listing of the food courses. As each dish is brought to the table, the server describes the ingredients as well as how to approach the dish. We found ourselves wishing for a printed guide, because each time, a few minutes after the server left, we weren't able to remember the full list of what was in the dish. In addition, as the evening passed, we wanted to know how far along we had progressed in the tour, and we heard other diners asking the same question. The servers were happy to provide any information we wanted, but we definitely felt the need to have the map in front of us. (The "how far along am I?" question seems to be a basic human need - software installations, surveys, and overseas flights usually provide an indicator for this, and I've heard a recent convert to the Kindle talk about how he misses the clear and obvious way to tell how far you've come in a printed book just by seeing the relative thickness of the pages on either side of the bookmark, even though Kindle books have a status bar at the bottom.)

At the end of the meal, we learned the reason for no map before the tour - we were each presented with a custom printout of the menu we had experienced, including the specific wine pairings we had chosen and at which point they had been served. My dining companion had had to stop the tour several dishes before the end, and her printed menu ends where she stopped. (I would argue that the restaurant could provide both - generic map before and specific after.)

To get to my point about the visual display of information - the circles in the menu (see image) represent the portion size, and their location on the page represents the predominant flavor - savory on the left and sweet on the right.

I'd love to see other information represented here too - for example, prep time, or how local the product is (the source of the ingredients was emphasized throughout the tour). Colors and/or shading could be used (although I understand how the monochrome ink fits the overall design scheme of the restaurant).

As a side note, an idea I had as we progressed through the tour was that the dining table, rather than being black-painted wood, could be an interactive surface (in keeping with my the-future-is-a-table theme) where before each course is brought out, the areas of the table on which the dishes will be placed could light up in the exact footprint of the dishes. There was obviously a great deal of thought and creativity put into the design and variety of servingware; it would enhance the experience to see a sneak preview of the upcoming dish (or dishes) by seeing its unique outline lit up moments before the dish arrives. After the dishes are removed, the diner might have a few minutes to touch the outline to bring up information about the dish (not available before the dish was placed, of course) and even enter comments.

Book Review - Groundswell

groundswell tool, originally uploaded by elizabethdunn.

I just finished Groundswell, originally recommended to me by Sue Hanley. At first, it seems targeted to the upper management of the large company with well-known products, but the concepts and case studies about social media are valuable reading for anyone concerned about perception of their brand, whether you're an employee at a small company or an individual building your own brand.

The most useful sections for me were:
- Truly illustrative real-world stories and case studies
- Detailed ROI calculations for different social media tools such as an executive blog or a community forum
- The Social Technographics categories and profiles (where "social technographics" refers to the demographics of those participating in groundswell activities) - see the Profile Tool section at http://www.forrester.com/Groundswell
- Tips on listening to the groundswell
- Discussion of the all-important question for the company and the individual - if you start getting people's attention in the groundswell, what will you do once you have that attention?
- How to recognize Groundswell approach-avoidance syndrome in yourself or your colleagues
- An entire chapter on the groundswell inside the enterprise

I have one issue with the book's conclusion, which paints a glowing near-future world where R&D and turnaround time are much faster for companies who are listening to the groundswell and responding quickly. This may be good for a company's competitive edge, but what happens when everyone's product lifecycle speeds up? How will the consumer keep up with all the new products and updates to those products? Shortening time-to-market also shortens time-to-obsolescence, and that's going to increase waste in a society that is currently emphasizing going green. Authors Li and Bernoff promise, "Product cycles will speed up." In the bigger picture, we might need to slow down.

Making Basic SharePoint Search work: Earley & Associates Webinar on SharePoint Search and Information Architecture

curiosando....., originally uploaded by Lilith Ecate.

Earley & Associates, a Knowledge Management consulting firm headquartered in Concord, MA, will be offering a SharePoint Search and Information Architecture Jumpstart series during the month of June.

I'll be co-presenting the second webinar in the series, Making Basic SharePoint Search work, on June 11th from 12:30-2 pm EST. My focus will be on the SharePoint search interface, and how to improve its usability.

If you have any questions about the webinar content or how to take advantage of SharePoint's built-in search, please feel free to drop a comment on this post!

Microblogging and the need for mezzopermanence

From those who've embraced microblogging (by which I mean the use of Twitter, Utterli, Facebook status, or similar tools for generating brief updates), I've been hearing about a frustration with this communication model: if you post an update and nobody from your network happens to see it at that moment, you could be out of luck. Sometimes there's a piece of information that you'd like to have "stick" for longer than a few minutes, so that everyone you know can catch it no matter what time they're logged in and what's streaming by on their home page. Some examples of this are:

• announcing the release of a new CD, book, etc.
• expecting a baby
• doing a fundraiser in two weeks
• ill or undergoing surgery
• traveling for an extended time

This is information that's not permanent enough to go into your profile, but is important enough that you'd like to keep it from being lost in the noise of all the other micro-updates. Somewhere between our relatively permanent information (our profile details) and our transient broadcasts, we could really use a way to make certain information stick around for short but defined periods.

Some people get around this by publishing the same post over and over, which can be annoying to their audience. A better way is to vary the information slightly with every broadcast – providing a countdown to the event or different statistics each time. This is a lot of work, however, which is making me see the need for a the kind of update that can sit in the middle space between transient and permanent – the mezzopermanent: a way to post information that needs to hang around for a week or two, while still allowing our other micro-updates to continue. Ideally it would be associated with an optional expiration date (like Announcements in SharePoint) so that you could set it and forget it.

I'm not sure how the existing tools would accommodate this additional dimension; it would need to be a combination of a dedicated space on our profile pages, plus a representation on the streaming side (each micro-update contains a sidebar reference to the mezzopermanent update?).

This might even be a way to monetize these technologies – with a paid subscription, you get this functionality as well as other advanced features.

Thanks to Mike G. for helping brainstorm this term and concept!

SharePoint Share - a community for sharing information on SharePoint, launched May 16, 2009

BCK - social tagging, originally uploaded by pulguita.

This week via Twitter I met Kale Davis and learned about his project SharePoint Share - "a community-driven SharePoint links site." Kale described his two goals behind the project as 1. to provide a quality, community-driven source of SharePoint information (nothing local or based too much on personal opinion) and 2. to deliver this via a simple, clean design. He's using the blue/pink color palette I know well from Flickr (so how can he go wrong?) and promises more features to come. I hope you'll check it out and add a link or two - let's see what we can build together!

Kale, just one small request - could you give me a "SharePoint Share This" button for my browser just like the delicious "tag" button? That would be great!