infoarch

We love shiny new things. The latest hype, oh, let's talk about it! But is it really new or does it just have a new name? Just think about how we talked about 'groupware software' back in the day. Nobody calls it that way anymore. We talk about 'collaboration software/tools' now. The same goes for 'web 2.0'. Nobody says that anymore. We call is 'social media' now, although I'm sure we'll have a new term for it soon. A last example (as I could list many more examples): everybody is talking about 'digital transformation' now. Before that all the talk in town would be about 'social business' and before that it was called 'enterprise 2.0'. Definitions are important. It's all about being clear about what we mean. What I don't understand though is the way many present something as completely new while it clearly isn't. The term is different, but the underlying theme is the same. That's why I...

Wired is my favorite work-related magazine by far. I read all editions from cover to cover (almost). Recently Wired celebrated its 20th anniversary with a special edition . Reading through that edition is a fascinating trip through history. And it's only been 20 years! For their anniversary Wired also collected some of their most popular articles and bundled them into an ebook. One of the articles struck me. The article is titled:  The Long Boom: A History of the Future, 1980 - 2020 and is written by Peter Schwartz and Peter Leyden. I'm a sucker for these kind of articles. But I found this one intriguing because it was written some time ago. I was curious how well they predicted what was going to happen in the time we are living in now. Of course they got things wrong, but many predictions are quite correct. Go ahead, read the article and see for yourself. But there's one part in this article that I wanted to share with you. It relates to all the posts that have bee...

Sometimes I read a post that really gets me thinking. Anil Dashes' recent post 'The web we lost' did it this time. I think reading the full post is well worth your time if you're interested in where the web is headed. Two fragments from the post triggered me the most: We've lost key features that we used to rely on, and worse, we've abandoned core values that used to be fundamental to the web world. To the credit of today's social networks, they've brought in hundreds of millions of new participants to these networks, and they've certainly made a small number of people rich. But they haven't shown the web itself the respect and care it deserves, as a medium which has enabled them to succeed. And they've now narrowed the possibilites of the web for an entire generation of users who don't realize how much more innovative and meaningful their experience could be. (...)  The first step to disabusing them of this notion is for the p...

What social tools are young people using ? As a (internal) social media advisor for several companies I'm very interested in the answer to this question. So, when I get a change to talk for students, I'm honored, but also very curious what they will tell me. Recently I was asked to guest lecture for students at the Radboud University of Nijmegen . It's the university I went to years ago. I was asked to share my experience with using social media concepts and tools inside organizations. I basically used a shorter version of the slides I use for my guest lectures for a college , but spent more time on the conceptual, philosophical if you will, side of 'social'. I also asked them which social tools they use and why they use them. What did they say? Here's what I learned (there were 40+ students attending my lecture): None use Google+. Why? Nobody/none of their friends is there. All except 3 use Facebook. The 3 that didn't use FB, just didn't see t...

You all know +Luis Suarez , right? The guy from IBM, that live on the Canary Islands and has declared war on email . Well recently I wanted to get in touch with him to discuss an opportunity that popped up. Contacting him is easy, right? He’s all over social media. Just DM him on Twitter , send a message via Google+ or Facebook. LinkedIn will do as well. I thought I’d share how it went. Did I seduce Luis to hand over his email address to me?  But what to do if you want to send him a longer piece of text? Do you request for his email address? I was tempted to but refrained to ask because I knew I would be whipped by him. ;-) So I reached out to him via Twitter (direct message) and asked if we could call sometime soon. That was possible and we had a chat. But, still, I had to send him more information about the opportunity, about 10-15 lines of text. And I’m not going to chop this into 140 character messages. LinkedIn could work, but feels like email. I’m not connected to Luis i...

James Dellow has a nice post researching the history of email and why email is so successful. More importantly he wonders what this means for social tools and their success. He concludes his post with the following: Enterprise social software can also learn some important lessons from email: We need interoperability between enterprise social systems. Users prefer standardised interfaces. It needs to be cost effective to own and operate. Far from being a nemesis, email and enterprise social software are more likely to form a strong symbiotic relationship. I've been thinkings and blogging about this topic quite a bit as well. I did research and product concept development on document management tools in the past. One of the things we said back then is: integrate document management into email. I think this principle still applies. I also think the killer social tools will be deeply integrated into/with email. For that reason I think Google+ has a good chance of winning ...

Oscar Berg wrote a blogpost about a short discussion we had on Google+ recently. In his interesting post he shares  how he consumes and shares social media . Over on his blog I commented on his post by asking him some questions about his strategy. But I thought I'd share my strategy here as well. I've shared my strategy in the past , but it has changed over the years. Here's my current strategy in one picture: A couple of remarks about the picture: I use Flipboard to interact with my Twitter Lists (3 lists) and Google+. I also consume the HBR-, National Geographic-, Vimeo-, and Instagram-feed there. I read interesting tweets right away or email them to my inbox to read them later. I view my Twitter search every now-and-then on Twitter.com. But will move that to Flipboard as well after reading Oscar’s post. I read my feeds in Google Reader. If I want to read a post I star it and make sure I find time during the day/week to read the starred items. When I know I’ll...

Recently I had the privilege to give a guest lecture at the Hogeschool Arnhem & Nijmegen (college-level) about Enterprise 2.0. Just like  last year  I asked the students which social media tools they use and why. I like asking them this question, because it gives me some insight in adoption rates of tools and usage patterns. Last years results can be found here . I'll share this year's results below. Of the 24 students I had in my classes: 24 have a Twitter account, 6 actively use it and 2 others only consume tweets. 24 have a Hyves account (Dutch social network, comparable to Facebook), 1 uses it actively and some go there every now-and-then. Facebook is clearly taking over Hyves, with 20 accounts in the classes and they use it actively. 14 only consume Facebook updates. Only 2 have a Foursquare account and use it actively. 6 have a Google+ account and none of them use it. LinkedIn: 16 have an account, 5 use it actively. They all have to blog for these class...

Is email here to stay or will it die? Will it die because social media is here or will something else replace email? Recently Steve Dale wrote an interesting post about this topic. It's titled 'Email is dead: long live email!' . It was discussed on G+ and the blogpost itself has many interesting comments. I thought I'd share my comments here as well. Please read Steve's post first. I think it's an important post for social business people. Steve lists several reasons to use (and keep on using) email: Email arrives near instantaneously. It can be accessed from almost anywhere. It brings not just text, but pictures, documents, links, and more. Email is great for non-urgent communication. Things that don’t require an immediate response that others can deal with on their schedule. Email can provide a powerful documentation trail. Unlike text messages or phone calls, email provides an authenticated audit trail of past communication. It is hard to deny pas...

Recently listened to this keynote by Euan Semple at the 'State of the Net' conference. I thought it was a very good and insightful talk. It puts social media into perspective and helps you think about the underlying concepts of the internet. Semple basically starts out with the difference between the old(er) web 2.0 and new web 2.0 world. In other words: it started with blogging and now we have Facebook and Twitter. I like how he tells about how nervous he was when he published his first blogpost. (I can relate to that...) But goes on to stress how important it is for us personally and for organizations to find their voice (- remember the Cluetrain Manifesto ?). We have to move away from the industrialization of our worklives. On the other hand Semple acknowledges that asking people to say what they think, should never be underestimated. It's a big step for many. Semple wraps his talk with a nice quote from David Weinberger : Love is what makes the internet hang t...

How will businesses collaborate in the future? This is the core question of a GigaOm Pro report released some time ago. It is titled ' Practical business collaboration: personal tools show the way ' and was written by Thomas van der Wal and David Card. Based on a survey of business managers, problematic areas around business content collaboration were signaled and directions for solutions are given in the report. Much of today's collaboration still happens in email. 96% says they use email for internal content sharing and 92% for sharing with externals (and this does not correlate with age...). Some companies like Atos are (planning on) banning email. Businesses are looking for ways to increase employee "productivity, accommodate or counter email limitations, and reduce costs". If a new tool addresses these topics it will probably be adopted quickly. Searching and tracking documents is still a big problem for companies. Access or lack thereof to content ...

Eryc Branham recently posted an interesting article about 'The invisible company' over on ReadWriteWeb . I think his post also underlines that companies are inherently social. A company is a collection of humans. And (most) humans are social beings. I find most people don't look at companies this way. I hear lots of talk about social business as if business' are only social if they use social media internally and interact with the market via social media. Companies aren't social when they use social media. But, as Eryc says, social tools can be and should be used to make the social interactions between colleagues visible.

A conference about social media, organized using social media and presented by experienced social media enthusiast, can that be done? Yes, it can. I was part of such a conference a couple of weeks ago. It was called 'The Social Media in Practice Event' (Dutch: Social media in de praktijk) . Ronald van den Hoff of Society 3.0 kicked off the event. He gave an interesting talk about the influence of the internet and social media on society, and its implications for businesses. I liked how he stressed businesses should be built around passion and learning from mistakes. They should be ever more open to what's happening around them or else they will be eclipsed. Interestingly he also said large companies will get smaller and smaller and independent contractors/free agents will be the 'companies' of the future. I also went to Roos van Vugt 's breakout about leading into social media. She works for Deloitte and explained how see introduced and is cultivating socia...

What does social media have to do with finance and control? And even auditing? Those were questions I had to think about after I was invited to give two talks with prof. Eddy Vaassen about 'Control and audit implications of social media'. And I must say, it was challenging and fun. Our slides can be found here: Finance and Control Implications of Social Media View more presentations from Samuel Driessen Most of the questions from the audience were about control. What are the implications of using social media for the company's reputation? Should social media be organized centrally? Etc. Furthermore, some wondered if social media was only for marketing and communication, not for other parts of the organization, like R&D and Finance. There were several other keynotes. One was particularly interesting. Prof. Dennis Campbell gave a talk about 'Control and customer experience'. His research clearly related to the points we made. It shows that: Mor...

Jane McConnell recently shared 4 questions about intranet (aka the web workplace) that she is going to ask several panelist at an upcoming conference. Big and good questions, in my opinion. Her questions are: Are we reaching the end of the intranet as we know it? How do you imagine intranets to be in the future? Enterprise search seems to be essential in today’s world of masses of content in the managed intranet, in collaborative spaces and in enterprise social networks. Some people see “search’ as the logical point of convergence and the ideal user interface for the “digital workplace”. What is your vision of search and its role in the digital enterprise? How do you see the evolution of “governance’ in a world where managed content and user-generated, spontaneous content are blended? If you were to give one piece of advice to organizations just starting the social (or 2.0) journey, what would it be? Jane wondered what her blog readers would answer. Here are my answers (also p...

The company that I work for, Entopic , recently organized the Web editor’s conference (Dutch: Congres Webredactie) . It was the first conference in Holland (and the world?) for web editors. Dutch posts about the conference can be found here . The tweet stream can be found here (#webred11) and all the presentations here . I’ll share some highlights from the conference with you here. The Future of Content The conference started out with a talk by futurist Gerd Leonhard about the future of content. He gave an interesting talk about the past, present and future of content. He started in the broadcasting era and move to what he calls the broadband era; the time we are experiencing now. He stressed this is happening now and if we or institutions don’t get on board we/they will be disrupted. I liked they way he pointed to the increasing influence of technology on our lives, but also stressed the extreme importance of human ingenuity. Of course, Leonard also addressed the post pc statements...

In a couple of weeks I'll be giving a masterclass with prof. Eddy Vaassen about 'Control and audit implications for social media' . Wow, what a title, eh?! This masterclass is part of a large conference in Holland organized by NBA-VRC for accountants and controllers. The topic of this year's conference is Customer 3.0 . I'm working on the slides for the masterclass. And I'm curious what your expectations are when you read the title of the masterclass. What topics should be addressed? What are control and audit implications, according to you? Do control, audit and social media relate? If so, please explain. Of course we'll share our slides as soon as they're ready. Feedback on those slides is welcome, as always.

Giving a guest lecture is great fun, I find. I recently had the chance to interact with about 60 college students. They were in their second or third year. The topic of the lecture was social media use within company. So, Enterprise 2.0 or Social Business. My slides can be found here (in Dutch...). I kicked off my lecture with some open questions. I'd like to share the answers to one question with you. I was curious what social tools they use themselves to get things done in their lives. With all the talk about millennials being digital natives (or aren't they ), easily moving in the social space, organizing their life and work with these tools, etc I thought I'd see if this if the case in practice . I shared what I got from the students on Google+ . In sum, this is what they told me. Of the 60 students: 40 use Twitter Almost all use Facebook Just over half use Hyves (Dutch social network) 1 uses a bookmarking tool 2 blog 0 have a wiki (although all have ex...

Binnenkort, 27 oktober a.s., wordt het event Social Media in de Praktijk gehouden. Het belooft een bijzonder congres te worden. In de eerste plaats, is het congres op een bijzondere manier bedacht en opzet . In de tweede plaats, de lijst met sprekers hebben allemaal diepgaande ervaring met social media. Mijn workshop gaat over het raakvlak tussen social media en kennismanagement. Volgens mij is kennismanagement en social media een perfecte match. Kennismanagement was een hype en is als top-down strategie mislukt. De opkomst van social media biedt geweldige mogelijkheden voor kennismanagement 2.0. Tijdens de workshop ga je uitleggen waarom ik dat vindt. En we gaan er ook mee aan de slag. Aan het einde van de workshop kun je persoonlijk aan de slag en/of in (een deel van) de organisatie/instelling waar je voor werkt. Wat verwacht je van mijn workshop? Ik hoor het graag van je. Ik neem jouw input dan mee in mijn verhaal. Kom je ook naar Social Media in de Praktijk? Geef je hier o...

Recently took the time to watch some Dreamforce 2011 talks. There's lots to learn from them. I particularly enjoyed Marc Benioff's interview/talk with Eric Schmidt . I liked the way they stepped back and looked at the history and future of the technology industry in general, and the internet especially. Just to list some of the questions they talked about: what the future of the manufacturing industry (in the US and Europe) will be? Why is it hard for existing players to move to new technology standards? What should an existing company do when technology shifts? Where is 'cloud' and 'social' going? What is the potential of the internet for business and government? Is this only for large companies or more so for small companies? In short the future according to Schmidt is: mobile, local and social. And here's the whole talk for you. Hope you enjoy it!