thinkIntranet Strategic Intranet Management

I’ve been busy this week at J&J preparing some online communications, managing the transition of our two graduating coops, and preparing for my own eventual transition out of the Global Procurement organization. As a bit of background, when i took this position the hiring manager and I agreed that this was probably a “set it up and move on” sort of opportunity - which matched with my concerns about the New Jersey commute. So, while the work has been great, I’ve decided to excercise this exit clause and end my work with Global Procurement sometime around the end of July.

I really enjoyed this post by Mike Gotta about whether SharPoint is “e2.0” or not - or whether it is even relevant to ask the question. This post is a great synopsis of the issues around enterprise collaboration and 2.0 adoption. Mike is clearly channeling many lives right now, including mine! http://mikeg.typepad.com/perceptions/2009/03/circling-around-to-enterpri…

Mike makes the point that e2.0 is not about the platform, or the technology, but about the conceptual framework for work that any organization is bound by. SharePoint for any organization is only as successful as as an e20 solution if it is implemented in the context of the organization’s culture and climate. And, as Mike says, a little customization doesn’t hurt (okay, maybe a ton of customization).

I thought DeFrag on the whole was worthwhile - although I would have preferred much more time to brainstorm (forced to brainstorm, I guess) with attendees. I got the sense that the panel participants were not necessarily a whole lot smarter than the attendees in the audience. I was also bothered by the nonstop microblogging. I mean, guilty, as I got sucked into it (I hadn’t really microbloged before, so I was playing around with it) .. but come on - you come all the way to Denver to listen and pay attention - not to stare are your laptop. I think old bad habits die hard, and microblogging is just a worsening of the whole ADD problem with social technologies.

Making data accessible to all / using tools to maniuplate, analyze, view, publish are within reach.

The coming exaflood
3 trends:
Data moving to the cloud
Data being fragmented through APIs
Usability becoming a focus for data tools

Standards and best practices:
The programmable web (www.programmableweb.com)
API and activity streatm aggregators: GNIP
 friendfeed

Democratizing access to data - need to talk about who is using what - excel still most ubiquitous database on the planet.
Innovation: Vertica, hadoop, cloudera

Decentralization and democratization of information work
Where are the YouTube and WordPress for data? —> Freebase, Swivel

Interesting discussion during keynote2 about the responsibility of leaders at DeFrag (and beyond) to understand or illuminate the data problems that were underlying the current financial crisis. How could we build better perspectives/views into situations that are dangerous, unravelling, wrong…
soundbytes:
“It’s time to create information that matters…”
Discussion of a problem of trust and information sources and why nobody was catching what was going on in this space.
“…part of the problem the ability to extract signal from noise … “
“The metaphor for tools we use is breaking down..”
book: “normal accidents”
Discussion around empowering the individual, increasing individual responsibility and shift from listening to acting -

Interesting how this maps to social networking expectations - where the behavior of the individual is about being more empowered and responsible to comment - what if the approvers on the font line of mortgage co’s where able to share their thoughts about how these crazy mortgages were being approved? (ref article about WaMu brokers) - what if we all saw that?

what we need to do: