Northern Voice Blogging Conference 2008
Moosecamp
The first day of the blogging conference is an “unconference”, affectionately called “moosecamp”. This is modeled on the popular “barcamp” which is usually a day comprised of computer geeks, who initiate informal conversations on topics of technical interests (and there is usually some of beer).
I was particularly interested in Sharepoint, and it was suggested that we also attend the session on Social Enterprise first as the topics are related. The majority of the conversations circled around company culture and how it related to collaborative culture when the software was introduced.
I’ll try to give a summary of some of the points:
Social Enterprise
Why use collaborative software? Some companies found that there were issues of permissiveness in emails. With problems opening email attachments, due to formats used and problems with viruses it was preferable not to send documents as attachments. One such solution was to use collaborative software to share documents. There were also the capabilities of using software systems such as Sharepoint as a closed system, in the case of certain documents not everyone is authorized to see all projects.
What challenges were involved in using software in a social enterprise system? In some cases some companies had difficulty in getting their employees to adopt the system as a tool for their work.This may have to do with some people’s distrust of technology and the fact that it wasn’t part of their office culture. How does it become part of the company’s culture? One participant questioned how much of the resistance to the technology had to do with language. Context and culture are interdependent concepts. In cases where it had become successful it was noted that in order for the collaborative software to be successful it had to mimic the cultural communication within the company and it had to serve the purposes of the group. It should come in from the grassroots. If it came down from management, there was lack of interest. It has to become the culture of the company and not just a project. It was also important to get the search algorithm working and needed to be professional about the search (it had to be meaningful); Google search, for example. Another participant noted that usage of the software went up when there was also some personal meaning in some of the activity that went on within the software structure. Organizing staff socials, for example, gave it personal meaning as well as fresh content which in turn kept people returning to the system.
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