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Sorry SecondLife
Ok, I admit, I have forgotten all about SecondLife, Linden Dollars and avatars in my recent research on social media.
In a class called collaboration at Uni three years ago I visited another 3D-world, and today (after being ticked off by a colleague) i joined SecondLife and now officially have an avatar called TigerOfNorway Riddler (why do you have to choose last name on your avatar, and why on earth do I need to type the choosen last name when logging in??) and I did some quick discoveries listed below.
People. What stroke me first was that there was actually quite a few people (yeah yeah, avatars, or what ever) in there. And I have heard that some Norwegian companies are establishing themselves there, but could not find them – how are you navigating this anyway? Eventually I found a way to search, but at first it gave me only web page hits. I learned to teleport after about four minutes.
Content and learning. My colleague said that content is moving away from gaming (if it ever was there) and more towards big and small companies establishing themself there, running electronic meetings in there, and sharing content in there. I have not had the time to discover this properly yet, but will eventually. My biggest question though, is how this will ever compete with Google + Wikipedia – there is no way I can see more content quicker in SL, then I can by searching and reading Wikipedia. Maybe the learning and illustration example will do the trick here but is that really enough?
Avatars. Not long ago, I saw something about us designing computers to more or less replace humans, rather than augment them. I think the entire SecondLife smells of this life replacement a little bit and is still skeptical. Compared to video conference where people is unable to do anything but look either at you when they talk and they expierience you looking down on them or the other way around (see “the problem with video conferencing“) however, I believe avatars actually improve collaboration, avareness and the conference expierience.
The world loads slowly. Last time I visited a 3D world was at University as stated above. My expirience then was reduced by the fact that it loaded slowly. And so did SL today. I was sitting at work at relatively proper lines, but still things moved slowly and lagged a lot. I also had trouble zooming on details. This bugged me quickly.
Now that was four cents from me. Hopefully I will overcome some of these on my next visit. Until then, I stick to Vyew, Skype and MOSS 2007. Any comments to my SL opinions? How is secondlife going to be really useful and take on?
Best regards,
TigerOfNorway Riddler
Newbie in SL
Filed under: On collaboration, On entrepreneurship, On social media | 2 Comments
In this blog post I criticize journalists for being to tabloid and immediate referendums thrown at the people for contributing to stupidity. Here goes.
According to the biggest newspaper in Norway there was a Norwegian girl who first reacted to the new terms from Facebook and eventually gathered enough support to get them changed. This time to the good! Such immediate referendums made available through Internet have totally changed the way both companies, but also the politicians have to do their work. Dramatically!
However, they have a potential downside (at least one). When our Minister of Justice, mr. Knut Storberget nearly have to leave his chair because of an uncontrollable and extremely tabloid flaming from Norwegian newspapers and media, supported by the simplifying opposition, I understand that people turn to blogs instead of newspapers, but probably not to a large enough scale. And if they add to their media habits with blogs, do they read them with a critical analysis in mind? People have a tendency to believe in what they believe in, and then search for (and of course find) supporting evidence wherever they look. This is also why the Liberalistic Party (Fremskrittspartiet) is finding so many supporters these days. They tell people the simple story; Storberget did not have control over his Ministry, and should leave (and add to the story a couple of other blunders he made in the fall). I do not think it is that easy.
No one is perfect, not the secretary who happened to post the Police Hijab press release on the ministries web pages too early, neither the minister himself who followed up very clumsy at the beginning. He might however have learned by now. I do not know. He is probably no worse than any unknown alternative, but to be forced to step down by the opposition on this matter, because the press and opposition wants blood. As more and more voices are fronted, more and more blood seem to be what one want, and more and more dirt is being written about our high profiled politicians, I can not do anything but conclude that it has become a hell lot harder to be a politician, and that they have to listen to many almost immediate referendums to stay on top, and have the journalists back away.
Are the journalists just doing their job as the critical media shall be, or are they stressed to the brink, buying good stories based on presumptive evidence, and trying to make them hit the front page just to sell more papers, miscarrying justice as they go, and terrified that the media house they work in will set them on the street due to bankruptcy?
Filed under: On changing the culture, On social media | Leave a Comment
Today I read the latest Norwegian issue of Computerworld (nr 5 2009, pg 6), and to my great pleasure I found an article from our Senior Gartner columnist about the “war” between the IT Organization wanting to standardize and the vast amount of different quick win business applications that the business side want to use right away. These two agendas just does not match. Who wins; the IT department or the business side? And what happens with the IT department if they always loose? And what happens to innovation if the IT department always win? Gartner predicts that individual system choices will be more and more common. This, to my delight, foster creativity, but it also makes defining a complete IT Architecture nearly impossible and to manage, and if I may add, IT risk even harder to manage. The suggested solution: managed diversity.
I am a follower on the IT Strategy blog by Raj Sheelvant where he earlier wrote about rebranding the CIO, meaning the CIO could be an enabler instead of a brake in the organization.
Imagine a CIO fully grasping this concept? I certainly think an CIO coming to me and saying, use whatever program, as long as you tell me, and you try to convince the others doing the same as you to use the same program, would give me positive feelings. Now, how to make this work in practice? I think it is possible to sum it up in four very clear actions/policies:
Internal money
I absolutely think the Gartner approach where one may has to pay “internal money” in order to deviate from the given IT standard gives meaning. This not only incentivizes the business side to choose the preferred IT Standards, but it also enables the IT Department to provide some supporting resources to the new choice of technology if they should choose to deviate. It raises the question of how to price this though, but that is a whole other discussion.
Taking the consulting role
The CIO is no longer in charge of just operations of his system portfolio, but to give the business side good advice on how their choices of technology will work. He may ask questions like “how is backup taken care of” and “who do you call when it does not work” and last but not least “how is it integrated with our other portfolio of systems”? The CIO will have to “sell” the benefits of his policy, and enabling the organization to make informed choices. This is totally the other way around, opposed to the more or less undocumented denial one sometimes meet.
Keeping control
Make sure to define clear system policies that enables individual freedom, but keeping the necessary level of control. This must mean that applications used at work should be approved, so the IT Organisation knows about it, but that denying people to use it, given that they can pay for it as in the first bullet, is more difficult.
Dealing with the lifecycle cost and risk
To be aware of the lifecycle cost when enabling a new tool is critical. The feeling that deviation from the standard creates higher costs later, may also be why the CIO seems negative in the first place. Often quick and dirty projects only thinks about getting the tool up and running and forget about maintenance, backup, access control, security and so on. These issues must be tackled in order for the new tools to meet a long and prosperous life in the organization.
Any comments to these four elements? Anyone missing?
IBM illustrated this new role at their CIO Conference in November 2007 like this:
Good luck CIOs!
Filed under: On changing the culture, On collaboration, On the CIO role, On the IT Industry | Leave a Comment
The media sector has since the dot-com been in a changing world. This week it is also evident in Norway. Schibsted, the leading Norwegian media conglomerate said they need to cut 750 mill NOK, most due to plummeting advertising revenues (and some due to failed Classified Ad initiative in Spain). This is not a unique incident, as many media companies see the true results of the financial crisis. Hjemmet Mortensen is another example who published information about their cuts today.
I think I have to repeat my mantra, change is good – it opens for new opportunities. I must admit however that I wonder how the ad-market will look like in the future. The future is for fortune tellers to describe, I on the other hand, just wonder how one sell more stuff if you do not advertise? Is this the real social media revolution that we see? More Twitter, recommendations and relations, a more transparent reality – a flatter world! Now it is here for real.
A surprising effect is that local newspapers in Norway are still more or less withstanding (actually Norwegians reads more papers than most others). I guess it is because national and international news are available best online, while local news is still best in the paper. Are there entrepreneurs out there who are ready start the war for local content? Oh yes!
Filed under: On entrepreneurship, On social media | 3 Comments
All right folks, NAIAS is on! Are you lost? Yes, I am talking about cars! The above five are perhaps the cars of the future. Funny enough two of them have name from physical measuring units, however that is for nerds to beckon, and Chevrolet Volt is doomed from the beginning anyway.
GM’s Rick Wagoner was frightened by the show off from Warren Buffet-supported Chinese BYD E6 doing 400 km from fully charged, whilst Chevrolet Volt is doing ridiculously 64 km! Come on!
Tesla Roadster from California was recently presented on YouTube as the fastest accelerating electric vehicle. After all, that is an American vehicle, but not very much supported by GM or Ford. I like it very much, want to test, however not buy yet.
Ford formerly owned the Norwegian Think. They do not even say how far it goes on their sites. Maybe they have removed it when they saw BYD. Ford did not manage to make Think a profitable business, I think it is because the cars specs just isn’t good enough for people to buy it. Compared to a Volkswagen Golf your yearly spend is about the same, and when you want to visit auntie in far-away-city you are… going to, heaven forbid, invite her over instead! Think just got a round of capital and need to work hard to hang in there.
I just can’t wait till I can by a proper electric vehicle or plug-in hybrid electric vehicle “off the shelf”! I want one now, my old car is crappy and 13 years old! I believe car sales the last couple of months show that I am not alone, everybody is waiting for these cars to become mainstream available. So what the f#$@, is taking the manufacturers so long? Are the entire car industry corrupted by oil companies? Are their researchers just not good enough? Are they not the right people to innovate? This is going to be world histories greatest technology leap into the energy climate era and so far Toyota is the only formerly known car manufacturer that is nearly hanging in there with their hybrids!
Ridiculous!
Filed under: On dreaming, On entrepreneurship | Leave a Comment
Tags: BYD, Changfeng, Chevrolet Volt
Building on my post yesterday, defining a collaborative culture, a colleague notified me of the Gartner Quadrant from 2007 that already has made the connection between collaboration and social software. since someone already put it out, here it is again:
Gartner Magic Quadrant for Team Collaboration and Social Software 2007
However this quadrant is now getting old, and it has also recieved some critics, for the fact that it does not take new players into the picture. I also guess Gartner has made a new one since then.
However, the quadrant only resembles one actor at a time, but my personal favourite is the combination of Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server 2007 and Atlassian Confluence with the Sharepoint connector. If you, in addition, include Office Communictaion Server to allow chat and unified communication, then you should be well on the way towards collaboration nirvana. Anyone there yet?
I must say I also look forward to explore some of the other tools that shows up everywhere for different niche features and processes.
By the way, anyone thought of when consolidation is going to happen in the IT industry? This is why I love the strategy Atlassian pursues with the Sharepoint Connector (the market leader above) and JAVA(the definite challenger to MS.net in programming languages), amazing combination that is going to blast competitors. When they in addition get a thriving community and crowdsource all their plugin developments, how can anything possibly beat them?
Filed under: On collaboration, On social media, On the IT Industry | Leave a Comment
Tags: Atlassian, Confluence, Gartner, Magic quadrant, Moss 2007
Defining a collaborative culture
I have earlier blogged on social media and changing the culture. As social media is often about new forms of online collaboration, I now add collaboration (not as in collaborationism, but as in collaboration at work) as such to that mix. Every project manager ought to know that to create a culture for collaboration is vital for almost every projects success! However this turns out to be especially hard if the project is not co-located. Research shows that projects not co-located run a much higher risk of failure than those which are co-located.
But what is needed for good collaboration? I tried to read Wikipedia on collaboration, but did not get very much out of it in terms of required elements or actions to build a collaborative environment. (Thought of adding the fundamentals below in the article, so if they are there it means they have been added as a result of this post). Collaboration can be a fuzzy term. It refers more to a culture than to method. It requires something both of the structure and the organization, and both of the culture and the individuals. I googled it in Norwegian, (samhandling) and found a page referring to these five elements as especially important among politicians wanting to collaborate. I believe they are highly transferable to any project environment as well and I hereby refer to them as the five fundamental elements of good collaboration:
Trust
The need to trust each other and each other’s knowledge is necessary to build a good collaborative environment. This requires awareness of the roles on have in the collaborative setting, self awareness and openness. Lack of trust is a typical symptom in “e-mail-collaborative” projects where people do not meet physically.
Diversity
The need to accept, appreciate and use that we are different and have different knowledge’s and fill different roles.
Motivation
Motivation is fostered by having a common understanding of the goals, and a belief in that the team can pull it off together. Motivation results in team behavior.
Desire
Desire to collaborate is needed. Resistance towards collaboration could stem from many different reasons (power struggles, lack of incentives etc.). Lack of desire can ruin the entire project culture, and result in a failed project.
Capability
One needs to practice communicating with each other. Good communication skills are not something you are born with, but something you need to train to achieve.
Now, that is the five, they look simple enough but then come the art of massaging individuals into building the necessary level of these elements and deliver results in their teams. That is a whole other story.
Filed under: On changing the culture, On collaboration, On social media | 1 Comment
Tags: collaboration, Social media
Happy new year and all that. I hope you got to charge the batteries for 2009.
In the meantime, i just want to know one thing. We are more connected than ever before. You have more channels than ever to reach out to other people, including letting your cellphone forward to your voicemail. And yet, people keep taking their phone and telling me they are very busy, and need to call me back. Why??
PLEASE, let me give you a short notice on the voicemail as to why I called instead. And yeah, stop leaving me messages like “Hi, it is me, could you call me back soon”!
Filed under: On changing the culture | Leave a Comment
Update II on the Viking law
So it appears the presentation at First Tuesday was an extract from the one Tandberg use internally. They actually hand it out to foreigners and they report, it helps them understand how Norwegians think.
Here is the complete version from Annicken, remarkably like the one from Truls:
Filed under: On changing the culture | 2 Comments
Tags: jante viking law norway
Update on the Viking law
My post on the viking law has attracted some reactions, and two people have posted me alternate versions, Truls Berg, managing director in Movation and Annicken Rød, chief cultural officer in Tandberg. Here is an update and a poll for the best one.
Truls Bergs version, according to him unchanged since 1999:
Be brave and aggressive!
• Be direct & grab all opportunities
• Use varying methods of attack
• Attack one target at a time
• Use top quality weapons
Be prepared!
• Keep weapons in good conditions
• Keep in shape
• Find good battle comrades
• Agree in imortant points &Choose one chief
Be a good merchant!
• Find out what the market needs
• Don’t promise what you can’t keep
• Don’t demand overpayment
• Arrange things so that you can return
Keep the camp in order!
• Keep things tidy and organized
• Arrange enjoyable activities
• Make sure everybody does useful work
• Consult all members
Annicken Røds version as presented at First Tuesday December 2nd 2008, obvioulsly inspired by the same source as Truls: (translated from Norwegian):
- Be brave and direct
- Be prepared for whatever happens
- Find good battle comrades
- Have fun activities that strengthen the team
- Make sure everybody has meaningful tasks
- Be a good merchant
And finally my earlier posted version from Dagens Næringsliv:
1. See opportunities
2. Create winners
3. Be brave!
4. Give praise
5. Think positive
6. Take responsibility
7. Look forward
8. Pursue education and research
9. Oppose jealousy and laziness
10. Start today!
Now, which one do you like the best?
And finally, what was Dagens Næringsliv thinking earlier this summer? I bought the idea of the Viking Law as presented there – autentic – but it shows up it was not! I must admit I think the DN version is the most short, crisp and clean, but still – they should have mentioned the legacy, bad journalist!
Filed under: On changing the culture | Leave a Comment
Tags: jante viking law norway
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