Twitter supports knowledge networking!

Knowing who has the knowledge is more important then have the knowledge yourself. This businessrule we often hear in our interviews with customers. An the other hand we see that networkingplatforms are growing every day outside the companies (linkedin, xing ed.).
But how can we use both trends useful for our organisations so that we achieve a sort of knowledge network in the organisation? So that employees are knowing from each other which knowledge is available in the organisation. Who knows what?

An other trend that we observe is that people more and more working in networks. When people are working for your organisation they use their own network to get the job done, but they also enlarge their netwerk with new contacts outside of your organisation. So it seems also important to keep also the network alive when employee’s leaving the organisation? The people who leave the organisation have specific knowlegde, they also are a part of the network of the employees who are still working for you and the leaving employee has a network that is interesting for the organisation (a part of the network is build up in your organisation).

We think that twitter can help the organisation to combine the trends in a positive way for the organisation. Twitter can help to:

• get many twitter friends and followers to get everyone involved (it is very easy to become friends)
• read what your friends are doing and what is on their mind to get more knowledge or ideas form the twitter network
• have an easy and fase way to get to know your coworkers and be known by the existing group
• blur the organizational borders, twitter networks do not care about your job. So if you stop working somewhere you can still be part of the network
• get to know new people and take a peek into their thoughts, so you can get new ideas and knowledge.

Is it hard to get above avantage? We think it is not, the implementation of the twitter-technology is a small change on your intranet. The most work will be to explain the value of the knowlegde network and the reason to twitter to your employees. But the most of them are using networkplatforms outside the company, so why would the change be big?

In the above situation, twitter is used as a social software but then applied in a business context. What are your thoughts on this subject? We would love to hear!
This post was made by @hendri_ende and @robberthomburg

Can twitter support social structure in organizations?

The basic idea of twittering is sharing social information with your friends. An example is hyves where you can let know what is on your mind by 140 characters (this is called 'wat doe je'). All your friends can read and react to your short social/emotional message. This is more or less the same on twitter.

But will this also work in our organisations? Will a worker ever put his social message in a Tweet and share it with the whole company? Does the rest of the company care about the Tweet of the salesmanager? Maybe you have some doubts, but realise that the mental model in the organisation is that employees every day have their CCC ‘coffee-corner-chat’. And as we all know if you are seeking for the right information or you are preparing a decision in a meeting, the first thing to do is triple C.

And because employees are known with sharing things with each other in their mental model. We expect that supporting this habit by Twitter, people will use twitter from day one. Maybe you should rename it to coffee-chat, so everybody know what twitter is. For example: I went on a biking trip this weekend and hit a tree. Monday morning in my coffee-chat I put the words ‘I’am hurt by a three’. Later that day Robbert sees me in the restaurant and asked me how I’am doing.

One of the best things about twitter is the possibility to twitter by more features then internet but also SMS of txt! This very simple example shows how the social structure in your company can grow. And yes we hear you thinking: will my people still work and are they going to socialize allday long. Maybe the first two days people are using it like mad. But they will start to be smart about it and only twitter useful stuff. Then your social structure will get stronger. And the positive impact on performance will happen.

So our advise, don’t wait, start today with introducing the digital coffee-chat. This is a great way to enhance the social structure of you company at no cost! A nice video is here from MIT about twitter and ambient intimacythis post is written by hendri and robbert

Twitter for ideasharing

Should you use Twitter in your company to share ideas?

Twitter is about what are you doing today, but what if you are brainstroming and getting ideas? The beginning of a new idea should be short and shared amoung people inside and outside the company. So far Twitter seems to be a good idea. People will react to your ideas or get their own new ideas. This is possible with twitter, you can send messages to people and they can post their own ideas. Ideas occur in all sorts of places, now only form behind a computer. Twitter can do this, allowing you to send text messages!

But, what if I want to read all about one idea, or want to rate an idea of follow up on an idea. This cannot be done with twitter. The thing is for the start of an idea twitter is fantastic, for the second phase of an idea twitter is to simple.

But here is the great part, Twitter is open as all apps should be. Why not combine the simple but great Twitter funcionality and the functions of a site like IdeaFactory or IdeaExchange. Both being based of sites like digg. And start the discussion and rating of an idea over there. All the content about the idea is together and still online. Start an idea on twitter, pass it on to another site when the idea seems good, react to it, rate it and make it! If you make this business idea happen think of me ;-).

This is a great way to start an idea, collaborate on the idea online and share it with people around the globe. this blogpost was made in collaboration with Robbert Homburg

Twitter in the Enterprise?

A recent trend on the internet is Twitter. Twitter enables you to stay up to date with your friends/colleagues with short messages the ‘tweets’. To read more about twitter go to wikipedia (in english or dutch). On twitter you can search for people you know or navigate through profiles and followers. Links are shared in mini format so they don't take up much characters.

More and more attention is given to this service. You can follow Barack Obama on twitter or Frankwatching. But also some politicians in the Netherlands have twitter profiles. Beside the politicians, the marketing people and de techies we see the first companies and magazines are on twitter using it as an RSS feed or to give twitterers discounts.

In our upcoming items we will give some ideas and inspiration if the twitter trend can have value in an enterprise.This post is a co-production with Robbert Homburg

Mashups een hype of wordt het wat?

Ik lees steeds meer over mashups. En de vergelijking tussen mashups en webportals wordt regelmatig in tabellen weergegeven.
De tabellen doen ons geloven dat we redelijk outdated zijn als we nog met webportals aan de slag willen. Echter volgens mij zie ik nog weinig werkende voorbeelden, naast de bekenden van Google die in alle voorbeelden wordt genoemd.
Gelukkig las ik in één presentatie een zinnig en eerlijk advies, wees nog voorzichtig met implementeren van mashups, het staat nog in de kinderschoenen qua technologie en qua visie.
De eerste Mashup-leveranciers zijn al op het internet te vinden Schmap.

Maw goede Mashups zullen over een paar jaar te vinden zijn op internet. Echter hiermee kan ik niet de behoeften van vandaag invullen. Fijn om te weten dat ze komen, dan kun je er wel rekening mee houden op hoofdlijnen met de inrichting en de aanschaf van je platform.

Een leuke site om snel wat hoofdlijnen op te snuiven over mashups Mashuphub.

De Chief Collaboration Officer kan beginnen!

Waarom hebben we een CCO nodig?

de komst van WEB 2.0 en de kenmerkende sociale aspecten van de hulpmiddelen zorgt ook voor een organisatorische verschuiving. En nee het is geen pleidooi voor meer chiefs aan de top!

In hele grote stappen de doelverschuiving door de tijd heen:

• informeren c.q. presentatie op het web (aanspreekpunt hoofd ict)
• communiceren (aanspreekpunt hoofd communicatie)
• interactie/transactie (aanspreekpunt hoofd verkoop of een special afdeling voor de site)
• samenwerken met collega's en klanten (aanspreekpunt....CCO)

De komst van meer hulpmiddelen om samen te werken en de trend dat er steeds meer in netwerkverband wordt gewerkt vraagt om een dirigent die hier vorm aan geeft.

Wat gaan de CCO doen?

De CCO is verantwoordelijk dat de organisatie maximaal profiteert van de mogelijkheden om samen te werken. Hiervoor zal werk verricht moeten worden op terreinen als:

• strategie (opstellen van een samenwerkings strategie in lijn met bedrijfsstrategie)
• cultuur (als team willen samen werken)
• techniek (realiseren en laten implementeren van de tools)
• actieve promotie van samenwerking binnen de organisatie en buiten de organisatie met klanten, partners en leveranciers.

Wat moet de CCO kunnen?

U vraagt zich wellicht af "kan de ICT manager dit er niet bij doen?" NEE! De rol van de ICT manager zal naar verwachting steeds meer verschuiven naar een 'leverende' rol. Zorgen dat de infrastructuur beschikbaar is. Het nadenken en vorm geven hoe mensen met elkaar samen kunnen werken en dit stimuleren vraagt toch andere vaardigheden. Voorbeeld vaardigheden:

• kunnen begeleiden van een verandering in een organisatie
• kennis van IT-mogelijkheden
• kunnen begrijpen wat mensen nodig hebben om samen te werken in teams (online contact, opslaan van content etc. etc.)
• begrijpen dat het echte werk gebeurt in netwerk verband ipv het formele harkje van de organisatie
• sociaal gevoel hebben, het gaat tenslotte om samen werken aan samenwerken

Wanneer zullen we de eerste personeelsadvertentie zien: Manager Samenwerking gezocht!

Zoho een potentiële concurrent van sharepoint?

Vele initiatieven zijn er al gelanceerd om online collaboration te ondersteunen. Sommige geslaagd en een lang bestaan gegund, sommige met de life-time van een eendagsvlieg.

Echter met verbazing volg ik Zoho. Zoho weet toch steeds meer en meer collaborations tools bij elkaar te brengen die er toe doen.

De kleuren en de eenvoud op de Zoho-site doen me denken aan Google-apps. Wellicht wordt Zoho wel de potentiële derde hond die er met het been vandoor ging toen de andere twee aan het vechten waren om de gunst van de klant.