Collaboration

The concept of "free" content producers, which I think WIRED called crowdsourcing, is going to be a short-lived joke. A loophole in the content business that will be closed by savvy startups which identify the top 5% of the audience and buy their time.

There are two ways to go about encouraging adoption of social software: fostering grassroots behaviours which develop organically from the bottom-up; or via top-down instruction. In general, the former is more desirable, as it will become self-sustaining over time - people become convinced of the tools' usefulness, demonstrate that to colleagues, and help develop usage in an ad hoc, social way in line with their actual needs.

These key users should: be open to trying new software be influential amongst their peers, thus able to help promulgate usage have the support of their managers Users who are potential evangelists should be identified at every level of management, not just amongst the higher echelons, or amongst the workforce.

3. Convert key users into evangelists Training in the form of short informal sessions (face-to-face or online) and ongoing on-demand support are the basics for encouraging adoption. Too much training or too formal a setting will put users off, and is usually unnecessary.

Will That Be Coordination, Cooperation, or Collaboration?

The Ideal Collaborative Team AND A Conversation on the Collaborative Process

reveals that most people would rather have inexperienced people with a positive attitude than highly experienced people who lack enthusiasm, candor or commitment, on a collaborative work team.

The challenge I have been running into is convincing CTOs, CIOs and CKOs that there are network effects. These people have invested heavily in pre-Web 2.0 "knowledge management" solutions. They view blogs and wikis as a threat to the possible success of their existing investments. They fail to realize that adding a wider range of productivity tools to the Intranet will add value to existing tools, rather than take away from them.Do you have any suggestions on how to communicate this.

A short answer to your question is that in such cases an appeal to corporate competitiveness might make the most sense. Enterprise Web 2.0 (or to use the emerging enterprise 2.0 tag) evangelists such as Andrew McAfee and Dion Hinchcliffe are always on the lookout for corporate success stories to publicize. I'd pay close attention to what they have to say. Often in public presentations they are challenged by corporate audiences to "prove that this stuff works." They always like to point to public examples -- when they can -- in order to rise above the hype. Being able to point out that a comparable or competitive company "is doing X already - why aren't we?" can be a powerful motivator.

As a cost-conscious consultant I would first want to know whether the existing knowledge management system can be augmented with newer collaboration, social networking, and relationship management features in order to extend the investments in infrastructure that have already been made.

Here are my thoughts on how to use a wiki page to collaborate on creating a non wiki page let say a powerpoint presentation. I am looking for feedback on this so feel free to add comments.

Best Practices Learn how the pros achieve higher productivity through enhanced collaboration. Attention Management - Reduce time wasted in the Inbox. CC to Wiki - Get around the curse of Reply-to-All. Collaborating on a non wiki page using a wiki page - Use the attachment feature to collaborate on presentation files, etc. Designing Spaces - Key considerations for creating new spaces. Developing a Public Blogging Strategy Distributed Document Review Gardening and Wiki gardening tips Index Pages - create starting points for navigation around topics of interest. Lightning Editing - how to co-edit a document with a collaborator Securing buy-in - getting others to shift perspectives on wikis Sparking participation at events Using the workspace as a document repository

Best Practices Learn how the pros achieve higher productivity through enhanced collaboration > . > Attention Management > - Reduce time wasted in the Inbox CC to Wiki > - Get around the curse of Reply-to-All. > Collaborating on a non wiki page using a wiki page > - Use the attachment feature to collaborate on presentation files, etc. > Designing Spaces > - Key considerations for creating new spaces. > Developing a Public Blogging Strategy > Distributed Document Review > Gardening > and > Wiki gardening tips > Index Pages > - create starting points for navigation around topics of interest. > Lightning Editing > - how to co-edit a document with a collaborator > Securing buy-in > - getting others to shift perspectives on wikis > Sparking participation at events > Using the workspace as a document repository > Doing a demo Create tagging structures - Develop a core list of tags for your wiki Wiki Structure - Create a page which outlines important elements of the wiki Stop creating Word documents - The first rule of integrating wikis effectively See also Bonnes Pratiques for a chart of best practices and French translations.