Shawn, over at anecdote, has an interesting item about conversations. He mentions a new book on the topic and some “stinging” critisim from Steve Denning. In part of his post, Shawn states that:
I would also say that I have noticed that people in organisation rarely seem to have (or make) the time for conversation. Most talking is done to achieve a task which must reduce the ability for people to explore new ideas, innovate and revitalise their thinking.
I agree with Shawn’s observation but my feeling is that conversations in corporations/organisations are not entirely absent. But, to me, they seem to occur in the gaps between “real work” in the form of corridor chats, coffee engagements, friday night drinks, and even at the social events included as part of a work or professional conference. I think that last example is the best I can come up with in terms of organisations formally acknowledging and encouraging the value of conversations.
Do you have an examples of a corporation or organisation encouraging conversations?
Filed under: conversation, km, participation
Bill Ives (Portals and KM) has written a peice talking about collaboration successes with IBM Lotus Quickplace. This made an interesting contrast to Bill's recent focus on enterprise use of wiki's about which I have blogged and bookmarked. I found myself asking why would a company choose something like Quickplace instead of an enterprise strength wiki such as Confluence from Atlassian. Isn't a good wiki platform going to give you much more bang for the buck? I need to think about this more.
[Update: Having thought about this, here's my take on cooperation modes using a wiki
So tell me again why I would buy something like Quickplace?]
Filed under: collaboration, km, wiki
From Bill Ives at Portals and KM come three more useful smif (Social Media Inside the Firewall) entries. Case studies of wiki use at both Novell and Motorola. And then, yesterday, an item on wikis as a "disruptive innovation". Keep up the good work Bill, we're listening.
Filed under: km, smif, wiki
Via FutureTense, two projects to throw light onto wiki's and how they help with "emergent business". The first, 33 wikis, (already completed) is where they talked about their favourite 33 wikis over 33 days. The second, the wikiwise 50, (just starting) is 50 entries in 50 weeks of wikis "inside the enterprise", which as many of you know, is one of my favourite topics. Watch this space.
Filed under: km, smif, wiki
