Archive for the 'Collaboration' Category

Sometimes you’ve just got to exert some control

Published by Ben Kepes on June 28, 2008 in Collaboration, IT and Society. 4 Comments

Wikipedia has always been know as “the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit”. Contrast this with this editorial recently published in The Guardian by Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales. In the editorial Jimmy modified his definition somewhat to now read;

(Wikipedia is) the online encyclopedia in which any reasonable person can join us in writing and editing entries on any encyclopedic topic

Purely semantics? I don’t think so. Nick cave posts about the change and says that;

The old slogan was the language of the bazaar. The new one is the language of the club.

Wikipedia, since it’s inception, has heralded a mass democratisation of information dissemination. No longer where we enslaved to the whims of the editorial boards behind Encyclopedia Britannica et al, but now we, the humble netizens could decide what was suitable for an encyclopedic tome.

But this Nirvana-esque view ignored the reality, that when people have an opportunity to discourse, they do so generally in a way that is coloured by their individual perceptions, their personal beliefs and often their prejudices.

The reality is that an entirely open forum opens itself to misinformation and the sort of post and counter-post battles that have plagued Wikipedia in the past. The very existence of editorial control is itself an admission of the failing of humankind - Wikipedia’s new definition is merely an acceptance of this fact. Wales recognises this fact and accepts that Wikipedia is about as close to the ideal as we can get when he says;

I advocate for the value of a universal encyclopedia which is accessible to everyone and which rationally puts forward the basic facts about various arguments and controversies in such a manner that newcomers to an issue can understand what the disagreement is about. Don’t tell me what to think, don’t feed me one side of the story; give me actual facts and I will think for myself to decide. And I respect you as a human being enough to return the favour.

Wikipedia tends to be written by people who are significantly more educated than average, by people who are passionate about ideas, about getting it right. This is a good thing. Because thinking is not automatic, the avoidance of bias is not automatic. A ruthless precision in thinking is a great virtue in the project. And you have to bring that kind of precision because, unlike the comfortable writers of a classic top-down encyclopedia, you are likely to be contacted and challenged if you have made a flawed argument or based your conclusion on faulty premises. Such is the virtue of the marketplace of ideas.

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A cool new SaaS offering….

Published by Ben Kepes on June 27, 2008 in Business, Collaboration, Design, Efficiency, IT, New Zealand, New business, SaaS and Strategy. 1 Comment

I met this morning with Alan Cox, MD of LeftClick. LeftClick is a really cool post-click conversion services company that has shown some pretty impressive results for their e-commerce clients.

I first met Alan at a business roundtable where he was bouncing some ideas of people for a SaaS product idea he had. Since then we’ve met fairly regularly to discuss general business strategy and specific’s for his product idea.

Today I saw a breakdown of what that SaaS offering is and I’ve got to say its pretty exciting. At this stage I’m not in a position to give away details, a Beta1 release should be out before Christmas, but suffice it to say that it’s a product that stems from Alan’s post-click conversion optimisation experience and fulfils the requirements that I believe are important in a SaaS app;

  • aggregation
  • value-add
  • doing the heavy lifting for the target audience

Even more excitingly Alan and I bounced around some ides about how the product could leverage community and also incorporate some opensource attributes in a way that meets the suggestions I made in a post last year.

It’s an exciting prospect and I’m looking forward to sharing more as and when I can.

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Ruby a pretty good first foray

Published by Ben Kepes on June 24, 2008 in Blogging, Collaboration, Design, Efficiency, IT, New Zealand, New business, SocialMedia, Society and Strategy. 8 Comments

(and I’m not talking about Ruby on Rails)

I’m currently in the throes of doing some work around creating a business community (more to come on that one) and in my research I came across The Ruby Connection, the network set up by Westpac Bank in order to create a forum for dialogue amongst and between women in business. The idea of TRC, in the words of Westpac’s Head of Women’s Markets (and as an aside I’d be very surprised if they had a head of Men’s Markets!) is to;

inform, educate and provide online networking opportunities for today’s busy women in business

Which is a pretty commendable aim to be honest but the work I’ve been doing around social media has led me to a few conclusions about their method.

Make the dialogue constant

In her “blog”, the Head of Women’s Markets announced TRC on 12 May as her first post. The post was well thought out (actually felt like it was written by a PR staffer somewhere) but that was the last we heard of her. This is a major failing. There is no feeling that the offering is dynamic, rather it is a static (and ever more dated) location which gives a perception that the information contained within is also similarly out of date.

Have an ambassador

There is no feel that visitors to the site are really connecting with anyone. Had the Head of Women’s markets kept up the dialogue, and actually taken an active part in the Forums, there would be a feel that we were actually entering a community that someone was facilitating. While ambassador’s become less important once a community has gained sufficient momentum, they are critical in the early stages.

Neutrality is everything

Let’s be clear here - TRC is sold as a place where women can come to talk about being in business, it’s not sold as where women can come and be assailed by Westpac branding. Clearly it’s a difficult concept for marketing folks to understand but in order for a social network to have any semblance of transparency and neutrality it needs to meet certain tests;

  • The site must be branded neutrally (sure a “sponsored by” logo is fine but that’s about it)
  • The site must have minimal (or no) sponsor editorial control. I’d suggest creating a touchstone document at inception which lists the expectations of the sponsoring organisation - thereafter the ambassador should have editorial control

Dynamic, dynamic, dynamic

While there is some solid content TRC. It seems pretty static - there is no thought given to creating the dynamism of the forums for example within the content delivery of the “how to” sections. Again it’s a major limiter and does nothing to make the offering feel active and busy.

Overall

TRC did pretty well - there offering looks good and looks fun. The areas they’ve failed however are pretty important.

I tend to come back to a couple examples of social networks in various sectors that follow all the rules for effective community creation.

Vorb, New Zealand’s favourite sporting community site has a massive following, total neutrality and a passionate ambassador

Geekzone, has cornered the tech community, the founder/ambassador has given some control over to the community moderators and the neutrality of the site is unquestionable

The Ruby Connection isn’t a contender to the crown, kudos to Westpac for seeing the value in communities and hopefully they’ll have the vision to keep it going long enough to get some momentum.

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Skype 4.0 beta

Published by Ben Kepes on June 18, 2008 in Business, Collaboration, Design, Efficiency, IT, SaaS and Strategy. 3 Comments

Skype is rolling out a beta version of its newest software and it marks a distinct change in tack for the company. Skype’s formative days were centred around voice communications, video functionality had been something of a bolt on to the UI. The new version is all about communication, not favouring voice over video.

The new Skype is all about building up a user’s networks, support is included for importing contacts from a number of installed and web email apps.

The UI might shock a few hardened users, used to seeing the rather minimalist current look, but in order to maximise video functionality, Skype had to command more monitor real estate.

With most Telco’s already offering, or soon to introduce, VoIP offerings, Skype needs to up the anti in terms of functionality. This beta release takes yet another broadside at another of the incumbents high value revenue streams - namely video conferencing. The Telco’s must hate Skype - first P2P VoIP ate POTS lunch and now they’re looking at big ticket stuff - disruption hurts!

The beta release will be available here tomorrow.