Web and Enterprise 2.0 - Governance Techniques

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+ danrandow 3 months ago
@darren you should add the tag nzIntSum09 as I expect Dorje will promote that

Good morning. My name is Darren. I’m a web designer. I’m passionate about the web and making sure it’s usable by as many people as possible. Mainly this means I tend to spend way too much time online... But you’ll be glad to know that I’ve picked up a few tips about existing in this massive online community and how best to make it for work for me.

In today’s talk I’m going to be focussing on the ideas and techniques used in Web2.0 and how we can incorporate some of that thinking into your intranet.

The first thing I want to get out of the way is the definition of web2.0 and how it may be applicable in the office. So - I’m sure a lot of you have heard of web2.0 and some of you may even know what it is. Just shout out words you feel best describes web2.0...

Ok - those were all very good answers, but I’m afraid you were all a little off the mark. Web2.0 is:

Pictures of cats with very bad diction. I’m pretty sure all of you have seen one of these annotated cat pictures around the internet.

These images are a fine example of what the web2.0 is all about. In a nutshell it’s about being apart of a community and being able to share, create, interact and socialise with other like minded people. When you put enough cat loving people together they end up inventing LOLCats.

But in all seriousness it’s very difficult to define web2.0. It’s a million different things to a million different people. So in order to try and find a suitable definition of web2.0 I resorted to the best source of information on the internet: wikipedia!

The entry for web2.0 on wikipedia is way too long-winded - so I thought I’d summarise it be creating a word-cloud. The larger the word, the more it is used to define web2.0.

Although the name suggests that web2.0 is a new version of the world wide web it doesn’t refer to any technical specifications - rather it refers to the way in which developers and end-users are using the web.

Were web1.0 was more of a one-way push of information web2.0 is for more of a discussion. Web2.0 gives control over to the users. Users now own and control the data. It’s this architecture of participation that encourages users to add value to the application as they use it.

I guess you could say Web2.0 is the Participatory Web.

By looking at the above word-cloud you can see that shine through loud and clear. Just look at the largest words: participation; contribution, social, user...

It all boils down to the original ideas Tim Berners-Lee (the inventor of the web) had about the world wide web:

“The dream behind the Web is of a common information space in which we communicate by sharing information. Its universality is essential”

It’s this idea of communicating by sharing ideas which I think is the most important part of web we now use.

It’s the communities and the common online spaces we share.

The web lends itself nicely to the formation of communities. Even from the earliest days of the internet users have been interacting in groups and creating communities. Lets have a look at some of these online communities.

Facebook, twitter and linkedIn are good examples of the new breed of online communities - Social Networks. But online communities go way back.

IRC or Internet Relay Chat was probably one the first online communities to exist and is still going strong today.

Forums are now days a very common part of the web. But was around way before the internet we know today: BBS

A more modern take on online communities is the good old blog. Huge communities can be created around blogs.

I’m only including the obvious examples of online communities, but essentially any place where people can create content and interact on their terms is more than likely an online community. This could be leaving a review on an online store like Amazon, or it cold be posting that funny cat picture to your work intranet.

Your intranet is a community and it’s important to make it be a place where your users feel they can exist safely and happily.

During the next 30 mins or so I’m going to share some of what I’ve learnt from existing in these online communities and hopefully give you some ideas you can take back and use within your intranets.

The first thing I want to talk about is how you can make our intranet more relevant and useful for your employees. We’ll have a look at what makes the most popular online communities so useful and enjoyable to use.

A vast majority of your employees are already using these web2.0 tools. Things like facebook and twitter are very nearly household names. People know how to use these products and are familiar with their rules and guidelines.

Web users are becoming very savy.

A recent example is the backlash that facebook has recently faced regarding their term and conditions. I know - it’s weird - people are actually taking the time to read all this legal stuff. It really only takes one person to start preaching the word and it very quickly filters through the entire network. As the provider of this service Facebook has no control over the spread of this information. The social web is one of collaboration and sharing. People are going to create any content they want and it’ll spread like wild fire.

An example of the perils of neglecting your users:

Who has heard of Ofoto? Snapfish? Shutterfly? OK - what about flickr?

Ofoto, snapfish and shutterfly were all photo sharing websites who lost sight of their most important goal: keeping their users happy and giving their users what they really want. They thought their users wanted cheap printing. So these guys effectively undercut each other out of the market. “We can provide cheaper printing than that other guy...”

Then came along this new player - flickr. These guys didn’t really care about printing costs.

They cared about creating an environment where people could use and share their content in smart and interesting ways.

Flickr allows anyone to leave comments or tag. You can become friends with anyone and it doesn’t have to be reciprocal.

Flickr recognized that people wanted a better way to share their photos. They also recognized that people might have myriad ways of doing that.

Flickr lets people derive their own value from sharing photos.

Essentially flickr has relinquished control. And given it over to their users.

This is the sort of attitude you need to take with your employees.

All of them use facebook or beebo or youtube or flickr. They’ve become accustomed to having control of their experience within a web browser. There’s no need to be any different on the corporate intranet.

But it is important that you give your employes the correct tools to exist happily in this online space.

In my opinion there are three things that will greatly improve the relationship your users have with your intranet.

The very first line of defense is to craft a simple set of rules and guidelines. This doesn’t need to be a 50 page document outlining every possible thing that could go wrong. Start small and iterate as time goes on.

Remember that your employees make use of social media outside of work already. Embrace this - use it to your advantage. Give them a place that is familiar to them. This effectively lowers the barrier to entry. And once again start small and iterate often.

Give your users the tools to police themselves. This will lower the overall amount of time your intranet managers spend moderating stuff. Give that job over to the people who use the intranet on a daily basis.

We’ll start by having a look how to craft a simple set of rules and guidelines

In an ideal world the users of your intranet would all be saintly and understand exactly how to behave in an online environment. This is never the case.

There is a world of social media out there but sadly it’s overrun but the misfits and the antisocial types. The trick is to take your current company policies and sculpt them into a simple set of rules that would best suit the online world.

It’s also a good idea to involve a large cross section of your company to create these guidelines and help run and moderate your intranet. Traditionally intranets are run by either the Tech people or the Communications people. I would suggest trying to involve members from all teams within your company. Try to get representatives from each department and use them to be your Intranet Champions.

At my last job - which was at a fairly corporate company - I heard probably the best articulated bit of advice. There were a series of posters stuck around the office with advice for being an effective employee. The usual stuff like, “Help those around you”, “Always be closing”, “Lead by example”, etc - but the one that stood out for me was the following bit of frank advice:

Don’t be a dick!

I know it’s a little crass - but it’s simple and to the point. Many online communities have this or a variation of this high up in the guidelines. I like the way flickr puts it:

Flickr’s guidelines are a great place to start to get inspiration and ideas about tone. Flickr really understand their audience which manifests itself in the copy writing throughout the website.

Their guidelines start off explaining what their users should do in order to have a good experience on their site.

Try to focus on the positive things people can do to make the community a better place to be.

Don’t tell your users what they cant do - instead tell them what they should do and how they should behave.

Your set of rules shouldn’t be intimidating.
The last thing you want to do is scare people before they’ve even had a chance to use your intranet.

The easiest way to help your employees feel at home on your intranet is to make it feel like home...

Give your employees a familiar toolset. Something they’ve seen before and know how to interact with.

Chances are your employes already use online communities and social networking applications so try to incorporate some of those common devices on your own intranet.

User Profiles are a great way to give your employees the chance to say a little about themselves. It gives the whole affair a more personal feel. Being able to read a little about your fellow employees is a good start to fostering discussion and socialising through your intranet.

And as your intranet users start to interact with each other certain common interests will begin to arise.

So give your employees a way to create groups. You’d be surprised to see the sorts of things they may come up with.

I suggest swift moderation on groups that a little too subversive. There will almost always be that person who thinks they’re clever and misunderstood who will create a group that is a complete act of trolling.

I might take this opportunity to rant about trolls.

Don’t be lulled into thinking trolls are not those cute and benevolent little toys.

Well they’re not! They are dangerous trouble causing little monsters. I mean look at IT!!

You more than likely will encounter trolls. They exist on all online communities. Their sole purpose is to provoke a reaction. They will prod and disrupt. They will write controversial, inflammatory things. They will cause trouble.

There are two simple rules to help dealing with trolls:

Giving the troll no reaction is going to bore them and thus hopefully make them stop.

There are some techniques for dealing with trolls. Most of which involve ignoring them completely. There is a really interesting technique used by some online communities which I think is total genius. It has a really catchy name:

The Cone of Silence.

This is a genius piece of moderation that quite simply mutes the offensive user to the everyone except themselves. They can happily troll away but no other users are able to see their posts. I don’t know how effective this would be on your intranet, but it’s these sorts of ‘out there’ ideas that work.

In a lot of cases the best way to keep your online community a safe place to be is to let your users take care of the heavy listing.

Give you users the tools to police the intranet themselves.

I’m a big fan of this concept. I think it’s a prime example of what defines web2.0. Designing with your users solely in mind. These are the people who will use the system and therefore the ones who will know how best to govern it.

There is a concept that is central to a lot of online communities - and that is the concept The Wisdom of Crowds.

This is the idea that if you aggregate the results produced by a large diverse group of people that result will often times be the most accurate. This notion was first documented by a guy called Francis Galton. in 1906 he visited a livestock fair and stumbled upon an intriguing contest. An ox was on display, and the villagers were invited to guess the animal's weight after it was slaughtered and dressed. Nearly 800 gave it a go and, not surprisingly, not one hit the exact mark. The exact weight of the ox was 1,198 pounds. Amazingly, however, the average of those 800 guesses came close — very close. It was 1,197 pounds.

About 98 years later a guy called James Surowiecki finally wrote down these findings in a really good book called “The Wisdom of Crowds”. If you haven’t read this book I suggest you do.

One of the elements required for this concept to work is to give your crowd a simple task like guessing the weight of a bull - or marking a comment useful or not...

A technique used a lot with comments or reviews or small bits of user feedback is to get your audience to determine whether or not it’s useful. This screenshot is of the reviews of a product on Amazon.com. And illustrates various self moderation techniques.

At the top you can see the number of people who found this comment useful. There are also two tools right on the comment that will allow immediate and simple actions: Do I find this review helpful? and Do I find this review so offensive that I’d like to report it!

These techniques are used throughout the social internet. The ‘is this comment useful’ technique is one of the driving techniques behind the success of websites like Digg and Slashdot. Users are asked to vote for articles. The less popular ones never bubble to the top.

Flickr makes good use of the Report This feature. This allows their community to flag offensive images and videos.

And then there’s the world of Wiki’s. Wiki’s have taken the Wisdom of Crowds idea and really run with it.

Wikipedia has had great success getting the citizens of the world to write their encyclopaedia for them. But as you can see by this page, an awful lot of edits and rewrites have to take place to get to the perfect end result.

It’s important to choose a wiki tool that will allow you to keep an eye on these sorts of edits and reworks. It’s very useful to see who is making edits as it can help you spot the Intranet Champions and conversely the Intranet Trolls.

Hopefully these three points will help you create a safe and relevant intranet that your employees will feel safe and comfortable using.

Remember to keep your rules simple, your design friendly and utilise the social nature of your intranet to help take care of itself.

There is one last thing I’d like to touch on before I go. This is less about your intranet, but rather more about the world out there - on the other side of the firewall.

I’m speaking about those pesky web2.0 websites your employees insist of using!

Blog, forums and social networks are becoming increasingly popular so it’s important that your staff know how to conduct themselves out there.

I’m going to share with your 5 things you should consider when creating your Social Networking Policy.

1. The definition of “social networking”

Social networking means different things to different people.

Are forum’s social networks, what about email lists?

Name specific sites and technologies.

2. Identifying oneself as an employee of the company

Make clear whether employees are allowed to identify themselves as representatives of your company.

Remind them to be professional when representing your company

Blogs and other personal posts contain disclaimers that make it clear that the opinions expressed are solely those of the author and do not represent the views of the company.

3 Referring to clients, customers, partners or co-workers

In 2002 a blogger by the name of Heather Armstrong or Dooce was fired from her job because she had written satirical accounts of her experiences at a dot-com startup. As a result two things happened:

1) She learned never to blog about work, and
2) a new word was created. Dooced. To be dooced it to be fired from you job because of your website.

It’s therefore important that your social networking policy should make it clear that employees are not to reference any clients, customers, partners or coworkers without obtaining their express permission to do so.

4. Proprietary or confidential information

You may already have policies in place that cover the dissemination of the company’s proprietary or confidential information, trade secrets, etc.

Reiterate this and provide specific examples as they relate to social networking sites

5. Productivity impact

Social networking sites can be good tools for developing business relationships, but they can also turn into big time-wasters.

As with the “six martini lunch,” appropriate use often slips gradually into abuse without the employee even realizing it.

That’s why it’s important to set guidelines and priorities.
Your policies should make it clear that social networking activities are not to interfere with the employee’s primary job responsibilities.

If you’re really stuck you can always look at a few examples out there on the web.

Flickr community guidelines
Good copy writing, friendly tone

Jacob Neilson wrote a pretty thorough white-paper on social networking on intranet. well worth checking out

10 things you should cover in your social networking policy

How to write a corporate Twitter stategy

Great article about how flickrs polices their online communities. they have 30 million members who have psoted about 3 billion pictures...

Thanks a lot. I hope that this journey into the web2.0 world has helped give you ideas and techniques you can take back with you and implement in your own intranets.

My slides are available online at http://slideshare.net/darren131

Any questions?

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Web and Enterprise 2.0 - Governance Techniques - Presentation Transcript

Web2.0 http://flic.kr/p/47E92
http://flic.kr/p/3ibM1h
“The dream behind the Web is of a common information space in which we communicate by sharing information. Its universality is essential” Tim Berners-Lee
Communities http://flic.kr/p/61tu9W
Communities Facebook Twitter Linked-in Blogs Forums Chat rooms http://flic.kr/p/61tu9W
Communities Facebook Twitter Linked-in Blogs Forums Chat rooms Intranet http://flic.kr/p/61tu9W
Usable intranet http://flic.kr/p/5XLzsA
Relinquish control http://flic.kr/p/2idWdA
Tools http://flic.kr/p/rk59E
Tools Clear and simple rules Familiar toolset Self-moderation tools http://flic.kr/p/rk59E
Tools Clear and simple rules Familiar toolset Self-moderation tools http://flic.kr/p/rk59E
Simple Rules http://flic.kr/p/uMyUA
Don’t be a dick http://flic.kr/p/5TK6ZL
http://flic.kr/p/uMyUA
Positive Reinforcement http://flic.kr/p/296SbP
Tools Clear and simple rules Familiar toolset Self-moderation tools http://flic.kr/p/rk59E
Familiar toolset http://flic.kr/p/6mMXS5
http://flic.kr/p/51m1yo
http://flic.kr/p/51m1yo
Dealing with trolls http://flic.kr/p/5UfPvZ
Dealing with trolls 1. Don’t feed the trolls. 2. See rule 1. http://flic.kr/p/5UfPvZ
http://flic.kr/p/5UfPvZ
Tools Clear and simple rules Familiar toolset Self-moderation tools http://flic.kr/p/rk59E
Self Moderation http://flic.kr/p/4HT1hy
Wisdom of Crowds http://flic.kr/p/Ga5g8
Tools Clear and simple rules Familiar toolset Self-moderation tools http://flic.kr/p/rk59E
Social networking policy http://flic.kr/p/uNa8d
1. Define social networking http://flic.kr/p/3McFgH
2. Identifying oneself as an employee of the company
3. Referring to clients, customers, or partners http://flic.kr/p/e9iys
4. Proprietary or confidential information http://flic.kr/p/5WLVC4
5. Productivity impact http://flic.kr/p/62GEc8
Inspiration... Flickr comminty guidelines http://flickr.com/guidelines.gne Social Networking on Intranets http://www.useit.com/alertbox/social-intranet-features.html 10 things to cover in your social networking policy http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/10things/?p=875 How to write a corporate Twitter strategy http://neilojwilliams.net/missioncreep/2009/how-to-write-a-corporate-twitter- strategy-and-heres-one-i-made-earlier/ Nasty as they wanna be? Policing Flickr.com http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2008/09/29/onthejob.DTL
5. Productivity impact http://flic.kr/p/62GEc8