The document discusses the emerging role of social software within IBM and its use to foster collaboration and innovation. It outlines IBM's transition to more informal and open culture and describes various social tools and platforms adopted by employees, from internal instant messaging and blogs to experimental uses of metaverse environments and reputation systems. It highlights IBM's Technology Adoption Program for encouraging early adoption of new tools and sharing of internally developed solutions.

1. What’s happening behind the firewall? The emerging role of social software in IBM Gabriela Avram Brian O’Donovan Liam Bannon Interaction Design Centre Centre of Advanced Studies University of Limerick IBM Ireland

2. Enterprise 2.0 “ Enterprise social software will be the biggest new workplace technology success story of this decade. 30% of enterprises will openly sponsor internal…social sharing spaces to help employees find others with similar interest, skills, backgrounds and experiences. “ Gartner, “ Predicts 2007 – Big Changes Ahead in the High Performance Workplace”, Dec 5, 2006 Several global companies are known to have adopted Enterprise 2.0 tools: Sun, Google, Deloitte, KPMG IBM/Lotus has a long history of building and using collaboration tools

3. IBM through the years IBM was established over 100 years ago Until 1980s the dominant computer company Mainframe hardware company Set own proprietary standards Formal & Proud/Arrogant Almost went bankrupt But elephants can dance Now a services, software & hardware company Passionate about Open Standards Very informal Interesting Facts 300-350k employees (ambiguity from contract &vendor staff) 40% do not work at an IBM facility Significant growth in Emerging Countries (e.g. 40K employees in India) Significant growth through acquisition (e.g. Vallent in Cork)

4. Building a culture of collaboration The IBM Values: Dedication to Every Client's Success Innovation that Matters - for our company and the world Trust and Personal Responsibility in all Relationships The practicalities: Searching for the place one can fit in best Job rotation encouraged – go where you can learn the most Internal IM gives every employee instant access to anyone in the company Interaction with peers (i.e. anyone) – build your own network Asking tough questions sooner the better Finding innovative solutions in challenging situations End of the year assessment – based on input from both managers and collaborators Recognition and acknowledgment of successes Innovation and creativity are firmly encouraged Culture and practice are interwoven; Our research is focusing on social practices built around social software applications - allowing for flexibility, frequent communication and reliable knowledge-sharing mechanisms. Tools - seen as result of, and support for the collaboration culture

5. Engaging employees with emerging technology TAP – Technology Adoption Program Launched in 2006 to accelerate the adoption of new technology to benefit our internal transformation and productivity Foster a culture of early adoption to understand the impact of new technology on day-to-day work Brings together a community of early adopters to try new solutions and provide feedback directly to the creators Provides methods and infrastructure to support innovation development and deployment TAP Offerings typically come from product groups, IT teams and IBM Research End-users are also sharing tools that they’ve build to enhance their own productivity TAP has reached over 100K employees as early adopters and offers a catalog of over 200 solutions

6. Collaboration tools - 3 stages of adoption: For getting the work done Everyone must use these Taking off Used widely in certain sub-communities but not yet ubiquitous In an experimental stage Early adopters only Research concepts which are likely to change singinifcantly

7. 1. For getting the work done

8. e-mail, calendar (Lotus Notes) E-mail – business as usual –more context, keeping track of decisions, delegating tasks Calendaring and Scheduling – pivotal for time management: “The Notes calendar is king” Mailing lists for maintaining team awareness Web 1.0 tools, but content is used in web 2.0 mashups

9. Instant Messaging (Sametime) Communication Contacts list Awareness mechanism Location/position in the organisation chart

10. What makes IM so attractive? Existing contacts Team mates Managers Support staff Experts Knowledgeable peers Liaisons New contacts Following recommendations Found on the organisation chart Authors of documents published on the intranet Indicated by folksonomies Status visibility, persistent, less intrusive “ In many ways instant messaging does seem to support the serendipitous kinds of interactions that are lost when employees are not co-located.” (Parker et al) Part of the IBM culture IM as an alternative to the break room, coffee meeting, water cooler Affords getting in touch with:

11. Solving an urgent situation Context: translation testing; Two days before the deadline Coordinator at the Irish site Fix provided; tester in France refuses to apply it, because “he got tired of fixes that don’t work” Extended chat: the coordinator explains the situation He asks again the tester to apply the fix 3 min No further comments… A B C

12. BluePages Employee directory/personal pages/profiles Information on status, location, skills, management chain, languages spoken, picture Fringe: tag clouds, recent activity, internal&external blogs

13. Wikis Collaborative editing: documentation, code snippets, discussion of new ideas Lotus Notes Team rooms

14. 2. Just taking off…

15. Blogs http://www.ibm.com/blogs/ Internal blogs: BlogCentral External blogs on ibm.com, developerWorks, Alpha Works, PartnerWorld Only IBMers can create a blog on ibm.com; anyone can add comments to the thread. Many IBM Staff have blogs on a variety of platforms Cross-posting from internal to external blogs is quite common. - In the future BlogCentral might extend beyond firewall

16. Who is blogging? Why? About what? Developers, testers, managers, support, sales ~10% of IBMers Internally: connect to peers; build reputation; spread the word; ask for help; document own work; expose private lives Externally: get feedback from a broader audience; provide information to customers; connect with other professionals outside; develop own reputation About: work, challenges, tools, initiatives, personal development, hobbies, families

17. A selection of posts… Fighting e-mail: Progress Report - End of Week 3 (Whoooaaahhh!!!) Well, today is the end of the third week and still going strong. My team is stopping blogging… not writing any more entries to a blog might be a sad thing for the interested readers (tolerable), but actively deleting it might be actively destroying created knowledge without need... (not acceptable) (comment from a reader) A story Today I was on a prep call with a potential client from a large bank…. All of a sudden the client says, "Do you blog?" I said yes. And she said, "I thought your name sounded familiar, I read your blog!" She knows me...we have a bond!

18. A random selection of posts… I'm a new manager and can't blog Hey all. I've missed ya! I'm now out there in the brave world of management and can't blog. No one said I can't, nobody said I shouldn't, but wow, when do I do it? Headless chicken impression Today is not my day. I wanted to print my handouts on business cards. .. But the printer at home stubbornly refused to feed the Avery business card forms I picked up… How am I, you ask? A timeline of recent personal and work-related events. Friday, 12:15PM. Wife calls, having locked herself out of the house...

19. Social bookmarking (dogear)

20. To Dogear or not to Dogear - thoughts please! “ My "use cases" for dogear: 1. Sometimes, I'll post a bookmark which I think is of general interest - I have to admit I don't do this often, I'm still wedded to "traditional" bookmarks in my browser. 2. I subscribe to the RSS feed to discover what is hot and new. 3. I have the dogear plugin installed in Firefox. When I search W3, I get dogear results at the top of the results page. THIS IS THE KEY for me - I almost always find what I want within seconds, usually via the dogear results.”

21. “ After thinking about it for about 5 minutes, I decided to go the extra mile and configure my iMac to connect to the IBM network and install the necessary software. I did a Dogear search on "mac remote access" using the Dogear Firefox plugin. Several links came up which led me to the Mac Fans community. That led me exactly to the two pages that I needed: FAQ for Mac users and IBM Downloads for Mac Users. I LOVE DOGEAR!! ” Going the extra mile…

22. Fringe – BluePages+1

23. Media Sharing Shared repositories: Podcasts (IBM Media library) Presentations & other docs (cattail) Video on demand (IBMTv)

24. 3. In an experimental stage

25. Metaverse (aka 3D Internet) IBM Almaden training for emergency situations in SL Virtual TeamBuilding Virtual Lotusphere

26. In Second Life: "Why do we need walls and ceilings to do a meeting?" "We’ve had meetings under water and up in the air. Meetings are where you want them to be." “ So last night I logged on for 30mins or so and got a little more adventurous in the exploring department. I cruised over to a large art gallery to check out what virtual art looked like - it looks just like .bmps stuck to walls.” “ It’s not weird for a brand to expose themselves in a 3D space, and it’s not weird for people to socialize in 3D using a variety of mediums (audio, et al). What’s weird is the unfocused environments and the poor technologies of virtual worlds that are used to engage in very basic, primitive behavior: conversation .” “ I might try to have an organizational get-together in SL for my team. One of the things I'm grappling with is how to make it "better than" a simple presentation to folks that could be done in 2-D, or even better than a real world meeting! “

27. Other “bleeding edge” apps IBMr reputation management system integrated with IM BlueTwit Micro blogging (like twitter) SonarBuddies Detecting implicit social networks

28. Reputation People spend a lot of time trying to improve their reputation It is difficult to measure reputation But if it matters we must try Some experiments Blog rating system – readers award stars BeeHive gives points for “good work” Quantity versus quality debate IBMr – an explicit reputation management system

29. Mashups / Situational Applications

30. Facilitating innovation Inside IBM IBM Thinkplace TAP Innovation Jam Communities Around IBM IBM PartnerJam developerWorks DW communities IBM group on Facebook Greater IBM developerWorks Spaces

31. Illustration: IBM’s first HackDay Began with a post from Kelly D. to Blog Central submission to Thinkplace Quickly embraced by the community Using existing tools the group took it from idea to event in 2 weeks Over 50 teams submitted projects or ideas Voting was held to determine winners in 7 categories Emphasizing community and culture…not a contest

32. Opening the doors to the wider community alphaWorks Lotus Greenhouse Open Commercial Development Jazz is now open to the public: jazz.net

33. Thank you! Questions? Comments?