KateC's Gooruze Blog

Enterprise 2.0 wordle map

KateC — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 22:33:00 -0700

Just been creating a wordle diagram for a conference talk I'm planning - wordle is great:

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Warning this post was automatically generated ...

KateC — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 19:56:00 -0700

There is a new tool for the busy blogger, AussieBloggers have released a Lazy Bloggers Post Generator. It could come in handy when you're busy. Just gave the tool a quick test with the following generated post:

OMG! I just discovered I have not updated this since last month... You would not believe how tidy my house now is. Jealous much? Don't be, it was very painful..

I am frantic with setting fire to people wearing Crocs, a ticking crocodile, just generally being a nuisance to anyone unfortunate to cross my path, my day seems to be a litany of stuff and giggles from 4am to whenever. I am not complaining though. life is good.

I make a solemn vow won't blog until the next time booze prices go up and I have to get sober for a while. Peace! Seriously?

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Scrum, Agile and the Enterprise - Part 1

KateC — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 02:10:00 -0700

"Well established hierarchies are not easily uprooted;
Closely held beliefs are not easily released;
So ritual enthralls generation after generation."
Tao Te Ching

All change is difficult. It requires strong leadership and an understanding of foundations needed to instantiate the desired change. Most of all change requires that ingrained habits are replaced with new habits. And, since we are creatures of habit, change is very hard for human beings.

For the practitioner of scrum and agile development techniques this aversion to change and the resilience of old ways is a key challenge.

Within any enterprise exists an established hierarchy. Inherent in this hierarchy are rules that govern rewards, promotion, power, punishment and failure. Many people within that hierarchy have invested large amounts of effort, emotion and pride into meeting the demands of these rules.

We have vast amounts of longitudinal evidence that it is hard to build what users want to meet their budgets and time lines. The well known Standish Reports on software development projects show that in 2006 "19 percent of projects begun were outright failures, compared with 31.1 percent in 1994". These are not very good results, even if they have improved over a decade.

Agile methods such as scrum are an attempt to address this perennial problem. However, in trying to implement them we are embarking upon a significant corporate change program.

For the past 30 or so years we have inculcated in people adherence to a system of software development that is generally termed "waterfall". This software development life cycle (SDLC) approach is very structured and is actioned like a Henry Ford style production line. This means that the hierarchy around software development in most company's IT department is tied in strongly to the waterfall approach to systems development.

This focus on the waterfall SDLC is also reinforced by non-IT management who like it because it appears to offer control and structure. The documents, GANTT charts, diagrams and other artifacts give management comfort that all is under control.

Yet the very results we see for software projects every day around the world tell us that this control and structure is merely an illusion.

The question I have been asking for several years now is have we found a better way? And, is that way agile or is it merely another illusion?

More to come on this topic soon ...

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What shall I talk about at MOBILIZETHIS08?

KateC — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 23:08:00 -0700

The purpose of MobilizeThis2008 is to bring educators, e-learning technologists, managers, tech-heads and cross-sector organisation representatives together in a program that fosters conversations, workshops and online experiences to inform practical pedagogical practice employing ICT's in an open and global context.

I've been asked to present at MobilizeThis 2008 in October and need to come up with something to talk about, some of the other speakers' themes are:

Bridging the Gap with Kaltura - Collaborative Online Video Goes to Garma 2008
Teaching Is Dead : Long Live Learning ( Part 2 )
Outcome Based Education : A Perspective From China ( and other web 2.0 things ! )
Geo-politics - the influence and importance of acknowledging " distance" education
Practical examples of ICT imbeddement in post-secondary curriculum
New media : Horizon reports
Value in ICT's : Australia's response to a global myriad of connections
Networking, openness, sharing : The role of unstructure in conferencing
21st Century Rhetoric : Beyond the funding rounds
Not For Profits : Social Media Spaces and Places
Secondlife : Virtual Communities
Making Sense Of ICT's : Strength Based Digital Identity
Bio-computing and the onset of cyborg pedagogies
Cross-sectorial Partnerships : the Importance of ICT's In The Equation
Poverty & Homelessness : Using Web 2.0 Tools With Marginalised Communities To Realise Educational Outcomes
Networked Literacies : Finding Our Ways Out Of The Walled Gardens.
Networked Predagogies : The Prison Sentence of Organisational Discontent
Health & Well Being : Using Networked Communication Technology to Spread The Word
Engaging Young People In Youth Media
Systems Of Control : RFID's, Moral Hazards & other Social Persuasions

Any suggestions for themes are most welcome.

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Personal strengths?

KateC — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 21:34:00 -0700

Here's a bit of fun with this quiz about identifying your personal strengths, my results below:

Link to quiz

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Social Networking in the Workplace - Not Evil Just Needs to be Managed

KateC — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 20:43:00 -0700

In recent times there has been talk in the press about the dangers and evils of social networking technology (Facebook, Myspace, etc. ) in the workplace. Many commentators voice concerns about employees wasting time at work.

In a recent AustralianIT article Nick Ingelbrecht from Gartner is quoted saying "social networking in the enterprise is a double-edged sword. It can be disruptive to business, especially when people spend work hours accessing Facebook, but there are many social networking software tools that can be used to enhance business productivity, including collaboration tools, and even using Facebook to validate a hiring decision."

The thing is, if people want to waste time at work:

(a) they don't need a computer,
(b) it is a management issue, and
(c) it says something important about the individual concerned and their relationship with that particular workplace.

There is nothing inherent in the nature of social networking technology that is bad, even in the workplace. These debates are a reminder of the conversations of a previous generation debating placing telephones on every desk. There was sincere debate that office juniors would spend all their time chatting to friends and that productivity would be doomed by placing a phone on the desk in front of them.

Strangely enough there is a phone on every desk in offices nowadays and we tend to use them responsibly. Where individuals are irresponsible in using the telephone the managers counsel or fire the recalcitrant. The majority of us make the odd personal phone call.

Social networking is analogous to the telephone. One day we'll laugh at how silly the debate really was.

The key issue for business to note is that engaged and enthused staff tend not to waste time. When staff are visibly wasting time on the job it is time to stop and ask why that behaviour is happening - is it a one-off or is it systemic, is us or is it them?

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Training, Learning and Education

KateC — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 18:59:00 -0700

"I Hear and I Forget, I See and I Learn, I Do and I Understand" - Confucius

In recent times I've been involved in both delivery and receipt of education and training at tertiary and vocational levels.

On the delivery side, lecturing to postgraduate accounting students at Macquarie University and delivering workplace training. On the learning side I'm an external student in law at QUT and have just completed a Certificate IV in Workplace Training and Assessment. The contrast in learning approaches between the Tertiary and Vocational Education & Training (VET) sectors is quite stark.

In the university setting the process of teaching is still often with the teacher as 'authority' standing out in front of the class providing the 'facts' to be absorbed by the students. The students sit passively in their seats and dutifully take down notes. Some engagement with the students is encouraged by setting questions for them prepare before class and then discussing them in class. But still the model is quite passive from a student perspective. In this model there seems to be little understanding of different learning styles, and ideas like action learning are not widely adopted.

Some university courses are more interactive - for example, some of the subjects I took at MGSM where we learned theory and then played games to embed the theory. To this day I still recall the learnings from those kinds of courses.

In the vocational setting there is a strong emphasis on different learning styles, action learning techniques, and high levels of learner engagement and involvement are sought. The trainer is more of a facilitator of learning and co-creator of understanding when VET training is at its best.

Upon reflection I think this is because the VET sector is required to assess competencies, often on a much shorter time frame than in other settings. Also the industry focus for VET seems to drive a focus on people who can actually 'do' things to a pre-defined level of competency immediately after their training. Whereas in the tertiary sector perhaps the connection between theoretical knowledge and the 'doing' of things is more remote.

Admittedly in tertiary subjects there is often a large amount of theory to be mastered, often higher than in a VET course. But I still question how much theory people can absorb and understand if it is delivered to them as a passive audience. We've all studied subjects for an entire semester only to forget that content almost immediately after the exams.

As an adult learner the Confucian saying really holds true: "I Hear and I Forget, I See and I Learn, I Do and I Understand". The real question is how can this kind of insight inform our tertiary education activities?

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Offensive application behaviour in Facebook

KateC — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 21:11:00 -0700

This image shows yet another offensive way of interacting with people who do not want to add your application in Facebook. Here the application still wants you to log in merely so it can then never annoy you again.

It is just plain annoying - this kind of application rudeness is really turning Facebook into a utility where I keep contact details rather than a social networking medium where I spend a lot of time (which might be bad for advertisers???).

I'm certainly putting a lot more time into other social networking applications that don't allow or enable this kind of offensive behaviour.

Now don't even let me get started on the evil Facebook applications that force (blackmail?) users into inviting all of their friends merely to unlock the next feature!

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High tea #STUB

KateC — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 19:26:00 -0700

High tea STUB, originally uploaded by kate.carruthers.

Some of the @STUB (a.k.a. Sydney Twitter Underground Brigade) met for high tea at the Queen Victoria Building in Sydney yesterday. It was an interesting change from our usual venue (pubs or bars).

One of the main topics of conversation was the new 3G Apple iPhone (a.k.a. the 'Jesus phone' as the SMH called it yesterday). The juxtaposition of the high tech discussion and lovely olde worlde venue was great. The high tea was also very delicious - even providing gluten free menu options.

Power limits the real growth of new technology

KateC — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 16:46:00 -0700

Every home in the developed world has a plethora of devices and gadgets being recharged. Old houses don't even have sufficient power outlets to manage the demand.

That is why we really need ways to recharge all our equipment without plugging it into a power outlet on the wall. Thus some of the new products that are really interesting are those that help solve this problem.

Springwise talks about some of them, and my favourite is one that lets you recharge your mobile phone by moving or dancing. How much fitter would we be if everyone charged their phones like this?

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Traditional Media v. New Media Punch Up at #pubcamp Sydney

KateC — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 18:30:00 -0700

It was very interesting to see the panel discussion at #pubcamp Sydney last week - the topic was "How media companies are dealing with the challenges of this new world - including traditional media, online media and hybrid ventures," the moderator: Mark Jones (Filtered Media); and panelists: Kathy Bail (Fairfax), Jackie Blondell (Hardie Grant), Stuart Clarke (homepageDaily), Ben Gerholt (IDG), Tony Kenna (Abundant Media), David O'Sullivan (Media Publishing / itechne).

The panel pretty much argued that editorial processes of traditional media is good and holy, that blogs are often poorly written and that most new media is not edited properly and is done by people who don't know how to write. I remain confused as to why bad writing is so scary, there is so much of it in the newspapers & magazines everyday.

The stance taken by the panel really seemed to polarise the audience and the twitter backchannel went berserk.

It is ironic how the participants in the traditional media have lost sight of their own historical roots in citizen journalism. News media has been taken over from the early heady days, where news media advocated radical social change (like getting the kiddies out of the coal mines or universal male suffrage), by corporate entities (mostly men in suits or the old media silverbacks as I like to call them) who tend to advocate for the status quo.

Also there appears to be a failure to understand how the forces of fragmentation are beginning to impact media consumption. The internet has created the ability for communities of like minded individuals to connect, share and co-create content. Previously traditional media was a force for creating consensus because there were so few alternative voices. Now alternative voices are becoming the norm.

In spite of what many folks in the new media camp like to say, I think that the imminent demise of traditional media is totally over-hyped. It reminds me of the similar declarations of the death of the mainframe in the 1990s. Mainframes are still with us and continuing to do a good job in their rightful place. Traditional media will be much like the mainframe, useful and helpful in its place.

But on the other side it is amusing how much of the activity in the 'new' media space is actually using newer technology to do traditional media type activity. The only viable monetization model continues to be advertising. And I don't really think things will change, even in the new media space, unless we can identify alternative monetization strategies.

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Grass roots change in the enterprise

KateC — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 20:25:00 -0700

I love the whole web 2.0 philosophy and the idea that we can break down organisational barriers and make workplaces better places for people to create and innovate. But an earlier series of comments by Nick Gonios got me thinking how this kind of grass roots change can occur in organisations.

Having spent the better part of my adult life in large corporations and working on large projects I can see why the web 2.0 philosophical approach to things is a good idea. But what I am still trying to understand is how organisations can be open to adopting this kind of approach, and how we as individuals can help this to occur.

Think about the characteristics of larger organisational structures. They are generally hierarchical and often there is high power-distance between staff and management. It is interesting to think about the *social networks at play within in an organisation since this is what really determines which memes get traction.

Which way does information flow?
Who does information flow through?
Who talks to and with who?
What forms do the formal & informal communications take?
How do new ideas enter? Who's allowed to bring them in?
Who has permission to do new things? Is that permission formal or informal?
What kind of people (roles, gender, departments, etc) are allowed to push boundaries?

These types of questions are critical to work out the organisational boundaries for change. Why? Because memes are catching and you catch them from the people you hang out with. If your meme is to become ascendant then people who influence the power structures of the organisation need to catch your meme. Thus for guerrilla change agents enterprise social network mapping is a critical tool.

It is clear to me that change within an organisation must be given permission in some way, either formally or informally, otherwise the persons advocating the change will be ejected or marginalised.

It is all very well to say just go build a prototype and they will come. However, if the people in the organisation are not able to put that idea onto their mental maps or have reached their own limits of innovation then the idea cannot progress. This is why startup-land is full of people who pitched their great ideas to their previous employer and were rebuffed.

But, for those who want to stay inside an organisation and change it, what can they do? I've got some ideas that I'll keep working on, but anyone who's got the answer should let me know.

* social networks in this context means offline (not Facebook etc) relations between individuals and teams within the organisation

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Fundamentals Matter for Web 2.0 Business Cases

KateC — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 16:27:00 -0700

Explanatory note - this post is from the perspective of implementing web 2.0 within an enterprise. As per Nick Gonios' very good suggestion in the comments below, if you doing it yourself as a startup just go for it (check out his comment for the details).

At a recent conference I ran a workshop about building business cases for web 2.0 and one of the feedback responses was that the person was disappointed that all I talked about was 'generic business case' stuff.

The funny thing is that I see so many business cases for web 2.0 or enterprise 2.0 projects that fail to gain traction or ultimately fail to deliver business benefits precisely due to a failure to prepare a good business case.

The important thing to understand is that the nature of the technology proposed is almost irrelevant, more relevant are the following:

how the technology supports the overall business strategy - you have no business proposing it if it does not support or extend the business strategy
what the story or narrative is that makes sense of the proposed technology for the business - any new technology adoption is a change program and needs to be driven as such
how to bring all the various parts of the business together to gain benefit from the new technology - stakeholder engagement and management
how the new technology will drive changes in operational areas of the business - how business processes, staffing, other resources will need to adapt to deliver and support the new technology
the current internal capability to deliver the technology - this is at both technical and business operations levels, also often people don't want to call in experts

That is by no means an exhaustive list, but it is the absolute basics. Whether you are putting forward a business case for web 2.0 or some even newer and funkier technology get the fundamentals right and success will flow.

If you are unable to put together the story of why the proposed technology will improve the business somehow then that is a red flag. It's a sign to go back to the drawing board and keep working on the idea. Bad projects always start badly, the business case is often where the rot sets in. A good business case is a sound foundation for execution of a project.

There is lots of good advice out there on how do deliver successful projects, and some exposition of project failures. Check out some of the links below...

IT Project Failures
Gantthead
Australian Institute of Project Management
Project Management Institute
ProjectManagement.com

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Poll re Communication Tools?

KateC — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 15:25:00 -0700

I wonder which communication tools people prefer:

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The Un-Email Generation

KateC — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 00:33:00 -0700

One interesting thing about teaching accounting students at the university is that I get to ask them what they think about various web trends that I follow. It's nothing formal, more of a straw poll or temperature check. But it still helps me to understand a more mainstream view of current web trends. This is important to help me stay grounded since many of my friends are uber-geeks who are definitely not a representative sample.

So far this year, the big thing in my classes is how much anyone under 30 just does not really 'get' email. They state a clear preference for instant messaging (IM) and mobile phone text messaging. Hardly any of them use MySpace, and only a handful use Facebook, some use Hi 5. Zero among them have ever heard of Bebo.

This aligns with other anecdotal evidence - e.g. Jeremiah Owyang's younger sibling who told him that “I only use email to get a hold of old people like you”.

On the other hand, my informal research indicates that people over 30 actually cannot imagine why you would use anything else but email! They also seem to find the notion of using social networking sites quite baffling. A few even confessed that they had never purchased anything online due to security concerns (not surprising as I suspect that mature age accounting students might err on the side of caution in a number of areas).

Funnily enough, I hate both email and voicemail, much preferring the short text based message services for their brevity and utility. Thus my liking for Twitter. And, given the recent problems that I've been having with my email services, it has just reinforced my feelings.

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The LOLs Prayer

KateC — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 20:40:00 -0700

Sometimes when you're having a bad day the only recourse is Ceiling Cat:

Our Cat, who art in ceiling,
Hallowed be thy LOLs.
Thy cheezeburger come.
Thy wants be done,
On floor as it is in ceiling.
Give us this day our daily Noms.
And forgive us our do not wants,
As we forgive those who do not want against us.
And lead us not into curiousness,
But deliver us from basement cat.
For thine is the cheezeburger,
and the bucket,
and the LOLs,
for evers and evers.
Kthxbai.

(Hat tip: Warlach and NickHodge)

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Social networking traffic v. email

KateC — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 00:25:00 -0700

Late last year Hitwise reported that social networking internet traffic surpassed email service internet traffic in the UK. This trend was also noted in Asia.

This is a signifier of a shift in the role of online social networks, and ordinary people are increasingly finding utility in social networks. This all makes sense when you realise that human beings already doing social networking in real life. The online versions merely enable broader connections than are possible in real life not using technology.

In real world social networks it is hard to stay in contact with people who have moved away from your location. But online social networks enable us to stay connected with people who are not physically proximate. What are businesses going to do about this?

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Looking forward to Pubcamp Sydney

KateC — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 17:51:00 -0700

"Do you ever get the feeling you don't really understand where the Web's heading (let alone this Web 2.0 or Web 3.0 you keep hearing about) or that it's leaving you behind? You're not alone. The simple fact is no one really knows for sure or has all the answers. So, what can I do about it? Come along to "PubCamp - The Web 2.0 Media Day - A Conference and Unconference" -- a free event about the future of media on the Web -- and get some group therapy for dealing with this precocious teenager and its seemingly limitless potential."

Lots of interesting speakers (including little ole me) - list here

This #pubcamp event is on in Sydney on Wednesday 18th June at 3pm at the Marriott Sydney Harbour Hotel, 30 Pitt St, near Circular Quay.

More info: www.semanticmedia.org/pubcamp/

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Psychology of why reuse fails - courtesy of GeekAndPoke

KateC — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 17:50:00 -0700

This amusing cartoon by Geek and Poke captures one of the important reasons why so much of our planned software reuse fails. Thus projects often fail to achieve the economy of scale benefits from the business case.

Within companies there is often little trust between departments and an unwillingness to rely upon things that other people have built.

The real question is how can we overcome this problem so as to achieve the benefits of shared resources and reuse?

The first step in resolving the problem for any organisation is recognition that this kind of problem exists. The next step is to bring the issue out into the open.

Often there are war stories within the business that explain how or why the lack of trust has evolved. It is important to uncover these reasons. Once things are out in the open they can be managed.

My rule of thumb for problems with technology projects is that about 70% of the problems are in our heads (us being all the people involved in the project), while the other 30% of problems are logistical (e.g. stuff takes longer to do than planned; or stuff gets delivered late).

Very rarely are the problems actually about the technology in and of itself. More often the problems that appear to be technical result from hidden issues with people that remain un-addressed, or architectural problems that lead to the selection of inappropriate hardware or software.

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#myspacedev jam Sydney 0.1

KateC — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 03:15:00 -0700

Went to the inaugural MySpace Dev Jam in Sydney today. Great chance to hear from some startups that are doing some work with MySpace and an extremely funky venue (see some pics here). It was interesting to see how they are using Open Social and they have extended this in some areas too.

Firstly we heard from Jeremy LeBard about his project BookTagger which has launched a My Space application. He spoke frankly about the good and the bad. Interestingly the key good point from his perspective is the support from the local MySpace office team.

Then Jodee Rich gave us a quick preview of his new project PeopleBrowsr, which is still in alpha testing. Looked like a really cool application (can't wait to get my hands on this one). Jodee also shared some good advice on doing a startup, doing offshore development, and some pros & cons of the various social networks for developers.

Finally, Daniel Reyes from MySpace gave us a demo of how easy it is to build a simple application. At this stage I had to dash out to a meeting so missed the rest of the time to build an application. But plan to give it whirl soon.

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