Dave Coplin

Social Computing at Work:

The “Consumerisation” of Enterprise IT

From: Jonathan MurrayWorldwide Technology Officer

Microsoft

Disclaimer*1. Forward Looking Statements: The following presentation contains certain

predictions and forecasts which may possibly/probably, turn out to be wholly inaccurate.

2. Utility: The forward looking nature of this presentation is unlikely to provide any information which will prove useful for addressing near term challenges in your business or personal life.

3. Work In Progress: This is an ongoing piece of work; as such the author reserves the right to right to amend, replace or contradict any premises, argument or logical statements contained herein.

4. Investment Decisions: Under no circumstances should the information be used to make investment or other life changing decisions. The author’s liability shall not exceed the fee received for this presentation.

Why me?

• 16 years trying to make technology disappear...

• The best podcasts you’ve never heard...

• Enterprise collaborator

The Balance of Power Will Change...

Users Will Be In Control

Welcome to the New World of Work!

It’s All About Me...

Social Computing Will Make it Happen!And Change Enterprise IT Forever...

Shifting the Balance of Power

But What Does This Mean?

You’re Not SpecialAnymore...

Welcome to the New World of Work!

Company Loyalty

Veterans(b. 1922 to 1945)

Strongly Independent

Generation X(b. 1965 to 1979)

Financial Success

Baby Boomers (b. 1946 to

1964)

Personalized Work

Millennials(b. 1980 to 2000)

Source: “Get Ready: The Millennials Are Coming!”, Forrester Research, Inc., September 2005

“The Millenials

Are Coming!”

Social Computing at Work

The Third Age

Content Commerce

Community

Semantic WebConnects Knowledge

The MetawebConnects Intelligence

The WebConnects Information

Social SoftwareConnects People

Artificial Intelligence

Personal Assistants

Ontologies

Taxonomies

KnowledgeBases

KnowledgeManagement

SemanticWebs

Intelligent Agents

EnterpriseMinds

GroupMinds

Lifelogs

SemanticWeblogs

The“Relationship”

WebDecentralisedCommunities

SmartMarketplaces

The GlobalBrain

Search Engines

Content Portals

Databases

File Servers

“Push”

PIMs

Web Sites

EnterprisePortals

Pub-Sub

MarketplacesAuctions

Groupware

Weblogs

Wikis

RSSCommunity

Portals

eMail

P2P File-sharing

Conferencing

IM

USENET

SocialNetworks

Degree of Social Connectivity

Deg

ree

of In

form

ation

Con

necti

vity

Permission to re-use with attribution to: Nova Spivack www.mindingtheplanet.net

Web 3.0

Web 1.0

Web 4.0

Web 2.0

It’s Already Started...

PODCAST SELECTION- Filters- Search results

EDITORIAL- News- Top podcasts- Technical updates- Community highlights

NAVIGATION- Channels- Filters

SEARCH

User Experience

6 Months7000 Users

60,000 Downloads

There’s More to Come

Much, Much More...

http://research.microsoft.com/scg/

SNARF – Email AssistantSocial Network and Relationship Finder

• Side bar for peripheral awareness• Multiple Panes• List of people with associated messages• Sorted by relationship• Yellow bars, for visual indication of scale• Double-click on person to see their

messages

http://www.research.microsoft.com/community/snarf

Danyel Fisher, AJ Brush, Andy Jacobs, Marc Smith, Adam

Perer, Bernie Hogan

Netscan: A tool for studying threaded conversation repositories

Newsgroups

Authors Threads

Newsgroups

Authors Threads

The “Message”

Reply-To NetworkNetwork at distance 2 for the most prolific author of the microsoft.public.internetexplorer.general newsgroup

The Ties that Blind?

Mapping Newsgroup Social Ties

Two “answer people” with an emerging 3rd.

Microsoft.public.windowsxp.server.general

• Answer person– Outward ties to local isolates– Relative absence of triangles– Few intense ties

• Reply Magnet– Ties from local isolates often

inward only– Sparse, few triangles– Few intense ties

Distinguishing attributes:

Clear and consistent signaturesof an “Answer Person”

• Light touch to numerous threads initiated by someone else

• Most ties are outward to local isolates• Many more ties to small fish than big fish

1

10

100

0 1 2 4 8 16 32 64

Goal: Make SNA easier

• Existing Social Network Tools are challenging for many novice users

• Tools like Excel are widely used• Leveraging a spreadsheet as a host for SNA

lowers barriers to network data analysis and display

Summary

Closing Thoughts• Make technology invisible - Remember, it’s nothing special

• Embrace the new mediums but remember the principles you’ve learnt so far

• Avoid evolving legislation paralysing progress

• Get your heads “in the cloud”

• Think function not product

Above all, remember this is about the journey, not the destination...

And Finally…

Source: xkcd, http://xkcd.com/386/

Thank you