March 15, 2007

I do not necessarily think that teenage boys talking business models in a pizza shop is a primary recommendation for promoting collaboration and the use of social software, but it is a harbinger of a rapidly-approaching reality, as Joe McKendrick points out in this post from the FastForward blog.

But I’ve posted often about the rapidly-approaching impact of digital natives on the workplace of the near future … one more in what will be sure to be a long and widespread series of observations by many people.

Enterprise 2.0 Revelation in a Pizza Shop
by Joe McKendrick

Stewart Mader (Atlassian) surfaced this post from Steven Baker’s BusinessWeek blog, and it really makes you stop and think, especially if you’re old enough to remember the first seasons of Saturday Night Live:

“Stephen Baker tells how he overheard a group of boys in his local pizzeria discussing how MySpace makes money, and why YouTube sold itself to Google for $1.65 billion. He reflects that the boys are “orders of magnitude more tuned into business” than he was at that age, and that to them, “business is a much more vibrant and relevant subject. They know that a start-up is just an idea away.”

Stewart ties this revelation into the rising social software and collaboration phenomenon. “It matters more than perhaps anything else because the mindset of this generation and tools available to it are combining to limitless potential. While most major news stories concentrate on the perceived pitfalls of technology - the dangers of online chat rooms, the dangers of games, the ‘overuse’ of Wikipedia, and so forth - people in my generation and younger are showing incredible savvy - by understanding Wikipedia better than their parents and teachers, restricting their MySpace and Facebook profiles to just their friends and people they approve, and starting great new companies and tools based on the power of their ideas.”

Members of the emerging generation that is beginning to populate our enterprises clearly understand the power and potential of information technology. Not only that, they will expect that their employers (or clients) will also be savvy about the potential of Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 tools and platforms. If the organization isn’t savvy, then they will be expected to stay out of the way while they create, innovate, and find new ways to drive value to their businesses.

As my colleague Bill Ives pointed out in a recent post, a Watson Wyatt study concludes that “nearly 50% of the employee population will soon prefer – and expect – collaborative and interactive methods of communication with their employers.”

In other words, enterprises better get savvy about E2.0, because their employees (of all ages) will do it anyway. Lead, follow, and get out of the way.

Tags: Enterprise 2.0, Thoughfarmer, digital natives, FastForward, Joe McKendrick, Bill Ives, Watson Wyatt, wirearchy

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I’ve just added David Weinberger’s new blog Everything Is Miscellaneous to my blogroll and feeds.

I have had a draft post saved for months now wherein I was trying to summarize succinctly what I guess David’s main thesis is in the upcoming book, which I will pre-order. I just ditched it in favour of my off-the-cuff musings below.  I am certain not to steal his thunder … and here goes.

I believe that David will state something to the effect that everything humans do and create is miscellaneous, without inherent order, and that we put order onto the activities and creations based on the primary assumptions and beliefs that hold sway at a certain point in time, the received truth or wisdom that captures the public’s imagination.  David has blogged in the past on examples such as the Dewey Decimal System or the manner in which Thomas Jefferson classified and categorized the way (and why) he read the books in his library.

Before then, however, he had made numerous reading lists. According to Douglas Wilson, in the excellent monograph Jefferson’s Books:

"In some of the numerous lists he compiled for law students, which were usually not confined to works on the law, he arranged the recommended categories of books by the time of the day at which they should be read…" (p. 34)

Before 8am, you should read "Physical Studies, Ethics, Religion, Natural Law" and save "Belles-Letres, Criticism, Rhetoric and Oratory" for after dark.

Jefferson, by the way, did not think that the organization of knowledge — or, at least of books — had to reflect a single, GodNature-given order. In 1815, he wrote to the Librarian of Congress that a "physician or theologist" would arrange the books differently. Organization should reflect utility, he believed. In fact, one of this slaves reported that Jefferson would routinely have twenty books open at a time, spread out on the floor, not to mention the five he could have open simultaneously in the spinning book holder he apparently invented.

One person’s mess is another person’s desk. In the age of the miscellaneous, we can accommodate every type of mess and order simultaneously.

My guess is that David will hold forth, eloquently no doubt, on why and how we grope to structure and classify human knowledge (observations on why things are as we perceive them to be) using methods that seek to reduce disorder and ambiguity when fundamentally disorder and ambiguity will always be at the bottom of things.  I suspect that he will also address some of the new means (tags, lists, clusters, constellations of differently-connected relationships) now at our disposal for pulling things together in a range of different orders, thanks to XML and the hyperlinked Web.

And I expect that his new book will show us that there are exciting new opportunities that we are just beginning to learn about for growing and extending the ways human can and will use knowledge. I hope and expect that he will show us, with clear reasoning and useful examples, that the new methods for sorting and organizing knowledge can and will transform and transcend the fundamental assumptions about hierarchy as the core organizing principle for knowledge.

I’m probably wrong, and I am sure that if I am anywhere near remotely on target I will have drastically over-simplified while compounding the error with my awkward writing.

I am very much looking forward to getting my hands on and head into his new book Everything Is Miscellaneous.

Tags: David Weinberger, JOHO, Everything Is Miscellaneous

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Thanks to Dave Pollard for this clear and succinct story about how a doctor applied practical KM principles.

I think Cisco believes that the world of work will change a lot more than it already has over the years since the dot.com bust.

I also remember a few years back learning that Cisco was involved (in alliance with Electronic Arts, I believe .. I’d have to go back to the source, a book titled Work 2.0) in some quiet research about the use of video game principles and techniques in workplace application.  I was doing the research because I was trying to convince one of my then clients that the video-game idiom would be found in more and more workplace productivity and learning applications in about ten years (that was five years ago).

Anyway .. Cisco just forked out a lot of moolah for a web service that helps people conduct meetings online …. a really lot of moolah, $3.2 billion !

Via AP and the New York Times:

Cisco to Pay $3.2 Billion for WebEx
March 15, 2007

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Cisco Systems Inc. said Thursday that it has agreed to acquire the online meeting company WebEx Communications Inc. for about $3.2 billion in cash.

Cisco, the leading maker of routers and switches that direct data over computer networks, said it will pay $57 per share of WebEx. That represents a 23 percent premium over WebEx’s closing price of $46.20 Wednesday on the Nasdaq Stock Market.

Shares of WebEx soared $10.53, or more than 22 percent, to $56.73 in early trading on the Nasdaq Stock Market. Cisco shares lost 6 cents to $25.79 on the same exchange.

Cisco said the acquisition has been approved by both boards and is expected to close in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2007. Cisco said it expects transaction to have an immaterial effect on its fiscal year 2008 earnings after one-time charges are subtracted. The total purchase price will be about $2.9 billion when factoring in WebEx’s $300 million in cash on hand.

The San Jose-based company has recently made a number of acquisitions branching out from its core business of supplying networking gear and into communications, social networking and other areas that help drive traffic over the network and increase demand for its core equipment.

Update:

The following excerpt from today’s NY Times underscores my stated belief (above) that Cisco is positioning itself for a services push into the world of business networking and workplace collaboration.

Cisco, based in San Jose, has recently made a number of acquisitions branching out from supplying networking gear in communications, social networking and other areas that help drive traffic over the network and increase demand for its core equipment.

In February of last year, Cisco completed its $7.1 billion acquisition of Scientific-Atlanta, the No. 2 seller of cable television boxes after Motorola. The takeover was intended to increase Cisco’s ability to deliver content directly to the homes of consumers.

Cisco also said in January that it was paying $830 million in cash and stock to acquire privately held IronPort Systems, a maker of antispam and antivirus security products.

WebEx makes applications that enable online conferences and secure instant messaging. The company says it commands 64 percent of the online meeting market, with more than 3.5 million people using WebEx services every month.

Cisco said the acquisition will allow it to tap into the increasingly lucrative market for business communications over the Internet.

“As collaboration in the workplace becomes increasingly important, companies are looking for rich communications tools to help them work more effectively and efficiently,” Charles H. Giancarlo, Cisco’s chief development officer, said in a statement. “The combination of Cisco and WebEx will deliver compelling solutions accelerating this next wave of business communications.”

Tags: Cisco, EA, WebEx, networking, collaboration, the future of work

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A timely find (below), since yesterday I attended a forlorn meeting in a downtown hotel … the Standing Committee of Heritage Canada on "The role of a public broadcaster in the 21st Century".

Why forlorn ?

Maybe the post should be titled "How To Make Friends And Influence People" ?

Found in the comments section of FDL blog … thanks to Hugh

Please feel free to add to the list in the comments section.

1. Walter Reed outpatient treatment
2. Fired 8 US attorneys for trumped up reasons; political interference
3. Scooter Libby/Plamegate
4. Iraq: lack of preparation for occupation, looting, including the National Museum, too few troops, lack of training, lack of equipment, lack of securing loose Iraqi munitions, disbanding the Iraqi army, banning the Baathists, the CPA, Paul Bremer, losing tons of money literally, lack of international inclusion in reconstruction and security, weak Constitution, formation of sectarian parties, weak government
5. Afghanistan and the resurgent Taliban and opium production
6. Iran and saber rattling
7. North Korea, ditching the 1994 agreement because of dubious uranium program, the plutonium program which led to a fizzled first nuclear test, and something like a return to the 1994 agreement
8. Osama bin Laden, where are you? Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and terrorism
9. Civilian contractors
10. The Military Commissions Act: torture, indefinite detention, the end of habeas corpus, and kangaroo courts
11. Hurricanes Rita and Katrina, the destruction of New Orleans, and the aftermath
12. NSA wiretapping
13. SWIFT surveillance of financial transactions
14. Black prisons and extraordinary rendition
15. Homeland Security: white elephant (organization), black hole (money)
16. K Street Lobbyists, Jack Abramoff, North Marianas
17. Kyle “Dusty” Foggo and the CIA follies
18. Duke Cunningham
19. Tom Delay
20. Mark Foley
21. Cheney and Energy Policy
22. Tax cuts for the wealthiest
23. Global warming: refusal to join Kyoto, denial of manmade origin, continued reliance on fossil and carbon based fuels, little movement on CAFE standards and conservation, political interference in scientific reports (Good guys: Hansen, Peltz; bad guys: Cooney, Deutsch), listening to Michael Crichton
24. Terri Schiavo
25. Big budget deficits and vastly increased national debt
26. The stacking of the federal judiciary
27. Medicare
28. Medicare Part D
29. Healthcare (in general)
30. Cooked intelligence and the Office of Strategic Plans/ Doug Feith
31. 2000 Presidential election
32. 2004 Presidential election
33. Attempts to torpedo the 911 Commission
34. Failure to implement 911 recommendations
35. Marginalization of the UN; Appointment of John Bolton
36. Preventive war doctrine
37. Loss of US reputation internationally
38. No serious attempt to achieve peace between Israelis and Palestinians
39. Underfunding of basic research
40. Alberto Gonzales
41. FDA: drug testing
42. EPA: mercury levels for coal plants
43. Porter Goss and the gutting of the CIA
44. Militarization of intelligence
45. Rampant cronyism
46. Signing statements
47. Unilateral Executive doctrine
48. Overuse and abuse of the National Guard and Reserves; posse comitatus
49. Increasing unpreparedness of US ground forces (Army and Marines)
50. US balance of trade deficit
51. 2005 Grassley Bankruptcy bill
52. Mexican cross border trucking and safety concerns
53. Karl Rove’s security clearance and no firing of Libby co-conspirators
54. Detention of families for immigration violations; ICE raids
55. Dubai Ports deal
56. The Patriot Act; the Patriot Act extension
57. Attempts to privatize Social Security
58. The War on Science
59. David Safavian, former head of the Office of Federal Procurement Policy
60. Presidential adviser Claude Allen stealing from Target
61. Bush casually admits about lying about decision to fire Rumsfeld
62. Armstrong Williams and paid propagandists
63. Decimation of the Labor Department
64. Net neutrality and media policies
65. Backing Israel while it destroyed Lebanon
66. Presidential Daily Brief 8/01: Bin Laden determined to attack in US
67. EPA chief Christie Todd Whitman declares Ground Zero safe for cleanup
68. Sago mining disaster hearings and MHSA’s David Dye who walked out of the hearings
69. Harriet Miers nomination to the Supreme Court
70. Vetoing stem cell research
71. Attack on Plan B contraception, staffing Women’s Health positions with religious conservatives: Dr. Eric Keroack at Health and Human Services who thought birth control demeaning to women and Dr. David Hager at FDA who tried to keep Plan B prescription only. His wife contended in divorce proceedings that he had repeatedly sodomized her without her consent.
72. Clear Skies Act and Healthy Forest Restoration Act
73. Missile defense shield that doesn’t work; withdrawal from ABM Treaty
74. Leandro Aragoncillo naturalized Filipino-American in Cheney’s office (previously Gore’s) accused of spying for the Philippines and possibly France, pled guilty to unlawfully possessing secret US government documents
75. Defunding overseas AIDS programs that promoted condom use for prevention.
76. Call for a constitutional amendment declaring marriage to be between one man and one woman.
77. Opening up Bristol Bay, the last pristine large-scale salmon fishery in the world, to oil drilling
78. Accusation that Clintons trashed the White House before leaving, including stealing the Ws from keyboards
79. Gannon/Guckert a working male prostitute in the White House press corps
80. Native American trust funds and the Trust Responsibility to Indian Country
81. Selling creationist materials at the Grand Canyon gift shop claiming it was 6000 years old
82. Banning photographing return of coffins of slain American soldiers
83. False military reporting: Pat Tillman, Jessica Lynch
84. AIPAC espionage scandal; former DOD employee Lawrence Franklin pled guilty to passing information on Iran to Israel through two AIPAC employees
85. Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, Bagram
86. Asserted right to open US mail

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