Less is more

How do you engage your team members when you implement collaboration tools such as blogs, wikis, Microsoft SharePoint and the like?

Here is a summary of the suggestions offered from users and experts in the field on the best way to implement collaboration tools and engage the target audiences:

·        Make it easy and convenient for team members to use the tools to do small but important tasks. For example, checking a blog for information, or publishing an update on a specific item to a blog (rather than using email). 

·        Start small by engaging those team members that have a natural tendency to collaborate and are good early adopters. Form a tiger team and do a pilot project. You can work the kinks out before a larger roll out. It is easier to get additional team members to adapt once there is initial success.

·        Create a short collaborative project to evaluate certain tools (or have one person do an evaluation) and share the pros and cons of each tool with the rest of the team. Then the team can determine which tool is going to be the most productive to the whole group.

·        Make it fun and exciting too! Someone suggested running contests over SharePoint (scavenger hunts) or posting helpful notes that will get people thinking more and more about the value of the tool and its use for different projects.

·        Have an official cut-off date for when an old system is no longer available for use. This should be a far off date that is easy to remember (like at the turn of the fiscal year the new system comes online). This lets people know that they have a deadline to learn the new system.

·        The primary factor that enables adoption of a collaboration tool: A new project with no "incumbent" technology or process to change. So pick a new project, and work with the project team to select a tool for the project.

·        Find an executive sponsor who sees the benefits of the collaboration tool, and its impact on productivity and the ability to meet the key business objectives, and get their support in making the tool an important part of conducting business.

·        Provide the team with mini-training sessions, both formal and informal. A lot resistance to adoption has to do with the unknown and fears of wasting time. If you help your team overcome these fears, you are likely to get a much higher level of engagement.

·        Overall, the collaboration platforms should be a productivity tool, not a burden. The tool should make some important aspect of one’s job easier. Whether that is something as simple as submitting a ticket to the IT department, or viewing HR announcements, it has to be sold to the user base as something that will improve daily work life.

·        Also, at the end of the day, a tool has to be useful for the intended purpose. We too often see people thinking of all these tools as interchangeable, but blogs are more of a one-to-many tool as compared to wikis that are better at capturing widely held knowledge, which is different from SharePoint, which is much better at organizing document-focused work, e.g., word processing documents, spreadsheets, and presentations, with collaboration more often in a supporting role.

Sign up for the special "collaboration" bundle--Effective meetings, blogs, wikis, SharePoint ($35.00 special)

The collaboration bundle in March 2008 includes the three workshops listed below, and can be purchased online at:

-------------> Register online now ($35 special expires on 3/10)

• Workshop 1: Microsoft SharePoint Techniques (Tuesday March 11, 2008 from 9:30 AM - 11:30 AM PST)
• Workshop 2: Effective Meetings--Offline & Online (Tuesday March 18, 2008 from 9:30 AM - 11:30 AM PST)
• Workshop 3: Emerging Collaboration Technologies--blog, wikis, and Microsoft SharePoint (Wednesday March 26, 2008 from 8:00 AM - 12:00 PM PST)

They are made available for a nominal registration fee of $35.00 (this includes all three workshops). This is a special one time offer and seats are limited. You can order up to 10 seats.

Once you place your order, and receive the confirmation e-mail, please forward the confirmation e-mail you receive to training@people-onthego.com indicating which of the three workshops you would like to attend, and also the names and e-mails of the additional participants, and which workshops each participant would like to attend--if you order more than one seat. As a result, you and the other participants will each receive their individual login information for the desired workshops (for the web and phone conference).

-------------> Register online now ($35.00 special expires on 3/10)

PS: Please note that these workshops are also availale as corporate workshops. Feel free to e-mail us at training@people-onthego.com if you have questions, or if you would like to discuss bringing the workshops to your team.

We look forward to your participation!

Lunch & Learn Webinar on "Wiki Use Case: Managing Team Meetings"

This week's complimentary lunch & learn webinar was titled: "Wiki Use Case: Managing Team Meetings--Agendas, Minutes and Tasks " and was presented by Sean Murphy, CEO of SKMurphy Inc. (www.skmurphy.com). Below is the description and here are the presentation slides Download WikiPeopleOnTheGo080124.ppt , and the lunch & learn slides Download lunch_and_learn_wikis.ppt . Hope you will be able to join us in future lunch & learn webinars.

Project management tools are great for managing and presenting the highly structured elements of a project: resources, milestones, time-line, and budget. But they are not as effective for managing the unstructured information and the their inter-linkages: documents, notes, meeting agendas, and specifications. Wikis provide an on-line workspace for a project team to store and manage unstructured documents that's browser accessible. Learn tips on how wikis can cut the time needed to reach consensus on project deliverables when a deadline looms. You will leave with a practical understanding of usage models that leverage the distinct strengths of wikis for global project teams. This session will be presented by Sean Murphy, principal of SKMurphy Inc. (http://www.skmurphy.com).

Are you still not sure how wikis can help? Here it is in "plain english"

We've all heard about them, and some of us have used them to some degree, while others are already big fans of them, and depend on them to get important projects completed successfully.

If you are still not sure what they are or how they can be helpful to you, here is what wikis are in plain english.

And if you are interested in learning more about structured wikis, here is a video that was taken with Peter Thoeny recently (the founder of TWiki.org and co-founder of TWIKI.NET).

Enjoy!

Lunch & Learn 2.0 Questions and Answers from the Wikis-in-Action webinar--presented by Jeff Brainard from SocialText

- I am a publicist for authors. Would wikis be something an author could leverage for their website, and would it be cost effective?

Yes, you could have wiki communities built around your publicity firm, your individual authors, or other content. One well-known book - Wikinomics, by Don Tapscott - uses the Socialtext wiki to foster community discussion around the book. Visit the site to learn more - http://www.socialtext.net/wikinomics

- Can you provide a general description of your pricing model?

Socialtext offers the most flexible deployment options in the industry, We offer open-source software and virtual appliance options for free download at www.socialtext.net/stoss, as well as hosted services and dedicated appliances that are priced on a per user per month basis.
Customers interested in trying Socialtext wikis can sign-up for a free 14-day trial here - http://www.socialtext.com/trial/1.

- Does SocialText's wiki cost money? suppose I need to collaborate with a couple of colleagues building a budget using Excel. How would I determine whether or use a wiki (which I need to set up to do this) or just go to Google and access their shared, online Excel tool?

Socialtext offers open-source software that is available for free download (see above link). Also for personal users, Socialtext offers a free hosted service for up to 5 users - http://www.socialtext.com/signup/personal. (Once you have more than 5 users on the hosted service, customers are then asked to pay a per user per month fee.) Yes, the Socialtext wiki could be an ideal tool for you and your colleagues to collaborate online, working through a web browser. You could use wiki pages to collaborate on unstructured data and add attachments like Office files, but if you require spreadsheet-like functions WITHIN the wiki or handling of other unstructured data Socialtext offers Socialcalc. Socialcalc allows users to create spreadsheets within the wiki (much like Excel), perform calculations and support group contribution/edits, as well as integrate with external wiki or web links, as well as support other Web Services content.

- Is it possible to modify the email capability so that pages cannot be emailed to others?

You can control access to the wiki by specifying public, private or selective edit/comment/view access. Yes, administrators can also turn off email, so pages cannot be emailed to others regardless of access level.

- Is there anything here that is not being offered by the many open source alternatives? What are the socialtext "added" features and benefits?

Socialtext offers some substantial differences versus open-source packages, including Socialcalc for structured data and calculations in the wiki, an easy-to-use WYSIWYG editor, mobile access to wikis via Miki, disconnected support for off-line wiki use via Unplugged, as well as pluggable integration of wiki with enterprise IT (directory and single sign-on systems), email, RSS feeds, blogs, etc.  It's important to stress that Socialtext DOES offer an open-source version of its software with all of these features included, so IF you are a customer that prefers open-source you can select Sociatlext and not sacrifice on features.

- Would like to see how it looks when members of a wiki get infromed about new content? Is it e-mail to them? As a link or in the e-mail? etc.

When there are content changes in the wiki, users can get views of all new changes to the wiki when they log into the web-based landing page dashboard. Users can also subscribe to email notifications or RSS feeds of wiki content to get similar access to new content or changes to existing content.

- Who assures that content is appropriate, "clean", not manipulated, etc.?

Just like with email, it's possible that someone could mis-use or post inappropriate content in the wiki. With emails, once the 'send' button is pressed, then the message is out of your control. In comparison, with wikis, individual users or administrators can 'garden' the wiki and moderate discussion, for example to remove inappropriate content. If a legitimate wiki page is updated with bad content, the revision history of wiki pages allow an older 'clean' version to be saved over the newer 'corrupted' one. This revision history can also be valuable to track all changes or any manipulations to a wiki workspace. Also, since most corporate wikis authenticate users to the wiki before they can publish, edit, comment or view content, then if there are changes, it's easy to determine who made the changes.

- Can wikis be used for document review, and document editing?

Absolutely yes. Content developers, whether technical writers, engineers, marketeers or sales personnel, often collaborate on a wiki to develop content. The wiki provides a shared editable workspace for multiple contributors to collaborate on a document, as well as full revision history which is valuable for tracking changes. Socialtext also offers the ability to export single or multiple pages as HTML, Word or PDF, which can be valuable for turning content collaborated and finalized within the wiki into a public distributable document or integrating into a document management system.

- How does a wiki compare to a SharePoint site? What are the advantages of one over the other?

SharePoint provides a range of portal services which complement the Socialtext best-of-breed wiki. In fact, existing SharePoint users are deploying Socialtext's SocialPoint wiki solution which provides a pluggable wiki solution that works inside of SharePoint and integrates with other key Microsoft components like Active Directory for authentication and single sign-on to provide a complete dynamic intranet or extranet solution. For a best-of-breed wiki solution, Socialtext is far superior to Microsoft's more basis wiki-like functionality. Examples of leading features only available with Socialtext wikis include rich features for commenting, editing using a WYSIWYG editor, getting mobile and unplugged access, as well as integrating blogs, RSS feeds, email, tagging and search.

- How would you compare Socialtext to Confluence?

Confluence is a developer-focused solution that is based heavily on Java and requires extensive J2EE experience, as well as has a much greater amount of technical staffing and higher ongoing Total Cost of Ownership structure compared to Socialtext. Customers that select Confluence are typically Java shops that have strong development resources. These customers recognize that with Confluence they need to purchase and integrate a number of 3rd-party options to get a complete wiki solution.
In comparison, Socialtext offers a true, best-of-breed, integrated and complete wiki solution available as open-source for developers, as well as turnkey appliance and hosted service options which are more attractive to small to mid-sized enterprises. Even the large F500 enterprises (who do have significant development resource) are selecting Socialtext over Confluence primarily because they appreciate the optimization and security only available with appliances, like the Socialtext wiki appliance deployed behind the corporate firewall.

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Lunch & Learn Webinar: Structured wikis—The power of two!

In today’s lunch & learn 2.0 webinar titled “Structured Wikis—the power of two”, Peter Thoeny, the founder of Twiki.org and co-founder of StructuredWikis LLC, explained how structured wikis combine the benefits of wikis and databases all in one environment. The result is a collaborative database environment where knowledge can be shared freely, and where structure can be added as needed. In this 45 minutes session, Peter, who pioneered the structured wiki concept in 1998 with the open source TWiki collaboration platform presented about the benefits of structured wikis and demonstrated how a structured wiki can help empower users, and enable them to build their own Web applications

For more details, feel free to refer to the structured wikis presentation slides (once you get to the presentation web page, scroll down to the bottom to download the pdf).

Hope you will be able to join us in our upcoming complimentary lunch & learn 2.0 webinars which include topics such as blogging, podcasting, and Microsoft SharePoint, as well as the upcoming online public workshops

Lunch & Learn 2.0 Webinar: Wikis in Action—Revolutionizing collaboration!

The People-OnTheGo Lunch and Learn 2.0 Webinar series started today with the session titled “Wikis in action—revolutionizing collaboration”. Our guest speaker Jeff Brainard, Director of Product Marketing at Socialtext (the first wiki company and leading provider of Enterprise 2.0 solutions) explained how organizations and teams can benefit from having a wiki, and provided a live demonstration of the Socialtext offerings. Here are the main benefits of wikis that Jeff outlined (based on Socialtext research and customer feedback), and below is a link to the presentation slides:

The main benefits of wikis as presented by Jeff today:

- Accelerate project cycle time by 25%

- Reduce e-mail overload by up to 75%

- Cut search costs by 50%

- Unleash ideas trapped into e-mail (knowing that 90% of collaboration occurs inside e-mail, and 75% of knowledge assets is stored in e-mail messages)

- Tap into the social networks of enterprise (sharing of expertise, learning through participation, greater innovation)

Download wikis_in_action_presentation_slides.pdf for more details.

Hope you will be able to join us in our upcoming complimentary lunch & learn 2.0 webinars which include topics such as blogging, podcasting, and Microsoft SharePoint, as well as the upcoming online public workshops.