Technology Evangelism

3G is the New Black!

2010-11-04T23:29:00.009+05:30

For starters, allow me to quote from Wikipedia as to what this 3G is all about – “International Mobile Telecommunications-2000 (IMT—2000), better known as 3G or 3rd Generation, is a generation of standards for mobile phones and mobile telecommunications services fulfilling specifications by the International Telecommunication Union. Application services include wide-area wireless voice telephone, mobile Internet access, video calls and mobile TV, all in a mobile environment. Compared to the older 2G and 2.5G standards, a 3G system must allow simultaneous use of speech and data services, and provide peak data rates of at least 200kbit/s according to the IMT-2000 specification.”

Alright, so what does it mean for you and me? Have you ever wondered if you could talk & access the internet using your phone at the same time and with speeds that would come close to matching the broadband? Have you ever wanted to stream a movie on the move? Do you like to listen to internet radio? Can you imagine your phone screen acting as GPS navigation system? Have you ever wanted to use features like Apple iPhone’s FaceTime in India? Well, if you ever dreamt of such things, then get set because your dreams about to turn into reality. With Tata Docomo (one of the largest & leading telecommunications providers in the world) launching the 3G services, we all would be able take high-speed internet, crystal clear call quality/signal and having the option to do both simultaneously!

All in all what it means in simple terms is that we can do a lot more with even less! Personally I think this is a BIG step forward, since it will really allow me explore & leverage the internet to its potential without having to depend on a wired broadband connection. With the kind of interest I have in emerging technologies, trying & testing new tools and methods on the go are surely going to make a big deal – especially when you know that mobile technology is going to be the next big thing! With technologies like augmented reality & geo-location based apps – we are just lurking into our future mobile space and 3G will help us, not only to get there, but get all of us there!

In addition to obvious benefits such as video calls, movie downloads & others, I think what will help India get onto the world map is the access to emerging technology based on faster telecommunication networks, which will now be available to each and every one of us. It will soon play a pivotal role in our lives. We will no more just say “3G Life” but “3G is Life”.

Please note, this Diwali Tata Docomo will be the first private operator to provide 3G Services in India. For more information kindly visit http://www.3glife.com/

Disclaimer: This blog post has been submitted for 3G Life Indiblogger contest. If you are a member of Indiblogger.in community, I will appreciate if you can vote for me. Thanks!

* goes away with a sound fading... tut tu du, tut tuu du, tut tu du, tudutudutu, docomooo! *

# tagit!

2010-04-05T18:07:00.001+05:30

In what could be a continuation from my previous post about some of the technology features that facilitate in the social phenomenon of enterprise2.0, here is another aspect that clearly differentiates the emerging tools (or mechanisms) from our traditional ones.

Traditional KM systems were heavily focused on content management with a folder structure to store documented information. One was probably not even allowed to create the folder they would like to in the earlier days, however later in point of time we could create our own folder structure; which however lead to a lot of chaos and duplication. These systems typically were centered on structured data with a standard taxonomy. Lately, we did start seeing a bit of unstructured data coming into play with things like discussion forums as part of these systems. However, we could not consolidate all of this information of different types, stored in various places, in one single view; which not only lead to information being unavailable (not findable) but also creation of a lot of duplicates. This obviously was not the most efficient way to manage the information and hence was not as effective as it was expected to be.

Now, if we turn our attention to some of the emerging technologies which we classify as enterprise2.0, you might notice that some of these have really helped us in solving the above situation to a large extent. With the likes of micro-blogs, blogs, wikis and others, we really are tapping onto the unstructured information available to us. And this is where tags come into picture.

Read the entire blog post on Capping IT Off, Capgemini's Technology Blog http://bit.ly/cQBmV7

Social Features are the Small Things That Matter

2010-03-20T00:34:00.001+05:30

In most blogs posts, I have been constantly trying to address and better understand myself, how the “social” aspect is playing a key role in the way technologies of the future are shaping. It always did and will continue to excite me the way the social constructs influence the businesses. I have mainly covered the non-technology aspects of enterprise2.0 in most of my recent posts, however in this post I will cover a couple of the technology features that probably touch upon the human element of enterprise2.0.

There are a lot of triggers which have led me to think on these lines; one of them being a simple question that people ask – “why do we need a picture with our profile” or “what’s the big deal about thumbnails against each of our messages on various platforms like Faceebok, Twitter, or Yammer?” Well essentially what happens when you continuously start seeing the picture of a person you are interacting with is that, we as humans start registering it in our heads and soon start associating all things that come along with that photo. If one has built his credibility around a subject, we no longer really see the person’s name when we see his/her post/message, however if I were to see the same set of messages without those photos, the chances of me associating the various names will be considerably difficult. Try seeing a activity stream from Facebook, Twitter or Yammer without the photos and you will know what I mean. The photos obviously can go on further to help you when and if you happen to meet them in-person; but even an avatar of sorts can help in building the person's identity!

Read the entire blog post on Capping IT Off, Capgemini's Technology Blog http://bit.ly/dtjdu8

Enterprise2.0 is like a Business Function

2010-03-09T20:52:00.003+05:30

Newer ways of working and emerging technologies were changing the way enterprises functioned, this lead to the existence of Enterprise2.0. The idea behind using 2.0 was to communicate that we are heading towards a next-gen enterprise. We all know the importance the technology plays in this transformation into the new enterprise of tomorrow. However many industry thought-leaders and experienced talents have expressed that most of us are over-involved in the technology aspect of it and tend to forget the real basics.

If you recall my post Enterprise2.0 is the new face of Knowledge Management from last year, then there was a reason for it. Both Enterprise2.0 and KM have come to existence for transforming an enterprise to be leaner and more agile helping them achieve their end objective. Both have the same set of advantages, challenges and myths. For me these two are like business functions – that are interrelated with most if not all, other functions within an enterprise. The name is not important – you call it Knowledge Management or Enterprise2.0 – but what and how it helps the organization in achieving its objectives is what matters.

We need to understand that Knowledge Management also helps the business to drive its mission towards success just as other established functions like HR, Sales, Marketing & Communication, and Finance etc. For example the way HR helps an enterprise to hire the right talent for each of the other functions, KM helps the entire enterprise to provide the right information at the right time to the right person in the most swift & efficient means. There are many tools/technology suites that support the HR function to do their job better, but that in no ways indicate that people in that function side-line thoughts of improving aspects like Recruitment, Employee Relations, Employee benefits and compensation, Career development, Motivation, or even Counseling. A tool could help facilitate some or all of the above aspects but cannot take away the prime focus of the thought of improving itself. Similarly, when we talk about Knowledge Management/Enterprise2.0, we need to think beyond the tool and look at aspects like communication, collaboration, behavior, awareness, evangelism, human psychology, society, enterprise culture, and demography to name a few. The focus should be on how we can go about managing these facets and which tool(s) can further facilitate in doing so.

Read the entire blog post on Capping IT Off, Capgemini's Technology Blog http://bit.ly/aTJyit

Afterall Social Media is about... being Social

2010-02-11T12:11:00.000+05:30

Recently I came across Social Media #FAIL Indian Software Companies from the NASSCOM India Leadership Blog and once again it’s highlighting an extremely important aspect of Social Media – of being social. Of course the article was focusing on the Indian market scenario particularly around Indian IT industry, but having said that, I think we can safely assume that we have seen a similar pattern across industries and geographies.

With the advent of a host of social media sites and the topic shooting to popularity, most people and organizations seem to feel that by having, just a presence on social media sites, one can sit back and reap its benefits. When in reality just by creating a twitter profile or searching for candidate profiles on LinkedIn may not bring them the returns on social technologies. It surely is the first step in the right direction, but assuming that one could see startling results with just that, will be foolish. As we say 'What goes around comes around' - expect very little returns (or responses) from the social technologies if you are not willing to share or participate. It’s time we realize social media is about being social – contribution, conversation, interaction, engagement (and the likes) with your employees, customers, or partners is what will bring benefits and remember the social technologies are only the enablers!

Read the remaining blog post on Capping IT Off, the Technology Blog of Capgemini on February 4th, 2010 (click here).

SMILE within and outside

2009-11-14T12:15:00.001+05:30

We all are now fairly convinced that there exist two major streams of Social Business that flow around an enterprise. One is the Social Media Marketing which focuses primarily on how an enterprise participates, interacts, and benefits from the social media tools available on the internet to enhance their marketing efforts, align more closely with their customers, and form stronger alliance with their partners. The other stream is Enterprise2.0 which organizations need to evangelize internally allowing its employees to easily share & collaborate, improve efficiency, work as one team, and promote an open & transparent culture.

My colleague and good friend Rick Mans, in his recent blog, has published a framework for social media marketing. He suggests that talking & listening to your people (customers, partners or employees) can really go a long way when it comes to building trust & transparency, improve efficiency, and enhance collaboration. And I totally second that!

Right away I started wondering how this framework would apply internally in an enterprise and what would be the key basic activities that one would need to address while going in for Enterprise2.0. So in the figure below, I have attempted to add a few points to it. Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments below.

So if you are an enterprise looking to leverage from social business, then SMILE within and outside.

Nikhil Nulkar is a knowledge management consultant within Capgemini and is passionate about web2.0, specifically in enterprise2.0 & social media. Want to know what he is up to? Follow him on Twitter

Originally posted on Capping IT Off, the Technology Blog of Capgemini on November 12, 2009 (link)

Social Business Evangelism

2009-09-22T22:24:00.001+05:30

We have seen a lot of activity in the 2.0 space in the recent past, specifically in the social media arena. In addition to this, we have also seen a bunch of views, expressions and thoughts put down by leading industry experts and a majority of them have been around the social consulting landscape, acquisitions in this space, and experts moving into more focused social strategy & social consulting roles. Once again, we see that the importance is given to a lot of factors, in addition to just the social software per se. Most of the above actions are pointing to one phenomenon which being termed as Social Business Design.

Here are some of the lines I have picked from various sources:
Social business design is the intentional creation of a dynamic business culture that empowers all of its constituents to better exchange value. The rise of the social web has taught us a lot about how we can significantly reduce the costs of collaboration and co-ordination inside businesses, and demonstrated the power of iterative, evolutionary processes driven by real-time data and user feedback. Social Business Design is probably the first effort to completely unite both the strategic and implementation components of a new kind of business. It is a mutually exclusive, collectively exhaustive way of considering how a corporation, business unit, or project can create and capture value from today's emerging technologies and evolving operating environment.

Social Business Design is a concept that companies like Dachis Group and Altimeter Group are built on, and we definitely should give them credit for explaining the concept and making it as popular as we see it getting now. We are also now witnessing others follow suite, such as the India based 2020 Social calling it as Social Business Strategy; in fact Gaurav Mishra from 2020 Social has done a great summary of all the recent happenings in one of his recent blogs at Gauravonomics.

The entire point being made is that it is not just about the emerging technologies, but the significance of other aspects like guidance, approach, strategy, and design, etc and the value they bring, which is why one must give some attention and importance in understanding it. And if there is one term which encapsulates this, then it is Social Business Evangelism. Yes, I prefer calling it ‘Social Business Evangelism’ and define it as a philosophy consisting of a set of practices (including strategy & consulting services) provided by an individual or an enterprise to its employees or customers, guiding them in leveraging the emerging social technologies for transforming their businesses and achieving their goals in a way that is optimal and effective in nature.

Rather than concluding this, as an attempt to create yet another buzzword, I would like to explain why I prefer to use these specific words (social, business & evangelism) to describe the concept. These three words when put together brings out an expression which will allow businesses to transform for better in its entirety. The word ‘Social’ covers the human factor, the word ‘business’ is precisely the reason why customers are doing what they are doing and the word ‘evangelism’ is the philosophy that will facilitate customers in changing their business into success stories; and I think this philosophy-aspect is more important than anything else in any business. In addition, it will give intent to the entire approach of becoming 2.0 and will facilitate enterprises in becoming enterprise2.0. I would go with the Sameer Patel’s explanation of Enterprise2.0 - a state that the enterprise achieves by leveraging social computing concepts and technologies, to accelerate business performance - and Social Business Evangelism will steer these enterprises on their journey towards 2.0.

One might feel that I have completely left out ‘technology’ from this definition of mine, but to be honest technology is so much a part of our lives, that the need to give it a mention in here, just to indicate the important role it plays, is I guess a little redundant and that it being one of the key enablers, comes by default. We are already aware of how significant, technology is and how it enhances in the approach to 2.0. With the speed at which technology is evolving, what today constitutes as social technology might soon be the thing of the past and we will have a completely new set of tools; however the objectives of a business run by people towards success will always remain the same!

Some time back in May this year, I had posted about Social Media League, which was more about my view of a function in an enterprise that will act as a social media facilitation center providing all the guidance one needs inside the organization in benefiting from social tools. And this social media league acts more like a sub-set of Social Business Evangelism, where in, it complements the philosophy and has its focus on the internal environment and its needs.

Just as I was closing this article last evening, I observed a set of discussions taking place on Twitter around Enterprise2.0 & Social Business, with views coming from two distinct schools of thought and if definitions or terminologies really matter, or do the results speak for the terms we define. However I would say, to win that first customer of yours which may later show the results, you need to be very clear in what and how you define, with what you are trying to tell your audience in make them successful. So, even though I don’t encourage buzzwords, I do feel a good definition/explanation of what you suggest is fairly important.

I will close my post here, but would love to hear from you all on what you think about my views expressed above.

Nikhil Nulkar is a knowledge management consultant within Capgemini and is passionate about web2.0, specifically in enterprise2.0 & social media. Want to know what he is up to? Follow him on Twitter

Originally posted on Capping IT Off, the Technology Blog of Capgemini on September 22, 2009 (link)

Asynchronous is the new instant

2009-09-01T23:46:00.001+05:30

I start this post with the Wikipedia definition of chat to give a backdrop – “Online chat can refer to any kind of communication over the Internet, but is primarily meant to refer to direct one-on-one chat or text-based group chat (formally also known as synchronous conferencing), using tools such as instant messengers, Internet Relay Chat”.

Yesterday my mind was filled with thoughts about how this whole thing called “online chat” has evolved over years. There were times when people were hooked onto Instant Messengers from Yahoo, MSN, AOL and ICQ. People spent days and nights talking to strangers and friends in yahoo chat rooms. Then we had small changes in our instant messaging platforms and then in our chat rooms. After a while we had new features (emoticons, avatars etc), functionalities (groups, private messages, msn-yahoo compatibility) and the likes. The chat rooms too moved from just yahoo chat rooms to places like Meebo. Instant messengers went from free downloaded apps to SaaS. We can now log into yahoo messenger on the web itself!

However the reason for this post was not to just revisit the history in online chat, but to focus our attention to the way things have changed, the chat apps, the chat services, chat culture, and the chat mechanisms. I am going to list a few apps, services and tools that I came across in the recent past which I think are really changing the online chat context. This article from TechCrunch in 2006 lists The Six Biggest New Ideas In Chat and trust me we have had many more new things that have come up in the last three years. TinyChat, Omegle and a few others have added a new dimension to online chat. With TinyChat you can start a chat room from out of the blue with just using your twitter id and share the unique chat room link amongst the people whom you want to invite and there you go. Omegle is another concept I came across recently; from the look of it, you may not find anything extraordinary but the fact that one can just join in without any login credentials (as a complete stranger) and the Omegle system will connect you with another random system picked stranger (absolutely anonymous person) and you start chatting. This is as eccentric as it can get when it comes to chatting to strangers.

These days my usage of emails and IM for personal reasons has gone down so much so that I actually don’t have any IM client on my system and I hardly mail people unless it’s something I can’t do over Facebook/Twitter/Phone Call/Text Message. I still do use GTalk or Yahoo messenger, but very rarely and is via browser. And this is one of the important points I am coming to. With the evolution of social networking sites like Orkut and Facebook, and with the kind of functionalities they provide to communicate and collaborate, most of my needs of chatting are taken care of on their platform. For that matter I don’t use Facebook chat that much as well. Personally I prefer the asynchronous mode of communication! :-) The comments, the shares, the likes, the tags and the walls have taken over my chatting habits. Only if I need to communicate with someone in a really long important conversation which I don’t want to do it over a phone, then I prefer chatting. With these social media tools most of the activities in your life which you would have shared via a chat room are all done on platforms like Facebook and everyone participates. Having said that IM still has its own advantages and it will still remain the preferred platform for one-to-one communication for some time. Social Media platforms like Facebook, Orkut and Twitter were not enough that we now have Google’s Wave coming up and we all have seen what we can do on it when it comes to online chat.

With so many changes seen on the web when it comes to communication and collaboration for personal reasons, I wonder how things would be when we see this same change take over our enterprises. We already are seeing a serious movement in the interest, awareness and adoption of social media tools inside the enterprises. These Enterprise2.0 tools are definitely changing the game when it comes to the way employees communicate and collaborate. So are we going to see a similar change inside the enterprise when it comes to the use of internal messengers and emails behind the firewalls? Already I would prefer to use Yammer/discussion forums for communicating and sharing rather than inviting 10 people onto a group chat using the IM service. And as we all know, having these chats/discussions (formal ones at least) on platforms like Enterprise2.0 will surely ensure a proper Knowledge Management approach. Most of those informal, coffee machine chats will be saved and thus allow the capture of what we call the tacit knowledge.

I have already moved a long way from where I started in this blog post, but the matter of the fact is that with new social media tools, online chat and the way we have conversations, have changed. Also, with social media tools, online chat will reduce and this will impact not only on the web but also inside the firewalls in enterprises. In fact with today’s social media tools, the asynchronous mode of communication is picking up in comparison to the earlier instant communication and asynchronous is becoming the new instant!

Nikhil Nulkar is a knowledge management consultant within Capgemini and is passionate about web2.0, specifically in enterprise2.0 & social media. Want to know what he is up to? Follow him on Twitter

Originally posted on Capping IT Off, the Technology Blog of Capgemini on August 31st, 2009 (link)

The curse of the knowledge

2009-08-20T00:17:00.001+05:30

I have to give credit to the Internet and a few other things for all the knowledge that I have today. But some things have made me think more, especially when you read and see a lot of things around, is when you start realizing more. Recently, I came across Scott Anthony’s article How Knowledge Can Hurt Innovation on Harvard Business Publishing, in which he refers to the Chip and Dan Heath’s 2007 book Made to Stick. He talks about a basic problem:

“People who have deep knowledge about a topic sometimes assume other people have that same knowledge.”

With the kind of things I am seeing, reading and feeling in the recent past, I am somehow coming to a conclusion that YES the above statement does make sense. And I think the above issue has fairly serious consequences (more than just a few people calling you a geek for all your deep knowledge :-))

There are two things to it: 1) the assumption itself that other people have the same knowledge, which can lead to issues and 2) the assumption leading to a sense of “getting carried away” and losing focus. In Scott’s above article, he has listed a couple of examples, with the first one sending the message out very crisp. However, I would like emphasize the importance in my second point as well.

In most cases people/organizations turn a blind-eye and end up not realizing what they actually are doing & for whom, and assume that having the deep knowledge is can ensure success. I also feel a lot of people/organizations #fail because, over time they find it hard to understand why they are doing what they are doing; deviating from what their end objective and who their real customers were. They are so deeply involved in their knowledge, core activities and the way of thinking that they actually end-up losing focus of what they had set-out to do.

I might be diverging into another topic of discussion but maybe I will keep that for another post in detail. In conclusion here, I would say: it is always a good idea for everyone to revisit their objectives of existence; refresh goals statements to ensure they continue to align to the end-vision; and in particular not allow the deep knowledge/expertise to let you lose your focus from the path to success. And thus, avoid the curse of knowledge!

P.S.: I have happily borrowed this blog’s title from Scott’s aforementioned article. Thanks Scott!

Nikhil Nulkar is a knowledge management consultant within Capgemini and is passionate about web2.0, specifically in enterprise2.0 & social media. Want to know what he is up to? Follow him on Twitter

Originally posted on Capping IT Off, the Technology Blog of Capgemini on August 19th, 2009 (link)

Is search going to die one day?

2009-08-10T10:00:00.001+05:30

Search has become an increasingly important part of our lives, especially on the web. Imagine the world of internet without search. Imagine a website without search. How difficult things can get. But the way things are going, I see this coming to an end, some day. Well may be not a total dead-end, but almost there!

I had shared some views around this on my personal blog sometime last year in my blog titled Social Networking Vs. Searching. I will be revisiting that thought again, as I seem to have learnt more things that have helped me to convince myself that someday, we will be able live without search!

When/why does one search on the web:
1. One is looking for something he knows
2. One is looking for someone he knows
3. One is looking for something he doesn’t know
4. One is looking for someone he doesn’t know
5. And probably a few other reasons…

With the advent of social bookmarking, social networking, RSS, and micro-blogging, users hardly depend on searching rather they prefer tagging/subscribing to the topic. Having said that, with sites like Netvibes, Lazyfeed and Google Reader, one really doesn’t have to bother too much about how I am going to manage to keep a track of the topic that I usually search for. With networking sites like Facebook, Orkut and LinkedIn, and maybe Google Profiles one really wouldn’t need to search elsewhere to find a contact (existing or prospective). In fact, very soon we may have one integrated search that searches across various networks (or maybe we already have it). With all these above examples, one is sure, well to-do with my first couple of questions above.

Coming to the next couple of questions: one would typically look for something he doesn’t know, but that would be close to something he knows or it can be absolutely random things. If it’s something close to what he already knows, then the search engine/aforementioned sites should provide them as recommendations (ex. friends you may know, communities you would like to join, similar topics like this, etc). So now only if, one wants to do a random search, firstly, that person would typically ask for recommended links in his network by posting a question on Facebook or Twitter for example and via the extended network, invariably, he will find the right source of content. This will become more of a norm as people have started trusting their network more than they trust a search engine. Only if this fails, will he need to hit a keyword in one of the search engines to look for sources on the internet.

So are we moving to a situation in near future where we would hardly need the search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo etc? Would there be a day when there will be no need for us to search, per se? What would happen to the business models that these search giants are surviving on? Will this affect big mammoths like Google or Yahoo? How many of us kind of manage to do away with search engines today, well almost?

P.S.: I am not imagining a life without us requiring to search, but a day when one would not by default go to a search engine to find something; he will either get it as intelligent recommendation from the sites or you network will get you the source.

Nikhil Nulkar is a knowledge management consultant within Capgemini and is passionate about web2.0 and social media. Want to know what he is up to? Follow him on Twitter

Originally posted on Capping IT Off, the Technology Blog of Capgemini on August 6th, 2009 (link)

Facebook, Twitter, Yammer; its all geeky stuff

2009-07-09T01:05:00.001+05:30

Most of you, readers of my blog, might find the title of this blog a little funny or weird. But there are people out there who still are not aware of a lot of the things that have become part of our lives alike eating and sleeping; and I dedicate this blog to all those friends of mine!

How much ever it may sound strange, but there are my classmates from school or post-graduate course who have no clue what Facebook or Twitter is, let along Yammer. They might just have the slightest clue about it but many have not yet registered on such sites. More so, there are some friends of mine who studied computer science with me, who have recently joined Facebook but still are clue-less how some simple things work. I sometimes feel pity and then I wonder, is it just me or is it just a bunch of people who are early adopters who find using these systems very obvious?

Being from the same era, age group and same educational background (which is IT), are these people into something that I am unaware of, or maybe they are so involved in their 9-6 job that they are not too bothered what’s happening in the world outside of their office. This is not the case of this millennium, in the 90s, when personal email became a big thing (when free web-based mails like Hotmail/Yahoo were big), I remember I had an email address when a lot of my school friends had never even seen what an email was like. In fact, I think it starts all in the early stages: I got my first PC at home (a 386) back in late 80s or early 90s I think, when a lot of organizations didn’t had one (let alone personal computers at home).

Is it just passion and opportunities early on that has helped me and some of us to know so much about these new things? Or is just that we have made the most of those early opportunities we got in our lives? Or are they just a little less interested in all of this? Are you also one of the few who have been the early adopters of new emerging technologies?

Honestly, I don’t want to be considered as a GEEK in my friend circle, just because I link the word ‘Yam’ to Yammer and not to a person whose nick name is Yam. I share these new things within my circle so that, they can benefit from it, but only to get a response “I talk a lot of geeky stuff” and get tagged into a zoozoos photo as a geek. I am sure this is just a normal situation in a lot of individuals, but I would be glad to know your experiences/thoughts on topics like this.

And I will leave you all, with this video; guess it talks for itself and probably most of you have already seen it! :-)

Nikhil Nulkar is a knowledge management consultant within Capgemini and is passionate about web2.0 and social media. Want to know what he is up to? Follow him on Twitter

Originally posted on Capping IT Off, the Technology Blog of Capgemini on July 9th, 2009 (link)

Now: Web Squared; Next: Infinite Web?

2009-07-07T23:22:00.002+05:30

In a webinar couple of weeks back, Tim O’Reilly and John Battelle discussed their vision and structure of the web of the future. The Web2.0 Summit is scheduled for October this year and O’Reilly & Battelle expressed why they have considered “Web Squared” as the theme for it. You can read the entire article along with the whitepaper and the webcast on the Web2.0 Summit Website.

It is an interesting read and I am glad it has re-iterated the focus and benefits one can leverage from things such as Collective Intelligence, Real-time Web and (my favorite) Intelligent/Learning Systems! Also there are some excellent examples quoted in the whitepaper, which are worth a glance. In some of my previous posts (when I started blogging on my person blog), a majority of my thoughts revolved around these topics and I always wondered why, not many have been taking it seriously. I am glad O’Reilly has emphasized on these aspects and I hope people/organizations give a new level of importance to it going forward.

Tim says “Ever since we first introduced the term Web 2.0, people have been asking, ‘What’s next?’ Assuming that Web 2.0 was meant to be a kind of software version number (rather than a statement about the second coming of the Web after the dotcom bust), we’re constantly asked about ‘Web 3.0.’ Is it the
semantic web? The sentient web? Is it the social web? The mobile web? Is it some form of virtual reality?” And Tim concludes the statement saying “It is all of those, and more.”

Its five years since the word Web2.0 was coined and we all know that it has come a long way; I am wondering in another five years will the so called ‘Web Squared’ also make it to the English language dictionary as an official new phrase like Web2.0!

There is of course another side to this. When we are all talking about and are involved in these things, we feel Web2.0 is really a household name, but organizations and people are still getting to understand it and hardly a few have actually been able to benefit from it. Is the web world (of a small percentage of geeks) moving just too fast for the rest to catch up with? How does one start showcasing and benefiting from Web Squared (and its new mantras) when people are still creating awareness about Web2.0?

I understand that there will be a set of people who would keep on evolving the technologies and will be early adopters, but think about it: by the time people start getting a feel of Web Squared, we might come up with probably Web Infinity! If Web Squared was coined considering that Web now expands exponentially and is not just an incremental iteration; then probably we will soon have boundary-less Web with infinite possibilities. And I think people/organizations need to speed up in understanding, if not totally adopting the new technologies before they feel completely left behind in this race of the world!

Coming soon: Infinite Web!? ;-)

Nikhil Nulkar is a knowledge management consultant within Capgemini and is passionate about web2.0 and social media. Want to know what he is up to? Follow him on Twitter

Originally posted on Capping IT Off, the Technology Blog of Capgemini on July 7th, 2009 (link)

The causal effect of being lazy: Innovation

2009-06-14T01:09:00.002+05:30

In the last week, I and fellow blogger, Mark Nankman had some discussions around a few topics, where we ended up with a series of statements which started with “The causal effect of…” and immediately we thought it would be a brilliant idea to convert them into a series of blog posts expressing our thoughts around them. Mark kick-started this series with his post The causal effect of being cool: gullible consumers and here I am with The causal effect of being lazy: Innovation

It all sprouted over a discussion on Yammer over the last week. I have this strong feeling that Innovation is not something that comes only from the top-leadership of an organization nor does it vary by geography it comes from. It basically can come from anyone and everyone from anywhere in this world. Another tangent around Innovation is what this blog title reads.

During my childhood days, I remember my parents used to always warn me against being lazy and ensured that I never showed laziness (even it meant getting up early on a Sunday morning :-)). However I used to always have a counter argument that unless we (humans) become lazier, we will never be able see the advancements and evolution of technology. I always gave simple examples like without being lazy we would never have innovations like cordless phones, TV remote controls and the likes. These were the obvious ones that I could show them at home; nevertheless, if one actually gives it a thought, I am sure we all would agree that YES, laziness could account to most of the innovations in the world today.

So, to conclude: laziness certainly can sow the idea-seed which when nurtured with all the hard work, can lead to an innovation.

So think lazy, work harder! :-)

P.S.: In fact, the converse is true as well. Innovation has surely led a lot of people to become lazy! :-)

Nikhil Nulkar is a knowledge management consultant within Capgemini and is passionate about web2.0 and social media. Want to know what he is up to? Follow him on Twitter

Originally posted on Capping IT Off, the Technology Blog of Capgemini on June 13th, 2009 (link)

Open Enterprise 2009: Interview With Stowe Boyd

2009-06-08T21:48:00.006+05:30

I hope you guys have been up to date with all the activities that have been happening on the Enterprise2.0 Conference front and also that you all have started doing your final planning and chalking out of your personal agenda at the conference.

Couple of things I would like to inform you all with this post:
1. Open Enterprise2009 is probably one of the best items on the agenda for this year's Enterprise2.0 Conference scheduled in Boston from June22-25th, 2009
2. Inform you about this Interview Opportunity at this Conference

Firstly, the Open Enterprise2009 is an amazing concept to recognize all the great market-leaders and first-movers in the E2.0 arena and can really help gain visibility to a lot of organizations and their innovative products which otherwise is really difficult in this space. I am eagerly awaiting to hear who wins the Award and understand the innovation that has been submitted!

Secondly, if you have noticed the E2.0 Conf Blog, there have been quiet a few interviews that you must have come across and all of us Blog Partners are, I am sure, extremely honored to have been given such opportunities. However considering all the other things that have kept me busy, I couldnt conduct an interview and missed a excellent opportunity to speak to all these great thought-leaders!

However, all of you dont need to miss any of this. One of the recent ones, was of Steve Boyd and I would like you all to have a look at it.

Also, if you have still not registered for the conference then please do so as not only will you witness some of the best sessions around E2.0 but you may get to meet these SMEs in person as well. And hey, also remember if you are about to register, then you can get a 30%discount on the conference fees; just click on the E2.0Conf banner on the right here in my blog and you will automatically be awarded a discount.

So lets hope all goes well and I will see you all in Boston at the end of this month!

Will Google Wave hit a high tide or low tide?

2009-06-07T00:07:00.001+05:30

In last couple of weeks, one of the most talked about topic on the internet has been, obviously the Google Wave. After seeing the launch video and reading a lot of articles around it, this is what I feel: Google Wave is going to be a brilliant topping onto most of our existing technologies and tools. Obviously this will be in addition to Google Wave being considered as a new product, platform and a protocol. However the entire concept, that we can have all our present tools and technologies embedded into the Wave and it allowing you a single gateway to keep up with anything and everything you do on the Internet, is going to be THE difference it will make.

So in the last few posts I have been trying to put down my thoughts around how I think Enterprise2.0 is the new face to Knowledge Management. And here comes Wave that will sit on top of our Enterprise2.0 tools enhancing their functionality to higher level and extending their utility to a level which no one had imagined. So I think going forward all organizations might see KM a.k.a. Enterprise2.0 tools as part of their intranet infrastructure and all employees could have Google Wave as their desktop client/single entry point to leverage these tools.

I think, this is really going to be game-changing as rightly put by Lee Provoost in his last post about how he thinks Google Wave will cause some big ripples in the corporate world. If one carefully looks at Google Wave, you will understand how this can ease the efforts of Knowledge Management. It is like Google heard my thoughts when I said "KM is all about ensuring we have all the right information at the right time available to right people and all of this with minimum efforts". I think Google Wave has very neatly covered the part about “with minimum efforts”. Simply because KM is about providing an environment to your people which will allow them to do what they are supposed to do but in the background capture all the critical knowledge that can be leveraged at a later stage. So no more would anyone be required to put aside any time or put in an extra effort to support this cause what they called earlier, as Knowledge Management. And hence this new era of collaboration and enterprise2.0 is showcasing the real face of Knowledge Management. Immediately there were a few articles floating around what role Google Wave will play in Enterprise2.0 and I think you must read a couple of these at least. Google Wave and its’ significance to Enterprise 2.0 by Sameer Patel and The enterprise implications of Google Wave by Dion Hinchcliffe are articles by two of thought-leaders in the enterprise2.0 space whom I have been consistently following in the recent past.

The question is: will Google Wave hit a high tide (make it THE Open source platform, open to all and benefit all) or a low tide (make everyone go back into Google and make us depend on it even more)? Whatever the case, I am still extremely excited about Google Wave and look forward to getting my hands on it! I am really glad to be part of this history-in-the-making and more than happy to contribute to it!

Nikhil Nulkar is a knowledge management consultant within Capgemini and is passionate about web2.0 and social media. Want to know what he is up to? Follow him on Twitter

Originally posted on Capping IT Off, the Technology Blog of Capgemini on June 6th, 2009 (link)

Enterprise2.0: the new face of knowledge management?

2009-05-24T18:46:00.002+05:30

Knowledge Management (KM) has a long history behind it, but with the increased use of technology in the late 20th century, has given it a more formalized picture. We all know that knowledge has always been classified into implicit and explicit, and that there are three major dimensions to KM: Process, Technology & People. All that theory is fine; but what is the end objective that any organization expects from a KM practice? IMO the bottom line is: does the organization (and its people) get the right information at the right time with minimum efforts? If they do, then it really shouldn’t matter the means by which they are able to get it.

Unfortunately over years we have seen organizations trying to capture the so called “implicit” content, codify it, make it explicit and store it in large repositories which need access depending totally on search. This has led to an approach that has made KM sound similar to Content Management and companies in an attempt to achieve KM have ended up doing only content management. And the general feeling has been that KM is a failure, because content management will not get you the same results as with knowledge management. The focus with content management was too much on the side of the technology and IMHO it should be more on the lines of awareness, understanding and adoption of KM as a practice.

Today, with the emergence of new technologies based on web2.0 (call them social media or enterprise2.0 or anything else), we are seeing the shift in the way content is captured, managed and accessed. As one of the simplest definitions go, Enterprise2.0 is the use of web2.0 technologies inside an enterprise. If you carefully note, enterprise2.0 has touched upon THAT aspect of KM which otherwise was a little ignored: the people dimension. With social media, the emphasis has been on the people-to-people connections, which in addition to the strong process framework and technology base, brings in that delta that was missing earlier. Enterprise2.0 has come across, more of a complete solution for KM. To me, Enterprise2.0 is the new face of Knowledge Management!

I came across this set of presentations prepared by a group of enthusiasts at the site Besser2.0 (Better2.0) on the topic of “Enterprise 2.0 Knowledge Management”. They have done a great job and trust me, it’s a must see! Part3 of the set covers the thoughts I have expressed in my previous blog Social Media League and Part2 has thoughts on the same lines as the ones above. The important point to note here is that Enterprise2.0 is bringing back the good old Knowledge Management by focusing on facilitating the right information at the right time to the right people with minimum efforts and with no explicit requirement from the user to do anything in addition to his core role. I am more than certain, Enterprise2.0 will change the way people/organizations address KM and it will surely help in achieving the larger organizational objectives for which it has been setup. Enterprise2.0 is not just the new KM, but it is the real KM.

P.S.: If you or your company wants to understand, plan and strategize in the enterprise2.0 arena, then I will be more than happy to share my thoughts around it. :-)

Nikhil Nulkar is a knowledge management consultant within Capgemini and is passionate about web2.0 and social media. Want to know what he is up to? Follow him on Twitter

Originally posted on Capping IT Off, the Technology Blog of Capgemini on May 24, 2009 (link)

Enterprise 2.0 Conference

2009-05-16T15:57:00.008+05:30

Enterprise2.0 - you like it or not. Its happening!

Enterprise2.0 Conference - if you are anywhere in the same pincode as web2.0, social media and the likes, then THIS is THE event that you cannot afford to miss out on.

Few weeks back, I saw this tweet in my timeline

And immediately I saw myself an opportunity to be part of this high profile and value adding conference. I did the necessary and bang! Here I am...

I am extremely happy and privileged to be part of this growing community and the conference. With this opportunity I plan to express all my views around this topic and ensure that I bring value to the event as well as the larger community across the globe. Thank you @Janerri and the team for providing me the opportunity to be the blog partner for Enterprise2.0 Conference.

So for starters, please note Enterprise2.0 is the term for the technologies and business practices that liberate the workforce from the constraints of legacy communication and productivity tools like email. It provides business managers with access to the right information at the right time through a web of inter-connected applications, services and devices. Enterprise 2.0 makes accessible the collective intelligence of many, translating to a huge competitive advantage in the form of increased innovation, productivity and agility.

And Enterprise2.0 Conference takes a strategic perspective, emphasizing the bigger picture implications of the technology and the exploration of what is at stake for organizations trying to change not only tools, but also culture and process. You can get all the information and details around this conference, such as Registration, Topics, Speakers, Exhibition, etc, on their website http://www.e2conf.com/. Also pay a visit to http://www.enterprise2blog.com/ which will help you keep yourself updated on the various announcements and alerts about this event as well as get to read some of the interesting perspectives from the various blog partners of Enterprise2.0 Conference.

The event is scheduled from June 22-25th, 2009 and is going be organized in Westin Boston Waterfront. So hurry up and click on the banner on the right column and get yourself a 30% discount.

I am signing off right now, but I will be back soon and with more!

Social Media League

2009-05-16T15:19:00.001+05:30

How does one go about evangelizing social media, inside an enterprise or externally? When it comes to inside the boundaries of an enterprise, there are various dimensions which decide the way social media gets adopted. However, IMHO a couple of them need to be focused on, as they play a slightly important role than others. One is the “formal training” of tools & benefits case for each member of the user group and the other is the “cultural aspect”. Here is how it looks like from where I see it.

The formal training of the identified (developed) social media tool is extremely important. Understanding the use of social media tools isn’t rocket science nevertheless considering the level of awareness that usually varies in any user group, it is recommended that a formal training is conducted for the entire audience which covers the basics. In addition it is also a good practice to have all the various demos, user-manuals and wiki-guides made available and easily accessible. The training needs to accommodate a part which clearly showcases a benefits case for every section of the user group. Usually, it is best to identify all the diverse user groups and understand what would get their attention (indicating relief for their pain-points). This will not only ensure easier adoption of the tool but will also make the training effective.

Coming to the other aspect of change management which is an even more important when it comes to social media. One needs to ensure that there is a right attitude and culture amongst the user group which will allow the optimal utilization of the tool. A technology/tool is effective only to the extent their users find it useful. During the deployment of any tool and specifically a social media one, it is vital to have change management as part of the process. One needs to get into the user’s shoes and explain him how this tool is NOT another top-down management decision, not one of those which will be come in the way of their daily routine at work, and in fact show them how they don’t explicitly have to do anything in particular which they probably wouldn’t like to. The best way to do so is set examples yourself that will demonstrate the benefits. Allow and accommodate the feedback and suggestions that the user group might provide in whatever format or approach. Present day (particularly in social media) ONE person or a small group of people cannot define the way a tool will be used. In fact, it’s added benefit when we get innovative ideas/suggestions from the user groups for the tool, which the developers had not even imagined earlier.

In short, the advent of social media tools has put increasing pressure on the culture/change management aspect in deploying a technology strategy. This translates into a specific need for SMEs who would evangelize social media (both technically and functionally). Change management function and evangelists have long been part of many an organization, but my guess is we are seeing a strong desire to have Social Media Evangelist playing a vital role in any enterprise. I have come across this “role” title per se but have never seen a formal job description that is standard across enterprises across industries. Not that I am of the opinion that we could/should have standard responsibilities for them, but we sure could settle to have a de facto standard that might be followed across enterprises with some space for customization/specialization. Also, in addition to the evangelists, we need a function in every enterprise which will act as a social media facilitation center. We need a Social Media League!

This social media league will not only facilitate the objective of an enterprise by enhancing collaboration amongst the silos in an enterprise, but will also lead to providing a methodology for new interactions with customers and channel partners. Social media league will transform the business model of an enterprise and benefit them from each step it takes in facilitating the social media cause.

Nikhil Nulkar is a knowledge management consultant within Capgemini and is passionate about web2.0 and social media. Want to know what he is up to? Follow him on Twitter

Originally posted on Capping IT Off, the Technology Blog of Capgemini on May 12, 2009 (link)

iPods could soon become the latest toys for our sales soldiers

2009-05-16T15:16:00.004+05:30

Earlier this week when I was having dinner with one of my colleagues (@ksiripurapu), he shared this interesting piece of news from CIO. iPod Touch: The iPod of War, an article on CIO.com which talks about the recent item from Newsweek’s report about the U.S. military giving out the iPod Touch to soldiers in war zones in the Middle East.

My first reaction was “wow” and next “but what would the soldiers do with iPods?" I just had to read this article and my mind was all over imagining all the possible future use of it. I sit back and think how much these emerging technologies have changed our present world. Imagine a world without open tools. Most of today’s applications/websites are based on OpenID/OAuth and/or Open Source tools. Every time I think of Apple and its apps store, Facebook and its apps collection and so on, I wonder how life was when we had closed static websites/products. Thanks to Apple, for the wonderful product iPod Touch and for allowing third party developers to develop apps for its iPod, that today we could take the utility of iPods to a level that no one had imagined.

Well, coming back to the topic of my blog; so what we understand from the above article is that soldiers will now be able to stay electronically linked to other troops, tap applications for language translation and cultural information, and access data such as maps, photos, videos and voice recordings. It also means we could expect to see some added accessories for the iPods, such as protective covers, castings, glare and scratch resistant coatings that stick onto the touch-sensitive screen. Well all of this is either already available or could be developed in a quick time, however what’s more important is are we going to see things like aerial video to teleconferencing and the likes? Apparently, as the article quotes, “Snipers in Iraq and Afghanistan now use a 'ballistics calculator' called BulletFlight, made by Knight's Armament for the iPod Touch and iPhone”.

So, there are a couple of views I have around this: One is ofcourse how this whole thing can be replicated inside an enterprise in an industry like ours to foster innovation & drive business and two, how this relates to the various trends that are discussed in Capgemini’s TechnoVision. The obvious trend from it is the iPodification, but there are others that could be related as well.

Here is how I see this going: I am sure we could replicate the same model in our sales warzone. Deploy a sales force with arms such as these $300 weapons (read iPods) and ammunition (read sales systems) based on custom developed apps that integrate & sync with the back-up army (read our enterprise systems). What we are essentially talking about here is “Real time integrated business applications” accessed via “iPodification”. Imagine our sales guys with iPod touches and apps that provide quick access to client credentials, background-info, competitor analysis all at the touch of their finger tips and all available on-demand. This is all about “Composite applications” which are going to be “Role-based”. Imagine a 3D walkthrough loaded into their iPods and the customer can just navigate it like in real. Well, one could argue, we could do most of this in a normal high end phone as well, but folks think about the extra feel and experience that the Touch iPod brings in. It’s all about “You Experience (You-X)”, you see. It would be simply mind-blowing to have these apps "Thriving on data" and present it before a customer for all his fancy on-demand requests. Well I am sure its not just this, but a lot more than what I can think of, at the moment.

Couldn’t we boost up our sales guys who are in a similar warzone during the bids, like the US military forces? Well obviously the intensity and approach is different in both cases but the objective is same (to win). There could be and I am sure there must be already a few apps that are in this race; however I wonder if it would become a norm, a routine for all leading companies in the near future. Will iPod Touch become a de-facto tool for all sales guys in an organization in the near future? Mark Nankman, one of my fellow bloggers on Capping IT Off, also had similar ideas sometime back. Looks like his ideas from last year around the same time to an extent are coming true already.

Nikhil Nulkar is a knowledge management consultant within Capgemini and is passionate about web2.0 and social media. Want to know what he is up to? Follow him on Twitter

Originally posted on Capping IT Off, the Technology Blog of Capgemini on April 27, 2009 (link)

Are social media biggies facing the crunch?

2009-05-16T15:14:00.003+05:30

In the face of this economic downturn the social media biggies are facing the crunch as much as many others. There has been more than one instance when we have come across news about Facebook looking for additional financing and how Twitter is trying hard to bring in a business model that will help them make money. For some, it’s hard to believe that one of the fast-growing websites, Facebook, is unable to keep up with their ever-increasing expenses and is in deep need for debt financing. For others, it’s extremely strange that a website of the likes of Twitter doesn’t have any revenue model and that they completely survive on the venture capitalists.

Facebook has been getting its supply of credit from a number of sources however the recent necessity comes after it failed to extend its contract with TriplePoint Capital, a venture lending firm in Silicon Valley. As per the BusinessWeek article, Facebook has already raised more than $500 million in debt and equity, which in itself is an enormous amount for a startup. Facebook’s largest expenses are from their equipment lease lines and the humongous storage that they require. The ever expanding user-growth brings in higher expenses for computer servers, storage and internet bandwidth.

On the other hand, Twitter is in the news with the speculation as to how it will make money. Twitter is still struggling to find a fool-proof model to make revenues. We have already seen some of us express our opinion here on Capping IT Off blog posts (The inevitable end of free Twitter and How you could end up on the Canary islands using Twitter). However with the recent developments, it is becoming even more evident that we are soon going to see paid accounts for Twitter. News is already doing the rounds that we will see a fee-based subscription service, planned to be introduced by Twitter, before the end of this year. In my honest opinion, Twitter has lost, one chance too many to make money. There are way too many business models (applications) out there which are banking on Twitter’s innovative concept and ever-growing user-base. Can Twitter just keep the product as it is and let the outside world build on it? Do you think a fee-based structure for the apps as well (like a royalty), will help any bit? Or is it too late for Twitter to run this race? I think we will have to wait to see how Twitter weathers this storm!

With all these issues worrying the Facebooks and Twitters of social media, are we going to see a lot of acquisitions in this field as well? We saw Orkut and YouTube taken over by Google, Flickr by Yahoo and a few others. Already there are rumors of Microsoft taking over Facebook. Are we headed for a consolidation in the IT segment, with just 3-4 big players in the battlefield, to an extent that each can provide you with all the products and services from mainstream enterprise packages and social media to data centers and cloud computing? Would Microsoft acquire Facebook? Will Twitter be bought over by another big fish?

The point I am trying to make here is: has the economic downturn hit the social media biggies as well? A discussion with fellow bloggers Rick Mans & Lee Provoost and we had some more questions that cropped up - Has the current economic crunch suddenly exposed the weak business models that the Facebooks and Twitters have been (luckily) surviving on? If it was a thriving economy, would it still raise the same concerns? When I had a chance to have a word with Andy Mulholland, he had an interesting point; with social software, has the “who buys” and “why” question of enterprise applications been replaced with “who uses” and “for what quantifiable benefit”? Just some of the thoughts running in our heads, however only time will tell if this will get the best out of them or will they crumble, just like another dotcom debacles.

As I close, here is another article (Who Will Monetize Social Media?) that I came across recently and I will leave you all with these thoughts to ponder upon.

Nikhil Nulkar is a knowledge management consultant within Capgemini and is passionate about web2.0 and social media. Want to know what he is up to? Follow him on Twitter

Originally posted on Capping IT Off, the Technology Blog of Capgemini on April 19, 2009 (link)

Long Time No See! Thanks to Twitter!

2009-01-14T11:03:00.002+05:30

Its been more than a month since I have blogged last and I am really unable to understand what and why I am not being able to blog regularly...

One of the reasons is ofcourse the time and patience that I am slowly losing. But I think a big reason has been Twitter a.k.a. micro-blogs. With the way I am using twitter these days, its becoming increasing more difficult for me to sit down for long, put down some thoughts, share knowledge and write a blog post! Sending out 140 character posts is so much easier, comfortable and less time consuming.

I also came across Tumblr, which as a few say, is something in between blogs and micro-blogs. So what exactly it is? How does it help? Whats the utility of their service?

Another thing I would like to understand from each of you is, what do you prefer, blogging or micro-blogging and what service do you use? How often do you post entries?

Does anyone out here think that a micro-blogging service can kill the old-fashioned blogging?

Role of Technology/Social Media in Today's World!

2008-12-01T22:30:00.006+05:30

It’s been over a month since I last blogged and I already feel like ages! There have been a lot of world events that have occurred in the past month or so and I thought I will cover the role social media and in general technology has in these events and our lives as part of this blog post.

Firstly let’s focus on one of the most watched/tracked elections probably in the history of this world. President-elect Barack Obama became one of the most popular people on the web with the presence felt on all the leading websites including social media. I came across a few articles showcasing how Barack Obama and his team utilized the technology and in particular social media, right from campaigning till date. An article on the New York Times titled “How Obama Tapped into Social Networks’ Power” provides some useful details. With the help of social networking, Obama not only got the votes but also a database, millions of names of supporters who can now be engaged almost instantly. The Change.gov is a digital gateway for the transition of the elected party and now, during this period towards the new Administration, the Internet is used to engage with citizens and collect their ideas. Actually, people who aspire a position in the new Administration are urged to do this through the site. All of the Obama supporters who traded their personal information for a ticket to a rally or an e-mail alert about the vice presidential choice, or opted in on Facebook or MyBarackObama can now be mass e-mailed at a cost of close to zero. And instead of the constant polling that has been a motor of presidential governance; an Obama White House can use the Web to measure voter attitudes. In fact there were a couple of blog posts by Ron Tolido on the Capgemini website as well, one of them a short blog post touching upon Obama’s plan to appoint a national Chief Technology Officer and the other “Now, who's the President?!” taking a shot at the technology challenges that Obama may face. All said and done, we are sure to see Obama bringing in the change and we probably will see a president who is a lot more contemporary who would yet have his personal space.

Coming to another major world happening was the more recent Terrorist Attacks in Mumbai in the last week of November. Mere moments after the first shots were fired, there was a new page created on Wikipedia, a blog post covering all the details you may need about the attacks, live tweets, photos from the affected sites on Flickr (ex.: 26/11 Mumbai Terror Attack Album by Soumik Kar), and a Google map of the attacks. It was fantastic to see so much of activity on the web with information captured, published, and shared quickly with the entire world helping not only those part of the attacks, but also the near and dear ones and the rest of the world to get most up to date details as they happen right in front of your screens.

The above two are just mere examples of the power that technology and social media has in today’s world and we can be rest assured that they will play even more important role in our lives (professionally & personally) going forward.

Business Value of Web2.0 / E2.0

2008-10-27T23:29:00.008+05:30

In recent past I have been reading a lot of articles and I thought it would be apt to share with you some of the most interesting ones (this time with a little of my views). Most of these have been around metrics, the ways we can measure KM and in general the value that web2.0 brings to an organization. I will appreciate your comments around any of these topics and would love to understand and know the point of views from you all.

Alright, here we go:
Should Knowledge Workers have E2.0 Ratings, Part 2
In one of my previous blog entries I had expressed my views on Andrew McAfee’s Part 1 of the above blog entry. In this part 2, he has shared a few of the comments that people have made on his part 1 and I think has a raised a fairly debatably point of “if we really need to measure the contribution on enterprise 2.0 systems”. Though he is in the opinion that one must have some measurement methods (and so do I), but there a few out there who also have a valid point by indicating that by getting the users to contribute based on numbers we will only end up with a garbage (which I agree to as well)! From the learning I have had in the recent past I have come to a conclusion that we certainly do need some means to measure the usage and benefits of the system (at least to showcase to management/clients) but at the same time I, somewhere inside me also feel that in the process of getting the people to contribute, we might end up losing out the essence of KM. This is certainly up for debate!

The next set of links is from the Capgemini external blogs (CTO Blog and Capping IT Off)
Four ways that Technology has changed our buying patterns
Rock & Roll consulting, Web 2.0 style and SAP TechEd 2008 Berlin - Live event coverage!
The true cost of email, and saving through Collaboration

I have been sincerely following the external Capgemini blogs and its nothing less than a superb learning experience. The few entries that I have mentioned above cover the value of collaboration and its tools.

In the first one, Andy Mulholland has shown how each element of i3 can be applied to the various aspects of evolution of technology. The second one shows how Lee Provoost was able to capture the entire TechEd event using web2.0 tools like blog, twitter, and others and how this pilot was successful. IMO micro-blogging (or blogging for that matter) along with accessories such as Flickr and YouTube can really allow you to capture any event in its entirety. We did it here in Capgemini India as well during the recently concluded BarCamp and I think we have tremendous opportunity to utilize these tools and showcase the value they can bring to any organization. In the third one, Andy talks about how email has been misused and how we can use collaborative tools instead, to minimize the use of emails which in-turn will not only give us more time to do value-adding tasks, but probably saves some euros!

When I was following Lee, on the way this pilot was conducted, I was also on the look out for existing case studies that showcase benefits of web2.0. And as part of my research what I did was that I updated my status message on Facebook and LinkedIn saying that I am looking for Business Cases for Social Networking and Web2.0... and there were couple of connections from my network who responded. One of them was a consultant from MaFoi, a leading consultancy, who replied to my status and was nice enough to share a couple of case studies he had come across so far. He himself is also working on a similar project in their organization. The other also shared a very recent case study around how EDWs are used to store and analyze web2.0 data. Now this was interesting, the way I managed to get a couple of case studies, as this method in itself could be used as a case! :-) I am yet to give them a thorough read and will post about them soon. The couple of case studies I recd. are on following topics:
- BT - Web 2.0 adoption case study
- SAP Networks - A Company Transforms Itself Through Social Media

As I continue on my learning spree, I would love to hear from each of you to understand what you think can be utilized as a business case for web2.0/enterprise2.0.

Social Networking Vs. Searching

2008-10-14T20:04:00.008+05:30

I bumped onto this article “How Social Networking Could Kill Web Search as We Know It” by Glenn Derene, which really triggered my thoughts in the lines of more like “How would the Web Search evolve going forward?”

I will not re-iterate what’s mentioned in this article but would like to replicate that to our lives inside Capgemini. And try to come to some conclusion if “Will Social Intelligence help reduce what we Search?” I have said this a few times before to different people in various forums, as to how we can use Social Intelligence (thats what I call for social computing and intelligent analysis) to better support the people/community. Here is what I think of how we could implement a social intelligence component to a KM system.

The KM system homepage will be like our Facebook/LinkedIn homepage, with all the feeds that we might be interested in / subscribed to. So as soon as you log into it, you know who joined which community in my contacts, what topic is being discussed in the community I am part of, who is now connected to whom, etc. So I really don’t have to get into any specific section to know the updates concerning me. There will be various intelligent suggestions and recommendations such as Communities relevant to me and which I can join, people I may know, events I should attend, etc. Most, if not all, of the above information must be simply based on my profile and details I have entered in it (in My Skills, Languages, and Experience etc) and a little on my behavior on the system. I should also be provided with a little control on what and how many updates I want to see.

Now coming back to the search aspect of it; Of course we cannot take out Search all together, but we can certainly ensure that it is reduced to bare minimum. If I am an architect and invariably search on a few topics, my search results must have suggestions which will be based on my search behavior. Also, based on the search I make, my homepage feeds must contain a section covering topics that I might be interested in. So the system keeps pushing information at me which actually might be useful rather than me going and searching for it. My search results must also contain what my contacts are searching for, as in most cases we would have people in one’s team and work related connections as contacts. My search results should not just show me articles that are rated and no. of hits and comments, but also show me who out of my contacts used that article and who out of them has rated and commented on it. This kind of social intelligence will add a lot of value in addition to what we already have. There are many such things but… for now to answer the question, my view would be that, Social Intelligence like what we see in Facebooks and LinkedIns if replicated inside an enterprise as part of the KM System, then certainly our searching is going to be reduced as most of our behavior would be based on our contacts and thus our search would reduce over period of time and most of our needs will be served through the social intelligence!

I feel we are already experiencing this phenomenon on the web, where most of the websites are social network driven, so we don’t merely depend on some search result, but we ask question in our network using linkedin, facebook, twitter and the likes. There are specific applications targeted onto these networks which cover most of our search criteria like entertainment, recreation, food, travel etc. Going forward, I see one Social Network connecting (through APIs) all other websites including search and all these depending on our information on that network and contacts we have in there.

What do you feel? What are your views on Social Networking Vs. Searching?

Metrics for a KM System; Measuring User's Contributions

2008-09-30T07:35:00.003+05:30

I have made a mention of this in a couple of my last blogs I guess. Can one measure KM and if yes, how and what is the best way to do so?

These thoughts have been in my head for sometime now and recently I came across “Should Knowledge Workers Have Enterprise 2.0 Ratings?” on Andrew McAfee blog. Andrew is Associate Professor at the Harvard Business School and I was happy to see some positive ideas making way in regards to measurement of KM. I am to an extent in agreement in the way he has expressed his ideas of how one can go about measuring KM, especially in organizations where Enterprise2.0/Web2.0 has been implemented (in similar terms, tools like blogs, wiki, forums, rss etc). And hence I guess it will make sense for us to read his blog and give it some thoughts.

I would like mention some of his statements in quotes:
“Virtually everyone agrees that coaching, training, explaining, and leading by example would be appropriate and beneficial activities.” – I am part of the everyone!
“E2.0 is simply too broad a phenomenon to be reduced to any single metric. Furthermore, a single metric that’s too simplistic, like ‘number of blog posts per month,’ leads to bad and easily predictable results: people blog at the expense of using any of the other tools, and have a strong temptation to put up lots of short (even trivial) posts in order to up their scores.” – I agree with this and had the same argument at the Wipro KCommunity Meet couple of weeks back.

Andrew goes on to explaining about metrics by comparing KM with a NFL game and how passer ratings from the American football are taken into account. I really do not follow this game and have hardly watched it but it doesn’t take much to get some understanding around it.

He further suggests that the E2.0 score could be multi-dimensional giving a few possible examples such as “…authoring (on a blog, for example), editing (wikis), interacting with others (on discussion boards and Q&A forums), tagging online content, and uploading such content or pointing to it (using something like Digg). All of these activities can be done well or poorly, and there are lots of tools like votes and ratings that colleagues can use to give positive feedback that someone is doing them well.”

He later consolidates the metrics by having six dimensions: authoring, editing, interacting, tagging, uploading, and positive feedback. IMO in addition we can have a few more measures that I was thinking of, especially after reading the passer ratings comparison that Andrew mentioned in his blog. Can we have points for the no. of referrer links back to a user’s contribution? For example how many places have his blog entry, his comments, his contributions (assets & references), and his wiki entries been track-backed? With this we would get a fair idea how much of a value his contributions have brought to the organization.

As I mentioned sometime earlier, IMO it makes more sense to figure out how much value did the contributions got than mere nos. as that’s what enhances organizational knowledge. We can also probably have another mechanisms, in which in addition to rating and voting system, we have a very few (selected) SMEs in the organizations to give a thumbs-up to users who have utilized the respective tools in the most effective manner. I see a lot of people blog, forums and wiki, but in a lot of cases we see people post queries through blogs instead of forums and the likes. I know there would be a few out there who might say, it’s training and coaching of these tools which will avoid such instances, but then we can always give a thumbs-up to other users who will guide these n00bs in the right direction.

I will strongly recommend you give a read to the entire blog entry by Andrew and read the comments as well. It would be great to get each of your views on how YOU think we could or should measure the contribution of our KM System considering the best interest of enhancing the organization knowledge and in-turn benefiting to sell more, deliver efficiently, and collaborate better! And yes, don't forget to consider factors that would motivate the users to contribute!

P.S.: Thanks to @dineshtantri whom I am following on Twitter and which is why I came across Andrew's Blog. Dinesh is a E2.0 and Web2.0 Consultant at TCS.

KM in BPO Space - What an Eventful Journey! - Part Two

2008-09-25T23:11:00.004+05:30

Continuing from the previous post...

Alright, so I did manage to get some conversation going, with this person sitting next to me and my assumption was right. He was Ashwin Hoskote, the Head for Quality and KM at Infosys BPO. Oh what an opportunity for me to interact and network with him and gain some real insights. As soon as we had introduced ourselves, I recollected that I had read his name in schedule for the conference and he was one of the distinguished speakers at the conference planning to talk specifically on KM challenges faced by companies in the BPO Sector. Soon we were into a discussion around KM and how different it is in the BPO sector when compared to a consulting or services organization. He gave me a lot of snippets of the presentation he was planning to give at the conference.

I was just wondering how “knowledge” rich this trip has been so far. I have not even reached the conference (not even the city of the conference) and I have already interacted with a couple of people who are part of large, reputed and established organizations and especially who are in the KM practice at their respective firms. Before I could realize couple of hours had passed and just as I thought that I would be reaching the Delhi airport, the pilot announced the traffic congestion down under and that the landing has been delayed by about 20-30mins. It was a good opportunity for me to get to talk one-on-one with an experienced person like Ashwin, allowing myself to learn and capture a lot of insights into his views. We landed almost 30mins behind schedule and parted ways as I was collecting my checked-in luggage.

For those who are curious to figure out what really happened at the Conference, wait till I post Part Three of this blog! Keep a watch on my blog entries! :-)

P.S.: Written on 24th Sep, 2008 and posting it now!

KM in BPO Space - What an Eventful Journey! - Part One

2008-09-25T22:59:00.004+05:30

With this blog, I am starting with a series of more than a couple blog entries which will cover my entire trip to Gurgaon, India where I attended the 'KM in BPO Space - Challenges and Opportunities' Conference. This is the first one in the series and I start from the time I left home to board the flight.

I started off from home to reach the airport on time to catch the flight scheduled for departure at 17:10hrs. Availed Vayu Vajra, the special bus service recently launched by the BMTC to connect from the city to the new international airport. Was traveling from this new airport for the first time and had no clue how long it takes from the city and how the new place is organized. Reached way too early with more than a couple of hours of free time to spare and hence thought it would be a good idea to take a stroll across the entire premise and take a quick look at the facilities, arrangements etc that have been made there.

Just when I was walking, I saw this familiar face sitting in the waiting area. Within a flash, I recollected this person whom I had met very recently. It was Subhash Thyagarajan, one of the people whom I met at the K-Community meet this month at the Wipro office. And both of us (at least me) had a sigh of relief on my face! :-) To be honest I knew I had my free time sorted out and rest assured it will be utilized. We greeted each other and the first thought in my head - “is he also traveling to the same conference that I am?” I was wrong; Subhash was traveling to Hyderabad to conduct training for some of the new members in his delivery team. And soon the conversation kicked-in. Yes you guessed it right; we were talking about Knowledge Management (KM).

I am very passionate about the subject and most times end up boring the other person in the conversation with all the gyan, but I was glad to know that Subhash was also equally passionate about the subject and it didn’t take long before we got into a serious discussion on various topics of KM, from the way it is organized and practiced at each of our organizations to more debatably topics like measures and ROI of KM, to how process improvement and innovation is linked to KM! Hush!

Suddenly both of us checked the time, just to ensure we don’t miss our respective flights in the process of getting carried away in our discussion around KM! And we still had some 30 odd minutes left and the discussions continued. It was wonderful to know more from Subhash, who once was hired into Wipro as a Campus recruit into VLSI and eventually his passion for KM, got him landed into the KM team, taking care of the Manufacturing and Healthcare Sectors. It was fantastic connecting with him and spending the free time talking and sharing knowledge. Every time something like this happens I keep repeating to myself, how connecting and networking helps, not only in your professional life but also in your personal lives. If someone still wants to know what KM is then THIS is KM, connecting with like-minded people, sharing knowledge, utilizing this knowledge in our roles. Its equally important for each of us to share it with the rest of the community, and by using technology (blog), I can ensure that I share this with all you folks across the world.

Just as I complete my first part of the blog on this journey, which I am writing while sitting in the flight on my way, I realize that the person sitting next to me was going through some presentation and if my eyes caught it right, it was about KM in BPO Sector and which means he is either a speaker in the conference I am attending or is a delegate like me. I will try and get some conversation going before the flight lands and will post the details in my next part of this blog.

P.S.: Written on 23rd Sep, 2008 and posting it now!

Applying Collective Intelligence to Knowledge Management

2008-09-18T21:57:00.003+05:30

I along with a few of my team members visited Wipro Technolgies yesterday evening for the monthly event of the KCommunity in Bangalore. The topic of discussion was "Applying Collective Intelligence to Knowledge Management" and the main speaker was Udayan Banerjee the CTO of NIIT Technologies Ltd.

The session started with a brief talk by Sambuddha Deb, who showed a few slides around how they TRY to measure KM at Wipro and then put forward the most asked question - what is the ROI from KM? Like always it was difficult to quantify the benefits and more so measure them which then can be showcased to the senior management. The debate didn’t continue for long, as one, it almost.... almost has no answer and two, because we had the main speaker of the day waiting for his turn! :-)

Alright, so Udayan took over from there and started his talks by clarifying that he has no presentation (ppt) and for a specific reason, which he asked us to remind him to share at the end just incase he forgets to mention. He started his talk by sharing his experience on how they tried and failed and continued trying and is pretty stable now, with their KM strategy in NIIT. And before he moved on to THE topic of the day, he gave a quick background / history of how people started connecting. First it started with speaking, then writing, then printing and so on to date when we have web as a medium to connect and more so web2.0 making it even easier and accessible for people to connect irrespective of where they are on earth. ;-)

From there he moved to the topic by giving some simple and good examples of collective intelligence, including his own experience when he was at BHEL. His entire talk was more around "People" aspect of KM and how connecting people is more important and useful than actually capturing knowledge and placing it in documents etc. There were a few points raised here and there, like what about collective stupidity and the age old question which dimension of KM (people, process & technology) is more important.

The point of collective stupidity was pretty valid: what if all the people start and work together only to go in a wrong direction? Do we need moderators/leaders then? And from what I understand I tried to reply by saying, we really don’t need moderators like what we needed before, as the way things are today (with new technologies), what happens is Collaborative Filtering. I remember this mentioned in our Capgemini BarCamp as well and its so true. And similarly we have collaborative moderation as well.

Other debate was around, why and how is web2.0 really helping KM? Is it really helping people to capture better? Is it helping people to do better KM? How well does it connect people in an organization especially when one really is in a need to talk with some expert? There was a question, like we all capture and store our Software Requirements Specification (SRS) documents in our knowledge repositories. But now let’s say a consultant takes this document to the client and while discussing with the client it is found that some important point is missing and which gets added on-the-go. Only difference being, it is added in our consultant's mind and not in the document. Who updates this going back into the knowledge system? Can we capture what exactly goes on at the client site? Or other places?

Again, my POV goes like this: "why not have all the services such as LinkedIn, Twitter, and the likes internally in any company. The consultant can carry his mobile phone, use it to SMS a.k.a. send tweets to his followers about the minute-to-minute updates happening at the client site. He can later sit down and write a very informal blog about how things went along when he traveled to the site, spoke with them and the rest. All of this can be done through his mobile or laptop. All the people following him on tweets or blog will get all the details required. Plus it’s all captured at the same time in the knowledge system which can be accessed later. One can always go back to the ACTUAL SRS DOCUMENT and update it, more so it will have inter-links between the DOCUMENT and the related blog and tweets." Doesn’t this help to capture without really having to capture and also helps to share without really having to explicitly share.

There were a few more things discussed on the same lines with topics varying from Apple to Wikipedia and the session concluded with some sort of agreement that connecting people is more important than anything else and one can benefit the most by connecting to the right people!
Oh yes, so the speaker concluded letting us know why he didn’t use a ppt and reason being, he wanted to emphasize on the fact that we do not (always) need technology to share & communicate effectively and connect with people. :-)

Okay, I will end this kind of long blog post leaving you with some thoughts and feel free to leave any comments that you may have around any of the things mentioned above.

Locomi

2008-09-15T23:13:00.002+05:30

Just a hour back or so, I added the Locomi App for Facebook. Spent a few minutes to set it up and I raring to go! And it seems WICKED! ;-)

Okay for starters, what IS Locomi?
Locomi is Mash-up as we call it, showing all the places close to you - the restaurants, malls, theaters and what not on a Map. It allows you to rate, review and read what others have to say. Locomi is currently available for Facebook users in Singapore, Bangalore, Mumbai, Kolkata, Delhi, Hyderabad, Chennai, Ahmedabad and Pune.

Alright, so as soon as you add this app, it takes you through 5 simple (really simple) steps to set this app up for you. Sets your location on the Map (typically your residence). Then you can start searching... for restaurants, cafes, eateries, shops, malls, ATMs, schools, colleges, and what not. Its fantastic cause it actually drills down to the place nearest to you and shows them all on the map. You select one of them and it provides you with a pop with the address and other links.

There is more to this as I see and understand, than just mashing up the places on the map. One can add new place, provide more inputs to the system like "want to visit" or "recently visited" especially for restaurants and stuff and then I am sure with some social netowrking analysis it will show who in our Facebook friends list has visited or plans to visit or stuff like that. :-)

All in all, after adding, I used it for a half hour or less and it looks wicked. Very useful, user-friendly and informative.

My First Blog Entry! :-)

2008-09-14T15:59:00.000+05:30

Well this is my first blog entry and though I should have done this long back, more than a year back... its better late than never! :-)

So here I start and hope to continue doing this more often now on!