KM Overcomplicates: Heisenberg Impact on a VBA Quickie

Got a simple request from one of the folks in Operations; we’re sending out Excel spreadsheets for some quick data gathering, might we do a little basic input validation before they send in garbage that needs to be scrubbed? This person is very sharp, knows a decent bit about what is possible, and this is [...]

Back to the Future: Twitter "microblogging"

“That’s pretty good, Johnny, but that ain’t the way I heerd it. . . .”I recall when all this “blogging” talk started, way back in 1999 or so (thanks to Hallett for a decent history). The idea was to post thoughts and feelings, observations about technology, society, or whatever – anything from a daily diary [...]

Dueling Collaboration Portals

I noticed an interesting phenomenon this afternoon; we are experimenting with SharePoint as our internal project management / collaboration portal. A nice platform to choose, because it’s popularity is growing, and there are a wide selection of add-on products and development partners ready, willing, and able to help us spend our money to make it [...]

A Plea for Empathetic Communication

It’s impossible to over-communicate
Sounds a bit strong, but if you think through your real-world experiences, this shouldn’t surprise anyone. No matter how hard you try, your message will be missed by someone …
Problem: It’s all their fault!
Rely on Web 2.0, and …

… they won’t subscribe to the RSS feed; they don’t understand the concept, and [...]

Enterprise 2.1: Exiting the Trough of Disillusionment

“What will you do with that car if you actually catch it?”
– what the cat asked the dog (from the Chicago Reader, circa 1989)
So you’ve gone all “Enterprise 2.0″, spinning up a wiki, a blog, and a SharePoint or Drupal server inside your firewall. Now what happens?
The groundswell of interest in “cool tools” brings a [...]

Opportunistic Insights from the RSS Stream

I’ve written about using RSS for internal as well as external information sources. This past week, I found a couple of interesting tidbits in my feed reader (behind the firewall) …

1. Eyes on the Skies: It’s that time of year again; oil price volatility will continue if any big storms create problems for refineries [...]

No Silver Bullet for Group Collaboration over Distance?

Lots of organizations have to deal with the challenge of implementing standard work and best practices over physical distances. With sales offices, distribution centers, and manufacturing locations scattered across the country, what’s the best way to get people who know their stuff to collaborate on process improvement – and then take that knowledge back to [...]

Branching Out: Writing for the FEI Blog

Yet another interesting way that the Internet has broadened my connections and collaborations …
After connecting over LinkedIn and exchanging common interests via e-mail and blog post, the fine folks over at The Front End of Innovation blog asked me to do some posting there as well. They have a different posting style – shorter, a [...]

Thoughts During a Power Outage

I am sitting in the cube outside my office, connected by wireless to our corporate network in an otherwise darkened office. The power is out – started around 3AM, and it is apparently affecting a large area, not just this building.

Kudos to the infrastructure team that strung up the wireless access points here – thanks [...]

Success, Failure, and Insights after 12 Months of Internal Web 2.0

Different areas of our IT department are using internal blogs, wikis, and collaboration spaces, with varying degrees of participation, readership, and success. Some observations:
Blogging is Easy …
The blogs and wiki(s) have effectively removed the hassles of capturing and distributing information quickly. One important early decision was to not implement an editorial approval process for [...]