cazh1 » Twitter

Fragmentation of Social Sharing Environments

Jim MacLennan — Sat, 22 Oct 2011 22:06:47 +0000

Progress requires innovation, success spawns imitation, competition requires differentiation – and after 7+ years of “Web 2.0”, there are multiple sharing environments vying for our attention (and participation).

Content Creation

Blogging has morphed beyond it’s “personal diary” origins; Blogger, WordPress, and the various CMS platforms have moved to become a long-format publishing platforms that continue to evolve. My own experience with this blog (cazh1) and internal blogs at work has shown that “posts” are more essays, articles, documentation on what and how, status reports for projects or trips.

I’ve recently begin experimenting with a new (for me) type of blogging – I’ll call it short-format, and it hearkens back to the old-school, diarist model. This is a place to put short notes, observations, maybe sketches / photos for an Artist / Designer, code snips for a Engineer / Developer, or experimental prose for an Author / Poet. The format is exemplified by tumblr, a fast-growing platform that hosts some amazing content and is giving the old stalwarts some competition.

Click for the original ...

Content Sharing

But what about the Usual Suspects – Facebook and Google+? I don’t see these platforms as content creation engines as much as they are content sharing engines; ubiquitous Share This! links, the +1’s and Like buttons that give “social media” their differentiating characteristic; networks of contacts that are of a like mind, in your Circles or Smart Lists, add value and context to the original content.

I see Flickr and YouTube as hybrids. Flickr is driven by people adding pictures; you can see / browse / search, and it has a personal, sharing-my-photo-album quality. YouTube, in the other hand, is more like a new video broadcast network; lately, it seems like the number of personal videos is dwarfed by ad campaigns, political messages, and music / entertainment videos.

Antics with Semantics

Yes, I understand that you can Follow other tumblrs. Facebook pages and Google+ circles are creating content as profound and banal as the bloggers. And I’m glossing over professional networks like LinkedIn, which can be oversimplified as an electronic form of career networking. All of this has great value, is very relevant to the conversation – but all have subtle nuances, different use cases where they drive value.

Where does Twitter fit in? The best description to date seems to be micro-blogging; the 140-character limit forces a style and controls depth of meaning – Twitter is more of a broadcast medium, a virtual bulletin board or cocktail party, best understood by watching trending topics when events are breaking. Content is created, and RT’s and hash tags give weight to an ideas current mindshare.

An Excuse for Experimentation

Clearly, there is no one best answer when trying to figure out how social networks can drive a business. There are many platforms and technologies, all of which are evolving to deliver different messages and produce different results. There is no one best solution – and the only way to be able to glibly comment on how this might impact your business is by diving in, learning what these things can and cannot deliver. Or find someone who had done it, who is still doing it.

Just don’t go by what you read in airline magazines or see on TV – sound bites won’t cut it.

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© Jim MacLennan for cazh1, 2011. | Permalink | No comment |
Post tags: Blog, Blogger, business value, Facebook, Google, Google Plus, LinkedIn, networking, Social Media, Social Networks, Tumblr, Twitter, Web 2.0, WordPress, YouTube

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Twitter and the First Amendment

Jim MacLennan — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 02:05:59 +0000

Here lies Dobby ...

Apparently, 2011 is the year when Twitter, Facebook, and smartphone videos are graduating from Social Networking toys to evolutionary, revolutionary Sociology tools. Can they be controlled by governments or big business? It’s been argued that any such controls might run afoul of Amendment No. 1 from our Bill of Rights … how amazing for a clever hack that originated in a daylong brainstorming session.

Freedom of Speech, Assembly, and the Press

What is a tweet? 140 characters – one or two sentences. (Feel the need to shout? Use capital letters)

What is a Twitter account but a three dimensional megaphone? Where Speech used to be spoken and printed, but ephemeral and land locked, we now have written and permanent, multi-lingual, globally available, and permanently, stubbornly, indeliby saved for repeated viewing.

And what is a twitter #hashtag but a thread to connect one or more people into a continuous stream of sentences. A conversation. A “flash mob”. An Assembly.

What happens when blog authors are accused of being less-than-professional journalists? Well, they’ve already been granted the title, now we’re negotiating …

WIIFM?

I don’t know, I just like noticing the arc of the storyline for these Internet innovations. Who would have thought that something starting out as a “short burst of inconsequential information” …

… would morph into a haven for publicity hounds and the traffic-obsessed

… and continue to evolve as a facilitator of planned group meetings

… to something that was an instigator and planner of, well, really big group meetings?

The framers would have loved Twitter and Facebook, and how they evolved into the new tools for political and social change. Thank goodness creative and imaginative folks started playing around with them.

So what interesting, different, and strange technology have you tried to apply to your business today? Hopefully something that you have no idea how it might possibly be applicable to the [business] world that you know.

You might find that it takes you in a direction you never thought possible.

(with thanks to Harry and the Whale …)

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Post tags: bill of rights, Facebook, freedom, group meetings, internet innovations, social networking, Twitter

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Gartner Symposium 2010

Jim MacLennan — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 01:55:49 +0000

Last week, I was able to attend this annual Gartner event – something akin to SAPPHIRE, the SAP uber-users group meeting, without the vendor specific rah-rah. An interesting event – 7400 attendees, over four days. A typical conference – multiple sessions along major tracks, and I bounced between sessions dealing with these issues:

Master Data – Continuing to look for the latest information – this is still a fast growing software market, and ideas around things like “data governance” (people and process) first, “master data management” (tools – machines talking to machines) second, are getting established within many corporations.
Change Management, Agility, IT in Transition – things like mixing “fast twitch” (agile) and “controlled” (waterfall) methodologies, and balancing limited resources & requests across multiple competing initiatives.
Emerging Business Priorities – less on the technology, more towards a realization of / developing understanding on how economy and technology are changing expectations and strategies of the business – and how the business can (and / or should) leverage technology to make sure they succeed / thrive.
Vendor management / Dealing with strategic vendors – Consolidation (acquisitions) in the vendor space, plus the sense that some vendors (like Microsoft, Oracle, SAP) may feel they are locked in to our business – so how do you manage them so that you get what you need from the relationship?

Click to enlarge ...

The Magic In the Middle

Jim MacLennan — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 02:58:49 +0000

I don’t know where I first heard that phrase, or what it originally meant, but I have been using it a lot in the last few weeks …

Consider the entire user population for any web site or application. You can generalize all user populations into three Pareto-inspired groups …

Top 20% – The folks who “get it”, and have the brains, the interest, and the desire to fully understand the system / tool / report / whatever, and get the most benefit out of it. In Pareto terms, the 20% that get 80% of the value.
Bottom 20% – The “hopeless”; those that just don’t get the concept (and need constant handholding), have no interest in using the app (at best, they will have someone do it for them), and no desire to expand their horizons and learn something new. In Pareto terms, the 20% that cause 80% of the problems.
Middle 60% – aka “everybody else”. This is the group of users that could get value out of the project, process / program, but need more handholding, guided learning, and/or managerial promises (/threats) to commit to learning how to use and apply this new tool.

Click for the original ...

I call this last group “the magic in the middle”; this is the user group you need to win over to ensure success for the project. In corporate IT, most projects would be considered a failure if they only got 20% of their target audience to realize the promised value – then again, no one expects 100% success, especially with the bottom 20% of folks that will Just Never Get It. So, the make or break “target market” for training and retention is the “magic in the middle” – the folks who need a reasonable level of documentation and training to get things to work.

Note that “magic” refers to the fact that what really differentiates success – that core region of 60% – is the make-or-break group that takes the extra effort. It’s not good enough that your top finance folks understand the new reporting and analytics system – the middling folks that need more handholding and examples are the ones you need to focus on. It’s not good enough that your top project managers understand the new methodology – the journeyman PMs that have more tech background than change management and communication skills need guidance and templates and checklists to make sure the minimal I’s are dotted and T’s are crossed.

Interesting Observation …

This is one of the core reasons why analogies between corporate IT and consumer IT often fail. How many times have people in the business asked IT for projects as flexible, ubiquitous, user friendly, and high quality as Flickr, Basecamp, and gMail? Or tried to address internal communication and collaboration challenges with tools like Facebook, Twitter, and Google Groups? Why do folks look at highly target-marketed sites / communities of practice, and cynically wonder why internal IT can’t turn over project requests with the same level of speed and quality?

One key reason – those sites only need to go after the Top 5% group of focused, engaged, and technically able potential consumers – because the internet is so big, there is plenty of money to be made from such a small percentage of the total user population. Unfortunately for corporate IT, it is not OK to implement systems that are effective only for 20% of the target user community – expectations are more like 50-80% of the user population needs to be reasonably glib in the system to be judged effective.

… but What Does It Mean?

Corporate IT is forced to go after the “middle” group – the 60 percent of the user base who needs a lot more TLC to understand and be effective in the tools and systems we provide.

However, I call it “magic” for a reason. You can leverage a lot of value once you realize that “the magic is in the middle”:

Training: When you understand the low-end expectations for end-user competence, you can target your training material at that level – and no lower.
Testing for 100% of all cases is exhausting and time consuming, a real drain on resources. However, only testing the basics (the Top 20%) won’t require a lot of rigor, for the error checks are simplistic and the level of scrutiny is much higher. If you want to do an acceptable amount of decent quality testing, your test cases should involve “the magic in the middle”.
Vendors: Bringing them in for a demo? Salesmen typically target business scenarios that are the “low hanging fruit” (in the Top 20%), and it’s easy to understand when the software can’t handle the “worst case scenario” (the Bottom 20%); get the sales team to demo something from “a typical Day In the Life” (the Middle 60%)

The Top 20% group is the easiest to service, the Bottom 20% is the easiest to ignore. The magic is in the middle, and success here separates the excellent from the also-rans in corporate IT.

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Post tags: cognition, education, Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Social Networks, Twitter

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More Amazing Social Media Statistics

Jim MacLennan — Wed, 05 May 2010 04:36:16 +0000

A follow-on from my last post; speaking of interesting Social Media statistics … would you believe …

If Facebook were a country, it would be the world’s 4th largest
80% of companies are using LinkedIn as their primary tool to find employees
In 2009, Boston College stopped distributing e-mail addresses to incoming freshmen
80% of Twitter usage is on mobile devices
25% of search results for the world’s Top 20 largest brands are links to user-generated content

Pretty amazing stuff … check out this video for more …

I was referred to this video short by a friend, and I dug into the source a bit – check out the Socialnomics blog for more stats and videos. For example, this one on Social Media ROI …

… although, I am currently still of the opinion that social media is applicable to consumer markets; I’m not sure how it applies yet to B2B industry.

However, I’m not going to wait around to find out … but I guess I can’t talk about that right now …

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Post tags: Facebook, Google, information, interesting stuff, LinkedIn, millennials, networking, possibilities, Presentations, Social Media, Social Networks, Socialnomics, trends, Twitter, video, Web 2.0, YouTube

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eMail is Dead, Long Live Social Networking: Don’t Get Left Behind

Jim MacLennan — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 03:29:11 +0000

via Fred Wilson – a stunning slide from Morgan Stanley’s recent Internet Trends report:

Click to enlarge ...

The primary topic of the report is the growth and future prospects of the mobile internet – reason enough read through all 87 slides. However, I am slightly amazed by the fact that eMail runs second to the relatively new phenomenon of Social Networking, driven primarily by consumer behavior and Generation Y.

Admit it – more than once, YouTube and Twitter have made the water-cooler talk circuit, as folks text their kids and rave about connecting with long-lost high school and college chums on Facebook. We’ve all seen upticks in LinkedIn traffic as the economy has driven job networking skills to this professional social network.

The Internet’s “Gen-X” Surpassed

Another Morgan Stanley slide shows how the young-uns have surpassed their web-based brethren – first YouTube, now Facebook have taken over the internet …

click to enlarge

In just three short years, a significant movement of mindshare from one web property to another – but don’t stop there. The immersive user experience of Facebook and YouTube is very different from personalized Yahoo and Google portals, and business and social messaging has changed rapidly to adapt.

So how does that translate to business productivity and process management environment?

Business Process Automation Architecture is Falling Farther Behind

eMail is still the dominate business process environment in corporate America. Don’t believe me? Got users clamoring to switch from Notes to Outlook, or desktop-based to cloud-based service? Try introducing mailbox size limitations or document retention limits, and see how many folks squawk. Spin up a few SharePoint sites and insist that all file sharing be done in shared folders (no attachments allowed!). Insist that all discussions take place in forums, not via Re: and Fw: eMail chains. How successful do you think that will be?

Now, there’s no reason to panic; the population within many corporations have an interesting ability to want consumer level flexibility, speed, usability, and “fun factor” in their personal electronics, but few have that same sense of humor about their day-to-day job. “Go ahead and upgrade, as long as my process does not change at all”.

I’m sure this varies at different corporations – based on the average age of the user population. This is not meant as a slight, just an admission of reality – even I don’t quite get some of the communication norms embraced by my daughters.

However, I am very aware that with each passing quarter, new employees and incoming contractors join our work teams, expecting increasing levels of openness, information access, and social connections. It’s only a matter of time until the internal preference measures match the switch shown in the first slide above – will our business process teams be ready?

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Post tags: behavior, eMail, Facebook, Gen-X, millennials, Morgan Stanley, networking, social, Social Networks, trends, Twitter, Web 2.0, YouTube

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Underwhelming experiences with Google Wave

Jim MacLennan — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 01:22:00 +0000

Took some time today to work with the new communication meme – Google Wave. I wouldn’t call it a fundamentally new way to communicate – well, not yet. I think Google is safe to continue with a “preview” label – clearly not even “beta” yet. No horrible bugs – at least on the Windows platform – but some obviously missing features. And, I am not all that impressed with the basic idea – it’s just a mashup of Google Docs, instant messenger, and eMail.

Problems

All of my experimentation has been from a Windows machine – I am experiencing horrible performance issues with Firefox 3.5.3 on Ubuntu 9.04. I freely admit that this might not be a Wave issue – for the last two weeks, all of my Google sites (Mail, Docs, iGoogle, Reader …) run brutally slow, timing out by graying the browser window. I know it’s a weird issue because I can’t Google for an answer (a disturbingly tight loop). Wave refused to even show me the stills from the introductory videos until I disabled Greasemonkey. Yes, I’m sure it has something to do with my setup, my installed plugins – I’m just surprised that the problems have been this stubborn.

So, to get anything done, it’s back to Windows – still using Firefox, but no hint of platform troubles. Just an underwhelming experience with the fancy new toy.

I Am Legend

Interconnections on the internet are a wonderful thing; I put out a Tweet (sic) regarding my Wave invites, and a note in LinkedIn as well. Twitter generated the most responses, with folks I’d never met – great fun to connect like that. The following day, I got a note from someone looking to connect via Wave – I’m guessing from the information that I can see, this person saw one of my original notes via Friendfeed. Amazing how those copnnections were practically spontaneous …

… while Wave feels like I’m in a walled garden. I still feel very cut off in the Wave world – a different domain from gmail.com means a new address to track, a new contact list to build. And it’s difficult to find connections with folks you already know; I received another Wave invite from a friend, but since I didn’t need it, I tried to figure out how to connect to him via Wave (I thought it a reasonable assumption that he, like me, has dived in). Unfortunately, I had to resort to an email message and some detective work to find out his Google ID – not something I could explain to most business users.

Yet Another Email Client

Yes, I am still at that opinion. Most of the opinions and articles I’ve scanned make it sound like we are working with a next-gen email client that does some of the basics right. I do note that the amplifiers tend to gush a bit, while the attenuators work hard to impress with wit.

Generally Pro

Generally Con

Maybe It’s Just Me

One of my random invites went to this guy, who’s review was a bit more positive than mind. Ok, maybe I’ll jump into the with:public pool and wade around a while – it’s probably the only way I’ll really get it. However, I am very willing to be patient and continue the experiment – took me about 3 months to get Twitter.

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Post tags: Collaboration, Google, innovation, Knowledge Management, LinkedIn, mashup, Twitter, Wave, Web 2.0

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Notes from SAPPHIRE 09

Jim MacLennan — Sat, 16 May 2009 15:45:00 +0000

Yesterday at work was “catch-up day” from a week at SAPPHIRE 2009, the annual user conference for SAP. As with the JDA/Manugistics conference earlier this year, there were concerns that attendance was going to be low, because so many companies are limiting travel expense. At the conference, I did hear that attendance was only was 60% lower than last year.

Conferences like this are great opportunities for IT to do a ton of learning – about the specific technology, of course, but also about the state of mobile computing and collaboration, tools that we are apparently trying to get the rest of the business world to adopt. Experiential learning, real-world experience – always better to talk about something that you know works / doesn’t work in a practical setting. (No, I don’t suggest you replace Quicken with SAP at home, although that might be a growth area for BbD).

Twitter at a Conference

I wrote up my trip report / internal blog entry yesterday (Friday), but I was twittering a lot during some of the sessions, so it was an easy write up – I just cut-and-paste from my personal timeline. Using the Blackberry during the conference was a pretty good experience; I could take fairly detailed notes on what was being said – plus, I can throw out passing Tweets on the way. Near-real time knowledge sharing – very nice for folks in the Tweeterverse, watching the information go by.

Unfortunately, it’s a bit difficult to engage in a Tweet-versation with these client devices; the screen is too small, and you only see what you are typing. I did, however, latch on to the #sapphire09 hash tag to come up with a workable monitoring process. I found that search.twitter.com presents a decent RSS feed, one that the Blackberry browser consumes quite nicely. I don’t know if this is a “native” RSS reader in the blackberry, but it worked amazingly well – I made a passing mention of one of the sessions I attended, and someone asked for more detail – so I ended up tweeting almost every slide.

Apotheker

The Tuesday morning address by Leo Apotheker started with some doom and gloom about the economy, but that was just a lead-in to SAP’s new branding message of promoting “clarity” for the enterprise; making pertinent business information easy to access, easy to see. Some of my tweets from the speech … I clearly (sic) have a different editorial style …

Apoetheker starting with the doom and gloom #sapphire09 7:38 AM May 12th
My inner cynic is subsiding – I actually like the appeal for “clarity” #sapphire09 7:42 AM May 12th
Are “clear enterprises” like “glass houses”? (Sorry, cynic is back) #sapphire09 7:44 AM May 12th
Is he about to say sap could have prevented the economic collapse? #sapphire09 7:56 AM May 12th
Ah, just the story of how goldman sachs did ok because they actively manage risk #sapphire09 7:57 AM May 12th
We need a simple example of how a manufacturer manages risk #sapphire09 7:58 AM May 12th
SUGEN KPI Framework for enterprise support – nice focus on transparency #sapphire09 7:59 AM May 12th
Props – a pretty effective live demo of a blackberry enabled work process #sapphire09 8:03 AM May 12th
The carbon footprint app looks interesting – this is a recurring theme for recent presentations for me #sapphire09 8:17 AM May 12th
I think its a harsh. retroactive self criticism when this “speedy query” demo admits that a simple query would take ‘weeks’ #sapphire09 8:27 AM May 12th
SRO crowd at presentation for information “dashboards” – yet another recurring topic, still unmet need #sapphire09 1:11 PM May 12th
Sap guy was apparently unable to say “eat our own dogfood”, too closely related to microsoft hhh #sapphire09 1:19 PM May 12th

The most interesting areas of Leo’s conversation had to do with the metrics being created by SUGEN (not), a collection of all the national user groups (like ASUG). SAP continues to get lots of pushback from the customer base about their increased support fees, and these metrics are going to allow us all to see how SAP is performing.

Plattner

The Wednesday morning address by Hasso Plattner, one of the founders of SAP and a pretty interesting guy, started out like a technical lecture at engineering school about in-memory databases and columnar data. By the end, it had transitioned to a Business Objects demo and a tool “easy enough that a CEO can use it”. Here are some tweets from that speech …

Hasso on speed [sic] – spotlighting the reams of data and the need for decent access tools #sapphire09 7:44 AM May 13th
Hasso is very professorial – if it weren’t for the subject matter, methinks more would pass on the talk #sapphire09 7:53 AM May 13th
Ok, reading other #sapphire09 tweets now – is a shoe dropping right now? Re sap and hardware … #sapphire09 7:57 AM May 13th
Someone should register spaghettibeforecooking.com #sapphire09 7:59 AM May 13th
Maybe hasso’s point is that clarity / speed yap from yesterday is not smoke and mirrors – solid tech supporting this sales stuff #sapphire09 8:16 AM May 13th
Insert only – like the old one-write accounting systems – ledgers in pen. Make a mistake, back it out. Complete auditability #sapphire09 8:19 AM May 13th
Is insert only / read only db stuff analogous to RISC chips? Who needs elegance when you think Real Fast. #sapphire09 8:20 AM May 13th
Head-snapping shift from professor to jester #sapphire09 8:23 AM May 13th
Hasso rips on EIE processing (everything in excel) #sapphire09 8:24 AM May 13th
Oh, I think he just said he is talking about t-rex #sapphire09 8:29 AM May 13th
Hasso is definitly tech at heart, rips into classic demo style of demo on mini data set #sapphire09 8:30 AM May 13th
hasso’s enthusiasm is honest, like the literate engineer given a moment of exec management’s attention #sapphire09 8:34 AM May 13th
Awesome animated pipeline #sapphire09 8:41 AM May 13th
Boy he started slow but has he hit stride in last 10 min #sapphire09 8:43 AM May 13th
Table scans not considered harmful #sapphire09 8:48 AM May 13th

This was pretty interesting technology – high-speed, insert only databases. Not sure what that means for the long term of our existing databases, data warehouses, and hardware. But hey, it’s only capital – right?

Elsewhere On the Web

General interest / watchfulness towards the SAP strategy, as the company faces questions like technology platforms, support fees, and a new CEO …
Fortune magazine’s totally non-technical take on Leo Apotheker …
Vinnie Merchandani’s summary of show hilights, plus insights on SAP’s long-term strategy
SAP and Social Networking – I didn’t catch these presentations / conversations, but many are writing / tweeting about it …
Definite focus during the week on Business Objects … it actually looks pretty good …
Some summary comments from ZDNet …

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Post tags: analytics, ASUG, BlackBerry, Blog, business value, client devices, collaboration tools, conference, ERP, Execution, Hasso Plattner, having fun, JDA, KPI, Lean Manufacturing, Leo Apotheker, Manugistics, meetings, RSS, SAP, SAPPHIRE, Science, SUGEN, trade show, trip report, Twitter, Vinnie Merchandani

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Five Stages of Twitter Relevance

Jim MacLennan — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 03:36:00 +0000

Click for the original

I’m already fielding internal (as well as external) questions about the application of Twitter in a manufacturing company, and I’m developing a reasonably good model, I think – one that will apply to the hard-core, salt-of-the-earth, manufacturing business leader that I’ve worked with at many organizations.

This “maturity model” approach has been used before; back in December of 2008, Bhagarva sketched out the Five Stages of Twitter Acceptance – but that model only helps existing bloggers and social networkers understand this terse little idea spitter. Kind of like explaining OOP to a COBOL developer – I get the general idea of coding (communicating), but you’ve changed some of the basic rules like procedural vs. event handling (short and immediate vs. in depth and permanent).

This doesn’t help explain YACMTTCDFE (Yet Another Communication Method That They Can’t Distinguish From Email) for those still struggling with Web 2.0 and Social Networks. If it doesn’t arrive in their Outlook inbox, I’m still facing an uphill struggle getting them to understand the mechanism, let alone the concept.

However, I’m getting a decent level of results when I draw parallels to concepts that these folks “grew up” with. The level of understanding and acceptance directly correlates to the level of relevance that the Twitterverse might have for their current information sharing needs. They typically ask …

How exactly do I understand Twitter and it’s relevance to my work day?

Pointless: This has absolutely no value add, a complete waste of time – get back to work!
Cute: An interesting and different communication medium, but I gotta get back to work. Maybe over lunch …
Web-Based Texting: Conversations about nothing in particular, but at least you’re starting to connect. Not sure how it is better than IM, but some don’t even use that …
A Cocktail Party (or maybe the corner bar): Twitter is filled with cliques that are easy to eavesdrop / butt in on – a chance to develop your skills and awareness, and engage larger, targeted networks with pointed conversations about specific topics that I deal with every day. But no pressure, we’re just hanging out ..
A Community: Like a trade group, guild, or local Chamber of Commerce, one that requires and rewards participation. At this highest level, Twitter is both a source and a use of awareness, knowledge and understanding; conversations are multi-directional, real business value is being generated.

I can illustrate these levels with examples from my favorite Twitter Search columns in my Tweetdeck (Search:SAP)

Do I really care if the sap is running this spring?
Funny, I get hits when people watch sap-py movies. Oh, those wacky homonyms …
Twitter as a job board – every SAP job listing pops up. Wait, did I just see a trend tweet by?
Hmm, lots of interesting SAP practitioners are talking about live projects and cutting edge programming work …
Interesting conversations pop up when Oracle buys Sun, or SAP announces the latest product enhancements – I can get a near-real time pulse on market sentiment

I’ve piqued their interest, but now they want to know what “real business value” really means. I’ll post on that next time … stay tuned!

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Post tags: SAP, Social Networks, Tweetdeck, Twitter, Web 2.0

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Practical Applications of Twitter in Manufacturing?

Jim MacLennan — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 21:33:00 +0000

Over the past few weeks I’ve had a couple of interesting discussions about the introduction of Twitter to Manufacturing. When someone poses a question like this to me, it throws me for a minor loop, because for very basic, practical reasons, it just doesn’t seem to apply. More keyboards & data entry on the floor? Not likely.

However, a few months ago I wrote this rather breathless item, expounding on a brainstorm regarding the use of YouTube and Twitter in a manufacturing setting. Back then, my summary point was about the value of alternative mechanisms for capturing and distributing process documentation. I noted that Twitter was less intimidating than other documentation tools – it’s all about capturing status or best practices. But after the past few months of heavier use (@jpmacl), I typically explain Twitter as a keyboard-enhanced conversation – a “false path” for Lean aficionados if you are trying to capture knowledge (the Archaeopteryx of Manufacturing KM?)

But Twitter as an alternative communication medium for folks on the floor? I really don’t think it’s a good fit – and this is based on practical experience as well as a little common sense.

The Tweeter as Information Source

Are you trying to understand how Twitter would work in your environment? Don’t think you can get it right without some decent hands-on time. You’ll find that it’s very intrusive – not something that you want on 100% of the time. For me, it makes sense when I’m catching up on notes for the day, clearing e-mails, scheduling meetings, or other lighter work that doesn’t suffer greatly from periodic chirps from my Tweetdeck. It’s running on the second monitor; every once in while I will glance over to scan the latest potentially valuable conversations to jump into.

This scenario would never work on the manufacturing floor. There’s no way the Environmental Health & Safety folks will allow anything to distract folks from completing the tasks at their workstation.

Besides, hitting the keyboard for status updates is exactly the kind of non-value-adding data entry that Lean mavens are working to eliminate. Note that when I say “non-value-adding”, I am referring to Finished Goods; standard work, training and knowledge retention are important in a Lean world, but not while you’re actually getting work done.

The Tweeter as Information Consumer

On the other hand, if there is a Tweetdeck-style application available, running on a screen that is visible to an entire workcenter – well, maybe the folks on the floor can be _consumers_ of Tweets. Then again, it’s just another RSS application, nothing Twitter-specific.

Web 2.0 Technology and Manufacturing

Are manufacturing firms using Twitter? I’d say that few are – and it’s based on the “personality” of a typical manufacturing company.

IT is typically <3% of total revenue – not an environment that fosters experimentation / cutting edge IT work
Lean is a growing force in manufacturing, and Lean is decidedly anti-computer – so no one will have a keyboard at the ready to start Tweeting!

Now, to be fair, you could cherry pick high-tech manufacturers; certainly, there are many engineering departments that are sharing information and communicating real time. But when I hear “manufacturing” I’m thinking line managers, shift supervisors … not typically the keyboard types. They like their push-to-talk phones, and that’s really all the instant communication they need.

Aren’t there any potential benefits of Twitter for manufacturing? Directly – not much, I’m afraid. However, as with any area of the business that traffics in knowledge capital, the Design Engineering and Manufacturing Engineering folks might find benefit in information-sharing collaborative networks and “real-time” connections.

Note, however, that I am greatly interested in hearing counter-examples of the above. Anyone aware of interesting Twitter-ing on the floor?

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© Jim MacLennan for cazh1, 2009. | Permalink | No comment |
Post tags: Art, behavior, Communication, communication medium, documentation tools, Execution, Knowledge Management, manufacturing, process documentation, Safety, Supply Chain, Twitter, usability

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