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A mistake I've seen many organisations make when considering online staff collaboration systems for staff is trying to achieve perfection at the get go - building systems from scratch or investing in high-cost branded technologies that requires significant time to implement and can be expensive to operate and develop.
More prudent, in my view, is to find a cheap way of satisfying the basic requirements while delivering quickly.
This helps get collaboration (the goal) underway and allows the organisation to progressively develop its understanding of what staff need with a low upfront investment and instant benefits. In other words, a low cost pilot - helpful in the development of detailed business requirements for a future system.
So how can organisations achieve this without expensive servers, months of development and hordes of testers?
In many cases organisations have strict 'environmental' rules - restricting the applications staff can use and websites they can access. These rules are in place partly to protect internal data and partly to protect an organisation from its own staff and their possible activities, introducing malware or other nasties into the organisation.
Using a web environment it is possible for even business users to configure several low cost servers and provide access to tools - within or outside the firewall - while shielding the network from harm.
The tools themselves are low cost or free, drawing from open source communities (tools such as MediaWiki and PhpBB), public online tools (such as Blogger and Ning) and fully featured solutions (such as Wordpress or Confluence - available via Govdex).
So if your organisation needs a quick solution for a blog, wiki or other collaboration tool, consider whether it is possible to run a low cost pilot before investing in a long-term solution
Wednesday, September 03, 2008
Collaboration doesn't have to equal cost and complexity | Tweet |
Building online employee communities | Tweet |
Trevor Cook has posted a great summary of the benefits of online employee communities, as discussed in a presentation by Alexei Fey, Senior Manager eBusiness, Savings & Loans Credit Union at the Enterprise 2.0 for Information Professionals conference in Sydney on 14 August.
Entitled Building online employee communities, the post covers many different ways of engaging online, from a CEO blog to Facebook.
US election goes Google | Tweet |
Reflecting and building on the approach taken for last year's Australian Federal Election, Google has developed a comprehensive election coverage site for the upcoming Presidential race between Barack Obama and John McCain.
Looking at how the site presents public interest information, I cannot help but wonder why this type of material is being provided by commercial entities - who could choose to push an agenda - and is not yet available from a public entity.
As a way to generate voter interest, support participation, provide supporting information and put candidates in front of the people, I hope that we see this approach continue to grow over time.
Given the influence the internet now has, and the impact of effective online use by political candidates, I can see any politicians that choose not to embrace online participation being as a severe disadvantage in future elections.
Turning that question back on public sector organisations - if your department or agency isn't adequately investing in the online channel there is also the risk of becoming increasingly less able to engage, be influenced by and influence your constituents.
My view is that online needs to begin to be treated as more of a customer service channel than as a media channel and be internally planned, managed, supported and funded accordingly.
Google Chrome web browser beta now available for download | Tweet |
The Google Chrome beta is now available at www.google.com/chrome.
I'm taking a look, and will provide impressions, as I did for Internet Explorer 8, later today.
Other information is available from ZDNet, who liveblogged the Google press conference, and from the Google Chrome media kit, which includes screenshots and videos.
Tuesday, September 02, 2008
First pic of Google Chrome | Tweet |
CNET has published what looks to be the first picture of the Google Chrome browser in an article, Google Chrome update: First screenshot, and live-blog alert.
The release looks to be scheduled for 11am US Pacific time.
