Even though I agree completely with Euan Semple, with whom I have been working closely, that these things should not cost that much (our enterprise wiki cost about GBP16k for the year!) I do feel that there will be plenty of work for consultants so I got thinking about how to gain the experience that will be needed. Here are my ideas:
Step 1. Get accounts at all of the following, use them become very familiar with them:
Digg
Flickr
Virb
YouTube
Last.fm
Del.icio.us
Wikipedia (become a wikipedian)
Skype
AIM
GMail
Upcoming
Technorati
MyBlogLog
2. At the same time - start blogging (I suggest you start with a free account at Google - blogger)
3. Study enterprise Wikis (there are only two worth looking at: Socialtext and Atlassian Confluence).
4. Perform a couple of wiki roll-outs for charities / public sector for no pay.
5. Look at personal pages like Netvibes, iGoogle and Pageflakes
6. Having become familiar with bookmarking from step 1, look at enterprise bookmarking (Cogenz is one example)
7. Read the books: The wisdom of crowds, The tipping point, Wikinomics.
8. Read everything on this blog: http://theobvious.typepad.com
If anyone has other suggestions, please leave comments.
Good luck!
4 comments:
Alek, I think these are all good ideas, and I particularly like No 4. for getting the ball rolling. It's all too easy to 'know the theory' without being able to gain traction in the marketplace. (might I be speaking from experience...? ;-) ).
You don't mention RSS readers. I'd suggest adding those to the list.
Hi Alek! Those are some clear steps to understanding social computing today but I think that it's important to remember why you would do it in the first place. Maybe add a few points on the failings of email, shared drives etc? Perhaps thats too obvious to say but many people just dont get it and see it as a geeky internet trend that is not applicable to the every-day.
Simon, sorry its taken me so long to reply, I have been traveling.
Thanks for your positive feedback, It would be good to hear more of your experiences.
Yes of course RSS is an omission. The only thing I would say in my defense is that one would surly come across RSS while experimenting with personal pages like NetVibes.
I agree though that any 2.0 specialist should have a good understanding of installed RSS clients and their use.
Thanks again.
Thanks Rupert.
I do agree that a major benefit of the new tools is that they bring a much better way to communicate than email.
This brings for me a real sense of Déjà vu because the email argument was around in 1999/2000 and use as a main justification for the establishment of company intranets. This fact is often overlooked by modern vendors of social collaboration tools who can tend to think they invented the idea.
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