Month: January 2010

Social processes

The following presentation was linked to by Dennis Howlett, who said:

The…slideshow from Mark Masterson makes the point that when dealing with exceptions, the best tools available to us are the knowledge that resides in people’s heads. Ergo – the argument goes: implement social software as a way of capturing that information for current/later use. I don’t have a problem with this except that as currently iterated, most of the tools represent yet another IT silo outside the process flow. Even so, I’d encourage folk like Mark to keep refining their thinking so that critics like myself stand a chance of being persuaded.

Being up to date

James Gardner has a good post on staying up to date. His point is that if you don’t bother to follow the latest developments – which might mean doing so in your own, not work, time – then you’re going to be left behind:

2010 is going to be a performance – not an experience – competition. That’s why I said the other day that I think people who are connected are going to get all the rewards this year. It’s going to be about making things happen, and that means you need an in-between.

‘In-between’ is James’ term for the time spent doing kind-of worky stuff at home. That might be reading work related books, or blogs for example. It could be tinkering with stuff – or it could even be just thinking.

This resonates with me. When I had a proper job in local government, I’d do my job, then get home and spend at least a couple of hours a night reading, scanning the web for new, interesting stuff and blogging about it. I’d play with technology, trying things out – most of which didn’t work, but some things did.

When talking about using the web as a tool to improve government, a response is often that people don’t have time to engage with all the content that is online. I usually make up something conciliatory as a response, that perhaps if something is useful, then you find time – or that you replace less productive activity with the new ways of working.

But the brutal truth is that if you don’t find the time in your schedule, which may or may not be when you are at home, or perhaps on the train, or whenever, then there is a chance you’ll be left behind. Someone will be doing it, and they will know stuff you don’t.

This could well end up being a problem for you.

Bookmarks for January 4th through January 6th

I find this stuff so that you don’t have to.

  • Enterprise 2.0: Totally Unacceptable – I don't agree, but the challenge is good: 'Too often I hear Enterprise 2.0 positioned as a technology set that represents a better way of getting things done. It doesn’t. Despite what mavens may say, it never has and never will. That’s because of itself and even with technology adopted, you gain nothing of substance without context and process. All you gain is more content. That is why I have always argued that content without context in process is meaningless.'
  • Phil Bradley’s weblog: A digital native in a wooden world – A marvelous post on change and the need for people to innovate and improve, told through a compelling story. Great blogging from Phil Bradley.
  • Legal halt for Easy Council plans – "Running an airline, however, is possibly less complex than navigating a few hundred years of local government evolution and legislation."
  • Top Intranets Embrace Mobile Accessibility and Social Networking – ReadWriteEnterprise – Intranets are becoming a higher priority for organizations. Intranet teams are growing in size, and the best of them are embracing new trends such as mobile accessibility and social networking.
  • oneDrum – "oneDrum is a free, lightweight desktop application that can turn any application into a rich, collaborative environment."

You can find all my bookmarks on Delicious.

Jakob Neilson on intranets

Jakob Neilson has some good stuff in his yearly roundup of intranet trends:

Intranet design is maturing and reaping the rewards of continuous quality improvement for traditional features, while embracing new trends like mobile access, emergency preparedness, and user/employee-contributed content.

Ideas of enterprise 2.0 are leaking into intranet design, and quite right too.

As per this post, I’m focusing a lot of my attention this year on what goes on within organisations. I dare say that few councils and other government organisations have interactive – and mobile – intranets as discussed by Nielson.

I want to explore what technology people are using and what the barriers are to adoption – and then think about what the solutions might look like.

I’m on the lookout for stories about collaboration and innovation in this space within public services – like the stuff Carl Haggerty is up to in Devon. If you have any examples, drop me a line, or leave a comment.

How I write

I thought it might be useful to offer a sneaky-peak into my processes for writing this blog. After all, given that I am trying to encourage others to do the same, it’s probably only fair that I let people know how I do it.

Obviously, it’s worth pointing out here that this works for me, and it might not for you. Also, there are probably better ways of going about it. But since I started blogging back in 2004, I’ve got into the habit of working this way, and it seems to produce a fairly steady flow of content for me.

Standing on the shoulders…

For inspiration, I spend a bit of time in Google Reader, checking out what other people are saying, Likewise with Twitter, and Delicious. I’m not necessarily hunting for things to write about, but generally imbibing information and ideas and squaring them with whatever I’m thinking about at the time. Be catholic with your reading habits – don’t just limit yourself to reading blogs in and around your own sector, but find out what people are saying elsewhere. Consider how what they write about can be applied to your interests.

Type first, think later

I spend quite a bit of time writing posts that will never see the light of day. There’s no editing at the ideas stage. Sometimes I only have a sentence, or a whiff of a concept for a post, but I make sure it’s recorded somewhere. My preference is for these to be draft posts within WordPress, but sometimes that isn’t possible, so I’ll use another tool like Evernote, or even just a text editor. I’ll usually aim to get those posts into WordPress ASAP though.

The point is that I very, very rarely sit down and write a post from beginning to end, without having a good think about it first.

So, I usually have up to ten draft posts in WordPress at any one time. I spend quite a bit of time just staring at them, then I read other things, see related content online and how I can work that into the post. Sometimes this changes what the post is about, and the original theme is lost entirely, or reduced to a footnote. What often happens is that I’ll combine two or three of the posts I have in draft to try and produce something a bit more meaty.

Go ugly early

I’ll often hit publish on posts when I’m not entirely happy with them, when the thinking is half-baked or I have a sneaking suspicion I’ve got something totally wrong. I usually get corrected in the comments, or people add stuff to help me make what I’m saying make sense. I must admit, though, that it takes a bit more nerve that usual to do this as it risks exposing me as the fraud I really am.

Your tips

So that’s a quick run through of my writing process. What tips do you have for any budding bloggers?

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