Tuesday, 4 June, 2013

Monday, 3 June, 2013

Know your company

Know Your Company, from 37 Signals, is a really interesting looking idea. As with all their products, from Basecamp to Highrise, it has resulted from scratching their own itch – in other words, solving a problem they had.

37 Signals CEO Jason Fried says that Know Your Company aims to meet the following outcomes:

  1. Every week I wanted to learn something new about how my employees felt about our business, our work, and our culture.
  2. Every week I wanted everyone to know what everyone else was working on. It’s not enough for me to be informed – everyone’s in this together.
  3. Every week I wanted everyone to share something non-work related with each other. A book they read recently, a new recipe they’ve tried, something, anything that would help form surprise bonds between people.
  4. I wanted all this information catalogued and plotted over time.This way I could spot trends and shifts in morale, hone in on longer-term insights, spot outliers that need special attention, etc.

The system they developed also met the following requirements.

  1. As CEO, maintaining a healthy culture isn’t someone else’s job — it’s my job. I had to take responsibility for knowing my people and knowing my company. That buck starts and stops with me.
  2. Answers only come when you ask questions, so the tool had to be built around questions. People generally don’t volunteer information re: morale, mood, motivation unless they’re directly asked about it.
  3. The entire system had to be optional. No one at the company should be forced to use it. Forcing people to give you feedback is ineffective and builds resentment.
  4. This couldn’t be a burden on my employees. Employees would never have to sign up for something or log into anything.
  5. Information had to come in frequently and regularly. Huge information dumps once or twice a year are paralyzing and lead to inaction.
  6. I had to follow-through. If someone (or a group of people) suggested an important change, and it made sense, I had to do everything I could to make it happen. I wasn’t creating this system to gather information and do nothing about it.
  7. It had to be automated, super easy (for me and my employees), non-irritating, and regular like clockwork. This had to eventually become habit for everyone involved. If it ever felt like something that was in the way or annoying, it wouldn’t work. It had to be something people looked forward to every week.
  8. Feedback had to be attached to real people – it couldn’t be anonymous. You need to know your people individually, not ambiguously. If someone has a problem, you need to know who it is so you can talk to them about it. This requires trust on everyone’s part.
  9. Success depended on a combination of automated, and face-to-face, back-and-forth with my team. The unique combination of automated and face-to-face communication play off each other in really positive ways.

Those nine requirements could work for any online tool, I reckon!

The whole thing sounds pretty cool and I would imagine that this kind of business intelligence tool is the sort of thing that anyone wanting to work a bit better needs to have available. Right now the Know Your Company website is pretty coy about what this thing looks like and how it works – but if reality matches the promise, it ought to be a terrifically useful tool for leaders in organisations.

#Know your company

Link roundup

I find this stuff so you don’t have to:

#Link roundup

Saturday, 1 June, 2013

Link roundup

I find this stuff so you don’t have to:

#Link roundup

Friday, 31 May, 2013

Link roundup

I find this stuff so you don’t have to:

#Link roundup

Thursday, 30 May, 2013

Replacing Google Reader: and the winner is…

…NewsBlur.

newblurlogoWhy did I choose NewsBlur? To be honest I don’t really know – it’s just that, after a little time of using it, NewBlur just felt right.

A few of the options that emerged once Google announced the closure of Reader were claiming to reinvent the RSS reader, as if the whole thing was broken. I never felt that it was. Reader worked rather nicely to for me, so I just wanted something that did something similar.

NewsBlur to me seemed to take RSS as seriously as I do – which isn’t very, I suppose, but maintains a healthy respect. I don’t want my RSS reader to be like Twitter, Facebook, or – heaven forfend! – Flipboard. I don’t want my RSS reader to be beautiful, or ‘delightful’ – I just want it to aggregate all the things I like reading in one place for me.

NewsBlur does have some extra bits, like commenting within the reader rather than on the original sites, which I’m not sure about (it’s hard enough to get people commenting on blogs as it is, these days!) and so won’t use. Also the sharing option seems to create a separate link blog, hosted by NewsBlur.

My previous sharing system just used the stars in Google Reader and IFTTT to ping links to Twitter and also to the roundup posts in this blog. I could do that in Reader by just pressing the ‘s’ key – super simple. Right now I have gone back to bookmarking links in Pinboard, which adds some time to the process which is a bit annoying. Maybe I could set this up in NewsBlur? If anyone has ideas, let me know.

#Replacing Google Reader: and the winner is…

Run that town

Run that Town is an interesting game from the Australian Bureau of Statistics that uses real census data. It’s certainly a lovely looking thing.

From the blurb:

Use real Census data to discover who’s who in your area, and make decisions that will sway popular opinion in your favour. Choose from hundreds of projects for your town – from the practical to the preposterous.

What kind of leader will you be? Will you be treated to a ticker tape parade, or chased out of town by an angry mob?

Here’s a video, explaining more.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=rif1698fH2E

#Run that town

Tuesday, 28 May, 2013

Link roundup

I find this stuff so you don’t have to:

#Link roundup

Friday, 24 May, 2013

Link roundup

I find this stuff so you don’t have to:

#Link roundup

Help me save the Knowledge Hub (in some form)

An email from the Knowledge Hub team at the LGA:

As Knowledge Hub user I felt it necessary to contact you with this news. You may have read in today’s press due to cost the LGA are proposing to close the Knowledge Hub facility. There is statutory 30 day consultation period (consultation closes on 23 June) on these proposals. As project lead I am very sorry to have to bring you this news. Many of you have invested time and effort in the platform and we as a team have worked extremely hard to deliver what we feel is a valuable and vital service for local government at this difficult time.

The organisation has decided that in the face of further cuts funding is unsustainable.

This is a terrible shame for local government. Cross sector sharing of knowledge and learning is vital if councils are to meet the challenges they face.

I know I could make the Knowledge Hub work: with a change of technology, a new business model, and some great community management.

I think we can make the Knowledge Hub – or whatever it might be called – like LocalGovCamp – only all the time and everywhere.

I suspect I need to convince the LGA to let me do this. After all, I want the existing content on the Knowledge Hub to import into the new system, and the user data too. Otherwise, starting from scratch will most likely make life extremely difficult.

So, I’d like some help. The best form is probably in expressions of support, perhaps publicly on the comments of this post. If you think local government needs a knowledge sharing platform, and you think I might be the person to make a decent fist of it, then do please let me, and the LGA, know.

Thanks!

#Help me save the Knowledge Hub (in some form)

How in-the-browser software should work

I wrote recently about my growing unease with the addiction we have with ever greater convenience with our computing over the necessity of control. A lot of this is driven by cloud, and software-as-a-service (SaaS).

The convenience of SaaS is difficult to argue with. No installing software. No upgrades. Files accessible wherever you want them. The ability to share documents and collaborate on them with others in real time.

The downsides are all to do with control of your data. If it’s a paid service, and you stop paying, can you still access and open your files? Or if the company behind the system goes belly up? Is all your data locked up inside a system, or in a format you can’t reuse?

It is possible for those behind cloud based software to get it right though. Take a look at Dave Winer‘s new tool, Fargo. It’s an outliner (and outliners are cool, remember) and based in the browser. However, it also:

  • uses Dropbox for storage, so you have access to your files via Dropbox’s website, or downloaded locally to your computer, whenever you want. It’s not locked into Fargo’s own filesystem
  • uses the open standard OPML for the file format, so if you stop using Fargo for whatever reason, you can still load your files into any outliner that uses the OPML standard (which they all do, if they’re worth their salt)

This is how in-the-browser software ought to work. All the advantages of cloud based applications without giving up the control over our data that traditional desktop apps give.

#How in-the-browser software should work

Thursday, 23 May, 2013

Loomio

Loomio looks like a neat tool for groups to discuss a topic and to come to decisions. Often online discussions just go nowhere and don’t result in specific actions. Maybe this is a solution to that problem?

Here’s a video.

#Loomio

Dumb Store

Apparently, not everyone has a smartphone! News to me.

Anyway, the Dumb Store is potentially very exciting, I think. Apps for ‘dumb’ phones – ie those that have limited ability to access the internet and the web.

They can be interacted with by sending SMS messages or making voice calls.

The SMS option is most interesting as it turns your message into a command line of sorts. So, for the Google Maps directions app, you text something like:

dir High Street, Peterborough to Letsbe Avenue, Dundee

and you then get a text back with the directions. Neato!

Apps are written in Ruby, apparently. Still, a potential step forward for making web services more accessible to folk without the latest mobile kit!

#Dumb Store

Codebunk

Codebunk looks like a neat in the browser editor for writing and testing code. Particularly useful, I think, for those learning to program.

Here’s a video that demonstrates how it works.

#Codebunk

Wednesday, 22 May, 2013

Monday, 20 May, 2013

New successful digital engagement course open for registration

Our first successful digital engagement course is up and running and going great guns. In fact, I’ve already had a few people asking when the next one is going to be.

So, am happy to provide an answer! We’ll be running it again starting on 4th September 2013 and it will again run for 8 weeks, and so will come to a close in early November. You can find out more and book a place here.

Here’s a reminder of the course content:

The course consists of eight lessons, which last for a week each. Total learner time per lesson is around an hour, which they can do in one chunk or spread throughout the week – it is entirely up to them.

Support is provided both to the group as a whole, with discussion and sharing of experience and knowledge encouraged; and privately through email or telephone discussion between the course facilitator and learners.

Each lesson will include some or all of the following elements:

  • An introductory video introducing the topic and explaining some details
  • Downloadable templates, resources, guides and case studies
  • Links to further reading and case studies
  • Interviews with practitioners
  • Screencast demos of how to perform certain actions
  • Learner discussion areas
  • One to one private email or telephone support
  • Additional content in response to queries and requests
  • Assignments to practice learning

The eight lessons in this course are:

  1. Introductions, objectives, how the course and the platform works
  2. What is digital engagement and what defines success?
  3. Strategies for successful digital engagement
    • Different approaches – organisational, team based, individual
    • Different focuses – external, internal, partnership based
    • Different objectives – informing, consulting, collaborating
  4. Popular platforms and how they are best used
    • Twitter
    • Facebook
    • YouTube
    • LinkedIn
  5. Emerging platforms – how might they be employed to best effect?
    • Instagram
    • Tumblr
    • Foursquare
    • Pinterest
  6. Other tools and techniques
    • Web chats
    • Blogging
    • Commentable documents
    • Crowdsourcing
  7. Skills and roles
    • Community management
    • Social reporting
    • Curator
    • Networker
  8. Bringing it all together – a chance for reflective practice
#New successful digital engagement course open for registration

Monday, 13 May, 2013