Enterprise 2.0

I think that small businesses are most likely going to adopt the implementation of Enterprise 2.0 when compared to large businesses. One of the reasons for that in my opinion is because it requires people collaborations in order for E2 to be efficient within businesses. As we understand that if only one person participate to it, it is not going to be very valuable. For example — “telephone, if only one person has and uses telephone, what is good about that?”

What i am really trying to say is that, it is always easier to start with a small number rather than a huge number, right? I have found that not many people these days fully understands how E2 works (like myself, only just started to get an idea of what it is), I think it will take an amount of time for everyone within a company to obtain the knowledge and use it efficiently for their job.

After all, you might want to ask yourself a question, “Does our company needs it?” Dion Hinchcliffe has an excellent blog post on Enterprise 2.0 — Enterprise 2.0 and improved business performance You might be surprise with what you can get from his blog post.

What Is Enterprise 2.0?

So like i have said before, not that many people understands what it really is, and because we get to choose whatever topic we would like to discuss about this week, i have decided to conclude my findings/understandings these 10 weeks to you all. (Also with some extra information.)

“Enterprise 2.0 is the term for the technologies and business practices that liberate the workforce from the constraints of legacy communication and productivity tools like email.”

Retrieved from UBM TechWeb

The figure above is similar to a table i saw in week 1 for INB346, this has helped me gain a bit more understandings of what Enterprise 2.0 is about and how it is different to Enterprise 1.0.

Throughout these 10 weeks or so, i have looked at a few things:

• Initial insights on blogging
• Use of Twitter
• Getting ideas of what Web 2.0 is about
• How Enterprises adopt and use of Web2.0
• Dangers of Social Networking
• legal risks for organisation’s implementing social media
• Risks of NOT implementing Enterprise2.0
• Business and corporate blogging
• Corporate use of Wiki’s
• Corporate use of Social Networks

What i have just done above is also something i find very useful and good about blogging, it allows you to link to other pages that are relevant to what we are blogging about, such as providing examples to readers.

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This week i have tried my first time using “Trachbacks”  and commented on a professional blog, Although it may not be a good comment but at least i have given it a go and tried new things for my last week’s activity. 🙂 Please free feel to leave a comment for me so if i have done anything wrong, i can make changes before i submit my portfolio 😛 cheers

s2

Corporate use of Social Networks

How companies are using (or could use) Social networks with (or within) their enterprise?

So my task for this week is to basically focusing on answering the question above. It seems to me the best way to answer this question would be giving a real example. Therefore, i went online and search for social networking for business and i have found the link below: (which gives a list of social networking sites for business.)

http://blogs.sitepoint.com/2009/07/28/social-networking-sites-for-business/

I have decided to choose one of the sites from the link above, and then talk about how they could be used in business and also list the benefits and pitfalls, as that was stated in the task.

LinkedIn, the reason i have chosen Linkedin is because I have experienced it and would be able to provide you with a real example of how it works. However, first of all, please allow me to give you a brief description of what it is.

As it has stated on their front page, there are “over 75 million professionals use LinkedIn to exchange information, ideas and opportunities” (LinkedIn, 2010) Also, it allows you to not only connect with professionals within your country, but also to heaps other professionals around the world.

“LinkedIn had more than 75 million registered users, spanning more than 200 countries and territories worldwide” (LinkedIn, 2010)

LinkedIn provides you with a platform to build up your online profile to connect with the people you already know and trust. and also allow you to be introduced to other professionals out there, you might happened to get connections to your potential partners/clients through LinkedIn.

Once you have set up your account on it and searched for the people you wished to connect with, you then can start sharing information, data and files across with them. (eg. LinkedIn allows you to form groups with your connections, for example, you might want to form a group with some professionals for a specific project.)

“A professional network that allows you to be introduced to and collaborate with other professionals.”

*if you were a job seeker, LinkedIn might be a good platform for you to spend some time looking at. However, i am not going to go into too much details on this today.*

What are the disadvantages for using LinkedIn?

To answer this question, i have decided to provide you with a blog post i found below:

LinkedIn: Like a bad chain letter

Personal Experience:

For my INB102 class last year, our tutor introduced LinkedIn to us, that was the first time i have ever heard of it. To allow us to gain more understanding of what it does and how it works, he told us to get online and create an account for it. Also, he suggested that we should be using our real information when setting our profiles as it might become useful in the future.  I didn’t take much noticed of it but still went with what i was told to do.

After setting up our profiles and added our tutor on it, he informed us that he has set up a group and sent out invitations to all of us to join. After joining the group, i was able to see who else joined it in our class, which allows me to connect with others within our tutorial class.

My tutor has used an awesome way to explain to us how LinkedIn works by having the whole tutorial taught on it in, such as posting the tutorial materials, setting up a discussion and answering our questions etc. He has made it so we wanted to participate in using it and provided us with a good experience/impression of LinkedIn.

However, towards the end of the term for that unit, the time we spent on LinkedIn decreased to once every 2 weeks. I think the reason for that was because we were only first year students, most of us weren’t keen on connecting with professionals out there around the world. Therefore, I started to have left it behind my head after Semester One.

Now here comes the bit where i found amazing. As i have mentioned, i completely left LinkedIn behind when i finished my unit, INB102. However, one day (like around 2 months later) after uni when i got online and checked my email, i found an email sent from LinkedIn asking if i wanted to connect with someone, (whose name i have never heard of). I logged into my LinkedIn account to have a look and realised that person has sent me a personal note saying something like:

“You probably don’t know who I am, I am actually a friend of your connections on LinkedIn. The reason I wanted to connect with you is because I am currently working on a project where I need to find an international student studying at university in Brisbane. As I do not know any international students myself, I have sent messages around to all my connections and one of them directed me to you.”

I was shock at first because I wasn’t too sure of what was going on and who that person was, but then I thought, why not give them a hand? So then I “connected” with that person and answered his questions about being an international students. (Not too sure how he went with that project thought. Ha)

That is about it, my personal experience for using Social Networking other than facebook. 🙂

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Not too sure if i have done anything wrong with this week’s task, please drop a line or two for me when you get the time to. Thanks! 🙂

Corporate use of Wiki’s

This week’s topic is to focus on how wiki’s are used with Enterprises, both internally and externally.

First of all, lets gain a fast understanding on what wiki is? To do this, i have decided to show you the video of “Wikis in Plain English”: instead of writing up a boring “real plain English” summary of what it is. 🙂

Now that you have seen the video and gained understanding of wiki’s, allow me to get into this weeks topic/question:

“How companies are using (or could use) wikis with (or within) their enterprise?”

Let me just briefly list some of the benefits about using wikis within Enterprises (Internally):

• Group/link information together
• Build up central knowledge bases
• Fast and easy access (*There are also access rights)
• Anyone who get access to it can edit (able to restore to previous version when necessary)
• Reduced the need of emails (avoid overload)
• Save money and time
• Improve the internal communication amongst staff members
• Build consensus

Now some Disadvantages:

• Anyone can edit (mentioned before as benefits, but note that there are both good and bad sides to this)
• Too flexible, this may cause information shared on the wiki being disorganised
• Must have internet connection to be able to get access to it (*however, in 2010, this has become not much of an issue)

All information listed above was retrieved from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enterprise_wiki

So now that we have looked at some of the advantages and disadvantages, let me show you an example — QUT.

QUT allows students to collaborate using wiki for their group projects. A personal experience/example to this: Back in 2009 when i first started university, i did a unit called “Industry insights” (Unit code: INB103).

I remember the first thing we were told to do when we had out first tutorial was to form a group then set up a group wiki. I did not quite understand the point of doing that as i have always thought that wiki = wikipedia, where you would be able to find information from. However, after seeking help from both tutor and group members, i started to understand the need for using wiki for our group project.

• We each did individual research for the group project, and then posted what we found on the group wiki (sharing and grouping information)
• When our group leader wanted to organise a group meeting or make any last minute changes, she would post the information on wiki for us to see (eliminates the use of emails)
• When we had any questions/concerns on the group project, we were able to post it on the wiki and receive help from others (internal communication amongst group members)

So that was  my personal experience of using a wiki (internally).

In addition:

In order to also gain some experience of using a wiki (externally), i have decided to edit an article in a useful way on Wikipedia (as suggested by Lecturer). Here are the steps of how i did it:

(As we have already seen an example in lecture of how Jason did it on an English version of Wikipedia, i have decided to do it on a Chinese version to see the difference)

1. Went on to the wikipedia site
2. Type in, for example, my favourite singer’s name
3. Read through it and found out there are some information left out from the list they had
4. Scroll back up to the top of the page and clicked “Edit” (of course, it was in Chinese)
5. I went into this page where i am now allow to change some of information
6. Typed in what was left out and clicked on “Preview” (Once again, it was written in Chinese) *Noticed that i was not allow to just save what i change without previewing it first
7. Previewed the page and made sure i type the right thing in the right spot and in the right format
8. I had to click on the button where it said “agree to the Terms of use and save changes”
9. DONE!

(I refreshed the page twice to make sure the changes i made was on there and displaying correctly.)

This was my experience of using wiki, externally. 🙂

s2

Risks of NOT implementing Enterprise2.0

So i have only just realised i forgot to mentioned about the risks for NOT implementing Enterprise2.0 in my earlier posts.

I just have a quick example to explain to one of the risk, Unauthorised use of web tools.

I have a friend, who is working for an organisation, i heard that her job mainly is just sit in the office, organise files, take phone calls, enter clients information etc. So she got a computer and has access to the internet and I often talk to her via facebook chat while she’s at work, but that was before her boss put a restrictions on all social networking sites for their office, last month. Since then, she has been complaining on facebook saying that she feels like she is in jail, as she no longer has any communication to the outside world (either than the phone)  while she is at work.

“I thought you have an iPhone? doesn’t it has wifi or 3G?” i accidently asked her without even thinking that she really should be working at work and not facebook at the time. 😛 ah well, the story goes on.

Once i reminded her, “accidently”, she then spent the next few days at work trying to figure out how to use wifi/3G and it turned out that they do not have wifi in the office…. -___-” So she tried 3G and hoya! she got it, facebook on iphone at work.

Anyway, get back to my point, so before her boss put the restrictions on facebook, although she often gets on it and chat with others, but that was when she has either got her work completed or just taking a break from the stress. However, after her boss put the restrictions on facebook, she spent days (at work) on figuring out how to get access to it, and now she is valuable-ing every moment on it.

So my question is, What’s the point? They are just going to go on using those tools anyway. No matter what it takes, it seems…-___-”

s2

legal risks for organisation’s implementing social media

So far we have looked at a few web2.0 tools and also some of the good and bad things about adopting them into organisations. Now, lets take a look at what legal risks are there for organisation’s implementing social media.

One of the legal risks mentioned in my lecture by our guest lecturer, Malcolm Burrows had caught my attention, “Discrimination by employees – Managers be warned about who you befriend online“.

“Employers need to think carefully before they allow employees to become ‘friends’ on Social Networking Sites as it may be argued that managers are being discriminatory if they accept some friend requests and not others.” (Elicia Lin, 2009)

Does that mean employers shouldn’t reveal any social networking sites account to their employees? or they just shouldn’t have any social networking site account set up?

It seems to me that if their organisation has somehow implemented web2.0, they should all have had at least one social networking account set up to communicate with others. Therefore, my answer to the very first question, you should never tell your employees your Facebook or any other social sites account. However, it seems that most users on Facebook uses their real names so that they can maybe reconnect with some old friends, so it appeal to me that you can very easily be found if people know your name. Now, if your employees somehow have found you and sent you friends requests, best way to do is either except, or ignore them ALL.

As i was a bit confuse about choosing an organisation for this week’s activity, therefore, i  haven’t specifically chosen an organisation to talk about but i have two scenarios that are related to legal risks for organisation’s implementing social media. Here is the first one:

Brisbane School of Hairdressing, if you click into their website, you can see at the bottom of the page there is an image saying “Add us on Facebook, click here”. Clearly, the school is suggesting their staff and/or students to like their facebook page.

I know someone who attended that school and have told me that most of the staff at that school have their own salons. Now here comes the problem, If student X wanted a job after graduated and have decided to search on the facebook page set up by their school for a specific teacher (as mentioned before, its very easy if an account is exist) and meanwhile, student Y is doing the same thing. However, the teacher only accepted student Y friends request and at the end student Y is who the teacher hired for their salon, then student X might take this as being discriminated by the employer of the salon (the teacher). *The solution to this kind of problems has been discuss earlier.

Another scenario, Student B has joined the facebook page, who recently taken some photos in their classroom, without noticing Student A’s design for the school for an up-coming design competition was captured. She then went on the facebook page to share the photos with other people who joined the page, which happened to let their opponent sees their design before the competition. This could be considered as confidential information loss for the school due to student B inappropriately using social media tools, online photos sharing/Facebooking. I think the solution to this could be having the school to change their Facebook Page to “not everyone allow to post photos/comments without permission from higher level of staff within the school.” Because if a higher level staff of the school has seen the picture and knowing that it will reveal confidential information, they can always stop it before it goes out to the public.

There is actually a lot more other legal risks associating with implementing social media into organisations but these are the ones i was more interested in talking about, therefore i might just end here and hopefully i didn’t misinterpreted this week’s task. If i did, please drop a line for me to direct me to the right direction. Otherwise, leave me any comments you like 🙂 Thanks. s2

The dangers of social networking!

The dangers of social networking

I found this comic quite funny so i have decided to post it up here just to see if i might get any discussion from you guys. 🙂

s2

Advantages and Disadvantages of Enterprises adopting web2.0.

“Advantages and disadvantages of enterprise 2.0”, when i first saw the topic of this week’s task, i knew that there is going to be a lot i could choose to discuss about. Therefore, i have decided to choose  the most interesting ones (to me)  that i would like to look into.

As i am not very good at formatting my posts, so i will be listing the advantages and the disadvantages as i go along. Also, i am not going to talk about “all” benefits and risks, only some. 🙂 so Let’s start with the most important concerns within organisations —

• Communications.
  

“Just as a successful marriage requires an honest flow of information and exchange of ideas, for an organisation to achieve its goals it is essential to have open and frequent communication between the management and the employees.” (Internal Communication Web2.0 Scenario and Beyond by Susan Thomas, 2010)

Here comes the question: “How does adopting web2.0 tools such as “Social networking” into enterprises maintain/improve communication within organisations?”

“…..blogs are being used to communicate in a team or to connect experts around a special topic – suddenly, everybody can publish or at least comment and link people and expertise within an organisation and their external network….. Wikis are set up to introduce glossaries, where everybody can add their expertise.” (Christian Kreutz, 13 May 2010)

So they were just some case study and references i found on the web, now is time for me to add my thoughts to this. Basically, my idea is very simple: Good communications = success. As i have quoted above, web2.0 tools such as facebook, connect people together, it is very easy these days to sharing information between not only two people but to hundreds or more. If a company shares positive and honest information of their business to others (both internally and externally), the result is, they are going to get good feedbacks and/or good reputations.

“Honest communication has positively cascading effects on employee loyalty and helps organisations to obtain trust and commitment of the employees.” (Susan Thomas, 2010)

There is also a bad side for when employees using web2.0 tools to communicate with each others. Let’s once again, take facebook for example. What if they uses this soical networking site for personal use and completely forget about the fact that they are at work and supposed to be getting work done?  Communication IS important, but being productive is the MAIN point for adopting these tools into the workplace.

“Web 2.0 is finding its way within organisations, but some resistance and fears linked to working in a less controlled and “secure” environment are still there. Employers’ concerns focus also on staff office time devoted to chatting over private issues on Facebook or other platforms. To this effect some institutions have fire-walled access to selected social networking sites.”(Susan Thomas, 2010)

I would like to end there for discussing about the good and bad things for when adopting web2.0 tools to enterprises for communication. Now let’s talk about a different web2.0 tool, online survey platforms.

• Online surveys.

I am sure most of you probably have already done at least one online surveys before, since QUT always encourages us to complete the LEX, every year. So here’s the question:

“What are the benefits and risks for organisations to use these online survey platforms?”

Before i actually get into answering that question, i would like to show how you how important survey is to organisations.

“Organisations are continually gathering information about how customers use their products and services or would like to see the product developed.” (Adobe Systems Incorporated, 2009)

Also, take a look at this: this is a video on “Advertising Techniques for small business“, the topic discussed in the video may not be as related to the question above, but noticed there one part (about 1:35) where she (the reporter in the video) mentioned about how they found out the results by having surveys on costumers. My point is just to make sure you understand how important surveys are.

Before we have online surveys, organisations used to spend quite an amount of money to hire a bunch of people or even send their employees out to knock on peoples’ home then ask if they have time to fill in a quick survey for them. I know this because i have experienced it. Also, it seems to me that telephone surveys were once very popular to business as well.

So how have these online survey platforms helped in this situation?

These web 2.0 tools allow everyone who has access to the web to provide their thoughts to businesses, and on the other hand, businesses are now able to get the information they wanted/needed, in a quicker and cheaper way.

“web 2.0 technologies allow customers, partners, and employees to have an amplified voice. Online surveys provide a cost-effective way to quickly gather information from customers, respond to customer actions, and establish an ongoing dialogue with the ecosystem of brand influencers.” (Adobe Systems Incorporated, 2009)

There is just two little things i am concern about organisations using these online survey platforms.

1. One person might be able to have multiple attempts on the survey, as normally these things don’t required identifications but only participations. In other words, survey results may not be accurate.
2. There are so many bad online survey platforms out there, therefore, if organisations do not carefully choose which platforms to set up their survey, they might end up having a bad reputation for their company. More information on what i meant by bad online survey platforms here.

There is actually a lot more i want to discuss about, but i would like to end here and hear some thoughts from you guys. Please feel free to drop a line if you would like to correct my mistakes or if you have any questions with my post. s2

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Further readings and References:

Threads in adopting web2.0 into enterprises: http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/fear_of_web_20.php

Internal Communication Web2.0 Scenario and Beyond: http://www.morisonmenon.com/internal-communication-web2.0-scenario-and-beyond.php

Development Organisations embracing Web 2.0: An update: http://www.web2fordev.net/component/content/article/1-latest-news/110-development-organisations-embracing-web-20-an-update

Online Surveys: The good, the bad, and the really, really ugly: http://paidonlinesurveysite.com/online-surveys/online-surveys-good-bad-really-ugly/

Implementing web2.0 in the Enterprise: http://www.itsc.org.sg/pdf/synthesis09/Five_web20.pdf

Being a Web2.0 beginner

Being a Web 2.0 beginner, my task for this week was to explore some web 2.0 tools. As i really didn’t know how to begin or what tools i should look at, therefore, i have decided to go on the Inb346 Blackboard site to reread the lecture notes. However, before i even got to that, i have noticed that Jason (our lecturer) has posted some links related to this topic, which i have found very useful as it has provided me with a list of web 2.0 tools i could choose from.

retrieved from http://knowem.com/

The task has then became a lot easier, all i needed to do was to go to the website posted by Jason, choose ONE from those 3350 listed on the site to begin my task with, which just sound amazingly easy to me. (cough cough) OK, enough of fooling around, lets actually get into what i have discover and learnt last week. 🙂

So i have previously looked at twitter and discussed about something i wasn’t aware before, in my last blog post. This time, i have decided to randomly choose one from the list of web 2.0 tools and i clicked on this one — Formspring.

As it described on “GO2WEB20”, it is a site where you can create a box and your friends (who has also signed up an account) can ask you questions, either with their account name or anonymously. Then the responses you provide to the questions could be posted onto Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook or your blog, to share with your friends and family (who don’t have to have an account with Formspring.) I have found this tool very interesting and i reckon that it might actually be able to increase the interactions with people as it allow you to link to some social networking sites.

I remember Jason has mentioned that, if you want to be able to work effectively with someone, you need to get to know them first. This is where i think “Formspring” would be useful as it allows you to tell others of what they want to know about you, and/or answer questions about yourself. Also, not only just those who asked questions but you can also share your thoughts to, for example: everyone within your friends list on Facebook.

So how can web 2.0 tools assist with my personal productivity?

• I can create myself an online resume/profile on some trusted professional websites, such as Linkedln, (Page.28 Week2 Lecture Notes) which might essentially allow people from different companies in the industry to consider about getting contact with me, provide me with ideas or direct me to the right path way in getting into their company.
• Exchanging ideas with others who are interested in the same topics as i am. I am aware that a lot of communications/interactions with different people could potentially increase ones knowledge.
• Not only gaining myself knowledge from others but web 2.0 tools also allow me to share my own understandings/knowledge with others who might be interested.
• Build a community/ a name of myself in a specific field of interest.

I hope i have successfully talked about everything i meant to talk about and didn’t misunderstood the tasks. However, if i did, please drop a line for me so i can maybe edit this post or even put up another blog entry which would actually be relevant to this week tasks. Thank you. 🙂 s2

An advantage i discovered recently with using twitter.

Noticed that i have not yet posted a blog entry of my thoughts on this week (week3) task for Enterprise 2.0, but as soon as i can get around to it and come up with something to talk about, it should be up before Monday’s lecture.

I have to say that i really am a beginner when it comes to blogging (still), so it would be fantastic if you could drop a line or two to maybe give me some ideas on how to blog properly. =P Thanks.

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Ok, so now getting to the point i want to talk about. “An advantage i discovered recently with using twitter.”

About two or three days ago, i re-listened the week 3 lecture recording, i then remembered that Jason has created a page on twitter for us to communicate with each other. Although i have had a twitter account since like last year but i never really used to to communicate with friends or share much about my thoughts. However, after visiting the twitter page and seeing quite a lot of people been using it, i have decided to leave a tweet on it.

Now here comes the good part — After i tweeted, I have received 3 comments on my blog post!3 comments from people from my inb346 class. I reckon that was amazing! i wanted to hear from more people on my very first blog post and there! twitter made it happened.

Well, i am not sure if you agree but i think that twitter is awesome that it actually helped me delivered my message to my class. s2

Crystal.

Initial insights on blogging

*Before you start reading my very first blog post, note that i really have no idea how to blog properly, therefore, feel free to leave me comments afterward and direct me to the right way of blogging 🙂 Cheers.*

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Blogging…….blogs…..

Yes I have heard of those terms, but if you were to ask me the meanings, I  probably would have told you, “Online journals? Diaries?”….but what i have been told recently is that in fact, blogging isn’t just that.

I found out that blogging is a way to express your personal thoughts to the world, on some particular topics/interests. Not only famous writers allow to write reviews/articles on things, but “ANYONE” who can get access to the world wide web.

“We no longer have technological experts programming the web; we now have users that have taken control over the web!” (Tim O’Reilly, 2006). This has shown that Web 2.0 tools allow users to have the power to control over web spaces, they are no longer just readers, so it is very clear that basically everyone these days can read AND also write on the web. Web2.0 can be referred as the second generation of web development and secure information sharing (Annemarie Hunter, n.d.). It concepts have led to evolve social computing sites (Facebook, MySpace, bebo etc.), video-sharing sites (YouTube, Youku etc.) and blogs (Xanga, Yahoo! Blog etc).

The useful thing about blogging, to me, it seems not only to be a platform to express ideas and thoughts but it also allow us to build a community within the “WWW”. An example would be Sacha Chua’s blog. I found that she has used quite a lot of techniques on blogging, to increase the awareness of her activities to the world.

I am not too sure if i am correct, but one thing i found very interactive with her blog entries, is that she uses quite an amount of sketches/pictures to describes her ideas/thoughts on some particular topics. Also, she presented the blog in a way i am not too sure how to call it, but in a way that we normally would (should) present during orals. She interacts with the blog readers by asking questions to keep them interested and also to feel part of the community she is building. Below has an example:

Large team challenges, an Enterprise 2.0 related blog entry where Sacha blogged about the challenges large teams face within an organisation.

She also has heaps other very interesting enterprise 2.0 related blog entries, i highly recommend you to check out her blog if you are into this area. 🙂

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As i have mentioned before, this is my very first blog post. I probably haven’t done quite a good job on completing this activity i was given, but I really would LOVE to read comments from you based on this blog entry and how i might improve in the future. Thanks. s2