21st Century Organization

A week of "Net Work". DHL partners with UPS & Matt Moore visits Manhattan

"Net Work" is the title of Patti Anklam's "Practical Guide to Creating and Sustaining Networks at Work and in the World". I've been actually reading Patti's book this week, not just using as a reference, to review for Inside Knowledge Magazine. (I admit to being a biased reviewer having been a privileged member of Patti's Gennova Emergent Learning Network from which the book sprung.)

A value of Patti's book is the number of real world networks examined.  Examples from “Gennova” that seeded the book, to the Boston healthcare community and the Young President’s Organization, Fast Company Magazine’s “Company of Friends”,  Women’s World Banking, Procter and Gamble’s “Connect and Develop” and the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency Knowledge Lab are all used to demonstrate network dynamics and the variety of purposes networks can serve.

With how organizations operate as networks on my mind I couldn't help but notice the page 13 Financial Times Thursday (May 29) headlined "DHL pays up to deliver with rival". DHL and UPS are intersecting their networks. DHL is paying UPS "$1bn annually to fly customers packages between North American cities" and "shut down 30 per cent of DHL's US infrastructure... as part of of a restructuring plan that will cost $2bn.." The FT reports for UPS the arrangement "will help ensure its fleet of aircraft remain full even if more customers opt for cheaper shipping options than overnight delivery."

Ending the week writing about "Net Work" I realize it started that way too, in a rich conversation with Sydney visitor Matt Moore. Thanks Matt for fitting me into your travels and the chance to explore our shared interests, especially around organizational network analysis and measuring value created through connectedness.  Good wishes for the rest of your journey.

~ Jenny Ambrozek

Community 2.0 Brain - netWORK Mindset

Attending a four day conference and making sense of it for someone else is tricky at best.  Everyone attends with biases, assumptions, and expectations. Other than sharing time and space together it is a unique individual experience.

We ran our workshop on Social Capital: Glue for Sustainability at the Community 2.0 Conference in Las Vegas.  "Social capital" and "community" have a lot in common as they both are about building relationships and value is created from the knowledge embedded from emergent conversations.  Linked conversations through networks is our focus and a netWORKED mindset is our workshop subtitle.

But there were only two sessions at the conference over 4 days that focused in part or in whole on seeing organizations as networks - Patti Anklam's keynote and our workshop. Mapping the network of keynote presenters is my take on revealing the collective value of the conference.

Consider clicking here an experiment in a netWORKED mindset- a means to capture my experiences and our workshop. Using a dynamic network mind mapping and knowledge visualization tool by the brain technology, I have  written my conference notes and made links to  keynote speakers and our workshop.  There are web links to Flickr, Slideshare and presenter sites as well. This may take a few minutes to open, but worth a try.

netWORKED mindset tab will take you to our networked organizations wiki which is private.  If you want to see it, let us know so we can send an invitation.

Once in the CORE tab, click "of interest", then click "video" to hear how we bring networks of stakeholders together.

The Brain has an enterprise version for organization wide knowledge capture and interactivity (multiple individuals can author and edit), so the technology scales.  The personal version I used can be downloaded for 30 day free trial allowing multiple maps to be created. Uploading to your website for read only viewing is fairly straight forward with an FTP program.

The netWORKED brain is lots more fun and has plenty of options for use to create a "shared"  experience.  Let me know what you think.

~ Victoria G. Axelrod

<24 hours at Community 2.0: Revisiting Online Communities in Business 2004

Thursday May 15 in Las Vegas colleagues Victoria Axelrod, Bill Becker and I conducted our Social Capital: Glue for Sustainability Workshop as a post Community 2.0 Conference event.  Our sincere thanks to our participants who had the stamina to stay on after 3 days of meetings and contribute to conversations richer than we could have imagined.

As our workshop followed a "Community 2.0" Conference for reading matter on the flight out I dusted off a copy of Joe Cothrel and my 2004 Online Communities in Business Study.  Reading the conference program, and in the people I met during my less than 24 hours in Vegas, I saw our Report come to life.

Patti Anklam

It began at the Vegas airport connecting with keynote speaker Patti Anklam.  Participating in Patti's 2003 Emergent Learning Network opened my eyes to both the potential and value that comes from viewing organizations as networks, and intentionally putting human networks to work.  Patti was one of the 135 online industry professionals who contributed to our 2004 study.

Jim Cashel

Checking in at the Community 2.0 Conference as Wednesday's sessions were ending appropriately Jim Cashel, both a top 10 influencer and respondent to our 2004 study was the first person I met. (See Top Influencers Table page 21.)

Jim's Online Community Report and Sonoma Conference have become industry staples. His interview with the BBC's Robin Hamman in which Robin explains how the BBC must adapt in a world of low cost consumer participative media tools, remains for me the best ever explanation to media companies of how they must act. The interview is no longer online but from memory I recall Robin describing how the BBC must move from being "the conversation" to "lighting thousands of conversations".

Joe Cothrel

Joe's Community 2.0 presentation addressed "Successful Communities Start Here" and who better to do that.  Co-convening our 2004 study with Joe Cothrel followed years of bumping into each other at industry events beginning with the 1999 Vircomm in San Francisco. 

Collaborating on our study and presenting our findings at the Virtual Communities Conference, The Hague remains a professional highlight. (As this 2004 Virtual Communities Conference was Harry Collier and Infonortics last, our slides are no longer available online so I've reposted to Slideshare here.) Thank you, Joe.

Nancy White

Unfortunately I missed Nancy's Community 2.0 presentation that buzz tells me was a conference highlight.  Not surprizing of course.  Nancy (along with Howard Rheingold) emerged as the most cited influencers in our 2004 study. Thanks to Nancy's tools niftiness and willingness to share, her C2.0 Conference visualizations are available on Flickr. 

Amy Jo Kim

Also a favorite influencer in our 2004 study, the slides from Amy Jo Kim's Community 2.0 presentation "Putting the Fun in Functional: Applying Game Mechanics to Social Software" indicate why.

Lee LeFever

I also missed Lee's presentation but he too contributed to our 2004 study, and emerged as a most-cited influencer that continues through his CommonCraft.

Open Source- Factory Joe- Chris Messina

In 2004 two OCIB survey respondents cited "open source" as an influence. 4 years later at the Community 2.0 speaker dinner I found myself sitting at a table with open source aficionado Chris Messina.

CNET indicates Flock, of which Chris was a founder, started early 2005, after our 2004 study. Consider the range of tools, not to forget "Open Social", that have emerged in these short 4 years.  Clearly sifting the technology candidates today to update the timeline (page 5) from our 2004 study would be an interesting challenge.

The Wisdom of 135 2004 Study Respondents

Revisiting our 2004 study 4 years on was especially thought provoking as the wisdom of our extraordinary respondents appears profound. The 5 themes that emerged from analysing the open text responses (Chapter 2:Strategies) were:

1. Think Local and Real
2. Get Networking
3. Empower the People
4. Raise the Bar on Data
5. Advocate and Educate

"Get Networking" and "Raise the Bar on Data" have directed my focus over the last 4 years. Both are central to the Social Capital:Glue for Sustainability Workshop that took me to Las Vegas. (Slides are posted here.)

For me the bottom line, attention getting findings in our 2004 study (that I suspect are closely tied) were:

"Most organizations can’t measure return on investment (72%)

Many people still don’t understand what online community is (72%)"

I couldn't help wondering if Community 2.0 Conference attendees were surveyed about their ability to measure the value created through their initiatives, whether the situation had changed.

Rereading our 2004 report, page 11, I was intrigued to find we had concluded:

"Conceiving of online groups as networks that is, larger, more distributed, with a looser set of shared goals or understandings―may better prepare us for developing and managing online groups in the years to come."

From my experience studying organizations as networks over the past 5 years, and as we watch enterprise platforms incorporate social networking capabilities, that call is even more relevant today than it was 4 years ago. I wonder what you see?

~ Jenny Ambrozek

The Power of Open Networking an Article: Wisdom to Sift and Abundant Credits

An earlier blog post here announced the article Victoria G. Axelrod, (my never to be underestimated 21stCenturyOrganization blogging partner) and I were preparing for Effective Executive Magazine.  The article seed is a 2007 quote from KM "father figure" Robert H. Buckman indicating:

"...but I never did try and manage knowledge. What I really tried to manage and nurture was a culture that would encourage and expand the flow of knowledge..  ~ Robert H. Buckman

Thanks to an introduction from Jerry Ash, (Inside Knowledge Magazine's Editor), Mr. Buckman's latest thinking is woven into our article.  We're deeply appreciative.  In addition we must also credit the power of networks for unexpected contributions that both informed our thinking through the sources they brought, direct contributions, or nudges to our thinking.

Via phone conversations, Facebook and email exchanges we included quotes from:

Doris Spielthenner, Mike Wing, Patti Anklam, Ricardo Dos Santos, Rob Cross, Robin Tiegland, Steven Malkiewicz, Simon Wardley, and Valdis Krebs

Our word limit precluded mentioning insights from our following valued connections but your nudges to our thinking are sincerely appreciated:

Carl Frappaolo, Cheryl Cooper, Chris May, Connie French, Dan Keldsen, Philip Lawrence, James Dellow, John Maloney, Laurence Lock Lee, Kristoffer Hartwig, Mark Masterson, Nick Barker, Steve Ardire, Tracy Cox

We also drew on oft cited sources John Seely Brown & Estee Solomon Gray, Ron Burt, Ranjay Gulati, Peter Gloor, Ross Mayfield, Stowe Boyd, Verna Allee.

Our new find (thank you John Maloney) was the 2002 work of Bonnie Nardi and colleagues Steve Whittaker and Hienrich Schwartz 2002. How is it that we had not previously encountered Nardi et al's focus on "netWORK" and "intensional networks"?

Our article is scheduled to appear in a special June Effective Executive edition.  Meanwhile as it was inspired by a quote from Robert H. Buckman here is his nugget from our email exchange that closes our piece:

"Need always has to be there as the driving force that causes knowledge to be sought, and if trust exists, then it will move in response to the need."

~ Robert H. Buckman

~ Jenny Ambrozek