21st Century Organization

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

Social Capital: Glue for Sustainability - WHY?

I recently attended a presentation given by a colleague who holds a senior position with a global financial services firm nominally on the topic of social capital and networks.  My colleague was open in admitting the the idea of organizational network analysis (ONA) had not yet been "sold" to the organization.

It seemed clear to me why it had not.  There was no business or strategic imperative stated that would make undertaking ONA of value to the organization.  Tactical benefits of identifying high performers (top talent) and information flows was the rationale- good for the current state of effectiveness and efficiency for today but that only helps you hold your own not give you a competitive advantage for the future.

If I do not have a context - Where is our business going and what are we trying to achieve to stay sustainable? my analysis will only confirm the present. Glazed eyes of senior execs. Maybe we bridge some gaps, however for all the effort the big gains are lost.

Making the strategy happen is what lights up business leaders. Being able to identify competencies and skill sets we need to make that future happen needs to be the rationale of the person proposing organization network analysis. Social capital is that illusive bond that your current talent may have and future talent need to be masters at building. 

Social capital is "created by a network in which the people can broker connections between otherwise disconnected segments" or "structural holes" according to Ron Burt. ONA exposes social capital opportunity - the external networks to be brokered by your current talent and new talent entering the firm - for innovation and growth.

Have you ever wondered why some firms seem to have cultures of constant renewal, regeneration and sustainability - it's their social capital capacity.

My partner Jenny Ambrozek just returned from the Enterprise 2.0 Summit at CEBIT in Hannover Germany where her presentation on Structural Holes addressed the importance of identifying the business driver up front.

We will be presenting our workshop on Social Capital:The Glue for Sustainability at the NJOD Annual Sharing Day on May 1st and Community 2.0 Conference at Red Rock Resort in Las Vegas May 15th.  For friends 20% discount use code SPKRM2005 when registering.

The business environment is too complex and moving too fast to not know your social capital capacity - your sustainability depends on it!

~ Victoria G. Axelrod