21st Century Organization

"Marketplaces of Mercenary Intelligences"

Here's an idea for your knowledge management woes - a knowledge marketplace.  We all know it will be sometime before we have a true semantic web so try the hidden collective mind inside the machine or Mechanical Turk from Amazon.

Jason Pontin,  editor in chief and publisher of Technology Review writes a good piece in the NY Times today Artificial Intelligence, With Help from Humans

Why do people work for such small amounts that Amazon pays?  What's the incentive?

“MTurk is a marketplace where folks who have work meet up with folks who want to do work,” according to Jeff Bezos, Amazon's CEO.

Imagine your organization operating as such a knowledge marketplace - seems like a clear cut incentive to me and the pay is higher!

~Victoria G. Axelrod

FAST Forward Ommission: Apologies Chris Heuer

Testimony to FAST's smart keynote speaker and strategic blogging strategy that a week after the FAST Forward conference in San Diego conversation around issues raised at the conference continues.  Andrew McAfee's post The Impact of Information Technology (IT) on Businesses and their Leaders, inspired by an exchange with Euan Semple at the conference continues to grab attention.

Reading that post I realized a serious oversight in my conference report was Chris Heuer's terrific session on Social Media. Testimony to Chris's World Cafe facilitation skills that he had a room filled with interesting people in animated conversation Friday afternoon following 2 session filled days.

I especially appreciated Chris providing an opportunity to think about what we did not hear at the conference but should be considered. Of course given the focus of this 21st Century Organization blog it was the fact that any technology, be it search or social media or prediction markets or virtual worlds or technologies not yet invented need suppportive management and organizations to leverage the full benefits. Interestingly the topic that has come to life on Andrew McAfee's post conference discussion.

And given the growing body of knowledge emerging around organizational network analysis ONA) through the work of Rob Cross and the Network Roundtable, Valdis Krebs, Steve Borgatti, Duncan Watts and a growing number of ONA practitioners, it was surprising to me that even tools like ConnectBeam appear not to be fully leveraging the social networking elements, yet. Perhaps business social networking platforms like LinkedIn and VisiblePath are working with other search companies to have an impact in enterprises?

When I've seen a Roundtable presentation describing a member organization combining ONA and NTags to strategically connect people across their organization to promote innovation, clearly there are interesting new opportunities to marry technology and emerging disciplines to aid enterprises beyond those discussed in San Diego. 

Thanks Chris Heuer for prompting my thinking.

~ Jenny Ambrozek

 

FAST Forward Conference 2007 Report

Thanks to wise advisers (happily acknowledge with permission), I landed in San Diego for the FAST Forward O7 Conference prepared for the vendor hype and boys with a hammer, SEARCH.  Simon Wardley's wonderful Ghenghis 2.0 post captures the spirit. Do we need to "dominate" in a networked world or is it possible "collaborate" might even be more effective?

Regardless the conference was absolutely worthwhile for what I didn't expect: the 1,000 very smart people from significant enterprises and organizations representing 29 countries.  Like Jerry Bowles prior to the San Diego Conference I had not heard of FAST or had no grasp of the dollars enterprises are investing in search as both a business necessity and strategic edge. FAST's Oslo Bours filing announcing Q4 2006 results reveals a 57% Y/Y revenue increase and an 80% gross margin.

So FAST is a smart company that attracted extraordinary people to San Diego for rich conversations. David Weinberger and Kathleen Gilroy did a fabulous of job of capturing  key messages from high profile speakers. All are recommended watching.

For the record, here are my conference highlights:

• Andrew McAfee's unscheduled Enterprise 2.0 round table discussion. He asked the question: "how long before Enterprise 2.0 is pervasive in the organization". I wonder what you think?
• Post Chris Anderson presentation coaching on applying long tail metrics to web site analysis
• Michael Schrage's observations about the importance of search not just delivering "the" answer but providing a wider view
• Discovering that within organizations a whole new skill area and roles are emerging in "search" product management
• The mind expansion that comes from fortunately sharing a dinner table with Simon Wardley.  3D printing. Smart briefcases using RFID. Discovering what I thought was new was old.

Thank you FAST for a very thought provoking gathering.

~ Jenny Ambrozek