derek abdinor

Everyone has a Dream in their lifetime, some have a few. They are so intensely personal that only you really know what your Dream is. Don’t you?

To define these Dreams are tricky as dreams are an overused, perjured term. What occurs in your mind when you are sleeping is not the Dreaming I mean. The Dream I mean is more aptly defined as an urgency to do something important to you. It is a feeling that you have even before adolesence and it is against this that you measure your purpose and success all your life. It is important to adhere to all those cliches when you are young about doing your best, doing what you love because they define the Dream and, more importanly, discard what is not the Dream.

At the individual level these Dreams are usually not specific such as “to be a ballerina” but more general as “to be a dancer” or “to be a builder” or “to be president”. One can hold these dreams and change them as circumstances dictate. So the ballerina Dream may change to becoming a mother. Even while many people die without fulfilling their Dreams many more give up on their Dreams. To truly know someone is to know what they have to become. It could be argued that your Dream is a function of the circumstances you grew up in and your earlies success, failings and influences by role models. It could be influenced strongly by culture or religion.

I’m purposefully steering clear of New Age thought on dreams as that methodology is to accept without qualification every and any idea*. Nevertheless it is important to point out that the Australian Aborigines believe their values and laws are shaped in the Dreamtime and Laurens van der Post was told by Kalahari San that “there is a dream dreaming us”. These ideas of imperatives arrived at by non-rational thought is in keeping with the idea.

Now I’ll take it as given that any performance activity is enhanced if the person doing it is fully engaged in it. They love the job. They are committed to the process. They have strong personal stakes in the outcomes.

• Can an organisation dream? Well, if we accept that a Dream is the urge to start something and carry on regardless whilst making use of the faculties at hand then the original Dream is that of the founders.
• A country can dream. The American Dream of the early 20th Century was well set out and coincided with the individual dreams of its people. People at that time, especially immigrants, had a long European dream of personal freedom, open spaces. To me, the strength of this collective agreement was that Americans of all backgrounds got together to fight ugly wars half way across the world. The American Dream went off track after world War 2 when the US saw itself as a global player until Martin Luther King brought it more or less back on track.
• A political organisation can Dream. It lays out its Dream as a manifesto in order to attract parts of the electorate. The electorate indicates a vote rather than the sum of individual dreams. Politicians may wax grandiloquently about “the Dreams of the People” but in reality its just a preference. Political parties that define themselves by being against a current view rather than for a new view are bankrupt of Dreams. The US Repbulicans and UK Labour spring to mind, being anti-Democrat and anti-Tory more than anything.
• A government department cannot Dream. It is a function. Even if the government should change it is likely the functionaries will remain. Individual Dreams of service are subordinated to process, which in turn is subordinated to policy, which is subordinated to the political organisation.
• A military organisation cannot Dream. Again it is a function that was set up. Individual members in the military often share similar Dreams which are taken for granted in the ethos: to survive, to stretch oneself, to achieve, to dominate, to belong. The organisation is therefore capable of performance greater than the sum of its parts.
• Can a business Dream? The founder has a Dream borne of a strong personal need. That need is personal and cannot be passed on. All that can be hoped for is that the dreams of subsequent employees may coincide with the relevant life-stage of the company. Employees can share in the founders Dream if it is clearly defined (think of Microsoft and Bill Gates’ vision of a PC in every home and business). Nothing spells a lack of a strategic plan for success than a dry mission and vision statement. Can a business have a Dream that is based in non-rational thought? Yes, it speaks of intuition if it is solidly backed up by the business case and the numbers.

In business environments I’ve yet it inquired of someone what their Dream is. Goals yes, but goals could include “to get through this week”. Dreams are personal and embarrassing because uttering them invites fear of failure.

Alignment of individual’s Dreams with functions could prove to be very powerful if we accept that an organisation that encourages Dreaming is highly switched on.

*  Provided that thinking did not occur in the Western world after the Dark Ages

Ok, the heading is misleading and would constitute baiting if I cared enough.

Found via Dianne Mueller and sure to become an internet meme. Explaining an accounting process need not be dry when you see these cartoons (click on the image). Sure to give the Plain English versions a run for their money.

From JICPA, the Japanese Institute of Certified Public Accountants.

On a related topic, the discussion is around Twitter replacing RSS as a news feed of choice for online media types. I dramatically cut my RSS reading time and use Twitter because the idea is germinated on Twitter before it becomes a post – So Dianne tweeted about this, and then did her post.

Apart from the fact that ou can pull RSS into Twitter,  expecting users to congregate around a news reader to passively consume media is actually, despite RSS and other add-ons, a very Web 1.0 concept. We ought to know better.

Jack Dorsey Presents Twitter from biz stone on Vimeo. Found via Jayz.

This post appeared first in Corporate Website. (29 October 2007)

Microblogging (Twitter, Jaiku) has caught the imagination of millions as a revolutionary communication tool. Many have grokked the uses of microblogs for the enterprise, but nothing has transpired as yet, excepting Google rousing and snapping up Jaiku. Perhaps corporate IT are still getting to terms with Web 2.0 and microblogging is a late entrant. Perhaps we’re focussed on trying to pinstripe Twitter, and are limiting the brief of what enterprise microblogging can be.

So this is first in a two-part series. While we redefine the benefits of enterprise microblogging here, the next instalment will be a wishlist of what we want in such an application. I refer to microblogging here as evidenced by Twitter and Jaiku, although make it clear that they are not enterprise-ready.

Convergence

As you know, you can email, IM, blog, SMS updates to your Twitter profile. In the spirit of Web 2.0, you can retrieve them all in the same way. Bear in mind the following:

• 91% of mobile phone owners keep them within arms-reach 24-7 (Mary Meeker, Morgan Stanley)
• IM has been identified as the web-based enterprise technology CIOs feel has the most business impact
• SpinVox recently announced voice updates to Twitter (and Facebook and Jaiku)

Every Facebook user (everyone you know) is extremely familiar with posting short status updates, checking for updates from others and possibly even mobile posting, RSS updates and IM

Urgent news Dissemination

The fires in California have seen a tipping point in Twitter adoption. Weather, fire news and authority news can be relayed to people in all the formats mentioned above. The LAFD has had a Twitter site for months.

If your enterprise relies on this kind of rapid dissemination, you would do well to replicate these systems.

Presence

Facebook and Skype, and now Twitter, have taught us that constant status updates pre-empt unnecessary calls or emails. When you know someone is in Brazil or otherwise not available, you don’t waste time trying to contact them. Easy notification of employees’ availability is not just to enforce presenteeism. Call centres have been identified as a critical operation that relies on presence: the agent can check expert or supervisor availability, escalation options and customer query progress.

Easy adoption

Using Twitter is as difficult as using SMS. Digital natives will bring it into your enterprise anyway, for personal use. After you block it (which you will) and they move it to their mobile devices (which they will) we will have enterprise microblog apps and they will teach you how to use them while other companies have advanced (which we will).

On that note, IBM has moved on this with their BlueTwit application. Unfortunately, that’s all I know about it: the name.

Lifestreams or rolestreams

Many digital natives and meta-bloggers (bloggers blogging about blogging) are suffering from information overload as they manage various profiles, websites, RSS feeds and try out each new application. Out of necessity, they often aggregate all their own RSS feeds or RSS subscriptions into a microblog, and may even synch their calendar with the blog due to its dispersion methods via SMS or IM. This lifestreaming is a river of the knowledge snippets which make up their day.

I bet many knowledge workers feel the same. Too many rely on Outlook to manage all their information, yet the information therein is hardly portable to other notification applications. Microblogs are built to leverage RSS, and could be a live, AJAX scrolling alert system that sends up flags or alerts based on hierarchy or importance (Oops, I’m straying into the wishlist article).

The added benefit of a lifestream, or rolestream, is that its time based and easier to round up billable hours at the end of the business day..

The Wires

The instant information retrieval nature of microblogs mean that companies can bypass traditional wire services. As IR WebReport recently blogged:

“In essence, [microblogs] can be a notification system and an editorial system. It can tell someone news is available and provide a link to it. For example: “Sun reports Results for Fourth Quarter and Full Fiscal Year 2007 http://tinyurl.com/2h5osq”

It can also be an information system by delivering the news in a concise format: “Sun Beats Profit Target Q4 Revenues $3.835 billion, EPS $0.09 vs consensus $0.05 http://tinyurl.com/2h5osq”

Sun’s recent decision to bypass PR wire services for its earnings releases is but a baby step in what is coming.

Ticker

The relation of a microblog to a blog post is often compared to the snippets of news on the ticker below the main news story on CNN or Sky TV News. Often a few pithy words is all the information you need to convey, and it does not detract from the main stories which are actually a different media. Stock traders have a need for some figures and a word or two to describe sentiment to make million-dollar decisions. Sure, often the source of that information is an analyst who has gone through reams of data and submitted a lengthy report. Its wholly complementary.

Presentations

Creating a microblog for a live conference, that’s projected on the stage, allows the audience both at the event as well as external to pose questions or make statements. I worked on a financial presentation for a dual-listed company where we wanted to synch Twitter or Jaiku with the webcast. In the end, the lack of moderation and branding confusion made me just hack a WordPress blog to deliver live comments. Enterprise microblog? I could not have paid enough for it.

Brevity

TinyUrl and pithy sentences lend themselves to a new form of communication where rambling is not respected. Just the facts. A global furniture concern got me to develop a secure application where they all executives could share snippets of strategic information in their respective markets. It was restricted to 250 characters and the administrator was notified by SMS with each entry. This was in 2006, they were microblogging.

We recognise that email is an indispensable office tool, but email overload is as real as the lack of importance we place to information trapped deep in an email’s body.

Knowledge Management

Much like enterprise bookmarking, enterprise microblogging can allow employees to send quick “hey, look here” updates. Others can act on it or be enlightened by information snippets that would have been beyond their reach. Sending an email to a vague, amorphous group, CC’ing other employees with a subject like “interesting link” and, in the body, a link that is not human readable, are all signals for the recipient to disengage with this communication.

Networking

Follow the travails of Twitter and you’ll come to hear that its a form of social networking. Sure it is, but that’s a spin-off to its larger benefits as highlighted above. Anyway, you have a social network, its called your Company. Or office, or team.

I wouldn’t suggest a that a major benefit of microblogging is that it brings your employees closer or improves morale. That would be trite. I do think you’ll have benefits of moving conversations off email and project leaders will be able to swarm all project members, developers can scrum and sprints will be slick relays. That should be a given. However, you can use it to create dialogue with your customers or stakeholders. You can also track usage in the Twittersphere and be alerted whenever anyone mentions you, your brand or your interest.

Buzz

You can use your channel as a media outlet and a buzz engine for product releases. Twitter is pretty viral and following a stream is a one-click process. These buzz strategies are far better detailed in Jeremiah Oywang’s post.

Topic(s): Corporate Blogging, Tools & Technology
Keyword(s): Webcast, Weblogging, Web 2.0, Microblogging

Web 2 has always been about communication, not technology. About using all different methods of getting accurate information, collaboration, dissemination. What better time to put it to the test in an organic, non-rational, human situation: the california fires.

Mashups of maps, microblogging and user-generated video are some of the uses. Remember the London bombings 2 years ag, where mobile phone images where the first used? Virginia Tech bloggers? This is not mall-meetup technology.

View Larger Map

I’ve written before about the LAFD and their despatcher-like use of Twitter before. What foresight by them.

This article was first posted to BizCommunity in September 2007.

A microblog is a smaller version of a blog, usually limiting posts to 140 characters. Woo-hoo, so it’s a variation on the blogging theme, but less space to make an idiot of yourself. Why then is it one of the fastest-growing applications in the history of the Internet? Is there a place for it in your digital strategy?

A microblog is a smaller version of a blog, usually limiting posts to 140 characters. Woo-hoo, so it’s a variation on the blogging theme, but less space to make an idiot of yourself. Why then is it one of the fastest-growing applications in the history of the Internet? Is there a place for it in your digital strategy?

The size comparison is not sufficient to explain the power of having a smaller, pithy blog, so here’s the rest of the product list:

• You can view posts online, get SMS, email, RSS or Instant Message (IM) notifications of new posts
• You can SMS, email or IM posts
• You can phone in an update or leave a micro-podcast (these new developments occurred during the writing of this article)
• Many people can join a group or channel and add their updates and receive updates
• You can integrate microblog feeds into blogs, other websites or even into each other.

This looks like information if not acronym overload, but its actually information aggregation and simplification. Consider these three continuum (Continuae?)

1. Publishing: catalogues and reports >> website >> blog >> rss >> microblog
2. Written communication: letters >> memos & fax >> email >> IM >> microblog
3. Telephonic communication: telephone >> mobile >> VOIP and IPhone >> microblog

Microblogging is at the nexus of publishing and communication! A post is published, users are notified five different ways, and they respond to you in five different ways. At the same time, they are part of your social network and are subscribing for the news that you wish to send them. This is keeping US marketers up at night.

You could believe we’re in the nascent stage of aggregating our content together and tying up all the loose ends. A related application is when mobile phones serve up RSS feeds. Getting all your news headlines on your mobile phone (not Blackberry or PDA) as a feed (not SMS) has been widely available for some months now. Unlike the built-in camera, but like text messaging (SMS), RSS on your phone is the real killer app.

Technologies
The main microblog providers are Twitter (www.twitter.com), Jaiku (www.jaiku.com) and Pownce (www.pownce.com). I believe they’re currently fighting it out to be the standard and therefore are trying to be the microblog for all systems. Twitter has market share and a vocabulary (vb. to tweet), Jaiku allows users to setup and join a channel and some moderation of posts while Pownce is exclusive and about uploading music and video to your profile. Enterprises could wait for one of them to create an off-the-shelf package, or you can build your own. The technology is alarmingly simple.

Lawyer, social media consultant, blogger and The Times bloggumist Paul Jacobson uses Jaiku a lot.”The channel isn’t just a one way flow of links to posts and sites, it is also a forum for members of the channel to jump in and participate in conversations sparked by items posted to the channel or topics they may want to raise themselves. A Jaiku channel is a great way to let customers know what is going on in your space in a convenient and user friendly format.” His Jaiku channel at http://jaiku.com/channel/JacobsonLaw is such an example.

A similar paradigm is Tumblelogging, which for all intents and purposes has now become a feature of microblogging. It describes a stream of consciousness where multiple users add their one-liners (tumbling) either as posts, observations or breaking updates. Great for a teenage gang, you may snort into your Horlicks, but what about co-ordinating a team in disparate locations who are not all behind desktops? The Los Angeles Fire Department uses tumbling for their dispatchers: http://twitter.com/LAFD.

A social service
Will microblogging take off? Well, if you’ve heard of MXiT you either come to know it through your kid’s school principal threatening to ban it or your occupational therapist trying to wean you off it. Your FaceBook status that you update six times a day: you are “lifestreaming”, or communicating brief asides that sum up your feeling, outlook, personality and location in around 10 words or less. On the other hand, our mobile phones have prepped us into this “always on” culture where we can describe complex concepts using just a few glyphs.

Microblogging for the enterprise

The instant information retrieval nature of microblogs mean that companies can bypass traditional wire services. As Dominic Jones recently blogged:

In essence, [microblogs] can be a notification system and an editorial system. It can tell someone news is available and provide a link to it. For example: “Sun reports Results for Fourth Quarter and Full Fiscal Year 2007 http://tinyurl.com/2h5osq”

It can also be an information system by delivering the news in a concise format: “Sun Beats Profit Target Q4 Revenues $3.835 billion, EPS $0.09 vs consensus $0.05 http://tinyurl.com/2h5osq”

Sun’s recent decision to bypass PR wire services for its earnings releases is but a baby step in what is coming.

Imagine a presentation where you release run a microblog and make this available. Users can post to it through all the media mentioned above; they can even link to video feeds, picture slideshows and pull other content into the feed.

A global distribution concern, based in South Africa, had the problem of sharing information amongst its executives who were scattered over multiple continents. They hit on the idea of each member logging into a secure site, submitting business intelligence or a link to a related article. SMS notifications were the next step. This successful application was produced by us in 2006 when microblogging wasn’t even a Wikipedia entry.

Keeping touch

Some of the US presidential candidates have microblogs. I subscribed to Barack Obama’s as a follower of his posts, and get woken up at 2am to read this on my mobile phone: “BarackObama: In New York – heading to the Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Be sure to watch it tonight.”

You get the point? If I needed to follow breaking information, I can have it delivered to phone, IM, email, RSS or go to the website. If I need to post breaking information, I do exactly the same. There is clearly application for intranets, collaborative groups, rapid dissemination of information. If email was instant, then microblogging is inst.

Like it or not, we (ourselves, groups and organisations) are being coached by our technologies into having a “persistent presence” online; a form of branding ourselves through all channels available. Maybe instead of the 15 minutes of fame we were promised in the TV era we’ll only be allocated 140 words and a thumbnail on our microblogs.

Go ahead, tweet yourself.

I love the fact that MySpace has introduced millions to blogging.
I love even more that FaceBook has introduced millions to microblogging.

Spacers blog and respond by commenting all the time: isn’t that brilliant? Facers microblog all the time. Its the status update, right under your pic. They can also edit status by mobile, and you can subscribe to notifications by RSS feed: that’s microblogging! Love or hate the two platforms, they are unconsciously bringing radically new concepts to massive audiences. When I need to explain microblogging, this is the way I do it. If I have to still explain FaceBook: oi.

The word microblogging should probably fall by the wayside in time: too cumbersome. High environmental impact.

The last few days have been a flurry of buzz around microblogging in general and twitter in particular (Note: I started jaiku before twitter but prefer the latter). First, Dominic Jones wrote a visceral article about the potential use for it to disperse investor info (this days after SUN Microsystems released their results online ). Dominic’s article led me to some others, notably: Get ready for the ‘Twitterization’ of mainstream media by David Berlind (ZDNET) and Five Quick Suggestions to Improve Twitter by Allen Stern.

my thoughts,

I see twitter as the bridge on these two continuum:
1. old media, website, blog, rss, twitter
2. letters, memos, email, IM, twitter

I’d like to see Twitter have a better admin interface, and the opportunity to easily edit your posts (if you’re all nerves and thumbs, it could be disastrous)

and

I want to use a microblog in the enterprise (2.0) field. Currently none of them are there. Your suggestions are all valid, and one of these would do well todetach itself from the ubiquitous-use market and go for a solid business platform. I would pay good (or bad) money for a business twitter. However, I think you realise too that they are all within sight of the big cheese and would it make sense to settle for second best?

Also, many ridicule Twitter for the fact that one can record one’s most inane moments and send them on. There is a service and a sale around that, and like it or not, its brilliant. Didn’t we all love 24 hour reality TV a few years back? Will we be able to pry microblogging out of the hands of an “always-on” culture?

Since I found out about micro-blogging, I’ve been trying to think of ways to utilise this tool in the enterprise. I’m not convinced by certain things I’ve seen, while other bits have impressed. Here are some of the rationales:

• always letting people know: what are you doing? (they can check your blog or subscribe mobile to updates).
  This works for Barack Obama, and mall rats, and once or twice for me. Not convinced.
• Getting latest updates via a channel.
  This can get so irritating, I subscribed to Muti’s updates on Jaiku and went crazy every 2 minutes, so I unsubscribed. The new Nokias do a great job of subscribing to RSS feeds. I’m convinced that along with the camera and text absorption into the phone, RSS feeds delivered to phone is a killer app. Killer! Therefore the channels may be a bit out of time. Boo.
• As a sideblog. Sometimes a blog is too formal for a one-liner. Just like a printed letter is too slow for email, and email has become too formal when you can send an IM, a sideblog is, well, an aside. Its something you feel ought to be published, but does not warrant too much http to process. It’s like in a newspaper, page 2, “the world in brief”, those snippets. Brilliant.

In the meantime, “sideblog”needs to enter the Public Knowledge Repository.

Updates: Dominic Jones on Twitter for IR wires, and IMHO a “tipping point” article from  ZDNet

TechPresident is an online aggregating service about all the US Presidential candidates’ use of online social media. You get to measure their effectiveness, or newsworthiness, on Flickr, Facebook, YouTube, and Technorati.

Votojournalism
The excellent portmanteau of Voter and Photojournalism, for voter-generated content where users post pictures of the candidates on the campaign trail, online. I think the term will be hijacked to come to mean the use of social media by voters, or by candidates (see below) to run an effective campaign.

Microblogging
I was suprised to find that Barack Obama microblogs (blogs constantly from a computer of mobile device, usually one-liners of his movements) on Twitter, and does a really handy job. In fact, he has raised over 40% of his funding online! Funding is key to success in US politics, and Barack’s online strategists have been on the money.

I feel this would have an impact on business, after the elections. You could never bring microblogging to business, but it would be excellent for wannabe celebrities to grow an active stalking community.

Update: this was fleshed out into an article for BizCommunity. Read/Write Web has some interesting stuff on this, although they seem to be looking at the metrics of voting at first blush:  a lot of users in the world deperately want/need the US to change its policies and are following the campaigns, or lending their online presences to candidates they hope will bring about meaningful change.