Redesign phase#1 is now complete.  There are still a couple of kinks in the template but nothing too serious.  Any comments about further improvements (and I'm guessing it's an improvement on what went before) would be appreciated.  At some point when I have a spare hour I'll go back and re-publish the entire weblog using the new template.

My sincere thanks to Bryan Bell for designing & sharing his templates.  He does good work.  In fact he also designed the template I was before.  I only hope he never saw what I did to it!

Here's something from a piece on "Why Collaboration" by Ray Ozzie:

"And so, for most of my life since that time, it has been my goal to explore what lies at the intersection between people, organizations, and technology. To attempt to utilize technology - to mold it, to shape it into a form such that it can help organizations to achieve a greater "return on connection" from employee, customer, and partner relationships, and to help individuals to strengthen the bonds between themselves and those with whom they interact - online. Because - empirically - collaborative technology has substantive value, in reducing the cost of coordination, in providing shared awareness across differences in space and time.

The way that I explore is to build products, and to see how they are used. To see what works, and what doesn't. To listen, to interact, to refine. Because cooperative work exists at the intersection between people, organizations, and technology, collaborative systems are truly fascinating: in order to serve people effectively, technologists must, for example, understand social dynamics, social networks, human factors. In order to serve people in the context of organizations effectively, technologists must, for example, understand organizational dynamics, modularity and transaction cost economics.

The bottom line to "why?" To create real value in a dimension that I passionately believe in."

Wow!

I've known who Ray Ozzie is for some time and what he's been involved in.  But I knew next to nothing about what drives him, what he is passionate about.

I just love what he says here.  Given a few years, a whole heap more experience, wisdom, and education I could have written this myself!

What lies at the intersection between people, organizations, and technology?

a fantastic question that drives me as well.

Collaborative working using an intranet. Many of the dot.com magazines have perished, but Fast Company seems to keep going, though I admit I look at... [Intranet Focus Blog]

» Good pickup on how so many companies still have a narrow view of what an intranet can be.  A good intranet is an information ecosystem and not just a magazine site for the corporate communications team.

The questionnaire mentioned looks interesting too.  It is geared towards large companies and seeks to determine:

• the potential value from developing a collaborative organization in your company.
• the current behavioral obstacles in your organization.
• the extent of collaborative levers currently in place in your company.

however I'm sure that many of it's questions could be usefully tailored to fit other situations.

More Flexible News Scanning Needed. This really hits the mark -- I've been traveling for two weeks with very limited connectivity. [Blunt Force Trauma]

» I too wish that Radio would handle news more flexibly.  The idea of a "poll now" button would be genuinely useful as would a way to adjust the frequency with which different RSS feeds are polled.

However when you get to the point where you want to poll every 3 minutes I think you may be reaching the breaking point for the medium.  I would be thinking about moving to Groove, Instant Messenger, Shared/Instant outlining or something like that to handle a real-time interaction.  The results of that interaction could then be published klog style for everyone to share.

 

I had Groove running on my notebook and I brought it up a few times to do things. I collaborate with some clients and people with Groove, keeping documents and discussions in sync. I also use it as a better Briefcase. And invariably, the comments were like "Wow, that's cool! I could manage my distributed project that way. I could keep track of bugs across a geographically disperse team that way. And man, you're disconnected and can sync later?" Then all of them would say "Who's Groove?" Its interesting to note that people need this kind of stuff and they have no idea its even out there or who Groove is (none of the developers in the room had ever heard of them). [...] How do we get people to collaborate? [Sam Gentile's Radio Weblog]

So then I download and install Groove, and start playing with it.  After 15 or 20 minutes of this, I'm starting to get it, so I think.  I call a few people from a client's office and get them to install it, and we start exploring what we can do.  By now, I'm getting excited about what I can do with this, and I'm starting to think I get it.  We figure out a couple of quick wins, and share a "pilot" groove space out to the team. [Greg Reinacker's Weblog]

Greg emailed me about Groove yesterday, I too had taken note of the recent posting on Groove and I'd been kicking around the idea of downloading it and seeing if anybody else at work would be interested.  Communication and collaboration are serious problems at work.  We've been using Sharepoint, but the results aren't great; we're using it as a glorified file server with a web interface.  Unfortunately, our connection to the Internet was pretty flaky yesterday and I couldn't connect to Groove the couple times I tried.  Monday, hopefully.

[Gordon Weakliem's Radio Weblog]

» Groove's one of those things.  I know it's important but it's a complex app and I never seem to get around to testing it out.  Maybe this week I'll download it again and see if Jeroen's offer to help me out is still good.

The redesign is based upon the "Discreet Purple" theme by Bryan Bell.  I really love the simple, elegant style and the way it emphasizes content.

New book on topic maps. Addison-Wesley Professional has just released a new book titled XML Topic Maps: Creating and Using Topic Maps for the Web... [Column Two]

» Looks good.  Some more info:

• Knowledge bases can be designed that not only relate concepts together but also can point to the resources relevant to each concept."
• Beginning with a broad introduction and tutorial of topic maps and XTM technology, the book then lays out strategies for creating and deploying the technology.
• Along the way the latest theoretical perspectives are offered along with a discussion of the challenges developers will face as the Web continues to evolve and develop.
• "The topic maps paradigm enables Global Federated Knowledge Interchange -- a concept that should be important to you if you are a large information owner with diversely structured information assets and international reach."

And I said I wouldn't buy any more books....