Eldis aggregation tool

05 July 2004

New book on technology in civil society (or vice versa). Howard Rheingold - who wrote a chapter - notes publication by MIT Press of Shaping the Network Society: The New Role of Civil Society in Cyberspace, Edited by Douglas Schuler and Peter Day Howard writes: "Information and computer technologies are... [Designing for Civil Society]
10:35:54 AM

Working group started on connecting blogs and forums. Martin Röll has now reported on Knowledgeboard a meeting which discussed how to join up blogs, forums and other online places. In doing that he explores why people blog - personal journalling, collections, publishing, conversations - with accompanying mindmap.... [Designing for Civil Society]
10:35:27 AM

ISociety report launch invite. Will Davies has now posted details of the London launch of his new iSociety report on Shrinking the Net - delivery of ICT in local communities. "As the internet becomes ever more pervasive, its local uses start to over-shadow its... [Designing for Civil Society]
10:35:02 AM

Corporate Weblog Pitch Winner.

On April 26th, 2004, I won the Perfect Corporate Weblog Elevator Pitch Competition. The pitch had to be 50-160 words and convince a corporate decision maker to sponsor and resource a critical mass of weblogs in his/her organization so that their benefits can be demonstrated in a meaningful way.

THE PITCH:

First, think about the value of the Wall Street Journal to business leaders. The value it provides is context — the Journal allows readers to see themselves in the context of the financial world each day, which enables more informed decision making.

With this in mind, think about your company as a microcosm of the financial world. Can your employees see themselves in the context of the whole company? Would more informed decisions be made if employees and leaders had access to internal news sources?

Weblogs serve this need. By making internal websites simple to update, weblogs allow individuals and teams to maintain online journals that chronicle projects inside the company. These professional journals make it easy to produce and access internal news, providing context to the company — context that can profoundly affect decision making. In this way, weblogs allow employees and leaders to make more informed decisions through increasing their awareness of internal news and events.

The post I wrote the day I won is here. Or read a final reflection.

[Common Craft - Online Community Strategies]
10:34:03 AM

Achieving Social Change: With The Slightest Push, Just In The Right Place. "Starting epidemics requires concentrating resources on a few key areas. Your resources ought to be solely concentrated on the [those who naturally play the roles of]Connectors, Mavens, and Salesmen. The world does not accord with our intuition. Those who are... [Robin Good's Latest News]
10:32:18 AM

Thinking About Interaction Design for Online News Delivery. "Online journalism needs better design for active readers rather than passive consumers. The author's research indicates that Web content can be made far more meaningful and useful through better use of interactivity, or 'productive interaction'." (Online Journalism Review) - courtesy of lucdesk [InfoDesign: Understanding by Design]
10:30:12 AM

Academic publishing web-style. Here are some links related to the publishing of research and other academic works that I've culled off some lists recently: Nature: Access to the Literature This ongoing web focus will explore current trends and future possibilities. Each week, the website will publish specially commissioned insights and analysis from leading... [IDblog]
10:27:40 AM

Collaboration First, Then Knowledge Management.

A very broad and thorough article on online collaboration. Here's a nice observation: "The goals of collaboration should first be to allow knowledge workers to labor together to complete projects and only then to collect that knowledge to be leveraged for the rest of the enterprise. Too many collaboration technology implementations are led by a knowledge management team that may have reversed the order of those two priorities." [thanks ColumnTwo]

[elearningpost]
10:27:07 AM

Usability and listening to customers have limits.

Gerry McGovern on balancing usability and real value : "Usability sometimes misses the point. If you’re trying to sell me red shoes, I don’t care how user-friendly your website is, I’m just not interested in buying. If you’re charging me 30 percent more than your competitor, all your fancy usability is pretty much irrelevant. If I think this product is cool and I must have it, I will gladly suffer an unusually designed website just to get my hands on it."

[elearningpost]
10:26:42 AM