Monthly Archives: June 2005

19th July: Reserve your place for the Intranet Imperative live


You’ve read the blog, now attend the seminar šŸ˜‰

Chief Technology Solutions in association with Institute for Information Management is pleased to present the inaugural live industry update seminar:


The Intranet Imperative – Getting alignment with business needs

The nature of intranets is changing. In fact the term intranet itself is rapidly losing meaning. The traditional view of intranets, one that concentrates on static information built around an impregnable information architecture, creates a risk for organisations that may be oblivious to the rise of collaborative and dynamic ā€œapplication-netsā€ that connect users to people, places and things.

In this half-day seminar:

  • Hear about the latest technology and workplace trends driving the evolution of intranets;
  • Learn how to apply the intranet imperative management framework to align your intranet with business needs;
  • Understand alignment in practice from two local vendor case studies; and
  • Discuss implementation issues with an expert panel.

Presenters and panelists include James Dellow (Chief Technology Solutions and author of the ChiefTech blog), Brian Bailey (freelance provider of information, knowledge, change and project management services), Linda Shave (President, Institute for Information Management, NSW) plus Steven Layer (Weblogics) and Matthew Lipscombe (DocBanq).

But wait there is more: The good news is that thanks to the help of our supporters, the Institute for Information Management, DocBanq, and Weblogics, we can bring you this half-day seminar at a great price of $99 (incl. GST) including a light breakfast.

You can download the brochure and reserve your place at the seminar on the event Website at:

http://events.chieftech.com.au/

We look forward to seeing you there!

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Killer niche apps for location-based services

I’ve blogged in the last few months about location-based and geographic information system (GIS) related social software tools. If you are still trying to work out what you might do with location-based services (LBS) and GIS, GPSWorld has some suggestions – the following ideas all won cash prizes at the Cellular Telephone Industry Association Wireless show held in March this year:

  • asset tracking/field services;
  • monitoring and measuring physical activity in fitness programs;
  • child/teen tracking service for parents;
  • peer-to-peer/find me;
  • navigation systems giving real-time traffic, weather and fuel-price information, and nearby points of interest;
  • sale prices for houses and recently sold in the vicinity; and
  • location-based imaging and tagging.

However, I think Rob Roveta, from Qualcomm CDMA Technologies (QCT), makes the right observation when he says about location-based services that “more targeted niche apps will get the market going.“

I’d also suggest that we are seeing a similar thing evolving in the social software space as people connect different social software and GIS tools into niche applications. For example, Foundcity combines mobile camera phones/PDA, Google Maps and tagging:

“What’s Foundcity? With Foundcity you send photos and text messages from the street to your personal map and tag it, share it, blog it and more…“

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7th July – Social Software: Knowledge Management Panacea… or Technology Fad?

A date for your diary – I’ll be presenting in a few weeks time at the NSW KM Forum, which meets in Sydney, Australia at Standards Australia:

7th July 2005 – Social Software: Knowledge Management Panacea… or Technology Fad?

WHY: So you’ve heard people talking about them but are blogs, wikis and other social software tools just another technology fad? Social software lets people rendezvous, connect or collaborate using a computer network. Learn about social software on Internet, what this means for enterprise knowledge management systems, and discuss how this will affect knowledge management within organizations.

WHO: James Dellow is the Principal Consultant of Chief Technology Solutions and member of the NSW KM Forum’s committee. James has a decade of experience in the knowledge and information system space, including time spent within Ernst & Young’s award winning Center for Business Knowledge. He recently completed a Master of Business & Technology at UNSW and is expected to graduate in October 2005. James also writes his very own blog.

WHEN: 5.30pm for 6pm, Thursday 7th July 2005.

WHERE: Standards Australia, 286 Sussex Street, Sydney NSW 2000. Call James Digges on 0414 191 009 for after hours entry to the building

HOW MUCH: Free

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Wiki – The New Facilitator?

My most recent Image & Data Manager (IDM) article, published in the May/June 2005 edition, is now available for download from the archive on my Website:

Looking at the use of wikis within organisations, I ask “Is the wiki about to revolutionise team work, communication and how we collaborate in organisations? A wiki is a server program that allows users to collaborate in forming the content of a Website. Wikis are quick, simple and effective whenever people need to share information, but what exactly makes the wiki such a good collaborative tool and should mature IT applications, platforms and architectures be thrown out in favor of the new kid on the block?“

Don’t forget to look out for my next IDM article, which will discuss Mobile Knowledge Management. PS In the meantime, if you are still looking for more reading materials have a look at my three part Intranet Imperative article right here on the ChiefTech blog (part 1, part 2 and part 3).

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Industry Update No. 5: GrouputerNet from Grouputer Solutions

Mea Culpa! I have to admit to being a little behind with the industry updates at the moment, however my excuse is that I’m currently in the process of planning an industry update live event to take place in Sydney during July. Further details coming soon…

But back to this industry update: A few weeks ago I spoke to Anne Hudson, CEO of Grouputer Solutions and co-inventor of the GrouputerNet technology. Grouputer was founded in 1996 and is based in Sydney, Australia but has over 300 users in USA, Australia, Mexico, Europe and New Zealand. Prior to starting Grouputer, Anne worked as a management consultant and in senior positions for multinational organisations. The late Tony Benson (one of only seven people to have received the highly prestigious Pearcey Medal in recognition of his lifetime commitment to the IT industry) was also a member of the Grouputer board until his death earlier this year.

GrouputerNet is a Web-based collaborative group decision support and meeting application. This application is designed to be used by organisations to aid decision making, planning, problem solving and learning. This makes GrouputerNet quite different from the other products I’ve covered so far in the industry updates (see below) and in this respect it is complementary to other content or project management tools you might already have in place.

For me its the structured discussion and decision support functionality in GrouputerNet that make it stand out from other Webconferencing products because it ensures:

  • Every participant has an opportunity to be heard; and
  • Meetings are more productive because they are outcome driven.

Grouputer can also supply a process builder for GrouputerNet that allows meetings and learning processes to be packaged up into stand alone applications.

According to Grouputer, end-users require no training however they support facilitators with both product training and skills transfer through co-facilitation. You can visit the Grouputer Solutions Website to see live demos of GrouputerNet.

Disclaimer: Information on this site is of a general nature. Please seek advice for specific circumstances. Unless otherwise stated, please assume that I have no commercial relationship with the vendors or products discussed.

Previous Industry Updates:
Update No.1: Pivot Software
Update No.2: Objectify
Update No.3: GMB Research
Update No.4: TeamFrame from Crux Cybernetics

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New Associate: Conclusive Consulting Group

The Conclusive Consulting Group, based here in my adopted home town of Wollongong, NSW, Australia, has joined my list of associates.

Stephen Cuff is the Managing Director of Conclusive Consulting Group and he has consulted to a wide range of business types, from solo entrepreneurs to Fortune 500 companies.

Conclusive Consulting Group deliver custom designed solutions to help improve businesses and corporations. As the name suggests, a specific need is determined and the exact end result of a collaborative project defined. The process includes a clear determination of Objectives, Measures of Success and Value to be gained by the Client. This provides an accurate determination as to the return on investment that will be possible. Our goal is to improve management skills and processes for our clients.

Check out the Conclusive Website for free articles and you can also fill out an on-line Business Analysis survey to find what is and isn’t working well in your business.

Dark Blogs: A case study of an enterprise blog… or perhaps not

I’m beginning to really like Nancy White’s Full Circle Online Blog, as she picks up on some interesting stuff. This time she’s blogged about Suw Charman‘s case study on a “Dark Blog” (PDF file) at a European Pharmaceutical Group used for sharing competitive intelligence.

However the more I read this case study the more troubled I became. For example, the case study is introduced with the following:

“This case study examines how a European pharmaceutical group used Traction Software’s TeamPage (www.tractionsoftware.com) enterprise weblog software to create a competitive intelligence (CI) knowledge base to replace previous platforms such as Lotus Notes databases and static websites.“

Ok. Fair enough so far, but then it sounds like they then duplicated the core functionality of Lotus Notes with the new solution such as things like user permissions and flexibility in managing unstructured information, ease of deployment etc. The other interesting point is that when you read the details you’ll find they began planning in late 2002 and but then the development of the application didn’t start until 2004. Not exactly what I would call quick.

If anything – from a technical perspective – all we have here is a case of someone building a better mouse trap. That’s a fair enough outcome but (at the risk of repeating myself) we need to focus on understanding the difference between the benefits of blogging as a style of hyper-communication versus blogs as an information technology platform. It also raises a question for me as to what exactly is a blog?

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StoryCast from HP: storytelling with photos and narration

Jean Burgess, PhD student in cultural studies & new media, Queensland University of Technology, Australia has a great blog covering creativity, culture and technology. By chance I found this link to HP Labs’ StoryCast – an experimental digital storytelling service.

“StoryCast… lets people use their camera phones and other mobile devices to easily create and instantly share stories with friends and family. Each story consists of a sort of narrated slide show of photos accompanied by the storyteller’s voice.”

It reminds me a little of Nokia‘s Lifeblog. Now wouldn’t it be interesting if we could then share stories peer-to-peer through Nokia‘s Sensor application.

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The Power Of Us – Collaboration and Cooperation

US-based Consultant Nancy White picked up on an interesting Business Week article on “how mass collaboration on the Internet is shaking up business“. White comments that “There is some cool stuff in this article, but also some troubling issues which get sparse attention” and I agree – it reads like an essay rather than providing any new insights, but its still interesting.

BTW This article is part of collection a few other articles looking at The Future of Technology including mobility in the workplace.

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