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This draft has been sitting here for more than a month… Trying to finish & publish it now!
On June 22 early in the morning I flew to Berlin to attend the EACE Workshop at Fraunhofer FOKUS, after a demanding week spent in Dublin doing fieldwork.
The EACE project is part of the ongoing research in Europe looking at ICT technologies for developing new collaborative tools and environments. The EACE project is an 18 month FP6 Specific Support Action set to “investigate further the dynamics, potential and impacts of the technological advances in order to feed the policy making process”.
The agenda sounded very interesting, and I was hoping to meet some of the people doing research in the field of Collaborative (e)Working Environments, which ties so well into our work. I’m part of several AMI@work communities, I’m subscribed to the ECOSPACE newsletter, but I didn’t have yet the chance to meet face-to-face with people doing research in this area, and I thought this would be a good opportunity.
As usually when I travel abroad, I did my homework before(booked the flight, arranged accommodation at friends, printed out directions and a map). Unfortunately, the Deutsche Bahn website knew nothing about Kaiserin-Augusta Allee, and gave me directions to Kaiserin-Augusta Strasse instead. I had to arrive there before realising there was no Fraunhofer Institut in that area, and it took me a while to get to the right place, so I missed some of the morning talks.
Craig Cmehill from SAP has blogged the event on the spot (and then waited indefinitely for this post to be published, guessing – I don’t know how!- that there was another blogger in the room!).
In the afternoon, Arnd Layer from IBM Germany spoke about Practical experience with social software at IBM. He spoke about profiles, communities, tagging, internal blogs and activities – all what Lotus Connections basically offers!, but he illustrated everything with examples, which made the talk really interesting. I really loved this particular tag cloud!
After spending the whole week absorbing information in my fieldwork, I was on the same wavelength with the speaker. When Craig asked: “Is this public? Can I blog this?”, I basically couldn’t keep from telling him it was on YouTube🙂 as public as it can get!
Arnd also mentioned Lotus Greenhouse, meant to give customers and collaborators the feeling of the new products, and ThinkPlace, the internal Web application for facilitating innovation.
Arnd concluded with a few words of wisdom on Business Social Networking:
– listen to your customers;
– use blogs to communicate externally, watch blogs speaking about your own products;
– encourage adoption: instant messaging and web conferences can provide people with real time information;
– use wikis as glossaries for teams / FAQs.
He emphasized that we live in a globalised world, in which the ones who dare and are pro-active will have the advantages. Knowledge Management was – for too long- stuck in top down processes; social networking opens new perspectives.
The next speaker was Craig Cmehil, Community Evangelist at SAP AG – presenting The world(s) of the SAP community Network. This time, the facts were completely new, and I had a tremendous surprise to see what a big company can do with these nice tools, if the right attitude and culture are embraced. And of course, the right people – Craig appeared to me as a sort of wizard, open-minded, innovative and ready to try new things in new ways, always present in a hundred places at one time, reading, commenting, adjusting the tools to fit the people.
The SAP community network seems to me an impressive achievement, with separate areas dedicated to developers and business process experts.
What makes the concept interesting are its exclusive content, the downloads available, the worldwide collaboration it fosters and a recognition system for the contributions of its members.
Craig said 76% of the content was actually contributed by the users, which is quite impressive.
He also mentioned specific problems, like French speakers not mingling with the others and having their separate community – but the community network is actually supporting this.
New tools are offered to the community and people are experimenting. Some get adopted, some others don’t. He mentioned Second Life and Twitter (and the case of Sen. Edwards that made the corporate world to actually pay attention to micro-blogging!)
The next presenter was Volkmar Pipek from University of Siegen, Germany. His talk was titled Every Software is Social -Appropriation Support in Collaborative Systems.
He tackled one of my favourite topics: the adoption of collaborative software tools, mentioning long-term studies on Groupware adoption such as Orlikowski 1996, Kasten & Jones 1998, Pipek & Wulf 1999.
I loved the idea that good design and user centred software development are important, but they don’t guarantee adoption; use dynamics can‘t be fully anticipated.
I particularly liked the statement on the role of social practice around collaborative systems
in adoption. Actually the practice is the appropriation of these technologies!!
He illustrated his talk with a few examples from their work – the help function of a tool(an Eclipse-based client for the BSCW system) was combined with a wiki.
The main conclusion was that these ‘appropriation activities’ should be actively supported, and we’re moving towards ‘Virtual Communities of Tool Practice’! The designers of a tool can do a lot, but the last mile has to be done by users.
Frank Fuchs Kittowski from Fraunhofer ISST was next, speaking about Integration of Knowledge Communities into Knowledge-intensive Business Processes.
I came across Frank’s name while I was working for Fraunhofer IESE and some of my colleagues were involved in a project called APO-IT together with several other Fraunhofer Institutes, but I never had the chance to meet him in person before.
He spoke about making informal collaboration visible and integrating communities into business processes. Wikis were then brought into the picture for providing “context- (process-) based access to the community” and give birth to “collaborative knowledge activities without process
boundaries (in and across process steps)”. I must confess I am a bit skeptical about this idea. It might sound good in theory (finding a cure for a pain we all know it’s there!), but it doesn’t pay any attention to the fact that communities are living organisms (if we speak about real communities here and not about special interest groups assembled by the management!)
Their approach is actually adding a wiki and a wiki interface to the existing APO Pilot process oriented knowledge base.
The interesting twist is that the application is designed for process integrated learning in the automotive industry.
The last speaker was George Milis, from European Dynamics who presented the current results of the EACE project in a talk titled: Towards a New Policy Framework for the Adoption of Electronic Collaborative Working Environments.
The project partners set to elaborate policy recommendations for CWE adoption(Collaborative eWorking Environments) in the EU.
What they came up with was a “layered ontology of collaboration patterns”. More on the framework and the 3 selected CWE prototypes in George’s slides!
There were mentions about counterbalancing the American supremacy in designing collaborative software tools (doh!). Someone mentioned the Buerger Portal initiative in Germany – giving every german citizen an email address, a web page, access to shared spaces (who’s interested already has all these).
Someone asked the following question: “If the availability of the technologies is not a problem, then how can EU stimulate the adoption?” I tried to bring into discussion the idea the approach shouldn’t be centred on the technology and the collaborative tools, but on the purpose for which one would embrace these tools. If a job application procedure or a tax claim can only be done online, people will learn how to use it. But putting the carriage in front of the horses won’t help!
I mentioned Karin Knorr-Cetina’s work on Sociality with Objects that has been used by Jyri Engestrom to show why some social network services work and others don’t.
Another discussion topic was the (disappearing) work-life balance. People tend to take care of personal matters durring the working hours and work from home in the evenings, so the boundaries between work and free time tend to get blurred. Arnd stated that what’s happening inside IBM shows that actually adding a social dimension to work improves productivity.
Volkmar argued that life needs structure -say the psychologists!
The question: Do we need a collaboration etiquette(c-etiquette)? was also asked. Could such an etiquette be modelled ? (In my opinion, it can only emerge!)
The opportunity of using CWE as a vehicle for transferring knowledge and skills to new and younger employees was also touched in the discussion.
The slides of the presentations were made available for download, and there are also a few pictures from the event available.
Together with Craig Cmehil, we managed to ignite some interest for social software tools and especially for Twitter and Dopplr! Unfortunately, the enthusiasm was short lived – none of the invitations I’ve sent were ever answered!
Craig also uses a nice tool I wasn’t aware of – Time-to-Meet – for scheduling his meetings.
There’s a link to a database full of other fancy applications on his blog.
In conclusion, it was an interesting event and a good networking opportunity, but my original expectation of getting associated with some FP7 proposal writers in this area wasn’t unfortunately met.
(Originally published in Tales from the Field of Software Engineering)
August 02 2007 | Uncategorized | No Comments »
I’m dreaming about blogging day and night. Then why I’m not doing it?!
I’m a Virgo, you know, and we Virgos have the tendency to excessively analyse everything…
It took me quite a long time to analyse the reasons for my erratic blogging: mad workload (self-imposed!), lack of work-life balance and… a fair amount of good old procrastination…
I’m writing things in so many places that it’s difficult to keep track anymore… I’m kind of lost in the jungle of web 2.0 tools, and I realise more and more that, despite of being somehow “permanent”, most of the content I generate is ephemeral. My blog was a sort of central point where I used to be able to retrieve everything I needed from my past… Actually, this is what it was meant to be:
“A place where stories, thoughts and ideas come together“
Now this map of my past three years has a lot of blank zones… a lot of stubs, unpublished drafts… but I lost hope of ever getting back to them, and I decided to focus on the future…
I’m feeling much better now – got rid of my anxieties, accumulated some experience in my research domain and I’m more positive about finding ways to invest more time in this violon d’Ingres of mine which is social networks… playing my Connector role;-)
March was hectic, but great! The Webcamp on Social Networks in Galway, the Global Sourcing workshop in Val d’Isere, and BocSe (the Bosch Software Engineering conference) in Ludwigsburg, where Ita Richardson and myself were invited to give a tutorial on Global Software Development. I must confess I was a bit wary about calling it “tutorial”, because I doubted we could teach the Bosch software engineers anything new, but formally, there was no other way of doing it… It went amazingly well, and we enjoyed it as much as the participants…
April looks a bit less hectic – more time for producing stuff…
But May and June… oh, my! What’s on my list right now:
Exciting…and scary on the same time:-P
April 14 2007 | Uncategorized | No Comments »
I’m in a dream place -Val d’Isere – attending the first IS Workshop on Global Sourcing.
Val d’Isere is advertised as the best ski resort in the whole world. After what I saw today, I might agree;-)
The workshop is extremely interesting – the proceedings are already online!, and there’s another day to go!
March 14 2007 | Uncategorized | No Comments »
After a sort of hibernation, with lots of paper writing, revising and nights without sleep, I’ve got a phone call from John Breslin, inviting me to Galway for a WebCamp on Social Networking taking place at DERI on Wednesday, the 7th of March.
My first reaction was: too bad! I won’t be able to go, I’m teaching on Wednesdays. But then I sat down and thought: this is something I’ve be longing for all these long winter months, and as they say: “where there’s a will, there‘s a way …”
I really want to attend, and the way was found;-) Now I must start thinking of my talk. What I had in mind was “Social Networking in corporate environments” – giving an account of my observations, maybe focusing on one story only… will see!
Valdis Krebs is the special guest, and he will give a talk on “Social networking and emergent communities”. Can’t wait!
February 28 2007 | Uncategorized | No Comments »
As I said in a previous post, I started teaching a module this semester. This morning, I got a phone call from my colleague Jurgen Simpson, telling me about a seminar and a performance taking place at the Daghdha space this afternoon. Great stuff for our students, who had the opportunity to get an idea (maybe for the first time) what’s the use of what they are learning.
I went there myself for the evening concert. I didn’t get any name while I was there, but I asked my friend Google when I got back home, and he told me everything:
Soundings: KK.Null
Tuesday, October 31. At Daghdha Space, Limerick, Ireland. Soundings presents KK.Null, escalation 746, and Tony Higgins. More information is available on the web.
I had the place and the date – what else did I need?! A bit more googling, and I found out who’s who:
- soundings – a performance series designed to open the senses to new forms of music, sound art, and media interaction;
- Tony Higgins – a 23 year old composer from Galway City, Ireland. He has just completed a Master’s in Music Technology at the University of Limerick, for which he wrote “I’ll be there in ten minutes”, for drum kit and tape. (might have been this the piece performed tonight!);
- escalation 746 –escalation 746 is an association engaged in sonic attacks, art appropriation, and terminal documents. Performances are designed to detach segments from the audio spectrum in order to expose their form and the medium itself for examination. Starting in radiophonics, escalation 746 has explored performance art, music, soundtracks, phonography, electro-acoustics and other disciplines. The piece performed tonight was based on the well-known Nokia standard ringtone, and I found it extremely interesting!
- KKNull alias KAZUYUKI KISHINO – born in Tokyo, Japan. Composer,guitarist, singer, mastermind of ZENI GEVA and electronic wizard. One of the top names in Japanese noise music and in a larger context, one of the great cult artists in experimental music since early 80’s. It was obvious to me that he was good at what he’s doing, but that doesn’t mean I liked it. I guess I lack a lot of context knowledge, and even so… It has to do with the vibes, I feel like I can’t attune myself to this frequency, it even makes specific points on my body ache…
The easy way out would be to say: I’m getting old, this is not my music, it’s for who enjoys it, leave me alone! But I don’t feel like this – I am curious, I’m ready to try , to learn … I believe it’s fantastic that sciences and arts can converge, marvelous things could come out of this… And I usually like loud music, I enjoy that tickling in my solar plexus, the only problem I have is with music hitting directly some sensitive points on my body and causing real pain…
At the end of the performance, one of my MMPT students came to me and told me full of pride that they went digital: they created a MySpace for their course and they plan to use it as a notice board! We talked about MySpace a few weeks ago, I’m glad they’re experimenting!
November 01 2006 | Uncategorized | No Comments »
Last week I attended the CASCON Dublin Symposium at the Dublin Software Laboratory of IBM. The event was organised in association with its bigger “sister”, the Toronto CASCON, already at its 16th edition. This year’s edition had a suggestive name: “Meeting of minds”.
The keynote speaker here in Dublin was Prof.Mark Keane, the director of Science Foundation Ireland. For me, it was an excellent opportunity for getting a broad picture of research being done in Ireland: research centres, groups, topics, funding perspectives, and so on.
There were 3 papers presented in the morning, and 3 in the afternoon (very little compared to the Toronto CASCON, who went on for 4 days and included several tracks and workshops and a technology showcase). Two guests, one from Egypt and one from Sweden, gave an international dimension to the local event.
During the lunch break, a poster session gave us the chance to network with IBMers, colleagues from other universities and other participants. My team presented two posters, and we got some very interesting feedback on them. We all voted for choosing the “best poster”, and Benoit Gaudin(and his colleagues) from University College Dublin got the award for a poster titled From Migrations to Population Concentration, based on some very interesting visualizations.
The video link with IBM Toronto worked (almost) without fault, and we were able to watch the keynote speech and the panel discussion going on there, and even to ask questions… It was such a nice feeling, to be part of that global research community and to participate in the Toronto event while sitting here in an auditorium at IBM in Dublin. I was happy to discover that someone blogged that event – here’s the link.
The CASCON blog is aggregating posts from several participants’ blogs; it almost feels like I’ve been there! I was thinking of it as an inspiration for setting up a conference blog for ECSCW’07 – we’ll be hosting it in Limerick!
Going back to the CASCON blog today, I found a very interesting (and painfully true) reflection on CASCON (but it could apply to any other conference!), the incredible amount of enthusiasm and ideas they stir in us, and how these get killed by our inevitable return to our day-to-day lives!
October 23 2006 | Uncategorized | No Comments »
The Open University is advertising an interesting position:
Research Fellow, Role of Blogs in Learning and Teaching
The Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) Research Group is seeking a postdoctoral researcher to work on an e-learning project in the area of blogs. The project is jointly funded by the Faculty of Maths and Computing and the Virtual Learning Environment programme of the Open University. The research work will be carried out in close collaboration with industrial and academic collaborators.
Far from being just a fad, as some people predicted, blogs had become a common presence in our day-to-day lives. Their use in education gains ground, as we see.
Two years ago, this would have been my dream job. But not now… Anyone interested?!
August 18 2006 | Uncategorized | No Comments »
I’m striving to understand what’s happening to me, and why my apetite for blogging seems to have radically decreased. I guess it’s because I’m changing, going through a transformation period, becoming somebody else… and I like this new person much better than the old me…
I know, it would have been interesting to document this transformation. But I didn’t feel like…
I simply felt the need to be on my own for a while. Things are changing again now … I’d like to reconnect to my peers, to lay a bridge between the old and the new “me”… to get my voice back!
Let’s see if I am able to sustain this impulse by blogging regularly again!
I need a fresh start, and I should forget about the tens of unfinished drafts – they’ll never get published!
July 26 2006 | Uncategorized | No Comments »
I was away for a few days, doing field studies. This is what I found in my Inbox when I got back to work:
“Turning Munster Red”
The Munster Rugby Supporters Club is asking the workplaces of Munster to become a sea of red the day before the Heineken Cup. In preparation for the big day in Cardiff the 19th of May is to be designated Munster Red Day.
All factories, shops, offices and schools are being asked to participate in the initiative by encouraging employees and pupils to wear the Munster colours to work or school. Some of the largest employers and schools throughout the province have already agreed to show their support for the Munster Rugby team by allowing employees to wear jerseys and red clothing.
Hmm… that explained why a lot of people in my department were wearing red that day!
On Saturday, I decided to go to the city center and join the crowd. Many of my colleagues said they will be there, the atmosphere was fantastic, and, the most important thing, MUNSTER WON THE CUP!
A few images taken in the hours before the game … So that you can see how Munster red looks like!
May 20 2006 | Uncategorized | No Comments »
I just finished reading “The Deadline” by Tom deMarco, an excellent novel about project management. Here’s a good review by Richard Mateosian, and the first chapter is offered for preview here.
A few words on the plot: Webster Tompkins, a systems manager who has just been laid off from a giant telecommunications company, is kidnapped by a charming spy and brought to the fictitious state of Morovia to organise its software development industry and put to work about 1500 software engineers who are supposed to re-produce six carefully chosen (already existing) software products in a two years period.
From Tompkins’ perspective, the four most essential ingredients of management are:
- people selection
- task matching
- motivation
- team formation
– and he calls all the rest Administrivia.
Because he has too many people that have to be given some work to do, Tompkins decides to try a controlled experiment, running three parallel projects with teams of different sizes and using different methods. He envisages a sort of world’s first project management laboratory.
Tompkins is seconded by Belinda Binda -a bag lady who used to be the world’s greatest
project manager in her day, and who eventually recovers from her burn-out after embarking upon this experiment. She had also been kidnapped and offered Tompkins’ position before, but she declined and found refuge on the Morovian beaches searching in containers.
Reading the book was a delight, I was looking forward to the evenings and to travel time when I was able to continue reading.
I particularly liked this conversation between Tompkins and Belinda Binda, where Belinda explains that management involves heart, gut, soul and nose.
The ‘heady’ leader can lead, but people won’t follow. You can’t do much about the heart you’ve got, and maybe you have to be born to it. However, there are people who grow into management ; they start awkward and become confident and eventually make wonderful managers.
The soul has to do with the fact that projects prosper to the extent that people learn to work together effectively. If they work entirely apart, a bunch of piece workers in different places who didn’t even know each other, then soul wouldn’t matter. Management would be a simple matter of coordinating their efforts. It would be an entirely mechanic process.
..the real world requires close, warm, and almost intimate interconnections between team members, and easy, effective interaction through the whole organization.
And Belinda emphasizes that the manager can’t make this happen – he has to let it happen, to create an atmosphere where it can happen. If he’s lucky, it does happen. That’s what she calls building soul into the organization.
She also speaks about a team’s need for a shared vision (could be a cult of quality work, the feeling of being an elite or simply integrity): …the group desperately wants to be unified. The human creature has – built into its firmware – a need to be part of a community. And, in today’s rather sterile modern world, there isn’t much community to be had.
The scene is absolutely fantastic – a top manager getting advice from a bag lady in a Morovian park on soul and community;-)
And it relates to my current work – how to create this atmosphere where flow can actually happen ? From user-centred design to team-centred design – isn’t this what CSCW is all about?!
April 08 2006 | Uncategorized | No Comments »
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In the afternoon, Arnd Layer from IBM Germany spoke about Practical experience with social software at IBM. He spoke about profiles, communities, tagging, internal blogs and activities – all what Lotus Connections basically offers!, but he illustrated everything with examples, which made the talk really interesting. I really loved this particular tag cloud!
