Informationoverlord

Paula Thornton at The FASTForward Blog has a great piece on Enterprise 2.0: “Enterprise 2.0 Isn’t a Checklist”

Whilst it doesn’t contain any radical new thinking on the way to success for Enterprise 2.0 – It’s the people, stupid – I do like the way her mind thinks and how she expresses things. I agree in particular with her assertion about the role of IT and how traditional organisation IT thinking is something that can kill Enterprise 2.0.

“If you’re building a spaceship and lives are at stake, these practices are a must. If you’re running a company in today’s turbulent marketplace, everything that is locked down and fixed prevents the real human capital of the organization from adapting to constantly changing circumstances. There is never an ideal process or system and there will always be exceptions. IT cannot respond fast enough to these changes. That means the flexibility has to be built into the systems.”

I think having organisations that are adaptable is key. This also touches on an idea explored in the excellent book ‘Starfish and the Spider’ by Ori Brafman and Rod Becksrom about how being more decentralised in business can help to make your more efficient. This in itself often needs for there to be a cultural shift in the organisation away from command and control and practices and a culture that reinforce such behaviours. As Paula Thornton says “A different culture is not a prerequisite, it’s a corequisite.” I like that. ” It should evolve as enabled by the other changes. Such cultures have to move from ‘rules’ to ‘guidelines’; from ‘fixed processes’ to ‘governance models’; from binary to heuristic (obvious exceptions will be for those industries and/or business artifacts subject to legislation).”

All this must, of course, go hand in hand with enterprise 2.0 tools only being introduced to enhance and improve actual working processes. There is the danger that companies, who give lip service to having an open cultue, but who are in reality still very much command and control, decide to ‘get’ enterprise 2.0 and start telling people what the wiki , blog, etc SHOULD be used for,rather than making people aware of the tools and allowing them to discover how certain tools can best help them do there job better/quicker etc.

There is an interesting set of posts on the 3 Geeks and a Law Blog about using crowdsourcing with lawfirms to accomplish certain research tasks. They are pleasantly surprised by the quality of results they get back for tasks paying only 10-50 cents per task, using Amazon’s MTurk ‘crowdsource’ work system. The tasks – identifying general counsels and summarising articles are not hugely difficult, but work well as a proof of concept for the idea.

According to Greg Lambert “I have to admit that I was pretty impressed with the quality of the work. Regardless of if we paid 25 or 50 cents, the work was very good. I’m also stunned by the seriousness that the MTurkers seem to take with regards to the quality of the work.”

Should we in the information community now be worried about crowdsourcing as well as outsourcing when it comes to our jobs? Or should be all be signing up for MTurk now to make some additional money on the side!?

I came across this site  and it gave me an idea for a new web2 startup, that I’d like to call, Burglr

I see two types of account: Sharer and Follower.

Sharer Account:

List all the good and possessions you have in your house.
Sign up to use ‘always on’ GPS location tool.
Link your Dopplr/Tripit etc account to let people know when you’re away from home.
Link to Twitter/Facebook ’status updates’ to confirm you’re away from home.

Follower Account:

Search by Area
Integration with Google Street View
Anonymous ‘follow’
Email when ‘away’ alerts

The idea still needs some fleshing out, and most people I know are already providing enough information for this to work without my new site, so maybe it isn’t needed anyway? What do you think?

I could not resist a short blog post about Dell’s new netbook. It looks like a nice little machine. Dell obviously agree, and have also decided that what they need to do is target women. So much so they have set up a ‘Della‘ part of their website to tell women why they should get a Dell mini: It’ll fit in your handbag; you can find and save recipes and watch cooking videos; track your calories; download meditation podcasts, watch yoga videos…

Think they missed, we’ll patronise the fuck out of you. Why not just go the whole hog and say we’ve pre-installed a link to eBay and already saved searches on handbags and shoes for you, so you don’t need to.

According to the BBC the French National Assembly has passed the Hadopi law (by 296 to 233) which will implement a three strikes rule that would cut internet access to anyone ‘caught’ illegal file sharing. A new state agency, the Hadopi, would first send illegal file-sharers a warning e-mail, then a letter, and finally cut off their connection for a year if they were caught a third time.

The move comes as the UK music and film industries are putting pressure on Lord Carter to add a similar recommendation to his Digital Britain report.

The French move is a risky one, as it puts it on collision course with the European Union. Last week the European Parliament (EP) reinstated one of its first reading amendments for the EU’s new telecoms regulatory package by reinstating an amendment that guaranteed that an internet user’s internet access could not be restricted without a court ruling. “no restriction may be imposed on the fundamental rights and freedoms of end users, without a prior ruling by the judicial authorities (…) save when public security is threatened.”

The French Law which does not involve the accused person having their internet access blocked by any judicial authority would immediately be in breach of that law (if adopted). However: EU telecoms ministers, who have a final say on the EU legislation, could reject the amendment at a meeting on 12 June, but this would delay agreement and adoption of the whole telecom reform package for months. Also, as chances are there will be 12-24 months for Member States to implement any agreed new telecoms package; and that the infringement process of the European Commission is tediously slow (Countries are still only just being found in breach of EU law for the European Court of Justice for infringing the telecoms framework that was in place before the current one (which was passed in 2002); regardless of what the Commission eventually decides on this issue France may still go ahead with this plan.

I notice that the US government has signed some new agreements with a variety of social media sites to allow federal agencies to follow President Obama’s lead by joining the likes of Facebook and MySpace to help increase citizen participation in government. The agreements resolve legal concerns found in many standard terms and conditions that pose problems for federal agencies, such as liability, endorsements, advertising, freedom of information, and governing law.

Of course President Obama already has the Whitehouse in full social media/networking tilt, with a presence on Facebook , Flickr , YouTube , MySpace , Vimeo and Twitter

Of course, here in the UK our own glorious leader has seen 10 Downing Street spreading its message via some of the same tools

Facebook, YouTube, Flickr , and Twitter

Although it has to be said they have been rather quiet of late on Twitter - nothing new for a week? Some might say an accurate reflection of the state of the current PM.

It seems that the residents of Manchester will be the first people in the UK to benefit from feeling safe in knowing who they are. The government’s wonderful plan to issue us all with ID cards that we don’t have to carry is starting in earnest (a small village on the outskirts of Manchester, I believe). “ID cards will deliver real benefits to everyone, including increased protection against criminals, illegal immigrants and terrorists,” the home secretary said. Yes, it is true. In future if you encounter any of these classes of people all that all you’ll need to do is wave your ID card at them, and it will emit a secret death ray that will either kill or momentarily disarm the individual’s) allowing you enough time to escape.

“In the temple of love: shine like thunder; In the temple of love: cry like rain, In the temple of love: hear my calling, In the temple of love: hear my name …” Temple of Love - Sisters of Mercy

I bring you news from a strange world. Most of you know that I work for a Clifford Chance, a large corporate law firm, who mostly spend their time sorting out contracts between parties. In fact the parties were one of the things that attracted me to the job, so you can imagine my disappointment when I realised I’d got the wrong end of the stick when I heard that. Anyway, we do quite a bit of M&A (Mergers and Acquisitions) work here, so I was interested to read that apparently, the Executive Committees of Inner Temple and Middle Temple have agreed to commission a feasibility study to investigate the potential benefits of merging their Libraries and creating a Joint Education and Advocacy Centre. Yeah, Library M&A.

Now, these Temple places are, I believe, where lawyers who couldn’t get into places like CC - and/or used to like dressing up as children - go to pray for another job (I saw a programme about it once, it all looked a bit like a grown up version of Harry Potter). These ‘Temples’ seem to involve ritual humiliation and being forced to dress up in musty old robes and wear ill-fitting wigs (like those school plays all over again). You also have to learn some law too and say ‘M’lord’ a lot. I’m not sure if those that work in the libraries have to do likewise or not. I haven’t heard of anything along those lines, although in further weirdness bunnies have been spotted there I have been told. See: I told you it was a strange place.

The Study will look at things such as which building gets the library, what to do with the stock - merge, consolidate, get rid of - and , of course, what to do with the gods and goddesses that work in said libraries, without whom the legal world would crumble and fall: - obviously. It will be summer before we get the results of the study. Of course this being the UK, it could be several years before we have a summer, so this process could take a while.

In the meantime I’d ask you to visit the site of the most regal Charon QC, whom I believe ‘M’lord’ knows about the goings on in such places and has a poll on his site (Well, if Britney can ask for one in her Hotel room, I don’t see why he can’t have one on his website) which asks the question: Is the proposal to merge the Inner Temple and Middle Temple libraries a good idea or a bad idea?