Security, Part 3

Another thing I've been thinking about when using external sites for things like wikis, blogs, and other collaborative tools is that, although you may be able to control access rights on a user level, it probably doesn't work as well as you think. Here are some examples:

* you grant access to anyone who has the same corporate domain email ID that you do ("@xyzcompany.com"). Whenever someone tries to access your information, the system validates that their account has that domain. However, it doesn't check to see if that domain is currently valid, just that it was originally. In other words, if someone creates an account on this system, using a corporate email account, it's only validated then. Never again.

* you grant access to someone whose account ID looks like the person you mean ("Joe Abercrombie" = "jabercrombie"). It turns out to be someone else.

* you've granted access to your co-workers. A new person joins the team, but you only remember to add her to 5 out of your 6 on-line tools.

* if you use a corporate directory/ ldap system internally at your company, you are probably used to being able to grant access to groups like "Sales," "U.S.-only," and "Managers." No such luck on external systems.

Security, Part 2

At my company, we are supposed to put appropriate footers at the bottoms of our documents and emails. For example, "Internal Use Only," "Do Not Duplicate," etc., (I made all of those up). I don't think all of the employees are as thoughtful at doing this as our legal & security groups would like, although I'm sure many people are very conscientious. So I think we may have just assumed that, by keeping our documents only on our intranet, that we are keeping employees safe from themselves, and the company's secrets slightly safer than they might be otherwise.

Now, however, it is very easy for employees to blog on the Internet, or collaborate using a wiki on the Internet. Our email & calendar accounts are accessible from the Internet. But many employees find accessing our applications and documents through our intranet just not compatible with their work (or location, or Internet-enabled device, or ...). So should we move more out onto the Internet?

Security, Part 1

(note that I'm not in an IT security group or anything, I just started thinking about this)

Several months ago when our group started looking at ning, I wrote up some general guidelines for using these Internet-based apps (vs. our intranet), just to have something.

Currently, after reading the policies & guidelines for our company's external blogs and wikis, I'm thinking that we've just flipped the model. We used to think we had to protect users from themselves, by giving them the safest default. Now that everyone wants to be connected via whatever device or appliance or location or situation they choose, we need to move our data onto the Internet. In addition, as we understand the value of open information (think Wikinomics), we (as a company) want to publish as much of our information, and thoughts, to as wide an audience as possible.

Anyway, I think the model is now something more like, "You, as an employee, have knowledge and ideas that may or may not be appropriate to share with the rest of the world, including our competitors. It is up to you to determine whether or not you should publish this information securely, or on the Internet. If you are unsure, contact blahblahblah for assistance."

Liveblogging from Office 2.0

This week I attended the Office 2.0 conference in San Francisco. I decided one of the easiest ways to take notes, and be able to access them later, was via my iPhone. So I took my notes in iPhone's Notes application, then mailed it here to my blog. I haven't yet corrected anything except the titles, and added tags (I can't tag entries directly via email).

I decided to, at least for a day or so, leave them in the format they arrived in, just to see how I feel about that. I will tidy this all up, and also add links to the products and articles, rsn.

If you want to see all blog posts from everyone who was blogging directly from the Office 2.0 conference, check this out (also in my Links channel): Office 2.0 Conf Tag in Technorati.

GTD with Office 2.0:

Smartsheet shows "what changed", granular permissions,

PlanHQ shows also what you did

Do at least weekly review, maybe daily, schedule it

Sometimes you just have the mental aptitude to shred paper.

If you can't find the first actionable task, maybe it's not worth
doing. Staff Meetings start out everyone says what they need from
teammates.

Results Manager

(Office 2.0 Fri PM Notes, part 3)

-Diana

<Sent from my iPhone>

Enterprise Collaboration:

Collaborative tools need to be, have fun so people will use them.

Externally-based tools can't always be used, some companies are too
protective of their IP (Sony).

Zimbra, Clearspace,

No votes for video conferencing

Really incorporate The Wisdom of Crowds.

(Office 2.0 Fri PM Notes, part 2)

-Diana

<Sent from my iPhone>

Mind-Mapping:

(not sure I really agree with all of this)
Most useful tool now for collaboration. Align on language, context.
Nonthreatening. Virtual brainstorming.

McKinsey: Next Revolution of Interactions ( look this up and correct)
Past 30y reengineering, automation, outsoucing. Must increase
productivity of most knowledgeable workers

Now with Web 2.0, you can truly use for online collaboration. Before,
it was just duplicating paper-based tools (didn't transfer to online
collaboration). Will be lots more products appearing in this space now.

Visual Thesaurus

(Office 2.0 Fri PM Notes, part 1)

-Diana

<Sent from my iPhone>

Online Communities:

Most Internet content produced by us now, not big corporate sites.
Approximately same rate (percentage) of errors.

Empty Quarter: least likely to use social tools, most senior authority
2% troublemakers

Companies creating online communities get new ideas for uses of their
products. Share best practices with each other. Community may/will
morph into something else; but you (company) don't own it anymore,
it's now their community.

Afraid to open up because you might hear something bad. But others may
defend you anyway. You may also get the new great idea. Offering joint
ownership with customers

Ideastorm. Know that ideas will not all succeed.

What resources should you expect to allocate? Many people may already
be blogging, etc., so may just start contributing, without much
additional time.

When Intel started theirs, had 90% Intel contributors; within year
switching to 90% non-Intel.

(Office 2.0 Fri AM Notes, part 4)
-Diana

<Sent from my iPhone>

Knowledge Workers 2.0:

"bursty" workers
Mgmt recognizes both are valuable worker types, output-based, not time-
based
Frequent spectacular failures (already dying in video games).
Still must have a reasonable approach to project
Not just age-based

IT groups already ask SMEs (establish authority, sharing)

These workers usually expect high compensation (they think they are
worth more), high profile projects, high responsibility.

Bursty people don't always work bursty, sometimes have heads-down work
too.

Rewards: can't be expected or gets complicated (disappointment), not
as valuable.

(Office 2.0 Fri AM Notes, part 3)
-Diana

<Sent from my iPhone>

The New Platform:

Who owns the customer when they work via an aggregator
(salesforce.com, Zoho, OpenSAM)?

Cross-application activities: single sign-on, copy & paste,
preferences (date formats, etc.), dictionary, highlight colors,
printing, access/ ACLs, versioning

File formats! Can't I have open document format?

Use Facebook as sso? But mesh model vs. hub and spoke model.

(Office 2.0 Fri AM Notes, part 2)
-Diana

<Sent from my iPhone>

Office 2.0 Setup:

Applications and data live in the Cloud only?

My Office 2.0 Setup

Tools are not usually able to integrate, even copy & paste, also which
app do you look in?

Next year they will use a tool that natively integrates with
salesforce.com

600 attendees plus press, presenters, etc.

(Office 2.0 Fri AM Notes)
-Diana

<Sent from my iPhone>

Web Practioner:

ROI on these Web 2.0 tools, which are free, compared to ROI on
existing internal tools like email, collab, IM, etc.

Success in implementation requires champion(s). Ask forgiveness, not
permission crowd.

Tools on the Internet, is disaster recovery improved?

Death of the Application:
Iteritive releases ( or permanent betas) instead of big (bi-) annual
releases. Less disruptive, expensive.

Software as a service; now there are many choices of word processor,
spreadsheet, task mgr (see office 2.0 list).

It doesn't matter what phone, email program, etc., others are using,
we can still communicate transparently.

Long-tail apps... Product life cycles are accelerating.

(Office 2.0 Thurs late-PM Notes)

-Diana

<Sent from my iPhone>

Meet Charlie (Pfizer):

Easy to remember URL
None of the people on the team were in the same department.
Sandbox: get people to post what they want to do; others will chime in
if they are also interested, or if they have already started one.

Culture & Technology:
Mellenial generation unsure of business mores and social tools, but
will go dull steam ahead, unlike current gens. Dress codes, conformity.

GenY wants responsibility in their new worklife. Existing managers,
previous gens want less/ no responsibility? Who gets replaced, and
why? More transparency as well will expose workers, too.

Successful corporations will be a "marketplace" for workers.

Collaboration: have we solved all of the one-brain problems, so now
all that's left are multi-brain problems?

Don't forget that the average IQ is 100.

Current young gamers are willing to die (fail) over and over again.
Current workplaces not so forgiving of failure.

(Office 2.0 Thurs mid-PM Notes)
-Diana

<Sent from my iPhone>

Office 2.0 Thursday AM Notes:

People enjoy collaborating
Cultural adoption don't send docs, send links
Decisions: what do I need to know?
What do I need to produce ?
What do I need to communicate ?
(where's the value?)

Pan for gold, I Love Lucy skit in my inbox, email is my favorite app?
No.

Enterprise 2.0:
Mgmnt support
Usability
Integration
Accessibility
Top down - mgrs can lead the way
Training- not how but why and what's different
Templating no blank page
Solving problems

Adoption: New tool must be 9x better than what it replaces (9x better
than email?)

No Long Tail of users, small percentage of people participating in
Enterprise can be a small number (top small)

Feed the open mouths, don't force others. Be patient

Morgan Stanley created system to convert email groups to discussion
forums

(Office 2.0 Thursday Morning Notes)
-Diana

<Sent from my iPhone>

Working Online

If I want to do all of my work online, so I don't have to worry about having the right computer with me, or even a full computer with me, how do I do it? It looks like there are a few online applications (ThinkFree, Zoho, Google Docs-although the latter doesn't yet work in Safari) where I can edit from a browser on my Mac.

Here are my questions, or at least, unresolved issues:
* can I edit OO format documents, or only Microsoft?
* can I at least view these OO documents from my iPhone?
* can I edit somehow from my iPhone?
* do I always have to down/upload the documents to one of these sites? I can't always do that from my iPhone, but many of these documents were emailed to me, if that helps.

More questions, and I'm hopeful, some answers, as I figure them out. I'm headed off to the Office 2.0 conference tomorrow, so maybe all will be revealed there. And, everyone there will be using an iPhone!

What Should IT Provide?

For corporate users of collaborative tools, what should IT provide?

For ease-of-use, many corporate users are going to external services, looking for applications to manage wikis, photos, blog posts, and more. These external services usually have excellent support and reliability, and various kinds of training and help are available.

But if IT could provide these same services, but designed for corporate use, here are some of the things the IT services could provide (in no particular order):

LDAP authentication

ensure appropriate licensing

maintain back-ups, and the ability to provide restores

secure or public rss-feeds

appropriate server infrastructure

centralized profile management (what group someone is in, projects they are on)

security

more to come, I'm sure

Sorry for the Delay

Sorry for the delay in posting, I was busy playing with my new... wait for it... you can guess... yup, my new iPhone!!! Wow, is it awesome! Even better than I thought!

Here are To Do lists I'm looking at, but I haven't found the perfect one yet:
TaDa List
Listingly
ToodleDo

I'm also looking for a replacement for Documents to Go, but I'm thinking web-based would be better:
Zoho
Google Docs & Spreadsheets, but no Safari support?
Note that I rarely use Microsoft formats, prefer OO, so the built-in reader in the iPhone doesn't always help me.

Suggestions?

EDIT: 8/28

Virtual Sun Worlds

Sun has a virtual world I'd like to try for work meetings and such. It looks a lot like Second Life, but I heard the sound quality is very good. But don't a lot of these folks look like they're wearing Star Trek uniforms?

Visualization

Just some notes on visualization:

Edward Tufte's books (and poster) are pretty great, and beautiful:
The Visual Display of Quantitative Information
Envisioning Information
Visual Explanations: Images and Quantities, Evidence and Narrative
Beautiful Evidence

PowerPoint Does Rocket Science--and Better Techniques for Technical Reports
why PowerPoint should not do Rocket Science

Here's the Napoleon's March poster.

and finally, this may be useful:
A Periodic Table of Visualization Methods

Interactivity Scale

(more interactive)
A
F2F (1:1)
F2F Meeting
B
Video IM
Second Life/ Virtual Reality
C
Telephone (1:1)
Conference Call
D
IM
Discussion Forum
E
Email
Comment Wall
F
Blog
(least interactive)

EDIT: The letters (A-F) are just for grouping labels.