Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Social Media Policy

Information Technology solutions have the ability to dramatically improve efficiency, reduce costs, automate complex business operations, and can touch a business in so many positive ways.  Numerous companies and organizations around the globe have realized this years ago and have created IT departments, partnerships, etc.  This is not news.  If you want your IT solution to be successful, there are many factors to consider.  Budget, executive sponsorship, business driver, governance, policy, and enforcement.  Each of these things help bring the solution and the business closer together.  The closer they are the more successful the solution is and the higher the rate of adoption is within the population of people intended to use the solution.  Often, overlooked in this equation is the importance of policy and the consequences for not abiding by this policy.  Not all IT solutions can enforce the participants to follow the rules, and social media can be one of those solutions.

Your social media approach should include both public and private social tools, and since we can not enforce Twitter or Facebook to help us enforce our corporate policies, this becomes a function of the corporate community.  To have the ability to communicate quickly and openly through numerous means as social tools allow us to do so, we do not want to build too many restrictions into the technology it’s self.  I received this posting on Social Fresh from a colleague which is a “starter” Social Computing policy.

http://socialfresh.com/a-template-to-help-start-your-social-media-policy/

For the most part, I feel this is a really strong list of items on which to make decision and build your policy.  I often suggest to clients they use a very simple list of guidelines that summarizes a good deal of these points.  “If you would not say or do it in front of your grandmother, then do not do it in social media.”  This is often well received, and the point is made.  There was one item in this list that I did not feel sent the right message was:

“Each individual should choose for themselves if they will use social media.”

While this is definitely appropriate for a policy on public social media, this should not apply to a private social community.  If you have deployed Connections, Sharepoint, or open source tools to build a private social media outlet, then participation should not really be optional in my opinion.

If, for example, you were to start documenting company policies in a wiki, then reading these policies is not an option.  Users are now using your private social media.  This does not mean they need to contribute, but participate to me includes the act of reading or consuming the information in the social tools.  IBM has given us solutions for capturing metrics and develop trends to observe and drive direction of private social networks.  Often times, this data shows a relatively small percentage of the population that contributes the majority of the information to the social solution, while the largest group of people simply consume this information.  The argument can easily be made, however, that when using technology like tag clouds the tagging of information to classify and elevate an items importance according to how the community sees the item is only as good as the participation it receives. 

Said another way, if you have a company of 100 people, and 80 of them contribute to just the tagging of wiki articles, then the trends of how people group information contained within the wiki will be very relevant and reflective of your community at large.  If the same 100 person company only has 15 people contributing to the tag cloud, I would not assume the tagging of data to be accurately representative of the whole 100 people.

The article makes a really good point, however, and that is if you do not yet have a policy on the use and participation in public social media, you are too late!  I would venture to guess that more than half of professional people use some social outlet to communicate with at least friends and family.  If you have not set peoples expectations on what you feel is acceptable or not in these public forums then individuals can rightfully assume anything is appropriate.  Ignoring the importance of social media in your business strategies and market message is irresponsible and narrow sighted in my opinion at this point.  Since 2008, people have been saying social media is mainstreamed, and in 2010 we saw marketing through social media reach numbers of participants that would indicate mainstreaming as well. 

My advice, in closing, is do not dismiss social media any longer.  Make policy, educate your workforce, and include the use of these tools in your working environment.  The good that they bring far out-weigh the potential risks, and when proper policy is enforced around the use of these outlets, the results will be profound.  Look at what Ed Brill has done for Lotus with just a blog!

Traveler for Droid is Here!

The wait is over, time to schedule your upgrades.
Now available - Lotus Notes Traveler for Android

Wednesday, December 08, 2010

Lotus Traveler Open Mic

Attending the LTS OM call this morning with over 310 of my closest friends.  As many are, I am sure, I am looking forward to the new Android support and hope to have some more clarity around this specifically.  It has not shipped as of the time of the call, but is described as “vary close”. 

We started with a brief overview of what Traveler is, reiterating it’s place as the mobile solution within the Domino-based solution group.  Specifically, this is the PIM and email sync component bringing those services to mobile devices, tablet devices, etc.

After reviewing the features, we discussed the system requirements.

http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg27007909

Device support and versions were also covered, which you can also find in the link above.  The list of “whats new” in 8.5.2 was then reviewed.

The chat from the meeting is linked at the bottom.  It contains some good questions and answers. 

Android support will be limited to 2.x devices with the next FP release, 8.5.2.1.  Still on target for this quarter, which we are running out of.  The 8.5.2.1 is a full replacement like previous updates, and it will also provide fixes etc. as you would expect.

Key Questions

Q – Syncing custom “shared” address book to devices via Traveler.
A – It is an often requested requirement, but not in the product at this time.  IBM is investigating how this is administered and gathering requirements for some sort of feature to cover this.

Q – iPhone PIM sync options to be centrally administered.
A – IBM indicated this will require cooperative effort with Apple.  There is some of this in design, but not in the product at the moment.  It is in the top 10 list of requested features with no ETA.

Q – Blackberry device support?
A – Response seems to indicate that IBM will not compete against the BES.  We know there is now a no-cost BES solution for small groups.

Q – Support for Windows Mobile 7 devices.
A – WM7 is not supported in the 8.5.2.1 release.  IBM is reviewing the demand and will look at adding it in future releases.

Q – Prevent Traveler from being used on devices that have been Jailbroken.
Q – Apple can not reliably detect this.  IBM, therefore can not build this into the technology.  They suggest using policy to make Jailbroken phones “illegal” in the enterprise.  On-going issue.

Links

Presentation

Chat Log

Friday, December 03, 2010

LS11 Sessions Announced

Today, the majority of those awarded an opportunity to speak at #LS11 will receive their congratulatory emails.  For the rest, they have another year to plan something else to try to help secure them a presentation slot.  I have been listening to the buzz on Twitter this morning, and there appears to be a lot of great content this year.  Stuart McIntyre will be presenting two sessions about Connections 3.0 that are being put on my schedule for sure.  If you have not already signed up, IBM has made a social site available for LS11, enabling you to stay in tune even if a trip to Orlando is not in the cards for you this year. 

http://www-949.ibm.com/social/lotusphere/

Go sign up!  It is an exciting time of year for the Lotus brand, as it always is, and here you can stay in tune with the conversations and trends.