The Parameters of Wisdom

For several years now, I have been experimenting with the use of Web 2.0 collaborative tools in the classroom.  Among the most significant thing I have learned in this process is that the technology itself is actually a rather simple part of the process.  The technology is implemented, it is capable of certain features (or not), and students use these tools to work together.  Pretty simple.

The far more complicated part is how to design the course requirements (e.g. deliverables, exams) to account for the presence of these tools.  One has to put the correct incentive structures into place to generate the type of engagement one hopes to create.  For instance, requiring contributions leads to a high volume of mediocre activity, but providing bonus points usually yields to fewer but higher quality contributions.  This is a simple question of incentive alignment – the goal of students is to get a good grade and the goal of the professor it to create a strong learning environment.  The solution is to design the class in such a way that is that the student’s goal and the professor’s goal is aligned.  (All this applies to the workplace as well)

This is a bit more complicated in technologically-mediated environments, in that the collaborative processes may change over time.  As they learn to work together, students can find ways to achieve their indivdual goals without addressing the goals of the professor.  For instance, In our class we offer bonus points for the best blog post.  Twice now, students have made an appeal to classmates to award bonus points becuase they “need” them, and both times classmates have heeded their requests.  What has happened is that, working together, students have figured out a way to meet their individual goals without necessarily contributing to the overall good to the class.  (This is not to say that Chris didn’t deserve the bonus points, but it may have been enough to sway the vote enough in his direction).

My point, however, is not to berate Chris.  It is the realization that the only way to restore the purpose of the incentive structure is to create a rule (or regulation) against this practice.  Herein lies the problem that the financial markets are facing.  The markets operate under certain parameters that tries to make the 1) pursuit of individual good/profit 2) lead to overall societal good.  The problem is that, working together, the crowd can figure out ways to achieve 1 without accomplishing 2.

I’m not necessarily a fan of increased regulation, but when the rules of engagement are in place for too long, people find ways to work around them an accomplish their own individual goals at the expense of the collective.

So, my question for this week is…what are the most powerful incentives for you at work?  How might technology be used in a way to motivate people so that individual incentives are aligned with organizational goals?  Can technology be used to monitor and detect when people are “gaming the system?”  Just some thoughts.

Why in the world are we paying for Social Text? « DC’s Blog

Why in the world are we paying for Social Text? « DC’s Blog

There’s a good string of comments here.  Mine is as follows:

I both agree and disagree with Alan here.  Disagree in the sense that I think some “free” sites are competition – namely, Google.  Many companies have precisely moved away from enterprise level email hosting, and routing their corporate email through Gmail.  I think there is a real danger here that Google sites (Google’s free wiki platform) could morph into a similar competitor.

On the other hand, my experience with SocialText is that they tend to be fairly proactive in platform development.  Just as I wish that ST had a feature, it’s not long before it appears (of course, I’ve been asking for the ability to “rate” pages for years now to no avail).  I also agree that ST is a very “user friendly” experience.  They do a good job at hand-holding, which is required for the short term adoption of these tools.  If ST continues to hand hold and use those opportunities to respond to customer concerns by adding new features, then they could stay one step ahead of the Googles of the world.

It might never become a $50B company, but by pushing the envelope on group collaboration they can might find a good niche that they can ride for many years.  We’ll see.

What they really need to do is hire me as a consultant to go into companies and give my dog and pony show on group collaboration.  Maybe if they reach their first billion.

Cloud Computing Special Report in The Economist

A survey of corporate IT: IT’s global “cloud” | Let it rise | The Economist

The economist has a very nice multi-article special report on Cloud computing that you might be interested in.  Haven’t yet gotten a chance to read the whole thing, but it seems pretty thorough.

Socialtext 3.0

Last night we had Alan Lepofsky, the Director of Marketing for SocialText, introduce us to the new SocialText 3.0 platform.  I thought I would reflect on some observations from that visit, and invite others in the class to comment as well.

Some thoughts:

1) I thought it was interesting the degree of functionality with which Alan was using the ST 3.0 platform compared to how we are using it in class.  Web 2.0 tools are part technolology and part social process.  I think ST has the technology part down reasonably well, but it’s transferring the processes that is more challenging.  I consider myself a relatively strong user of the platform, but I wasn’t aware of much of the functionality or ways it can be used.  So, if I have difficulty using it, 1) how are other companies learning of the new features and potential processes and 2) how can managers communicate these new processes to their employees.  I like the flexibility ST offers, but flexibility also comes with additional work.

2) Speaking of flexibility, I am somewhat underwhelmed with the ST people module, at least so far.   Three points here.

a) I am surprised that people don’t have more flexibility about their profile.  For instance, there are pre-designated fields for supervisor and assistant.  I have more than one assistant.  What do I do then?  I am surprised that a Wiki company has developed such a rigid approach to profiles.  Why not give people a Wiki area to create their own profiles.

b) I am also disappointed the user pages don’t provide more history about each user.  Do I really care about the last 20 edits someone made, or do I want to know their usage history across many months, what pages they are editing most, etc.  I can certainly envision business uses for this data, especially in a large company, and I am surprised ST doesn’t provide this functionality.

c) Lastly, I am surprised that ST still doesn’t support any type of messaging or commenting between users.  ST signals is nice, but there may be times when I want to raise an issue with a partiuclar user that may not relate directly to any particular wikipage.  If they are really looking to become a social networking tool, they need to let people communicate with one another.

Those gripes aside, I do think they are moving in the right direction with the platform.  I think there is great potential in where they hope to go.  What do you think about the ST platform and their plans for the future?

Running a hospital

This comment is meant with complete respect, but I thought it noteworthy to read Paul Levy’s blog recently.  It can be found here.

Running a hospital

If you don’t know him, Paul is the CEO of Beth Israel Deaconness Medical Center (I don’t know if he is Mr. Levy or Dr. Levy, so I’ll call him Paul here).  He has been a pioneering blogger that has focused on transparency in the healthcare industry, using his blog to address issues that other healthcare professionals might find uncomfortable to discuss in public.  I admire Dr. Levy’s leadership and boldness in using Web 2.0 tools for this purpose, and many others share this admiration.

Nevertheless, I find it odd that Paul has not responded at all on his blog about a recent event that happened at BIDMC.  For the first time in 10 years, a woman died during a c-section procedure there.  This event garnered the attention of me and my wife, because we had the same procedure there with our son a year ago (and had a very good experience all around, BIDMC is a great hospital).

My question is this, however, when someone takes to the blogosphere advocating information transparency, what are the implications of failing to address such a high-profile issue?  I think people expect high profile-bloggers to be straightforward and forthcoming, particularly ones who are using the blog platform to advocate greater information transparency and safety.

I am certain there are alot of reasons Paul chooses not to discuss the issue in his blog – patient confidentiality, liability, lack of information – all of which are legitimate.  The silence unnerves me, though.  I think a wiser approach would be to acknowledge the event (it’s all over the local news), explain what is being done internally, or simply be straightforward on why he chooses not to address it in his blog.  That’s what Dell did when the laptop batteries caught fire.  They simply said, “we don’t know why this happened, but we are going to do everything we can to find out why.”

I think that a better approach would be for Paul to be forthcoming in his blog, in whatever way is most appropriate.  Acknolwedge the issue, express sympathy for all concerned, and address what is being done or why he can’t talk about it now.  I think people would understand if the response was limited and didn’t provide any details beyond what was found in the news.  Silence in the face of a high-profile tragedy simply doesn’t seem right from a genuine leader who is stepping forward to champion a very important cause of greater information transparency…but I guess it’s times like these that true leadership is tested.  Speak, Paul, speak!

What happens when you actually use Web 2.0?

One of the most interesting parts of my MBA class this semester has been the NML assignments (incidentally, based on midterm evaluations, the students agree).   Of course, I use the term “interesting” intentionally, because I don’t think that any of the students, or the professor for that matter, has had a uniformly positive or negative experience with them.  Some of the lessons I am learning:

• Web 2.0 tools take up alot of time.  It’s hard to remember to post, to follow others’ activity, and generally keep up with all of the activity (no matter how genuinely interesting I may find it).   As a case in point, it’s hard to believe I haven’t posted in two weeks.  I think the trick is to find a good way to identify the content you are interested in.  This likely means that Web 2.0 can’t just be a casual engagement, you have to learn to use the tools to get what you want out of them.  Otherwise it can be a bit overwhelming.
• I am surprised at how many people are concerned with privacy – even people who are very active Web users.  I think I just learned a long time ago that the concept of privacy is out the window, whether we like it or not.   Sarah Palin is a good case in point – people hacked her email account using publicly available information.  We are living in a world where anything can appear online at any time.  For most of us, other people just don’t care enough to pay attention.   Attention, not information, is the scarcity in today’s world.
• Whether or not they are just sucking up to the professor, most people seem to have at least gotten some value out of the tools and have figured out how to use them relatively easily.  To be honest, I had gotten my TA’s all ready to field a host of questions about the tools, but people simply haven’t had to contact them.   What I find most intersesting are the ways that my students are using the tools that I had not even considered.
• I am beginning to see the value of ubiquity – the ability to access the internet anytime/anywhere.  I’ve lost some good thoughts simply because I wasn’t in a place to write on my blog when I had them.

Just some thoughts, more later

Blogging as Rome is Burning

One thing I have always liked about being an IT professor is that it’s always changing.  You can open up the WSJ or business week and there is always a story about some technological innovation that is sure to shake things up.  The past two weeks, of course, has been different.  No longer is IT the most volatile and rapidly changing discipline, but finance is.  I admit that its been hard to focus on the business innovations of IT when the fundamentals of finance seem to be crumbling – or at least changing – on a daily if not hourly basis.

For those of you following the crisis, there’s a nice NPR story on This American Life that talks about the roots of the current financial crisis, explaining things like the commercial paper market and credit default swaps in terms almost anyone can understand.  What struck me most about the story is that it seems like the current root of everyone’s fears is the lack of information available in the market.  The problem comes down to an unregulated credit-default swap market in which none of the players know what deals the other players are involved in.  Without this information, trust disappears, and the credit market freezes up.

Like it or not, we are living in an information age.  We can discuss issues related to privacy and regulation and how various needs should be balanced.  Our economy is facing a big black hole of a lack of information and we simply don’t know how to respond to it, how to value it, how afraid to be of it, what to do about it.   So, I guess we’ll just have to sit back and see what information is revealed over the coming weeks and months – who knows what we’ll find.   Upon reflection, I think I’d rather have the information – even if it leads to some unintended consequences.  At least we’d know how to respond.  But that’s just my 2 cents.

This was just an unscheduled emotional tirade as I try to absorb financial news, the regularly scheduled IT-analysis will continue in subsequent posts.

Socialtext – more than a facelift

Tech Joy

I’ve seen both Claire and Joy discuss the so-called “facelift” that has happened in our socialtext platform that we use for class.  I have been interested in this discussion, mainly for the implications that the conversation suggests.

My first response is that these changes are far more than just a “facelift.”  It represents a fundamental redesign (or at least powerful new functionality) to the way Socialtext operates.  “But wait” I hear you saying, I don’t see any fancy new technology…it works the same but just looks different.  Well, yes and no.

I have been very excited about the potential of the new ST 3.0 platform, and I have been following release notes closely.  A year ago I met with ST developers and told them that I thought this was the direction the platform should go (only to find out that their CEO had expressed the same sentiment two weeks earlier…great minds may think alike but this mind gets paid alot less!)

So, I went to try out this new functionality, and use this as a teachable moment for Joy and Claire to not judge a book by its cover, only to find out that the new features were not yet turned on.  Why on earth would ST do this?  These cool new toys and I have to ask for permission to play with them.

After further thought, however, it makes alot of sense.  We’ve been talking in class lately about computing as a service.  Companies who offer software as a service have to contend with an issue that I had not previously considered – upgrading the software without the user’s permission or knowledge.  It would have been a rude awakening not to just have ST look different but act different without any real advance warning.  So, their approach was to make the tools available if we want them.  Prety smart, if you ask me.

I’m tentatively planning on having ST’s director of marketing in class sometime over the next few weeks to discuss the changes.  I’ll give you a heads up so we can all be ready to explore the new functionality and decide (as a class) if we want to adopt it.  Could be interesting for us all.