What Kind of Web Animal Are You?

According to the BBC I'm a Web Elephant. What does that mean?

Slow-Moving - Web Elephants browse the Internet at a stately, methodical pace. They rarely see a reason to rush things.

Social - Web Elephants often use social networking sites to keep track of friends and family, and are happy to to rely on information from sites whose content is created by its users.

Adaptable - Given their large brains and multi-purpose trunks real elephants are very adaptable. Web elephants are also adaptable and certainly capable of multi-tasking.

It's all fun stuff, and a diversion from task, task, task. What Web Animal are you? Find out at the BBC's Virtual Revolution site http:www.bbc.co.uk/virtualrevolution. Consider this blog a virtual watering hole - all Web Animals welcome, unless -of course - all you want to do is snarl and bite.

Don't Collaborate Unless You Have To!!!!!!

Occasionally, I will review the books I have on my shelves. Actually many are not on the shelves, but standing in piles on the floor and on various pieces of furniture. There is no real order among my books; my theory is that if books are scattered randomly the weird juxtapositions that occur will stimulate my creativity. It does happen, but the time spent searching for a specific book can be painfully long. Why don't I put the books into some kind of order? Well, it's hard to let go of a theory once you've adopted it. But I digress!

On a recent safari through my books, I came across one that deserves to be brought back into the light. It's called Managing to Collaborate: The theory and practice of collaborative advantage by Chris Huxham and Siv Vangen, Routledge, 2005.

In this age when everyone seems to be talking and hyper-ventilating about collaboration, it's always good to stay rational and ask the simple question, "Do we need to collaborate?" The authors mentioned above developed the theory of collaborative advantage which, to paraphrase,is the synergistic result of collaborative activity; the achievement of something beyond what could have been achieved by individuals working alone. To read some of the current commentary on collaboration, it seems to be collaborative advantage all the time! No one should underestimate the difficulties of achieving successful collaboration; it's tough, tough work. I'm not talking about mass collaboration here which is another animal.

What I like about about Huxham and Vangen is how they also hightlight the opposite of collaborative advantage - collaborative inertia (the dark side). In a paper in Organizational Dynamics, Vol 33, 2004, they say "collaborative inertia captures what happens very frequently in practice: the output from a collaborative arrangement is negligible, the rate of output is extremely slow, or stories of pain and hard grind are integral to successes achieved." They leave with the sage advice - DON'T WORK COLLABORATIVELY UNLESS YOU HAVE TO.

Good collaboration begins with understanding the value that collaboration can bring (or not) to solving a problem, innovating,executing a plan, or working through an issue. Good collaborators know when not to collaborate, as well as when to bring others on board.

Think about collaborating when the problem and the solution are unclear, or the problem is clear but the solution is not. When problems are 'wicked' - collaborate. Don't waste time forcing collaboration on relatively simple problems with simple solutions.

Book Review on "Where in the world is my team?"

Check out this SlideShare Presentation:Where in the World is My Team? As you'll see from Slide 5, my virtual gym membership is really paying off!

Book Review on "Where in the world is my team?"

View more presentations from alevates.

HIPerWall: Really Big Collaboration, Really Big!

Photo: Anne Helmond

I just learned about HIPerWall from John Sviokla's blog posting "It's Time to Reinvent Knowledge Work." You can access the blog here!.

The HIPerWall - or Highly Interactive Parallized Display Wall - is a spinoff from the University of California at Irvine (UCI, and is based on research and technology at UCI's California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2). Basically, the HIPerWall's software, enables a very large electronic canvas for creating very large video walls out of standard computer, monitors, and an Ethernet network. John didn't mention the wall itself, but a link in his blog took me to an article about two Calit2 affiliated professors (Steven G. Potkin and James H. Fallon) who were using a wall to help them identify the genes associated with schizophrenia (something one of my sons is also working on, and so I was further intrigued).

The researchers had to try and find patterns in a huge amount of data that could help them connect the millions of dots into a genetic picture. The 200-million-pixel,40 by 10 foot wall gave them larger-than-life views of their data sets at very high resolutions. As the Calit2 article said, ". . . they could scrutinize multiple data set sets simultaneously, comparing and contrasting images while they rotated, dissected, spliced and superimposed them." The wall also facilitated collaboration with other researchers in cognitive science, physics, informatics, computer science, neuroanatomy, statistics and genetics. The data was dynamic, could be grouped in many ways (e.g., gender, severity of illness). Before such a high-tech visualization tool, researchers had to grind their way millions of data-gerated numbers.

Use of the wall led to the identification of two genes associated with schizophrenia, and the researchers are now investigating genetic risk factors for Alzheimers.

As John says in his blog, other organizations (such as businesses) need to learn from these labs and consider how their own knowledge workers and potentially high-value teams think together, use information together, innovate together, learn and re-learn together. Tools like the HIPerWall not only help generate new knowledge, they feed curious imaginations that will disturb and overturn existing paradigms,and so present us with new ways of seeing. As Einstein said, "Imagination is more important than knowledge." Imagination is where knowledge begins life.

To learn more about the HIPerWall you can visit here. You can also see a number of videos on YouTube, including ones where researchers are playing Guitar Hero 2 on the wall. Fun times!

Emerging Markets Are Pretty Developed on the Collaboration Front

In May 2009, Frost & Sullivan conducted an online survey of 3,662 Information Technology and line-of-business decision-makers in 10 countries in Asia-Pacific, Europe and the United States. The study - sponsored by Verizon and Cisco - wanted to find out how professionals work together using advanced collaboration tools. Here are some of the most interesting findings:

China is embracing unified communication and collaboration (UC&C) tools - 89 percent use some form of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) as their primary phone service

India sees the biggest return on their collaboration investment They have the lowest average spend on UC&C, but the highest return on capital

India is the most telecommute-friendly country, followed by Hong Kong, and with the US and China third

China has the largest proportion of its firms currently having both desktop videoconferencing (69 percent) and immersive video (62 percent. India is second and the US third

Chinese organizations ranked first with the highest percentage of companies giving advanced collaboration tools to their non-management employees. The US ranked second and Australia third

Differences in regional perceptions are very interesting:

Asia-Pacific
Feel that communications technologies give them control over their lives, and allow for a better balance between life and work
Are most concerned about the security of their information
Like the ability to telecommute
Find the technologies are invalauble to help them stay in the loop and keep business moving forward

Europe
Like to work in the office, as opposed to working from home
Are least likely to multitask while on a conference call
Prefer in person meetings
Are least likely to disconnect from communications technologies in order to preserve their privacy

US
Highest percentage of all regions who believe that they lead busy professional lives
Readily substitute communications technologies for business travel
Like the ability to telecommute, and if possible, would do most of their work from home
Guard their privacy, often sending calls to voice mail or disconnect instant messaging so as not to be disturbed

The global collaborative infrastructure continues to develop at a rapid rate. Unfortunately,work cultures usually drag behind for many years, and so the value-generating potential at the Talent-Technology interface remains just that - potential. But, let's change that!

The Web is . . .

I am a great admirer of the BBC. Born into a working class family in England, and attending not-so-stellar schools, a good deal of my education came from BBC programming. I learned recently that the BBC is trying something different. They are producing a documentary on the story of the World Wide Web with the working title of Digital Revolution. The plan is to create an open source documentary, meaning it is opening up the production process as much as possible. Everyone is invited to join the process of answering the question 'The Web is . . .?' Not that there can be one answer, of course.

Everything about the production is a work in progress - from the thinking, the website, and even the program title. The production team will be blogging and sharing their thinking as the project moves forward, and even putting up rushes from the filming. Throughout the process, the team will be seeking advice and asking for stories from those who join in.

Want to join in? Click here!

Talkin' 'Bout Our G...G...Generations: The Hip and the Sage

You probably know that there are currently four generations functioning side-by-side in today's workplace. I use the term 'functioning' loosely because much of what I read about generations fits into the 'WhineLit' genre - "Who are those people!!!!". Not so with Lisa Haneberg's new book Hip & Sage: Staying Smart, Cool and Competitive in the Workplace (Nicholas Brealey, 2009). Lisa's ambitious goal is to catalyze a revolution - "There is nothing so powerful and transformative as a strong partnership and collaboration between our sages and our youths." Her view is that those professionals who nurture hipness and sageness will have a competitive advantage over those that don't.

What does it mean to be 'hip' and or 'sage'?

Hipness is an ability to communicate, connect, and collaborate with those in younger generations. It is a key factor in one's ability to engage and influence younger workers like the Millenials.

Sageness is our natural strengths and characteristics, goals and priorities, and experiences that show up in our skills, drive, judgment, and knowledge.

Hip & Sage isn't just a philosophical text on the need for the generations to learn from one another. It's also very practical with lists, worksheets, web resources, reflective questions, and examples to guide the way. I particularly like the section where she asks us to reflect on how our beliefs fuel our behaviors and our ability to change. I also like where she talks about collaboration - as opposed to participation - and how it is as much a mind-set as a set of actions.

The book begins with the wonderful story of how the veteran singer Tony Bennett came to collaborate with the relative youngster k.d. lang. They were both backstage at a Grammy show and he simply walked over to her and said, "I'm Tony Bennett and someday I'd love to sing with you." How many of us Boomers can walk over to a young Millenial and say, "Please teach me about social networking." The world is changing much too fast to try and learn everything by ourselves.

Check out her book, and also visit her Hip & Sage website
here