…We've
been running Operation Blogosphere here at PC for 6 months now. My
workgroup started in January; Phase 2 — a national, multi-location
workgroup has only been going for a month. The roll-out has taken some
time (*is* taking some time), but it would have been helpful at the
outset to have a few examples of folks who had done this
successfully…

Some of the issues we've run
into:

1 IT
can be your best friend or your worst nightmare, especially when you're
trying to get a non-standard piece of software installed (we use MT
which is definitely not a corporate standard). I've been very lucky to
have great local IT support who have navigated the waters for
me.

2 Not
surprisingly, content is (still) king. We've tried to impress upon the
larger workgoup that they need an editorial schedule, a backup library
of content and bloggers who understand writing for the screen. They're
taking a while to get it.

3 Actually,
that's something that
would have helped .. examples of different publishing models within an
organization. Who gets to publish? And how fast can you more an
organization from multi-levels of hierarchy to a flat
everyone-can-publish model.

That's been one of the
most
interesting things about this project — watching an organization
change and adapt. The cultural aspect of any change
management/knowledge management program is fascinating to me (which is
why I started life as a ritual anthropologist .. but that's a different
blog entry).

If it gets to be really interesting,
I'll keep
posting about how the org has changed. My boss has high hopes .. he
thinks we'll be fundamentally different in a year. I wonder
…
Posted by Kate at June 19, 2005 05:32 PM |
TrackBack
Comments

The
second, more interesting part, of Operation Blogosphere is a roll out
of BLOG (everyone in the organization, when referring to blogs
capitalizes it .. makes me chuckle) across a national project team.
There is an “enabler” team (a group of 10 senior execs) and then about
a dozen functional teams across Canada. So there is an “uber” blog (for
the enablers) and then one for each functional group. They share
categories so that we can do searching and feeds on particular
categories for the larger audience.

One of the big
changes I've
noticed is moving a paper-based publishing organization (”newsletters
come out once a month or once a quarter”) to an electronic-based
publishing organization .. where the goal might be a brief post or two
a week rather than a 12 page newsletter.
Posted by: Kate at
June 21, 2005 03:05 PM

Huh,
very interesting. So what exactly does the enabler team do? And can
anyone have a blog?Is there any concern that someone outside of the
company will see the blogs and are there guidelines?
Posted
by: Heather Green at June 21, 2005 03:44 PM

The
enabler team provides senior level leadership to the project (the
content of the project is around knowledge sharing about a particular
set of corporate values, e.g. “Zero Harm” (we operate refineries and
“Zero Harm” is one of our core values .. so different groups across the
country will share ideas, best practices, etc. around the value “Zero
Harm”)).

At this point, not everyone can have a
blog. We've
rolled out the blog concept to this national team and they are our
pilot for blog technology/principles inside the company. Ultimately,
there will be about 150 blog-enabled folks for the first 6 months of
this pilot. After that, we would like to roll-out blog capability to
other workgroups or project teams who are
interested.

This
case study examines how a European pharmaceutical group used Traction
Software's TeamPage (www.tractionsoftware.com) enterprise weblog
software to create a competitive intelligence (CI) knowledge base to
replace previous platforms such as Lotus Notes databases and static
websites.

The CIO chose Traction TeamPage for a
number of reasons:

• the format was ideal
for the type of competitive intelligence material they were
collating
•
it was easy to implement and could be tightly integrated with existing
business systems, such as the LDAP corporate directory, Lotus Notes and
Microsoft Office
• it supports unlimited,
individually permissioned blogs within a single, integrated
installation
• it supports user permissions across
reading, authoring, editing and commenting functions on a blog by blog
basis
• the publishing process allows for
collaborative editing
• it was easy to use and
required minimal training, thus lowering the bar for
adoption
• it was low cost to buy, deploy and
manage

The
CIO put together a small team which began examining the CI problem in
late 2002, beginning development with Traction Software in 2004 and
soft launching that autumn. They decided that, due to the nature of the
material being published, an editorial committee was needed to ensure
content had been validated before publication. They created a clear
publishing process, with a private editorial blog to which readers
could submit potential content via email or a web form. This content
would then be assessed by a member of the editorial committee and
posted to the appropriate blog. This semi-open publishing process is
balanced by a fully open commenting system which allows any reader to
post comments on any article.

The blogs were
promoted via word
of mouth, coverage in the company's internal magazine and viral
marketing, with the CIO and his team mentioning the project in any
presentations they gave. The initial user group was drawn from a pool
of employees already active in the competitive intelligence field.
Users were introduced to the software in informal face-to-face meetings
where they could explore it at their own pace. Formal training
procedures were deemed unnecessary due to the simplicity of the user
interface.

Traction TeamPage has had a very good
reception from
users, who found it to be easy to surf and navigate. The project as a
whole has also been received very well, with feedback from users
indicating that they find the content relevant and valuable. Although
the jury is still out, early reaction is very
encouraging.

The
CIO is now examining the possibility of increasing the number of blogs
from the six currently in place, for use in more project-based work
across the group. He is working with Traction Software on enhancements
to the current system including further integration with third party
applications. His experience with blogging has been overwhelmingly
positive, and the company are keen to see the project
grow.

NewsGator Online, offers several features that other online RSS readers can't currently match:

•
Job bulletins. In partnership with the employment service Work.com,
NewsGator Online allows users to subscribe to help-wanted listings
within any given radius of their chosen city. Reinacker cites this as
an example of many up-to-the-minute services NewsGator is planning.

•
Integration with Media Center Edition. People who own a PC with
Microsoft's Media Center Edition can get multimedia feeds, including
video. The service is accessible to MCE users by clicking Online
Spotlight, News and Sports, NewsGator MCE.

• Podcasts that come
to you. Perhaps the most compelling new feature of NewsGator Online is
its support for “podcatching.” This buzzword means automatically
downloading audio and video programs that are posted on the Web. If you
have NewsGator free FeedStation application (now in beta) running on a
home PC connected to an iPod, you can do amazing things, Reinacker
says. “If you're at work, and you see a podcast you want, you click to
download it to your iPod at home. This also works with Windows Media
Player. FeedStation actually downloads the stuff and puts it in your
playlist at home.”