If you cannot see E2 helping your organisation directly with those basic things then why bother?
Just in case everyone things I’m a grumpy old fart all the time, I thought I follow up on my dismissive put down of the all the hoopla around Enterprise 2.0 by talking about customers in this “brave new world” of Enterprise and Web 2.0.
Customers are the reason we get out of bed in the morning and they kindly pay our bills for us — so we’d better keep them happy! However, even through we may deal with them directly every day, it can be hard to understand what they want or when they are unhappy. Even worse, when they do communicate problems we often label them awkward and unreasonable.
Web 2.0 can help us overcome some of these problems:
Providing a varity of channels to make it easier for customers to communicate
Separating the consumer and supplier of the message (in time) so that customers and vendors can view the messages without letting emotional baggage get in the way
A larger volume of feedback should help organisations spot genuine problems and trends
In addition forums and blogs give organisations an new opportunity to engage customers with what they do and the future direction — however such new channels of open communication do not sit well with many enterprise cultures, so be prepared for some painful learning…
I sometimes wonder why people with poor or limited network connections don’t still use UUCP email. It can be configured to use precious bandwidth during off-peak times, handles slow networks and unreliable communication. This would seem to be the perfect piece of infrastructure to be rolled out with the OLPC project. If your network does not have a wired connection to the world is even works over HF radio.
All you have to remember is that email is not an instant messaging medium.
A increasingly amount of words, and now money, is being expended on Enterprise 2.0 (E2)
E2 is an extension of some of the ideas from Web 2.0 (W2)— the concept of a network of connected people making a self sustaining community that generates ideas, information and value. In addition the ever present threat of Gen Y and Gen C employees unable to contribute to the business except in a connected web of goodness that provides inclusion, exploits the power of the group, … and all the other nice warm fuzzy words
However at the end of the day organisations need to survive by fulfilling customers needs and wants effectively. It’s often hard to see how the totally immersive nature of the W2 experience translates into value for E2.
Let’s look on the positive side first:
An E2 enabled organisation may be able to attract and retain better quality individuals in the gen Y workforce
E2 may provide better mechanisms for a team generating new ideas and hence business improvement
Team work may become faster and more effective because of improved communication
However reality could be a little different:
All that high quality talent spends all day communicating in a E2 connected world they actually don’t get much work done. Capable people are only as valuable as their deliverables and at some point rubber has to hit the road, so can they please stop twittering and do some work?
Everyone, both as individuals and as a team, can spend so much time navel gazing that no improvement of any value can be implemented.
Communication paralysis can stop decisions being made. Everyone is so busy communicating it becomes unclear what needs to be done and no one is able to cut through the chaff. It’s a great way of avoiding responsibility.
In certain organisations the tools of W2 may present a significant security risk.
So what is the bottom line on E2? I suspect it’s probably just a big waste of time… Remember that business value comes from three things:
Doing it better and faster
Managing the business more effectively
Saving costs
If you cannot see E2 helping your organisation directly with those basic things then why bother?
This is a presentation I gave a few years ago to the Linux Users of Victoria (Australia) on SCM. It’s brief and simplistic, but hopefully will server as a jumping off point if SCM is confusing you. As always feedback is welcome.
Community prototypes are projects Microsoft employees work on in their spare time
I hate to be mean, but it looks like Microsoft have decided to follow Google’s lead and provide an avenue for employees to work on personal projects. Not sure if MS provide just the website or also encourage employees to have time as well.
Some commentators propose a model of post-Agilism that is effectively constructive anarchy, in that teams should be self-organising to the point where even the core values of the Agile movement are considered too presciptive, and that teams should simply “do whatever works for them”.
Does this seem a little scary to you? Gives me the heebie jeebies.
For those folks who are not familiar with Agile methods I have to say that I am firmly of the opinion that professional Agile developers are in fact some of the most process centric individuals on the planet. It’s one of the reasons I like the approach. This process (and we are talking about process in the small) leads to a) greater predictability and b) a mind more able to concentrate on the creative aspects of the job.
Post-agilsm seems to the antithiis of this. However a brief paragraph in WikiPedia does not a methodology make so I’m open to discussion.
If you are a Serena Dimensions administrator you might find this of some use, otherwise I’m afraid it’s ‘move along, nothing to see here…’ Read the rest of this entry »
I’m using a Windows XP desktop running Virtual Box under a Gnome Linux (Ubuntu 8.04). It’s quite handy to dedicate a virtual desktop to the Guest, or each guest if you have enough memory for more than one.
Using my default Compiz keyboard I can jump into the guest using <ctrl><alt><arrow>, if the guest is in full screen mode then I get put straight into Windows and can type away, use a mouse etc.
Going back to Linux is a little more difficult as Windows throws away the Compiz key shortcuts. Howevever if you preface the Compiz shortcuts with <RightCtrl> (assumes you are using the default VirtualBox hot keys) then you can jump backwards (or fowards).
The company [Microsoft] wants to lure those developers back. Its open source play is aimed squarely at them, and at independent software vendors (ISV). They mean potential sales, and Microsoft has embraced the open source development model in order to tempt them away from the open source platform and over to the Windows platform.
A fairly insightful article on why MS turned up at PDX for OSCON last month. Given the huge market developers could have for any applications they develop using the MS ‘Open Source’ model this has to something that is taken seriously. The pleasing thing is that MS now sees OSS as such a threat — however now that the communities have Redmond’s attention it is going to be a tough battle for mind share.
If you are like me, a *nix user (sometimes) trapped in MS Windows land, then you’ll come to depend on the Cygwin utilities. Their use is pretty straight forward, but you can make life a little bit easier for yourself:
When installing Cygwin select the option for default UNIX / binary style line endings for files. When selecting DOS style text files I’ve had subsequent problems with Perl CPAN modules failing unit tests and bash failing to process login scripts
After the install issue a mount -c / command, this means that you can access drives without using the /cygdrive mount point (i.e. /c/Program\ Files instead of /cygdrive/c/Program\ Files)
NB This isnot recommended practice, but for years I have been installing cygwin into the root of my C: drive, apparently without ill effects, and it does make life slightly easier. However you will need to modify startxwin.bat (and startxdmcp.bat if used) and make sure that the environment variable CYGWIN_ROOT is defined as an empty string.
Create a shortcut to invoke bash, I use “C:\bin\run.exe C:\bin\rxvt.exe -sl 2500 -fg lightblue -geometry 80x25 -bg midnightblue -sbt 10 -title bash -e /bin/xhere /bin/bash.exe %HOME%” (noting of course that I install into the root of the C: drive). You can also use chere to install a ‘Open Bash here’ option in Windows Explorer
