Louise McGregor Buzzword, Communication

Brain Dump

I’m guilty. This is a cliche I use, often to refer to a first draft of a report or a presentation where I’m still figuring out what should be included and what should be omitted. The image to the right is my first draft for a presentation I’m working on about digital literacy.

My “braindump” for a presentation on Digital Literacy

It turns out this is not the meaning most IT people understand from “braindump“, where it has come to mean the mass of information needed to pass an exam – particularly a certification exam – produced by examinees who memorise the questions or record them and then “dump” that information onto a website for the next crop of examinees to use.

It’s considered bad practice by the examiners obviously, as it makes it difficult to assess the real knowledge of examinees. Long term it devalues the certification.

What do you understand by the term?

Louise McGregor Buzzword

Turnkey Solutions

A colleague came to me a while back really excited about a potential new supplier. The social solution they offered was perfect, fantastic, value for money and a turnkey solution. “Just think, we could have this in place in four weeks!” he said.

I think he was a bit underwhelmed by my reaction.

So what is a turnkey solution? Wikipedia gives this definition

The term turnkey is also often used in the technology industry, most commonly to describe pre-built computer “packages” in which everything needed to perform a certain type of task (e.g. audio editing) is put together by the supplier and sold as a bundle.

The solution offered was theoretically turn-key that should be easily implemented. According to my colleague they’d implemented such things before.

So why did I find it hard to believe the four week timeline? Because in ten years of implementing technology solutions I’ve learnt that as soon as a solution needs to touch employee or customer data systems we need to follow tough procedures to make sure each step is taken correctly and with due concern for the protection of that data. That takes time, certainly more than four weeks.

So is anything a turnkey solution or is the term a myth?

The search engine we have in place on our external site behaves in this way. I think from the time we’d signed the contract until it was implemented was days rather than weeks. It’s an external tool, relying only on public – and published data. Although the supplier didn’t label it as such while they were selling the service, it is a turnkey solution.

When you hear the term used by a supplier think hard about your own company’s requirements and processes, what is turnkey for the supplier may not be turnkey for you.

Image keys via pixabay

 

Louise McGregor Communication

Open Government

There is a mismatch between the centralised vote once every x years mode of government and the current social network world.

How can governments open up, not just to share data but to involve citizens in key government processes?

Turns out some governments already are; several places have participatory budgeting, Rajastan uses a low-tech approach to keep government-spending honest, Russia and Lithuania are using Wikis to develop legislation. It’s a fascinating look at what governments can do to be more open in a social media era.

If government could really create an open route for discussing and creating policy it could be eye-opening; for all of us. I hope the people behind Digital Europe see this.

Louise McGregor social media

Social Media Screw Ups (and a Genius Response)

Bashtagging? Hashtag Highjacking? x-rated images? mixing accounts?

There are so many screw ups in social media I think this could be an expanding series. For now I’ve added 9 screw ups and one absolutely genius response. Plus what we can learn from each, after all, it’s easy to laugh and point but it could easily be us next time.

PS: To see this in all it’s original beauty on an iPad it’ll be easier to view the social media screw ups on slideshare.

Louise McGregor design

Sound Design

How well can you concentrate at work? in the classroom? In this speech Julian Treasure demonstrates how noise can make it harder for us to concentrate, and makes a plea for architects to consider sound in their designs.

It’s one of my regular complaints about modern design, my mother is deaf and wears a hearing aid most days. In most modern cafes she cannot hear what is going on due to the reverberation of sound from the ubiquitous hard surfaces and the music. I recently moved desks in my office just to get a slightly quieter work environment, and I live in an old house – I can hear way too much of my upstairs neighbour’s activities (especially when the football is on). Sometimes I put on some soothing classical music so that I can listen to that instead.

The design fashion for hard surfaces and open plan spaces can make it harder to concentrate, and that’s a loss of productivity in a work environment.

Louise McGregor Buzzword, Communication, Innovation

Critical Mass


Wikipedia defines critical mass as the point when;

a sufficient number of adopters of an innovation in a social system so that the rate of adoption becomes self-sustaining and creates further growth.

When people will adopt depends on where they sit in the adoption lifecycle, and if you’re managing the implementation of a innovation into a company it’s crucial to help each group in their own adoption process. Critical mass is usually said to fall between the early adopters and the early majority, although some research puts it further into the early majority phase.

The five categories can be defined as:

  • innovators – eager to try something new, need little training
  • early adopters – quick to try something new, seek out new experiences, see benefits of the innovation
  • early majority – open to new ideas, will try something if the purpose is clear, influence to colleagues
  • late majority – want proof it works, safety and systems around anything they use,
  • laggards – reluctant to change, sometimes only change because their existing tool is obsolete, or no longer available.

Not everyone is the same type for all innovations I’m an example of someone who can be an early adopter with one innovation and a laggard with another – I joined Linkedin in about 2005, but didn’t get a smart phone until last year.

Critical mass, where the growth in adoption becomes self sustaining, is reached when the early majority start to take up your innovation.

I’m trying to apply this to our implementation of an Enterprise Social Network, we have a total target audience of about 65,000 and so far 45,000 have signed up to use the tool. So that sounds like we’re already into the late majority – job done.

Except signing up is a low impact activity and doesn’t reflect a real use. It just means the person has agreed to the terms and conditions.

So I’ve been looking for some other measurable behaviours which we could consider as a threshold for use.

We see a monthly report on active users. To be considered an active user you need to have done something – anything – in the time frame measured. The activity could be five useful answers to five other users or it could be a comment or a like. So it’s a very broad measure, but by this measure we are into the early majority as of January – just.

We have implemented badges on our enterprise social network and this might give the best measure of where we are on the adoption lifecycle. The lowest level badge, the “starter” badge rewards a low level of activity; a post and a few comments and you’re there. By this measure we’re about to enter the “early adopters” stage. However badges were only introduced 6 months after launch so they under measure the adoption activity.

Looking at all these measures, the data per country, and reviewing how the Enterprise Social Network is used I believe we’re still with the early adopters across the company, but we’re into the early majority in the two countries with the largest numbers of employees. This is huge progress. Now the challenge is to embed this Enterprise Social Network in the company, my real measure of success is when it’s just how we work.

Images boulder

Work found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:DiffusionOfInnovation.png / CC BY-SA 3.0

Louise McGregor Digital

Unrelated things

There’s a whole lot of thought, clever thought, behind offering you related content or related shopping offers, but it doesn’t always go well.

Slideshare Finds Content Related to My Name;

I uploaded a presentation about “7 signs you’re in the wrong job”, but under related content on the right you’ll see a slideshare called “Peter Rabbit” which is based on a story by Beatrix Potter… which happens to feature characters Mr and Mrs McGregor, who are pretty much the bad guys of the piece. While my name is McGregor, it’s not really related content. But I laughed.

Amazon’s Flawed Recommendations;

I bought a Kindle last week, since Amazon finally decided that it would be OK to ship the model I wanted to the Netherlands. It’s my new favourite toy. In the same order I bought a power adapter for the EU and a kindle cover.

In my recommendations I now see a power adapter recommended on the basis that I bought a kindle cover, and a kindle cover on the basis that I bought a power adapter.

There were other kindle related recommendations listed, but these two were right next to each other so it jumped out at me.

Amazon knows I live in the EU, but yes potentially a US power adapter might be something I was looking for – but that’s not why they’ve recommended it. It seems they take the data of the items I ordered, not the whole order in creating recommendations.

Image different

Louise McGregor Innovation

Life Hacks for the Developing World

Vinay Venkatraman talks about “technology crafts” essentially describing a couple of ways to use technology to deliver public service solutions at low cost – built from common components with local ingenuity.

The resulting tools are all about providing single function to solve a single problem, it’s a far cry from the bells and whistles of most projects I work on. The simplicity is part of its charm and, I suspect, its success.