I have been covering the
Cisco I-Prize for several years and continue to be impressed with this
initiative.  I spoke with Sharon
Wong, the Director of Business Development for Cisco’s Emerging Technology
group to discuss the conclusion of the second I-Prize. She said that the first
one validated the desire for teams to work together on innovation on the global
scale and they learned how much people really like to collaborate (see Cisco Announces I-Prize Winner and Results of Their
Global Collaboration). 
So this time they provided greater collaboration support through Cisco
tools including the following four.

There was some talk during the Enterprise 2.0 Conference last week that Social Networking was having a negative impact on our relationships.  This idea was put forward by Alcatel-Lucent’s Kathleen Culver during her session (#e2onf-25), but not everyone bought into the concept.

I for one agree with the observation. What I feel we are seeing is the flattening of our overall relationship depth.  To explain this, let me talk about the positive impact upon relationships first.

My Social Network Gains

My use of social networks is divided up into two groups, professional and social.  I know that this is not necessarily the norm.  That said, I have seen the tools that I use overall fall into two categories, regardless of focus:

1. Network Mapping: This is LinkedIn (professional) and Facebook (personal).  If I know someone well enough, I link to them.  Essentially, the tie has to already exist. Obviously there is more that can be done with these tools, but we’ll hold off on that.
2. Idea Sharing: This is Twitter and my blog, both professional in nature. I share ideas, both short and long, and over time the audience has grown.  This growth has been through connecting and sharing other ideas.  The connections are to mostly “new” ties.

LinkedIn, by itself, has not significantly grown my network.  It has just helped me keep track of my professional network.  LinkedIn’s capabilities have grown over the years, but my usage has not to a large degree.

As for Twitter/blogging, as of right now, I have about 900 people following me on Twitter and I am following about 200.  I’d guess that there are at least 10-20 people that I have met that I could readily reach out to and have a drink with if I was passing through their town.  A small handful of them might be upset if I didn’t reach out if I was passing through their neck of the woods

This is purely counting people that I wouldn’t otherwise know, not those that I’ve met through real life that I’ve connected to online after meeting in real life.

Overall, a net gain.  Let’s look at Facebook…

Weakening my Strong Ties

On Facebook, I have about 150 friends.  Most of them I knew before I joined Facebook, and a vast majority I met in real life first.  They include family members, my best man, and my closest friends from high school.

The people that I listed are people that I kept in touch with before Facebook.  There are many that I have resumed contact with since joining.  Typically we exchange a few messages and maybe meet-up once.  After establishing a ne “baseline”, we track each other through Facebook, exchange comments, and move on with our lives.

Let’s look at the close friends.  We would regularly call each other, go out of our way to catch-up over drinks, and generally interact as much as our lives and the distance would allow.

Now, we mostly track each other through Facebook.  We feel we know what is going on in each other’s lives.  The urge/need to reach out over the phone isn’t as pressing.  This seems good because I spend so much more time online, so it helps save time.  Aside from maybe commenting on their statuses more than average, I interact with them online as much as most others on Facebook.

My strong relationships seem to be becoming weaker.  My interactions with my close friends are, on average, more superficial than they where before Facebook.

My friendships seem to be moving towards the mean.

Is this Good?

Let’s quickly sum-up:

• Lots of new ties professionally.
• Average strength of new ties, and of previously existing weak ties, is stronger
• Average strength of old, strong ties, is weaker

The answer really depends on your goals.  In my professional life, Social Networking is making things better as I meet more people and gain new opportunities.  The entire Enterprise 2.0 conference is a direct result of my use of Social Networking tools.  My social activities were also entirely the result of my Social Networking. On the whole good things.

That said, there is nothing like talking to good friends all night about anything and everything.  My professional life exists to support my personal life, so the weakening of my personal ties is actually a concern.

Then there is Dunbar’s Number.  Simply put, this is the number of stable social relationships that a person can maintain.  The number is 150.  So, with more professional relationships, personal ones will invariably be pushed aside.  As bad as it sounds, this is probably a wash given that it is relationship 151 that will be dropped.  If that particular relationship was more important to me, it wouldn’t be the one that gets neglected.

Let’s be fair, there is nothing stopping me from calling people like I used to do.  on the other hand, there is nothing stopping them from calling either. It happens much less on both sides, so it isn’t just me.

Will I give up Facebook? No, it still serves a purpose that was not being met before. I am going to make a more concerted effort to connect the old fashion way with my close friends.

So excuse me while I go call my best man.

In a departure from my normal waffle, I wanted to share a book I’ve just read “The Tipping Point” by Malcolm Gladwell, that I’ve come to very late – it was first published ten years ago and that anyone who’s hung around with marketers for as long as I have really ought to have read it by now!

I like this kind of book (I read a lot of Seth Godin - yeah, yeah, who doesn’t?) where authors bring to life their serious marketing theory and techniques through stories – but this one surprised me.

Here’s what the author says on his website, as a reading guide:

1. The Tipping Point is that magic moment when an idea, trend or social behavior crosses a threshold, tips, and spreads like wildfire. At what point does it become obvious that something has reached a boiling point and is about to tip?

2. The possibility of sudden change is at the center of the idea of the Tipping Point — big changes occurring as a result of small events. If we agree that we are all, at heart, gradualists, our expectations set by the steady passage of time, is it reassuring to think that we can predict radical change by pinning their tipping points? Can we really ensure that the unexpected becomes the expected?

Now that’s what I expected to learn.

What I didn’t expect to learn was about the Tipping Point being applied to Revere’s ride at the dawn of American Independence, fighting violent crime in New York, TV for kids, research into why people smoke, the reasons why groups of 150 are good and the relationship to the evolution of our brains…. and, and, and…  a whole host of absolutely fascinating stories.

Clearly Gladwell knows his stuff, these stories brought the points  to life, making it a super read and elevating this book from a simple marketing book, to something I’d recommend to anyone.

Interested? Here are (affiliate) links to it on the Amazon US and Amazon UK websites – or read more on the authors website.

Alan and I recently wrote this piece (requires free registration) for CFO Connect, a thought-leadership magazine for CFOs and other senior finance professionals operating in India. The idea was to introduce people to Compliance and how an ECM technolog…

Alan and I recently wrote this piece (requires free registration) for CFO Connect, a thought-leadership magazine for CFOs and other senior finance professionals operating in India. The idea was to introduce people to Compliance and how an ECM technolog…

A few weeks ago I
read an interesting blog post, The Edges, by Edward Harran, that I found
through Twitter from Ross Dawson. 
He began with the idea that “The past, present, and the future are all one and
the same” and added, “new things always happen
on the edges.” However, he goes to add that it is hard to see the new things
because you do not know they exist and do not know where the edges are located.

Edward
summarizes this issue as follows: 'The
Future' is the continual emergence of the edges in the present. 'The Past', similiarly, is the
continual understanding of the edges that were discovered and, that which we
are now, attempting to put into context.
'The
Present' is, thereby, in the intersection of these two ongoing investigations.
They are all built and interwoven into each other.

Edward
concludes with a quote of Eckart Tolle, "The present is the only thing we
will ever experience. The now." He adds, “so we better start understanding
it.”

This
is our mission at Darwin. We try to provide the context for the present in real
time thorough our Buzz Tracker™ and Scan Cloud™ so you can better understand the
past, anticipate the future, and better live in the present.

Years ago I wrote a poem
that contained these lines within it,

A baby cries and laughs

While
real time is actually a relative statement, understanding its context will help
you better find the edges.  Thanks to
Eddie for bring me back to this topic. 

Yesterday, we moved the Cascade Server Success Community to a new Forum and Idea Exchange.

The Register: “The place to start is to consider IT’s role in the grand scheme of things. If we sidestep the idea that everything is going to the cloud, and consider a more realistic scenario whereby a business may own and operate a certain set of core services (processes with a degree of privacy / IP, customer data, etc) and look to outsource their services (certain software apps, server/storage capacity etc), it’s relatively easy to see an emerging role for IT as an orchestrator, rather than sole custodian.”

Complete Story

Brightidea brings the capabilities
of social computing to the idea generation and implementation process. Their WebStorm^TM product is an
Idea Collection and Ranking Portal that facilitates the innovation process. I have covered them before (see: Brightidea.com – Brings Focused Enterprise 2.0
Capabilities to Innovation).

Now collaboration is
forecasted by Forrester to be one of the big drivers for smart phone usage in
2010 (see Smartphone Surge
in 2010). In line with this
trend Brightidea has announced the release of Brightidea
Mobile^TM. 
Designed exclusively for Apple’s iPhone and iPad, as well as the Google Android
platform, the native App brings the Brightidea platform to mobile users.

The Brightidea Mobile^TM
app supports public or private communities and is designed to support the
rigorous security requirements and access controls required by large
enterprises that host many online brainstorms simultaneously.  

Users of Apple’s iPhone and iPad can move between
multiple Brightidea WebStorms through the familiar iPhone interface and simple
navigation menu with built-in access to all accounts, campaigns, ideas, and
comments.  With Brightidea Mobile, users can view, post, comment, vote,
and share ideas as well as use Brightidea’s corporate micro-blogging feature
that allows users to post and follow activity within their innovation
community.

One of Brightidea’s first clients to roll-out the
mobile app is The Nielsen Company. Brightidea Mobile TM
can be downloaded directly from the iTunes store. I think the migration to
mobile instances of enterprise 2.0 collaboration software will continue. Most
studies have shown that moving to mobile is a major direction for enterprise
software (see for example, Global Intranet Trends 2010 Report). 

Brightidea was also recently selected by the city of San Francisco to power their program to get more employee involvement in improvements for the city.  They are also supporting Ireland's efforts to get more citizen involvement in improving the country in the Your Country Your Call effort. A mobile app should be very useful in these cases. 

Cisco has recently announced the launch of the second I-Prize global innovation
contest where entrepreneurs worldwide can collaborate and submit
proposals for Cisco’s next billion-dollar business idea. I wrote about the
first contest (see: Cisco I-Prize – Mining the Web and the World for
Innovation) and the
results. Following the first I-Prize, which drew nearly 2,500 entrepreneurs,
this year participants will have access to an expanded portfolio of Cisco
collaboration solutions to build on as they share their ideas with others
globally. The winning team will be eligible for $250,000 in prize money.

There
are four main categories as described by Cisco:

The
future of work: Use the power of the network to bring together customers,
suppliers and associates to propose solutions that will change the way
companies and organizations do business. 

The
connected life: Showcase technological advancements that will dramatically
improve living conditions and culture. This category will require people to
envision a life of seamless connectivity. 

New
ways to learn: Create innovative solutions that will transform when, where and
how people learn.

The future of entertainment: Devise next-generation solutions that
will change how people play.

I like
their topics. I-Prize contest participants will be able
to use the following Cisco collaboration tools:

Cisc  Show
and Share, a social video community where
contest participants can record, edit and share video; comment, rate and tag
interesting content; and use speech-to-text translation for easy video search
and viewing.

Cisco Pulse, a search platform that dynamically tags content as it crosses the
network, allowing contest participants to accurately locate and rapidly connect
with the best available experts and information on a particular topic.

Cisco WebEx™, an online
meeting platform for audio and Web conferencing that enables users to share
documents and desktops in real time.

Cisco
TelePresence™, an immersive, virtual meeting experience that combines innovative
real-time video, audio and interactive technologies to give people in
distributed global locations a wide variety of face-to-face collaboration
experiences.

This is a good
way for Cisco to gain more exposure for its collaboration suite. I-Prize
participants will also have access to a management platform, powered by Spigit, which enables participants to buy and sell ideas
on an open market (see: Innovating Through Market Games with Spigit). The idea market lets contest participants establish the value of their
ideas through trades. Shares of ideas are purchased with virtual currency
awarded to participants based on the value of their contributions on the platform.
This is the same platform being used by the upcoming Enterprise 2.0 conference
to help participants and others evaluate potential sessions.

This program
seems to be a win-win for Cisco as they get to harvest new ideas, showcase an
innovative crowd-sourcing program, as well as feature their collaboration
products.