Four foundations view of organisational collaboration

Michael Sampson has just posted an excellent piece over on his blog about the four foundations of orgaisation collaboration. http://currents.michaelsampson.net/2009/10/fourfoundations-overview.html

I left a comment on his post noting the similarities between what we are creating and the foundations he's outlined.  We're not quite ready to share exactly what we are designing (screens etc.) in detail, but I think it's safe to talk about the similarities here and share some of the process of what we are doing.

Michael describes a workflow to illustrate how the foundations he's proposed work in the day to day life of Julian, a worker in the sample organisation.

Let's take an example. One of Julian's current projects is the design of a new widget, "Widget 15". Whenever he writes an email to colleagues about "Widget 15", that phrase is included. Whenever he posts to the project blog about the status of his work, "Widget 15" is mentioned directly in the text, or is implied because it's on the "Widget 15 Blog". He attends a lot of face-to-face and virtual meetings about "Widget 15", and these are scheduled using the calendar in the team's collaborative workspace.

Now looking at the four foundations, that means:
- When someone looks up Julian in the directory or profile system, they should see that "Widget 15" is something he's good at (foundation 1).
- When someone is looking into "Widget 15" -- via a search or on a tag cloud -- Julian should be flagged as a relevant person (foundation 2).
- People should have a way of opting in to receive updates about "Widget 15" (foundation 3).
- Julian is able to note an interest in "fabrication processes" related to widgets, and discover other people with similar interests (foundation 4).

It's a great opportunity to extend this and show how the tool we are building (lets give it a working title of "Project PleX" for now) behaves in the same scenario.

To enable foundation 1, "Project PleX" sits inside the firewall and monitors content and keywords.  It sees that Julian consistently talks about Widget 15 and related topics, once a level of expertise is demonstrated, "Project PleX" will send Julian an e-mail asking him to confirm his expertise.  This overcomes a core problem with profiling systems which are not automated - Julian is prompted based on the signals he's already sending, he doesn't have to step out of his busy day and suddenly realise he's now an expert in "Widget 15".  "Project X" ensures that Julian's knowledge is kept up to date as he is demonstrating it.

With "Project PleX" we believe in People Centric Software.  We make a key distinction from Enterprise Search in that instead of searching for "Widget 15" and returning 15,000 documents that mention it, we return the people who talked about it which helps address "Foundation 2".  This also overcomes a key problem with the sharing of e-mail.  It's not hard to see that Julian would find it challenging to make his e-mail discoverable to everyone, after all sometimes he complains to his mates about the project manager on "Widget 15".  "Project PleX" removes this worry, it's focussed on the fact Julian works on "Widget 15", not finding the e-mail he mentioned it in.

Each skill identified by "Project PleX" can be explored, this includes seeing what content is being created that mentions the skill (to solve the e-mail problem, only certain sources would be shown).  People interested in "Widget 15" can subscribe to this content as a feed to stay up to date.  I don't think this is a full match for Foundation 3, but it does address some of the requirements.

Finally, "Project PleX" will recommend to Julian people and skills which are related to his expertise.  For example, if Frank in Sydney suddenly starts working on "Widget 15" as well, "Project PleX" will alert Julian so he knows to reach out from Melbourne to connect with Frank.  "Project PleX" will also suggest other people and skills based on the skills that Julian already has.  So for example, if Frank is an expert in "Fabrication Processes", then "Project PleX" would suggest this as a potential skill for Julian.

I hope this combination of the theoretical and practical is whetting your appettite for learning more about "Project PleX", there is more to come, we are only beginning down the road, but it's great to see that there is a lot of interest in this area of knowledg signals in organisations already.

Our Evil Plan

Over at Gaping Void Hugh has created a great post on Evil Plans, describing as follows:

The defi­ni­tion of an “EVIL PLAN” is, quite simply, a great idea that the world isn’t quite ready for yet, or at least, doesn’t think it is.

As we count down (16 days to go) to our launch, this post really resonated.  A lot of having an "EVIL PLAN" is really about having a vision for the change you want to see in the world. In our case, we don't want to hold anyone ransom for "1 Million Dollars".

We would however like to change the way in which people's knowledge and expertise is recognised inside organisations. Automatically identifying peoples skills and expertise based on what they do isn't the worlds grandest "EVIL PLAN", but it is our little bit of creating meaning.  To quote Hugh again:

9. I think human beings inhe­rently want to do “Something That Mat­ters”. I think it’s in our DNA. I think the peo­ple who say they don’t want do something that mat­ters are liars. I also think having an EVIL PLAN cons­tantly in the back of our minds– quit­ting our day job and ope­ning a bar, wri­ting the Great Ame­ri­can Novel, wha­te­ver– is also in our DNA. EVIL PLANS is a medi­ta­tion about finally waking the hell up and going off to do something meaningful.

I really recommend you read the full post, for those seeking to create meaning, a little bit of evil goes a long way.

We are really excited about sharing the our "EVIL PLANS" with you in more detail over the coming weeks.

What is people centric software?

At one level, People Centric Software is simply software that is centered around the point of view of the user of the software and what they are trying to accomplish.  That's not a bad thing at all and many sites, particularly in the Web 2.0 world rightly claim an exceptional user experience.  However we think that within the realms of the enterprise, there is a lot more that can be done.

At BinaryPlex, we believe that People Centric Software as a philosophy goes more than skin deep.  It's about software that is not only effective to use, but that also acts as an agent on behalf of people to help make thier jobs easier.

Expertise location is a great example.  Smart software should work on behalf of people to locate and identify experts.  Why should you fill in a profile to let the organisation know what skills you have when your daily activity demonstrates these?  Why do you have to tag your content the way everyone else thinks to ensure discoverability when smart software that understands what you're writing about can help do this for you?

Sure it's a greater challenge for the software package to interact and talk with the content stream in your organisation to understand what you're doing and the expertise you're demonstrating, but for us, that's what People Centric Software really means.  Using the knowledge that already exists in organisations to make smart decisions in partnership with you, rather than having you repeat yourself into yet another system.

Expertise location across E2.0 is gaining momentum

Ross Dawson wrote today on his blog that:

Unless a large organization can bring the most relevant expertise within the firm to bear on the problems and issues at hand, it really has no reason to exist. A smaller more nimble organization could do as good a job with lower costs.

Welcome to BinaryPlex

Hi there!

The first post is always the hardest I think, so perhaps I'll get it out of the way and move on to more interesting topics. 

Firstly, who are we?

Well, BinaryPlex is currently in the process of being founded.  What does that mean? It means we are so hot off the press I'm not sure if the accountant has filed our incorporation documents yet and the ink isn't dry on our tax file number.

Another way of looking at it however is that the two co-founders - Alex Dong and myself, Tim Bull have a lot of experience in the things that are really relevant to what BinaryPlex is setting out to achieve, namely building great software for enterprises to solve their expertise location problems.

Which hints at the second question, what are we doing?

What we see in the organisations we've worked with is they are trying hard to solve the problem of leveraging their experts and understanding what they know.  To do this, many organisations are starting to look at Web 2.0 tools to provide part of the answer.  We think this is part of the answer, but there is a smarter way.  We are building a product (super-secret name just at the moment while we trademark it) which can help take all this Web 2.0 content and turn it back into people, not documents.

This philosophy is something we call "People Centric Software" - it's the people that know and hold the expertise, not the documents they've written, lets help connect people with people again, and lets stop asking them things that they've already told us.

Where can I find out more?

We are rapidly approaching our corporate launch date of 16th of November, but in the mean time as we wind up other projects and current employment we will start sharing some of what we are up to and thinking about here.

On our main website, http://www.binaryplex.com/ you can also read a little more about our first project and sign up for the beta.  Thanks for stopping by, I hope to be able to share a lot more of our journey with you.

Feel free to follow us on twitter:

• BinaryPlex
• Tim Bull
• Alex Dong