Members, Beehives and Bookmarks

It's always nice to catch up with ex-KIN members. Not long ago I had lunch with Nick O'Doherty who some of you may remember. Along with another ex PwC employee he has set up a consultancy business brightbeehive.com/

They "...offer services to companies looking to make use of tools such as wikis and blogs, and websites like YouTube, Facebook, Twitter etc. Collectively we call this Social Computing. We believe there are huge benefits to be gained for companies who are using this technology and we want to assist those who would like to engage and who feel that they are being left behind."

Like any self-respecting internet consultancy business, they have a blog, they're on LinkedIn - they're even on Twitter (FWIW!). But the other thing that really interested me was that they also share their bookmarks using Delicious.

Since the subject areas of interest to them are of interest to me also, I have added the RSS feed of their Blog and their Delicious bookmarks to my feedreader. If you also have an interest in these topics, you might want to do the same. But you can be assured that anything they bookmark that I think is relevant to KIN members I will also bookmark using Diigo and they will appear in the KIN memberspace, here and relevant blog posts will appear here.

KIN Bookmarks, the experiment continues...

It's all very well setting up a KIN Social Bookmarking group, but unless the results are easily visible to KIN members, it's not achieving it's purpose. We now have three active bookmarkers: myself, Gary Colet and Matt Hill from Lloyds Register. So how can KIN members see what is being bookmarked?
Well, there are a number of ways.

• You can visit the Diigo KIN group web page where all the bookmarks are listed in reverse chronological order of bookmarking. (From this page you can also request to join the group and start adding your bookmarks.)
  
• You can visit the KIN Tags and Bookmarks page in memberspace which has a number of groups of bookmarks displayed according to how they've been tagged and a tag cloud of all the bookmarks made so far.
  
  But remembering to visit a web page regularly is a chore. And do you really what's changed since your last visit? So...
  
  
• You can put http://groups.diigo.com/rss/ki-network/bookmark in your favourite RSS reader and updates will be brought to you rather than you having to go to the updates. (You do use a RSS reader don't you? - See this post!)
• Finally, as an experiment, I'm going to use a feature of Diigo and have the week's bookmarks automatically posted to this blog.
  

As ever, feedback on the above options is very welcome.

Social Bookmarking - Take 2 (Pt3 - Some Results)

(Number 3 in a series of posts - see also part 1 and part 2)

I've only been playing with Diigo for a few days and I'm starting to see how it can be used to benefit myself and KIN.


Firstly, I have created a Diigo KIN Group. As I bookmark things, any that I think are of interest to KIN, I add them to this group. Now in itself I think this is useful. Where it has the potential to be really useful is if other KIN members also start to add bookmarks to this group.

The bookmarks in this group can be seen here. Note the Tag Cloud in the panel on the right.
I have embedded the 'Tag Cloud' for the group links in the ET SIG Home Page, here and below.


I have created a list of bookmarks relating to the recent Wiki roundtable event and embedded this list in Memberspace.

I have tagged some bookmarks 'Prediction Markets' and embedded these links in the Winter 2009 workshop site (bottom right). The bit that's really cool - I think - about this one is that it has an RSS feed so those of you using feed readers can pick this list up directly!

I'm experimenting with what else I can do on the ET SIG site in 'Resources Pages'.

Key Advantage
In all of the above, the lists as seen in memberspace are not static. i.e. if I add bookmarks that meet the criteria, the lists as viewed will change.

Minor Disadvantage
Using the standard Sharepoint Link Lists, you can set up an alert to be notified of any additions to the list. Such alerts will not work for these lists.

Personally, I think the advantages far outweigh the disadvantages. What do you think?
Does anyone else use Diigo, and what features do they like best?

Social Bookmarking - Take 2 (Pt2 - Why?)

I want to share things I find on the web that I think will be of benefit/use/interest to KIN members. Easily.

Unfortunately, the KIN memberspace is not ideally suited to this. As you probably know, the KIN memberspace is a Sharepoint site. Sharepoint allows you to create lists of links. So why don't I want to use these?

Sharepoint Link lists shortcomings

• Which link list should I use ? There is one (sometimes several) on each Quarterly Workshop event site (example). There is one on each SIG site (example). So if I have found something that is of interest to more than one Special Interest Group and relates to a Quarterly Workshop, where should I post it? Should I post it more than once? Too many decisions, too much effort. (Not to mention what about links that relate to specific Roundtables or Masterclasses).
• Adding to the Link List is 'out of the flow'. So I've found something of interest. Now I have to open Memberspace, navigate to the Link List I've decided it should go in, click on add link and fill in a Sharepoint form. Again, too much effort.
• How can I see all 'my' links? With links scattered over several Link lists, how to I keep track of 'my' links and avoid having to duplicate effort by creating my own bookmark list?
• What, no tags? Sharepoint (at least the version we are using) does not provide for 'tagging' so that links that are related are easily found.

So will a Social Bookmarking tool help? I think so.
The tool I've decided to try (this time) is Diigo.




Diigo Advantages (vs Sharepoint Link Lists)

• I have a single repository for all my (tagged) bookmarks. And there are multiple ways to view this list.
  
• Bookmarking is done 'in the flow'. I can bookmark, tag and comment on my bookmark without leaving the page I am bookmarking.
• There is the facility for 'Community' tagging. I can (and have) set up a 'Diigo Group' for use by KIN members.

In addition to the above advantages which overcome the listed shortcomings, it is also possible to display Diigo bookmarks in Sharepoint such that as I add bookmarks, these additions automatically appear in the KIN memberspace. This can be done in various ways: by tags, by group, by lists (see my next blog post in this series of three - part1 is here).
And as I explore Diigo further, I expect I will discover other advantages. I'll let you know.

Social Bookmarking - Take 2 (Pt1)

Last year I started an experiment with Social Bookmarking (see this blog entry). I have to admit that it never really took off. I know people had some difficulties setting up accounts on Ma.gnolia.com and although I had an account the process of creating bookmarks didn't really seem seamless.



But I remain convinced of the potential benefits of using a Social Bookmarking tool for myself, for KIN members individually and for KIN members collectively. (If you aren't sure what Social Bookmarking is or how it might be usefule to you, see Social Bookmarking in Plain English).

So I've decided to try again. This time using Diigo which is a tool that Steve Goodwin put me on to. I believe the most popular social bookmarking tool is Delicious but the last time I looked it didn't appear to have a feature that I wanted and that is for a self-contained community such as KIN to be able to share their bookmarks amongst themselves. That said, I plan to try Delicious at some point in the future and compare it with what Diigo offers.

That's it for this post. This is the first of a series of three. The remaining two are:

Social Bookmarking - Take 2 (Pt2 - Why?)

and

Social Bookmarking - Take 2 (Pt3 - Some Results)

What, if any, social bookmarking tool do you use?

KIN Bookmarks

And now, for my next WEB 2.0 KIN experiment, I have set up a "KIN Bookmarks" group on social bookmarking site Ma.gnolia.com.

This is something I have been considering for a while but was finally inspired into action by the KIN Quarterly workshop which I co-facilitated yesterday. I thoroughly enjoyed the day: the presentations, the member case studies and the networking opportunities.
(For KIN members, all the material presented at the workshop and more besides can be found in the Quarterly workshop site on the memberspace - this site will be being updated over the next few days)

During one presentation, I was reminded that during a visit to a member organisation internal forum the previous week, I overheard one person there commenting that they had learnt one new thing: they had never before heard of 'Social Bookmarking' but were now going to try it. So I wondered if there were people in our audience that also had never heard of Social Bookmarking. (Or some of the other tools mentioned such as RSS. When I posted a poll in the memberspace, I did get a few people saying they had never heard of RSS)

So first of all, a link to one of my favourite sites, The Common Craft show:
Social Bookmarking in Plain English



And for those of you who would like to have a go:

• To visit the KIN group, go to: http://ma.gnolia.com/groups/KIN
• To join Ma.gnolia.com for free, just click the link http://ma.gnolia.com/join

I decided to use Ma.gnolia because it allowed me to set up as a moderated group where contributors can be restricted to KIN members. So everytime I create a bookmark using Ma.gnolia I can send it to the KIN Bookmarks group. And better still, so can you !
First, create a Ma.gnolia account (if you don't already have one). Then click on the 'join' button at http://ma.gnolia.com/groups/KIN to join the group. That will make you a member (anyone can see this group and become a member). Then send me an email telling me you would like to contribute to the group and (provided you are a KIN member) I will make you a moderator so that you can.

You can see how I am using Ma.gnolia (not very much - yet!) at: http://ma.gnolia.com/people/PhilRidout

So have a go, and let me know what you think !