KIN MemberSpace - a major milestone for the Knowledge and Innovation Network

Wow, KIN proudly launched the brand new MemberSpace today!
The reason this is so notable is the way it was developed, using a the latest in free, cloud computing components. Having struggled with Microsoft's SharePoint for the last 4 years, it feels as though shackles have been released. KIN did a major evaluation of collaboration packages, both open source and proprietary and concluded that GoogleSites was ahead, in functionality, cost and its future-proofing. No more software upgrades or migrations needed!

As a result, at last we have a flexible, connected and intuitive place for KIN Members to share. An added bonus is that because the search is so efficient, tons of existing valuable content will be exposed to a new KIN audience. Previously you had to know where content was, before looking for it. Duh.

KIN stalwarts Phil Ridout and Steve Goodwin are far too modest to say, but they have done a sterling job of configuring GoogleSites to deliver exactly what our Members wanted, in an agile way and without an IT department. If members want changes, or new functionality becomes available, we can respond almost immediately. The streamlined back-office processes, all using existing Google facilities, will make administering members a doddle. Migrating from SharePoint was almost painless.

This experience leaves one to wonder whether organisations should re-evaluate the benefits of tying in their collaboration tools to a proprietary IT infrastructure and suite of integrated services (read Microsoft). Yes, GoogleSites may not yet be positioned as an Enterprise Collaboration Solution, but that can't be far off.

Please note that because of proprietary content, we can only share the link to the new MemberSpace with those from KIN member organisations. If you are not from a member organisation and would like to know more, please contact us.

Corporate Attention Deficit

Image courtesy Leo Reynolds
I've been talking to an organisation recently undertaking knowledge transfer for departing staff. Many of these people have unique knowledge that, if lost, could adversely affect the organisation's ability to deliver its objectives. Having invested serious time in understanding what knowledge is most important for the future, further effort has gone into turning interview outputs into useable material. Typically, these are 8-10 page documents and short video and audio clips packed with insights, risks, and other rich, actionable information.

It seems that in these highly pressured times, this is too much, reduced to 'just gimme a one-pager'. How do you usefully reduce 10 years experience and 6 at-risk projects in a soundbite with no context?

Take a look at some of the symptoms of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, normally applied to children, and consider them in relation to your organisation:

• Fails to pay close attention to detail.
• Fails to finish tasks or sustain attention in activities.
• Seems not to listen to what is said to him or her.
• Fails to follow through instructions or to finish homework or chores (not because of confrontational behaviour or failure to understand instructions).
• Disorganised about tasks and activities.
• Avoids tasks that require sustained mental effort.
• Loses things necessary for certain tasks or activities, such as pencils, books or toys.
• Easily distracted.

The Circumlocution Office

"Upon my soul you mustn't come into the place saying you want to know, you know"

Image via Wikipedia

Is this a Dickensian example of the need for a knowledge sharing strategy?
One of the activities we are planning for the Autumn KIN Workshop 'The Perfect Knowledge Organisation' is to have some fun creating the worst knowledge organisation. Perhaps we should just use Mr Barnacle's example of the Circumlocution Office.

KIN is getting Googled

KIN currently uses Sharepoint 2003 to provide an online repository for shared content - the MemberSpace. While this has worked reasonably well for us, it is starting to show it's age and is becoming increasingly limiting to use. So the time has come to replace the MemberSpace. But what with ? Over the last year, the Facilitator team have reviewed a number of possible options.

An obvious candidate is of course Sharepoint 2007 or 2010. But for various reasons, we have decided not to go that route. We have been trialling the use of Google Sites for several months now and have taken the decision to migrate to that platform for our repository (we will retain the vBulletin discussion forums).

So why the change of platform?

I'm not going to attempt to give a point by point comparison of Sharepoint vs Google Sites - they are quite different beasts really. But the main reasons we decided to switch are:

- Every 2/3 years, Microsoft issues a revised version of it's software. Unfortunately it's not just a simple matter of installing the new software and your old content is then available with the new functionality - you have to migrate it all to the new system. And Microsoft do not provide migration tools - you have to go to third party providers.

vs Google sites where you get incremental functionality additions every so often with no migration needed.

For an organisation with very limited IT support this is a big negative to Sharepoint and plus to Google. We really did not want to invest the time and effort into migrating content to a new version of Sharepoint and then have to do it again in a few years time.

- We've long felt that wiki-like functionality would be much more suited to KIN's needs. Essentially, Google Sites is a Wiki. The wiki functionality in Sharepoint still lags behind the best wiki platforms available including Google Sites.

- Some functionality in Sharepoint simply does not work unless you have the latest version of MS Office installed since it relies on some components in that suite. Since we cannot be sure that all our member organisations are using the latest version of MS Office (or even using Office at all) this would potentially limit the accessibility to our members. For Google sites, all you need is a browser.

- To get the best out of Sharepoint, it seems to me that you need fairly sophisticated IT support. For a lot of corporates, clearly this is not an issue (ConocoPhillips, for example, have done a lot to make up for the shortcomings of Sharepoint but have dedicated IT support). But for smaller organisations with limited IT support (like KIN) it most definitely is. Google Sites is 'in the cloud'. We don't have to worry about infrastructure or product updates - that's all take care of by Google.

That said, Google sites has it's shortcomings also (what platform doesn't?). For example, Google Sites doesn't provide granular security (yet... we can always hope that this gets added soon!). It's pretty much all or nothing. If someone can edit a site, they can edit everything in a site whereas Sharepoint has a much more sophisticated security model. (But KIN is a 'trust network' so we don't believe that this will be a problem).

Another plus for Sharepoint is that their list manager is very sophisticated allowing you to view the data stored in lists in many different ways to meet different users needs. Google Sites doesn't match that.

Also, in Sharepoint you can specifiy additional fields that you might want for calendar entries. The embedded Google calendar we will be using in future doesn't provide this but there are other ways to achieve the same things.

So the upshot is that we are taking the plunge and migrating from Sharepoint to Google Sites. The timescale for completing this is a bit flexible at the moment but will definitely be this year. We expect to be able to showcase the new system at the Autumn workshop and, if all goes well, go live with the new system shortly after that.

(Prompted by a response by @markvlunenburg to a Tweet I made, I have decided to write a few posts describing how the migration is going. Since these posts will be probably more technical than most KIN members would be interested in, I will be blogging here rather than on the KIN blog.)

Employee Engagement management training

Occasionally I've been watching the BBC2 series 'Mary Queen of Shops'. If you didn't see Last night's episode, I'd recommend it. As well as being entertaining television (if you like that sort of thing) Lightwater Homecare should be required watching on management training courses about employee engagement. I was particularly struck by one of the newly invigorated employees who at the end of the programme said "I was just a cashier, I just worked behind the till. But now I'm able to get out and talk to the customer and know what I'm talking about".

I hope they do a '12 months later visit to see if the changes have stuck!