Who defines your company’s social collaboration strategy?

KnowledgeInfusion.com has an interesting poll up on their site (snapshot taken 3/26/09):

KnowledgeFusion Poll

Go here to see latest results:
http://www.knowledgeinfusion.com/coe/poll.jspa?poll=1102#cf

The most effective social collaboration strategy will be flexible, not rigid. It will be able to evolve based on the usage patterns of the community.  A bottom-up driven strategy.  Not top-down and rigid, like what you would might expect from traditional thinking HR, Marketing, or IT.  So I think it’s interesting how the “Colleagues/Co-workers” choice is at the bottom of the list.   With social software you are talking about how people connect and communicate.  Doesn’t it make sense that the best strategy will be one that continuously adapts to the needs of the people in the community it serves?

HR will define the above-medium code of conduct. Marketing/Sales/Product Dev will benefit in myriad ways from the freer flow of ideas and knowledge.  IT will facilitate the needs of the community as effectively as they can by deploying and customizing tools.  But it’s the community of colleagues/co-workers who really need to define the strategy.  This is not a chicken-or-egg problem either.  It is a convergence process.  Deploy multiple tools. (The major vendors get this – Jive SBS, Lotus Connections, SocialText, etc. now offer platforms comprised of multiple social SW tools.)  Minimize governance and process overhead.  Trust your employees to follow HR’s code of conduct, and empower them to collaborate.  Then see where and how their usage patterns converge toward the most valuable tools and methods.  Expect the unexpected (especially at first). You won’t be able to predict some of the most valuable effects.  So don’t try to design your entire strategy from the get go.  Executives and middle management must also participate.  They should use the same tools to help keep the company’s business goals firmly in sight for all employees.  Embrace change.  Let your strategy coalesce – from the bottom up.

City Government 2.0 – Austin’s Opportunity

There has is a “healthy” online discussion among Austin netizens about the latest RFP and (retracted) contract award for the sorely needed update to the City of Austin website.  Links:  Omar Gallaga’s digital savant blog on Austin360,  Sarah Coppola’s statesman.com City Beat Blog.  I added the following comment to each of their blogs today:

I’m glad to see that the COA is delaying the vote on the site redesign.  I commend Omar for originally surfacing this story, and for sticking with the comment thread.  That this discussion is happening in the open is great.  How many other COA RFP-to-contract award processes face this much netizen light of day?

Ideally, the forum for a discussion like this should be hosted by the city (irony intended).  And, any online forums hosted by the city should also allow for reg’d participants to not just compose/comment, but also vote up other posts/comments too (Whitehouse.gov did this just today in their first online presidential town hall meeting – a watershed event in government 2.0).

I’m starting to enumerate functional requirements for the redesign now.  Where is the RFP?  Can anyone share a link to the original RFP?  I can’t readily find it (or much of anything) on the current COA site. (update: Omar has added a link to the original RFP at the end of his post)

One comment mentions that the RFP did not specifically require Plone/Zope as the platform.  Can anyone confirm this?  If true, then where is this requirement coming from?  As a tax paying Austinite though, I am very pleased that at least a Free/OSS platform strategy is in play.

I hope the current RFP (or the new one now that “the city’s new communications director and new chief information officer need more time to review options for the project”) will not be limited to functional requirements that facilitate business us usual.  It should also define requirements that open visibility into the business of the COA in new ways, allowing for online interaction and feedback from residents in ways that currently aren’t possible today.  As whitehouse.gov demonstrated today, net based social media is creating a whole new paradigm.

Heck – we are home to the most important new media/tech interactive conference in the world today (SXSWi).  Wouldn’t it be great if there was a panel discussion in next year’s SXSWi agenda like this?… “City Government 2.0: Come to this panel to learn how the City of Austin designed and implemented their widely acclaimed interactive city government web site.” …with the panel comprised of the our Mayor, the COA CIO, and leaders of the *AUSTIN BASED* firm that led the successful and widely emulated project.