According to my research findings, there are more than 1.86 million population in Brisbane alone.  Blessed with an abundance of sunshine and spectacular waterways, Brisbane is surging forward as modern metropolis with a new air of confidence and style. Rapid inner-city development, a swelling population and a cosmopolitan upswing have given it greater stature in recent times, yet it retains the friendliness and relaxed attitude it has always been praised for. Locally known as Brissie (or Brisvegas) it’s the nation’s 3rd largest destination and deserves all acclaim for being a dazzling river city. Sleek catamaran ferries so called “CityCat” glide up and down the Brisbane river, which snakes its way around shiny CBD buildings and sprawling subtropical parklands under the mighty Story Bridge, past colossal rock faces at Kangaroo Point and out of magical Moreton Bay.

Some of the places i discovered and found it to be spectacular and “must-watch”  sights for those who are planning to go to Brissie are such as:

1. Treasury Building  (Casino) – the most grand and impressive of Brisbane’s historical architecture.
2. South Bank Parklands – an enormously popular family area with blooming arbours, cafes and restaurants, picnic spots, tropical gardens & walkways.
3. The Story Bridge – a bridge that connects ‘the Valley’ with Kangaroo point.
4.  The City Hall – Opened in 1930,the four clock faces on each side of the tower are the largest in Australia and was the most expensive building in the country until Sydney Opera House was completed in 1971. It was the tallest building in the city until 1973.
5. Footsteps Gallery – (166 Ann St. Brisbane), established to support emerging artists from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. Tourists can purchase handmade Aboriginal souvenirs.
6. Parliament House - (George St. Brisbane), is where a person can watch state politicians trade legislation and insults from the public balcony on sitting days.
7. Botanic Gardens – An ideal chill-out spot for anyone who wanted to crave for fresh air and beautiful views of the Kangaroo Point cliffs. It’s filled with walking trails, green lawns, bamboo gardens, bunya pines, macadamia trees and Moreton Bay figs. It’s also a good opportunity to spot possums.
8. Roma Street Parkland – (1 Parkland Blvd), The world’s largest subtropical garden in a city centre. It features 40 varieties of Australian native trees, a lake, three waterfalls, a playground and public BBQs.
9. Queensland Cultural Centre – comprises 2 art galleries, a performing arts centre, museum and the state library. It’s stunning architecture, landscaping and riverside location are must-sees – even from the outside.
10. South Bank Parklands – an enormously popular family area with blooming arbours, cafes and restaurants, picnic spots, tropical gardens and walkways. It has spectacular views across the river to the CBD.
11. The Wheel of Brisbane – This London Eye-style prime riverfront views, is fully enclosed, air-conditioned capsules rise to nearly 60m but the experience is all over in 13 minutes or less! (depending on the crowd).
12. Fortitude Valley – Brunswick Street Mall is the heart of this valley, where coffee shops thrive by day and bars buzz at night with live music and DJ beats. Running parallel to this mall is Chinatown, a compact but lively strip of affordable restaurants, Asian supermarkets and clothes boutiques.
13. New Farm – just east of the valley along Brunswick St, is bursting with coffee shops, wine bars and restaurants to cater for its new cashed-up residents. By taking a “CityCat” ferry to New Farm, you can go to the New Farm park, a spacious parkland with playgrounds, picnic areas and scenic river frontage. On the eastern fringes stands the Brisbane Powerhouse (119 Lamington St, New Farm) that hosts a range of visual arts and music and comedy performances and has two restaurants.
14. Newstead  House – This museum is a beautiful hilltop spot near the Brisbane River. Rooms are decorated with Victorian furnishings, antiques and period displays. The surrounding lawns offer lovely river views. Also, there is an excellent Fireworks Gallery (52a Doggett St. Newstead), dedicated to contemporary Australian and Aboriginal art.
15. Finally, Mt. Coot-Tha Reserve – About 7km west of the city centre, an expansive bush and parkland area peppered with picnic spots. A must-see is the lookout at the top of the mountain that brings spectacular views of Brisbane. On a clear day, you can see all the way to Moreton Bay in the east and the Glass House mountains to the west.

Did i miss out some interesting places in Brissie? Feel free to share it in my comments below.

It’s been a quite a while i have written a blog post. Too busy with assignments, projects and work i guess! Today, i am feeling one step closer to be “superior”. I just bought a DSLR camera Nikon D7000. It’s awesome! It’s a beast! Why?  For many reasons:

• It’s not only powerful but user-friendly. I haven’t touch a DSLR camera for many many years. Without reading the manual, i instantly fix the camera, battery grip, lenses, UV filters, flashlight and other accessories in less than 10 mins!

• Graced with a 16.2-megapixel CMOS sensor, the Nikon D7000 exceed the 12-megapixel mark. A/D conversion is 14-bit, handled by the new EXPEED 2 image processor.
• Capable of shooting up to 100 JPEGs at 6 frames per second, the Nikon D7000 exceeds its predecessor’s utility for action shooting, and Nikon also keeps the pressure on in the ISO sensitivity department, with standard ISOs ranging from 100 to 6,400, but reaching to 25,600 in its expanded range. When it first arrive from the box, i used the battery out of the box without recharging it. I managed to shoot using a single battery in 16.2 megapixel fine picture for more than 200 shots, and it still has 13% battery remaining. Wicked!
• Metering is also improved in the Nikon D7000, with a new 3D Color Matrix Metering sensor with more than twice the pixels of past sensors at 2,016 pixels.
• A new Multi-CAM 4800DX autofocus sensor now sports 39 autofocus points, nine of them cross-type. 100 percent viewfinder coverage promises easier image framing as well, a major improvement in the Nikon D7000.
• It has a Dual slots. Both slots are compatible with SDHC and SDXC cards and it’s possible to configure the camera to use the secondary slot as an overflow when the first card is filled; as a backup of everything written to the other card slot; or to have Raw files routed to one card, and JPEGs to the other. In addition, you can select which card movies should be written to, and copy data between cards in-camera.
• Its Autofocus developed a new Multi-CAM 4800DX autofocus sensor, which includes 39 AF points, including nine cross-type sensors at the center of the image frame, operable with every autofocus Nikkor lens. The 39 focus points cover much of the image frame, and the Nikon D7000 includes 3D tracking capability that follows moving subjects from point to point as they traverse the frame. For manual point selection, when a 39-point system might prove overly complex, it’s possible to restrict the number of manually selectable points to a subset of 11 points throughout the frame. Nikon has also improved AF control in the D7000, with a new button positioned centrally in the Focus Mode switch used to select the AF point in concert with the camera’s control dials to select autofocus mode, active points, etc. Detection range for the D7000′s AF system is -1 to +19 EV (ISO 100, 68°F / 20°C). It also supports AF fine-tuning to address back- or front-focusing lens issues!
• Its viewfinder now boasts 100% rated coverage, easing accurate framing of images. The rear-panel super density 3.0-inch LCD panel, with resolution is still 921,000 dots, roughly equating to a VGA (640 x 480) pixel array, with each pixel comprising three adjacent red, green, and blue dots. The D7000′s LCD panel has a wide 170 degree viewing angle, making it somewhat more useful for shooting from the hip, low to the ground, or overhead, although the tilt or tilt/swivel types on some competing cameras can make these tasks rather easier.
• Last but not least, the Nikon D7000 draws power from a new EN-EL15 lithium-ion battery pack. It was stated that its battery life to CIPA testing standards should be approximately 1,050 shots. The Nikon D7000 is also compatible with an optional MB-D11 portrait battery grip, which can accept either one EN-EL15 lithium-ion battery pack, or six standard AA cells.

In conclusion, thank god i didn’t purchase the Nikon 5100 as it is intended for amateur/intermediate level only. But with this beast, Nikon D7000 it’s a professional that almost compete with its bigger brother – Nikon D3S. Just look at the photo i have taken below without any training and reading the manual at all!

My rating for this book review: 5 Stars

Format: Hardcover, 320 pages
Publisher: Penguin Group
Imprint: Portfolio (December 2006)

Why is it worthwhile to read this book?

We’re moving away from a closed, hierarchical structure focused on capital and physical goods. In this old system, you tried to be a good manager while you moved your way up in the hierarchy. The trend now is toward a new kind of open, networked enterprise that is modular. It’s dynamic, flexible and it reaches outside the boundaries of a corporation.

Summary (via Netcast)

The book describes why the new business models for an enterprise require the seven principles of Wikinomics:

1. Peer Pioneers
2. Ideagoras
3. Prosumers
4. The New Alexandrians
5. Open Platforms
6. The Global Plant Floor
7. The Wiki Workplace

What do these seven principles mean to us? Let’s look at them in layman’s terms.

The Peer Pioneers talks about how The Wisdom of Crowds (that means any one of us) can be harnessed to make smarter decisions. Good examples of this are Linux and Spikesource, which is an open-source application. The success of open-source software has encouraged a growing number of “innovation communities” to adopt an open or distributed model. This means more resources can be applied to solve problems. Openness is the key for implementing good strategies in any organisation, like Zopa, which is a website that allows people to lend money to each other eBay style.

Meanwhile, Ideagoras talks about open markets for ideas, and innovations for uniquely qualified minds. It comes from the Greek agora.

Then we have Prosumers (this is one of my favourite principles). It comes from the words “Producers” and “Consumers”. It tells us how we are beginning to be a prosumer society. An example of this would be SecondLife. I became a prosumer when I had my avatar designed in SecondLife. There is also a company called Linden Labs, where 99 percent of its product is built by its consumers. This shows how we turn our customers into producers.

The New Alexandrians is about the sharing of science. There are thousands of these mass collaborations underway today all around the world in the area of science. New collaborative platforms are making it possible to engage very broad communities of public and private entities in large-scale collaborative research and development efforts.

Next we have Open Platforms. All the world’s a stage, and we get to participate using others’ API for free. Everyone likes freemium (Free + Premium). Also, sharing is caring! One great example of this would be Pikspot, which is like YouTube, Digg, and MySpace combined, for instantly creating rich media communities. It’s an open platform, where we can create a community that uses video in three minutes.

The next principle is The Global Plant Floor. It’s not that mass collaboration is a better way of building the most difficult thing we can think of to create; it may be the only way. A great example of this would be Boeing designing a plane. Boeing suppliers co-design airplanes from scratch and deliver complete sub-assemblies to Boeing’s factory, where a single plane can be snapped together like Lego blocks in as little as 3 days. Meanwhile, I was amazed with Tapscott’s findings about a Chinese motorcycle industry that is essentially an open-source motorcycle, making it cheaper for the community.

Finally, the final chapter of Wikinomics is The Wiki Workplace. It discusses the use of Wikis, blogs, collaborative filtering, social networking, RSS feeds, jams, and so on within corporations. Consequently, it is called the definitive guide to the 21st Century Enterprise, for Enterprise 2.0. According to Tapscott and Williams (2006), if we publish a book, we don’t own it because it’s done under a creative commons license. If we create the definitive guide to the 21st century corporation, that’s going to help our organisation somehow because in business we don’t fear theft of Intellectual Property (IP), we fear obscurity.

Still not impressed with Tapscott and Williams’ Wikinomics principles? Well, let’s look at another insightful video explaining how GoldCorp, a gold mining company, with Rob McEwan at the helm as the CEO, adopts these four principles of Wikinomics. They made a great discovery during their search for gold.

(Photo courtesy of Tapscott, 2007, p. 29)

Food for thought

How are we going to find leadership for change? The good news is it can come from anywhere in an organisation. Sure, it’s helpful if the boss is involved, but it can also come from anywhere else. Therefore, leadership can be found on each of our personal journeys if we will it. It looks like Wikinomics will be our road map for doing business in the twenty-first century.

A French poet by the name of Victor Hugo once quoted, “Nothing’s so powerful as an idea whose time has come.” The time has come for the new web, for a new generation for whom this new medium of human communications is their birthright. The time has come for a new model of enterprise and for profound changes in how we innovate, how we create goods and services, and how we, as organisations, engage with the rest of the world. And hopefully the time has come for each of us to find the leader within us to change our organisation and, in doing so, change the world.

References:

Tapscott, D. (2007). Wikinomics: Winning with the Enterprise 2.0. NewParadigm. pp.1-56.

Tapscott, D., & Williams, A. D. (2006). Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything. New York: Portfolio.

Brunei at a Glance from Wan Harris on Vimeo.

Darul-Faaizin Computer Company (FCC) was born in early millennium (2000) and is based in Brunei Darussalam with less than five employees. A decade later it has come a long way from those pioneering days. Of course, back then, FCC was only conducting IT courses and repairing computers for its customers. The arrival of digitalization in the last decade not only provided a wide range of new opportunities for videography and photography services, but also related challenges in terms of developing or acquiring technical and production abilities using Web 2.0 capabilities.

FCC specializes in video shooting and photo taking for any kind of events such as corporate functions, weddings, gala night, church ceremonials, emblem nights and much more. With its succinct tenets – Positive, Progressive and Productive, FCC provides one of the very best video productions using High Definition (HD) with state-of-the-art technology that suite to its customer’s needs. Furthermore, its professional crew has been involved in the business for more than a decade now. It offers customers, a professional, timely and value for money service. The most important thing is its customer’s excitement when they relive their favorite memories in a way they had never dreamed possible. It listens to its customers and includes them to be in the process. Also, it understands how valuable memories are and ensure any items supplied to complete the request of its customers are treated with the utmost care and respect.

FCC’s customers are critical to its success as it has built and run what it believes to be the best videography and photography businesses in media industry. Ignorance generates suspicion and fear. Knowledge brings trust and favour. Its job is to make sure its customers know it is doing a good job. Hence, to serve an excellent service, it has to provide an efficiently run operation to maintain its high class services locally and internationally. By investing the latest equipment and software technology, FCC wants to ensure that it provides customers with the highest quality production possible.

FCC from Wan Harris on Vimeo.

Based on the vision that states its status as to be the supplier of choice to its customers, FCC intends to interact with its customers that they ought to serve in the society. Reaching out their hands to customers all over Brunei Darussalam, and now all over the world, this network aims to reach out to the globe and introduce FCC and its culture through a wider scope of influence. Helping the community realize that FCC is readily able to provide them the service assistance that they need would certainly subject the network in facing responsibilities that might not be perfectly accomplished without the help of the web. Applications such as Web 2.0, cloud computing, new-age online social networks and all other web-based approaches to information sharing and distribution are all seen to have a great indication of effect on the influence that FCC is to establish among its target customer.

Web 2.0 Business Improvement Proposal for FCC from Wan Harris on Vimeo.

By showing a pilot showcase we had developed, we have identified the requirements of the proposal and developed an Enterprise 2.0 strategy to ensure FCC’s requirements are met. From expert designers to web programmer and analyst, we have the team to ensure the highest quality Web 2.0 site at a very competitive rate. Being a Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 champion, we know the pitfalls; we know the shortcuts. Use the team to cut through years of frustrating trial and error. This is because i-Opener team is the team that can provide tools to liberate your ideas with unprecedented power. To the minds of one, to the minds of many. No limits, no boundaries. Mass Collaboration perfected!

To see on the proposed Web portal developed by i-OPENER, please tune to FCC new improved website.

Some of these motivation motto really suites Enterprise 2.0 Champions. The question is, which one suits you best?

Web 2.0 is a metaphorical indication for the idea that a new generation of internet application has been developed. Web 2.0 refers to the business revolution in the computer industry caused by the shift to the internet as platform and an effort to comprehend the rules for success on that new platform (O’Reilly, 2005).  Web 2.0 business applications include blogs, wikis, RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds and podcasts. Blogs provide social networking and bookmarking. Wikis allow collaboration of relevant contents. RSS feeds uses aggregator to make the user’s contents available with web access. Podcasts allow anyone to listen to a list of digital medias that are relevant to them.

The innovation of Web 2.0 has changed how business organisations conduct their work over the internet. It is users-driven and offers organisations a chance to freely communicate and collaborate. Besides, business applications of Web 2.0 impact the network effects and global connection through decentralisation and rich experiences through multimedia capabilities.  Web 2.0 is an opportunity for organisations to deliver information to citizens, partners and employees in an attitude that is more sensitive, convinced and efficient than ever before. Web 2.0 can impact organisation’s services by accelerating and improving decision-making and increase adoption of online services (Kendler, 2007).

Figure 1: The relationship between web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0

(Hinchcliffe, 2006)

Web 2.0 has changed the role of users from unilateral technologies and passive receivers of information into both senders and receivers by multidirectional applications (Carr, 2008).The implications are as followings:

• Unlimited and egalitarian – Users can create, add, edit or delete content without permission or regulation.
• Allowing government work processes to be more efficient, cost-effective and transparent.
• Assisting government to be more accountable by making the data easily accessible, easy to download and ease of use.
• Harnessing the collective intelligence within the organisations.

Figure 2: The subsets of Web 2.0

(Joining Dots Ltd., 2005)

However, one of the risk in web 2.0 applications, it do not guarantee data security. The organisation’s business will be jeopardised if data cannot be accessed from the web. It is possible that confidential data can be accessed by unauthorised person. For example, Amazon’s EC2 service suffered a massive outage in 2008 that wiped out some customer application data. The outage was caused by a software deployment that erroneously terminated an unknown number of user instances (Malik, 2008). Alternatively, an organisation could go for a hybrid approach which will require employees to familiarise with the applications’ usage relating to workflows and processes. The organisation’s policies need to be reviewed to handle the replication of data.

An organisation needs to keep up-to-date on the latest policies, news, tools and commentary for everyone. Thus, a hybrid approach is an ideal choice as compared to other options because it offers many opportunities and benefits to organisation while maximising the return of investment.

References:

Carr, N.G. (2008). The big switch: Rewiring the world, from Edison to Google. Norton, New York.

Hinchcliffe, D. (2006). Web 2.0 definition updated and Enterprise 2.0 emerges.  Retrieved September 21, 2010.

Joining Dots Ltd. (2005). What does Web 2.0 mean.  Retrieved September 21, 2010.

Kendler,P. B. (2007). Bank Systems & Technology.  Retrieved September 21, 2010.

Malik, O. (2008). Amazon S3 Storage Service Goes Down, Still Not Up.  Retrieved September 21, 2010.

O’Reilly, T. (2005). What is Web 2.0: Design patterns and business models for the next generation of software.  Retrieved September 21, 2010.

Velte, A. T., Velte, T. J., & Elsenpeter, R. (2010). Cloud computing: A practical approach. New York: The McGraw-Hill.

Recently, I had the opportunity to conduct an interview with the Apple iPhone users.  The main purpose of this interview is to explore the user’s interest and understand on challenges, frustrations and success of using such a device.  According to Wikipedia (2010), “Apple has dominated 15% of Smartphones stakeholders and continues to be a threat to other Smartphones mobile market”. iPhone sales trend continue to increase as shown in figure 1. In the same way, Gartner forecasted Apple’s iOS will have a peak market share of 17.1 percent in 2011 as shown in figure 2. Contrary to these findings, a principal analyst, Leach (2010), states “Apple iPhones will remain above Android due to its unique user experience, one that consumers still find engaging and easy to use”.

(THE FOLLOWING VIDEO FOOTAGE CONTAINS CERTAIN PARTS THAT VIEWERS MAY FIND DISTURBING)

Figure 1: iPhone sales worldwide.

(Wikipedia, 2010)

Figure 2: Global Market Share for Smartphones 2009-2014

Hence, I had came up with a few sets of interview questions for iPhone’s users listed as below:

• Why did you choose the iPhone?
• Describe your feelings about owning an iPhone?
• What is it that most attracted you to the iPhone over other options that are available?
• What is your experience of using the iPhone?
• How much time do you spend on your iPhone? Is it less or more than the time you would spend with a phone if you didn’t have an iPhone?
• Do you use social networking? Do you use it on the iPhone, and why?
• Is there something you don’t like about the iPhone?
• Have your social relationships changed since you got the iPhone? Why?
• In the future would you purchase another iPhone?
• Do you have any suggestions to people who make the iPhone or use the iPhone?

The above questions were chosen because they are a good mix of technology related issues that can lead to more in-depth conversations about the symbolism of an iPhone. It is evident that there is a certain level of social and economic stigmas that are attached to owning a particular piece of technology. In the case of the iPhone, many people believe its owners are trendy and young. I wanted to see if this was actually true or if it was a clever marketing scheme that was put out by Apple. Another aspect of the iPhone I wanted to cover was its role in either aiding or decreasing certain types of online activities such as tweeting, sending messages via Facebook and other social media sites. The main thing I wanted to ensure was that I conducted a well rounded interview rather than one which focused heavily on just the technology side of the I-phone. I believe the iPhone symbolizes much more than a simple phone. It has become the symbol of our generation thus making it imperative to study its ins and outs in greater detail.

(more…)

It’s long been recognized that word of mouth is one of the best forms of advertising, and social networking is just an online extension of advertising.  Social networking tools, such as Facebook and Twitter are great for keeping in touch with friends and family.  Once banned from the business world, they are now being allowed or even embraced on many company networks. Some employees use social networking as a quick break from work. According to Shinder (2010, p.1), “Studies have shown that taking short breaks can make workers more productive, and hopping over to your Facebook page for five minutes to check friends’ activities can be a quick and efficient way to “get away” mentally, even if you need to stay physically in place”.

One great example of an organisation using Social Networks is IBM. The social network tool used is called “Beehive”. It look similar like a Facebook but slightly different.  With Beehive, IBM employees is able to express themselves in rich, personalize and customize ways so that their peers in the office could get an expressive image of them. Beehive users can create a profile, submit pictures, submit updates, submit comments, organize events and tag someone’s photos. The user profiles are dynamic that allows changing depending on a user’s activity in submitting content or giving comments. In addition, users can select which information to display at specific location on the page and limit the visibility of their photos and lists to their peers or external social communities. Beehive interface can be seen as in figure 1.  According to Ward (2010), “Over 30,000 people have opted-in, sharing over 40,000 photos in less than a year since Beehive issued its first honey. And it’s still being enhanced”.

Figure 1: Beehive Social Network Application

(Ward, 2010)

The employees in IBM use Beehive to share information among themselves such as collaborating in projects, personal interests, hobbies, projecting skills and experience based on resume and as a portal for knowledge-based centre such as conference presentations.

The benefits of using Beehive are:

• Employees are willing to share more information inside the organisation instead of public sites because they were less concerned with the ramifications  of sharing process on personal information and opinions.
• They can expand their market reach globally, widening IBM’s business contacts, create a communication with IBM clients and submit free advertisement.
• IBM manage to bridge the digital divide and generation gaps among their employees, ranging from ordinary employees to managers and senior level employees.

Meanwhile, the possible pitfalls that could occur are:

• Slump in productivity.  If every 50 employees in IBM organisation spent 30 minutes on social networking every day of a working week, that would total a cumulative productivity loss of 6,500 hours in one year (GFI, n.d.). Consequently, this could have a high impact on return on investment (ROI) upon measuring the employee’s salary based on each hour costs.
• IBM could be held liable for failing to protect its employees from viewing illicit or offensive content material and commenting publicly and defaming IBM’s image. Thus, the damage to the IBM’s reputation could both be enormous.

Also, contrary to these findings, I had the opportunity to site visit two broadcasting stations in Australia last month. With reference to the video below, it seems they had spend millions and millions of dollars for their data centre investments, in order to provide rich services to their audiences including Enterprise systems. Most of their equipments are IT-based.  Its captivating to know broadcasters like Channel Nine and SBS, Australia are also using Social Networks. Both, have a RSS feeds, Podcasts and Blogs. Channel Nine is using Micro blogging tool like Twitter to disseminate their information to the community, whilst SBS is using their Facebook and Twitter to interact with their loyal audience.  According to Alexa (2010a,b), SBS website is currently worth $194,998 USD while Channel Nine website is worth $3.9 million USD!  Consequently, they really mean serious businesses as what can be seen on the video below (due to confidentiality, I am not allowed to insert their voice conversations in this video, instead I had replaced it with insightful music background).

Australian Broadcasters from Wan Harris on Vimeo.

When it comes to personal experience, I have used many social networking tools such as Facebook, Twitter, StumbleUpon, YouTube, Vimeo, Slideshare, LinkedIn and many others. For instant, uploading videos, I prefer using Vimeo instead of YouTube as it is less restrictive in submitting content contributions. Uploading video in Vimeo does not depend on time limit, unlike YouTube having a maximum of 10 minutes only. Also, there’s no restriction in adding songs into your video in Vimeo. Unlike YouTube, you’re not allowed to submit video that has a song which does not own by you; thus, breaching the copyright laws and intellectual property rights. YouTube seems to have a built-in software analyzer that scans your video upload before it is being approved. Those who breaches these policies will have their video being removed instantly without prior notice.

Of all the social network sites, I recommend Facebook first and foremost for those serious about group collaboration. Compared to MySpace, Facebook is more of a site for grown-ups; MySpace is more suited for teenagers and preteens. A Facebook group includes the following collaborative features such as recent news, discussion board, uploaded photos and videos, posted web pages and The Wall which is a kind of chat board.  In addition, your group can be Open (public), Closed (description if public, but members have to be approved), or Secret (membership by invitation only).  Unfortunately, Facebook groups do not offer file uploading or sharing.

I am one of those users of LinkedIn. LinkedIn is specifically targeted to people who are going to build business relationships with peers and potential clients.  It can also be used to actively promote ourselves and our businesses. This is effective for those who are self-employed such as freelance consultants, writers and trainers.  Although LinkedIn is useful in building and enhancing my personal branding, I found that there’s a lot of limitation for being a basic subscriber.  There’s no profile organizer, can’t reach networks over 75 millions, no reference searches, no priority in customer service and no expanded network profile views.  Nevertheless, LinkedIn seems useful for us to get notice by others.

In brief, Social Networks have many advantages as it is easy to use, allows to build relationships online and easy communication be it for personal use or office work. Furthermore, personal brands rule on Social Networks.

References:

Alexa (2010a). SBS.COM.AU site info. Retrieved September 15, 2010.

Alexa (2010b). ninemsn.com.au site info. Retrieved September 15, 2010.

DiMicco, J., Millen, D. R., Geyer, W., Dugan, C., Brownholtz, B., Muller, M. (2008). Motivations for Social Networking at Work. Retrieved September 15, 2010.

GFI (n.d.). Social Networking at Work: Thanks, But No Thanks? Retrieved September 15, 2010.

LinkedIn corporation (2010). Compare Account Types. Retrieved September 15, 2010.

Shinder, D. L. (2010). 10 ways to use social networking tools to promote your business. Retrieved September 15, 2010.

Ward, T. (2010). Beehive builds buzz at IBM. Retrieved September 15, 2010.

Last fortnight, I chose to observe my friend’s very modern kitchen, equipped with the newest high tech devices. The types of devices that existed in the kitchen included: an intelligent oven by TMIO (see Figure 1), an LCD TV kitchen system and Action Fresh Blue Technology.

TMIO is an acronym for Tonight’s Menu Intelligent Oven. My initial reaction to the newly, remodeled kitchen was that it did not look like a kitchen at all but more like an open entertainment space. Instead of a table, it consisted of a black countertop, bar stools and an overall sleek and modern design. To clarify, the TMIO intelligent oven doubles as a refrigerator and oven and can be controlled by cell phone or the internet. Regardless of where you are, you can login or call the devices call center and control when you want to start cooking your food, at what temperature, method and many more. If you decide to stop cooking the food, the oven can convert back to refrigerator mode so there is no waste. The LCD TV kitchen system by Phillips was equipped with an iPod and television monitor, all connected to the internet via a wireless connection. Lastly, the Action Fresh Blue Technology consisted of a fruit bowl with a blue light around it to ensure freshness and keep out bacteria.

Figure 1: TMIO – An Intelligent Oven

(TMIO n.d.)

The most important aspect of this observation came in the form of comparison. I was very interested in observing how vastly different the modern kitchen was in contrast to kitchens that were as little as ten years old. When people think about technology, they automatically think computers and the internet. By choosing the kitchen, I wanted to observe how technology could impact the most basic and everyday actions. I wanted to stay away from observing someone in a context where technology was expected, that is a home office and in a context where it was more unexpected. Many people do not realize that technology impacts every aspect of our lives in the office and outside the office too.

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The term “wiki” comes from the Hawaiian word “wikiwiki,” which means “fast.” The technology is computer-based and can be generally described as a knowledge sharing and creation system that has as its basis a set of Web pages, which can be created and updated on an iterative and collaborative basis, and is in many ways a form of groupware. A wiki is designed to run on the Internet and World Wide Web, uses the HTTP protocol, and resembles traditional Web sites in terms of its underlying structure. Some of the benefits of wikis include the ability to easily create pages (using a simplified form of HTML or basic HTML) and the ability for a document to be authored collaboratively and collectively. In particular, simplicity is the key to wikis, and wiki pages have been designed to be easy to create, (simpler than the process of creating standard Web pages). One of the better-known examples of a wiki is Wikipedia, which is an online encyclopedia with entries authored and edited by different persons worldwide, and in several different languages as well. In essence, it is an online information resource that is authored by interested and knowledgeable persons from around the world (Wikipedia, 2010).

Wagner (2004) developed a set of design principles that relate to wikis. These are the principles of open, incremental, organic, mundane, universal, overt, unified, precise, tolerant, observable, and convergent wikis. Open means that anyone can edit a wiki, creating an “open source” environment for the sharing of knowledge. Incremental means that new pages can be added, even if they do not yet exist. Organic means that the information can be continuously evolving, as changes and edits are made. Wikis are mundane because they involve the use of a simplified set of essential commands. The design of wikis is also universal, meaning that writing and editing is a “combined” activity, formatting is related to input (overt), page names are not context specific (unified), and pages are generally named with some precision (precise). Wikis should be tolerant of error; activity should be observable by all, and duplications are undesirable and should be deleted (convergent).

Wikis are set up to allow for easy collaboration and more specifically, editing. Rather than passively reading a passage of text or related information (which may include graphics, multimedia, hyperlinks, etc.), a reader of a wiki can also take on the role of a writer, making changes to the text (re-organizing, editing, re-writing, and marking up) at will. In essence, the document is open to changes by a “collaborative community,” which allows for the secondary-oral model in education to be applied. There are a number of software programs that enable the effective creation of wiki pages, including TikiWiki, TWiki, and Pmwiki. These allow for the effective creation, modification/editing, and management of wikis, including creating pages, creating links, formatting, and feature modules (discussion forums, photo pages, download areas, etc.) (Chawner & Lewis, 2006). According to Gartner (2010, p.50), the market penetration of using a wiki is 20% to 50% of target audience which has an early mainstream maturity that would be adopted 2 to 5 years period as shown in figure 1.

(Gartner, 2010)

IBM is one of the giant organisation using a wiki to share knowledge information and expertise on topics of special interest to its community. By using its Enterprise 2.0 application called developerWorks, IBM brings together its technology and solutions into a fully integrated portal. Consequently, IBM’s customers can find information about IBM products and uses these products themselves in their own environment. There is a wide range of information within developerWorks, everything from product documentation to articles, blogs and services showing the usage of new features and customization of products in compelling new ways.

My developerWorks: Wiki

(IBM, 2010)

The interesting thing about developerWorks is that it is powered by the readers of the site itself. This has always been one of the major advantage; where most of the content and how-to articles are written by the same people learning new ideas and features. The content is easily findable, and an integrated full-featured search enables them to quickly narrow down to the content they’re looking for to be successful in their project (Bernal, 2010). developerWorks has been continually evolving to include more social networking capability. A concept called Spaces is also available within the developerWorks community. Recently, it has provided some additional functionality to create professional networking capability called My developerWorks. This greatly enhanced functionality enables users to create new networks and connections with others who share a common interest as well as providing many of the same social networking patterns like blogs, wikis, forum and tagging (Bernal, 2010).

(NB: Sorry guys, you just have to visualize if you don’t understand what the presenter is saying. But I do like its interpretation)

However, one of its pitfalls is difficulty in securing its content especially the confidential data. According to Mills (2010), “Nearly 50% of data breaches were caused by insiders (employee) through data theft due to misuse of access privileges and others. Consequently, it cost $3.8 million USD per year for organisations to handle cybercrime as it is difficult to protect the data without encryption”. This can be seen further as shown in the figure below.

(Mills, 2010)

Other pitfalls that may also occur in developerWorks are such as:

• Lack of organization and structure, which may result in an unmanageable wiki.
• Tracking of contributions and modifications can be difficult. As wikis are used to create or maintain formal content (for example, client communications, product descriptions and technical documentation), it may be necessary to introduce additional policies and management controls to ensure appropriate quality and governance.
• Quality control is needed to deal with the variability of content quality, especially when once-thriving wiki page collections fall into disrepair when abandoned by their main contributors.

I have experience using a wiki myself such as Wikispaces, where I had contributed several great articles and topics related to new media and other technological issues. Most of the time, I use Wiki for discussion/bulletin boards, brainstorming tools and online sketchpads. Meeting planning is another viable application area, in that I can start with a preliminary agenda, from which the other team members (dealing in a group project) can then add their own additions or make modifications or comments. An important application area for wikis has been identified in knowledge management (KM). The use of wikis for knowledge management may allow for an improvement over existing systems and technologies. Currently, with existing KM systems, there does exist a number of bottlenecks relating to knowledge acquisition, namely acquisition latency, narrow bandwidths, knowledge inaccuracy, and “maintenance traps.” Basically, these knowledge acquisition bottlenecks result from a time lag between when the knowledge is created and then distributed. In addition, there are also problems of limited channels of knowledge input, possibilities of erroneous information being received and also the difficulties of maintaining the knowledge base as it grows larger (Wagner, 2006).

We can expect improvements in Wiki in terms of its technical qualities such as ease of implementation and stability, as well as improvements in editing interfaces and graphical quality. These improvements, along with the positive experiences of early adopters, should help gain the interest and confidence of potential users and result in further diffusion of wikis as tools for collaboration. Clearly, I am sure you would agree that the use of this new conversational technology is allowing for the enhancement and continued evolution of new and innovative forms of support for teaching and learning. What do you think?

References:

Bernal, J. (2010). Web 2.0 and Social Networking for the Enterprise: IBM Press Pearson plc

Chawner, B., & Lewis, P. (2006). Wiki wiki webs: New ways to communicate in a Web environment. Information Technology and Libraries, 25(1), 33-43.

Gartner, I. (2010). Hype Cycle for Business Use of Social Software, 2010. Retrieved September 8, 2010, from http://www.gartner.com

Higgins, B. (2005). Corporate Blogging: Is it worth the hype? Retrieved September 8, 2010, from http://www.backbonemedia.com/blogsurvey/45-IBMcasestudy.htm

Mills, E. (2010). Report: Most data breaches tied to organized crime. Retrieved September 8, 2010, from http://news.cnet.com/8301-27080_3-20011871-245.html

IBM (2010). My developerWorks: Wikis. Retrieved September 7, 2010, from https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/mydeveloperworks/wikis/?lang=en

Wagner, C. (2004). Wiki: A technology for conversational knowledge management and group collaboration. Communications of the AIS, 13(2004), 265-289.

Wagner, C. (2006). Breaking the knowledge acquisition bottleneck through conversational knowledge management. Information Management Resources Journal, 19(1), 70-83.

Wikipedia (2010). Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Retrieved September 7, 2010, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

Last month, I had the chance to site visit Thomson Reuters office, in Sydney, Australia. It’s an intriguing experience for me as I had the opportunity to see how they harnessed social networking tools and used state-of-an-art technologies in their organisation.  Special thanks to Edward Davies, a specialist editor of Reuters News, who was willing to show me around their work flow process environment. Generally, Thomson Reuters is an information company where it provides world news express services to financial and government sectors including broadcasters like RTB.

A visit to Thomson Reuters from Wan Harris on Vimeo.

Thomson Reuters uses a dynamic mashups referred as “Badges” embedded in their website.  It were developed using the Presto product from vendor JackBe. It includes user’s published research and demographic citation views. In addition, ResearcherID Badges were designed to be easily embedded in a user’s personal blog or Web site and to be emailed to peers. Each Badge, when embedded in a personal blog, provides a dynamic preview of the researcher’s data to the community. Clicking on the Badge takes the visitor directly to that researcher’s page within the ResearcherID site. Thomson Reuters also included two other mashup-based widgets for the members of ResearcherID: the Collaboration Network, a graphical cross-reference of the researcher’s professional collaborators, and the Citing Articles Network, a map-based view of independent references to the researcher’s publications. The mashups were a successful addition to the ResearcherID community. Within weeks and with little direct promotion or advertising to its community, hundreds of independent professional blogs and Web sites had Badges in them, all linking back to ResearcherID. The mashup-driven Badges allowed the community members to become the extended “sales team” that pushed the community’s reach well beyond the formal boundaries of the community portal.  Moreover, Thomson Reuters recently has been using twitter, a micro blogging as part of their social networks tool for posting up-to-date news on the Australian politics agenda. Not to mention others like Skype! (If you manage to hear that oblivious unique melody from the video shown above.)

Some of the benefits gained by Thomson Reuters are such as:

• The mashup-driven “Badges” allowed the community members to become the extended “sales team” that pushed the community’s reach well beyond the formal boundaries of the community portal.  Within weeks and with little direct promotion or advertising to its community, hundreds of independent professional blogs and Web sites had Badges in them, all linking back to ResearcherID.
• The news messages  reach everybody globally. By using social media, it allows addressing those segments that are difficult to reach with traditional media (e.g. the journal), as for the Gen-Y generations.
• Its also allows reaching segmented groups with specific, direct messages (e.g. companies, political leaderships and its followers, etc.)
• Social media brings everyone “where the people are” together. It involves the citizens in the city projects and makes talking to the government less intimidating. Consequently, the public’s interest in politics, making the decision-making process itself a part of the public arena and letting citizens interact.
• Social media such as twitter; costs less. Hence, it can be used to create a good vibe during a specific events.

Despite these findings, there are also some pitfalls that might trigger such as:

• Using social media broadens its communication toolbox. Hence, it requires Thomson Reuters to plan ahead, thinking about its goals, target audience and tone of voice.
• One of its biggest challenges is probably maintaining a consistent online corporate identity as Thomson Reuters is allowed to speak for the city, how and at any given time?
• Lastly, social media is not the only tool use for communication. There are still a lot of people who have no computers and/or internet access, and thus rely on the traditional media to receive information. Consequently, Thomson Reuters needs to consider other kind of platforms to leverage its long tail.

References:

JackBe (2007). Case Studies:Thomson Scientific Expands their Research Community through Mashups. Retrieved August 30, 2010.

Spoelders, S. (2010). Government & Social Media : « Government 2.0 ». Retrieved August 30, 2010.

Thomson Reuters (2010). ReutersOz. Retrieved August 30, 2010.

Thomson Reuters (2010). Thomson Reuters Australia – Legal, Tax & Accounting – Lawbook Co, cvMail, PowerTax, Sweet & Maxwell, and more… Retrieved August 30, 2010.

Wikipedia (2010). Thomson Reuters. Retrieved August 30, 2010.

The term “Gov 2.0” is also known as e-Government (Wikipedia, 2010).  According to the Australian Government 2.0 Taskforce (2010), “Government 2.0 may be understood as the application of tools and approaches associated with collaborative web or ‘Web 2.0’ as it has been dubbed. These tools are potentially transformative of the way governments operate”.  Meanwhile, Australia’s Google Group states “Government 2.0 is not specifically about social networking or technology.  It represents a fundamental shift in the implementation of government – toward an open, collaborative, cooperative arrangement where there is (wherever possible) open consultation, open data, shared knowledge, mutual acknowledgment of expertise, mutual respect for shared values and an understanding of how to agree to disagree. Technology and social tools are an important part of this change but are essentially [just] an enabler in this process”.  Overall, Gov 2.0 is all about engagement!

Gov 2.0 is the prime mover for Information Communication Technology (ICT) development for government sectors.  It has been realised that providing citizen-centric services means a lot more than just creating a websites.  Simultaneously, improving business process is equally important, if not a pre-requisite before making services online.  Considering the ever increasing dependency of ICT in our daily lives, we believe passionately that citizen-centric services should be a driver of change, not only for the civil service but also for all social community.  That being said, it is imperative for the government to study ways and means of effecting changes in organisational culture and business processes as well as the desired transition of attitude and mindset amongst the community as a whole.  The success of the e-Government initiative is largely dependent on the positive interaction amongst stakeholders, namely Government, industry and people.  Therefore, stakeholders must adopt a forward-looking and problem-solving mindset to achieve the goal of providing meaningful services for all (Ismail, 2009).

Several government departments who have already started adopting social technologies are such as:

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) adopted the Geospatial Innovation

A website named recovery.gov, has been supported by USDA aimed at providing information about spending and impact of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.  This demanded thinking that was big and fast as the schedule to deliver a common language for nationwide change within two months.  It was considered critical to build confidence quickly in the economy by tracking spending from the very highest levels of government all they way through to the beneficiary, as well as enabling feedback.

No more than four people from the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) of the Geospatial Service and Technology Center in Salt Lake City, looked at source data systems, “geocoded” that data, and used a Web-based mapping application to rapidly deploy base-map-enabled views of recovery spending by geographic locality, right down to the level of individual zip codes.  The Chief Information Officer’s office for the National Information Technology Center partnered with the USFS to host the solution on scalable infrastructure, and to connect different social media tools for constituent crowdsourcing collaboration.

In a shortest reporting period, the recovery.gov website and blog averaged more than 336,000 unique user interactions. This example shows how innovation in government is possible by taking very diverse needs from a variety of different stakeholders and quickly peeling back the layers of bureaucracy to reveal the public value chain — from policy decision, through government organizations to citizens.  After this first phase, an Enterprise Geospatial Management Office (EGMO) was created to extend, expand and enhance the use of geo-enabled business solutions and leverage this new model for place-based policy planning and programming. The EGMO exploits the ability to see the essential connections between policy, data and services and really understanding the relationship between context and problem and the proposed solutions, which is where the geo-dimensionality analysis excels.  The main driver was the urgency created by presidential administration commitments to make federal governance transparent, accountable and participatory to the public.

Natural Resources Canada go for Wiki to success

Natural Resources Canada (NRCan) focuses on forestry, minerals and metals, energy, and earth sciences. These are actually managed by four very different organizations that were given the goal of integrating knowledge and working more collaboratively. There was a strong push for this from a deputy minister as well as a good deal of grassroots activity.  In response, two and a half years ago, NRCan started a wiki for its department internally, which has 5,200 employees across Canada. Today, the Wiki has about 3,000 active contributors and between eight million and nine million page views. It has become a very rich source of knowledge for natural resource information. So far, the wiki is purely internal-facing, and NRCan has not faced the challenge of letting Canadians contribute to it. However, it has become a foundational tool for the department and is used in many different ways, significantly changing the way NRCan works.

During the first year and a half, the Chief Information Officer (CIO) attended a number of meetings and presentations to market the wiki internally and to push people to use it. Shortly, it was recognized that there was no longer a need to push, as a growing internal community took over control of the wiki, ensuring that it would be used further within the department. Now, employees market it to each other and management is standing back and working on implementing additional tools. NRCan also actively uses blogs as a way to share information about ongoing work, and has launched its own version of Facebook and Twitter. It provides an effective knowledge sharing platform for science information and had considerable uptake within the first few days after launch. Employees also use SharePoint quite extensively and are about to extend the reach of an Autonomy search engine to search across the wiki, blogs and SharePoint implementations.

This has been a cultural shift, more than a technology change, to address a critical business. NRCan now uses communities of practice very effectively. For example, there is a Video Community of Practice in which about 60 employees with common interest in all aspects of video technology get together and share their expertise on departmental video initiatives. This is saving considerable money that would otherwise have been spent on contracting for video services.  So far, NRCan has not performed any formal measurements, besides keeping track of statistics.  However, it does not appear that there has been any dramatic decrease of e-mail use. A challenge with measurement is the lack of a baseline for comparison.

According to Ernst and Young (2010, p.10), “For 2010, regulation and compliance has resumed its place as the number 1 threat across a spectrum of sectors and remained one of the most prominent risk” (as shown in figure 1). These are the vital aspect that need to be considered by NRCan and USDA since it can be a pitfall for them if neglected.

Figure 1: The risk in Government and public sector

(Ernst & Young, 2010)

References:

Alexander, P. (2009). Engage: Getting on with Government 2.0: Draft report for comment. Retrieved August 30, 2010.

Ernst & Young (2010). The Ernst & Young Business Risk Report 2010: The top 10 risks for global business, A sector-wide view of the risks facing business across the globe: Oxford Analytica.

Ismail, E. A. (2009). The E-Government Strategic Plan 2009-2014 Brunei Darussalam. Retrieved August 25, 2010, from http://www.egnc.gov.bn/download/Documents/e_government_strategic_plan_2009_2014.pdf

Maio, A. D. (2009). Five cases discussed by government panelists at the Gartner Orlando Symposium shed light on some critical success factors and provide useful hints to implement, develop or sustain innovation in government. Gartner Industry Research.

Wikipedia (2010). e-Government. Retrieved August 31, 2010.