Microsoft has a proof of concept built on SharePoint – Looking Glass (must stress: It’s a proof of concept (PoC), no mention of an actual working solution yet and Microsoft PoCs often have a dash of smoke and mirrors about them):

But wafting the smoke aside and stepping around the mirrors, the concept is sound. There are plenty of tools on the Internet for visualising trends from social media sites like Twitter and Facebook. (Twistori is a pet favourite of mine for simply observing the world in a conversation) But few go beyond visual analytics. This video explores how to integrate ways that enable you to act on the trends uncovered, what happens next. Interesting stuff. Bet the Microsoft CRM team just love it!…

There’s been all sorts of criticism levelled at Wikipedia, and comparisons made with the well-known encyclopedia Britannica. But to try and compare like-for-like is a ridiculous notion. Wikipedia may share a similar goal but is fundamentally different to Brittanica. If I’ve missed an episode of a TV show, I don’t go to Britannica to find out what happened… Similarly, I don’t expect Wikipedia to be the authoritative voice on any given subject. But, for me, the biggest plus points for Wikipedia are: its breadth of topics covered, the depth of skills and knowledge freely donated by contributors, and the freshness of the content.

These three plus points are what most business knowledge management systems are in desperate need of.

Whenever I visit a customer who has deployed Microsoft’s SharePoint Server (any version, from 2001 through 2007), the first thing I do is click through the hierarchy of topics the implementer will almost certainly have created as part of the deployment. And, almost always, at least 80% of the topics are empty. Why? Usually the reasons are simple. Nobody told anybody what the topic hierarchy is there for; There is no incentive to add content (failure to satisfy ‘what’s in it for me?’); The topic hierarchy doesn’t represent how people actually work or organise their content. A bit more delving into the deployment, and usually the content can all be found within SharePoint, stored and duplicated across a tangled-but-useful-mess of team and individual sites

SharePoint Server 2007 introduces wiki capabilities. That means, potentially, organisations can have their own little world of Wikipedia for sharing knowledge and expertise – let’s call it the KnowledgePedia.

When you create a new site in SharePoint, there is a wiki template available out-of-the-box:

Hey presto, you now have a wiki! In the image below, I’ve entered the first topic in my wiki – Project Trinity.

The wiki page follows standard wiki conventions. You have an Edit button up in the top left to put the page in Edit mode. Once in Edit mode, you can enter content using an in-browser editor. To link to other wiki pages, you surround them with double square brackets.

In this image, you can see that Project Trinity is surrounded by double square brackets. I have also entered a new page – New Starters Guide, also surrounded by double square brackets. The page has an in-browser editor, you can see the toolbar above ‘Welcome to Wikipedia2′ with icons for changing formatting, adding images and so on.

Clicking OK returns us to the view of the wiki page, with the new content displayed:

The New Starter Guide link is underlined because I have referenced a page that does not yet exist. Clicking on the link automatically opens up a new page ready to be created, with the name already filled in:

I can enter content immediately, and when I click ‘Create’, the new page is published. It’s as simple as that to start building a topic structure and sharing content. The pages also store version history so you can track changes made to the pages and who made them.

The technical piece is relatively straightforward, and really does require only a small amount of training to get people comfortable with editing the web pages. The harder part is getting people to contribute. Now, the Internet has proven that people are more than willing and able to share stuff without requiring either financial rewards or a cattle prod. As ably demonstrated by the likes of YouTube, Flickr and the various blogging platforms. How easy it is to create such an environment internally will depend on the culture of your organisation. Are people encouraged to talk, chat, share stories? If so, then encourage them to capture those thoughts in the wiki. If people are treated more like robots who are supposed to ask permission before taking a ‘comfort’ break, rewarded for task productivity, and where smiling is frowned upon, then building a useful knowledge repository will be a little more challenging… see previous posts – Seven productivity tips and Why is KM so difficult? for some more thoughts on that subject. But the main piece of advice is simple – let people decide what topics and content need to be included. Resist the temptation to create a managed hierarchy with formal look-and-feel and corporate standards. Let it be messy and organic and you will get a far closer representation of human knowledge being shared across the organisation.

…and never forget, we will always be only able to document a fraction of what we know in our heads. It’s still easier to show someone how to tie a shoelace than point them to a manual.

Related blog posts:

• d.SharePoint – Gimme a widget
• d.SharePoint – OurSpace
• Let’s make SharePoint Dirty
• Changing how I search
• Seven productivity tips
• Why is KM so difficult?
• Reading versus doing

Technorati tags: SharePoint, SharePoint 2007, MOSS 2007

Update: Knowledge@Wharton has a blog post describing how Internet-based collaboration, like Wikipedia, can change how we do business

One of the big Web 2.0 stories of 2006 was the phenomenal growth of MySpace. There were scandals and careers launched but, what really mattered, people shared ‘stuff’ on a scale never seen before. And the funniest part? I rarely meet an IT dept who thinks anyone in their organisation has even heard of MySpace. Where do they think all the users live? Mars?

For those who have never visited the land of MySpace, here’s a screenshot of a MySpace site:

Not much to it really – web page, with boxes that display various types of content and the ability to personalise the appearance of the page. (I know there are other features worth a mention but I’m trying to avoid turning this post into a book) This site is for the singer Lily Allen and includes a music player where you can listen to her songs, a calendar of her upcoming shows and some profile information.

So, if MySpace = people voluntarily sharing lots of stuff, and you want to increase knowledge sharing in your organisation, what could possibly be the solution? One option is to encourage everyone to create a site on MySpace… but if you don’t fancy the idea of your company knowledge being dumped on the Internet, how about doing it internally on SharePoint instead? Let’s call it OurSpace.

Granted, it’s not quite as psychedelic, but hey I created it in 5 minutes

SharePoint contains the technology – web pages with boxes that can display various types of content; the ability to create sites, lots of them; you can customise the appearance (colour scheme, page layout, how ‘stuff’ gets organised) and the ability to let the users control it all. Lots of standard admin can be automated – for example, if a user tries to access a site they don’t have permissions for, they can be presented with an email that will forward their access request to the owner of the site, they don’t have to go and fill in a form to get IT to do it for them.

The challenge is being prepared to let it all just happen…

…and that means trusting people to look after their space. Try applying lessons in managing the physical to manage the virtual.

You don’t remove all unused electrical sockets from office space just in case a user decides to bring in a DVD player and sit watching pornography at their desk. Instead, you have a company policy that (should) make it pretty clear what activities are likely to lead to being fired.

The same should apply to virtual space. Don’t worry about locking down SharePoint in anticipation of unacceptable uses. Do leave a link on the standard template pointing users to the company handbook that defines what is and is not acceptable or appropriate behaviour. Worried about Sarbannes-Oxley compliance or similar? Include a reference in the handbook. Clearly state what information would fall under compliance rules and require the owner sign an agreement to be responsible for the content on their site (you can even include the requirement on the web form used to create new sites).

Tips and Tricks:

Create some initial site templates populated with sample web parts and links to help people get started. Sponsor a couple of virtual teams and help them set up their sites, including their own colour schemes and layouts. Include handy hints for making it easy to find and share content. Include a link to OurSpace / Community / whatever you want to call it, in the top-level navigation of your intranet – make it easy to find and use

Use quota management to restrict people from overloading the servers. By restricting the maximum size of a site, and the maximum quantity of sites that can be created, you can ensure your database doesn’t run out of disk space. Depending on just how popular OurSpace becomes, you may need to scale the solution by starting a second site collection, and it may even require its own dedicated server/virtual server depending on the size of your organisation

Put good housekeeping procedures in place. For example, configure SharePoint to send out regular reminders to owners to confirm if their site is active or not, and automatically delete those who ignore reminders (the email can tell them this will happen). Those who hit their site quota can request additional space – you can decide if it is justified or not.

If people start dropping lots of content on to their community spaces, they may influence your corporate index (similar to how blogging results have been skewing Google’s search results). You can tweak the search settings within SharePoint to help maintain (and improve relevance). One element of ranking is click distance, determining relevance by how far a page is located from an authoritative site – others may call this Page Rank You can define which intranet sites are authoritative and also demote sites. If you don’t want community content to dominate your results, demote the Community site collection to reduce its relevance. A more extreme solution would be to not include OurSpace content within your corporate index – depends on how useful the content is to people.

These are just a few suggestions for getting started. If you want more details or help on how to implement OurSpace on SharePoint. If there is interest, I’ll flesh out this article into a step-by-step guide.

Technorati tags: SharePoint, SharePoint 2007, MOSS 2007

Back in December (it’s the 2nd January and I’ve already started treating 2006 like it took place a century ago…), Euan Semple wrote a post about why he doesn’t like SharePoint – it’s too sterile. If business is heading for change (and I agree that it is – see Changing Habits), we need tools that cope with Web 2.0 messiness rather than support traditional ways of working.

When I looked after SharePoint during my days at Microsoft, it was still in nappies and under the radar of serious IT folk. Many of the customers I spoke to were interested in doing ‘new stuff’, collaborating and sharing knowledge, and wanted a tool that would just get on and do it without becoming embroiled in policies and processes. Enter SharePoint, somewhat lacking in the features department but with pots of paint and hands at the ready.

Now SharePoint finally has plenty of bells and whistles but is no longer in kindergarten. It’s all grown-up and wearing a uniform. Customers I speak to now are concerned about document and records management, compliance and governance, scorecards and KPIs. And the serious IT folk are in charge of deployment. Trying to suggest using a wiki instead of a managed document for publishing information usually generates looks of horror or confusion… sometimes both.

I don’t want to be too flippant about the serious business of information management – being responsible for compliance is not a fun task – but let’s try making SharePoint a little bit dirty. Over the coming weeks, I’ll have a go at injecting some Web 2.0 mess into SharePoint’s tidy organised world.

Update: related posts

• d.SharePoint – OurSpace
• d.SharePoint – Gimme a widget
• d.SharePoint – Knowledgepedia