Tailorable blog

Reboot 9.0 and new work environments

Please visit Ewan McIntosh’s blog (http://edu.blogs.com/edublogs/2007/06/reboot9_your_id.html) for a discussion on my session “Your ideal working environment” on Reboot 9.0.

As I mentioned in his comments as well, I loved the stories people told about their ideal working environment and the fact that this seems to be not only very personal, but also depends on what type of activity you are engaged in (creative or having to finish a paper).

Also very interesting to hear what some people considered ideal social software: software that understands when it is okay to disturb you with awareness information and when not: a Twitter that knows when to bug you. I certainly see some design challenges and possibillities for further research there…

The good news is that I will be able to test some of the suggestions I heard in the near future: the kick-off of the Telematica Instituut project on new work environments is next week! In this project we will start living labs at various medium-sized and large organizations to test the impact of new, flexible collaboration processes. We know that social software opens up new possibilities for communication and even enables new working processes. However, we also expect that the motivations of people to collaborate do not change significantly. So, with this consortium we are going to investigate new working environments, in the physical and organizational sense and in terms of (social) software support.

Your ideal working environment

What does it take to create a working environment that stimulates productivity, collaboration and knowledge sharing? On this question I am initiating a conversation at Reboot 9.0.

Looking from a human, organizational and technological perspective, what does it take to create a working environment where we feel happy, where we are productive, where we collaborate and share knowledge? What practices and tools do you consider essential for your ideal working environment? And… how do we balance the freedom, trust, responsibility, and social cohesion in such an environment?

Not only at Reboot, but also here I would like to hear what you consider essential to achieve this. At BlogWalkEleven we already started a discussion on key ingredients that are needed to keep creative, heavily networked, independent thinkers (”Digital Bohemians”) happy within the boundaries of an organization:

• Providing them with opportunities to share their passions
• A healthy mix of freedom, trust, responsability and social cohesion. The latter actually requires that their passions are shared by other people in the organization.
• Access to the resources they need in order to keep up-to-date (digital libraries, blogs, RSS feeds)
• Access to the resources they need to keep connected: their own blog, Skype, conferences, gatherings of like-minded people. I am missing things here, please add…
• Recognition of success: their added value to the company is in bringing creative new ideas from unforeseen perspectives, linking previously unlinked developments, understanding and explaining how new technology developments could impact the organization.

I’m more then happy to hear your thoughts on this. And hopefully we have a chance to discuss this in-person in Denmark.

Typing to an empty room

Last week I finally gave my first presentation for a Second Life audience - and it was a bit weird. I have attended quite a few business meetings in Second Life, but now was the first time I was on stage, presenting slides and “talking” to the audience about business models for a presence in virtual worlds. 

The preparation took a bit more time than usual: instead of just preparing my slides, I also had to export them as separate images and place them in a virtual screen. Fortunately, I carry around a presentation screen from the EduNation shop in Second Life. So, I arrived with my own virtual presentation screen and laptop in the virtual conference room a few hours before, to test things. Fortunately, it was easy to contact the owners of the virtual room to get rights to place my virtual objects there: I was simply added to the group of owners.

More annoying was the fact that voice communication is still not supported in Second Life. There are some ways of using external software to create an audio stream and then make that stream audible in Second Life. However, we did not have time to set all this up, so I ended up preparing the key sentences to type with each slide in a separate document, to make sure I could give the presentation at a speed that kept the audience happy.

The presentation itself went okay, but it was strange: it was a bit like talking to an empty room - except for the fact that I was typing. Normally, you use the non-verbal cues from your audience to see if they understand you, to decide on the pace of your presentation or when it is time to add something funny to wake them up. These non-verbal cues are missing in Second Life and my audience (of about 10 local organizations active in Second Life) was a bit hesitant to interrupt me with questions. Usually, feeling the energy from the audience and providing them energy is important, and all that was missing here. So, it was good to have this experience, but I certainly prefer to give face-to-face presentations, even if the content is about virtual worlds.

By the way, the material about business strategies in virtual worlds, on which my presentation was based, is online: Does Your Company Need a Second Life?

From Russia with love…

Today we have the last day of the final meeting of the RUSMECO project. I’m having mixed feelings about it: it is always nice to finish a project, but I’m also sad this one will soon be over. The project is/was about improving the competitiveness of innovative Russian SMEs by helping them start a Community of Practice to share knowledge and experiences. Apart from the management and design challenges, the project provided me with many opportunities to get to know many interesting Russian people and helped me gain more insight in the Russian culture.

The project has resulted in three connected communities: one in Moscow (Zelenograd), one in St. Petersburg and one in Ekaterinburg. These communities of iSME members meet regularly face-to-face and have an online platform for sharing content, having discussions, performing self-assessment tests and even following trainings. According to the other project members, the project has also resulted in our marriage and little Alexander - but we have to see if those deliverables also end up in the list towards the European Commission

Anyway, the project was a great source of experiences, a lot of fun and I hope to work with these people again soon! But for now, back to the last items on our to-do list.