Google Wave drowned by apathy

The Official Google Blog announced the close of Google Wave- the web app for real time communication and collaboration, developed by the search engine giant in 2009.
Urs Hölzle, senior vice president, operations & Google fellow wrote on the blog: "Wave has not seen the user adoption we would have liked. We don't plan to continue developing Wave as a standalone product, but we will maintain the site at least through the end of the year and extend the technology for use in other Google projects."
Those who liked it really liked it- the twitter posts from its handful of fans are saying that loud and clear. "Google Wave was email evolved. It heralded a fundamental change, in my mind, of how we could interact with each other and our various locations on the net." And "a gem of a communicative tool goes down the drain" and so on.
Google Wave was truly collaborative. It enabled users to manage their total communication on the web- instant messaging, emailing, and communication on social networks.
It enthralled business users too with its document collaboration applications, easy and intuitive tools to share ideas, wikis, graphs, opinions, files and presentations. It allowed users to mash up a wide range of web based technologies like such as sharing a map or document and even allowed private communication within a group collaboration.
It allowed the sharing of images and other media in real time, enabled third-party developers to build new tools like consumer gadgets for travel, allowed drag-and-drop of files from desktop and even playback the history within the web browser.
And it was free.
So, if it was indeed this good then why it failed. The search engine is partly to be blamed for Google Wave's failure. Apart from a few (and far between) tedious You Tube demos and introductory clips, Wave's true objective and potential was not communicated to the users. Left to people's own perception, its uptake was limited because many thought it was complicated and unnecessary.
Wave was rejected as yet another communicative tool that just brought together everything on the web that we managed separately.
In fact, Wave allowed group collaboration, but unlike social media, it allowed you to choose what you share and how much you share with whom.
A large part of its failure is down to us and our obsession with old-fashioned communication. While we appreciate and embrace new tools of communication, we are not truly embracing of collaboration. We still choose to do all things - email, IM, sharing - separately, when Wave allowed us to do them within a single browser.
We only appreciate digital resources that perk up our existing form of communication but if it is one that just brings together all that we do individually, we fail to see the point.
Of course Wave had problems- the predictive texts and the ability for multiple users to edit the same text brought in confusion, but nothing that couldn't be easily fixed.
Google Wave had a great future but our apathy drowned it.

Social media technologies must do what they say

Micro-blogging website Twitter has managed to secure a "significant round of funding" from five investment firms, as was revealed through the blog post of its co-founder Evan Williams.
The new funding has reportedly come from two new investors Insight Venture Partners and T R Price, as well as its existing funders Institutional Venture Partners, Spark Capital and Benchmark Capital.
There are two problems to start with. First is that Williams was not as candid about the exact amount of investment because the investors want the deal to be a private affair. Isn't web 2.0 all about sharing information and encouraging transparent and candid conversations? Internet has liberated information and has always preached professionals to provide information. Shouldn't it apply the same rules to itself?.
Unless social media companies including Facebook - which is also known for shying away from sharing plans, projections and security measures - come out in the open, it is hard for information professionals who want to capitalise on these tools to chart out their plan or realise the potential.
Amid tight budgets, it's extremely important for marketers too to define the return on investment and unless there is more information, it is hard to define ROI. The lack of information also hinders discussion on whether the amount of investment was right in the first place. And it does not set a basis to evaluate other social media technologies.
Also presumably, Twitter has secured the funds and valued itself on the basis of its whopping 45 million users in its three-year history and expecting this to grow exponentially.
Twitter is planning to roll out adverts and even provide companies with initial insight and market reaction. But the second problem is that because information on web2.0 applications are user-generated, scattered across multiple platforms and at different times, professionals and advertisers would find it difficult to target the right information for the right set of audience.
There has to be more collaboration of content in the social media technologies before any plans to leverage on them take to the sky. And there definitely needs to be more engagement between users and social media companies.

What do you prefer: Artificial intelligence or natural stupidity?

Technology is amazing and we all love it. Only when it works and only when we have it.
When it doesn't work it is more than useless and redundant. It makes life and task more painful than it would have been without the help of "the damn thing in the first place".
Why do we loathe it so much when it goes wrong? Surely the answer is our dependence on it. For most of us it would be a "terrible day" if we forgot our mobile phones before venturing out. Make it a "dreadful day" if it was a smart-phone and one was "on the move" the whole day.
Making technology work is all equations and mathematics. A software works only if the code is right, a site is accessed only if the password is accurate. Our brains have become administrators and house-keepers. Today, we do not know the information per se, but we know where to find that information from.
It is a mobile phone's task to remember the number of our loved ones. It is the sat-nav's task to remind us where to take the next right and it is Microsoft Calendar's task to remember our appointments and "alert" us.
Let's take it a bit further- we don't really have to remember all the spellings- there is an inbuilt auto-correction tool; while searching for a phrase, we do not really need to type the whole phrase, artificial intelligence prompts us to "drag and drop", we do not need to rewrite or reword an article, there is "copy and paste".
It is all good- real time communication, blurring geographical boundaries, liberating information, empowering humankind and creating, managing and organising intellectual property and so on.
The newer and more novel the innovation, the harder we fall for it. Second-gen devices and applications are very attractive and addictive.
I am not patronising life without technology, but it would be interesting to pause and think how much we have started depending on even secondary technological devices and innovations such as faster broadband, plastic money, wi-fi, catch-up television, text-to-voice transcriber, file-sharing, social networking, digital radio, Skype, Second Life, communication devices.
It feels wiser to take pain in remembering (and forgetting) the birthdays of our loved ones genuinely than rendering information technology a more charismatic personality.
Because, sometimes, natural stupidity is more charming than artificial intelligence.

Are we a digitally-confused society?

...Or is our digital consumption, marked by a classic characteristic of jumping on the bandwagon? Asks Archana Venkatraman
On one hand, Ofcom research suggests that people are willing to give up on celebrations and routine pleasures such as meals out and holidays to hold on to communication services, if a choice has to be made. That fits in with the EC's digital competitiveness report found that two in every three Europeans under 24 years of age use the internet every day.
But almost exactly at the same time, another research report from social media analytics company Sysymos analysed over 11 million Twitter accounts and found that about over 85% of Twitter users post less than one update a day and that 21% of users have never posted a Tweet. In addition, the social networking site Friends Reunited is sold off for a fraction of what it was worth in 2005.
Arguably, the reason for the burgeoning success for Facebook as against Friends Reunited could be attributed to its free access as against a subscription model, which was eventually dispensed with. Similar trend was spotted by the EC's report where it said that a third of young people would not pay for online services such as music and video downloads.
Have we assumed that most internet services we use will remain free and that we just have to factor the hardware costs? Media baron Rupert Murdoch has just shaken this belief to its core.
We haven't yet sorted out our digital behaviour and our inability to put a value to our digital services. We embrace digital services- general search engines, social networking sites, news sites, email accounts, YouTube and numerous download sites - that are free, without assessing their real value and importance to us. We all know of people who have opened a Twitter account to obtain a desired URL before it is too late.
The real question is how many of us would actually give up on holiday and dining-out to keep Facebook and Twitter and Skype if all three were in fact subscription-based? In such a scenario, people willing to keep communication services would have to pay for the devices, internet connection and individual websites.
It is time we start putting a price on the communication technologies we use and choose more selectively. Web 2.0 has certainly revolutionised the way we live and communicate but if we do not exercise our discretion then the companies providing these services will gain revenge, either by charging or disappearing.

You can't close down people

It is time to see social networking sites as just that. Networking sites. Says Archana Venkatraman
Two incidents earlier this week took the paranoia around networking tools to an absurd level. One was when MI6 chief Sir John Sawers's personal life became public when his wife innocently uploaded their holiday photographs to her Facebook account. The other was concerns expressed by UK intelligence agencies that Facebook and other social networking tools ruin the spy industry, as finding new recruits without an online trail has become nearly impossible.
In the first instance, Sawers faces a probe, and in the second, consultants are saying that having a Facebook profile is like "opening up a Pandora's box of online traceability that one can't ever truly close". The message from security experts is loud and clear - maintain a low profile at all times.
That means having no images in the public domain, or being associated with any person or organisation. What we need to understand is that while the latter is in people's control, the former is not. In today's internet age, it is hard to control information that is visible and searchable in the world wide web.
For instance, the MI6 chief was unaware of the availability of information while his wife did not consider the implications of her enthusiastic and seemingly harmless activity. Even if she had been careful with the security settings, his friends could have published the photographs and "tagged" friends' friends and so on, or he could have featured in other holidaymakers' pictures.
High profile officials must indeed have Facebook and Twitter accounts as information coming from them is fast, first hand and extremely useful. It also is important for the info pros of the future as references while documenting an event.
Instead of making them digital outcasts, they and their loved ones must be informed about the security aspects of these websites. More importantly, instead of controlling the prolific adoption of these inevitable sites, experts must advise search engines and those who run social networking sites to stop crawling through their pages for easy find-ability and to stop presenting a vast amount of information to random web search-ers.
It is the technology that has to become smarter with sensitive personal information, not people.

Facebook works hard to avoid losing face

Information professionals with an interest in privacy issues will be following the data trials and tribulations of social networking phenomena with some interest. The story so far goes something like this. A couple of weeks ago the company released an updated terms of service but then on February 18 decided to revert to the previous version. Why? Because Facebook has apparently received complaints from some users that revised terms appeared to imply that the company would keep personal data even if the account had been deleted. So the old terms were out back while a redrafting process took place.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg used his blog to explain what was going on. This issue has clearly caused some soul searching. Now Facebook says it is "reaching out to respected organizations to get their input" and Zuckerberg reckons that much of the language is "overly formal and protective so we don't plan to leave it there for long".
With Facebook such a dominant force in the social networking space the outcome of this episode is bound to leave its mark.
Zuckerberg wrote: "Our terms aren't just a document that protects our rights; it's the governing document for how the service is used by everyone across the world. Given its importance, we need to make sure the terms reflect the principles and values of the people using the service."
It would be interesting to know where information professionals on Facebook agree with Zuckerberg. Would privacy issues cause them to stop using Facebook or use it in a different way? Or is this just part of the price you are prepared to pay for using the tool?

UPDATE: What Future for Search?

I was going to wait until tomorrow's keynote on Search before blogging about this, but I understand that the session will now count Andrew Kanter, Chief Operating Officer from Autonomy as a panellist.
As one of the senior figures at Autonomy it is going to be revealing what he has to say about search and what plans the organisation has for its technology. If you are involved in Enterprise search or just interested in semantic developments, this will be a must see.
With search guru Stephen E Arnold moderating the session I have a feeling that the panel will get a thorough grilling.
We will be blogging from the session so if you can't make it check back here around mid afternoon for a round up.

Online Information Conference - Day 2: Using Web 2.0 tools in a learning environment

We all hear a lot about how Web 2.0 is applicable to all areas of life, both at work and at play. The education sector is certainly no exception with the library poised to play a crucial role in what is offered to scholars.
Professor Anne Morris, from Loughborough University examined the technology surrounding libraries and the service they provide in Higher Education. What they want to offer students is a richer learning experience.
The key thing with 2.0 tech is that the more people use it the better it gets, as far as libraries are concerned, she said.
Morris gave us a quick run through of what is on offer and its potential for helping students learn better.
Blogs - encourage the development of communities, they facilitate communication among librarians (Stanford University being a very good example).
Wikis - Offer an easy way to create lists and tips as well as the easy ability to comment on LIS services. There are of course issues with trust and security, but then that is true of any wiki.
Instant Messenger (IM) - Has been used for reference management, training and immediate online assistance.
One example that Morris gave us was the offering from the OCLC or QuestionPoint as it is known to its users. It's a good example of library's spreading the burden of information sharing and works well with a group of libraries using this technology.
Podcasts - a wide choice of material is made available to students whether as a lecture, interview, conference or tutorial. The list is substantial.
Social Networking - can be applied to recommendations, listings of popular materials and the opportunity to work in groups. The Virtual bookshelf available on Face Book is a nice idea to highlight the favourites in your collections and offer recommendations and reviews.
What the Pilkington Library have done at Loughborough is adopt a range of these ideas, such as a podcast introducing the library, a blog, RSS feeds on either all new material that comes in or a specific subject area.
What did the students think about all this? Had they even heard of the concept of Library 2.0? The research that Morris and her team conducted on the Information Department students showed that less than half of the scholars knew what the library 2.0 term actually meant. More worrying was that over 70% hadn't even used the tools or knew that they existed. However when asked if they would find receiving updates about their specific needs useful over 70% expressed a positive interest.
The general conclusions that Morris came across were mildly positive views of Library 2.0 tech. The most welcomed technology came from RSS feeds, podcasting, IM and professional reviews of books. There was little faith that fellow students would contribute much in the way of their own recommendations. The key thing to consider is that whatever technologies you are thinking of adopting, make sure they are user-centric, specific to their course needs and of course wanted in the first place.

Online Information Conference - Day 2

Do We Have a Profession?
The somewhat controversial sounding title of this morning's session was posed to us by Natalie Ceeney, head of The National Archives (TNA) and as of last night, IWR's Information Professional of the Year.
"We are now living in an 'information society'" said Ceeney, whether that is through the daily use of tools such as Google to Wikipedia and a host of social networking services. During her 8 years in the profession she has seen the importance of information rise in the organisation from that of the outsider to of critical importance.
Information of course is the life blood of public services, it has a fundamental impact on the education system said Ceeney. Information is now a mainstream issue in British politics and recognised as such at the most senior level.
What has been driving Ceeney however is her quest to get us all to consider how much of an asset information is to business and to get that recognised by the most senior decision makers. Just as importantly it's about getting recognition for those who actually work with information and the skills they bring.
Ceeney explained how a report from Cap Gemini released in March this year, found that by not exploiting their information assets, the cost to organisations equated to lost opportunities of approximately £46bn in the private sector and £21bn in public sector.
Where does this all sit for information professionals? For Ceeney, it's about how the info pros define themselves. The culture is such that "we define ourselves by our sub professions - librarians, record managers, archivists she said, "The problem is because everyone has a different job description there is a lack of a cohesive identity for info pros among the organisation." Because of that definitive description, the due recognition is amiss in their organisation.
"If we sub-divide ourselves too much there is a risk that jobs are given to other departments as they don't fit properly at the moment." "Why do we think we are so different from other departments in the organisation?" Ceeney asked, murmurs of consent rippled around the room.
Ceeney outlined her own experiences within government as an example such as her role in the data handling review, getting the acknowledgement of information as an asset. The crux of her point was that these ideas are less for the profession and more for the eyes of senior management.
In making information management mainstream, Ceeney gave us the example of her Digital Continuity project that meant a joined up strategy of information management across government rather than each department trying to achieve it themselves and the great cost each would generate.
The biggest challenge we have got is getting senior people to realise that this matters and less the information professional.

Reasons to be cheerful

First day of Online Information always has a special buzz about it and yesterday was no exception. The conference was crowded and at some points during the day it was standing (or sitting on the floor) only in some of the tracks. The exhibition was also buzzing with the usual range of meeting by chance of old friends and contacts, as well as the fulfilment of carefully planned meetings and briefings.
The IWR stand was particularly busy with the December issue in great demand (no surprise there). If you haven't seen a copy or you want to join or rejoin the circulation list, then come by the stand and leave your business card.
There is no doubt that much of the conversation at the conference and the exhibition revolved around how the profession would cope in a downturn. I think the answer is pretty positive. The profession is brimming with ideas and initiatives to help organisation do what they have to do better and there are a seemingly endless stream of new products and tools which should help to harness the brain power.
And yesterday's business pages in The Times agree with my assessment. Discussing Reed Elsevier the report suggested the information business is not "overly sensitive to the economic cycle".

IWR Information Professional of the Year 2008

IWR would like to offer their congratulations to Natalie Ceeney (CEO of The National Archives) who has just been announced as Information Professional of the Year 2008.
Having met and interviewed Ceeney soon after I joined IWR, I was quickly aware of her passion for information and the role it has to play in government. Hearing her speak on various occasions since it is clear that passion also applies to the people who are involved in that profession.
Although Natalie had a prior engagement this evening and couldn't pick up the trophy in person, well done from all of us here.
To hear more from Natalie, she will be addressing the conference tomorrow morning in her session "Do We Have a Profession?"
More then.

Online Information - Innovators Under the Spotlight

After my somewhat lengthy post of Clay Shirky's opening keynote I wanted to keep this next post brief. It was a session of information innovation experts giving us their advice on how best to implement your own online strategy.
As moderator to this session, Euan Semple noted that by engaging in the more cutting edge of innovation there is a high degree of risk being involved (citing the experience of his own redundancy). Big changes how organisations work and how they relate to the people that work with them are coming he said.
Here is the gist of key points and principles I picked up from them:
 Consider what are the information needs of your target audience?
 Where are the gaps in what people want?
 Make what you do fun and entertaining for users. Experience is key not necessarily the information
 Pilot groups often don't work as customers often don't know what they want or need
 Let people make their own niches in your space
 The process should be about lifting the lid off of something - rather than creating it, it should be easy because there should be a vacum of information to fill
 Too many tools can put off users and spook them
 Explaining what the idea is key. How would you explain it so that it is easily understood?
 People need to see the benefits offered to communities in order to recommend an online service.
More later...

Online Information Conference - Opening Keynote, Clay Shirky

Part 1
Clay Shirky, author of "Here Comes Everyone" spoke to assembled delegates this morning about the nature of how we like to share and use our information and how that has led to the next information distribution revolution.
Shirky discussed how communities work and come together through publishing their shared interests, all a platform like flikr needs to do to work is provide the infrastructure. Users then share tips and help each other with their problems - it's a good example of how every URL has the potential to be a latent community he said.
Ultimately people turn themselves into a user community.
The distinction between publishing and communication is more blurred. Flikr's advantage is that it doesn't have to decide what info will be useful Shirky pointed out, by managing less Flikr offers more opportunities for its users. It is one of many such areas out there that do this successfully and makes a good example.
Another intersting example Shirky shared with us was the attention to detail given to the Dr WHO Wikipedia page - edited no less thab 9000 times! That would average about 2-3 edits per each users one would expect - however to demonstrate how we can't rely on a simpistic model of user behaviour Shirky pointed out that the editing process and contribution was far more skewed. For example, 2200 contributors edited the page once while 965 edited it multiple times, one user in particular has edited the entry over a 1000 times! The point is though is that there aren't typical users or typical behaviour.
If you wanted to tap this kind of commitment (especially if its provided for free) for your content consider how you would pitch that to a decision maker - would you even dare?
Colaboration and Collective Action
The story of HSBC reneging on its "free" OD fee for students recently was a PR disaster. When the bank went back on its word it angered many of its student customers. As a bank it knew that to move your money and finances to a competitor is no easy matter and so therefore they could afford to upset them. What tHSBC didn't count on was that students use Facebook and know what it can do.
The protest group acted as staging post for the outraged to come together, others offered advice on how to move their money and who to, it acted as a clarion encouraging even more dissaffected so the story made the national press. HSBC backed down not because the students were upset but because they were upset, organised and co-ordinated.
It is the difference between just reporting what HSBC had done than reporting and offering a way to do something about it.
However Shirky noted that we still tend to underestimate these tools, as they are often used for entertainment and frivolously so. For Shirky they can (and have) been utilised for far more significant uses - the example he gave was of flash mobs entering the main square in Belarus to protest against the law that crowds were not allowed to gather there. The state could do little as each person came there individually not as a group and with a big grin on their face. What is important is that there was the intention among each individual in how they would use this tool, by doing so they became a community with power - albeit shortly.
It is this in part that means there is no longer a difference between the producer of information and the consumer of it. The internet has the many to many element at the core of its nature.
CONTINUED in part 2

Online Information Conference - Opening Keynote

"We are now seeing a new set of business innovations and it's an interesting time to develop business, information being at the heart of business. Without the information tools and tech that we will here about can't hope to be successful." So opened this year's Online Information Conference courtesy of its chairman Adrian Dale
The theme for this year (subsequent to the economic bubble bursting)
Dale explained how in the 1960s and 70s it was those professionals in personnel who saw the importance of their role in a businesses strategy to justify their place on the board. Their its predecessors in Finance were the same. Meanwhile, the 1980s and 90s was the time for the business process managers - the supply chain managers in other words to take the lead and further influence their organisations for business benefit.
For the information profession, that role has largely been contained and formed as a number of cottage industries such the realm of the librarian, web development, the records manager. Now though we are moving into a time when it's the information manager that takes the lead, said Dale - at least in those organisations that have the foresight.
Why now?
For one, because of the vast amounts of information being generated across the globe. A live feed from EMC showed a row of whirling numbers projected across the world to represent this current data generation, in fact 432bn GB created since 1st Jan 2008.
We are dealing with the explosion of information and it has now caught up with us, said Dale, we have got to get to the heart of these processes. Most businesses won't understand how to manage information properly. Unfortunately that can mean less cottage industry of information management and more like a personal approach with everyone managing their own, but is that really a strategy?
This opened up the floor for Keynote speaker Clay Shirky, author of and "Here Comes Everyone - the power of organising without organisations. More to follow...

Speaker of the Week: Jenny Levine

Jenny Levine, Internet Development Specialist and Strategy Guide, American Library Association, USA is this weeks speaker. Jenny is a track keynote speaker on day one of the conference. ...
Day 1: Track 3 New Channels, New Media and New Approaches for Libraries
Q Which are the most important topics, for you personally, due to be discussed at the Online Information Conference 2008 and why?
Jenny: The most important topics for me are the integration of user-generated content, interactivity, and syndication (RSS). I believe these three things are changing user expectations and behaviour with information and media, forcing the rest of us to adapt to these changes.
Q Which tracks would you recommend to delegates attending the conference?
Jenny: As someone who works in an association and is implementing a professional networking service for our members, I'm interested in the "Risk 2.0 or Opportunity 2.0 - hype or hope?" and "User generated content - challenging professionals" tracks. I'm also intrigued by the "Perspectives from Generation Y" and "Information seeking behaviours in the new world" ones, as I think these have an impact on our profession.
Q What are you looking forward to most about participating in Online Information 2008?
Jenny: The piece I'm looking forward to the most is the networking and meeting new people who can provide me with new information and inspire me think of things in different ways. This conference certainly looks like an exciting group of people to do just that.
Q If you had to choose only one - which social network would you recommend to colleagues?
Jenny: don't think I can recommend just one social network, as I don't believe any of them meets all of someone's needs. Instead, I think each person should create their own social network using Friendfeed, although I am discouraged that the site still cannot display Facebook updates.
Q And finally, just out of interest - where are you planning to spend Christmas this year?
Jenny: I'm planning to spend the holidays at home, which will be a nice break after a fall of quite a bit of travel. :)
About Jenny Levine
I work in both the Information Technology and Publishing units at the American Library Association. As part of my job, I blog, create wikis, bug my colleagues to instant message, test podcasting and vodcasting, teach RSS, post pictures on Flickr, explore Second Life, and do similar work with emerging technologies and new tools. I am currently organizing the 2007 ALA TechSource Gaming, Learning, and Libraries Symposium which will take place in July in Chicago. Last year, I had the pleasure of traveling around the United States and Europe to give more than 30 presentations. The "strategy guide" piece of my title is providing leadership and implementation of new technologies at ALA and in libraries in general.
Learn more about Jenny by checking out her Blog www.theshiftedlibrarian.com
For more information, or to view the conference programme in full, please visit:
www.online-information.co.uk/conference

Criminal data loss

On the 25 June 2008, the Cabinet Office decreed that all government departments would have to encrypt important information held on discs, USB sticks or laptops in its wide ranging review of security practices. This conclusion could be either seen as a sensible approach to managing the vast data government holds or, less charitably, a statement of the obvious.
If it were a statement of the obvious, it wasn't quite obvious enough. Data handing procedures in government: final report doesn't seem to have been read, or understood, or acted upon by the Cabinet Office's colleagues at the Home Office or by suppliers to the Home Office. Less than two months after the tome hit the streets, the UK government is once again mopping up after at another hugely embarrassing loss of data.
Back in February I wrote on this blog. Data loss has become a running story over the last few months. Not so much is the question "Has there been a data breach?" more a case of "Who now?"
And that "Who now?" question keeps being repeated. It is hard to think of a government department which hasn't mislaid data. There is something of a routine to all this: government department confesses to the latest cock up. This is followed by emerging of embarrassing details. Opposition politicians express their outrage, experts express their opinions and inquires are set in train. And then another data loss comes to light (repeat above).
In this latest example, my thought processes go like this: so at one stage the data on 84,000 criminals was encrypted, that's good. And then it was decoded, well OK maybe that was necessary so the data could be used. Then the decoded data was put on a memory stick. At this point I want to shout: "What did you do that for?"
The Times reported this morning that Home Secretary Jacqui Smith was furious. Who can blame her? The BBC reported that PA Consulting has searched its premises and looked at CCTV recordings in an attempt to recover the missing memory stick. If the security guys and gals at PA start by questioning everyone who has a pocket, wallet, handbag or briefcase that should narrow it down. Unbelievable (again).

In search of a competitive edge

Corporates appear to be sold on the idea of Web 2.0. More than three-quarters of executives who responded to a McKinsey survey say they plan to maintain or increase their investments in technology trends that encourage user collaboration, such as peer-to-peer networking, social networks, and web services.
More than half say they are pleased with their past internet investments, though some regret not boosting their own capabilities to exploit technology. So there are still people out there who ask their secretaries to print out their emails. Surely not.
Anyway it will be interesting to see how the results of the McKinsey survey contrast with research due out later in the year by TFPL and the Edinburgh-based Napier University School of Computing.
TFPL's Melanie Goody says that the idea of the research is to look at the risk and opportunities of social networking tool in the business market. At the moment most of what we think we know about the impact of social computing comes from anecdotal evidence, although last year the British Computer Society (BCS) estimated that £130m a day is being lost due to employee engagement with social networking sites.
The TFPL/Napier research (results in the autumn) is designed to look at the use of social tools such as Facebook, blogs and microblogs, plus more formal collaborative platforms such as Sharepoint (in which TFPL has a particular interest).
Out of the research it may be possible to start to formulate policies on acceptable use, workplace bullying and damage to corporate brand. Of particular interest to information professionals are subjects such as corporate confidentiality and the archiving of valuable employee exchanges which has to date received little attention.
Enterprises still have a lot to learn about web 2.0 and its role in the work environment. While there may be opportunities there has been a lot of focus on the downside risks. The McKinsey survey talks about the possibility of these technologies providing a sustained competitive edge. If that is the case then businesses will definitely be interested.

Plane silly

Here's a timely reminder for all those high flying company executives who are off on holidays and can't quite tear themselves away from the thrill of work. As you pack the laptop or the BlackBerry ("Honestly darling I probably won't even switch it on and certainly not when the kids want to play") say to yourself: "Nearly 4,000 laptops go lost or missing in Europe's major airports every week." No, not a figure made up by a desperate hack in the midst of a silly season but the headline finding from Ponemon Institute for Dell. This statistic summons up images of piles of laptops strewn around arrivals and departures halls like so much modern art. How do we manage to lose so many?
And while the amount of kit that is getting mislaid is mind boggling, equally astonishing is that fact that the research claims that nearly half of the professionals surveyed take no steps to protect the data in the event of a loss or theft. Maybe that would be OK if the only information on there was the holiday packing list but nearly half reckon they keep confidential information on their laptops. It is hard to assume those two halves don't overlap so a fair amount of important info is sculling around the world's airports unprotected. The other astonishing statistic unearthed by this research is that 57% of the 3,300 laptops in the eight largest airports that end up in lost and found departments are never reclaimed. Is that because people want an excuse for a nice upgrade or maybe we're all too cynical to believe that something that is once lost can ever be found?
Whatever the lesson from all this is plain. While business travellers clearly need to carry the kit, if you are off on holiday think twice before you haul that laptop into the hand luggage. They'd be much safer locked away in the office and you would definitely have a better holiday. Enjoy.

At the heart of the knowledge economy

The 21st century is the era of the information professional. No, not another claim from the editor of IWR after a good lunch (I should be so lucky), but a summary of the prediction of the IBM Data Governance Council.
The council is a US-based industry group whose 50 members include big names from the corporate world including American Express, Deutsche Bank, Citi and Mastercard. Formed three years ago to help the business world take a more disciplined approach to how big companies handle data, it has produced an interesting assessment of life following the credit crunch.
The council concluded that failures in data governance were at the heart of the sub-prime crisis and that a regulatory backlash will see data governance becoming a regulatory requirement in some countries, initially in the banking and financial services industries. There is nothing like imposing a regulatory requirement for hoiking an issue up the corporate agenda. But the council goes even further. It is discussing the idea that the value of data should be recognised in the financial statements and should be treated as an asset on the balance sheet. The accountancy profession has always been a bit wary of intangible assets, with fierce arguments over if and how intellectual property assets such as goodwill, brands, and human capital should be recognised. The credit crunch and the argument over the value of financial instruments has underlined how difficult it is to inform investors about the changing asset values.
In the scenario painted by the council, the quality of data will become a technical reporting metric and key IT performance indicator. New accounting and reporting practices will emerge for measuring and assessing the value of data to help organisations demonstrate how data quality fuels business performance. Crucially the council sees the role of the chief information officer changing - with reporting on data quality and data risk to the board becoming a key task. The CIO will have the mandate to govern the use of information and report on the quality of the information provided to shareholders.
For information professionals it is an exciting idea, putting them at the heart of the knowledge economy and at the centre of corporate life. It is a vision which the profession should try to turn into reality.

Promises, promises

Promises like pie crusts are made to be broken. Or maybe we need to update that old saying to promises like data protection guidelines are made to be broken. I had made a half promise to myself that the best policy on the seemingly endless flow of news on data and information that had...whoops... disappeared was to ignore it. Maybe like unruly children various government departments, ministers and civil servants would just stop making embarrassing data breaches if we all looked the other way and pretended they weren't doing it.
But the events, hard on the heels of each other, of the Communities Secretary Hazel Blears having her laptop stolen so soon after south west trains were apparently overflowing with top secret documents was just infuriating and reignited the great data debate. What is puzzling is why so many people seem so slow to learn the lessons from the misfortunes of others about the necessity to take the most basic precautions to protect data.
I've got this image of the street value of juicy information falling faster than a stone as members of the criminal classes are overwhelmed by bits of kit and secret documents that they are trying to offload in dodgy pubs in Salford or near Waterloo station.
The situation has become so serious that after the Blears' laptop was taken (reinforced glass was smashed in the raid you'll be pleased to know, barely careless at all then) that, according to newspaper reports, Prime Minister Gordon Brown was forced to intervene urging ministers to enforce "procedures on the treatment of information".
Sounds like a good idea to me. And it takes a prime minister to tell everyone to follow the rules which they have drawn up.
The question which is intriguing me is what and how? As the habit of throwing sensitive data away is clearly a hard one to break, I want to know which government department will be the next culprit and how. I may call up Williams Hill and see if they are prepared to put up some odds. Is this a joking matter? No. Should we be taking this seriously? Of course we should and so should those who are losing the data. Come on boys and girls, it's time to stop. Promise now.