Teblog

Green thinking

One of my responsibilities at Freeform Dynamics is covering environmental issues in the context of ICT. Of course, like everyone else, I get bombarded from all directions with people with wonderful solutions, most of which require customers to fork out for more kit.

It really is an attractive option too. First of all, most of us are unaware of the environmental harm that new and jettisoned kit does. Second of all, companies generally save enough money as a result of the changes to pay for the equipment in fairly short order.

So why am I bothered? Especially when I agree with the broad thrust of the changes being suggested - consolidation, virtualisation, smart power etcetera. I guess I'm bothered because the approach is too narrowly focused. Going for the low-hanging "save energy" fruit is all well and good but where will the vendors be when the ICT folk start to raise their sights?

Will the vendors willingly identify the environmental impact of creating, using and disposing of each piece of equipment? That will require a deep understanding of the supply chain, right back to the components of the components. And it will involve a lot of cost and maybe stall or slow new machine purchases as the implications sink in among customers.

Is there anyone out there who can come up with realistic numbers for teleworking? We know that it saves commutes but, if you take a holistic view, what's the net gain and where does it accrue? Household heating, energy, space etc have to be offset against the savings at the company. I think we have a gut feel that these things are working out for the best, but not in terms that an accountant or an environmental auditor might understand.

Teleconferencing, when well executed, can be a terrific time, cost and environment saver, although it's bad news for airlines.

A ton of no-cost things can be done, like getting staff to change their habits - switching off desktop PCs, chargers and lights when there's no-one around or redistributing hot and cool equipment in the data centre, for example.

But all this is just lists of actions. Somehow we need to get people to think differently, so that making these decisions becomes second nature. We can force costs into users' consciousnesses by making sure first that IT takes the hit on its energy costs. Then they will be motivated to find ways to devolve these costs to their departmental clients. (I read somewhere that only one percent of IT managers/CIOs in North America have any idea what their energy costs are. And I doubt it's much different elsewhere.)

I think the bottom line is for everyone to start thinking in terms of input-process-output. (Sound familiar?) In a fractally sort of way, this can be applied from macro to micro level. From the company looking at what it's doing right down to an individual, they are all capable of looking at what resources they draw on, how they exploit them and what outputs result, both good and bad. IT can raise its game hugely by supporting the company in new initiatives in all three areas.

But, to radically reduce costs and alter our environmental impact, we don't just need to reprogram our computers. We actually need to reprogram our brains.

On social computing signal:noise ratio

Earlier this week Dale Vile - boss of Freeform Dynamics - posted about his frustrations following a deep dive into social computing. He's been blogging and reading blogs for a couple of years but wondered if he might be missing out on something. By and large, he concluded he wasn't.

I responded by email rather than comment. But Dale thought I should base a post around my response. Having read it through, I think I may as well share it in its entirety. Responses, private or as comments, are more than welcome.

Dear Dale

Read your 'Signal to noise' piece yesterday.

Reread it this morning.

Sounds like you've gone round the loop I went round a few years ago, except I did allow myself to become overwhelmed for a while.

Eventually, it was the realisation that you can't keep up with everything, no matter how relevant/important, that stopped me. Along with the inability to keep up was a strong and growing sense of inadequacy which was fairly crippling.

Eventually I twigged that all this stuff is a river - continuously flowing, into which it's possible to dip and sense the mood and perhaps go after the occasional fish or interesting piece of driftwood. There's always Google blog search if you want to track down what's been said recently on any particular subject. And, as you point out, tags. Although I'm less trusting of them because they're not universally used.

When Netvibes came along, it allowed me to Watch the river without necessarily going for a swim. This is where the value of a good descriptive headline comes in. Netvibes just lists the feeds in little boxes - you can choose how items many you want to display in each, but the next/previous links mean you don't have to miss stuff.

If you want to see the full degree to which I (don't) track, see the attached picture. The bold numbers are how many unselected/unread items are outstanding in each category.

Am I bothered? Not any more. Like you, I go where I want when I need to. You'll notice the 'ego' tab has no unreads. When I go to a tab with unread entries, it takes seconds to scan each one.

I agree about Twitter - lots of lost souls clinging together for comfort and reassurance. Facebook is heading the same way and they're making some strategic mistakes at the moment. I hope it will pass because groups have good potential for business use as does the general theory of 'find someone who knows'.

The water cooler/bonding aspect of these social media is important IMHO, providing it doesn't descend into pointless natter (the social media gurus will argue that nothing's pointless, it might come in handy some time). Sometimes our own Skype IM group is good, sometimes it's noise. But there's bonding going on there. These things can be good for distributed teams or collaborators.

Part of whether social computing has value lies in the size of the participating group. And this applies to wikis as well. Too few active participants in a community means that nothing happens and value isn't extracted. Large organisations like IBM, BT or BBC get value out. Signal/noise can be improved with simple ground rules. And, of course, by the fact that people's online activities are visible to all in the community.

Finally, there's the question of why people do stuff online. Blogging in particular, but it could apply to Twitter, Facebook et al. Conventional wisdom is 'post often'. I think the reason for this is that you then go up the various rankings. And, if you get visible, you go up further because people think you must be good. I've always thought this was barmy, and still do. The scheduled or frequent posting is not for the benefit of the reader, it's for the benefit of the publisher or the individual doing the post.

You talk in your piece about how few blogs have something original to say. And I agree. It's just noise. And, I suspect a lot of this is because people feel obliged to post at a particular frequency, regardless of if there's any reason to post.

It's all jolly complicated. I know there are Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays when I think "oh shit, it's blog post day". Although, mostly, something has happened in the previous week to justify some kind of post. Then there's the time it takes up.... But that's another story.

David

Removing blog posts

Received wisdom says you should never remove blog posts or make meaning-changing edits, without making it clear what you're up to or why,.

So, this note is to say that I'm going to remove some of the entries from this blog which exist purely to point at something I've written elsewhere. I have, instead, added a Grazr reading list in the right sidebar of this blog which lists most of my recent online stuff. It does this through a Yahoo! Pipe which keeps watch on this kind of thing.

I will only add a link entry for stuff which would otherwise not be picked up.

I'm probably the only person who cares, but I thought I'd better explain.

PS Some feeds take a while to be updated so it might take a little while for the Grazr panel to accurately reflect reality

Jimmy Wales (Wikipedia) on successful wikis

Yesterday, Jimmy Wales blew into town to address a huge audience of information professionals at the Online Information conference. Wales, in case you don't know, co-founded Wikipedia which is intended to become "the sum of all human knowledge". Written for the people by the people. And hugely popular, to boot.
As ever with these kind of events, the question and answer session at the end was just as interesting as the prepared presentation. It was a chance for some baffled people to get to grips with some key issues. While these were Wikipedia-focused they do resonate with other wiki activity, including that in your own organisation perhaps.
Freeform Dynamics recently ran a survey asking people how they connect at work or education, as opposed to in their personal life. The 1500 or so responses came from IT professionals and, that subset that liked responding to a survey on this subject. Interestingly, in the work context, wikis were read by more than 55 percent of respondents and contributed to by about 25 percent. This suggests that wikis are certainly on the business communication radar. Wales' thoughts could well help avoid some false starts.
On participation, he talked of applying the 'neutrality principle' to writing style. I think he means avoid opinion and stick to facts. Or, to don the behavioural psychologist's hat, to keep contributions adult rather than parental or childish. A debate is more constructive and likely to lead to a better outcome than a fight.
In a similar vein, Wales urges courtesy and respect for the community. He gives the example of journalists who think its clever to edit a contribution to see how long it takes for anyone to notice. The important takeaway here is that people cannot be expected to just start contributing to Wikipedia without understanding and agreeing to some basic ground rules.
He doesn't regard Wikipedia as the place to publish original research. For a start, no-one would be able to check it. Second of all, it gets away from the principle of the "sum of all human knowledge", in the sense of a summary, understandable to the layman but with sources cited for those who want to drill deeper. In Wikipedia's case, he politely suggests that researchers get their material published elsewhere first and then cite this as a source. The 'summary' idea is a good one. The difficulty in a company wiki is that it's sometimes quicker to write or cut and paste a long discourse than a thought-out summary. But, if no-one reads it, it seems rather counter-productive.
On credibility, it's somewhat easier for humans to assess this than for it to be calculated automatically. Wales would be interested in seeing a background colour wash in Wikipedia according to the credibility of the writer. But, as he points out, a mathematical formula might regard his frequent contributions to the policy part of Wikipedia as 'argumentative' and downgrade him accordingly.
Humans take into account their knowledge of a person, whether their changes and challenges have improved the content, their engagement style generally, their biases, etc. Try working out a reliable algorithm to deal with that lot. Perhaps Wales is right to be experimenting with it but with no firm plans for its introduction.
Another thing to bear in mind is that a wiki isn't like paper. It's theoretically limitless. Wales noted that the English language write up of Pokémon provides details of all the various regions but the German version has not allowed this. People don't have to read this stuff, so does it matter whether it's there or not? Since wikis are largely textual, they demand little in storage resources.
Finally, there's the question of motivation. In Wikipedia's case, Wales believes it boils down to humanitarianisn or fun, where the fun is being part of an enthusiastic and engaged community of common interest. He points out that "doing wikis alone doesn't work". He suggests five or six people - friends, enemies, it doesn't matter - engaging day in and day out is the way to go.
In our coporate wikis, we can probably discard the humanitarian aspects but fun and community building sound like good motivations.

Link: IT helps companies go green

Date: 03 Dec 2007

Audience: IT Professionals

Link: IT can help the business become green

Writer: David Tebbutt

Where: Computing

Date: 03 Dec 2007

Audience: IT Professionals

Link: IT can help the business become green

Writer: David Tebbutt

Where: Computing

Audience: IT Professionals

Link: IT can help the business become green

Writer: David Tebbutt

Where: Computing

Audience: IT Professionals

Link: IT can help the business become green

Writer: David Tebbutt

Where: Computing