Tag: Business

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Adventures in Abu Dhabi: Ferrari World

Where else but in the UAE would you find the largest indoor amusement park — devoted to Ferrari — and the world’s fastest roller coaster? Nowhere else.

Saturday was my adjustment day in Abu Dhabi, having travelled eleven time zones from LA, arriving late Friday night. My colleague Tom and I ventured out to visit Ferrari World on the outskirts of town.  We looked forward to staking claim to riding the world’s fastest roller coaster – the Formula Rossa, which hits speeds of 240km/h.

Ferrari World is impressive in size and ambition, but the lack of crowds made us wonder how long it would remain open. For starters, three of the most popular attractions were closed for maintenance — including the world’s fastest roller coaster. Bummer.

We ambled over to the one roller coaster that was open, and were the first two in line. In fact, we were the only two in line. We had to ask to double-check that it was even open (it was). We navigated the serpentine (but empty) queue designed to handle mobs of people and made our way to the ride. We were the only ones on the first trip around the track. When we returned, there was still no line, so we went back. From there on, we didn’t even get off, we just asked them to keep sending us around. We rode it four consecutive times before finally a few people started to filter in.

The crowds did grow a bit over the afternoon, but it was never crowded. And we were both a little disappointed that three of the key attractions were closed (not a good sign).

On the bright side, I did learn a lot about Ferrari and saw some beautiful cars – some historic and many new models. But the experience left me scratching my head and wondering about the business viability of the park.

And while I can’t claim to have ridden the world’s fastest roller coaster, I may be able to say… “I visited Ferrari World back when it was still open.”

All this got me thinking; putting aside questions about whether it’s the right thing to do or not, let’s assume that the objective is to make changes that would help Ferrari World thrive. What changes would help them grow?

One obvious omission was the lack of a Ferrari dealership. Let qualified buyers test drive a Ferrari on the adjacent Formula 1 track (the Yaz Marina Circuit). Let people pickup a new car brochure and dream a bit. Even though the car’s price puts it out of range for most people, I was shocked that this wasn’t there. The “world” was a bit incomplete. You couldn’t even find out how much they cost (at least, it wasn’t apparent).

How would you crank up the buzz and stimulate business?

 

 

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What is the WordPress KM Project?

Knowledge Management is a term laden with baggage. For some people, KM synonymous with expensive IT systems and tools. For others it conjures memories of failed initiatives from a time past. But for most people, KM is a concept that they really don’t get.

Not that they need to “get it.” The term itself was invented by academians and consultants conspiring to elevate their science. But when the rubber meets the road, KM is simply about sharing and leveraging knowledge intelligently. The typical knowledge worker isn’t usually familiar with the term knowledge management or even knowledge worker. They just know that they need to tap into knowledge and expertise to help them do their job.

And so, we KM professionals are tasked with providing a systematic approach to KM that doesn’t burden knowledge workers with learning a whole new language. Taxonomy, vocabulary, subject matter experts, communities of practice — all are misguided labels that serve the KM professionals (we know what we mean) but obfuscate the message to the engineer on a project.

We need to put the process into terms they already know and understand. In many ways, Enterprise 2.0 concepts come closer. Blogs, social networking, profiles and discussion forums are all part of our common experience of the web. And they all fit nicely into a community-centric approach to knowledge management.

I’ve said many times that KM is not about the tool. Successful KM is more about the processes and behaviors that drive collaboration, knowledge sharing and reuse. Show people how they benefit when they share their knowledge and it doesn’t matter what the tool is. As long as that tool doesn’t impede your ability to connect with knowledge and the people who have or need expertise, which tool is almost irrelevant. Not exactly the message that the big software vendors want you to hear, but it’s true.

 

Which got me thinking: if it’s not about the tool, why not choose some tools that are readily and freely available? Could this not make KM accessible to many more companies, and perhaps spawn a new era of extra-enterprise collaboration?

Thus was born The WordPress KM Project. The goal is to create a community-centric knowledge management platform that leverages freely available and easily deployed technology — WordPress.

WordPress is primarily considered blogging software, but it can be much more. A single WordPress installation can now support multiple sites or communities. Plugins such as the BuddyPress suite add discussion forums and extensible user profiles. And the core WordPress system is already well-suited for content creation and management.

What are the key requirements for the WordPress KM Project?

  • User Management – Each user must have a profile that can contain contact information as well as skills and expertise. This is important in establishing context and building trust among people who may not know each other.
  • Communities – The core management of knowledge and expertise is delegated to domain experts. People interested in that domain are the primary participants of these communities.
  • Enterprise scope – Although knowledge and expertise is delegate to communities, the partipants have access to the full breadth and depth of knowledge across all communities.
  • Search – For most people, this will be the primary method of retrieving needed knowledge or expertise. For that reason, search — by default — must cross community boundaries.
  • Discussion – The primary medium for ad hoc collaboration and knowledge sharing. Each community will have discussion forums centered around the subjects relating to their domain expertise.
  • Blogs – This could also be considered news, but carries the advantage of allowing community participation through comments.
  • Knowledge – This is experience codified. Explicit knowledge stored in web page or other electronic form.

The goal of the WordPress KM Project is to build a working prototype environment, and then share the results with the world. To do this well, I need your help.

Do you have a passion for KM, WordPress, enterprise systems or just contributing to the greater good? I want to hear from you. Get involved, share your ideas, and join the team.

Let’s begin. Start by leaving a comment below.

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Seth Godin Pokes the Box

Last night I had the pleasure of hearing best selling author Seth Godin speak at this month’s LinkedOC event in Segerstrom Hall. Godin’s talk centered around the subject of his latest book, Poke the Box, in which he encourages us to take initiative; to instigate; to GO! Writes Godin:

“Imagine that the world had no middlemen, no publishers, no bosses, no HR folks, no one telling you what you couldn’t do.

If you lived in that world, what would you do?

Go. Do that.”

Godin is a terrific speaker, very relaxed and personable as he skillfully balances enlightenment and entertainment. I won’t repeat his talk (Ricardo Bueno put together a great recap), as you can get even more from his book. What really intrigued me was the Q&A afterwards, particularly when he described his Domino Project.

What is the Domino Project?

The question came from the audience after his talk. Seth spoke passionately about how he felt the publishing industry has lost it’s way. “Bookstores are dead,” Godin boldly declares. Not dying. Not hurting. Just dead. So he partnered with Amazon, who happens to sell a few books directly to consumers, and has some interesting data about those sales.

From Amazon, Godin learned that a majority of sales of his last best seller were to customers who bought in multiples — two, three, five or more copies of his book. Godin’s books are unique not only for their content, but their form factor. They are small, compact packages that can easily be absorbed in a long plane flight and passed on to a friend, making them well-suited for multiple purchases.

The Domino Project changes the formula. Instead of publishers selling to bookstores (who aren’t really the customer), Godin leverages Amazon to sell directly to consumers. Instead of one size fits all, you can order Poke the Box in no less than ten different formats and packages. You can get the Kindle version for a mere $4.99, or a pack of 52 hardcover versions for $341 (and everything in-between).

Godin even points out the the front cover of the book has no text on it. No title, author or marketing speak. Just a clever, retro-looking chap who looks excited. A colleague or friend who spies it sitting on your table is compelled to inquire “what is this?” Godin’s austere cover is irresistible book bait.

It’s still to early to tell whether Godin’s gamble will be a success, but I’m betting he’s at least on the right track. He says that early sales figures are 5x that of his last best-selling book.

With his Domino Project, Seth Godin is practicing what he preaches in Poke the Box.

What box are you poking?

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Social Media and Knowledge Management

Social media is often cast as being at odds with enterprise initiatives such as knowledge management. There is a sense that as people embrace and use social media tools like Twitter, Yammer, LinkedIn and Quora, the enterprise loses control over their knowledge. While this is certainly true, it’s also nothing new. There have always been and always will be opportunities and reasons to search the Internet vs searching the Intranet; for participating in an Internet discussion group vs. one in your enterprise community; and for leveraging external wisdom vs. known internal resources.

The subject of this week’s KMers.org tweet chat emphasized this tension: Corporate Social Media vs. Intranets. The implication is that social media and knowledge management are at odds and one is destined to be the solitary victor.

Reality Check.

Social media and knowledge management aren’t at odds at all. In fact, the most successful knowledge management systems embrace social media, but with a business mindset. The smart KM implementations leverage blogs, subscriptions, communities, discussion forums, and member profiles. They tie it together with search in a single working environment. And they look for opportunities to tie in other tools to streamline knowledge sharing — everything from instant messaging (i.e. Sametime) to micro-blogging (i.e. Yammer).

A few of the comments that really stuck out in our discussion today bear this out. We were asked for tips on optimizing the integration between social media applications and intranets. Here are a few notable responses:

[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/#!/TKBeard/status/40101729278246912″]

Tammy Bearden hits the nail on the head: it all starts with people.

[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/#!/stangarfield/status/40103103382429696″]

I like Stan Garfield’s advice to meet people where they are, which for many is still the email inbox.I’ve found the ability to subscribe and get email notifications to be an invaluable tool for engaging the workforce. I would even say it’s essential, and we’ve found it to be a tremendous attraction at Fluor.

[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/#!/BarbaraFillip/status/40102879041687552″]

Barbara Fillip reminds us to take the member eye view. Remove barriers to participation, where possible. Single sign-on is just one example.

Thanks to Stan Garfield, Liz Williams, Tom Menke, Ryan McClead, Sean Brady, Tammy Bearden, Antoon van het Erve,  Matthew Loxton, Barbara Fillip, and the other participants who shared their knowledge and insight. You can read the entire tweet chat transcript online, as well as check the schedule of upcoming discussions on KMers.org. We gather via Twitter every Tuesday at noon Eastern time. If you’re a KM professional, you should be a part of the discussion.

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Knowledge Management is Not a Software Solution

At Fluor, one of our favorite sayings about knowledge management is that “KM is not about the tool!” We aren’t Luddites by any means. Ineffective tools can inhibit the success of KM, just as woodworker would struggle with a dull blade.

Conversing with our colleagues at other companies, participating in best practice studies with APQC, through industry KM groups and informal discussions with other KM professionals — both inside our industry and beyond — have reaffirmed this point.

Technology is not a critical factor to successful knowledge management.

Today on Nick Milton’s Knoco stories blog, he poses the question: What was KM like, before IT?  How did we manage knowledge in medieval times? A provocative concept, since so many people immediately jump to technology when thinking of KM.

Overwhelmingly, the organizations that struggle to achieve success with KM do so because of this inappropriate focus on technology. The theory goes, “if only we had SharePoint (or Yammer, or Wikis, or fill-in-the-blank), sharing knowledge would be easy.”

And it’s true, to a point. Today, we have an abundance of tools that do indeed make it easier to share our knowledge, and many of them are excellent. We don’t have a technology problem.

It’s the difficult part that people either overlook or give inadequate emphasis; the soft part… people.

For KM to deliver value to an organization, the people who possess the knowledge and the people that need the knowledge need to connect. The right behaviors, motivators and a culture of collaboration and knowledge sharing needs to be nurtured. Leaders must determine how they can weave these principles into their work process, or transform those processes completely in ways that deliver value and ultimately supports the organization’s strategic vision.

This has implications that reach far beyond knowledge management. If you examine the success of Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, you’ll find that the people who get the most out of them are not necessarily the most sophisticated techno-geeks, nor the ones with the most “friends.” They are the ones who use technology to help them build and strengthen relationships — be they personal or professional. Once again, “it’s the people.”

I share this to remind myself, as well as stimulating one or two you. Tomorrow I’ll be training four, bright new knowledge managers. On this, their third day of training, we will be looking at (you guessed it) the tool.

Personally, I love tools. They can be a godsend, and enable global collaboration in a way that wasn’t possible when I began my career. But just as it’s not possession of the tools that makes a master craftsman, success in KM has far more to do with people and process.

Photo credit: Hans Splinter

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Things Real People Don’t Say About Advertising

Things Real People Don’t Say About Advertising is a Tumblr-powered collection of cheesy stock photos poking fun at the world of advertising… and advertisers too-often disconnection with reality. It’s a breezy, easy site to scan, in much the same way as the Lolcats at I Can Has Cheezburger.

While it’s sure to make you smile, especially if you’ve been involved in advertising or even commercial web projects, TPDSAA has a very real point. Too often we miss the mark when trying to communicate. We spend too much time on minutiae, and make too many assumptions that “we” know what our audience wants because we think they are just like us.

We Are Not Our Audience

Whether “we” means an ad agency, design firm or an individual simply trying to stake their claim on the Internet, “we” are not the same as everyone else. In fact, everyone else is very different from us. We are too close to the subject to see it through the eyes of the average visitor.

Over and over I’ve heard anecdotes of people recruiting their mom as the ultimate usability tester. The assumption is, if mom gets it, everyone will. Honestly, this is not far from the truth. We need to interact. We need to be genuine. We need to ask — our visitors, employees, members or customers — what they really need and want. And then, we need to give it to them.

I’m not suggesting design by committee, or worse, design by community. There is still a need for vision and creativity. Our experience and knowledge can help create a user experience that delights. Doing so requires a combination of that know-how and a willingness to listen and adapt to genuinely serve the audience.

Check out TPDSAA. I guarantee you will find at least a few photos you’ll relate to. And if you’re in a position to influence user experience, think about how you can avoid ending up lampooned on TPDSAA.

Looking to improve user experience? Here’s two companies I recommend:

  • Adaptive Path provides a range of consulting services to help companies improve their user experience, as well as coordinating a series of events and conferences for user experience professionals.
  • Creative Good also provides consulting services for companies who want to improve the user experience, supplemented by councils — groups of peers sharing their knowledge and expertise. The annual GEL conference (Good Experience Live) draws a range of creatives in a format closer to TED than an typical conference.

Meantime, I’m thinking about how I can apply the humor of TPDSAA to the realm of knowledge management. Stay tuned…

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Dropcard takes business cards digital

Earlier this month at the Office 2.0 conference, I ran out of business cards. Maybe it’s happened to you. You fumble around in your pocket and come up empty-handed. Somehow I was caught off guard. I put in a new order online (our company has at least automated all of that), but still hadn’t received the shipment before I left for the Knowledge Leadership Forum two weeks later. 

Dropcard aims to solve that problem, and could even eliminate the need for business cards altogether–a very green idea. I read about Dropcard on WebWorkerDaily and immediately saw how I could’ve used this.

photo.jpgHow it works

The concept is simple. You register on Dropcard and can create two profiles: business and personal. You control how much or little information you want to share. When you want to send your “business card” to someone, you do so either via text message to 41411. When I meet Bill G., I can ask for his email, then send him my Dropcard by texting drop billg@windows.com to 41411. 

If you’re using an iPhone, you can thank your lucky starts and skip the text message, opting instead to use the clean, web interface you see to the right. Either way, it’s quick and easy. 

What happens next?

Once you send an instruction to send someone your contact info, they get a nicely formated email with all your details and a vCard attachment for quick import to Outlook. 

Dropcard allows you to enter multiple phones, addresses, chat networks, websites and personal profile addresses. 

There are no advertisements. Dropcard is supported by paid subscriptions. With a free account, you can send up to 15 Dropcards per month. $4.99 a month gives you as many as 20 profiles, and the ability to send up to 100 Dropcards per month. $9.99 a month gives you unlimited Dropcards. 

Oh yeah, my old skool carbon-based business cards did finally arrive this week. I’m not ready to ditch them, but Dropcard will be a handy backup in the future. 

Check out Dropcard.