View from the Hill

"Technology is a tool - it is only as good as the leadership"

It took me a while to remember why I'd set my alarm so early this morning. I'm glad I figured it out and made my way to Roast for our networking breakfast as it was jolly good company and conversation.

Social media was the main topic of conversation whilst we were tucking into our delicious food. Some organisations are embracing the functionality that new technologies can bring, others are holding back. Managing risk in this area is a high priority. Giving staff a thorough understanding of the implications of their actions/words/Tweets is a vital step.

Some broader questions raised throughout the meeting included: How do you add value when your users have access to the same information? Would you introduce yourself and your service to other parts of the organisation who don't know you? What is the true cost of bad information management? Has your service become a process that is administered rather than delivered?

And my personal favourite question - "weren't we supposed to be paperless by now?"

- Suzanne

 

The Language of Leadership

The practical challenges of leadership in times of change came to the fore at this week’s Sue Hill Breakfast.  On one side of the table we had a manager who is facing the prospect of the loss of decades of knowledge and experience during a current redundancy programme.  On the other, one who is charged with reinventing a once-thriving information service that has had no direct senior management for a significant length of time. 

The first is in the ironic position of having actively encouraged the team to develop their skills and competencies over the years with the direct objective of feeling able to move on.  The other has to reguide an independent workforce back into delivering a service in line with organisational rather than individual imperatives. 

Both must maintain morale and direction, as well as service continuity, and ensure that their teams understand and embrace the need for change.

A number of wry smiles were raised at the question of whether restructuring and severance programmes were being conducted on a truly strategic and sustainable basis, or simply on the basis of headcounts and political expediency.  Regardless of local politics, it was acknowledged that the key to successful staff leadership in times of radical change and crisis is clear, honest and frank communication.  Where staff are properly informed in a timely and truly transparent manner, the equally damaging processes of worst-case-scenario rumour mills, or heads-down-it’ll-never-happen-here can both be avoided.  Whether HR departments, with their litigation-wary circumlocutions, always support this frank and fearless approach to communication can be debated endlessly.

Do organisations learn during these processes, or does so much know-how and expertise walk out of the door that every procedure and programme has to be reinvented and revisited for each generation?  Cases in point include some professional services firms whose outsourcing programmes resemble a merry-go-round: units outsourced then brought back in house for failing to deliver either service or efficiencies. Another breakfaster reflected on the schadenfreude of finding their own redundancy resulting in no less than 5 new staff being taken on in another hemisphere.

However our fellow breakfaster were far from doom and despair.  We also heard of exciting expansion programmes in the wake of regulatory change, and a tantalising mention of innovative new hand-held apps in an unexpected sector.  As our time ran out, I returned to work from Roast energised and wanting to hear more.

- Donald

Should Information tip the scales on the balance sheet?

Our Friday breakfast discussions highlighted the importance of online content strategy being understood and supported by everyone in an organisation, in particular at CEO and board level.  Information, unlike a warehouse full of product or work in progress, is invisible and often not recognised or valued as asset.  In the current climate the easily recognised costs of organised access to information are often being cut (the information managers) thus indirectly adding to the cost of ensuring that those who need it can find and identify the appropriate information.  This becomes even more difficult in a global organisation where the cultures may differ and local management have a differing view.  Corporate memory is an eroded value asset.

Equally having a sound information or online content strategy can bring benefits that outstrip information forced into an IT infrastructure that doesn't always fit the need of the users or the organisation.  One delegate mentioned that the corporate ethos of "make search work" was somewhat at odds with several thousand users developing their own mini libraries on local servers without understanding the need for globalised sharing.  This led another delegate to make the point that in their company people only admit where their information stored is if it appears they may lose it or lose access to it.

Risk is always an issue.  Users expect the keepers to circumvent the rules put in place by IT or even to try and bypass contractual limitations. The security of information in the cloud was seen as uncertain - sanctioned by some employers and feared by others.  Social Media is still blocked in certain types of organisation and consequently people use their own personal devices more and more.  This is something that mobile and home working tends to take advantage off.  Providing accessible access to internal information but encouraging staff to provide their own space, PCs and devices cuts overheads whilst at the same time giving risk management a higher profile as organisations try and balance security, access and reputational management.

Intriguingly cultures differ within the same types of organisations and recent co-operation between public organisations has brought that into perspective.  Of three local authorities moving to shared services one has everything outsourced, directly opposite to another where everything is done in-house whilst the third has a mix of both.  Change needs driving from the top down but you often still need information people to make sense of it.

Above all the ability to make a decision (be it right or wrong) is vital as failure to make decisions invariably causes damage and can stall progress.  In a tracked programme of change, four months of 13 months was attributed to failure to make appropriate decisions.  A valuable aid going forward has been to run risk registers alongside the process thus facilitating better decision making.

Asking delegates present to outline the biggest changes they had seen in the last five years brought forth growing user expectations, outsourcing (justification and value), mobile technologies, ways of working, lack of boundaries, globalisation ideology and keeping up with the pace of technological development and concepts.  The final comment brought a wry smile from all those present; "SharePoint is not the answer!"

Sue H

Yam Jam at breakfast - more than just toast and jam

Some interesting words reverberated around the lively agenda-setting session at the breakfast table at Roast on Thursday morning for the first SHR networking breakfast of 2012.  Strategic review was swiftly followed by strategy, business objectives and restructuring; budgets, economy, offsite and time fitted nicely with volume; intranets and wikis; and last but not least governance, reliability and compliance.

 One can be confident that 12 people working in strategic information roles will have something to say.  Those present represented all the facets of information not just sectorally but also nationally and globally

 It was exciting to hear of different organisations' views and usage of the myriad of communication channels.  Not all firms are fast movers and adopters and it seems that IT still hold the reins and are hesitant to condone organisation wide of tweeting, yammer, wikis and more.  Yammer implemented firm wide but working outside of the fire-wall raised eyebrows and certainly was of great concern to IT and we were greatly amused by the idea of a Yam Jam.  The need to drive IT to manage cultural shift away from fear of sharing was high in everyone’s minds.  At least one person found it frustrating and pointed out the difficulties in not being the owners of our destiny and thus needing to take a place in the IT queue which placed CRM ahead of KM.  We needed more time to talk about wikis vs intranets vs web but I heard enough to think I could find a use for an internal team wiki.

 I confess I came straight back to work and checked out http://digbig.com/5bfnkn a great blog by Austin Hunter on how he as a non social media user was able to use Yam Jamming as a way to discuss business priorities. 

Concern about corporate memory and impact of its loss came to the fore.  (Is corporate memory becoming an eroded value asset?)  So too did the mix in old business values re new highly mobile bright social media communicators.  This works well when we can ensure diversity in attitudes to work and life balance and boundaries. It’s good when oldies can understand young folks’ need to publicise all they do, and young ones understanding oldies need for boundaries between work and personal life in return!   

We all felt strategic reviews were happening more frequently and not always with good reason.  They shouldn’t’ be driven by panic.  Some felt them hard to endure and wondered what the end game was but others had found them positive and resulting in the creation of exciting new opportunities, directions and ways of working.

Our delicious breakfast (eggs benedict, full veggie borough, boiled eggs with marmite soldiers and more) nourished us for the day and also nourished our minds.

Résumé On The Dancefloor

I am pleased to introduce another guest blogger Gordon Kaye (@gordon_kaye on Twitter). Gordon has a strong interest in the potential of social media in promotion and recently completed a research study with Sue Hill Recruitment on the role of Facebook in the recruitment industry as part of his MA in Information Studies. Over to you Gordon...

As a DJ and music producer, I developed a strong interest in social media platforms by following how artistes, and particularly new artistes, used these tools to rise through the ranks and emerge as the stars of tomorrow.

Rolling on nearly a decade, it is easy to identify the evolution of social media; LinkedIn reigns as the corporate supreme, Twitter signposts information and hash tags have developed a smart way of performing searches within specific sectors. Facebook is by far the most social of these networks, developing a transparent community where people can share their interests, comments, hobbies, music and video clips. The platform has both been criticised for its part in aiding this Summer’s UK riots and praised for its role in signing up volunteers for the aftermath clean-up operation. However, wherever you stand on the Facebook debate, it is difficult to deny its influence and power.

Whilst studying for a Masters degree in Information Studies at the University of Brighton recently, I based my dissertation on Facebook’s role in the recruitment industry. I welcomed the challenge of investigating whether a social networking site well known for its role in building social communities amongst people with similar interests, could present a suitable place for jobseekers and recruitment agencies to communicate and if, and how, recruitment companies are using Facebook to their competitive advantage.

My investigation examined how students use Facebook as a jobseeking tool and how organisations, both in the recruitment world and outside, were successfully engaging with their audience via Facebook.

My findings unveiled some recruitment companies were using Facebook, but the degrees to which they implemented its use varied dramatically. All saw it as another way of generating traffic to their websites, but some were experimenting and following the trend because they were concerned they might be missing opportunities and only very few had defined strategies. Again, very few measured Facebook’s success in turning enquiries into job applications and even less tracked how many of these transformed to job hires. However, all the agencies in my study believed Twitter was a more successful platform in generating engagement with candidates, but that LinkedIn was significantly the most successful in their campaign.

My research uncovered many ways in which organisations in different sectors were successfully engaging with their public and making financial savings in the process. My findings showed the general consensus in the recruitment world is that it is too early to tell how effective Facebook campaigns have been, because there is very little accurate measurement of the return on investment. There was much evidence to support the positive ways in which Facebook can display a potential employer’s openness and human side and as a place for candidates to see the consultants they are dealing with. In a highly competitive market where candidates have similar skills and qualifications, it can also give employers and agencies a clearer indication of an applicant’s influences, culture, style and the way they communicate in social circles. Facebook can bring valuable information from learning about candidates in a broader sense.

Whatever your point of view, if an organisation is going to successfully engage with their market through Facebook, it is essential that they listen to and involve their audience.  Successful use by organisations encourages their public to communicate by involving them and providing incentives, such as promotional gifts or advice and offers them influence, giving users a sense of power. Some companies’ social media technologies are tightly integrated with how they learn and work, carefully analysing how these forms of media can inform their business strategy and culture in light of surprises and emerging trends. It’s also a place where an organisation can show their social, more informal side. By showing these sides, they may attract a different type of jobseeker. Facebook may also be a more successful platform to engage with passive jobseekers, giving them insight into a work environment and colleagues they could expect to work with.

The main message of my research was that Facebook is not successful for every sector or business and that a defined strategy based on an organisation’s goals should be a careful consideration. However it did identify some of the ways in which Facebook has successfully promoted brand awareness, from artists giving away song downloads to recruitment agencies instigating friend referrals. However, it still remains to be seen whether Facebook is a successful component in the recruitment toolbox. 

BIALL Seminar: James Mullan on Emerging Technologies

There was plenty of food for thought at James Mullan’s presentation on Emerging Technologies last night, hosted by BIALL at Finers Stephens Innocent in Great Portland Street.  James focussed on three areas: applications, technologies and future trends.

The main topic under applications was the emergence of Google+ onto the social media marketplace. While a show of hands round the room showed that only a few people have tested the waters here so far, the message was that this application should not be ignored by anyone interested in social media.  The most innovative features are its ‘hangouts’ and ‘circles’, new methods of online friend management.

However you may already have seen Google’s own internal voices of dissent leaked to Silicon Filter last week, under the  heading "Our complete failure to understand platforms" . One to watch, nonetheless. And should anyone else out there still need convincing of the commercial power of social media, here are some great facts and figures that James pulled out to introduce the evening, courtesy of Eric Qualman's Social Media Revolution video. 

James went on to talk briefly about Cloud Computing, and the growing benefits of software and infrastructure as a service. He very rightly pointed out that information professionals have been in the forefront of using remotely sourced solutions for many years.  However as many of these technologies are now being marketed directly to fee-earners, information workers in the legal sector may need to fight to ensure that service provision is clearly coordinated, and in the short-term the opportunities for service development may be dictated by internal policies of individual firms.  

The second area where law librarians will need to assert themselves is in the development of mobile technologies. At present, the most significant developments are stateside e.g. Fastcase, and subscription applications released by LexisNexis and Westlaw.  Mobile intranets are another growth area, exemplars being UKParliament, and developments in the Higher Education sector, for instance at the Queensland University of Technology.  The questions to consider here are not simply how best to push maximum content to the new environment, but what are the customer imperatives for mobile content, and what will specifically add value to existing services? 

Taking this further, an additional significant question is what will the role of e-books be and how can they be integrated into existing law library & information services.  Again this is a question that has been and is already being actively investigated in the local authority and academic environments.

For another perspective on all of the above, Tom Boone’s article in Information Outlook from February of this year is worth revisiting: “Library Mobile Applications: What Counts as Success?”  

Finally James quickly surveyed some future trends, namely the implications of crowdsourcing, customisation and personalisation, and generally the challenges posed by the emergence of Web 3.0 – the semantic web.  As an occasional Luddite who can be driven to irrational rage by the vagaries of predictive text and Google Instant, these are developments that make me peer over my lunettes in consternation. 

For more on current trends, check out Mary Meeker's recent presentation at this week's Web 2.0 summit via the Business Insider.

Thanks again to James and to BIALL for an enjoyable and informative evening.

- Donald.

Information Architects: the secret librarians of the internet - LIKE26 at the Crown Tavern

One mark of a good public speaker is to appear relaxed and spontaneous.  Two apparently effortless asides bookended Martin Belam’s excellent talk last night at LIKE26. The first was a question on job titles: a good one should fulfill two conditions – it should fit on your business card, and it should explain to your mum what you do at work.  Having had a particularly obscure job title myself not so long ago, I’m guessing that as Lead User Experience & Information Architect at The Guardian, Martin also struggles with both of these conditions. The second aside came in the Q&A session at the end, words to the effect that the purist theory of Information Science in the workplace must always bow to the pragmatism of organisational (and in Martin’s case at the Guardian, editorial) requirements.

Martin gave us a wryly humorous account of his professional development as an information architect. He began in the surly world of Reckless Records in Berwick Street, Soho, where discs were arranged rigorously according to the customer’s expectations (e.g. Nirvana albums appearing alternately in “Rock/Pop” for the hit Nevermind and "US Indie” for the obscure 1^st album coveted only by pre-sellout fans). 

He moved from here to the BBC, working on the early days of the website, and building taxonomies extropolated first from user requests and queries, particularly those of the archetypal Mandy of Bromsgrove, then progressing into the more sophisticated world of search log analysis and content audits.  He closed his talk by outlining the increasing complexity of the Guardian’s tagging systems – which have evolved to the stage where they have their own Twitter account.

Martin contrasted the merits of formal user testing of new information products, with all its lab conditioned drawbacks, with the more playful approach of guerilla sampling of unsuspecting idlers in the British Library.  Where either of these approaches have been exhausted or neglected, user feedback on the launch of  new products can be swift and merciless – viz the sorry tale of the redesigned online Guardian crossword page’s first day in the sun. 

The underlying theme of Martin’s talk, implicit in his opening and closing gambits was that information workers, whatever they choose to call themselves, are constantly engaged in balancing customer demands and behaviour with organisational imperatives, and ergonomic system design in its very widest sense. Over- emphasis on user requirements in information architecture can result in the degeneration of underlying structures, and badly designed systems will never be used properly, either by end users or backroom workers – and these are laments familiar to information managers the world over. 

If I was feeling very clever, I'd probably come up with some smug parallel with Ranganathan's dimly remembered Five Laws of Library Science, but I don't have the time or space.  It would be far more productive to find out more for yourself about Martin's work in his blogs about user experience, journalism and digital media at currybet.net, and on Twitter as @currybet. 

Thanks once again to the LIKE collective for a hugely enjoyable and informative event.

- Donald

Carve your place on the social web

Yesterday I went to an APSCo marketing forum on Active participation in the social web and, much as I did on my way home from Uncaged Monkeys on Monday, I spent my tortuous journey through the City last night (who ordered rain AND traffic chaos on the same night?) thinking about my blog. Where to start? I could tell you that the average age of Facebook users is 38 and that c10,000 sites a day connect with Facebook. Or I could talk about the very many hints, tips and tools we were given (links aplenty). Perhaps the explanation of the latest LinkedIn toys and functions would be useful for you. But I think what has grabbed me most is the discussion around credibility and visibility. This will be old news to some of you and I found myself thinking "we do this" quite often but we are always learning.

 

Our speaker for the afternoon was Paul Harrison of Carve Consulting - yet another inspirational speaker. (It's my great fortune to have heard several this week!)  What he said about engagement struck a particular chord with me - the real value of the social web is meaningful participation. Anyone can tweet/blog/advertise their jobs/products/services but surely the point of social media is connectivity and communication, about relationships and engagement. How many of us have a blind spot when it comes to the right hand advertisements on Google, Amazon and Facebook? So it follows that we would most likely ignore blatant advertising on other forms of the social web. But how much more effective would it be to engage in conversation with your industry? To hear what's happening and start a dialogue, to get your demonstrable expertise out into the market. Connect with people who matter.

 

Paul described these tools and technologies as having fundamentally changed the way we connect. Has that fundamentally changed the way we do business? Yes and no. The yes is pretty easy to see by the aforementioned "visibility" of organisations and people but the no... well, perhaps that's just as easy to see in the lack of visibility. Attendees at the event yesterday spoke about letting their colleagues loose on Twitter & LinkedIn or about not being able to do that because of company policy (or lack thereof). Paul's advice was to be grown up about it. If you give your staff the tools to fly, you must let them practice and they will get better. Take using the phone as an example - the first few calls can be shaky but you get better and more competent. This doesn't have to take a lot of time - 1 comment (140 characters?) per day from each member of your team is a whole lot of expertise and engagement.

 

There is so much I could say about the seminar but I should keep this short and sweet. I daresay I'll be tweeting about it in much smaller doses. The best bit about the afternoon was hearing Paul speak. Articulate, knowledgeable and clearly passionate about his subject, I was completely engaged from his first word and would recommend you get to hear him if at all possible. Certainly if you have anyone who has reservations about the validity of social media in business, tell them that active engagement is free.

 

- Suzanne

Farewell Library, Hello Aptitude Centre

Wellington College, the £30,000 per year school in Berkshire, is planning rather exciting changes for its library, as reported in The Sunday Times on 15 May 2011. Out go the books (80% of the stock will wing its way to Africa and other “worthy causes”) and in comes the Aptitude Centre.  Students can step away from the 140 year old book stacks into the glass walled pods, dip their toes into one of the eight pooled water libraries then pick up one of the iPads before heading for the café. 

The College follows an holistic approach to education, developing each pupil’s gift by nurturing 8 aptitudes -  moral, social, physical etc. Anthony Seldon, College Master, wants the new zone to be a place for students to think and debate. 

Well, he did inherit an “arid” library full of 20,000 books which had barely been updated since the college’s inception in the mid 19^th century.  The library webpage remains mundane, its resource list a reminder that private schools are often stuck in a bit of time warp with architecturally beautiful buildings rather than spaces fit for 21st century purpose.  My son’s inner London secondary school, when rebuilt 3 years ago, was designed around the library with all the classes using whiteboard technology and laptops.

But, as Annie Mauger, the Chief Executive of CILIP points out, literacy rather than the medium through which it is pursued is the key to children’s education.   

The Wellington alumni can always pick a book in the Bodleian; meanwhile hope no one drops an iPad into the water.

- Anne Williams

Solutions and reputations

My poached eggs and bacon came with a side order of budget and politics this morning at the latest SHR Networking Breakfast at Roast. It wasn't a review of the coalition's first 12 months but discussion across records, information and library services and the level to which our colleagues have budget input. The now standard request from on high seems to be "I'm going to reduce your budget but I want you to provide more service". How does this work when there is no more money for requested products or information? Looking at statistics and usage in depth means being able to explain to users exactly why and how products and services are procured, assigned and used. It can also be a shock to aggressive users to discover how little use they do make of an expensive resource (ROI rules!).  It was also suggested that budgets are often presented to us with a lack of realism about what can be achieved.

 

I like a conversation topic that's as hot as my delicious fresh mint tea - we moved on to social media (particularly, Twitter) and brand management. In communicating and marketing online, the watchword is "reputation". How do you control this when everyone is encouraged to contribute? There was more discussion too around personal accounts which comment on work-related matters. Whilst it's vital to communicate to your work and professional networks, there is a need for commercial awareness and to be astute in what you tell the world.

 

We got on to the topic of the IT "solution" (are they ever ultimately "solutions"?) and I'd like to leave you with my favourite quote of the morning: "I have a dishwasher but I still wash dishes by hand!"

- Suzanne