Personal InfoCloud

Four Rings of Enterprise Social Tools

The four elements really have to work together to make for a successful services that people will use and continue to use over time. Yes, I am using a venn diagram for the four rings as it helps point out the overlaps and gaps where the implementations can fall short. The overlaps in the diagram is where the interesting things are happening. A year ago I was running into organizations with self proclaimed success with deployments of social tools (blogs, wikis, social bookmarking, forums, etc.), but as the desire for more than a simple set of blogs (or whichever tool or set of tools was selected) in-house there is a desire for greater use beyond some internal early adopters. This requires paying close attention to the four rings.

Tools

The first ring is rather obvious, it is the tools. The tools come down to functionality and features that are offered, how they are run (OS, rack mount, other software needed, skills needed to keep them running, etc.), how the tools are integrated into the organization (authentication, back-up, etc.), external data services, and the rest of the the usual IT department checklist. The tools get a lot of attention from many analysts and tech evangelists. There is an incredible amount of attention on widgets, feeds, APIs, and elements for user generated contribution. But, the tools do not get you all of the way to a successful implementation. The tools are not a mix and match proposition.

Interface & Ease of Use

One thing that the social software tools from the consumer web have brought is ease of use and simple to understand interfaces. The tools basically get out of the way and bring in more advanced features and functionality as needed. The interface also needs to conform to expectations and understandings inside an organization to handle the flow of interaction. What works for one organization may be difficult for another organization, largely due to the tools and training, and exposure to services outside their organization. Many traditional enterprise tools have been trying to improve the usability and ease of use for their tools over the last 4 to 5 years or so, but those efforts still require massive training and large binders that walk people through the tools. If the people using the tools (not administering the tools need massive amounts of training or large binders for social software the wrong tool has been purchased).

Sociality

Sociality is the area where people manage their sharing of information and their connections to others. Many people make the assumption that social tools focus on everything being shared with everybody, but that is not the reality in organizations. Most organizations have tight boundaries on who can share what with whom, but most of those boundaries get in the way. One of the things I do to help organizations is help them realize what really needs to be private and not shared is often much less than what they regulate. Most people are not really comfortable sharing information with people they do not know, so having comfortable spaces for people to share things is important, but these spaces need to have permeable walls that encourage sharing and opening up when people are sure they are correct with their findings.

Sociality also includes the selective groups people belong to in organizations for project work, research, support, etc. that are normal inside organizations to optimize efficiency. But, where things get really difficult is when groups are working on similar tasks that will benefit from horizontal connections and sharing of information. This horizontal sharing (as well as diagonal sharing) is where the real power of social tools come into play as the vertical channels of traditional organization structures largely serve to make organizations inefficient and lacking intelligence. The real challenge for the tools is the capability to surface the information of relevance from selective groups to other selective groups (or share information more easily out) along the way. Most tools are not to this point yet, largely because customers have not been asking for this (it is a need that comes from use over time) and it can be a difficult problem to solve.

One prime ingredient for social tool use by people is providing a focus on the people using the tools and their needs for managing the information they share and the information from others that flow through the tool. Far too often the tools focus on the value the user generated content has on the system and information, which lacks the focus of why people use the tools over time. People use tools that provide value to them. The personal sociality elements of whom are they following and sharing things with, managing all contributions and activities they personally made in a tool, ease of tracking information they have interest in, and making modifications are all valuable elements for the tools to incorporate. The social tools are not in place just to serve the organization, they must also serve the people using the tools if adoption and long term use important.

Encouraging Use

Encouraging use and engagement with the tools is an area that all organizations find they have a need for at some point and time. Use of these tools and engagement by people in an organization often does not happen easily. Why? Normally, most of the people in the organization do not have a conceptual framework for what the tools do and the value the individuals will derive. The value they people using the tools will derive needs to be brought to the forefront. People also usually need to have it explained that the tools are as simple as they seem. People also need to be reassured that their voice matters and they are encouraged to share what they know (problems, solutions, and observations).

While the egregious actions that happen out on the open web are very rare inside an organization (transparency of who a person is keeps this from happening) there is a need for a community manager and social tool leader. This role highlights how the tools can be used. They are there to help people find value in the tools and provide comfort around understanding how the information is used and how sharing with others is beneficial. Encouraging use takes understanding the tools, interface, sociality, and the organization with its traditions and ways of working.

The Overlaps

The overlaps in the graphic are where things really start to surface with the value and the need for a holistic view. Where two rings over lap the value is easy to see, but where three rings overlap the missing element or element that is deficient is easier to understand its value.

Tools and Interface

Traditional enterprise offerings have focussed on the tools and interface through usability and personalization. But the tools have always been cumbersome and the interfaces are not easy to use. The combination of the tools and interface are the core capabilities that traditionally get considered. The interface is often quite flexible for modification to meet an organizations needs and desires, but the capabilities for the interface need to be there to be flexible. The interface design and interaction needs people who have depth in understanding the broad social and information needs the new tools require, which is going to be different than the consumer web offerings (many of them are not well thought through and do not warrant copying).

Tools and Sociality

Intelligence and business needs are what surface out of the tools capabilities and sociality. Having proper sociality that provides personal tools for managing information flows and sharing with groups as well as everybody as it makes sense to an individual is important. Opening up the sharing as early as possible will help an organization get smarter about itself and within itself. Sociality also include personal use and information management, which far few tools consider. This overlap of tools and sociality is where many tools are needing improvement today.

Interface and Encouraging Use

Good interfaces with easy interaction and general ease of use as well as support for encouraging use are where expanding use of the tools takes place, which in turn improves the return on investment. The ease of use and simple interfaces on combined with guidance that provides conceptual understanding of what these tools do as well as providing understanding that eases fears around using the tools (often people are fearful that what they share will be used against them or their job will go away because they shared what they know, rather than they become more valuable to an organization by sharing as they exhibit expertise). Many people are also unsure of tools that are not overly cumbersome and that get out of the way of putting information in to the tools. This needs explanation and encouragement, which is different than in-depth training sessions.

 

Sociality and Encouraging Use

The real advantages of social tools come from the combination of getting sociality and encouraging use correct. The sociality component provides the means to interact (or not) as needed. This is provided by the capabilities of the product or products used. This coupled with a person or persons encouraging use that show the value, take away the fears, and provide a common framework for people to think about and use the tools is where social comfort is created. From social comfort people come to rely on the tools and services more as a means to share, connect, and engage with the organization as a whole. The richness of the tools is enabled when these two elements are done well.

The Missing Piece in Overlaps

This section focusses on the graphic and the three-way overlaps (listed by letter: A; B; C; and D). The element missing in the overlap or where that element is deficient is the focus.

Overlap A

This overlap has sociality missing. When the tool, interface, and engagement are solid, but sociality is not done well for an organization there may be strong initial use, but use will often stagnate. This happens because the sharing is not done in a manner that provides comfort or the services are missing a personal management space to hold on to a person's own actions. Tracking one's own actions and the relevant activities of others around the personal actions is essential to engaging socially with the tools, people, and organization. Providing comfortable spaces to work with others is essential. One element of comfort is built from know who the others are whom people are working with, see Elements of Social Software and Selective Sociality and Social Villages (particularly the build order of social software elements) to understand the importance.

Overlap B

This overlap has tools missing, but has sociality, interface, and encouraging use done well. The tools can be deficient as they may not provide needed functionality, features, or may not scale as needed. Often organizations can grow out of a tool as their needs expand or change as people use the tools need more functionality. I have talked with a few organizations that have used tools that provide simple functionality as blogs, wikis, or social bookmarking tools find that as the use of the tools grows the tools do not keep up with the needs. At times the tools have to be heavily modified to provide functionality or additional elements are needed from a different type of tool.

Overlap C

Interface and ease of use is missing, while sociality, tool, and encouraging use are covered well. This is an area where traditional enterprise tools have problems or tools that are built internally often stumble. This scenario often leads to a lot more training or encouraging use. Another downfall is enterprise tools are focussed on having their tools look and interact like consumer social web tools, which often are lacking in solid interaction design and user testing. The use of social tools in-house will often not have broad use of these consumer services so the normal conventions are not understood or are not comfortable. Often the interfaces inside organizations will need to be tested and there many need to be more than one interface and feature set provided for depth of use and match to use perceptions.

Also, what works for one organization, subset of an organization, or reviewer/analyst will not work for others. The understanding of an organization along with user testing and evaluation with a cross section of real people will provide the best understanding of compatibility with interface. Interfaces can also take time to take hold and makes sense. Interfaces that focus on ease of use with more advanced capabilities with in reach, as well as being easily modified for look and interactions that are familiar to an organization can help resolve this.

Overlap D

Encouraging use and providing people to help ease people's engagement is missing in many organizations. This is a task that is often overlooked. The tools, interface, and proper sociality can all be in place, but not having people to help provide a framework to show the value people get from using the tools, easing concerns, giving examples of uses for different roles and needs, and continually showing people success others in an organization have with the social tool offerings is where many organization find they get stuck. The early adopters in an organization may use the tools as will those with some familiarity with the consumer web social services, but that is often a small percentage of an organization.

Summary

All of this is still emergent and early, but these trends and highlights are things I am finding common. The two areas that are toughest to get things right are sociality and encouraging use. Sociality is largely dependent on the tools, finding the limitations in the tools takes a fair amount of testing often to find limitations. Encouraging use is more difficult at the moment as there are relatively few people who understand the tools and the context that organizations bring to the tools, which is quite different from the context of the consumer social web tools. I personally only know of a handful or so of people who really grasp this well enough to be hired. Knowing the "it depends moments" is essential and knowing that use is granular as are the needs of the people in the organization. Often there are more than 10 different use personas if not more that are needed for evaluating tools, interface, sociality, and encouraging use (in some organizations it can be over 20). The tools can be simple, but getting this mix right is not simple, yet.

Social Tools and Services

To start this tutorial the understanding of the object that is central to social interaction need to be understood. Often in digital social environments there is a social object that is at the core of the discussion (see Jyri Engestrom's post on Karin Cetina Knorr's "object mediated sociality", which he brings to the web an understanding of social objects). These social objects form the frame of focus for discussion and social interaction, be it a photo in Flickr or a post in a person's blog that is being discussed in the comments or tagged, annotated, or blogged about in another post, much of the social web is built upon social objects or the creation of sociality around objects. These social objects are the focus of this discussion as it is the focus of the discussion and annotation that is being brought into focus here.

Collective

I am starting with the collective understanding. The collective as seen in the first graphic has three layers: 1) the object being discussed; 2) the discussion or annotation of or about the object; 3) the people annotating or discussing the object. The object is the focus of collective, the individual's voices and annotations are held separate as each individual is working as an individual. The individuals annotations and contributions can be aggregated or collected (a helpful connection is the collective is based on collecting) and surfaced as an aggregate. This aggregate is what allows folksonomy, as it surfaced in del.icio.us providing understanding how many people use a single tag term on an object. But, this same approach in folksonomy helps discern slight or vast differences between understanding around an object. We can see what an object may be commonly by many in a folksonomy, but we can also see differences in perspective and context.

The deep and rich value in tagging from a folksonomy perspective is created in the collective structure of tagging with the individual voices held separate around the understanding of the individual. The ability for anybody and everybody to tag and annotate and object and have their perspective captured is a very strong value for each individual who has hopes of refinding the object in their own perspective and context, as well as having others whom have similar understanding find the same object. Lacking the understanding of collective approach is lacking the understanding of folksonomy and leave incredible value out of a service as the depth and breadth of understanding supports the human collective mind as it exists.

Collaborative

The collaborative understanding has value as it allows for capturing consensus and usually aims at completeness. The collaborative approach has individuals contributing understanding of their perspective of an object, but it done so with everybody working together to build one understanding (often a comprehensive understanding), but often with the aim of the work building the understanding out of one voice capturing many perspectives. The depth and of understanding is flattened - if the object is a picture of a sunset, once it is annotated as being a sunset there is no value in many others making the same statement. Quite often a wiki page on a subject is used as an example of a collaborative effort.

Social bookmarking can be collaborative when a group is working to capture all objects on a subject matter and annotate them, but this is rare occurrence. There is a need for this when organizations are doing competitive analysis of other organizations work on a subject matter and the aim is to be as exhaustive as possible. Often the competitive exercises are done in selective social spaces that are closed to all but members of the group doing the work.

In the past I have describe Flickr as a narrow folksonomy, which is a rough synonym for collaborative tagging. There is value missing in Flickr tagging (I am always hopeful they will add the collective individual tagging into Flickr as I see great value to the service and the individuals who are tagging other people's photos by being able to tag a photo of a sunset as a sunset, which would all the person tagging to have a nice collection of things they call sunset as well as reinforce it is about a sunset). Flickr does allow for this type of tagging to a degree, but only provides access to the tags by API (Flickr has had many other things on their plate that the community has placed higher priority on). But, the collaborative tagging approach is often copied from Flickr by services that do not have the massive user contribution, which provides Flickr to do insanely brilliant algorithmic understanding of what is in their service (like interestingness and clustering).

The understanding of collaboration has trickled out of business and academic understanding of most anything social in an organization being categorized as being collaborative. The aim in the 1990s was for business and organizations to use digital collaboration tools to let people to work together across distance and to capture understanding. At this point most of what was being done was collaborative, with the focus on building one document or deliverable (marketing report and sale projections, etc.). Many of the tools that business used and the academic community in information science studied were tools that were trying to foster collaboration or a collaborative knowledge with in the organization.

Tools Improved and Collaborative and Collective Tools Evolved

Today we have grown well beyond the relatively poor tool foisted upon unsuspecting employees as knowledge management tools with the wonderful goal of capturing and sharing knowledge (often through complex tools that created excuses for adding new required form fields) [I have lived through the implementation and non-use of many of these painful KM tools, which did market what is now capable and far less painful in the tools of today]. Today people wanting to hold on to information or a media object can easily bookmark the object in their social bookmarking tool from their own perspective to greatly ease refinding the object later, as well as share that object with others who are near in thought or have similar interests. This collective approach is still being incorrectly called collective through habit of calling anything social collaborative even though the tools that are now delivering on the promise of the last 15 years (which the tools of the past damaged the hope that proper tools could work).

Those building tools and implementing tools (I am looking squarely at you large consulting firms who use the old models to mis-understand, provide poor strategy, and improperly implement tools that should work well) must expand their vocabulary and understanding by one term and add collective to their lovely term (when used properly) collaborative.

Companies Claiming to Get Web 2.0

Nearly all of the enterprise software product companies are claiming understanding of Web 2.0, but none execute well on it and very few show promise of getting to good products (not even targeting great yet) in the near future. The companies placing a stake, include:

• BEA: Traditional enterprise clunky and difficult to use interfaces
• IBM: A good start with their Connections social software stack, but none of the tools are close to current practices and not to best practices. A version 2.0 may fix a lot of the issues. This is the best of this traditional enterprise bunch.
• Microsoft: Leads their efforts with their newest version of Sharepoint. Sharepoint creates mini silos that are difficult to share information out of. The opposite of openness, sharing, and efficiency (tenets of Web 2.0).
• Oracle: Offers sprinkling of Ajax interfaces and Web 2.0-like features, but really misses
• SAP: As far as I can tell they have not launched anything yet

The best of this bunch with the most promise is IBM at the moment. IBM is saying all the right things and their products, while not current best practices or close yet, show they have most of the right foundation and the whisperings of version 2 sound like that could be a really useful tool for enterprise. IBM is using their own tools in-house and getting a lot of feedback there from eating their own dog food.

The BEA product I have only been able to watch video demos as my request to get hands on demonstration was turned down as I am not a direct buyer (I have three large clients interested in the products that are wanting my feedback and that will drive their decision to purchase or not). The BEA screen shots show really poor traditional enterprise software interfaces and while including trendy (but often not helpful) tag clouds and other hints they heard the buzzwords, the tools are not really more than old enterprise software in Web 2.0 clothing.

Microsoft Sharepoint is every enterprise's darling for a few weeks. Sharepoint built on top of its existing teamware, collaboration, and workflow tools from the prior version and added easier to use interfaces. The downside for organizations is it creates mini silos of content and ideas that can benefit the whole organization. There is a lot of frustration around Sharepoint in enterprise as it is more difficult to get it to do what is desired and the silo issues are often problematic. I do like Sharepoint as it triggers business for me, with enterprises wanting to better understand and get smart on what social software in the enterprise could do for them if they get it right (this is what I do at InfoCloud Solutions, Inc. for customers, get them smart on possibilities and good practices, which usually leads to helping the technology vendors improving their products for use).

Oracle seems to have added "features" into their offerings (based on what Oracle developers tell me), but there is little solid there to talk about.

SAP is an unknown as they have not launched anything as of yet that I can tell.

What Should Be in Web 2.0 for Enterprise

One of the core pieces of the Web 2.0 mantra is Ease of Use. Most enterprise software over the years has been "ease of abuse". Enterprise software is apparently supposed to come with very large manuals. The interfaces need to be cleaned up and focus on affordance and improved task processes that allow for diversions (say, fix an address while entering a sales order should hover to fix the address not require you to go back to the beginning).

Providing ease of sharing information as well as ease for holding on to information that has value to individuals. Sharing is a really sticky problem in most large organizations as many are built around heavy privacy (some of it for good reason, but an incredible is overly cautions and hinders efficiency and being a smart organization). Sharing to make an organization smart and knowledgeable requires openness. There is yet to be an enterprise service that account for openness and needed privacy well. Many require a gatekeeper and permission, which are both bottlenecks. There does not seem to be a trust in employees to do the right thing. Most management can not come up with a valid worse case scenario that is viable, but still strong privacy is important. As one CIO commented to me, "we know we need social software inside our organization as we recognize the strong value, but we need to greatly limit sharing and have everything private." At least that person recognized the value of social software, the next step is sorting out that most things inside the organization do not need to be private (20 to 30 percent is usually what needs to be private) so to make a smarter, more knowledgable, and more efficient organization that is more competitive.

Today's Viable Web 2.0 Tools for Enterprise

While the big companies are not quite grasping how to vastly improve their offerings to enterprise, there are many companies that do grasp that is needed and being demanded by many enterprise organizations. There are many of these companies, but the ones I see performing well in enterprise and companies are happy with are the following for in-house enterprise solutions:

• ConnectBeam for social bookmarking that intelligently incorporates with your existing enterprise search
• Cogenz for social bookmarking for smaller companies and are comfortable with the service being hosted outside the firewall.
• SocialText for enterprise wiki and adding needed wiki tools into Sharepoint
• Atlassian for enterprise wiki and an increasing array for social software options
• MobableType Enterprise Edition for blogging, identity management, community support, and profile tools
• WordPress with Automattic Services for blogging
• Drupal for a full platform for social software development.

There are many more options on this front, but these are the ones that are getting the most interest and high marks from people using them.

The Next Step

Those organization who have been implementing real social software solutions in-house are finding they are needing another layer after the tools have been running for a while. When the tools catch on, and the most often do, there will be a good amount of new content and sorting through it, analyzing it, and finding the best relevant information out of it (be it blogs, wikis, social bookmarking, collaboration tools, etc.) needs tools. Most of these tools will need to be built in-house as solutions are not yet there (other than enterprise search and its augmentations). Most organization do not see the need for these tools until 9 months to 24 months in, but it will come. There is good information and there is great information, but much of it all depends on the hand the information is in. On the web we are not quite there yet, but we are getting closer with tools like Lijit, and some of the ConnectBeam's relevance understanding is helpful.

I will likely be doing more in depth looks at these tools over the coming months. But if you need help sorting through what social software means to your organization and help analyzing needs and best products for your organization, please feel free to contact me through InfoCloud Solutions.

Overview of the Local InfoCloud

The Local InfoCloud started as an idea of information that was physically close. What is stored or accessed by physical location (information that is physically close) as in an Intranet or location-based information accessed on your mobile device. The more I thought about it and chatted with others it became clear it was more than physical location, it is information resources that are familiar and easier to access than the whole of the web (Global InfoCloud) as a framing concept.

As the my understanding began to lean toward familiarity as a core component of the definition of Local InfoCloud, the term began to embrace the social and community aspects (I am working on shying away from the term community as it is a broadly used term and I am trying to be a little more precise). Interactions with people, services, networks, applications, etc. that are familiar are means of bringing information closer to us as people with data, information, and media needs. The Local InfoCloud eases access. It eases the ability to find and refind information. It is information that is closer to us, not necessarily in physical proximity, but in the ability to access, in which familiarity is bread.

I spent much time considering changing the label from local to community or social, but there were elements that did not perfectly fit that either. Location-based services may be created by a service, but understanding the mindset, terminology, dialect, and cognitive frameworks that are germane to that physical location the information can be structured to resemble or mirror the social elements of understanding in that place. I will get to a better understanding of this when I talk about the Location aspect of the Local InfoCloud. As well, thinking in the Model of Attraction framework the Local InfoCloud is that which is attracted closer to us than the Global InfoCloud.

Important Attributes

There are some attributes that are important to the Local InfoCloud and separate it from the Global InfoCloud and ease the ability to integrate or draw the information and/or media in to the Personal InfoCloud.

Familiarity

As mentioned above familiarity is an essential attribute. Familiarity can be through vocabulary and terminology used to describe or discuss information and objects that people are trying to find and use. The taxonomy or germane ontologies are important to understand as they help ease the connection between the person seeking the information and objects and those providing it.

Access

Access to a resource is very important as it is in the ease of access that we rely on the Local InfoCloud. There is information that is in systems or in locations that others can not get to (that would make it in other's Eternal InfoCloud), but ability to get to the information is important. The ability to get back to the information (through password locked systems, access only by location, etc.) that dictates access is a key attribute.

Structure

Structure is a key attribute in the seeking, finding, and refinding information and objects. In a physical neighborhood we know that a corner store is on the corner, but in a portal we know that movie reviews have a certain URL structure and/or that we can click on a Entertainment button/link to get to the page that links to the movie reviews. Reading one movie review in a familiar site we know how to get to other movie reviews. These browsing structures allow the person to interact and attract information to their screen easily.

Known Actions

Known actions are the element in peoples lives that provide patterns that can be repeated to get to what the person desires. Many times people know how to get to, or more appropriately get back to what they are interested in through indirect connections. A favorite resource may be on a friend's link page as they have not set a direct means to connect to that source or to even draw that information to them to cut down the effort expended. Applications and location-based information are other environments that depend upon known actions to connect people to that which they desire.

Consistency

Consistency is a main attribute driver to our use and reuse of a component in the Local InfoCloud. Consistency breeds familiarity as people learn the terminology, can bookmark, use the known actions to get back to information, or guess how to get access to other items of interest. Having URL structures that are consistent provides a means to get at open information as well as permits the person to restructure means to keep that information closer to them (external social bookmarking as an example).

Copy, Point & Tether

Copy, Point & Tether are actions that a person can take to move information from a Local InfoCloud to the Personal InfoCloud. The attributes are germane to the Personal InfoCloud, but also have importance in the Local InfoCloud often the Local InfoCloud embraces these concepts to ease these actions.

When a person finds data, information, or media objects of interest they most often do one of three things: Copy the item to keep it close (hard drive, flash drive, scan to a drive, scrape to a drive, etc.); Point to the location where the information is located (bookmark, link, blog, wiki, etc.); or Tether the item which is desired by copying or pointing, but then setting a means to get notified when that item has been changed, updated, moved, etc. through tools like RSS/ATOM, e-mail, a pinging service, etc. The tethering is insanely important for items that are anything but completely static over the very long-term (think years not shorter) and it will be getting its own long write-up in the future (subscribe to the RSS here to tether your interest to the future content).

Components

Now we can look at the components that can comprise the Local InfoCloud. Each of these have one or more of the attributes. The components are digital and physical in nature. Components may or may not be exclusive, as some Local InfoCloud resources may be comprised of more than one component.

Location

Location was the first component of the Local InfoCloud I considered. Location is important as the physical place has characteristics that draw various attributes together. Location often has a familiarity with terms and language that frame the items within it. The structure of the physical surroundings play an important part in how and where things are located in that location. Tools that are implemented by location are kiosks, GPS/location-based information systems, games that use physical space to provide rewards or clues, language translation tools that are needed in a location, physical location can provide, ease, hinder or censor access to information, and access points to get information can be germane to location (mobile devices need local permissions to access services, etc.).

Friends (and Family)

There is one area that is often over looked as friends and family are not always digital resources, but can provide incredible means of information. Knowing a friend (or she has a good friend) who is an expert in the subject that we need understanding of is very helpful. We can call or visit that person, but we can also e-mail, chat, or have a video conversation with the person to get access to the information or knowledge. In social networks it is common that people will use those whom they are most familiar as a resource to get access to stored knowledge or use the person as a ready pointer to how to get the items they need. Access and familiarity are very strong attributes with friends and family. Often we do not have to tap the person to get the information, but the friend will e-mail us a pointer that they believe we have an interest in consuming. We can save e-mail (as that pointer or container of information is structured by a face or name we have known connections and have put them in context, much in the way they do with us.

A person's preferred method becomes a known action for us. We know the times we can tap somebody with a question or what tools they prefer to communicate using. We know friends who love to talk and their best means of interaction is the phone or an audio chat, while others are more apt to respond to e-mail, text chat, text messaging on their mobile device, or respond to a blog post. Over time we learn not only what is easy to get from whom, but the best means to interact to get the what we desire.

Near in Thought

We have resources that we rely upon because we have similar taste, interest, and/or perspectives on the genre or facet of life the resource covers, more directly these resources are near in thought to us. Politics is an easy example as the terminology used in and around the items we are seeking is known to us and we have expectations that we will like or agree with what is provided from that resource. Beyond politics we have resources with similar interests, perspectives and taste that help filter and provide easier access to items we desire. These resources are not only familiar but they often are structured in a manner that we understand the naming conventions for categories and other resource are easy for use to use and predict what will be brought closer to us through actions. These resources may be whole web sites, journals, writers, blogs, periodicals, etc.

Affiliations

In our life we belong to many groups. These groups have their own terminology and structures for things. Some of these affiliations will be easy to grasp how to access the resources at first opportunity, while others will come through enculturation of learning the structures and terminology. Through consistancy of the affiliations we increase our ability to use these resources to our benefit.

Organizations

Organizations are things we can belong to or join, like a knitting group, local chapter of a national affinity society, etc. These memberships in the organizations allow greater interaction with others with similar interests and/or needs. Organizations can have gated resources that are only access through membership or affiliation with that group.

Work

Work was the initial driver behind the Local InfoCloud as it was information and resources on an Intranet that was the initial understanding of local. But, work also has its own terminology, known actions, and structure. Over time we learn the resources, both digital, physical, and human that provide us access to information and knowledge.

Social Software

Social software can be device-based or network-based (web, internet, intranet, etc.) and the software builds consistency, structure, and known actions over time. If the software is built well the hurdles will be low to understanding how to get at the items we want and need. The software connects people and provides individuals the ability to contribute content and connect with others with similar interest and needs. Social software may connect people over time in an asynchronous manner as a person can leave an answer to a question at one point in time, but everybody with that same question or interest will have the capability to get to the same answer and potentially connect with that person as a known expert/resource through time.

The software becomes the conduit for connecting people and the data, information, and media the people share and/or discuss and augment. It also provides the means to connect people who are near in thought. It is one means for us to share things we would like feedback on. Social software mitigates distance for connecting people around common interests and can mitigate time as we do not need to be on at the same time to interact. Some examples are online discussion groups, listserves, social bookmarking, social networking, blogs, chat software, etc.

Portals

Portals in this meaning are the large aggregation sites that collect information and media into a familiar interface. Tools like AOL, Yahoo, news sites, aggregated shopping sites, etc. are portals with familiar structures that are consistent. Portals make a learnable interface to a variety of data, information, and media objects. Some are interest-based, while others are extremely broad. Similar to a newspaper or magazine the portal has one set of structures to grasp and access remains constant over time. We will easily know where to find movie reviews, car sales, discussion lists, various genre of news, etc.

Wrap-up

This is still a work in progress to some degree. Feedback on these attributes and components is always welcome. There may be some editing to this page, but more than likely the modifications will be in pages and posts that follow-on under this Local InfoCloud category.

The Candidates

I have already loaded Curio and been trying it for a little more than a week. The tool is not as integrated as I would like. I have not had success dropping PDF or OmniGraffle files into the Idea Space. The external files are held in an organizer, but I can not annotate these files in a more direct manner. The Idea Space is much like a lightweight OmniGraffle and OmniOutliner, which I have and are better tools. I do like the Dossier, which is a questionairre for each project, but I would like to have more than one available for each project as it currently seems is the limit.

James showed me his implementation of iView, which is mostly a digital asset management system. James does most of his thinking in a notebook (possibly a moleskin) and is filled with text and wonderful drawings to capture his ideas. James in turn scans the contents of his notebook into his laptop and uses iView to annotate and view his ideas. The digital assets can be annotated and then sorted and grouped. This seems like it would work for some of my information, but not everything for me. I have not had a scanner for about a year and have not been used to having our new scanner available again so that I could scan in my graph paper notebook.

Jesse brought up VoodooPad as an option. VoodooPad is built on a Wiki technology. I am not a fan of Wiki technology for group project tracking, but for self annotation and having the ability to link to files on my hard drive by drag-and-drop I can see the value. Tanya mentioned she had a similar system using a personal Wiki that worked very well for herself in new environments. VoodooPad may be my next try as I really like having the ability to cross-link ideas.

I have been trying StickyBrain 2 for a few months now, but I have not been fully dedicated to trying it. The initial idea behind StickyBrain works for me, but the interface and the junk preloaded in it have cluttered the interface before I even began. The interface to add info into StickyBrian is very nice as it is in the mouse-related menu (right mouse click for those with such devices). Content in StickyBrain can be categorized, but that can get out of hand. StickyBrain also as a search tool, but unless I have annotated the information correctly, I do not always do so, I can not find it.

Bryan suggested AquaMinds NoteTaker, which I have not seen in action, but the site does offer very good movies that explain how information is entered and how the too can be used. To some degree this is how I use OmniOutliner, but NoteTaker seems to have far more functionality. This will be one I try and compare to OmniOutliner.

Lastly is Tinderbox a note taking tool and idea organizer. Tinderbox's strengths seem to be based on getting this information on to the Web, which is not my initial need. I know a couple people who have been very happy with Tinderbox in the past, but I do not know if they are still using Tinderbox. I looked at this tool when I was thinking about a change from my vanderwal.net weblogging tool that I build, but I was not thinking in terms of finding a tool to better organize my digital thoughts and artifacts of thought.

Conclusion

I will be downloading these of the next couple weeks and I will be writing reviews on them as I try them. I have a couple articles and other items due in the next couple weeks so I may be texting by fire and not having too much time to summarize the results of my testing.