Kim Feraday

Expertise location, social context and credentialing

Adina Levin, VP of Products at Socialtext, has been writing some great posts of late (Social context for distributed social networks, Tags for ActivityStrea.ms, and others) on the need for creating social context in order to focus attention. This is becoming increasingly important as the volume of content (blogs, microblogs, activity streams...) continues to grow.

Social context as defined by Levin is "the way that people think about what’s relevant to share to whom". In order to capture and maintain attention in distributed social networks we need to be able to share profile data and content at a much more granular level than we can do today. As an avid road cyclist new to Vancouver this would allow me to share aspects of my profile of La Bicicletta Pro Shop Cycling Club on Facebook -- my background in triathlon and cycling, a blog where I write about cycling and so on. Other members of the community would be more likely to be interested in this information as opposed to professional information or other interests or hobbies. Similarly, when I'm sharing information through my blog or twitter, I can more finely target the intended audience using tags.

Last week Ross Mayfield, President of Socialtext, responded to an article in the WSJ (Who Knows What?) that makes the argument that blog, wikis and tagging should be actively used in locating expertise in large organizations. Mayfield's response was supportive but he noted that microblogging and activity streams should be included in locating expertise. Including activities and interactions from blogs and activity streams will provide more valuable insight into credentials than static profile data.

These posts are really addressing the same issues from different perspectives -- Levin addresses the problem of disclosure and Mayfield addresses discovery. The same capabilities and tools are needed to address both. I need to be able to share profile information (that may be distributed) and content (including microblogs and activity streams) based on the different personas I have -- professional, academic, personal. Tagging can provide context to content including blogs and activity streams and profile data. Levin argues that distributed profile data can allow individuals to create different personas. 

Having worked in a large organization I can attest to the fact that using profile data exclusively can be  difficult and time consuming even when profiles have social network capabilities. It's also true that leveraging social media in expertise location is useful -- because it shows both expertise and interest. Someone blogging on specific issues demonstrates knowledge that a credential alone can't. And it also shows an interest and passion for the subject matter which is equally important. Monitoring activity streams confirms interest and engagement that is also useful in the credentialing process.

But credentials also contain information that is important in the credentialing process -- professional and academic experience and designations, and even interests and hobbies. As the WSJ points out adding tags to profile data can aid in searches.

As Levin points out the practice of tagging content isn't very explicit or well defined -- although she also point to the ActivityStrea.ms proposal as a possible solution to sharing content. To really make tags useful in either syndication or aggregation of content some measure of standardization should also be considered. Having spent the past decade in the master data management world it seems that some of the core capabilities such as name and address standardization could be used to make tagging more effective. Name standardization for example uses a thesaurus's in order to improve duplicate suspect processing (so for example I can recognize Smith, Smythe, Smithe etc.).

Here's and example that I ran into recently with twitter lists. I was looking for web site designers lists. What I found was that many of the same names showed up in design, webdesign, webdevelopment and similar concepts. Providing a thesaurus capability that would identify and group similar concepts is essential for success in tagging. Search analytic capabilities -- clustering and categorization could play an important role in this process.

Making profile data more granular by allowing individuals to create personas would greatly improve its usefulness in expertise location. The basic capabilities are already available. JanRain's RPX solution (based on OpenID/Oauth) supports aggregation or extended profile data from multiple sites to build a rich profile. Extending the RPX data model to support personas can be informed by how MDM solutions allow for similar capabilities. Personas can then manage how rich profile data is shared

What would really make this compelling and really useful in locating expertise though would be some additional level of automation in the credentialing process. For this why not look to the credit industry for help? FICO type scores that analyzed both rich profile data and social media and generated "credential scores". Scores could be generated and stored for each persona and added to profile data to support and simplify the process of locating expertise.

Expanding the use and capabilities of both rich profile data and tagging to will aid in both the discovery and disclosure -- whether in the support of credentialing and expertise location or community building.

Margaret Wente at it again

I don't know why I let Margaret Wente get to me. I know it's what she wants. It's what keeps her employed. But once again she is spewing more climate denier garbage (Why people are chilled by warming)and thanks to the platform given to her by the Globe and Mail, there are a lot of people who will read her and buy into the whole denier argument. 

What I didn't know before today is that she is on the board of Energy Probe, a leading climate denier organization. The Globe doesn't make that fact clear when they let her churn out the propaganda. This is clearly a conflict of interest. Why doesn't the Globe make full disclosure including any financial or other considerations given to her by Energy Probe? A big black mark on the Globe as a "news" organization as far as I'm concerned. 

On emergent systems in government and government as platform

David Eaves has been writing some interesting posts (how gcpedia will save the public service; emergent systems in government: let's put the horse before the cart; and others) on how the Canadian government could/should be leveraging Web 2.0 technologies to become more responsive and transparent. Which is all good but like all technocrats he seems all too willing to embrace technology as the panacea for all government ills. 

Here are two examples. In the "emergent systems of government" post he criticizes Paul McDowell, Knowledge Management Advisor at the Government's School of the Public Service, for suggesting that only leadership and adequately trained people (craftsmen) will be able to give purpose to the technology to enable success. 

Eaves response is twofold. First, that because the costs of deployment are so low you don't have to plan for release. You simply "release, test and adapt (or kill the project)". Secondly, Eaves feels that the last thing government needs is more leadership, that government should become more employee centric: "Users - not their bosses or a distant IT overlord - decide a) if they want to participate and b) co-develop and decide what is useful." 

There has been a fair amount of debate lately about how the emergent nature of web 2.0 technologies will democratize large organizations (not just government. Dennis Howlett triggered a firestorm last month when he wrote "Enterprise 2.0: what a crock". Essentially, as with McDowell, Howlett feels that without structure, Enterprise/Web 2.0 technologies won't be very successful. You need to start with "simple identifiable solutions to internal problems. I can let those solutions increment so that what emerges is a changed organization." An essential ingredient to this success? A "different type of engineer -- a business mentor capable of understanding the DNA of each business with which I interact. That's the job of educators, organizational social psychologists and wise business managers." In other words what you need is strong and effective leadership to give structure and purpose to the technology. Otherwise it ain't going to work. Howlett's evidence? Decades of failure in BPM for not embracing these values. 

Interestingly, in some very important ways, Mike Indinopulos, VP Professional Services and Customer Success at Socialtext agrees with Howlett. In essence Indinopulos argues (Transparency, not Anarchy) that the power of these tools is in improving transparency but not in pooling decision rights:

"Enterprise 2.0 pools information, so that workers can benefit from enhanced access to their colleagues and their colleagues' work. That's transparency. But Enterprise 2.0 does not pool decision rights. Embracing Enterprise 2.0 does not mean that workers can assume decision rights that formerly belonged to others. That would be anarchy. But fear not, oh champions of freedom and enlightenment, all is not lost! Enterprise 2.0 can still free you from the chains that oppress you!

"Hierarchy" is a pejorative term, often used to suggest that senior decision-makers are ignorant, out-of-touch, or otherwise unqualified for the responsibilities the organization accords them. The more transparent an organization is, the less likely that problem is to occur. Open, ongoing conversations with staff, customers, and channel partners make management better-informed, less isolated, and more engaged with what's really happening in the organization and the marketplace. It's easier to focus on what really matters, and harder for managers to succumb to yes-men and wishful thinking. And it's easier for staff to understand management decisions, even when those decisions are controversial or unpopular.

When decisions get made in a transparent organization, we don't call it Hierarchy. We call it Leadership."

In placing technology before leadership, Eaves is effectively putting the cart before the horse.Without clear purpose the potential for failure is much greater. And the costs are likely much greater than Eaves proposes. While the costs of implementation might be low, the potential for costs in diverted employee effort are much greater

The lack of purpose and direction may also hurt government open data initiatives. While the Vancouver municipal government should be applauded for exposing data, doing so without some form of analysis and decision process will undermine the effort. Putting garbage schedules on line and allowing developers to mash the data with geo-location data may be "neat" but how much value does it really have? I'd argue not much -- it's just a shiny toy.

It also gives governments to hide behind these efforts without becoming truly accountable. Take the Canadian federal governments Economic Action Plan website. It provides a cool looking Google map mashup that shows all of the projects that the government has theoretically funded.

Unfortunately without integration to actual procurement data, there's no real accountability as you can't see what's really happening on the ground. Which is why the Kevin Page, the Parliamentary budget officer gave the government a failing grade on it's reporting of stimulus spending. Ensuring that high value data takes planning, analysis, and yes, leadership.

Government is not a platform, it's an organization made of people that use technology to serve the people who elect and finance them. The tools in and of themselves can do nothing. Which is why leadership and purpose are essential elements to success.