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Clearstep Business Community : Community: Internal Collaboration

clearstep-community@jivesoftware.com — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 19:23:07 GMT

Who are the internal community experts at Jive?

clearstep-community@jivesoftware.com — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 16:27:12 GMT

Here is what I would like from Jive:

* Who is your internal community expert? Meaning, who at Jive actually has done internal communication professionally with a focus on 2.0 tools?

* Who are the standard bearers in your client base for successful internal communities using Jive? I like the opportunity to discuss with other people like myself who are digging their way through the trenches of early implementation, but who are the people who are making their internal community really happen? And what does their environment (culture, office setup, remote vs. main office, other communicataion tools, etc.)? And are they willing to talk to us?

Fixed width vs Elastic layout for your internal SBS site

clearstep-community@jivesoftware.com — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 08:05:32 GMT

If you go to a web designer and say 'Give me a great home page', they will usually come back with a nice looking fixed width design.

The look is all groovy banners of attractive people talking and smiling in the middle of your home page and maybe somewhere you have some lines of recent content. Not too much though as it doesn't look as great as this cool flash animation that I've done for you and hey it's just lines of text right.

Now a layout like this has a nice wow factor for when you show the execs or are new to your business SBS site. But on day two whilst you're trying to find anything to read or later on when you decide to do things like say build a table with more than 3 columns or maybe even compare a doc side by side the amount of scrolling one has to do starts to become a chore. The wow factor has got in the way of the usability factor.

Jive SBS out of the box has an elastic layout, that means that things like widgets are fixed width and other areas expand or contract depending on the browser. For usability this is great, I like it when the designer allows me to use the full width of the 26" monitor that I bought rather than assuming that I'd be happy with the same workspace as the person with that old 17" that they never get around to replacing and who dominate the lowest 12% of visitors.

Of course this means that there has to be some compromise on the home page, graphics to the sides and potentially resizable widgets in the middle. A great example I think is the EMC home page, the image I got from Chuck Hollis's excellent blog.

Have a look and you have the nice graphics but what springs to mind is that this isn't a website in the traditional brochure sense, this is bang on focused on the people! A huge recent content widget in the middle, polls, tags, all sorts of people focused goodness. Looks good for the wow factor but doesn't get in the way of usability. Now am not sure if the layout is fixed or elastic but then elastic it could be as there is nothing stopping this from happening, especially if the theme designer is intelligent in how they built the banner.

Now for customer facing sites such as Clearstep I can understand that fixed is more important because it controls more strongly the look, but for internal SBS sites where documents are more complex and usability is key to productivity do elastic layouts have the edge?

What is your opinion? Fixed or Elastic layout for Internal sites and what have you done?

SBS Desktop

clearstep-community@jivesoftware.com — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 20:50:06 GMT

Is there a plan to have a desktop widget/gadget app that can be launched at startup for internal communities? I just got done doing a round of focus groups inside my organization and since all of our work is now browser-based, there seemed to be an interest in being able to access information in our version of SBS through a desktop app. Anyone doing this? Jive have an opinion about this?

Analysts looking for more real world examples

clearstep-community@jivesoftware.com — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 19:45:08 GMT

Hey all, I'm spending a ton of time talking to analysts and writers these days. They're all hungry to talk to customers and are willing to share a lot of their research in return. Please let me know if you have an interest here (and what the interest is) and I will make the introductions accordingly. You can respond here or send me a private message.

Thanks!

Dave

CEO

Jive Software

Valuation outsourcing company needs a community and community relations manager, know someone?

orion.addis@jivesoftware.com — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 14:50:03 GMT

Valuation outsourcing company needs a community and community relations manager, let me know if you're a good fit.

Can companies have a Facebook Profile?

clearstep-community@jivesoftware.com — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 22:51:00 GMT

Should brands/companies create their own profile in Facebook or should they just stick to the Facebook pages? Are there any rules? How do you think the community would feel befriending a "Nike" or a "CNN" profile as opposed to adding a "Nike" friend?

Thanks!

How do I limit the access to view and respond to a discussion question

clearstep-community@jivesoftware.com — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 18:26:23 GMT

We have users who want to limit the viewing and response to a discussion question without the limit of the space being all private?

7 Models of Community

clearstep-community@jivesoftware.com — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 00:25:35 GMT

I enjoy the musings and observations of Mark Hurst, who publishes a regular newsletter on "good experience" and who hosts a really interesting TED-like conference every year. He offered seven models of community, which I found interesting...

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Seven models of community

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Everyone seems to be building community these days, or at least saying they are. Look at the buzz around Facebook and Twitter. Or consider museums - I've seen multiple recent exhibits of photos by visitors. How about politics? The leader of the free world is a community organizer. Or retail and travel - especially online, full of community features. Journalism - newspapers declining, locally-oriented sites rising. And so on.

How do we bring together different people, ideas, cultures, values, into a cohesive whole?

Off the top of my mind I have seven answers, surely an incomplete list - but here are some ways to conceive of joining disparate parts.

1. Solar System: A whirling ballet of major and minor parts, each with its own well-defined station and role. But everything is dependent on the one supreme central figure holding it all together.

(See also, the atom - though electrons are less easily tracked :)

2. Crack the Whip: A common children's game in which players run or skate in a line, each player holding on to the one in front of them.

The leader makes the decisions of when and where to turn, while everyone behind scrambles to keep up. Notably, the further back one is, the harder it is to keep up, eventually throwing the last in line out of the group entirely.

3. Birds on a wire: I couldn't resist this one - birds twittering on a phone line. They sit together "online" and each have their say, twittering their individual thoughts off into the ether. Sometimes there are interesting patterns as they fly off into a clump, a V, a flock - but mainly it's each bird to itself.

4. Melting pot: An American ideal - welcoming diversity, bringing in many different voices. But we often forget that the melting pot precedes the mold, which shapes everything into a uniform mass with a predetermined shape - much like an ice tray.

5. LEGOs: Different parts fit in different places, and they're interchangeable to some extent. Independence is the pro and con:

each piece retains its shape but has no connection to any part it's not immediately adjoining.

6. Salad: Lots of pieces chopped up and tossed together, intended to create one delicious concoction. Not exactly a melting pot, as pieces retain their identities - but neither are the pieces exactly joined together in any way, except that they're in the same bowl together. (Some people have said that America is more of a tossed salad than a melting pot.)

7. Gel: My favorite. Can be hard to describe exactly what it is and what it does, but that's its strength. Parts are added together without losing their identities, but the whole can take on different forms (think of a jello mold). Can be used to hold a shape (hair gel), *not* hold a shape (dissolving toothpaste gel), adapt to pressure (gel pen handles) or protect from pressure (gel shoe inserts). Gel is both formed and formless, both strong and weak, depending on the situation.

Mark Hurst invites comments here:

http://goodexperience.com/2009/04/seven-models-of-commu.php#comments

His newsletter can be subscribed to here:

http://goodexperience.com/newsletter.php

What is the core challenge for Enterprise 2.0 initiatives?

gia@jivesoftware.com — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 17:20:41 GMT

Dion Hinchcliffe, a noted thought leader in the social computing space, posits this notion in his Enterprise 2.0 Bootcamp course:

Ultimately, the core challenge for an Enterprise 2.0 initiative is to transform the culture of an organization to use fewer non-social software tools, openly sharing more business information, and be knowledgeable about and effective in consuming worker-generated content. This must all be accomplished while still maintaining minimal disruption to business activities.

What do you think?