MarkSimon.de » Articles

LAX Airport Parking Lot Communities

Mark — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 08:00:36 +0000

Every social situation in which individuals are voluntarily taking part – sometimes they might also be coerced to do so by vocalized or non-vocalized social regulations, sanctions or force – leads to the formation of a social structure. Even in short everyday interactions, sharing an elevator for example, these mechanisms are visible.

Of course, one could argue that the trained eye of a sociologist might only see what it wants to see. In these cases, the examples have to be extraordinary, like pilots and other airport personnel building mobile colonies on airport parking lots. They even have a mayor, problems with prostitution and unsolicited residents.

Now if that isn’t convincing, i don’t know what else is.

Saturday – 18th July 2009 @ 10:12:24 AM

Mark — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 08:12:24 +0000

At the moment I am revising the theme and structure of this blog. If it looks wonky, behaves irrationally or just plain looks weird, this might be the cause. Please bear with me and my design and programming skills, it will work out soon.

Hopefully soon, I might add.

Internal Communications HowNotTo

Mark — Sat, 30 May 2009 07:48:23 +0000

The worst that can happen to an internal communicator is that his audience reads about ongoing events and happenings in the press – and that before even anything internal has been published. This not only conts as a (intended or non-intended) slow response time, but is also a sign that there is something fundamental wrong with the internal communications paradigms in the conpany. This piece (German only) in the Harvard Business Manager makes some very valid points in this regard.

Links for today: MIKE2.0 / omCollab

Mark — Fri, 22 May 2009 05:30:42 +0000

MIKE2.0 is a comprehensive open source methodology for enterprise-wide Information and Knowledge Management [Link, via]
omCollab is a package of open source collaborative software (including customized WordPress, MediaWiki, and other social software bundled for enterprise use) that is specifically targeted to be used in conjunction with MIKE2.0 [Link]

Use your Noodle?

Mark — Wed, 13 May 2009 05:34:26 +0000

Something about the name of this intranet software makes me smile.

Intranet Dashboard / Interact Intranet Suite

Mark — Tue, 12 May 2009 05:31:27 +0000

I’ll have to put both Intranet Dashboard [Link] and Interact Intranet Suite [Link] on my list of products to watch out for. Although, and I am sure that I am not the only one that noticed this, both companies share very similar web strategies, in some cases right down to the wording. And don’t get me started on these ever-present contact forms that do more harm than good — I just wanna check out some hands-on info about the product without taking five minutes to fill out a form.

Social Media & Online Participation Guidelines Pt. 2

Mark — Sat, 09 May 2009 05:18:05 +0000

A quick follup to my post from yesterday: Over on Mashable, there is a short article about why your company should have a social media policy for external social media sites like Facebook, Youtube, Xing, or every other site where your employees can add a profile that identifies them as representatives of your company.

Best Practice Examples of Social Media & Online Participation Guidelines

Mark — Fri, 08 May 2009 05:15:10 +0000

This article sums up the focus points that have to be taken into account if you are trying to establish a useful and usable corporate guideline for internal social media tools. Additionally, it links to a whole batch of best practice examples, from IBM and Sun up to the old lady of journalism, the BBC.

Interviews in Intranet Needs Analysis

Mark — Wed, 06 May 2009 05:09:09 +0000

On a related note to my post from yesterday, Step Two Designs has a short overview on how to use an established qualitative approach from the Social sciences, more precisely interviews, when conducting an intranet needs analysis.

Intranet and Enterprise 2.0 ROI

Mark — Tue, 05 May 2009 05:03:28 +0000

There seems to be quite an ongoing discussion about the ROI of Enterprise 2.0 applications, which typically range from trying to define exactly what Enterprise 2.0 is and, more important, how to measure and rate its value. Especially the latter is complicated, because we are dealing with a mixture of financial and technical changes coupled with more ‘soft’ changes that relate more to the social structure and communications formations of the enterprise than to hard and easy measurable facts.

I have recently pointed out that a solution would be to establish a set of sociological approaches, and i am not alone with this opinion – over on the ThoughtFarmer blog there is an interesting article that integrates some elements from network theory in a proposal of how to measure the value of an emerging Enterprise 2.0 landscape.