Cancellation of meetings is becoming an increasing trend. Good for the firm, in terms of chargeable staff spending time with clients and not us, but it makes us need to think of fresh ideas of how to get time with chargeable staff, making it beneficial for them and the knowledge communities they represent. Our approach has always been to ensure these communities are led by people with experience of client needs/requirements, ensuring their knowledge communities are relevant and valuable to the stream. The mix of face-to-face, webinars, VCN and phone calls has proved a popular mix and from Monday we are offering our stakeholders Yammer to allow increased engagement and collaboration with us.

Some years back domain management occupied much of my time, protecting one of our most important IP assets, our domain. I used to receive many flyers, emails and even cold calls on how/why I needed to register something urgently, or Russian spy’s were looking to buy-up a potential unprotected domain (I hope this doesn’t give the impression I was working during the cold war).

Anyway I’ve become weary of all the demands for land grabs and gold rushes for domains. However, something which is catching my eye is the potential that Twitter may start a gold rush for currently locked-up usernames.

Although Twitter didn???t specify a date, a spokesperson said they are planning to release usernames that are either inactive or have been deleted by their former “owners.”

Soon we could see a virtual stampede as companies and individuals clamour for coveted Twitter names and themes.

The Prime Minister’s announcement of a free laptop and broadband connection for more than a quarter of a million families is a welcome step towards bridging the digital divide.

Inside the firewall we rarely talk about the digital divide (more and more services moving online but employees are still disadvantaged but their lack of knowledge with the browser and the workplace web). In my conversation with employees I am still amazed how many people have no, or poor, connectivity with the workplace web. Whether it be the lack of signals, poor speed or dated technology, I continue to hear of employees struggling with online services.

I believe in my job I sometimes forget not everyone has a deep relationship with the web. The cure? Certainly more time and resource given to training users to understand and engage with websites, plus easier interfaces (that’s why Yammer is so easy to adopt) and raising the level of technology we use (I get far quicker connection when logging in from home than I do in any office). But all this costs. While we are quick to move services online we are slow to teach, hand-hold and adopt these services with the user.

Since the New year I have seen a growth in requests for ‘social media’ areas within our intranet (or ‘business influence’ areas as I would I would prefer to call them). The reason for this? I doubt its people who have suddenly read about social media and want to get on the bandwagon. Most of the requests come from groups who we have engaged with over their knowledge sharing and collaboration strategy. Once we get the high-level commitment to share and collaborate, the next steps is to identified the issue, or gap. In many cases this is a lack of leadership, in terms of knowledge sharing. What better way to provide leadership than to practice what you preach. Hence we start to see some of our business leaders eager to get something started. This is when the ‘business influence’ tools can then be introduced, with some ‘already prepared’ protocols, blogging guidelines, and ‘participation’ document. Within the next few weeks we hope to see one of our largest community leaders beginning a blog, a group on Yammer for over 100 Managers, and a sub-group leader blogging. Maybe 2010 will be a good year for knowledge sharing?

In response to Gerry McGovern’s item about ‘Why we love the web’

I do agree that the web has created a far greater informed consumer. Customers, clients and even employees now have far more ways to connect, engage and create dialogue. However, do we as consumers, customers and employees have far more empowerment? I sincerely doubt it. There are some examples where individuals influence a brand, a product or a service, however, these are minor. Since the development of the web we have seen a rapid decrease in elements that have major impact on the empowerment of consumers – such as government commissions, trade unions, industry bodies etc, that had an interest in the long-term, sustainable development of sectors and products. US Presidential election is a prime example. Through the web we now have thousands of access points to interrogate, discuss, engage, question, comment on the process, however, do citizens of that process (or product) have more influence now than 20-30 years ago? The web has given us the ability to learn and discuss more, but has it given us real power?

Due to bad weather in UK noticed a big increase in joiners and postings to our Yammer site. Classic way to implement web 2 technologies. Find the business need first and then deploy web 2 as a solution. Will the bad weather hasten the terminology for the way we work? Will our intranet will become the ‘workplace web’ as Jane McConnell reported, we’ll no longer think of an ‘office’ but a ‘network’ (both in virtual and social context) and the ‘physical’ office will only exist for meetings and leaders to network. Like the paperless office it’s the future!