A recent opinion article in Computerworld ponders the role of org charts and what they reveal about an organization.  They are useful in detailing who reports to whom and which department pays the salary.  But the very act of viewing an organization through this type of chart perpetuates an outdated way of thinking, with a silo’d, hierarchical structure that often fails at meeting client/customer expectations or responding quickly to changing conditions.  So what to do? Some massive reorganization?

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So after all the hype I finally got a Google Wave account and well…. well…what was all the hype really about?  And I guess I’m not alone in being underwhelmed.  Now yes, it is really beta (not just a perpetual beta that really isn’t) and they are trying to do something completely different.  Plus, as with any social networking/collaboration tool it isn’t much fun when there aren’t many people using it.  I do fault them for producing something that doesn’t run in Internet Explorer, and didn’t even seem to run too well in Firefox.  Browser dependent behavior is a cop-out at best.   Maybe it, or the protocol will become useful for something really good over time, or the user community will embrace it in numbers to reach some tipping point.  But until then I’m much more interested in the possibilities of other tools — like BuddyPress.

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So I’ve got a test BuddyPress site up and running — for testing/learning purposes only.  And I like what I see.  I’ll probably blow the site up and rebuild it a few times just to try out different configurations.  The activity stream is a key feature, allowing people to follow actions (posting, commenting, etc) across the site and content types.

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What features are needed in a workplace social network system?  And could BuddyPress, the WordPress multi-user collection of social networking plug-ins, be used to power it?  Yammer uses has recently taken off at my workplace, and its success here is serving as a real example of the types of communication and collaboration people are looking for in the workplace.  Here are a couple of thoughts, observations and opinions: Read the rest of this entry »

• RT @museummedia Open social media framework for museums http://bit.ly/5KDds3 — not much on the wiki yet, but an interesting start. 11:23:30

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• Published a new article Join the Yammer: Social media for the workplace @http://zz.gd/54d190 05:36:33

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