One of the things I try to do here is to capture the interesting debates we have over guiding principles associated with our Social Media effort, expose you to the thinking, and recap what we did and why.
My only hope is that you'll get some value from the discussions you're likely to enter into, and might be a bit forewarned as to the various tradeoffs.
We've just crossed the threshold on this discussion, so here's what happened.
The Rationale For Public Spaces
One of the "big decisions" I enforced early on was "no private spaces". I thought it was an important message to send.
Why?
First, this is really all about behaviors, not technologies. I strongly believe there's a set of SM behaviors that include openness, honesty, transparency, sharing thoughts in public forums, responding to opposing views from people you don't even know, etc.
Private spaces discourage that behavior, don't they? And it's the behaviors we're really after.
Second, our particular corporate culture presumes information is sensitive, can't be shared, need-to-know, all of that. Sometimes, I feel like we're still fighting the Cold War. Times have changed, and we need to get with it.
We've got lots of ways of securing information, restricting access, etc. -- we didn't need another.
Third, we're lazy. Setting up private spaces means managing ACLs (access control lists), dealing with all sort of security issues real and imagined, and it all looked like a ton of work and hassle. I'd be OK with that, but I didn't see the business value in signing up for all of that.
What Was The Reaction?
Generally positive, I'd say. Of course, it's a new approach, and lots of people had questions about this, and -- to be frank -- a few people were intimidated by the openness, even if it was behind-the-firewall and limited to EMC employees.
More importantly, we were sending a message. It's all about building the social computer. Making connections. Leveraging people's natural interests in things. The more nodes the better. And so on.
And Then, Things Changed
About a month ago, we started to get requests for private spaces, ones where access was limited. I can't really call the requirement "secure", because that implies a bunch of stuff we didn't have, but they wanted a way to keep things from prying eyes.
We poked around a bit, and came to the conclusion that there was a legit need here. There are certain groups that need to collaborate / discuss / brainstorm cross-functionally, and they tend to talk about sensitive topics, like R+D, acquisitions, strategy, etc.
They wanted to collaborate. They felt that they couldn't in a semi-public forum. And it was a legit business need.
So, We Changed Our Policy
I'm encouraging the core team to be flexible to new requirements from the user community. This is largely an experiment, right? And if we learn something new, we should be able to act on it.
So, here are the key elements:
- Let's start small -- we're going to set up 3-6 of these, each with small user bases, and see what happens.
- The community manager role now involves some extra work -- they're going to have to manage their own ACLs, we're not going to do it for them.
- Keep in mind, this is casual security at best -- if you study the Jive forums, you'll realize that the product isn't designed to create secure spaces at generally accepted commercial standards. I'm OK with that, we didn't it buy it for that purpose (just the opposite!) but everyone should be OK with the occasional "leak" or "slip". If not, go somewhere else.
- The default still remains "no private spaces" for the same reasons, but if you've got a legit reason for a private space, let us know, and we'll tell you what we think. I think I know enough about EMC's business to tell fish from fowl.
Where Do We Go From Here?
In a few weeks, we should know the results of this, and be able to feed back to you what happened, and what we learned.
If we get new, productive communities with a minimum of extra effort, it's a win, isn't it?
The problem is, I won't be able to tell what's happening behind the curtain ;-(
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