I don't know if I've shared this with you, but I sort of have a new set of responsibilities at EMC.
One of them is to figure out how we get more proficient at social media. And in the process, I've developed a pretty good storyline about why this is important, and how to think about doing it.
And, since many of the people who read here also think about broader topics, I thought I'd devote a post to this -- framed in technology tools.
Actually, I'm Writing Another Blog On This One ...
And for the full details of the journey we're undertaking, you can go here.
But here's one way of thinking about the problem. We talk about ways of interconnecting computers together to get more scale and tackle bigger problems more effectively. Same discussion with a twist for SOA. Ditto for storage.
But how do we do this for people -- the most powerful non-linear computers in the world?
Analogies In The Technical World
The way I describe "social media" (wrapper term for all things cool and Web 2.0-ish) is the interconnection fabric and protocols that bind people together in new and interesting ways.
In my mind, the technology problems associated with this are pretty straightforward. Sure, we can have a great, focused discussion on the best social media technology, in much the way we can talk about the best server interconnects, or enterprise service buses, or other enablers.
I think this misses the real issues, though.
For me, the interesting discussion in these next-gen technology architectures is teaching the participants to use the new connectivity. And how do you orchestrate it? And, finally, how do you govern it?
Same general problem with our new "social computers". How do you teach the participants to use it effectively? How do you orchestrate the interaction? And, when it gets really big and hairy, how do you govern it?
The APIs of Social Computing
If I wanted to build out a SOA environment, I'd have to think about my applications very differently. I'd have to expose service interfaces. I'd have to teach application writers to think in terms of composing applications from services, rather than writing monolithically. And how do I bridge between the old and new worlds, since I can't rewrite everything at once?
And that's just scratching the surface.
There are parallels in the social computing world. How do we teach people to expose interfaces? How do we think about getting work done in terms of composing elements, rather than recruiting a dedicated team? And, like in any large organization, there will be people who are early adopters, and those that aren't -- how do we deal with that?
In our SOA world, we'd need protocols for communication, validation, etc. Ditto for our social computer. In the SOA world, we'd need to understand what the roles and responsibilities are for various entitites. Ditto for our social computer.
To build the next generation of social computer, you need to think about it in terms of social engineering, don't you?
And Then There's Governance
IT governance, or -- more appropriately -- information governance -- is a thorny issue we're just beginning to wrestle with in the IT world. How do we balance cost, risk and value in an IT world where everything connects to everything, and information flows freely?
As we build our scale-out social computers, governance becomes an equally thorny issue. How do we handle IP and confidentiality issues? How do we root out incorrect or inflammatory information and interactions? How do we support and encourage people in the new paradigm.
In building this new social computer, what's more important: IT, or HR?
No good answers here.
Heck, We're Pressing On
If you're like me, you don't want to wait for clean answers to any of this -- whether you're in the technology domain, or in the social computing domain. You want to be aware of the issues and concerns, but press on ahead to get stuff running and learn quickly.
You don't want to be the last one on the block who "gets it". Definitely not cool.
When you think in terms of advanced computing, some things will work out, some won't. But you'll learn quickly, and benefit from it.
It looks like it's going to be the same deal as we build our next generation of social computers as well.
Your call to "press on" reminded me of this quote from the 37signals blog ( http://www.37signals.com/svn/ ) that I read just yesterday ...
"Doing it right is a pie in the sky. It’s a misnomer for second-system syndrome and it’s never going to happen anyway. So stop aiming for perfect, start aiming for good enough."
The SOA analogy is great, and one I hadn't considered before. I'm going to noodle on that for awhile, and expose the results as they develop.
PS: regarding services for expanding the network and making the content rich, I wish we could use mark-up in the comments here. it would be nice to at least allow blockquotes.
Posted by: Mark Kraemer | October 18, 2007 at 10:55 AM