Dave's Whiteboard

I’m looking for examples of collaboration tools doing actual work in the workplace.

Notice how deftly I avoided saying “web 2.0″ tools?   That’s what a lot of these things are, but I have a suspicion that the examples I’m looking for will be from people who don’t say “web 2.0″ a lot.   Or “blogosphere.”   Like the people in this video from BNet Intercom.

What I hope to find is a collection of mini case studies:

• Here’s a problem we had at Montcrieffe Heraldry and Landscaping.
• Here’s what we tried because we thought it would let us do X, Y, and Z.
• Here’s what happened in reality.
• Here’s where we’re going next.

Why am I looking?   Rather than saying to people “you ought to have a blog” (or a wiki, or a mashup, or whatever), I’d like to show real-word examples in terms of the problems they addressed and the results they delivered.

For example, procurement people at a petrochemical company wanted to track and share what they learned in dealing with suppliers.   You may recall this saying:

Good judgment comes from experience.
Experience comes from bad judgment.

The corollary is that the bad judgment doesn’t have to be yours.   So the procurement people used an online tool to report on negotiating strategy, dealings with particular vendors, and other things that procurement people pay attention to.   They restricted access to just their department, but allowed people in that department to revise or add to the information.   So, over time, topics emerged, as did cross-references, as did changes in thinking.

It was a wiki.

The key is that if you’re reading this, you probably know what a wiki is.   You’re likely to have written or edited something on a wiki.   But, when you say “wiki” to many people in the corporate world, they think of Wikipedia, which means they think of:

• Political staffers and folks with agendas trying to change the pages for Barack Obama or John McCain
• Featured articles like these (shown on the main page on the last four Fridays):
  • The anekantavada doctrine of Jainism
  • Film star Jackie Chan
  • The Calgary Flames hockey team
  • Walter de Coventre, a 14th-century Scottish ecclesiastic who spent at least 25 years of his adult lift away from Scotland
• The Buffyverse, an astonishing number of pages related to Buffy, the Vampire Slayer

What are you seeing that’s working?   Let me know, either in a comment, or by email to dferguson at strathlorne youknowwhatgoeshere com.

(I don’t think this post has much to do with performance improvement.
Your opinion may differ.)

I just wandered over the the Washington Post website, where I see the feds are “assisting” with the sale of Lehman Brothers.

I’m no economist, but I’ve begun to thing about legally switching my name to “Too Big to Fail.” Despite the potential for ridicule about my appearance, I think that with this right-naming my financial worries would end.

As is so often the case here at the Whiteboard, my idea isn’t new. Indeed, the Lehman news immediately recalled analysis by the noted economist Tom Paxton. It was lagniappe to find Arlo Guthrie singing the once-again apropos Changing My Name To Chrysler.

From http://xkcd.com/

This week has been filled with anniversaries — August 26 marked the 88th anniversary of the nineteen amendment, guaranteeing the right of women to vote. August 28, the 45th annversary of Dr. King’s speech at the Lincoln Memorial. And August 27, the 100th anniversary of the birth of Lyndon Johnson.

There was a time or fifteen in my life when I despised LBJ, but I’m older and a bit wiser now. I was moved by Robert Caro’s piece in the New York Times on LBJ’s birthday.

Caro connects Barach Obama’s speeech with Dr. King’s, and also with one Johnson gave to Congress in 1965 to introduce what became the Voting Rights Act.

Even if we pass this bill, the battle will not be over. What happened in Selma is part of a far larger movement which reaches into every section and state of America. It is the effort of American Negroes to secure for themselves the full blessings of American life.

Their cause must be our cause, too. Because it is not just Negroes, but really it is all of us, who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice.

Caro says that at this point LBJ paused. Then he continued, “And we shall overcome.”

Johnson was an outsided figure, complex, flawed, irascible, passionate.   One unsubstantiated story has him saying that the Voting Rights Act would give the South to the Republican Party for fifty years.   Maybe so, but come November, less than 18 months of that timeframe will remain.

When I was growing up in Detroit, I looked forward each year to the Freedom Festival — a cross-border celebration that included Canada Day (known in English-speaking Canada as Dominion Day until 1982) and the Fourth of July.

Some Americans don’t know much about Canada (including how to pronounce “Newfoundland”). Maybe, as Pierre Berton suggested in Why We Act Like Canadians, it’s the lack of a revolution or a civil war. So, for those who missed the 15 minutes spent on Canada during high school, July 1st is the anniversary of the 1867 agreement by Upper Canada (now Ontario), Lower Canada (Québec), New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia to form what Sir John A. Macdonald and Viscount Monck wanted to call the Kingdom of Canada.

Back to the border: my parents, two brothers, and I had emigrated from Nova Scotia; Detroit and Windsor were and are filled with other members of the Cape Breton Island diaspora. We’d shuttle back and forth over the bridge or through the tunnel, and day trips to watch the massive fireworks (shot from barges in the Detroit River) were a prelude to our annual summer trip down home.

No quotation marks to set those last two words off– like Hemingway’s Paris, Cape Breton Island is a moveable feast. My dad arrived in the States in 1951, but when he says “down home,” there’s only one place he means. Me, too.

So July 1st takes me back home (as do shortbread, fiddle music, and the sound of waves). And as July 4th approaches, I always think of John Adams, wrong in a small thing but on the mark with the big picture, as he wrote to Abigail:

The Second Day of July 1776, will be the most memorable Epocha, in the History of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival. . . . It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfire and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more.

To fill out these three days (July 1st, July 2nd, and today), David Hackett Fischer in today’s New York Times adds the name of Samuel de Champlain, who founded the city of Québec on this day in 1608.

Showing he had his priorities straight, nearly two years earlier he founded l’Ordre du Bon Temps. Whichever holiday you mark, and whenever you mark it, may you like Champlain’s companions be joyful and of good cheer.

Photo of the Bluenose II under sail in Halifax harbor by learningful_rcb.