Time Management

Not exactly one of my strengths, which is why I haven't posted in several days. There have been a lot of developments since the last one. I shall try to sum up.

I have been pounding through the book Groundswell. A really terrific read, and I highly recommend it for anyone who is thinking about implementing any sort of social media tools in their organization.

In a startling repeat performance, only one person showed up to the most recent meeting of our internal Web 2.0 project team. Must be time to rally the troops again.

I met with the director of aaaU again the other day, and provided her with a rough timeline of how myself and the project team (or at least the active participant) believe we should roll out the available tools. She seemed pleased with it, but I confess that I wasn't real happy with it myself. The pace at which this project is proceeding is frustrating to me, and there is a lot of information and guidance that simply isn't available to me yet.

Last week I had a conversation with another executive about social learning and social media in general, and the value they could bring to our organization. I bounced some ideas off of him in an effort to get a little more feedback and direction. His perspective and insight was extremely valuable, and it gave me some new avenues to try for garnering support - particularly of the financial variety.

One of the questions that is banging around in my head right now is this: who is going to manage this thing once we get it up and running? I don't mean maintaining it on the back end - that's IT's job. I mean, who is going to work to keep things organized, spot check content, help train users, rally the support of executives and employees, prepare for the future? Is that one person's job, or is it five people? Who will they report to? I suspect that at first it won't be a full-time job, but it will become one by early 2010 at the latest. Hell, it's nearly a full-time job right now. This, I think, will be the topic of discussion at the next project team meeting.

Oh, the Enthusiasm

I had a project team meeting today with the Web 2.0/social learning project team. Only one other person showed up to the meeting. It boggles my mind that people aren't more interested and excited by this initiative. I mean, how can you not be? Like it or not, folks, this is the direction that corporate learning is headed.

On a more positive note, I created a wiki today. Nothing fancy, just a place to document procedures for preparing CBT content for ingestion into the LMS. What was most exciting about it was that one of my co-workers has already added to it. That is a positive step.

SharePoint, My Nemesis

In looking at implementing a Web 2.0 solution here at AAA Northern California, Nevada, & Utah one of the things we had to seriously consider was SharePoint 2007. We already have SharePoint 2007 (SP07) implemented throughout the enterprise. In fact, we also have SharePoint 2003 (SP03) as well. Being as disorganized and technologically backward as we are here at AAA NCNU, we have got things scattered all over the place between the two SP servers. We were supposed to have migrated everything from SP03 to SP07 six months ago so that they could take down SP03. Hasn't happened yet. Some teams have migrated, some haven't. Some, like the Claims College (my team), have material on both servers. It's a mess.

To make matters worse, nobody knows how to find things. Aside from IT, who actually use SharePoint for some internal collaboration, everybody else within the company seems to use it solely for document storage. As a result, there is very little actual useful content on our SharePoint server, and anything that might be useful is probably buried in a Word or Excel file somewhere. And, of course, there is a good chance you won't have access to the specific SharePoint site that has the file in question.

Let me get to the point. I'm trying to implement a new Web 2.0 solution that my company can use to improve collaboration, knowledge management, and training. We already have SharePoint, which is a Web 2.0 application, and so every time I approach someone new about my plan, the first thing they say is, "We already have SharePoint. Why do we need this?" It's a natural question to ask. Don't get me wrong: I have nothing against SharePoint - I think it's a terrific tool. However, SharePoint is not the easiest tool to use. Creating content in SharePoint can actually be quite difficult, and if you don't know HTML or CSS you can pretty much forget about it. The Web 2.0 features it contains also are not very tightly integrated with one another. These two flaws by themselves are the primary reason why our company's SharePoint servers contain so little useful content. Our employees quite simply lack the time and know-how to create and maintain useful SharePoint sites.

And thus the aaaU Web 2.0 initiative. I'm hoping to implement a tool that is not only easier to use, but also has tighter integration of features so that the technologically inept employees of this company will have a Web 2.0 tool that they can actually use. The other benefit of this project is that because we have an official aaaU project going with assigned resources and a budget, that means we as a training organization will be able to build out the site in a way that invites people to use it and to participate in the online community. We will also have the opportunity to provide training on how to create content within the tool, thus empowering everyone.

But in the meantime, I will continue to answer the question, "Why are we doing this when we already have SharePoint?"

Da Blahs

I came down with a cold on Saturday, and am still fighting it off. I am one of those people who is completely unable to function when they're sick, so I basically spent the whole weekend acting helpless (although I somehow found the energy to grill up some ribs on Sunday). My backyard still looks like the photo in the first post, below. Not good.

Watched the Seahawks-Chargers pre-season game last night. Excellent game with some really terrific play (and some mistakes) on both sides. I think Charlie Frye made an excellent case for moving up Seattle's QB depth chart. For a pre-season game, it was very entertaining.

An exciting 24 hours is about to begin. Tonight I have my first fantasy football draft of the season. Tomorrow I am doing a presentation to a number of important people from aaa University regarding the use of Web 2.0 technologies for learning, and a proposed solution that I have been working on. Both of these events require hours of preparation. I'm much more prepared for the presentation than I am for the draft, as it should be.

I would like to post about the Web 2.0 thing in greater detail, and if I weren't feeling so crappy I would have done so over the weekend. Look for that in the next couple of days... I have much to say.

EDR and VT! Woo!

At work we are developing a small course on emotional responses to disasters for our casualty and catastrophe teams. We lovingly call it Emotional Disaster Response. It has to do with how to talk to Insureds who have just been affected by a catastrophe (house burning down, severe car wreck with major trauma or a fatality, etc.) and help them to focus on their insurance claim and getting their lives back together. I've been reading through a lot of papers on vicarious trauma looking for tools that our claims adjusters can use to prevent themselves from becoming too emotionally overwhelmed by what they see and hear when working with these Insureds. Fascinating stuff if you're into psychology, which I am not.