Como alguno de los sufridos lectores de este blog recordará , hace un mes que estaba prevista la salida del estudio Comunidades Online 2009. Lo retrasamos para conseguir más datos, y luego para dar tiempo a procesarlos. Y ahora se sigue retrasando porque esos datos son más curiosos de la cuenta.

Me explico. Sería muy sencillo sacar un informe como los de ForumOne. Tenemos datos muy interesantes, que dan muy bien en gráficos. Se montan las tablas, se explican un poco, y voilá las veinte páginas del informe. Con datos como la evolución de los presupuestos ante la crisis, o la distribución de modelos de negocio, o el papel jugado en la organización… que son alimenticios de puro útiles.

Lo puñetero (o no) son los casos en los que el estudio se ha quedado corto. Por ejemplo, el 25% de las comunidades que no dependen de ninguno de los departamentos “sospechosos habituales”, ni de la alta dirección. ¿De quién dependen? Hay que investigarlo. Y como ésa, cinco o seis preguntas más.

O lo más potente de todo, las correlaciones entre unas respuestas y otras, que apenas he empezado a procesar en serio y que están dando pie a algunas conclusiones curiosas. Especialmente las que relacionan la industria en la que está la comunidad y el resto de los resultados.

En resumen, que tenemos un problema. Podríamos tener un estudio para este fin de semana. O podemos tener algo más potente una o dos semanas más tarde. Hay que pensarselo .

It’s a fact that Forrester has managed to establish some sort of dominance in the analysis of social media trends and technologies. Despite the departure of one of their most prominent names, the commercial side of it is running strong. This week was proof enough: two out of three, and new ideas running scarcer.

Yesterday I attended the AERCO’s event “Maximizing digital channels to thrive in the recovery“, pushed through by the inexhaustible Jose Antonio Gallego. It featured a nice use of social media as a marketing tool, by the Cervantes Institute. I wouldn’t call it a community by a long stretch, but it was a very nice use of online conversation channels to push a worldwide event. It also featured a quite thoughful and new (if woolly) presentation by Ignacio Villoch, whose role as marketing head of the BBVA’s innovation center makes the vision more relevant. The piece de résistance was Forrester’s Jonathan Browne talking about the evolution of online experiences. Essentially nothing new (OK, so online experiences are becoming Customized, Aggregated, Relevant and Social… impressive insight, or trite rehash of Web 2.0 ideas? It depends on your background, and it may be good marketing), with very nice examples and effective conducting ideas, even if the presumed tie to fostering the recovery was hard to find. I arrived late and left very early, so the people side of the event was disappointing this time.

Jive sent yesterday the materials for their latest webinar and roundtable (very nice Gartner and Forrester take-aways by the way, I’m not yet sure if they can be linked to). Much more interesting as always, touching as it did on several real-world uses of online communities (not just social web) for business ends, such as Nike and Cisco. Both have already featured in Jive materials. They also had a Forrester analyst to give the roundtable some more weight (they actually brought Laura Ramos to the roundtable, whose focus is 200% sales and marketing). The set-up part was complete rehash; the good elements were in the comments and questions.

Last but not least, on the 13th there was a webcast by Lithium that on paper looked quite as good (I appreciate Lithium’s specialized range of solutions and they had Genesys presenting, plus I’m actually building a consulting offer on that angle) but they managed to host it in one of the world’s most inhospitable online collaboration platforms, Microsoft Livemeeting. It actually refuses to work on Firefox on Mac OS X despite the advertised existence of a Java applet for us technologically disadvantaged punks. In the event I refused to fire up Windows for such impolite people. Too bad. Also it was the only one not to advertise some Forrester analyst on the lineup, which is beginning to look like bad manners.

So? Well, some good working reports by Gartner and Forrester, some nice slides, some (few) new good angles and ideas. A definite sense that someone should clarify that “social software” and “community” are different things. Forrester’s pervasive presence and thinning message (well, they did give out some nice leaflets). A new instance of Microsoft’s lack of interest in interoperability (and their customers’ either gullibility or shared lack of sensitivity to the increasing market share of Mac among executives and social-IT people). The continuing interest of webinars as sales tools. All in all, interesting.

PS – “Social-IT”. Hmm. Now there’s a word that could have a future. Maybe I should trademark it .

There’s a very interesting thread going on at Com-Prac, instigated by Joitske Hulsebosch, which got me writing again (no mean feat these days).  She’s exploring “dysfunctionality symptoms” in communities of practice. Indeed I expect Joitske’s work with it will result in something very interesting, but meanwhile here’s the last answer I wrote, slightly aliterated and expanded.

“What I meant is that there may be many levels to look at to find dysfunctionality, the higher the easier to see (and the most terminal):

1. Executive level: They’re glaring. The CoP is terminally dysfunctional if it is not doing what it’s funded or authorized for; of if it is not doing what we (members, founders) signed up for. That’s a result, not even a symptom. And it usually results in people voting with their feet or their wallet, killing the CoP.

2. Community management level: There are  several things (indicators, symptoms) that can tell us that the CoP is not working smoothly, and most may be managed away with the right levers. Some of those symptoms are:

- Participation concentration. A 10% of members with some degree of participation can be reasonable sometimes. If it’s less, the CoP is walking dead (probably a long-declining group), an artificial construct (which never existed in fact but many people got signed in to), or in very serious trouble due to excessive barriers to participation.

- Answer assymetry. If the most active CoP members pointedly do not answer all (or most) questions, but stick to those from a few people (themselves and friends, usually) you have either an invaded CoP on the defensive, or an aggresive clique behaviour that will kill it.

- Social awkwardness. Relationships and conversations are strained, resulting in botched social initiatives, lack of cohesion, little esprit de corps. Something is under people’s skins and pulling the CoP apart.

- Herd behaviour. CoP members follow their leaders blindly and massively, and in some cases with aggresivity. The worst examples are groupthink, “political correctness” and guru worship, which kill innovation and significant practice development. This kind of CoP evolves into a thought sect, not a CoP.

- Subject hijacking. Either through invasion (from some non-subject-concerned people) or through drift (lack of interest or relevance of the main subject), another subject creeps into the mainstream conversations and stays there. This can be a natural evolution of the practice (or of the CoP), or can be unwelcome by the old core (which should lead to a split). The worst is when it’s simply a case of a CoP talking about offtopics instead of their practice (“how’s the family?”).

- Work relevance. For any of the above reasons and for many more, a CoP may be unable to provide help to practitioners: it may grow irrelevant. If people feel the CoP is no longer generating stimulating debate, turning up useful advice or catalysing initiatives… they will leave.

3. Culture level: the ultimate causes of trouble are usually here. In the part that Steve kicked: what’s this about, what are we doing and what for, what’s importante for us. Having that clear allows forceful action (in design, moderation, activities) and usually helps to avoid weed infestation (dysfunction). Usually. Not having that, and the “institutional framework” that goes with it, is serious dysfunctionality. Some key elements that had better not be missing:

- Serious and relevant goals the members really care about (and are willing to put ten minutes of their time for).

- A cooperative volunteering spirit, open to helping others (OK, not blindly, but good-naturedly).

- An affinity with fellow members (having something in common is key, liking them is best, having met helps both).

- Member ownership of the community (a feeling of belonging and being a relevant part of something you like).

- Implicated, active and coherent moderation (it helps if it’s happy too).

- Clear and well-defined rules, accepted as fair and acted upon.

- Aligned processes (the ways the institution gets things done).

- Efficient channels (the machine part).

- Sensible relationship with the funding part (a clear understanding of what is expected from the CoP, and general agreeement upon its fairness).

Curing dysfunctionality here takes long work by specialists… and/or by very inspired, implicated members and moderators.”

I don’t know if it will be helpful, but it was a good way to put some things in writing that I’ve been thinking for a long while. Until it can go into something more structured, the blog will have to do.

Estos días me estoy divirtiendo mucho con algunos debates, y algunos incidentes curiosos. Hay uno en e-mint que casi me hace levantarme y aplaudir. Pero empecemos por el principio.

Hace muchos años que hay comunidades online. Hace muchos años que hay “web participativa”, y blogs, y si me apuras hasta redes sociales. Hace muchos años que bastante gente los maneja, pero en general (y salvo la fiebre bloguera de hace dos años) son cosas de las que se habla poco y con poca precisión.

Pero desde hace cosa de un año, hay una cantidad curiosa de agencias de comunicación que han decidido que los “social media” son, en realidad, “una forma low cost de hacer comunicación corporativa”. Y que ellos son expertos en éso, además. Si te sientas diez minutos, te explican el “cambio de paradigma” (del que venimos hablando desde hace cinco años lo menos los implicados) de que la web social es lo contrario que la comunicación unidireccional tradicional. Es otra historia, que sirve para otras cosas. Tiene mucho más que ver con gestión de relaciones y con servicio al cliente que con promoción o comunicación. Tiene que ver con espontaneidad y realidad, no con mensajes preparados. Pero a continuación, te cuentan cómo van a montar tu campaña con esos nuevos medios y sus creativos.

Y así se ven, oyen y leen barbaridades notables. Se confunden churras con merinas (¿”Madrid Network”?), se incita a la gente a gastar en campañas de twitteo o en redes sociales en las que no están sus clientes (y si están, no es para contratar), se aconseja spammear foros de terceros… y en general, se confunde y degrada la imagen de una serie de herramientas más que útiles, si se usan con sentido común.

No hablo sólo de agencias desaprensivas. McKinsey lleva un año madurando poco a poco, pero ha dicho cada tontería que da miedo. Forrester se orienta bien, pero Gartner dice obviedades como puños y encima lo presenta como conclusiones arriesgadas. Y el resto están a la que salta. Veremos qué hace el IESE con el estudio que está preparando.

Y preocupa. Porque al final, a la gente y a la prensa generalista le queda la idea de que éso del social media no es más que algo así como el “márketing below the line”, una especie de happening tirando a cutre (por aquello del low cost) que vale para hacer ruido pero para nada más.

Y no es así. Como ya hemos dicho docenas de veces, el uso de comunidades y otras herramientas tanto para difundir conocimiento como para fomentar innovación, para dar soporte, para mejorar el conocimiento del cliente, para cambiar procesos reales en negocios reales… es real, es serio, existe. Es verdad que en este país no se hace demasiado, pero se hace más de lo que la gente cree.

Lo que me revienta es que si sigue la marea, ésto va acabar como el “knowledge management”: inundado bajo la capa de cernícalos que se habían leído un libro y vendían las auditorías de madurez, o el análisis de taxonomías, como si valieran para algo (vale, hay veces que sí). A día de hoy cuesta hacer algo en ese terreno, y mucho más si usas el viejo nombre, porque está contaminado. Lo mismo que va a pasar con las palabras “social media” a este paso.

(O con “redes sociales”, que es la curiosa traducción universal. Tanto da que da lo mismo).

Ufff. Disculpen ustedes la pataleta. De hecho, reconozco que hay agencias serias en las que saben que una cosa es anunciar y otra comunicarse, y hasta son capaces de usar los social media con fundamento y eficacia, al menos en la parte de márketing. Los hay, y los conozco (varios/as corren por la AERCO, por ejemplo). Lo malo es que hay muchos más que se meten a hablar de lo que no saben. Y luego hablas de montar una comunidad de soporte, y te dicen que si con Twitter o en Facebook… están despistando a mucha gente.

Y ahora, sigamos trabajando. Si queréis profundizar en el tema, éste artículo merece la pena.

Efectivamente: siguiendo el calendario marcado, el próximo día 15 cerramos la toma de datos de la encuesta… y nos ponemos a procesar los resultados en serio. Aunque confieso que ya les he estado echando unas cuantas ojeadas. Merecen la pena.

Eso sí, la muestra dejó de crecer en cuanto nos fuimos de vacaciones. Parece que el apoyo de eLearning Review y ANEI no se ha traducido en tantos participantes como esperábamos, por no mencionar (y ésa sí que es una decepción) los pocos grupos de XING que han aportado datos.

Así que vamos a ver si le damos un último empujón a la cosa, subimos un poco más la muestra, y empezamos con la parte divertida. Si llevas una comunidad (como gestor, moderador o responsable) y aún no has participado, no lo dejes para más tarde. En link y muchos más detalles están en el menú del blog… o, para ponerlo fácil, aquí: http://emekaeme.wordpress.com/estudio-comunidades-online-2009/

At the end of August, the Spanish beaches become deserted of working-age natives: all trundle back to jobs and desks (if lucky) in their disparate, beach-less cities. All? No. A small Armorican village, that is a small number of us stretch out the holidays among Spanish and French pensioners and the odd Brit. Things slow pleasantly down… Until next Monday in Madrid. But carpe diem.

Meanwhile, there’s something I hadn’t yet done, and it’s using the iPhone to blog from the sand within wave’s reach. So that’s the excuse for this post [Update: I had to log in later to include links and bold format, but it works sweetly].

Forrester freebie. Our old pals at Mindtouch have launched a promo documentation package that includes Forrester’s latest report on collaboration tools. Go fetch it, it’s interesting. Mintouch too; I’ve been a paying customer and still keep a free wiki with them. Tremendously powerful, if not fit for every use. And it’s no longer common to engage a CEO in a support forum conversation.

Methodology and building blocks. Over the next few days I expect to announce some bits and pieces of community-building toolkit that I’m making open under Creative Commons. The reason: I want to use them in a project without including that intellectual property in the package, or allowing my employer to claim it. The bits and pieces are Macuarium work, and either I own it or nobody does .

The year of truth. This course promises to be interesting. Due to the sickly condition of the Spanis economy, the options are four: either I get fired before year-end, or I manage to consolidate my employers’ community consulting practice (built solely on my shoulders) or I jump ship to build my own, or I jump ship for a different job (and, likely, country). The only sure thing is that the current half-way state can’t last.

The kid. Yes, that’s the best part of life anyway you put it. Mikel is past eight months now and as bright a spark as ever scooted over this beach and its inhabitants on all fours (and incresingly confident upright too). My son’s garnering so many friends of all ages that we’re starting to worry he plans to go into politics.

Almost in-vitro CoPs. And I don’t mean CoPs for reproductive health . Not that it’d be a bad idea.

But to the point. Recently I’ve had reason to give a lot of thought to CoP-fostering as a whole, and as a managed process.

Picture this. You are an organization that is somewhat removed from the people that matter for your goals. They interact with you only after a lot of preliminary, arduous work has taken place. Indeed, they deal with you almost through a filter, for their needs are complex and your part in solving them is very specific. You don’t half understand their domain, and they don’t really understand yours. You fret that helping them through their preliminary work would help you too, and wish you knew how to drive more from your competition. Then someone talks to you about communities, and you realize that what they need is peer support and a holding hand. A CoP, in short, with you as a sponsor. You’re an enterprising organization, so you get to work.

Being also a practical, intelligent organization, you hire me to help with that work . And so the fun begins.

Take the business from under the bushel

Some people will say you don’t build CoPs , they just emerge like mushrooms after the rain. And in fact you don’t. You foster the community and you build it’s environment: in other words you arrange the trees and pour the rain, and often put there the early spores just in case. The CoP must do its own growing.

Most CoP-building starts with the aim to give a platform to an existing community, or to catalyse some that are already clearly there (often partly inside the buiding). The saying is “you find the CoP, you don’t build it“. The funding organization has a clear interest in it, so the business side of the matter is just “how do we measure results”, not “what should be we doing”.

Some others have to do the business case to get the funds. Here, we had to go back to designing the business angle, since we could not take anything for granted. What are the targets? How should the community further them? What specific processes should be designed and integrated to make sure it does? How do we track it? Now, what’s the business case? Too often, the questions go unasked and the CoP effort launches without having defined some things that should be essential for its success… and ultimately falls by the wayside as irrelevant.

Project management and community work

So once we have a clear understanding of the business needs and a general design of the would-be CoP’s integration in the organization’s business processes, then we can start to flesh the idea with the usual concepts of domain and community and whatnot.

That will usually be managed as a project. And project management has a tendency to rely on clearly defined phases, tasks, deadlines, deliverables, and (especially) responsibilities. That will serve us early in the project when we’re dealing with the organization… but as soon as we have a community core, and want it to evolve ideas or test services, out goes most planification. And you want the core’s input, since you can’t build a home for a community of which you won’t be a member, not without their help.

You need to identify relevant content and services (to start with). You want to fine-tune the technology (at least a bit) guided by early use. You want to fire-check the ground rules and community guidelines (and if possible add to them from user input). You want a lot of things, and you want it now. They want to go on holidays. And they do. Volunteers have that.

So it helps if you map out exactly what you want them to tell you early on. It’s not that much: most community evolution will have to take place later, involving people in the use of resources already built. But you need to define the domain, you need to define the community (the target you’re driving at), you need to define the services and content they will find useful, and that will therefore drive them to you and catalyse conversations. You need to define may other things, but in less detail… and if you’re an old CoP hand, you don’t really need much more early help.

But that data you will pursue and get, and get it by due dates. It will fall to you to exact it and coax it into proper design documents: no foundling community will do that for you. So at the beginning, it’s you that the project will be managing.

Thereafter, marrying the needs of project management and the creative chaos of community evolution require a clear understanding of each other. You can’t drive volunteers, but you can egg them on. On the other hand, you can’t rely on getting a “finished” anything from them, so (for the more formal work that needs doing) you’ll be forced to work iteratively.

Iterations and deliverables

Communities evolve their practices and their ideas, especially early on. On day 30, they may like something that they find inadequate on day 300 (or even on day 40). They might find out they need a different tool, or a different rule, or a different way to manage new users, or…

So anything you build or manage for them (say, a portal, a forum system, and identification system, a rulebook) will be perpetually needing evolution. On the other hand, if you work as is usual in professional services firms, you want a start and an end date, and clarity in between.

The only solution I’ve found to date is to identify those evolving things, mark them out as tasks, and set “freezing points” at which requirements are gathered and the next iteration is launched. That helps manage resources and focus community minds at the same time… and not least, it enables you to give the customer some formal, solid, deliverables at the expected time.

So the trick is: define unending, iterative community activity, and fit them with fixed-date “freezing” tasks where your resources help it define current requirements; then define the resulting iteration as a conventional project activity, with deadlines and resource involvement and clearly defined deliverables. You can even plan ahead this way.

More news? This is a marriage of conventional project management and the community development practices described in “The Cathedral and the Bazaar”, that beautiful Bible of collaboration. It was done in self-defence. And it works.

PS: Asif Devji is guilty of teasing this out of me with his related work and questions, at com-prac and at his blog. I don’t really buy his model (a mite too formal and idealistic ) but it does depict most things that need to be attended to, and he’s working hard at it.

I’m becoming concerned about my iPhone use. True, it’s a nice phone and PIM, and lets me handle my mail in a very confortable way. But just how much time am I burning on it?

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t play games (well, two at Lux Touch and one run at Terminator LT surely don’t count). But ever since mid-May I’ve read such a heap of books on the little thing that I’m beginning to wonder. And the worst part is that it’s all “fun” and no work, there being an outright abundance of free good literature but not many free relevant tech or business tracts available for download in the integrated online services. I haven’t taken a white paper or a report (or even The Economist) out in any of my commutes or travel ever since I bought the thing.

Wonder what I mean? See the reading list:

- The last of the legions (and other stories), Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

- A desert drama, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

- The lair of the white worm, Bram Stoker

- A Wodehouse miscellany, PG Wodehouse

- Jill the Reckless, PG Wodehouse

- My man Jeeves, PG Wodehouse

- Right ho, Jeeves, PG Wodehouse

- The adventures of Sally, PG Wodehouse

- The clicking of Cuthbert, PG Wodehouse

- The girl on the boat, PG Wodehouse

- The white feather, PG Wodehouse

- Uneasy money, PG Wodehouse

- Rupert of Hentzau, Anthony Hope

- Bardelys the Magnificent, Rafael Sabatini

- Captain Blood, Rafael Sabatini

- Casanova’s Alibi, Rafael Sabatini

- Scaramouche, Rafael Sabatini

- The Sea-hawk, Rafael Sabatini

- The puppet masters, Robert A Heinlein

- Project Mastodon (short story), Clifford D Simak

- Arm of the law (short story), Harry Harrison

- Spell of Catastrophe (now working on the continuation), Mayer A. Brenner

- Tarzan of the Apes, Edgard R Burroughs

Is that all? I fear not. Besides having dropped several tomes half-way either for lack of tempo or for software failures (Wattpad is a bit of a disappointment), I’ve also revisited some seven Pratchett discworld books which I downloaded from a long-defunct russian site. I try to atone for the long-ago intellectual theft by buying those of his books that get published in Spanish and those English versions I can find in stores, so nowadays I don’t need the rtf’s… but they’re so convenient.

It’s worrying. I did use to read a lot of paper books, but either I was doing more than I realized, or I burned through far more papers and magazines than I counted. Either that, or reading on the iPhone is so much more efficient. I mean, look at the time this must have consumed… and I haven’t stopped doing anything that ever got on my agenda.

Technological mysteries, or extreme conveniency. Now, if it did get G3 coverage on the beachfront, I think I’d never let the rubber-cased devil out of sight.

… o mejor dicho, a partir de hoy refleja exclusivamente las opiniones y actividades de su autor (o sea, yo) y sus proyectos particulares (los derivados de Macuarium Network, o sea eme ká eme). Cualquier mención a la empresa para la que trabajo de nueve a cinco ha sido expurgada.

Es una pena en varios sentidos, principalmente porque esperaba que este blog sirviera también para aumentar la visibilidad de lo que hacemos allí en el terreno de comunidades y gestión del conocimiento. Pero lo cierto es que, en ausencia de una política corporativa de social media que deje claro lo que se puede hacer y lo que no (y siendo sinceros, en ausencia también de un grado de prudencia que podría considerarse conveniente por mi parte: hace unos días metí una pata considerable), es más sensato y más sano mantener las cosas separadas.

Así que, por si alguien lo dudaba, este blog refleja exclusivamente la opinión de su autor, vertida sin respaldo alguno de dicha (o no) empresa, como siempre. Y además, a partir de hoy ya no reflejará mi trabajo en ella.

[Actualizado para confirmar el expurgo].

Una semana cumplida del lanzamiento. De nuevo, gracias a los que están participando y a los que están ayudando a movilizar a otros.

El estudio ha recogido ya 31 encuestas válidas verificadas (seguimos por delante de las previsiones, aunque nos queda bastante), y más aún incompletas. Entre ésas incompletas no sólo hay curiosos examinando las preguntas , sino también más de un usuario de Microsoft Explorer 6, que daba problemas de visualización y ha impedido a más de uno pasar de la primera página.

Así que me alegro de informar que he eliminado el problema. Aunque de momento la página de toma de datos queda menos bonita, al menos la pueden visualizar también los que navegan desde el Lado Oscuro. Confío en que a partir de ahora decaiga la proporción de encuestas fallidas.

Por lo demás y aparte de formalizar la colaboración con A-NEI (asociación nacional de empresas de Internet), también hemos formalizado un acuerdo con eLearning Review. Por otro lado, el estudio va a tratarse también dentro de Agere (un proyecto de investigación del que hablaremos más adelante), con lo que aseguramos que la versión en inglés de los resultados sufra la mejor “peer review” posible.

Pero sobre todo quiero dar las gracias a los amigos y bloggers y comunidades que están haciéndose eco de la convocatoria cada día. Haremos un buen listado a fin de mes, pero soy muy consciente del papel que estáis teniendo en dar a conocer el estudio y generar respuestas cualificadas . Que no decaiga ahora, que queda aún bastante para los niveles de relevancia de los datos con los que queremos trabajar. Faltan, sobre todo, comunidades independientes y proyectos open source: aunque tenemos unas cuantas a bordo, la representación en la muestra es inferior a la proporción que intuitivamente creo que hay.