The quarterly publication of the International Legal Technology Association
Issue link: https://epubs.iltanet.org/i/21494
Just last year, in a blog post on ostatic.org, “The Future of Collaborative Networks,” Aaron Fulkerson, co-founder and CEO of MindTouch, stated, “Rather than focusing on socialization, one to one interactions and individual enrichment, businesses must be concerned with creating an information fabric within their organizations.” He described this information fabric as “a federation of content from the multiplicity of data and application silos utilized on a daily basis” and pointed out how drastically different the characteristics and problem-solving issues are between consumer- oriented social networking and business-oriented social networking. The emphasis on the former is achieving personal objectives and the latter on achieving group or enterprise objectives. So how does a firm implement Enterprise 2.0? For Microsoft-centric organizations, the platform of choice is SharePoint 2010, which Microsoft describes as its business collaboration platform for the enterprise. With its collaborative content (blogs, wikis, videos, and discussions), social feedback and organization (bookmarks, tagging and ratings), and “Apple’s Ping is a brilliant example of how successful organizations align strategic objectives with innovation.” colleague tracking, SharePoint 2010 sets the standard and raises the bar for Enterprise 2.0 technology. But on its own it doesn’t deliver the “information fabric” of federated content from “data and application silos used on a daily basis.” This is where third-party software providers come into play with the integration of their ERP, CRM, DMS and LMS systems into the Enterprise 2.0 fabric of SharePoint. SharePoint’s Use Is Evolving Currently most employees are limited to being consumers of information, but Enterprise 2.0 technology promises to bring content publishing and ownership to employees at large. Early implementations of SharePoint as an intranet platform didn’t provide much more than a centralized portal for organizing and publishing links to internal Web-based applications. Over time, however, content was pushed closer to its consumers as pages evolved to incorporate related information from disparate systems. Eventually, we began to see the expansion of permissions to publish content along with the expansion of ownership Apple’s Ping is a brilliant example of how successful organizations align strategic objectives with innovation. Apple created Ping, a social network for music to increase music sales. Consider the similarities between a social network for music and a social network for learning: A social network for music, why? Discovery of music What are my friends listening to? Where and when are my favorite artists performing? What concerts are my friends going to? What are my friends’ favorite songs? A social network for learning, why? Discovery of learning opportunities What videos are my colleagues watching? Where and when are my leaders speaking and teaching? What classes are my colleagues going to? What learning resources did my colleagues find useful? 86 www.iltanet.org Peer to Peer