This week in links - week 12, 2008

"Stranger in a Strange Land" by Susan Scrupski:

"...we, in the Enterprise 2.0 community, tend to immerse ourselves in the echo chamber of those who already have crossed the mental chasm to web 2.0 freedom and collaborative sharing. Our clients are not resisting the changes afoot. They’re eager to learn about social media and web 2.0, but they face hard realities concerning what to even invest their time in, let alone their budget– which, by the way, is mostly already committed to legacy apps and operations expense."

"I’m aware that the so-called “revolution” is being waged in departmental groups of large enterprises, but in order to reap the true benefits of enterprise 2.0, IT must embrace the transcendental experience. Despite the flood of information flowing every day onto the web on Enterprise 2.0 and social media, the largest firms in the world are now just becoming introduced to these concepts. It’s important to keep this in mind even if we think we’ve seen it and heard it all."

"Generation Collaboration" by Roger Farnsworth:

"I believe it means that employers must do a better job of creating an interesting environment for employees. In the past, management selected workers based on their skills and assigned them tasks. In the workplace of the future, where data flows freely and knowledge, not information, is the coin of the realm, leaders must adapt their styles to the reality of a much more informed and mobile workforce. Give too many unpleasant tasks to one worker without considering the ramifications and you may unwittingly thrust her into the arms of a competitor. So, rather than thinking of collaboration tools as a way to assign tasks, I think of them as a way to unlock potential."

Robin Good lists his selection of online collaboration tools which can be used to:

"...share access or let other people remote control your computer, to help you share documents, to send files, and to chat on all major instant messaging services".