Corporate Social Bookmarking Tools

I was just asked on twitter about using social bookmarking tools that work behind the firewall. I thought I had blogged about this before, but I'm not finding the post.

Here are the social bookmarking tools that I commonly cite in presentations:

• BEA Pathways
• Cogenz
• Connectbeam
• del.irio.us - perl based, very similar to del.icio.us
• IBM Lotus Connections
• Scuttle – Open Source
• WSSsearch - SharePoint add-on

Any others? Good comparisons of these?

I originally included: Jive Software - because I thought they had it, but it appears they don't.

Corporate Policies on Web 2.0

One of the barriers commonly cited during my presentations around eLearning 2.0 (use of Web 2.0 / social media for work and learning) is that organizations often have not established their policies or guidelines around the use of these tools. Unfortunately, companies sticking their head in the sand doesn't do any good. Employees are using these things in some way. Companies need a policy. And most corporate guidelines out there around social media are fairly similar. They generally make each employee personally responsible, they need to abide by existing corporate rules, obey copyright and other IP rules, keep secrets and act appropriately.

I think IBM's policy is a pretty good starting point: IBM Social Computing Guidelines

Updated 6/2/2009.

Other company policies or discussions of guidelines I've seen around blogging, social media, web 2.0:

• United States Airforce (PDF)
• United States Navy (PDF)
• Feedster Corporate Blogging Policy
• Thomas Nelson Blogging Guidelines
• Plaxo Public Internet Communication Policy
• Hill & Knowlton Blogging policies and guidelines
• Yahoo Employee Blog Guidelines
• BBC Blog Guidelines
• Sun's Policy on Public Discourse
• Groove
• What Should Your Corporate Policy Be On Blogs?
• Social Media Policy Musts
• Opera
• Harvard Law School
• GM
  
• IOC Olympic Athletes Blogging Policy (PDF)
• Cisco
• Dell
• Intel
• Gartner
• About.com Samples
• Enterprise: List of 40 Social Media Staff Guidelines

However, I'm not really sure how many organizations have these kinds of policies and who in most organizations establishes them.

If you have good articles, posts, etc. on how to get these established in your organization or stats on how common it is among different kinds of organizations, please point me to them.

In some ways, the question we face is -

If our organization doesn't have an existing policy, is that a fundamental roadblock to using certain kinds of Web 2.0 tools as part of our eLearning 2.0 solutions?

Is it worth our time to try to push for getting a policy established?

Depressing Facts - Prisoners More Common than Active Contributors

Just saw Pew Report - One in 100: Behind Bars in America 2008. That statistic is downright sad, distressing - some truly depressing facts in the report. It also really caught my attention because of my recent post around the 90-9-1 Rule.

So, a higher percentage of people are in prison out of the US population than actively contribute in any given population?

Can that be right?

Prisoners are more common than active contributors?

Dissertation Wiki

Karyn is asking for help via a post on her blog - So, how did you get started... and what difference has it made? Basically, it's about the use of Social Media by learning professionals. She is looking for first had experiences. I hope she's successful in finding them and publishing about them.

She also made one comment that was very interesting:

To the consternation of my rather conservative university, I am submitting the dissertation in the form of a wiki (although - strictly speaking - is it really a wiki if I don't open it up to the community to co-author, which of course I can't do in this instance).

First, I can't imagine trying to do a dissertation wiki. The issues with getting it into a format ready for print publication would be daunting. But that aside ...

You can't open it up? What's the dividing line? You are certainly allowed to get comments, suggestions, etc. on it. After all, that's what advisors are for (other than causing you grief with their agendas). So, if they provide comments via the Wiki doesn't that make a lot of sense. The alternative is emailing around a document. Why is that so different?

In fact, wouldn't it be safer to have it as a Wiki where you could see what each person did? And isn't it the notion of ONLY having your faculty committee / advisors a fairly antiquated notion? After all, the dissertation is certainly much too specific for them to really be experts on the topic. You quickly blow by their knowledge and then you can't get as much help. Opening it up to the world seems to make much more sense.

I've not really paid much attention to this topic. BTW, my experience writing my dissertation was not good. If I could have done it via a combination of blog posts and a wiki, that would have been a completely different experience. And, I truly believe I would have learned more.

I imagine there's lots out there going on around this, I just hadn't thought about it.

Laptop Distraction

A comment just got me a bit worried...

If I were someone not using a laptop during a live conference session, I'd just as soon not sit next to someone who was -- it seems at least for now much more distracting than sitting next to someone taking notes on paper.

As a person who takes all my notes into my laptop (or sometimes into my Treo), it worries me that I could be a laptop distraction as well.

I did a quick search and didn't see a whole lot on this.

• Are other people finding that they are distracted by someone with a laptop sitting next to them at a conference?
• Any suggestions on best way to handle?