Author: JP

Enterprise 2.0: The real revolution in the making

There’s a not-so-quiet battle going on during the US election, one that is going to get harder and grittier as the days go by. On the face of it, it’s a battle between “Mainstream Media” (or “MSM”, as it gets called) and “New Media” (principally the blogosphere, flickrworld and twitterverse).

I think that the battle can be framed differently. It’s not really between MSM and New Media, it’s between MSM and Citizen Media. That’s an important distinction; the debate is about the ways in which humans gather the news, validate the facts, edit the stories and then publish them; it is less about the tools used and more about the process; and when it comes to the process, it is more about the values and ethics that drive the editing and publishing process than anything else.

The treatment of the Edwards story is an example of what I’m taking about. The treatment had nothing to do with the technology used, and everything to do with MSM mores and habits and ways of doing things.

In every economy, in every market, in every firm, there are ways in which information is collected, validated, ratified and published. There are people involved in the collection, validation, ratification and dissemination. There are tools and techniques involved, conventions in use. All bound together by sets of values.

Now we come to Enterprise 2.0, a term that is many things to many people. There was a time when I thought I knew what it was, a time long since past. Forgive me if I don’t even attempt to define it; suffice it to say that Enterprise 2.0 is something to do with the way information flows around an organisation, allowing people to make decisions, inform others of those decisions, prioritise resources as a result, execute on the decisions, monitor the outcomes and report on them.

For the past seven or eight years, I’ve had the privilege of watching the equivalent of the MSM-Citizen Media battle within organisations, and it’s been fascinating. Here’s a sampling of the questions that have been intriguing me:

How does something become “fact” in an organisation, particularly when that something has to do with figures and achievements? What are the conventions used to report on these facts and figures? Who knows what these conventions are? How do the conventions get changed? Who changes them?

Reporting and monitoring responsibilities in organisations tend to gravitate, quite naturally, towards the audit/control function that is “centrally” associated with the resource in question: Finance deals with matters financial, HR deal with matters human-resource-related, and so on and so forth.

As Michael Power has covered so beautifully in The Risk Management of Everything, the audit explosion continues to proliferate, to a point where, paraphrasing the author, valuable yet vulnerable professional opinion is overshadowed by process minutiae and small print.

This Risk-Management-Of-Everything growth is taking place at the same time as the Battle-Between-Professions, something that Andrew Abbott has expounded excellently on. And all this is happening while the Future of Work is being shaped, while the Modern Firm is being established, while Enterprise 2.0 is being birthed.

So there’s turmoil. A lot of turmoil, as people within and without the firm jockey for position. And what do they use to jockey for position?

Reports.

Statements of “fact”.

Statements of “figures”.

“MSM” statements.

You know something? MSM statements are easier to game than Citizen Media statements. You can only tell that MSM statements are “naked” when the tide goes out; when it comes to Citizen Media statements, they tend to be naked all the time.

That’s the real revolution in the making, when the process of monitoring and reporting within the organisation switches to Citizen Media-like behaviour.

Just a thought, as I laze on a Sunday evening.

[An aside: Why didn’t I include Facebook and MySpace and social networks in general in the “citizen media” definition? I thought hard about it, but decided not to; I felt there was a need to distinguish between those aspects of new media that supported reportage, and those that did not. Somehow I find it easy to associate blogs, flickr and twitter with reportage; that ease disappears when I try and extend it to social networks.]

That glazed look

We like eating together as a family; there’s something about sharing food together on a regular basis, something I want to encourage within my family, something I want to encourage within all families.

Particularly in winter, we try and have a roast meal every now and then. But we’re not legalistic about it, we are quite capable of having a roast in the summer as well. More often than not, the meat du jour is chicken, we don’t have a great deal of red meat at home. Similarly, more often than not, the roast is had on a Sunday, after church, the traditional “Sunday roast” lunch.

All this changed some months ago, when the church we belong to (www.kcionline.org) began to have two services in the morning, at 9.30 and at 11.30; there’s always someone in the family involved in something in the “second service”, so it has meant that the Sunday roast became less frequent.

So we adapted. We felt like a roast. And so we had a roast. Today. Saturday. As an evening meal. My wife and I both like rack of lamb, so I thought I’d augment the chicken and vegetables (that she was preparing) with some glazed lamb; we have some house guests staying with us at present; this way we didn’t have to cook a ginormous chicken, something I didn’t really want to do.

Today I decided I’d try the honey-and-mustard-glaze treatment with some fresh lamb. I used the epicurious recipe as a starter, varying it only where I felt it was absolutely necessary. What did I vary? I dropped the canned beef broth and went for fresh beef gravy instead; did the same with the canned chicken broth, went for fresh chicken gravy instead; chopped small plum tomatoes instead of using the tomato paste; reduced the all-purpose flour quantities, raised the honey and mustard quantities. But in essence I stayed with the recipe, my variants were not material.

How was it? Well, take a look for yourself:

Glazed roasts are enjoyable only when the glaze really “catches”, so I was keen to get the honey and mustard to a crisp golden level. I’ve done it before, just not with honey and mustard, so I was patient enough with the basting, I had faith that the goldening would occur. And it did.

Especially with rack of lamb, I try and keep the fleshy part of the chop as pink as I can get away with, crisping the edges as much as possible. It means basting regularly during the roasting, every five minutes or so during the entire 35-minute session.

This is what the end-product looked like. Honey-and-mustard glazed rack of lamb with roast parsnips and potatoes, steamed carrots and fine green beans. It’s quite easy to do: the entire meal took about an hour to prepare and serve.

Prior to this, I’ve tended to use fruit-based glazes: apricot, quince, plum, that sort of thing. After today’s experience, I’m probably going to stay with “thinner” glazes, they take less time, they’re easier to manage and they’re probably better for me as well.

As with most things I’m interested in, when it comes to cooking I’m a passionate amateur. So I’d love to learn more from you. What have you learnt? Where do you go for your recipes? Are there handed-down-dor-generation recipes you’re prepared to share with us? Are there specific blogs you find interesting and useful in this respect?

Comments and advice welcome. In the meantime I hope I’ve been of some help. I’d also like comments on this post as well… what worked for you, what didn’t.

“there are 327 words in Inuit for Sarah Palin’

I love the Web. I love Twitter. I love the way elections are becoming sources of entertainment. Take a look at this:

Little known fact Palin

Now that is viral.

Some like it hot

I live in Windsor. At least I used to. Until it got just a teensy bit hotter than I would want. Which is what would have happened if the BBC forecast, shown below, was accurate…..

Crunch time

I had some unusual habits when I was young. [Didn’t we all?] No, really.

I ate cockroaches. Apparently. This was when I was crawling around on all fours in Calcutta. Every now and then, my parents would hear a tell-tale crunching sound, come running to wherever I was, only to see the last vestiges of cockroach disappear down my gullet. A one-man roach exterminator. Or so I’m told.

Old habits die hard.

Which may be one of the reasons I found Catherine Chalmers’ work extraordinarily compelling. I was blown away by Safari as shown in the latest issue of Wholphin, and have ordered both her books. Amazing stuff.

Incidentally, when I was a few years older, my father taught me these lines:

Algy met a bear; the bear met Algy; the bear was bulgy; the bulge was Algy.

A whole ecosystem encapsulated in four sentences? Strange how memory works. Because that’s what came to mind when I saw this photo on Catherine’s site, and the two that followed.

Go take a look at the site, it has some wonderful stuff.