Power of Social & an example of “Wisdom of the Crowds”

Posted on 2012/02/26 by markjowen

In a previous post, I discussed how you don’t always get a correct answer to a question you ask to a crowd.

One of the Spark talks given at Lotusphere 2012 was by Mitch Cohen. It was titled “Get Cancer – Get Social”. His wife had been diagnosed with breast cancer.

Mitch’s talk was a good, & inspiring, one. He talked about the part the internet, and social media played, and broke it down into three areas:

Information
Misinformation, and
Support

(Mis)Information

“Believe it or not, someone (can) be wrong on the internet”

The first thing that Mitch did when his wife was diagnosed was to tell her not to look for answers on the internet. In his talk, he tells us that no two diagnosis’ are the same, and that everyone reacts differently. There are a lot of people out there trying to be helpful, and give advice, but it was, really, misinformation. The best thing to do, said Mitch, is ask the questions to the experts – the doctors and oncologists.

Social

“There’s a lot of support you can get”

Mitch talked about Facebook. “You can be sitting at an infusion centre, letting this poison run into you boy, and you could be thinking about that, or you could be looking at the 100 of comments coming in wishing you support.”

Blogging

Mitch’s wife started blogging about what she was going through. She wrote about how she was feeling, how she was handling it, and what she thought about what was going on. Not only did it made it easier for her to tell her friends all about it, it made it really made it easier for Mitch to share it with his friends.

Living Vicariously

Mitch pointed out that going through chemo means you end up being more susceptible to infection Which means that you can’t be around other people. Being able to see what the vacation photos of others on Facebook, and reading their stories really made a difference to his wife.

Thousands of Miles Away

“I wish we were closer, I wish there was something we could do”

Mitch told of the great support they got from their local friends was, but what he found incredibly powerful was the support he got from people thousands of miles away. How people he had never met in person came up to him (at the conference) and were genuinely concerned and interested with what had been going on.

The Spark Talks were, and are, organised by The Nerd Girls. You can see, below, a list of other excellent Spark talks that were given at Lotusphere2012.

Spark Ideas Lotusphere 2012 – The Videos (nerdgirlsrule.wordpress.com)
Wisdom of the Crowds – part 1 : When the wisdom of the many helps the few or the one (markjowen.wordpress.com)
Relationships in social media (markjowen.wordpress.com)
From The Wisdom Of Crowds, To The Wisdom Of Friends (neilperkin.typepad.com)

“Infographic Thinking”

Posted on 2012/02/17 by markjowen

Troy Larson has written a post on Infographics that I like.

If you have read my earlier Infographic posts (here and here), you’ll know that I don’t think much of the majority of Infographics that I have seen.

Well, Troy has the same opinion:

…after surfing the web for a few minutes looking at some of these, you quickly come to the conclusion that most of them suck.

He follows this with the best comment on Infographics that I’ve ever seen…

most people wrongly think that information + graphics = infographics

And then he takes the whole “infographics” discussion to another level…he discusses an interview that Gestalt had with Francesco Franchi, the Art Director of one of Italy’s top financial newspapers.

It’s a great post. Click here to read what Troy wrote (as well as watch the video of Francesco Franchi).

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UPDATE

Also just noticed that my friend Ant Clay, from 21apps has also published an amazing post on Infographics. Definitely take a look at it!
http://www.21apps.com/uncategorized/that-aint-no-infographic/

The Truth about Every Presentation

Posted on 2012/02/10 by markjowen

This video reveals the truth about every PowerPoint presentation that has ever been made…

Exciting Times ahead with AIIM

Posted on 2012/01/07 by markjowen

I’m honored to have been asked to be an Expert Blogger for AIIM!

That’s right – I’ve been designated an AIIM ECM Expert. I’ve even got a new purple badge that has been added to my AIIM profile. (It’s sitting on top of the AIIM Ambassador badge!)

I’m very thankful to the editor at AIIM (Bryant Duhon) for giving me this opportunity, and it’s also fantastic to be include with such intellectual giants as Chris Walker, Joe Shepley, Laurence Hart, Cheryl McKinnon, Jesse Wilkins, Jeremy Thake, Christian Buckley, Nick Inglis and many, many more. (For a full list click here).

I’ve been given the OK to publish any post I write for AIIM, also on my own blog (i.e. this one), but with a lapse of a couple of weeks.

At the same time, I’m still very interested in other areas that don’t quite fit the scope of my AIIM designation. If I feel the urge to put fingers to keyboard and write about these, they will also be appearing here.

I’m really stoked about this, and look forward to writing some smart stuff.

Infographics – some examples of REALLY good ones (maybe)

Posted on 2011/12/30 by markjowen

If you have read my earlier post on Infographics, you’ll recall that I bemoaned the fact that some of the so called infographics coming out these days are just not making the grade.

This evening, my good reader, I came across a blog post that showed seventeen examples of “excellent” infographics. Initially I was excited by what I saw, but then, on closer examination, I actually discovered that while some of the infographics were, indeed, visually exciting and really “painted a picture”, some of them were just statistics with a coloured graph.

Infographic #1, #2, #3, #4, and #5 were prime examples of what I have been saying. They give you information in a great way and add value, rather than making you think “D’uh – you could have just given me the raw statistics, or information.”

Infographic #6 and #7: “D’uh – you could have just given me the raw statistics.”

Infographic #8, #9 and #10: Are great representations of the data.They made me really study them to try and get more information out of them.

Infographic #11 and #12 were poor. These were just numbers. That’s all. I wasn’t stimulated to think about what I was looking at. (In short – they were boring).

Infographic #13, #14, #15 and #16. I like these ones. The information present, again, caused me to stop, while my neurons, and synapses, sprang into life.

Infographic #17. At the risk of repeating myself “D’uh – you could have just given me the raw statistics.”

Have a look at the post (click here), and let me know, in the comments, if you agree with what I have said.

Infographics – have they gone too far? (markjowen.wordpress.com)
Deconstructing Infographics (freetech4teachers.com)
Infographics – love ‘em or hate ‘em? (sparkyourinterest.wordpress.com)

Excellent point…Sucky PowerPoint presentations

Posted on 2011/12/15 by markjowen

Here’s an excellent presentation by Jesse Desjardins. He makes some really great suggestions. So much so that I wanted to capture it on my blog. I just hope that more people actually “get” what makes a good PowerPoint presentation.

At the same time I realise that many people need to comply to some “corporate” standard. And, sometimes a PowerPoint presentation is created to be read, or viewed, at a later stage when the presenter is present. I’m not quite sure how to fit those types into the concepts that Jesse (and many others) are promoting.

Watch Jesse’s presentation, and have a think about how a “corporate” (or a “stand-alone”) presentation can be created using these ideas…

A couple of my other posts that discuss presentations:

3 Easy Steps to a Great 20 Minute Presentation (forbes.com)

Infographics – have they gone too far?

Posted on 2011/12/12 by markjowen

We’ve probably all see an infographic that displays “interesting” (or not) statistics in a visual way. (For a selection of infographics, check out dataviz, and visual complexity).

An infographic turns numbers into something visually exciting and meaningful.

Recently I came across an article on the VentureBeat website, by Chikodi Chima, which states that infographics have “jumped the shark“.

In it, Chikodi refers to Edward Tuft, (author of The Visual Display of Quantitative Information.), who said that successful graphics should do the following:

Show the data.
Induce the viewer to think about the substance rather than about methodology, graphic design, the technology of graphic production, or something else.
Present many numbers in a small space.
Make large data sets coherent.
Encourage the eye to compare different pieces of data.
Reveal the data at several levels of detail, from a broad overview to the fine structure.
Serve a reasonably clear purpose: description, exploration, tabulation or decoration.
Be closely integrated with the statistical and verbal descriptions of a data set.

It seems that many infographics don’t accomplish these, and are being made just for the sake of making them.

Here’s that link to that article…How infographics jumped the shark.

Give it a read, and let me know if you agree.

Infographics – some examples of REALLY good ones (maybe) (markjowen.wordpress.com)
The Rise of the Infographic (makeapowerfulpoint.com)
Storied infographics: Why do they fail? (commetrics.com)

Tips for creating Great PowerPoint slides

Posted on 2011/06/20 by markjowen

When I was at the European SharePoint Best Practices conference in London this year, I had the pleasure of meeting Ruven Gotz.

Ruven is a is a Senior Consultant & SharePoint MVP with Navantis, and gave an excellent presentation on “How to organise effective requirements gathering workshops”.

The subject was interesting, but what I was really impressed with, was the style of Ruven’s PowerPoint slides. They made me listen to what Ruven had to say (rather than switch off and just read what was on the screen).

Ruven’s style impressed me so much that I tried to emulate it recently. It wasn’t such a success.

Thankfully Ruven has just written a post on creating excellent powerpoint presentations.I strongly reccommend that you go to his site and have a read.

Ruven’s post: Can you read that at the back of the room?

Frikkin’ Presentations

Tips for creating Great PowerPoint slides (markjowen.wordpress.com)
Create Better Diagrams for your PowerPoint Slides (labnol.org)
Present Away: Techniques to Shine (Part 2) (abitofeverythingnow.wordpress.com)
Stop Making Presentations! How PowerPoint Ruined the US Economy (marketingprofs.com)
Knovio Reinvents the Power Point Presentation (arnoldit.com)

FirstDoc User Group – Vienna

Posted on 2011/04/22 by markjowen

I’m going to the FirstDoc User Group (FDUG) conference in Vienna, Europe, this year. (For those that are not familiar with FirstDoc, see the links at the bottom of this post).

Every year CSC hold the FirstDoc User Group conference – first in the US, and then in Europe.

I’m looking forward to it. I’ve been ask to present there so it’s time to put the old thinking cap on, and come up with an interesting way of presenting information. (I don’t want to bore people).

The agenda for the Europe conference hasn’t been posted yet, but the one for the US conference has.

The keynote speech will cover CSC’s Long Term Product Strategy. This will be interesting, as the ECM world is very much a lively, ever-changing thing at the moment, as each large EMC vendor morphs, and adapts to meet the ever-changing environment bought about by such things as SharePoint 2010, and cloud computing.

Next on the schedule is a case study – “Global Deployment”. This will also be interesting as international companies are, and have been for awhile, looking at the challenges of multiple sites, located in disparate locations around the world. The challenges don’t just include the hardware side of distributed systems, but also taxonomies and metadata (ensuring that everyone uses the same vocabulary), etc.

In the afternoon, there will be a panel discussion by representatives of some of the large Pharmaceutical companies on Collaboration, and SPX. SPX is CSC’s technology that allows users to interact with their FirstDoc system from SharePoint. It consists of two parts – SPX web parts, and Wingspan’s DocWay server component that resides on a web service server (see my earlier post for details on this).
I’ve been involved with this technology for the last 4 years, and I am curious what will be covered here.

Later in the day there is also a discussion on FirstDoc Performance metrics.
Now, this is something that I would be very interested in. How do you actually measure the performance of a system, especially when there are so many parts involved? For example, if a user is in SharePoint, and they use SPX to access documents that reside in a Documentum docbase, there is so much going on. If performance is poor, how do you actually pinpoint where the bottleneck is? I know that there are ways to get information back on the activities that occur, but this involves making some changes in the configuration, and is not really a simple thing to do. If I was there, this is one session where I would be scribbling notes. (I know – in these days, I should actually be typing notes into my iPad2).

At the end of the first day there will be a User Only session. In the first FDUG conference 2007, this session caused a little bit of concern. The idea was that the users would have a chance to talk frankly with the users about FirstDoc (at that stage FirstDoc was the name of the company also – it was bought by CSC in 2008.) However, the fact that there was someone from FirstDoc present in the room did not engender a feeling of openness. At later conferences this was less of a problem.

On the second day, there are more strategy, and users sessions culminating in product demonstrations.

Naturally there is also a social event planned, and this really gives the attendees the chance to mix, and get to know the others that are using the CSC products. There is an opportunity to share, and learn, from others who may be dealing with, or have dealt with, similar challenges.