Proton Media: The Most Advanced Collaboration Technology in the Market?

Written by Alex Williams / October 30, 2009 4:00 PM / 11 Comments

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We see so many different collaboration tools that at times if feels like we are looking at the same environment over and over again.

Proton Media is entirely different. It is the most advanced collaboration environment we have seen in the market. We say this without hesitation.

The team at Proton have created a virtual world that includes application sharing; collaboration with 2D and 3D environments; video; 3D avatars; chat; VOIP; simulated environments and a social network that leverages the knowledge of the different users.

Prior to leaving Forrester to join Altimeter Group, Jeremiah Owyang, along with Josh Bernoff, Cynthia N. Pflaum, and Emily Bowen, published a report that attempted to bring the future of the Social Web into focus. If we viewed the content of his research as a social object, the conversations that would transpire could in fact expedite the development and implementation of the most valuable predictions and observations contained within.

The first part of the report observes the state of the Social Web and summarizes its direction:

Today’s social experience is disjointed because consumers have separate identities in each social network they visit. A simple set of technologies that enable a portable identity will soon empower consumers to bring their identities with them — transforming marketing, eCommerce, CRM, and advertising. IDs are just the beginning of this transformation, in which the Web will evolve step by step from separate social sites into a shared social experience. Consumers will rely on their peers as they make online decisions, whether or not brands choose to participate. Socially connected consumers will strengthen communities and shift power away from brands and CRM systems; eventually this will result in empowered communities defining the next generation of products.

Brian Solis outlines Forrester's take on the future of the social web.

Is Enterprise 2.0 a crock?

by Jay Cross on November 5, 2009[edit]

Yesterday I attended the Enterprise 2.0 conference, “the event that will make your company more agile.”

First up was a Google presentation about Wave. Bare-bones Wave is a snooze; I haven’t been able to see many benefits. But customized Wave looks like a winner and that’s how I think Wave will be deployed. SAP demo’d a business process management application with collaborative charting; prototyping with their “analysis gadget” looked slick. ThoughtWorks showed project task assignments; the individual tracking and comments reminded me of what I’d seen in Brainpark last month. Novell Pulse combined messaging and project management. All of these bolt onto Wave’s API. Wave enables collaboration. Some in the audience were skeptical.

Workshop: Become a Chief Meta-Learning Officer

by Jay Cross on November 3, 2009[edit]

On Tuesday, November 10, Clark Quinn and I will be leading a workshop entitled Be the Future of Organizational Learning: Become a Chief Meta-Learning Officer in San Jose. It’s an all-day event in the Atherton Room of the San Jose Fairmont. We have four seats left. For your $495, you get breakfast, lunch, refreshments, a certificate, and Clark & Jay. Such a deal.

Published: August 27, 2009

 / Autumn 2009 / Issue 56

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Organizations & People

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Rising to the Corporate Education Challenge

Amid layoffs and restructuring, many companies are rethinking, not discarding, their efforts to build worker capabilities.

by Thomas Ripsam, Edward C. Landry, and Bradley Fusco

Had the current economic crisis occurred in the mid-1990s, it would surely have been followed by severe cutbacks in corporate education programs. During difficult periods in the past, worker training and development initiatives were typically seen as little more than a pricey luxury. Today, however, amid layoffs and restructuring, many companies are rethinking, rather than discarding, their efforts to build worker capabilities. The notion that human capital management — and particularly employee learning — can create competitive advantage and support corporate agendas has never been more compelling.

There are several reasons for this trend. First, downsizing necessitates retraining. Add to this the related strategic changes: the acceleration of organic growth initiatives, movements into new and adjacent markets, and adoption of new business or operating models, such as increased offshoring and outsourcing. Learning programs can also help improve morale by sending a signal that the company plans to be around for the long haul; otherwise, why train workers and managers for the future?

And beyond the crisis, the strategic importance of corporate education is driven by broader trends. The rise of the service economy has made work more complex; employees are increasingly called on to solve problems, as opposed to performing rote tasks. Global economic liberalization, new regulatory requirements, and other changes in the world at large require employees to be sufficiently knowledgeable to perform a variety of tasks. Technological changes have forced workers to stay up-to-date on increasingly advanced equipment and practices. And the brain drain brought about by the retirement of the baby boom generation is shrinking the available talent pool, propelling an influx of new, undertrained employees. (See “The Talent Innovation Imperative,” by DeAnne Aguirre, Laird Post, and Sylvia Ann Hewlett, s+b, Autumn 2009.)

Learnstreams Have 3 Major Actions

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Since my Learnstreaming post, Harold Jarche has added another interesting piece to learnstreaming.  Harold says that learnstreams are the water that allows learnscapes to grow.  I like this addition and have developed it a little further.

Learnstreams have 3 major actions that are required to keep the learnstream healthy for use within the learnscape.

I'd been calling this posterous blog a lifestream, borrowing from Steve Rubel and others. Dennis Callahan terms his a Learnstream; I like this term much better.

Now I am more likely to post opinions and essays on my blog and to reference things I simply want to share with others in my Learnstream.

Ecology is an apt analogy to business.

Teaching In The Next Way

October 31, 2009 ·

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I love this interview that Shel Israel did with Howard Rheingold (a favorite author). Partway down the interview, Howard goes into some of what he does for teaching with modern tools. I ripped this part out. Check out what Howard does:

One strategy is to have only the student co-teaching team keep their laptops open while they are helping me lead the class; one member of the team makes notes on the wiki, sketching in top-level headings that the other students will fill in AFTER class, another member of the team identifies words for the lexicon and adds them to the wiki (and again the class, as a whole, fills in the definitions before the next class), and a third member of the team looks up sites online and projects them (I have three screens in my classroom at Stanford).

You can read the whole interview here. I’m grateful to Shel Israel for getting this out of Howard. Nicely done, sir.