A powerpoint about my personal and professional background, presented at the Vrije Universiteit of Amsterdam

1. Web strategy Vrije Universiteit, 16-11-2007

2. Today, I would like to talk a little bit more about my professional background so far, from my Msc thesis to what I’m doing now. I think it’s relevant to you as I was in the same situation 2 years ago as you are now…

4. Initiation: University of Amsterdam and Management of Immaterial Values

6. Focus was on knowledge management, learning…

8. … and communities of practice.

11. My main research question:

12. “ What hypotheses can be formulated that explain how, and to what extend, social software offers facilities that support the process of learning in practice in communities of practice?”

13. How did I approach this research question?

15. Some of my results

17. Some more detailed results

25. How did I ended up at my current employee?

27. And now: some part work, large part fun!

29. I sort of introduced them to concepts like Web 2.0 and social software:

30. I showed them things like:

32. I talked about some more fundamental principles:

33. Considering social software, seven building blocks can be identified Identity - a way of uniquely identifying people in the system Presence - a way of knowing who is online, available or otherwise nearby Relationships - a way of describing how two users in the system are related (e.g. in Flickr, people can be contacts, friends of family) Conversations - a way of talking to other people through the system Groups - a way of forming communities of interest Reputation - a way of knowing the status of other people in the system (who's a good citizen? who can be trusted?) Sharing - a way of sharing things that are meaningful to participants (like photos or videos) Source: http://nform.ca/publications/social-software-building-block

34. And talked about the economic value of Web 2.0:

35. Web 2.0 can also be explained within a broader economic trend, which is refered to as the long tail Units sold Total offering Source: Anderson, 2006 1 Democratize production tools resulting in more stuff, which lengthens the tail (user generated media) Democratize distribution tools resulting in more access to niches, which heightens the tail (mash-ups, readers, startpages) 3 Connect supply and demand resulting business driven from hits to niches (RSS, Recommendation, Tags) 2 From a hitdriven market to a niche driven market. For instance, Pandora makes money by delevering the long tail of music to listeners, based on personal interests and profiles

36. I also showed some catchy examples…

37. There are tons of examples of Web 2.0, of which to show a few

38. And we thought about what is in it for us

41. A little bit more about work

43. How did we get this assignment?

45. So what was it about?

47. Approach

48. Engagement of end users Accountability with users Differentiate through content Community2.0 Supporting a need Focus Reward participants

50. What initiated the contact?

52. What did they do with this model?

53. Vision nota Involvement Responsibility Need Reward Focus Differentiate through content Community A Community B Community C

54. And now the final example…

56. Origins

58. Innovation is a key requisite for an organisation to realise a sustainable competitive advantage . Every individual employee can contribute (to) innovative, refreshing and renewing ideas and opportunities which enables the company to operate at its best and realize a sustainable competitive advantage . The mission of the innovation team, and the innovation portal is to transform every employee into an entrepreneur The innovation Team adopts a strategy focused on enabling the innovative character of the employees by implementing low-barrier, easy-to-use collaboration tools , which captures the collective intelligence and collaborative attitude of the colleagues. The portal should facilitate communities of practice in their need for creating engagement, imagination and alignment. Participants should be able to share a passion, work on a shared problem and collaborate on a shared topic

59. Question: what strategies (concrete examples) can be formulated, given the examples of Web 2.0 we discussed, to nurture innovation amongst the companies employees? Go in separate teams and think about this question for 15 minutes: then, lets discuss the results.

60. What did we do?

61. We brainstormed…

63. We looked at relevant examples…

65. But took a slightly different approach

66. AKA Ideas Exchange, Dell IdeaStorm

67. Which resulted in…

68. Breakdown of rationale, mindmap, innovation funnel, and relevant theory results in the portal framework Portal Framework User generated content Bookmarks Blogs Wikis Idea submission Workflow integration Social networking / community Groups Friends Messaging Personalisation, recommendation, and rewarding Latest… Top voted Userpoints / Voting Recommen-dations Tagging Slideshows as flash objects Fun stuff Comments E-mail & RSS support

69. I hope these slides gave some insight in my personal and professional background and how social media and online presence shaped my current position. I hope it inspires you to follow a similar path…

70. Questions?