I love how creative our customers are.

I got an email this week from a big pharma company who's about to begin their rollout of Clearspace. This customer has impressed me in a number of ways. They actually did a "Coke vs Pepsi" test before choosing which collaboration platform to standardize on. They brought in people from around the company and had them use each application stripped of its Jive and Microsoft branding.

This is smart because ultimately the entire company would be using the end-choice. As an aside, this same company is one of the earliest adopters of the iPhone as an enterprise device. They have an amazing people-centric approach to technology. Both the iPhone and Clearspace seem to be on similar schedules and it's cool to see all the ways this company gets employees involved.

Their rollout plan

They actually spent a lot of time thinking through and testing out what to call their internal instance of Clearspace and just how to roll it out. I thought their choice of a "pool" metaphor not only works for the reasons they articulate below, but the need to just "jump into the pool" when it comes to people-centric collaboration like this often comes up in my conversations with people.

Bipolar Training

5-10 folks from each department were selected to be part of the soft launch program. Of those people, half of them were enthusiasts and half were technology laggards-but all were people that others turned to in some form or fashion. The training was more centered on great cases for using Clearspace and how to become proficient at engaging with others. The logic of including the laggards was to capture the, "well if Sally is in there using it, I can too." This same seed group would play a critical part later on (see below).

Naming is important

A lot of our customers replace the name of the product (Clearspace) with their own company name or they create a completely new brand. In this case it was the latter. I've modified the logo for this post since the customer's Marketing/PR department isn't ok disclosing vendor associations.

Reasons for the Genepool Name:

• Shortens the learning curve (observed through focus groups)
• Sounds scientific
• Conveys a sense of shared community
• 8/10 people I asked liked it better than all the other ideas
• "Genepool" sounds like a collection of important "stuff" rather than a Livelink replacement or new "where files go to die" Document repository

Great "Genepool" metaphors:

• Becoming Proficient with the applicaion = Learning to swim
• Clearspace Policy Guidelines = Don't pee in the pool
• Novice features = The Shallow end/ The wading pool
• Advanced Clearspace features = The deep end
• Space Administration = Adult swim
• Digg-like content area = The Hot Tub

Use it in a sentence...

• "Post a question in Genepool"
• "Did you check the 'Pool first?"
• "Look for it in the 'Pool"
• "Did you just read Todd's blog post in Genepool?"

Get the VPs blogging

As part of their "Coke vs Pepsi" test with users, they also asked everyone what sorts of things would get them to participate. As we've seen with nearly all our projects, it was having top management both supporting the project but also actively participating. In this case the VP has committed to a regular blog called "The Diving Board."

Explode the word out

It's very hard to let a massive company know that there even is new software for them. These folks have done a stellar job breaking through the noise.

• Have posters with provocative questions plastered everywhere
• Email announcement
• All-hands/department meeting announcements
• Create tent-cards for everyone's desk inviting them to log in
• Get the seed group (mentioned at the top of this post) to "sneaker-net" around and ask people if they've logged in, need help or training

What about you?

Are you in the beginning, middle or end of a social software deployment? Love to hear what you've seen work and what's failed.