We kicked off bright'n early at 8.30 with coffee, pastries, and a great group of people (coming from as far away as Brighton and Manchester). We started with a short presentation about the challenges for current awareness ('CA') processes and our thoughts about the potential for improving and expediting those processes through the use of simple social tools - such as RSS and wikis.
We then gave a live demonstration of the social software platform (integrating NewsGator ES and Confluence) we recently implemented for Dewey & LeBoeuf in New York. That sparked some interesting questions about how to encourage adoption of the tools, how to integrate the tools with existing systems, and the best use cases for the tools in relation to various work processes and roles.
In our experience, concentrating on discrete areas of information and knowledge sharing (like internal and external CA) helps in the construction of powerful business cases by illustrating tangible improvements and efficiencies to existing processes and systems. And there are some obvious cases to be made here, like the ability to deliver timely information, to do so in a cost-effective manner whilst adding value, relevance and originality to the content.
This is where social tools out-do themselves! Just take a look at the presentation. Or if you want to see the tools in action, let us know and we can give you a demo of Dewey.
Many thanks to all those who attended!
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