Social Tools for Research & Collaboration [2005]

[email protected]://dinamehta.com/

social tools for research & collaboration

june 10-11 reboot 7.0 copenhagen









no electricity

no telephones

no newspapers

YET 5 cell phones

in the dark ….


beaming pictures and sounds live from the village


teams are collaborating globally

we need tools that enable us to forget physical

and cultural boundaries exist

challenges :-developing common ‘brainspace

-understand process & motives of emergence manifest

in social behaviour and media


social tools foster collaboration & community …


december 26, 2004

a massive earthquake and resulting tsunamis

in the Indian Ocean devastated many

countries in South-East and South Asia








Nature's force, while tragic, stimulated an almost immediate response and outpouring of help

nature's force, while tragic, stimulated an

almost immediate response and outpouring

of help through the internet




no crisis on this scale will ever be handled

again without sms, blogs, and wikis

social tools will become a natural extension

of rapid adaptation to chaotic conditions


technology with heart


a living document from blog > sub-blogs > wiki



cooperation and interdependence



communication and information flowscommunication and information flows


a decentralized self-organizing system



“I think your 'blog' was more of a tributary to that big pond. It was a tributary to a larger river, then a lake,then an ocean. Like the source from a rich, minerally-charged fountainhead, the news of this font spread, and those who heard it, swam upstream, bringing others with them. And so the flow reversed somewhat, source being fed by recipient. It was a resource that many could tap into. And, much like chaos, it is often said that water 'finds a way', and a leak is often positioned way beyond its origins."

James Straffon, Designer Picture here too ?


social tools for research…

…many more opportunities


blogs in market research

“In the marketing research context, blogs are a disruptive

technology. Instead of having to generate data by way of surveys

or focus groups with whatever artifacts the process introduces,

blogs provide direct visibility into customers. Instead of having to

connect potentially artificial samples back to the actual market,

now you have to filter real market behavior, interpret it, and make

sense of it.”Jim McGee, Director Huron Consulting Group


“the growing popularity of blogs and other online

forums has prompted companies to pay more attention

to what is being said about them on the Internet, and has

given rise to a new kind of market research aimed at

finding useful information in the sea of online chatter. “

Wall Street Journal

web-monitoring as a research tool…


blogs as playgrounds for testing ideas…



from Japan - a research paper by Daisuke Okabe:

“camera phones enable an expanded field for chronicling and displaying self

and viewpoint to others in a new kind of everyday visual storytelling...... ”

many advantages…

quicker, cheaper

real life and real time – tool fits into their ‘culture of use’

no researcher bias - the subject is the researcher

easy to transmit via email or post on blogs

flick’r- like applications, image tags

the subject is the researcher…


blogs and social networks

help build jazz communities

so rich in content - a

researcher’s dream come

true …




unique opportunity to use a blog ….

corporate ethnography

teams in the US and India

US team need to ‘see’ and ‘hear’

Indian team to understand the client’s perspectives


be part of a learning journey on next generation tools

more dialogue : more jazz play – feed off each other

one space : one-stop shop

for the project

accelerate speed and

efficiency to bring concepts

to market successfully

how we pitched it…


change the way we work, engage you with these tools

a short prototyping experiment – 2-3 months ?

client to commit approvals and time

longer term – explore the potential for

using these tools internally on other projects

and later, client may want to set up a corporate blog

call to action…



skype

wikis

other social tools used…


client feedback…

“we now forget boundaries exist!”

• creative playground• immediacy, spontaneity, flow• efficiencies – communication, time costs• learning journeys


news aggregators

tagging with flickr, del.icio.us

voip / skype / IM

podcasting, skypecasting

some other tools with applications for research


summing up …

social tools melt cultural boundaries

people pick up the tools that are around them to meet human needs.

strong human needs drive these emergent behaviors

the challenge for research is to reveal and understand the motives and the process of emergence, as seen through social behavior and media


wish list :

integration – cell phone, audio-video

recording and transcription

location awareness– disaster management, field teams

video flickr, video skype


thank you

Technology

Social Tools for Research & Collaboration [2005]