Chris Konstapel's Blog

Working from home, what do we need?

Christiaan Konstapel — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 08:02:29 +0000

Wat tools and facilities do we need to provide for our employees if they all need to work from home. This subject suddenly becomes urgent now with the flu starting to rise everywhere.

Reliable internet connection with enough bandwidth, a mobile UMTS connection is nice to have as a backup
Laptop, with microphone and preferrably webcam
Remote access to the company network and fileservers such as a VPN
Communication and collaboration tools such as phone (VOIP, softphone), mobile phone, email (webbased and VPN), instant messaging and chat, web conferencing with colleagues but also clients

Which web conferencing solution should we choose:

WebEx, market leader, expensive, feature rich, got a direct reply from customer service
Adobe Connect, free version available, subscription only possible from US?, feature rich, not expensive
Citrix GoToMeeting, expensive, feature rich, could not find a way to contact sales
DimDim, cheap, SAAS, lacks a few features such as decent application sharing
Microsoft LiveMeeting, expensive, feature rich, office integration, both inhouse hosted and SAAS

And which instant messaging solution should we choose:

Microsoft Office Communication Server, expensive, usable via client and web, hosted inhouse, good voip and video, secure, standards based, application sharing, active directory integration, office integration
MSN, is used by a lot of employees, free, usable via client or web, reasonable voip, video and application sharing, available everywhere but not secure, no active directory integration, not standards based
Skype, free, usable via client, available everywhere, good voip, video and application sharing, secure, no active directory integration, not standards based
Google Talk, free, usable via client and web, available everywhere, good voip and video, secure, standards based, no application sharing, no active directory integration
Lotus Sametime, expensive, usable via client and web, hosted inhouse, secure, no application sharing, active directory integration
Openfire XMPP, free, usable via client and web, hosted inhouse, good voip and video, secure, standards based, application sharing, active directory integration, can gateway to other networks such as MSN

Social Network Software and the Enterprise

Christiaan Konstapel — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 12:37:13 +0000

The question is, will social software be adopted by the enterprise. The most obvious place where it can be used is where networks are heavily used, such as sales etc. Early users of social-networking technology say they already have found that it greatly expands their business network, allowing them to tap into a broader pool of contacts and to gain an edge by receiving a warm introduction to new business prospects. The thing I’m thinking about is, will social networking software have any benifits to parts of the enterprise that don’t rely on their network to do their job, such as developers etc. Wil social network software support Communities of Practise, or can we create Communities of Practise from social networks.

Storytelling and Weblogs

Christiaan Konstapel — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 12:35:25 +0000

At this moment I’m researching the rather large domain of Collaborative Learning. When you search for Collaborative Learning you will find a lot of results about the knowledge worker and their problems. One of the problems is the sharing of experience. I think experience can be shared through story telling. A good way of story telling which can be reused is blogging. I found an entry which contains a good story about how you can use blogging for enterprise Knowledge Management.

Short Thoughts on existing KM Solutions

Christiaan Konstapel — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 12:23:47 +0000

When reading on Knowledge Management systems my eye fell on a problem that I think you can find in a lot of software solutions. It stated that Knowledge Management was built for pouring knowledge from the expert into the novice and relied to much on the contributors entering information and getting nothing back and used incentives, such as gifts, rewards, bonuses to stimulate people. This problem needs to be resolved for any software to be used to it’s full possibilties and advantages. I think one way to solve this is to get content into the system automatically and let the metadata be added by the system and not the user. But this needs more thinking….