Dave Pollard, How to Save the World
Thoughtful presentation on the current state of social networking, including low technology approaches.....high tech is not always best solution.

What's involved in Social Networking Applications?
- Finding people inside and outside organization
- Building directories and mapping relationships
- Inviting People
- Access Permissioning
- Connecting
- Managing relationships
- Collaborating
- Learning/Finding/Sharing relationships, KM

First generation social network applications
- Inflexible, tedious information architecture, over engineered and unintuitive, among other reasons I could never get comfortable with eRooms!
- Next generation will reflect complexity of social networks, and collaboration.

Weblogs--good pilot candidates (include younger members for enthusiasm and tech knowledge)
o Subject matter experts can offload work load.
o Heads of communities of practice can establish connections between members
o Internal publishers can replace cumbersome publishing processes

Moving ahead NOW......
- Develop taxonomy for the business
- IT needs to convert personal content archives to HTML and "bulk publish" so blog is populated. Need brief seminar on blog publishing & subscribing to get internal understanding, ttalk uplkup out outside the organization.
- Expertise finders are hard to keep current. Canvassing system just in time by connecting to email groups works better. Keep an eye on Google.
- Simple virtual presence: get everyone using Skype, good voice quality. For now, use an expert like Robin Good to design a custom, managed solution. Pretty complex to integrate for right now..can set up in Italy around the world.
- Collaboration tools are not there yet. Forget high-tech for creativity solutions, Open Space process with MindMaps (for documentation) works best right now--people who show up for a meeting, vote with feet. Wisdom of Crowds to assess, forecast, and evaluate alternatives and come to a decision. Simple tools are best, i.e. wiki. Wiki appearance not attractive.(Square brackets instead of HTML conventions).
- Social Network Mapping--need to map quality and value. Create email groupings to support expertise finder canvassing. Can be used to look for bottlenecks and disconnects.

Second Generation SNA: What's hot
- del.icio.us Blogroll for those who don't t have blog to share bookmarks.
- Flickr to share pictures and put comments on them.
- DodgeBall. a virtual water cooler for young people.
- MySpace for young people It's simple way to share music and photos.
- Facebook for universities and high schools to meet people, as well as former schools
- Insider Pages..local yellow pages. These can be customer affinity books, i.e. Harley Davidson lovers
- Zimbra
- Flock, an upgraded browser
- Also sensor hook-ins to social software, GPS, medical information.
Full presentation posted on the KM Wiki