Social engagement

Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite," says the engraving above the entrance to the Senate building in Paris. It could have been formulated for Les Blogs & Social Software, the conference that recently attracted 300 bloggers, social software gurus and the curious to the first European event of its kind.

Loic Le Meur, vice president of blogging specialists Six Apart, had floated the idea of a conference only six weeks earlier. He posted a provisional programme on the web, and mentioned it to a few bloggers. Word spread, and the conference pretty much organised itself, thanks to some Wiki-based collaboration software from Socialtext Inc.

The number of participants was limited by the capacity of the Senate's second chamber and an overflow room with projection facilities. But for most of those who attended, the engagement started well before the event.

People signed up for the conference by hitting the edit button and adding their details to Le Meur's Socialtext Wiki pages. They paid by clicking a link to the payment page. They entered their personal details, and added notes such as "Anyone need a lift from Amsterdam?" or "Anyone fancy dinner on 24th?" to the Travel/what to do page.

Pages materialised according to need, and adding and editing information was straightforward. Best of all, everything was always up to date.

The only upset came when someone tried to insert a block reservation for 50 people into the middle of the list. These were quickly removed to avoid a riot. All Wiki edits were saved to provide a permanent record of changes, so they could easily be reversed.

As a result, the conference came into being very quickly, with no formal advertising and a high degree of goodwill and involvement by the participants. The organisers still had work to do, of course, but it did show that collaborative social software could be used for practical ends.

Of course, Socialtext Workspace, the underpinning software, is capable of more than creating collaborative documents. It can also incorporate weblogs and email, and the enterprise version can accommodate instant messaging. Wiki pages and weblogs can be updated remotely by email, and users are notified of changes through email or RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds.

The end result is a collaborative workspace that, according to Socialtext's chief executive Ross Mayfield, can accelerate projects by 25% while eliminating "occupational spam". This is the 30% of emails that are basically backside-covering cc and bcc copies. In fact, one slogan for Socialtext is that it "gets everybody on the same page", and this almost eliminates the need for email within project teams.

Although Workspace is used in about 20 of the Fortune 500 list of America's largest corporations, Mayfield advises all organisations to start small and get comfortable with collaborating in this way, so they understand the potential.

Socialtext is available in three versions, which more or less equate to the size of an organisation. Socialtext Enterprise runs either in-house or as a hosted service, and is tightly integrated to existing software, information and procedures. Socialtext.net runs as a hosted service for small to medium-sized businesses. Socialtext.org is for non-profit organisations, academic institutions and internet communities. Prices for commercial clients start at about $10 (£5) per user per month.

Users have been distracted for years by communications that either interrupt their normal workflow, or force them to visit websites - for example, just in case something on the website has changed. RSS is a "tip off" mechanism that lets you know whenever something changes on a Wiki page or blog that interests you. You don't need to go and check, and you only look at the RSS feeds when it suits you, so you are not interrupted. However, Socialtext has added instant messaging links, because sometimes you do need to be alerted to new information.

Mayfield says: "Workspace is aimed at groups who have mutual trust." These workgroups - in engineering, customer service or on a help desk - often get the software on a trial basis.

According to Mayfield, this kind of group often finds itself "dealing with a high volume of exceptions to routine", which tends to make them enthusiastic adopters of knowledge-sharing software.

From this base, use can be expanded into other areas and, depending on the nature and scale of the company, may eventually involve the IT department.

Mayfield has a dim view of corporate intranets and, for that matter, extranets (which usually extend to suppliers and/or large customers). "Thousands of users are frustrated by 30-day lead times on publishing new information," he says, whereas Socialtext and other Wikis let them publish it immediately.

While this is true, it is often also a symptom of many companies' urge to control the channels of communica­tion. The new social way of working with blogs, Wikis and other social software is often regarded as a threat. But can organisations afford to ignore software that improves the effectiveness of their teams and creates permanent repositories of their collective wisdom?