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  Pep Cura 9:15 am on July 20, 2011 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: business social network ( 9 ), communication 2.0 ( 60 ), enterprise 2.0 ( 90 ), enterprise social network ( 68 ), enterprise social networks ( 94 ), zyncro ( 182 )   

  Knowing the implementation process of your Enterprise Social Network: proposals and techniques 

  Estimated reading time: 3 minutes

  As previously outlined in the the article Enterprise Social Networks: Fact or Fiction? incorporating a working and virtual communication environment within a company can be a difficult decision for management and can almost result in a leap of of faith.

  When the decision to incorporate a collaborative tool in a virtual environment has been made, many leave it to the gods to ensure that their work group accepts and adapts towards the new way of working.

  Everybody shares these same fears and we all share the risks but…

  • how can we know if the application is sinking in amongst our company’s employees?
  • how can we know if they are discovering the full potential offered by the tool?
  • and one of the most important points: how can we rectify an implementation process that is not going exactly as we had hoped?

  We could consider two areas of focus when evaluating these aspects: technological and human.

  I won’t concentrate on the first area, technology.  It will suffice to say that tools such as Google Analytics can produce figures and illustrative information about the use and behavior of your tool.  On the other hand, I would like to mention the perspective of human behavior.

  The basic premise that in order for one to know the implementation process of the Enterprise Social Network is to know your employees and overall, know their attitudes, practices and attitudes when faced with a collaborative tool such as Zyncro.

  Psycho-social consultancies like Spora Sinergies are developing innovative qualitative and quantitative research methodologies that allow answers to be obtained both in the online as well as the offline business world.

  By applying techniques such as semi-structured interviews in a virtual environment or analyzing speeches and the meaning given by users with regards to their cultural organization, you can come to know how the collaborative tool is being used or identify common difficulties among employees in order to channel the implementation process.

  Good social research could mean the difference between a leap of faith and a leap with a safety net!  Are you prepared to run the risk?

   
   

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  Pep Cura 10:14 am on June 17, 2011 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: communication ( 32 ), communication 2.0 ( 60 ), community ( 2 ), teamwork ( 23 ), virtual communities ( 5 )   

  From traditional communities to virtual communities 

  Estimated reading time: 3 minutes

  Traditional communities can be described in short as a group of people united by common goals (often these are linked to survival) and in which a series of common codes are developed (symbolic, communicative…) that define the community’s own collective identity (such as the differences between it and other communities).

  On the whole, traditional communities usually belong to a particular territory where its physical boundaries set the separation mark between “us” and “them”.

  In order to research traditional communities, we anthropologists have developed a series of techniques based on seeing, listening, feeling and thinking like a person in their cultural context.  You will probably know some of these, which include:

  • Ethnography: This is about gathering notes about more or less generic topics among a cultural group and drawing conclusions.   
  • Comparative study: Drawing new conclusions from two ethnographies.
  • In-depth interviews: Asking questions about one or various aspects of a person’s life over a number of work sessions.
  • Focus group: Contrasting opinions about a particular subject within a group of socially diverse actors.
  • Dense description: Interpreting key symbols within a cultural environment.

  And a long list of etceteras.

  When the first virtual communities were created (around the 90s), anthropologists, who were probably not the only ones, thought twice before jumping into researching this new mass phenomenon.

  The doubts were based on whether virtual communities would actually be comparable to the traditional ones or not.  In other words, whether or not they would be the same.

  After much had been written and after leaving conversations behind that tended to veer off the course of what was actually going on within the virtual community, it was concluded that virtual communities had their own logic, their own essence, their own space, and their own common codes that were not comparable to that of a traditional community.

  However, it is this conclusion that catapults us into a new and very up-to-date take on the topic:

  If we are meant to consider virtual communities as something different to traditional communities, then…

  1. How must this new phenomenon be researched?
  2. How should be see, hear, feel and think about a person (or their avatar) in a virtual context?
  3. Which research techniques should be applied in order to research virtual environments?

  Ladies and gentlemen… place your bets!

  I will endeavor to include my findings in the next post.

   
   
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  Pep Cura 9:25 am on May 16, 2011 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: communication ( 32 ), communication 2.0 ( 60 ), technology tools ( 17 )   

  Computer-Mediated Communication. Anthropology 2.0 

  Estimated reading time: 3 minutes

  In my previous article in this blog I posed the question: in what way can online relationships enrich the sphere of relationships when compared those offline?

  We are not the first to people to ask ourselves this question.  In the 90s, a group of social scientists carried out some particularly relevant investigations on this matter.

  The aim was to find the best path to develop Computer-Mediated Communication systems (CMC) for organization and identify the possible benefits and difficulties.

  It was Kiesler who began investigating the topic in 1984.  He assigned a group of people a task by means of a videoconference and to another group, by means of physical interaction.  The results he obtained pointed to a lack of social signs in CMCs (for example, gender characteristics, age, social status, facial expression, intonation, nationality), which resulted in a disinhibition factor within the group that had not had physical contact. This translated into:

  • Greater equality in communicative participation
  • Increased levels of aggression in communication (it is thought that people lose their manners when the person in unknown to them).

  Spears et al. (1990), not seeing the results from the first study carried out by Kiesler clearly, proposed a change: to analyze the use of just one type of technology (email) in different contexts (work environments).  In the investigation results, it was observed that the decisions made on a group level could vary depending on the participants’ sense of belonging within the group.  In other words: the context in which the technology is applied is as important, or even more so, than the technology itself, at least where decision-making is concerned.

  Mantovani, also dissatisfied with Kiesler’s results, found that in another study carried out in 1994, in CMCs the hierarchical barriers between people are strengthened instead of being broken, finally concluding with the fact that the technology cannot be evaluated  independently from the context in which it is applied.

  It would seem that some of the questions that those social scientists asked themselves back in the Internet’s beginning are still valid today:

  1. Does it increase or decrease hierarchy within CMC relationships?
  2. Is there a greater transparency?
  3. Is there an increased participation in the development of tasks?
  4. Do the roles of the communicators vary significantly?

  In my point of view, the most significant advance in these studies lies within the recognition that the communication tools or CMCs are DEPENDANT, and therefore we cannot detach them from the context in which they are used.

  Source: HINE, C: “Etnografía virtual”. Coleción Nuevas tecnologías y Sociedad. Ed.UOC. 2000 (“Virtual Ethnolgraphy” by HINE, C. in Spanish)
   
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  Pep Cura 11:40 am on April 12, 2011 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: collaboration ( 56 ), communication 2.0 ( 60 ), social network ( 7 )   

  Anthropology 2.0. Humankind and their new habitat 

  Estimated Reading time: 5 minutes… Give this new section a chance!

  

  Image taken from Fernando Polo's blog http://abladias.blogspot.com

  This is the first time I will have written in this blog so let me introduce myself.  I’m an anthropologist by training, profession and vocation.

  The first part is clear; I got my degree at university.

  The second part is also, though these are difficult times…  How many anthropologists are there in the world who are actually working as anthropologists?  Sadly, I don’t know many.  I’m privileged!

  But the vocation part… what is that?  Well, it is something that occurs in me naturally, that takes place when I relate to people or when I see them relate to each other.  My senses awaken (observation and hearing overall) and I begin to think, to put things together and ask myself things such as… what brings these people together?  What do they share?  How do they relate to one another?

  For anyone who has not quite got the grasp of it yet, I will point out that anthropology is a social science that, fed by the infinite curiosities of the human being, studies how humans adapt to their natural environment, the interpretations that groups of human beings give their experiences and the things that occur to them or how towns organise themselves as a collective.

  The move towards “Anthropology 2.0″

  I must make a confession: I was totally against the environment 2.0 up until recently.  I have always thought: how can the Facebook wall or tweets be even the slightest bit as enriching as everyday life? (And here, after “everyday”, I must add “offline”, for those in the know).

  All of this began to change when a few friends decided to arrange a surprise birthday gift for one of them.  We had to bring quite a few people together in order to develop a common theme, which in the end, turned out a lot more complicated and detailed than we had expected at first.  We generated 85 emails in less than one week. Inboxes crashed many a time.  It was chaos but magical, all at the same time.  Without a doubt, emails were an innadecuate communication mechanism and somewhat uncomfortable for this type of communication and coordination.  If we generated 85 emails, imagine how many comments would have been written in a social network…

  Aside from the volume of emails, I observed the following results: strong human relationships, more participative, more intimate… more communicative!  This got me thinking, until I realized that online communication can be enriching to the traditionally “only offline” relationships.  But how?  The answer to this lies with the motivation with which I am prepared to investigate and reflect upon.

  What is generated within inboxes, Facebook walls or tweets is also something worth observing and studying from an anthropological point of view, because what is generated by these spaces goes further than just communication.  Now I have no doubt about it, that what is generated is culture.

  What do you think?  Do social networks enrich or substitute interpersonal relationships?

  All contributions are welcome.  In this new environment we are creating, everything is yet to be defined and we are responsible for it.  It is also from an anthropological perspective that we find ourselves facing a “second generation” (that of 2.0) of communication + culture + interpersonal relationships.  What about you?  In what way do you live this new 2.0 generation?