Thanks to those who voted for me as a speaker at the upcoming Enterprise 2.0 conference (if you haven't yet, you can vote today by going to this survey -- http://bit.ly/E20_Vote -- I'm listed on page 11 as Tracy Altman with Ugly Research. You'll have to page through and click 'Next' to find my proposal on page 11 [How to Get More Enterprise 2.0 ROI], then go to page 16 to submit your vote http://bit.ly/E20_Vote.)
My proposal was inspired by Deming's idea that you can't inspect quality into a product after the fact: Quality is either in a product, or it's not. But I believe many online communities are being managed as if quality can somehow happen later: The focus is on quantity (building bigger networks, establishing connections, and keeping usage levels high). Too often, we allow people to contribute whatever they want, however they want -- and then we use voting, peer review, search tools, and other filtering mechanisms to identify the quality stuff. But there are other ways to handle it: We can design user interfaces that set expectations for how people contribute. This will reduce information overload and improve the quality of the evidence that becomes available.
That's what was on my mind when I submitted this 100-word abstract for Enterprise 2.0:
How to Get More Enterprise 2.0 ROI: Focus on Quality *and* Quantity
Many Enterprise 2.0 initiatives will fail because they emphasize quantity over quality. Initiative owners have invested in creating millions of network connections, but haven’t invested enough in information quality. The result? Information overload and inadequate ROI from social networks and collaboration. This presentation will show how Enterprise 2.0 can support essential conversations that generate more strategic value. Our experience has shown that we can’t improve quality by filtering out the low-quality stuff after the fact – quality must be there from the start. Two key steps: 1) connecting people’s conversations to valuable information, and 2) controlling how people
contribute.
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