I just spent 15 min. browsing your text and bookmarked it as an interesting subject for future investigaiton.

I would propose to omit the Section "Software becoming bigger, more stupid": ERP-software and "classical" enterprise information systems address different problems than the kind of networks you want to establish with "social software". Therefore, claiming that these "old" systems are "bad" doesn't make social software "better".

The only effect is that some of your readers may be inclined not to read on.

Thumbs up

Hello Professor Matthes and thank you for your comments.

The issue we're trying to address is not whether ERP systems and social software are easily comparable - clearly, they're not as their historical business and technical development have followed very different paths.

We wouldn't like to claim that "old" systems are "bad", or infer that social software is "better" as a result, but if this is the conclusion you have drawn from our paper we will need to take a closer look to avoid misunderstandings (this is precisely why your contribution, and that of others who have provided it via email, is so valuable).

What we're trying to highlight is the experience of many organisations, in both the corporate and governmental sectors, whose approach to large-scale enterprise software deployments has demonstrably been poor in both human and financial ROI terms (we see human and financial returns as inextricably intertwined). Often, such deployments follow a top-down management view of 'process' followed by a technical implementation and a proscriptive 'change management' programme (which, from the users' perspective, can often be characterised as "re-learn how to do your job with this new tool, which you've had little or no part in developing; and if you feel alienated or threatened by it, well... we'll send you to a training course if it's in the budget for this year"). This has - for example - been the experience of many e-government implementations in this country, and I know there are documented comparisons elsewhere.

We would argue that, in order to improve this record, there is a clear need to re-think organisational approaches to 'technical implementations' by focussing more clearly on actual user needs, motivations, 'really-existing' human interaction processes - and moulding software development priorities around these, rather than force users into a pre-determined 'black box'.

In this context, social software tools and techniques have much to offer in each stage of planning, development, deployment and ongoing uptake.

i could only afford to read through very quickly ... with a sense of urgency ... because here is ...at long last ... a paper which says what needs to be said ...

however, i cannot see how it can be delivered ... 1) to decision makers who can only listen to elevator statements ...
2) to people who have grown accustomed to expect ready made off-the-shelf solutions ...

so, my old-but-young-hearted-guy wish ... pictures your paper coupled with a progressive ... learn-by-doing ... experience, starting from scratch, ... with an approach ... so down to earth ... to be naive

Post Scriptum (to my comment of May 7)

i see weblogs as some kind of social system outlet .. so ... if i comment a post and i happen to produce a wrong or misworded argument ... i'd like to get some kind of diagnostic back ... to give me a chance of recovery from my own mistakes ... if any ...

wouldn't that be a form of *positive feedback*?

First of all, let me say that I found this paper very informative and I certainly agree with its main proposition (I would anyway as a usability person, wouldn’t I?). I just think that some of the fundamental ideas presented here and in relation to the ‘Social Software’ concept have been around for decades (e.g. Terry Winograd and the idea of looking at what’s going on in organisations simply in terms of people and their conversations – 1986 Understanding computers and cognition) and obviously the participatory design school from Scandinavia (as far as the project set-up suggestion and stakeholder involvement is concerned). So my question, I guess, is: what is – if any – the truly new aspect of the Social Software concept? My feeling to date is that what is new about it is its notion of back-scaling and sustainability which can compensate for increased development costs and time that have always been a problem for participatory or ethnographic design methods. I still think it's a hard-sell tho'.

Thanks Susanne,

Your are right of course, none of it is new. However, I think the difference is that the necessary pre-conditions for social software to become a reality are now starting to fall into place, so we can put the vision of Winograd and others into practice.

Great stuff - come and discuss how we can open up collaborative innovation communities (win-winnings for humans and economics) the fast and lifelong learning exchanges the net and its architectures were supposed to socialise and make intrapreneurial at our EU sponsored debate http://www.knowledgeboard.com/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=87494&d=1&h=417&f=56&dateformat=%o%20%B%20%Y