Headshift
designed a collaboration and knowledge-sharing application for the
international law firm Dewey & LeBoeuf LLP. We integrated social
media tools such as blogs, wikis, social bookmarking and RSS feeds to
improve the general flow of information within the organisation -
letting employees collaborate better and share their insights more
easily.
The main issue: Individual actions should benefit the community
In most organisations useful knowledge and information gets buried within separate computers, separate departments, or in the everyday practices of individuals, and it seldom gets shared with a wider community that could benefit from it.
In order to make all kinds of information and knowledge more accessible and thereby also useful to wider groups of people, it is important to create systems that bring individual actions into a wider context.
The aim of our project was to build such a system.
What constitutes a social media platform?
Based on a period of rigorous user requirement research, in close collaboration with Dewey & LeBoeuf, Headshift set about making an internal communication platform that included the following tools:
Group blogs facilitate discussion
Blogs were designed to sit at heart of the group spaces of the wider communication platform. Users would be able to post new blog posts in groups, thereby sharing their thoughts, ideas and knowledge with the other members of that group.
Discussions would then form around the group blogs with members commenting on each other's posts.
Wikis organise information
A sophisticated wiki implementation played a key role within the system as 'spaces' where specific groups could work together and share information about their work. This advanced infrastructure was designed to support virtually any number of groups within the firm and could therefore be used more widely to sustain collaboration and group-based discussion.
Users also have their own personal wikis that can act as a private sandbox for recording thoughts and items of interest.
The wikis were further designed to have 'user and group management', allowing the client the ability to control exactly who should have access to which groups.
RSS feeds constitutes the backbone
RSS was used as the primary mechanism for transporting content between different parts of the platform, and also as the preferred mechanism for delivering content to end users.
There was also the need for a multi-channel delivery platform, allowing consumers a choice as to how they wish to consume their information:
• RSS
• Email
• Web
• PDF / Print
• Mobile devices
In all cases, it only takes one click to translate from one format to another, and where required there is integration with defined templates to ensure a consistent branding and look-and-feel.
Consumption of information: personalising according to need
The consumption of content is an area of crucial interest - the effectiveness of RSS feeds is multiplied when tools such as feed readers are used. Tools such as these allow an end user to quickly scan information to identify items that are of further interest.
Instead of using just one tool Headshift recommended that a selection of tools be used to cater for a particular user's needs and preferences - some users may feel comfortable using a dedicated RSS consumption tool, others may prefer to have this information come into Lotus Notes (and consequently their mobile device such as a BlackBerry), while others will want to access this information via their browser.
All users have a personal dashboard page that:
• Displays the feeds the user has selected (or are deemed as compulsory)
• Allows the selection from a list of feeds that the user has permission to access
• Shows other content of interest (most popular bookmarks, personal tag cloud etc)
• Allows user profile maintenance
• Allows users the ability to rate interesting content
• Allows the creation of personal feeds that might include specific search terms and keywords, or all content for a particular tag, or content from a particular person or a group.
Aggregated bookmarks works as a recommendations engine
Sharing bookmarks allows insights into areas of interest and specialisation for individuals and groups. The aggregation of bookmarks, when filtered by date (e.g. show all bookmarks in the last week) can offer an almost real-time view into topics that the firm as a whole thinks are important or need more attention.
It is also important to realise that this information is something that emerges as a result of aggregating individual behaviour, and is not something that needs to be explicitly mandated.
This system exploits the scale of the firm to deliver network effects that make knowledge sharing more effective as more people read and contribute, based on the concept of social news-reading, using 'attention metadata' (i.e. real usage data) to provide finely tuned reading recommendations.
Personal and aggregated tagging make connections visible
Tags are a powerful way of collaboratively filtering content, as well as a mechanism for matching content items and people. Discovering people using a similar set of tags is a powerful way to identify who has similar interests to you.
Tagging is a key element of the solution Headshift has built. It is woven through all the other pieces of infrastructure as an absolute requirement - letting individuals add their own personal tags to any piece of content, or to choose from a list of predefined tags and commonly used tags.
We proposed that users should be able to adopt a set of controlled vocabulary terms where they can, and supplement these with their own tags to add more detail and granularity and personal meaning.
The main task in this section of the project was to build a common system that tied together tags and keywords from the individual infrastructure elements and exposed these to the wider community.
Social network profiles adds a human touch and transparency
In addition to the personal dashboard, every user in the system has a public profile that allows them the ability to maintain information about themselves for the benefit of the community.
This opens up for social networking and greater transparency with regards to people's interests and skills.
Better communication = A more profitable organisation
Our overall aim when building a social media platform for a large international law firm, such as Dewey & LeBoeuf, was to improve internal communication, and thereby increase the value of collaboration, which in turn should lead to a more profitable organisation.
Social media the way Headshift sees it is essentially about making people communicate in simpler and smarter ways - creating a working environment that is more efficient in terms of the use of physical resources, in terms of information retrieval and creation, and finally in terms of time spent.
The main issue: Individual actions should benefit the community
In most organisations useful knowledge and information gets buried within separate computers, separate departments, or in the everyday practices of individuals, and it seldom gets shared with a wider community that could benefit from it.
In order to make all kinds of information and knowledge more accessible and thereby also useful to wider groups of people, it is important to create systems that bring individual actions into a wider context.
The aim of our project was to build such a system.
What constitutes a social media platform?
Based on a period of rigorous user requirement research, in close collaboration with Dewey & LeBoeuf, Headshift set about making an internal communication platform that included the following tools:
Group blogs facilitate discussion
Blogs were designed to sit at heart of the group spaces of the wider communication platform. Users would be able to post new blog posts in groups, thereby sharing their thoughts, ideas and knowledge with the other members of that group.
Discussions would then form around the group blogs with members commenting on each other's posts.
Wikis organise information
A sophisticated wiki implementation played a key role within the system as 'spaces' where specific groups could work together and share information about their work. This advanced infrastructure was designed to support virtually any number of groups within the firm and could therefore be used more widely to sustain collaboration and group-based discussion.
Users also have their own personal wikis that can act as a private sandbox for recording thoughts and items of interest.
The wikis were further designed to have 'user and group management', allowing the client the ability to control exactly who should have access to which groups.
RSS feeds constitutes the backbone
RSS was used as the primary mechanism for transporting content between different parts of the platform, and also as the preferred mechanism for delivering content to end users.
There was also the need for a multi-channel delivery platform, allowing consumers a choice as to how they wish to consume their information:
• RSS
• Web
• PDF / Print
• Mobile devices
In all cases, it only takes one click to translate from one format to another, and where required there is integration with defined templates to ensure a consistent branding and look-and-feel.
Consumption of information: personalising according to need
The consumption of content is an area of crucial interest - the effectiveness of RSS feeds is multiplied when tools such as feed readers are used. Tools such as these allow an end user to quickly scan information to identify items that are of further interest.
Instead of using just one tool Headshift recommended that a selection of tools be used to cater for a particular user's needs and preferences - some users may feel comfortable using a dedicated RSS consumption tool, others may prefer to have this information come into Lotus Notes (and consequently their mobile device such as a BlackBerry), while others will want to access this information via their browser.
All users have a personal dashboard page that:
• Displays the feeds the user has selected (or are deemed as compulsory)
• Allows the selection from a list of feeds that the user has permission to access
• Shows other content of interest (most popular bookmarks, personal tag cloud etc)
• Allows user profile maintenance
• Allows users the ability to rate interesting content
• Allows the creation of personal feeds that might include specific search terms and keywords, or all content for a particular tag, or content from a particular person or a group.
Aggregated bookmarks works as a recommendations engine
Sharing bookmarks allows insights into areas of interest and specialisation for individuals and groups. The aggregation of bookmarks, when filtered by date (e.g. show all bookmarks in the last week) can offer an almost real-time view into topics that the firm as a whole thinks are important or need more attention.
It is also important to realise that this information is something that emerges as a result of aggregating individual behaviour, and is not something that needs to be explicitly mandated.
This system exploits the scale of the firm to deliver network effects that make knowledge sharing more effective as more people read and contribute, based on the concept of social news-reading, using 'attention metadata' (i.e. real usage data) to provide finely tuned reading recommendations.
Personal and aggregated tagging make connections visible
Tags are a powerful way of collaboratively filtering content, as well as a mechanism for matching content items and people. Discovering people using a similar set of tags is a powerful way to identify who has similar interests to you.
Tagging is a key element of the solution Headshift has built. It is woven through all the other pieces of infrastructure as an absolute requirement - letting individuals add their own personal tags to any piece of content, or to choose from a list of predefined tags and commonly used tags.
We proposed that users should be able to adopt a set of controlled vocabulary terms where they can, and supplement these with their own tags to add more detail and granularity and personal meaning.
The main task in this section of the project was to build a common system that tied together tags and keywords from the individual infrastructure elements and exposed these to the wider community.
Social network profiles adds a human touch and transparency
In addition to the personal dashboard, every user in the system has a public profile that allows them the ability to maintain information about themselves for the benefit of the community.
This opens up for social networking and greater transparency with regards to people's interests and skills.
Better communication = A more profitable organisation
Our overall aim when building a social media platform for a large international law firm, such as Dewey & LeBoeuf, was to improve internal communication, and thereby increase the value of collaboration, which in turn should lead to a more profitable organisation.
Social media the way Headshift sees it is essentially about making people communicate in simpler and smarter ways - creating a working environment that is more efficient in terms of the use of physical resources, in terms of information retrieval and creation, and finally in terms of time spent.