Comments on: Social Computing in PLM and the Scarce Resource of Attention

By: Jim Brown

Jim Brown — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 14:57:15 +0000

Christian,
At first I had trouble with the link, but then it worked. For anybody interested, the article referenced is on pages 16-17.

Thanks for pointing it out,
Jim

By: Jim Brown

Jim Brown — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 14:51:57 +0000

Just watched the video in Peter’s post. Brilliant example, and well done. It is centered on IBM products, but the example is generic and valuable to anyone. Well done IBM.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kw2j0YOqKoo&feature=related

By: Jim Brown

Jim Brown — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 14:50:54 +0000

Stan,
Great comments as always, thank you.

There are lots of things beeping, chirping, ringing, or flashing for our attention these days. Alerts from e-mail, twitter, etc. can be distracting if you let them be (which I admit I do, but also feel I get tremendous value from it). I agree that some sort of mass filtering / rating would be tremendously valuable. I think the other thing we all have to remember is to turn it off sometimes when we need to focus.

Thanks,
Jim

By: Christian Jones

Christian Jones — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 14:21:09 +0000

Interesting articles and opinions, there’s also an interesting article on Social Product Development by PTC in the latest issue of Microsoft’s Prime magazine.

You can view the digital addition of this magazine at http://www.onwindows.com/digital-edition.aspx?title=prime&issue=18

By: Stan Przybylinski

Stan Przybylinski — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 19:02:00 +0000

Hi Jim,

There was a piece on a local Boston show on NPR yesterday about attention that is relevant here – http://tinyurl.com/y96aklt. Can you really be efficient when you are dividing your attention? Recent research would suggest no, actually hell no if you believe this piece.

One way out is augmentation, a concept that has been around since Vannevar Bush envisioned most of this stuff (http://tinyurl.com/cxzzf). I think we need this augmentation to be effective.

Having this stuff buzzing around you is good, having something to HELP you focus will be better. I look at my own desktop has changed in the last 18 months. I used to keep one Firefox window with two tabs: the NY Times and a custom My Yahoo! page on PLM. Now add to that one Facebook and Twitter. (I know, so backwards using the Web version.) Then another one with three tabs for internal social computing apps. Then a IE window for internal things that don’t work as well on Firefox (thanks MS).

Yeah, RSS feeds can help, and I try to use those but it is still too much. I need the augmentation to help me sift that information and pre-focus it for me. The features of social computing that don’t often get used enough can help, like rating content AND the raters. If something is rated highly by someone I PERSONALLY rate highly, I should read it. (What I have promoted within my company is entry to a “community” requires you to look at a tag cloud for that community (or tool) and pick the things that interest you, then add others that are not there. Then that is your initial rating and you get suggestions from there. The tool then learns from your behavior, with the option to add and subtract topics at any time.) But it takes a village…

My bigger concern is the recent studies that say this divided attention can induce an ADHD-like state. I can see some early onset signs in myself. Anyone else?

By: Jim Brown

Jim Brown — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 15:44:45 +0000

Peter,
Thanks for your comment. I try to draw a distinction between “social networking” and “social computing.” I believe that social computing can be applied to either business or personal interactions, but typically refer to social computing when it is business-related and social networking when it is personal. I did like the “social business” term used in the post that sparked my comments. What is the term you (or IBM as a whole) feel ties together social computing / web 2.0 capabilities with business?