And “training and explicit policies about appropriate and inappropriate contributions” have always been useful, but they are imperative now. We’re still working to identify and codify best practices around public/online sharing, and I imagine we’ll be learning (plenty of hard) lessons for years to come.

Prof. McAfee, we at Connectbeam are betting right along side with you.
However, for enterprises, we feel the choice may not be as binary as:
1. keep security risks and discoverability to a minimum
2. make it as easy as possible for people to collaborate and access each others’ expertise

We feel a combination of these is the sweet spot for enterprises. We are seeing this increasingly validated at Connectbeam.

I’m sure you can leverage these tools to fit your scenario

I also need to encourage dialogue with the legal and compliance communiteies to show how these tools are little different from the risk inherent in email – it’s essentially unfettered from a technlology deployment perspective and has proven to be effectively goverened by our communication and confidentiality policies.

Cheers,
Andy

These were fierce projects that imposed a huge amount of control. In some industries, that’s plain necessary – like pharma.

Suddenly relaxing those ‘rules’ based systems overnight could be catastrophic without extremely careful planning and execution.

So while I wouldn’t go as far as Andrew, I would pilot somewhere I thought relatively safe AND behind the firewall AND with some degree of moderation but with a firm feedback loop engaging employees so that they gradually feel more responsible AND valuable. That itself requires planning, a series of milestones mapping out and rewards/sanctions in place that are clearly understaood and agreed by all.

In fact – go one better and get employees to figure that out as part of the implementation process.

I think it’s important to remember that the real value starts from inside the business so there is no need to be taking unnecessary risks. It explains why the likes of iUpload and Blogtronix are getting a lot of attention right now. They have that fine grainerd control.

I want to but can’t agree about the inherent ability of people to behave themselves. I’ve seen too many things go wrong when a laissez faire approach is taken, I’ve had to take down systems and seen colleagues disciplined for the actions of their reports. Perhaps there’s a tipping point where scale requires a greater degree of control or focus to keep order about the house?

AARF has made great progress in using IT for cumulative intelligence and the collective memory. It is difficult to believe the spiral is possible with SLATES. Till IT can make the spiral possible the virtual space of the enterprise will remain virgin.

Is Security negotiable? Likely not. IT has to protect the space else its creation will be incomplete.