I work for a very large company and at some point or another someone started a Yammer account based on our email domain. Starting on whatever day that was, Yammer commenced its viral expansion and its spread has really been quite impressive and rapid. Last time I looked we were approaching 3000 users.

The usage demonstrates all the free-scaling behaviors you'd expect though, so not everyone is yammering away. Still both the growth and the impact have been impressive. We are developing a nice network of the kind of weak connections that tend to "small world" a big enterprise like ours. It's always difficult to quantify the benefits of "soft" collaboration but I'm really happy with what I see and I've personally enjoyed the interactions and my expanded network.

I think Yammer has done so well because it's a really good product with well thought out features that make Twitter seem kinda retro. It has a nice slick interface, threaded conversations, and no pesky 140 char limit (which is countered by a "return key = submit" that inhibits multi-paragraph posts). They are also working to create the kinds of features that enterprises need to feel comfy: an api that includes directory integration, an Outlook module and etc.

However, despite all that, I'm bummed to say I don't think they are going to make it.

The question of data privacy and ownership comes up over and over in our Yammer discussions. The last time it came up the thread ran for nearly 100 responses. Even though the typical post is something like "Who is using Grails?" or "Is the X application slow for everyone today or just for me?" data privacy is simply one of the biggest concerns going for a lot of companies these days. The mere suggestion that our data isn't under our control is a big deal.

This point was demonstrated to me in a personal and compelling way during my first week on Yammer. I mentioned a client meeting so that I could share a few tidbits with colleagues. Hours later I was surprised and dismayed when a Google search revealed that my comments had been re-posted to the friendfeed of someone I didn't even know. Someone on our network had written a quick and dirty app to follow his Yammer RSS feed and re-post everything to friendfeed. Then for good measure he followed everyone in our network. When I "politely suggested" he take it down he equally politely explained to me that I just didn't get Web 2.0.

Despite that kind of hiccup, I don't think data privacy is the death knell. After all, no one has told us to stop using it yet. The real problem is that Yammer thinks viral works the same way in the enterprise that it works on the web. It doesn't.

Yammer, by being free and viral, is demonstrating in that soft benefit kind of way to lots of enterprises like ours that networks of weak connections and "ambient collaboration" are useful. Usage is creating a pool of users and even executives that "get it." But they are playing their cards too early and are probably going end up as little more than a contribution to someone else's cost of sales.

Recently a thread started with "does anyone know how to remove people from Yammer that left the company?" Well, it turns out that's an admin function and only available to paying customers.

While we have grown rapidly and virally, the "admin issue" is coming to a head with only about 1% of the company holding an account and probably more like .1% actively posting. There is no way this is going to be a level of usage that an enterprise like ours sees as lock-in. And it won't for anyone else's either.

If the average company has an attrition rate of 10% it means that EVERY company that adopts Yammer virally is going to start to have this conversation well before adoption has locked them in. Every company will face the problem of removing ex-employees by the time they reach relatively low penetration rates. If it's a 25 person shop it may be easier to just pay the $3/employee per month than worry about it, but for any reasonably sized enterprise this is going to force an off-budget-cycle decision that involves real dollars before adoption has locked them in.

The other problem with viral adoption as a strategy is this: I may love using Yammer, but I'm not Yammer's customer, our IT department is. And they already have SharePoint. What Yammer doesn't understand, and what Microsoft has known for years, is that IT makes these decisions, not the users.

While Yammer is going viral with users out at the edge, Microsoft perfected its S1P1 virus to attack the very core of the IT enterprise. So, when it comes to enterprise microblogging, The Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) and its various add ons may be mediocrity in code form, but it's already there. And being there counts.

After I shared The Shy Presenter with 200 people at last Wednesday’s Ignite Toronto, Rohan Jayasekera told me that he was happy to see how I’d grown so much as a presenter. He’s known me for almost four years now, I think, and has seen many of my talks. He told me that I sounded a lot more relaxed now. I had more of a flow and a rhythm, and was starting to resemble professional speakers. In fact, he joked that I might be getting too good to inspire people to take that first step towards public speaking,

It’s been almost ten years since I gave my first public technical talk on August 25, 2001. I’ve experimented with:

• trying to read my slides without glasses (doesn’t work)
• wearing contacts (okay, but a hassle)
• using bullet points (doesn’t really work)
• having my computer talk me through my presentation (actually works, with Emacs and speech synthesis)
• writing my talks out as blog posts first (works)
• storyboarding my slides (works)
• using full-screen images (stock photography kinda works, Flickr is more fun, but this “look” is getting much too common)
• using only text (works)
• lowering my energy level (doesn’t work)
• sharing my presentations online (works, and reaches way more people)
• using short URLs in my slides (somewhat works; some companies block these URLs)
• encouraging re-runs and revisions (works)
• taking advantage of my blog archive (works)
• shortening my talk and using more time for Q&A (works)
• using the backchannel for more interactivity and learning (works awesomely)
• using the webcam for remote presentations (works awesomely)
• using a hat to balance out  harsh-top lighting when needed (works)
• professional editing help (kinda works)
• shorter scripts and more improvisation (works; tested with Ignite presentation)
• scripting with a target words-per-minute count (probably works, although I haven’t tested the results yet; should follow up with recordings)
• limiting travel and focusing on local or Web-based presentations (works)
• watching excellent talks for inspiration, such as those from TED and Slideshare (works)
• focusing on concrete next actions instead of general theory (works)
• strict presentation constraints (works; tested with Ignite and Twitter-paragraph-length presentations)
• using a hat or distinctive suit to make me easy to find at a face-to-face conference (works)
• easier-to-remember URLs (sachachua.com is hard to spell; LivingAnAwesomeLife.com is long but easy to remember; livingawesomely and liveawesomely don’t quite roll off the tongue)
• posting reflections on what went well and what I can improve (works awesomely)
• speech exercises (kinda works; need more practice)
• reading tons of books about public speaking and presentations (works)
• submitting proposals for conferences, just in case (works awesomely)
• making it easy for people to find previous talks (works)
• drinking lukewarm water (works)
• telling stories (works, want to do more of it)
• using stick figures (fun to make, faster than finding pictures, and makes people happy; works awesomely)

I’m looking forward to experimenting with metaphors (both visual and verbal), humour, stories, more content, and animation. =)

Someday, when I save up for it and decide that it’s a good thing to spend on, I’d like to get a tablet PC and figure out how to use that for presentations. (Wouldn’t that be awesome?) I remember seeing Tom Wujec show us this totally awesome drawing / storyboarding tool, which I unfortunately forgot to get the name of, but if anyone’s familiar with the Autodesk suite of tools and remembers some kind of index card thing…

It’s been eight and a half years of deliberate practice. I’ve come a long way from the nervous speaker who stuttered her way through her first talk and panicked when she saw only one person attending her second. (The rest had been late from lunch, and had politely stayed outside the room when they saw me sitting down and chatting with the lone audience member.) I’m going to keep working on this because it’s fun to learn something well enough to explain it to someone else, and this kind of sharing helps me scale up and help hundreds and thousands of people at a time.

I probably take a lot of things for granted now, so it’s a good thing I’ve been sharing some of my notes along the way. This is why it pays to share what you’re learning, because after a while, it gets hard to explain how you got from point A to point B.

I want to help lots of people learn how to present well. Eventually I may become a polished, well-practiced presenter like Seth Godin or Dan Heath, and then it will be harder for people who are just starting out to think, ”Hey, maybe I can learn to speak too.” But then I can help figure out what “awesome” looks like, and that will help other people build on it and figure out what “more awesome” looks like. So it’s all good.

How are you growing? Share your notes in the comments! =)

Thanks to Rohan Jayasekera for the conversation!

Post from: sacha chua :: enterprise 2.0 consultant, storyteller, geek. Check out my blog for tips on managing virtual assistants, Drupal, and other topics!

Experiments as a presenter

There's been plenty written about the App Store gold rush, but this is the first rags-to-semi-riches piece I've seen about the Android Market. Edward Kim, creator of the Car Locator app, saw his daily revenue jump from around $100 per day to more than $400 per day when the $3.99 app claimed a featured spot in the Market.

It's only one data point, but I'm interested in the broader implications here. Those early "there's gold in iPhone apps!" stories fueled interest in the platform. And while a lot of that iPhone excitement was later tempered by the realities of a hit-driven business, that first flush of exuberance was an important step.

If similar stories pop up in the Android universe -- legit stories, I'm not advocating lies and fabrications -- I see that catalyzing more developer interest, more competition, more refinement (something that's sorely needed in the Android Market), and ultimately, a more robust Android app ecosystem. That's a lot of "mores," I know, but after three-plus months of using an Android device, my enthusiasm for this platform continues to grow. Apps like Google Goggles and Google Sky Map are amazing. What I'd like to see, however, is broader Android experimentation by companies not named Google.

I work for a very large company and at some point or another someone started a Yammer account based on our email domain. Starting on whatever day that was, Yammer commenced its viral expansion and its spread has really been quite impressive and rapid. Last time I looked we were approaching 3000 users.

The usage demonstrates all the free-scaling behaviors you'd expect though, so not everyone is yammering away. Still both the growth and the impact have been impressive. We are developing a nice network of the kind of weak connections that tend to "small world" a big enterprise like ours. It's always difficult to quantify the benefits of "soft" collaboration but I'm really happy with what I see and I've personally enjoyed the interactions and my expanded network.

I think Yammer has done so well because it's a really good product with well thought out features that make Twitter seem kinda retro. It has a nice slick interface, threaded conversations, and no pesky 140 char limit (which is countered by a "return key = submit" that inhibits multi-paragraph posts). They are also working to create the kinds of features that enterprises need to feel comfy: an api that includes directory integration, an Outlook module and etc.

However, despite all that, I'm bummed to say I don't think they are going to make it.

The question of data privacy and ownership comes up over and over in our Yammer discussions. The last time it came up the thread ran for nearly 100 responses. Even though the typical post is something like "Who is using Grails?" or "Is the X application slow for everyone today or just for me?" data privacy is simply one of the biggest concerns going for a lot of companies these days. The mere suggestion that our data isn't under our control is a big deal.

This point was demonstrated to me in a personal and compelling way during my first week on Yammer. I mentioned a client meeting so that I could share a few tidbits with colleagues. Hours later I was surprised and dismayed when a Google search revealed that my comments had been re-posted to the friendfeed of someone I didn't even know. Someone on our network had written a quick and dirty app to follow his Yammer RSS feed and re-post everything to friendfeed. Then for good measure he followed everyone in our network. When I "politely suggested" he take it down he equally politely explained to me that I just didn't get Web 2.0.

Despite that kind of hiccup, I don't think data privacy is the death knell. After all, no one has told us to stop using it yet. The real problem is that Yammer thinks viral works the same way in the enterprise that it works on the web. It doesn't.

Yammer, by being free and viral, is demonstrating in that soft benefit kind of way to lots of enterprises like ours that networks of weak connections and "ambient collaboration" are useful. Usage is creating a pool of users and even executives that "get it." But they are playing their cards too early and are probably going end up as little more than a contribution to someone else's cost of sales.

Recently a thread started with "does anyone know how to remove people from Yammer that left the company?" Well, it turns out that's an admin function and only available to paying customers.

While we have grown rapidly and virally, the "admin issue" is coming to a head with only about 1% of the company holding an account and probably more like .1% actively posting. There is no way this is going to be a level of usage that an enterprise like ours sees as lock-in. And it won't for anyone else's either.

If the average company has an attrition rate of 10% it means that EVERY company that adopts Yammer virally is going to start to have this conversation well before adoption has locked them in. Every company will face the problem of removing ex-employees by the time they reach relatively low penetration rates. If it's a 25 person shop it may be easier to just pay the $3/employee per month than worry about it, but for any reasonably sized enterprise this is going to force an off-budget-cycle decision that involves real dollars before adoption has locked them in.

The other problem with viral adoption as a strategy is this: I may love using Yammer, but I'm not Yammer's customer, our IT department is. And they already have SharePoint. What Yammer doesn't understand, and what Microsoft has known for years, is that IT makes these decisions, not the users.

While Yammer is going viral with users out at the edge, Microsoft perfected its S1P1 virus to attack the very core of the IT enterprise. So, when it comes to enterprise microblogging, The Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) and its various add ons may be mediocrity in code form, but it's already there. And being there counts.

Shared by Arnaud
ouai enfin les SSII, la plupart ce sont des boucheries. Pas vraiment la carrière rêvée.

Article original paru dans le magazine Capital de Mars 2010.

Extrait : "EPITA, 190 diplômés, 100% de taux d'emploi à la sortie est l'école "la plus prisée des SSII". Huit spécialisations en informatique. La plus côtée : "les systèmes embarqués". L'avis de Capital : aucun problème d'embauche. Un tiers de la promo 2009 a été recrutée dans une SSII. Autres débouchés : éditeurs de logiciels, conseil en organisation".

After I shared The Shy Presenter with 200 people at last Wednesday’s Ignite Toronto, Rohan Jayasekera told me that he was happy to see how I’d grown so much as a presenter. He’s known me for almost four years now, I think, and has seen many of my talks. He told me that I sounded a lot more relaxed now. I had more of a flow and a rhythm, and was starting to resemble professional speakers. In fact, he joked that I might be getting too good to inspire people to take that first step towards public speaking,

It’s been almost ten years since I gave my first public technical talk on August 25, 2001. I’ve experimented with:

• trying to read my slides without glasses (doesn’t work)
• wearing contacts (okay, but a hassle)
• using bullet points (doesn’t really work)
• having my computer talk me through my presentation (actually works, with Emacs and speech synthesis)
• writing my talks out as blog posts first (works)
• storyboarding my slides (works)
• using full-screen images (stock photography kinda works, Flickr is more fun, but this “look” is getting much too common)
• using only text (works)
• lowering my energy level (doesn’t work)
• sharing my presentations online (works, and reaches way more people)
• using short URLs in my slides (somewhat works; some companies block these URLs)
• encouraging re-runs and revisions (works)
• taking advantage of my blog archive (works)
• shortening my talk and using more time for Q&A (works)
• using the backchannel for more interactivity and learning (works awesomely)
• using the webcam for remote presentations (works awesomely)
• using a hat to balance out  harsh-top lighting when needed (works)
• professional editing help (kinda works)
• shorter scripts and more improvisation (works; tested with Ignite presentation)
• scripting with a target words-per-minute count (probably works, although I haven’t tested the results yet; should follow up with recordings)
• limiting travel and focusing on local or Web-based presentations (works)
• watching excellent talks for inspiration, such as those from TED and Slideshare (works)
• focusing on concrete next actions instead of general theory (works)
• strict presentation constraints (works; tested with Ignite and Twitter-paragraph-length presentations)
• using a hat or distinctive suit to make me easy to find at a face-to-face conference (works)
• easier-to-remember URLs (sachachua.com is hard to spell; LivingAnAwesomeLife.com is long but easy to remember; livingawesomely and liveawesomely don’t quite roll off the tongue)
• posting reflections on what went well and what I can improve (works awesomely)
• speech exercises (kinda works; need more practice)
• reading tons of books about public speaking and presentations (works)
• submitting proposals for conferences, just in case (works awesomely)
• making it easy for people to find previous talks (works)
• drinking lukewarm water (works)
• telling stories (works, want to do more of it)
• using stick figures (fun to make, faster than finding pictures, and makes people happy; works awesomely)

I’m looking forward to experimenting with metaphors (both visual and verbal), humour, stories, more content, and animation. =)

Someday, when I save up for it and decide that it’s a good thing to spend on, I’d like to get a tablet PC and figure out how to use that for presentations. (Wouldn’t that be awesome?) I remember seeing Tom Wujec show us this totally awesome drawing / storyboarding tool, which I unfortunately forgot to get the name of, but if anyone’s familiar with the Autodesk suite of tools and remembers some kind of index card thing…

It’s been eight and a half years of deliberate practice. I’ve come a long way from the nervous speaker who stuttered her way through her first talk and panicked when she saw only one person attending her second. (The rest had been late from lunch, and had politely stayed outside the room when they saw me sitting down and chatting with the lone audience member.) I’m going to keep working on this because it’s fun to learn something well enough to explain it to someone else, and this kind of sharing helps me scale up and help hundreds and thousands of people at a time.

I probably take a lot of things for granted now, so it’s a good thing I’ve been sharing some of my notes along the way. This is why it pays to share what you’re learning, because after a while, it gets hard to explain how you got from point A to point B.

I want to help lots of people learn how to present well. Eventually I may become a polished, well-practiced presenter like Seth Godin or Dan Heath, and then it will be harder for people who are just starting out to think, ”Hey, maybe I can learn to speak too.” But then I can help figure out what “awesome” looks like, and that will help other people build on it and figure out what “more awesome” looks like. So it’s all good.

How are you growing? Share your notes in the comments! =)

Thanks to Rohan Jayasekera for the conversation!

Post from: sacha chua :: enterprise 2.0 consultant, storyteller, geek. Check out my blog for tips on managing virtual assistants, Drupal, and other topics!

Experiments as a presenter

When Ben and I joined Palm to run Developer Relations, we knew that we wanted to eat dogfood pretty quickly. We have had some mobile related projects in the past, but they were either mobile Web sites, or Java based. Being able to take our web skillz to rich mobile devices was much more new and exciting.

Building sample code and apps is useful for developers, and the team will be doing plenty of that (e.g. this is how you use the awesome List widget in every which way, and why you would do X, Y, or Z) but building a production app is a whole different level.

We wanted to learn what it is like for our developers to design, build, and distribute webOS applications. We could have started with a smallish app, but no :) Instead we took the great work of Justin Newitter (who built the original app) and went running with an updated Facebook app. Along with other great developers in the dev relations world, we have gotten our first early release out there today.

Here is a walk through of the app by PreCentral:

We have definitely learned a lot in our short time on the app, and this is the first release of many. I really want us to have a regular cadence to our releases. If there is a feature you are excited about let us know.

We added a broad feature set to the application. The first Facebook application was very much about synergy. Why put something in an application silo when you can bake it into the platform? I still contend that webOS is the best platform for Facebook users as it integrates throughout. Other mobile platforms do some of this, but I think we continue to do the best job here.

There are a bunch of Facebook features that our users still wanted though, so we worked with Facebook themselves to prioritize this list. The top features were access to Facebook Mail, full profile access (info, wall, and photos), people search, events and birthdays. We also wanted to do interesting things to the UI as we bring in these features. Oh, and a couple of mini-easter eggs.

Designing the application was challenging and a lot of fun. At a high level, working out a design that is true to webOS *and* a strong brand such as Facebook was a balancing act. You will run into this same issue even without a brand like FB. How does it have your DNA and still fit in with the core platform. This has been a design consideration since the dawn of time. Do you make a clean Mac app that looks like Mail.app? Do you do your own UI that looks like a funky Flash UI? Most of the time you are in the middle.

One feature that we spent time on was the base navigation. We wanted to make it incredibly easy to get to features you use often, and also quick to get to all features.

We ended up with a solution that made the following decisions:

News as Root

The root of the application is the news feed. Some Facebook apps have an icon window as the root, but we decided to behave more like the Facebook website itself. The news stream is the blood line, so start there. No matter where you go in the app, if you back gesture away…. you will always end up at the news stream.

Also, just like the iPhone app, we share the shake gesture as a way to refresh the data here. Shake away.

Status Matters

webOS devices have hardware keyboards and are great for creating content. In the Facebook context this means updating your status and uploading photos are prime ways to get your content into the system.

For this reason the top left area is your way to always get to your current status and update on it. In fact, if you are on the new stream, just start typing and the update area will pop down and capture your new status (while showing your last one below).

Also, if you click on the camera icon, you are sent into the core photo experience on the device which natively supports uploading to Facebook.

The Navigation Grid

For all other features, we wanted to give you a quick way to access them. Click on the top right grid and a pop down will immediately appear, giving you one tap access to any feature. No need to switch to a navigation screen first.

We are also playing with the ability to use that hardware keyboard by giving you quick key access to any feature (e.g. SYM + E == sends you to events). Is that a good idea?

Facebook Logo Power

The Facebook logo itself has some hidden love. In an homage to to websites, a tap on the logo takes you home…. which means back to the news stream. If you are on the news stream already, and have flicked down…. that same logo will bring you to the top.

Where to go next?

We are excited to offer access to data that Facebook users haven’t been able to get in an app before, but where do we go from here?

We definitely want to do a lot of polish on various sections that we have out there. One idea that I have been playing with from the get go is doing something immersive when you rotate the screen when in a news feed. Instead of just having the news feed work in that format, what if the content took over. I mentioned this in my last post about touch UI. I flick through the stream and if on photos, the album takes on the entire screen for example.

There are some other really fun features that revolve around webOS notifications and giving you a great way to “never miss a thing” (life moves fast you know ;) and choosing what content matters to you.

And, finally, we have to work out what makes sense in an app, and what could be baked into the platform. Giving access to birthdays is great, but would you like to have them as a calendar on the device? Maybe, but you would definitely want to be able to turn that view off…. and in fact you may already have birthday info in your profiles, so we should have one unified birthday view. Life gets more complicated when you go to the generic doesn’t it.

Again, we have just started here, but would love to hear from you on our feedback area in the app page.

Thanks to the team that played a part in this release! We haven’t reached Joe Hewitt foo yet, but we are having fun!