SPSBOS - Learning through collaboration and the wisdom of crowds

Learning Through Collaboration and the Wisdom of CrowdsSharePoint as an Organizational Learning Tool

Theresa Eller | [email protected] | @SharePointMadam

“Learning is a social process.”

James Surowiecki | Author of The Wisdom of Crowds

Who is Theresa Eller?

Experience & Education• Situs (Houston, TX)

• BA in Public Relations

• MA in Teaching & Learning with Technology

• Toastmasters International Member (since 2001)

@SharePointMadam

[email protected]

SharePoint Career Path• First SharePoint Site was WSS

• Site Owner for Training site

• Finance Site Collection Owner

• Corporate Trainer for SharePoint 2010

• InfoPath/Electronic Forms Advocate

• Farm Admin/Production Support

• SharePoint Consultant

• SharePoint Analyst

Our Agenda Today

Explicit & Tacit

Knowledge

The Wisdom of

Crowds

Work Like A Network

Jellybean Experiment

Social & ECM in

SharePoint & Yammer

Convert Content

Into Knowledge

KnowledgeTacit knowledge forms the underlying framework that makes explicit knowledge possible.

Tacit Knowledge

• Knowledge that can’t be easily summarized or conveyed to others

• Specific to a particular place, job, or experience

• Tremendously valuable

Explicit Knowledge

• Documented knowledge

• Articulated knowledge, expressed and recorded as words, numbers, codes, mathematical and scientific formulae, and musical notations

• Easy to communicate, store, and distribute

• Found in books, on the web, and other visual and oral means

Source: http://www.businessdictionary.com

Sources of Explicit Knowledge in SharePoint

Blogs

Wikis

Videos

The Wisdom of Crowds“…under the right circumstances, groups are remarkably intelligent, and are often smarter than the smartest people in them.”

James Surowiecki | Author of The Wisdom of Crowds

The Wisdom of Crowds

• Collective or group intelligence• #SPHelp or SPYAM

• Online customer reviews

• Three conditions necessary for the crowd to be wise• Diversity

• Independence

• Decentralization

Diversity

• “…contributes not just by adding different perspectives to the group but also by making it easier for individuals to say what they really think.”

Independence

• “The smartest groups…are made up of people with diverse perspectives who are able to stay independent of each other.”

Decentralization

• “…power does not reside in one central location…”

• Opposite of top-down management

• Crucial to tacit knowledge

• “…encourages independence and specialization…while still allowing people to coordinate their activities and solve difficult problems”

• Intelligent results require aggregating information

Decentralization Example: Linux

• Owned by no one

• People work on what they’re interested in and ignore the rest

• Single most important challenger to Microsoft

Collective Intelligence Example: Google

• [Collective intelligence is] “the reason the Internet search engine Google can scan a billion Web pages and find the one page that has the exact piece of information you were looking for.”

Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?

• Friends and relatives, collectively identified as “experts,” guessed correctly 65% of the time

• Polls of the audience—random people with nothing better to do—guessed correctly 91% of the time

Work Like A Network“We believe the future of work is founded upon open, discoverable information sharing and constant collaboration that ultimately turns companies into networks. Today’s enterprise social and unified communication experiences are just the beginning.”

Jeff Teper | Tranforming work, Transforming Office | Blog post on Feb. 17, 2014

Oslo

Office Graph

Yammer

• Get connected to the right people

• Share information across teams

• Organize projects

All Company Feed

Group Feed

Yammer Groups

• Similar to Community Sites in SharePoint

Yammer Conversations

• Available within Office applications in O365

How Many Jellybeans?“A classic demonstration of group intelligence is the jelly-beans-in-the-jar experiment, in which invariably the group estimate is superior to the vast majority of the individual guess.”

James Surowiecki | Author of The Wisdom of Crowds

Guess To Win

• Complete this quick Excel Survey for your chance towin the jar of jellybeans

http://1drv.ms/PZz5Uo

How To Win

• Blog post:How to win a jellybean guessing contesthttp://diggy.wordpress.com/2007/03/07/how-to-win-a-jellybean-counting-contest/

Social & ECM in SharePoint“Social networks...allow people to connect and coordinate with each other without a single person being in charge.”

James Surowiecki | Author of The Wisdom of Crowds

Taking SharePoint Beyond the Intranet

Newsfeeds

• User’s dashboard• What’s relevant to the user

• What’s happening with everyone

• How to get contextually-relevant content from across the entire SharePoint environment

• Share status updates

• Mention other users using @name

• Multiple #tags in a single post

Source: http://www.chrisweldon.net/blog/2012/12/18/sharepoint-2013-tagging-social-tags/

Tags

Hashtags• Easy way to #tag

conversations and comments

• Always public

• Use Tags & Notes board to see previous #tags

• Supported in Yammer but not integrated with SP

Keywords• Pre-Populated terms

specified in Managed Metadata

• Example: Ask Me About in MySites

Source: http://www.chrisweldon.net/blog/2012/12/18/sharepoint-2013-tagging-social-tags/

Community Sites

• Meant to replace distribution lists in Exchange

• Enhanced version of discussion boards

• Focus on conversations

• Encourage shared interests

• Promote gamification through badges & reputations

• Portal lists all available community sites

Content Types & Metadata

Candy Type Brand Color Flavor Size Shape

Wonka Green Apple Small Round

Wonka Red Cherry Small Round

Mars Chocolate

Brown MilkChocolate

Full Size Rectangular

Mars Chocolate

Brown MilkChocolate

Fun Size Rectangular

Jelly Belly Red StrawberryJam

Small Oval

Jelly Belly Green Margarita Small Oval

Convert Content Into Knowledge“What you’d like is a way for individuals to specialize and to acquire local knowledge–which

increases the total amount of information available in the system–while also being able to

aggregate that local knowledge and private information into a collective whole.”

James Surowiecki | Author of The Wisdom of Crowds

Convert Content Into Knowledge

• Conversations happen online via• Newsfeeds

• Community Sites

• Yammer

SharePoint Search

• Content is searchable because of• Hashtags

• Keywords

• Content types

• Metadata

Yammer Search

• Search for people, groups, and conversations

• Additional search optionsHashtags Keywords

Questions?

Theresa Eller | [email protected] | @SharePointMadam