Office 2.0 - How NESTA is using social tools & web apps

In an earlier comment, I mentioned that I'd post about what social tools we are using at NESTA, and the timing seems just right, as I've been invited to speak about this same subject at the Office 2.0 conference next week. In fact, it hadn't clicked just how many ways we've embraced the whole '2.0' way of working until I scanned the list of conference sponsors to find that we're using quite a few of their products/tools - as well as loads of others. Here's a breakdown of what we're doing:

Internal Collaboration & Knowledge-sharing
Our Intranet is a structured (hybrid) wiki powered by ThoughtFarmer. We opted for a hybrid approach instead of pure wiki, mainly because we wanted to gradually introduce social tools to the business, and structured wikis offer wiki functionality without the 'geek factor' - or chaos - that can be associated with traditional wikis. I think ThoughtFarmer's interface is one of the 'friendliest' out there, something our staff seem to appreciate.

We've also been using CommunityServer to drive our internal blogs & discussion boards. I must admit I'm not the biggest fan of CommunityServer, as it's been fiddly to work with and tricky to find UK developers to support it, but it ticked our ICT department's box of being Microsoft-friendly, so there we go. (We also use CS as the platform for managing our Creative Pioneer business support programmes.)

Online Workspaces & Extranets
We use Central Desktop for a number of things: my own team uses it as a collaborative workspace for all work, from steady-state 'rolling' work, to discrete projects. I personally love it, as it means all my docs are available from any computer in the world. We also use CD across the business as a way of managing work/relationships with external partners, from marcomms designers to Committee members to participants on our Crucible programme. My team is able to create extranets in a matter of minutes now that we're using Central Desktop. I'm a former Basecamp user, and I *heart* Central Desktop.

Fancy Feeds
We're using del.icio.us to do some pretty cool things aside from the usual social bookmarking. For example, our Innovation Digest email newsletter is created from a del.icio.us feed, as is the online version. It really simplifies the workflow, automating much of the drudgery associated with building newsletters.

And all the RSS feeds on our website are powered by del.icio.us and Feedburner, which is a pretty quick and simple 'hack' for RSS-enabling a website. I'm surprised more folks don't do it, to be honest. It's not the most elegant solution, but it works!

Speaking of feeds, I should also mention that we're using Yahoo Pipes to meld 2 feeds from our Typepad blogs to fill the 'blogs' slot on our website homepage. Again, it's a bit of a workaround, but it gets the job done.

Beyond RSS
We've introduced Netvibes to various staff members, and they all seem to say the same thing: Netvibes has changed my life (I agree!). While we first introduced it as a handy RSS reader that doesn't require ICT support, we soon found it became much more than that: a way of organising your digital 'clutter', planning for trips, and all sorts of other uses.

Remote Workers
We've used WebEx to enable our UK Partnerships team to collaborate across distances, often as an alternative to flying - which is great not only for the environment, but also in terms of cost. We've also used it to train our remote staff on using some of the tools above. I must admit we've had limited success in using it for online events, but I'm keen to give it another go under different circumstances.

Other Bits & Bobs
Last but not least, it's also worth mentioning that we use Wufoo and SurveyMonkey for our online surveys - both internal ones, and external. We use Wufoo for the simple ones, and SurveyMoneky for the more complex ones.

So what's next? We're currently trialling Diigo within my team, with the ultimate aim of introducing our Policy & Research team to this method of collaborative web annotation. I'm sure they will find it incredibly useful for the research & review process. And we're always on the lookout for new web apps and tools.

The really cool thing is that most of the above tools are free or low-cost, so I guess we're proof that you don't have to spend thousands of pounds to introduce web-based tools to the business context. So much has changed over the last couple of years. The old days of the 'Cost - Quality - Speed' triangle has gone; these days you CAN have all three: done cheaply, done well, and done quickly.

Comments

[David Wilcox]

Miko - thanks for such a useful insight into the way you are tying apps together. I hope you'll share your presentation with the rest of us! I'm looking at solutions for several clients avoid customised development. These range from using Google apps, iGoogle etc to collaboration systems. I've been using Basecamp ... but your endorsement of Central Desktop gave me another nudge to try it. Wow! Reply by email with attachments plus lots more functions. Any downside?

[Miko Coffey]

Hi David,

I'm at the conference now, so will collect my thoughts after and post a bit later, but in response to the downsides of CentralDesktop, so far my biggest one is the limitation on the number of 'company employees' (which is currently maxed out at 25). This only really poses a problem when you are trying to limit access to certain docs to internal use only, as you can work around it. But otherwise, I think it does a lot of the things you always wished Basecamp did (reply by email is the biggest selling point for my colleagues, no doubt).

I look forward to hearing about your use of web apps, too. I think more and more people will start to opt for web apps over custom development as the tools mature. Interestingly and in contrast to software, I see SMEs, charities and some public sector orgs being the early adopters in this area, as they are the ones with the smallest budgets but most flexibility in being able to deploy things rapidly. Plus, in the case of charities and SMEs, they are often more accustomed to dealing with creative solutions to problems... but I'm generalising of course!

[Miko Coffey]

I stand corrected! You can have many more company employees than just 25.