Striding boldly from the wreckage of voracious consumerist discountlust, I head toward the checkout. Glancing down at the sled, I am satisfied with my impending purchase. It is in a word…solid. I approach the line which seems to disappear over the horizon and while waiting for my turn my mind of course wanders into the geeky land of E2oh…

It occurs to me that my journey to find this sled is not too dissimilar from an almost daily frustration of finding information within corporate and government monoliths. I have harped on this issue before but here is what I go through when asked to “go find something”. For the purposes of the dialog below, consider Longfellow anyone who has created information alone, then it stored it in a traditional document management app in order to “share”. (So…like almost everyone in your organization. )

Longfellow: “Hey Nate…when you are done with your nap can you take a look at the deliverable I prepared? Would love some input.”

Me: “Sure no problem Longfellow. I assume you have put this wonder of consulting somewhere I can find it, right?Oh…and…uh…sweet ascot.”

Longfellow: “Thanks. My father Higginsly bought it for me. Yeah… the deliverable is uploaded to the DocuPointShareFireStormDrain site.”

After an interchange like this, I would search for the link to the aforementioned “place” where hopefully I am met with the delight of reading something worthy of Longfellow’s bill rate. Instead, I am presented with this:

Man...look at all that KNOWLEDGE to manage.

Hmmm. Ok. So now what? Clearly whoever designed this folder structure knew exactly how I would categorize information. So this should be easy, right? I should be able to flawlessly navigate directly to this deliverable and life will be good. And so we begin:

1. Click, click, click…not there….expletive.
2. Click, click, click….not there…expletive, expletive.
3. Click, click, click….not there…expletive, expletive, expletive.
4. Enter presumed keywords into search box. Dizzying list of irrelevant junk. More expletives.
5. HR rep stops by the desk. Still can’t find deliverable but am now up to speed on firm policy for professional behavior.
6. Call Longfellow. He stops by.

Longfellow: “Hey Nate…can’t find the deliverable? Weird. I thought it was pretty apparent where it would be. Maybe you just don’t understand how best to organize information.”

Me: “Hey Longfellow…yeah can’t seem to find it. Why don’t you give it a go? And maybe you just don’t understand that I might hobble you when we are done here.”

Longfellow clicks about 37 times and we are presented with this (his deliverable is highlighted):

Totally my fault.

I am sure you can imagine the rest of our interchange.

Sure, for the sake of argument Longfellow could have sent me a link but quite frankly that rarely happens. People tend to just state that a certain piece of information is “up there” and expect you to find it. Or even more frequent is the self-prompted need to find something. Either way, there are major issues with this approach constituting the reasons why I have abstained as often as possible from using platforms like this as a way to author and collaborate on content.

• We Need a Better Structure – Typically people will point out that the problem with me (or anyone) not being able to find anything is the fact that the structure or hierarchy (taxonomy) is flawed. Unfortunately this is merely a symptom, not the root cause. Hierarchies often break down because either the person/people who created them perceive information categories differently than the people who use them. It becomes an almost intractable problem when the data set you are trying to categorize approaches any decent scale. Your folder structure on your laptop works because you are the only user and your data is the only thing being organized. But then you get asked to create something like the picture above and scratch your head when I can’t find anything. Want a bigger example of this? You use and find things in the largest data set in the world on a pretty frequent basis. But how often do you use a folder structure instead of search? I would guess never. Traditional, single dimension hierarchies just do not work. Not to mention the fact that it is a holdover from organizing physical information in actual file cabinets and folders. Think about my experience shopping for sleds. The hierarchy I was presented with was designed to 1) hold physical goods, 2) keep me in the store as long as possible, and 3) make me walk through other stuff that I might be tempted to buy. Great for a store, but drop dead ridiculous for efficiency in the workplace.  You are not Henry Brown. Don’t try to be.
• The Search Doesn’t Work – This one is a bit more difficult to tackle. I am a big fan of the search not store mantra but with a caveat or two. One of the reasons search works on the WWW is because of links. The links between bits of info help with determining relevancy, popularity, and a few other things I am sure the smart folks at Google could tell you about.  I think that search tends to fall down a bit without links. In other words, almost all of the corporate stuff you produce. Unless you are creating web-based content and proactively linking (as if you were creating content on the WWW), you may find your stuff…well…hard to find. That being said, it isn’t that search doesn’t work…it’s that your content is not really designed to be found.

So next time you find yourself at a SUPERTARGET or authoring some sort of deliverable, think about the full lifecycle of your stuff. Not only does it need to be created, but it needs to be found. Keeping that in mind from the minute you begin spewing brilliance through the keyboard will at least keep me off probation for shouting obscenities at my laptop and at best, get your stuff found by people who actually might need to use it.

(This post is somewhat related to a post I wrote for Future Changes.)

I find myself in Zionsville, IN for the holidays this year. Having attended college in Bloomington, IN, every time I come to the Hoosier state I embark upon something of a nostalgic trip down memory lane. Well…it was college, so maybe more of a memory cul de sac. Nonetheless, while I could never live in this state, I always enjoy the visits. If you get a chance, give it a whirl. The people could not be more friendly, there is every kind of fast food you have ever heard of (and some you haven’t), and it is really easy to relax. Mostly because the sort of 1st gear velocity of life here forces you to do so. (Seriously. I stood in line behind a person today who took nearly 8 minutes to order a plain coffee at Starbucks. Do that inside the beltway and you face a federal indictment. It was nice though that the cashier and I learned all about her detailed plans for the New Year.  And her ailing hip. And her world famous squash casserole. And her poodle.)

Not sure about your holidays, but seems to me that my days are way less busy than my evenings. At night there is a multitude of parties, receptions, visiting, etc. (BTW, I love it when people “just want to visit”. What does that mean? Am I doing it right? How do you know when a visit is over? Is it acceptable to swill bourbon during a visit?) My days however are pretty thin on activities. So much so that I often crave simple tasks just so I feel like I am doing something.  For example, today I was asked to head to SUPERTARGET and purchase Diet Dr. Pepper and a sled. Upon being asked, I jumped up from the couch, donned my gay apparel and set out to turn what should take about 30 minutes into a task worthy of EVM. Little did I know, it would change me in ways I will never forget.

Upon arriving at the SUPERTARGET  I was presented with the daunting task of navigating my way through people and things of all shapes, sizes and states of animation. (And yes, SUPERTARGET is one word and should always be completely capitalized. They can be seen from space by the naked eye.) So I say to myself, ‘Self….if you were in charge of information architecture for this behemoth of junk, where would you put the sleds?” I stare up at the signs for the departments and am baffled. Here is what I see:

• Small Electrics
• Women’s
• Flu Shots
• Shoes
• Produce

Weird. Not sure I can place  a sled into any of those categories. So I begin my now fabled trek into the belly of the behemoth. I pass all sorts of other departments like Jewelry, Boy’s, Men’s, Teen’s, Octogenarian’s, Sporting Goods, Colts (yes, there is an entire department dedicated to the Indianapolis Colts), until off in the distance I spy a rising dust cloud and hear the rumble of what sounds like an active act of large-scale civil disobedience. A crookedly dangling sign with a torched reindeer appears to denote the correct department – Toys. Sweet. A sled is a toy, right? But why does it look like 28 Days Later?

After a short hike through Flowers, Garden, Spices, and Large Electrics, I arrive in Toys. And man oh man did I pick the wrong time to be in Toys. In addition to the deafening din of screaming little people, it appears some of them are actually climbing on the shelves. I can literally see the sugar emanating out of these tiny terrors like heat off a desert road. The parents seem to have given up, resigned to feeble and furtive glances of acknowledgement and apology in each other’s direction. I walk down an aisle filled with action figures but stop short when I see another non-parent dutifully taken out by a pack of raving 4-year olds. Poor guy never saw it coming. He put up a decent fight but there is no defense against a horde of tots fueled by Grandma’s Toffee Chocolate Crunch and gallons of Hi-C. After tackling their prey, one of them looks at me defiantly and actually snarls. I shudder and frantically search for a sled of any sort. At this point, I am running low on provisions and would gladly substitute a hubcap for this mythical sled. Anything will do. I just need to get out.

I spot a SUPERTARGET employee and kindly ask, “Could you point me toward to sleds, please?”

She senses the fearful strain in my voice and wanly smiles back. “They are in Clearance.”

I want, but decide not to scream “Clearance? Whiskey Tango Foxtrot is Clearance?!? And how would any normal human know that? You made me live through that horror movie only to state that there is a potentially more depraved circle of hell I will have to sift through to find a simple sled? POINT ME TOWARD AUTO PARTS!”

Instead I spring forward, steeling myself for the Clearance Department. As I walk away from the cacophony of pain, I am pleasantly surprised to find that while Toys was an active conflict, the Clearance department has the air of a Roman ruin or Civil War battlefield. Monumental and potentially horrible things happened here…but they were very, very long ago. Bare shelves littered with a half eaten candy cane, a ripped Christmas sweater, and an wooden angel that appears to have been napalmed, are all that remain. The wind whistles and an very old man with one eye shuffles by me, mumbling something about shortbread strafing runs.

At the end of one still smoking aisle, I see my goal. Like a mountain climber reaching the summit of K2, I proudly stride forward, careful not to trip on the smoldering remnants of a country ham. There is a single sled left. A single glorious sled. I slowly reach forward, fearing it may not be real. As I grasp the handle of the SuperSled with Parabolic Turning Rails I feel a wave of triumph and joy flow through my tired and aching body. I have survived the unthinkable and completed my task.

To be continued….

Last week I had the distinct pleasure of flying halfway around the world to attend the 4th annual International Conference on Electronic Government in Beijing, China. A couple folks on the Deloitte team submitted papers for presentation and despite the usual deathstroke associated with giving me an author credit, we were asked to come on down. Even with the mind-bending jet-lag fog of a 12 hour time difference, I had a truly excellent time. Highlights and observations are as follows:

* US Open Government Initiative – One of my favorite trends as of late is all of the data exposition and general geekery that is coming out the of the US Federal Government as a result of the Open Government Initiative. Beth Noveck, Deputy Chief Technology Officer for Open Government gave a pretty interesting overview of her office’s achievements and as well as told a compelling story of how the push for technical transparency (my words) has a vast impact on the quality of citizen services provided at the Federal level. For the 4 of you who religiously read this blog, I suppose it is no surprise that I believe squarely in the transformative power of data exposition. Seems Ms. Noveck does as well and while she was playing to a friendly crowd, the message was still very good.

* Estonia – Do you know about the egov work Estonia is doing? I certainly didn’t (not that my ignorance is all that surprising) and was solidly impressed by the presentation given by the Estonia Academy for EGovernment. I am going to stay far , far away from the political arguments surrounding the implementation of a National ID system, but from a technology perspective, there is some real brilliance occurring. For example, through the aforementioned third-rail issue of a National ID, they rock nationwide single sign on (with two factor authentication) and identity management to/for all electronically provided government systems. They literally turned their government into something of a service oriented architecture and every time you want to auth into the license plate renewal service or health care record database, you inset your National ID and whammo – Big Bro knows who you are, where you live, and what your favorite cereal is. Seems they implemented a bus of sorts (called X-road) and wrapped all of their existing egov services to play nicely with one another. Again, I am not going to comment on the political angle here…merely state that the tech used to accomplish this was pretty hip. One thing – the presenter stated the Auth service allows you to define delegates and permissions for various types of data on the grid. So doctors can see your health records, children could see your tax records if you die, etc, etc. While this struck me as something that should obviously be implemented, I can’t imagine the learning curve associated with these privacy settings. I mean, drunk college kids can’t figure out how to keep their moronic photobombs private in Facebook (yeah kids, when you interview, we look. Sweet bong, flapjack. Somehow, I don’t think you will make the cut) …Can you imagine configuring a privacy scheme for almost all of your sensitive personal data?

* Crispy Bird Skin – Sorry…this wasn’t really a function of the conference, but the Peking Duck was off the freaking map. Best place I went was called Da Dong and seriously, I have tasted heaven and it is apparently carved tableside. That garbage we (or maybe just I) eat in the States compares to this golden-skinned football of glory like RuPaul does to Naomi Campbell.

Turns out next year the conference is actually in Estonia. If you can make it, I highly recommend coming.

“I will have to send you the tracker.”

“We have developed a tool that helps us track things.”

“You have the wrong version of the tracker.  I am sending a new one out now.”

“Did you get the tracker I sent last night?“

Ugh. Head butt me with a barbed wire bust of myself. I really do have a visceral reaction to the word “tracker”. It pains me greatly. I immediately have nightmarish visions of being buried alive under reams of awkwardly-printed spreadsheets. I peer up out of my Office-borne grave while a lifesize Excel icon cackles madly and continues to shovel.  No thanks (unnamed) friends (quoted above). Keep your trackers. I’m opting for sanity.

Seemingly, the act of “tracking” things is important. But the tool of choice for execution is almost always an utter failure. I mean no disrespect to the people I have come to know that use these tools. For the most part you work off inertia, inheriting endless scrolling and eye-scratching color schemes from some former POC. You toil madly to maintain the false reality of “up to date”, applying cryptic file naming conventions that no one understands but you, all the while crushing your co-workers’ email with multiple meg attachments replete with animated gifs and 18pt Comic Sans. Super. Please send more.

I thunk on this for a while and tried to figure out what about this practice bothers me so much. Here’s what I came up with:

1. The information is never current. Never. The sheer mechanics of emailing requests, receiving and consolidating information, and then sending out again is too slow to keep up with the velocity of life. Every time I get a tracker briefed to me, there are always caveats that x,y, and z, have changed since the time of publication. Alrighty then. So what’s the point? Thanks for letting me know what life was like last week.
2. The information is presented in the way the “collector” believes to be logical, understandable, and efficient. Unfortunately, this thesis is rarely true for anyone else. There are discrete professions dedicated to making information consumable and meaningful. 99 times out of 100, you are not one of these professionals. Therefore your use of color, presentation, and the basic tenets of usability are about as informed as my understanding of dairy farming or snake handling. (I love me some Dirty Jobs, but you definitely don’t want me to milk anything.)
3. Spreadsheets are great for accounting. But drop dead awful for faking workflow or including narrative. Creating columns to be filled in with dates that signify actions is not only the technological equivalent of building a house with an shoe-last celt, but completely ridiculous for conveying current status. And don’t get me started on narrative. Spreadsheets can handle a word or two here and there, but if I have to read another center-aligned, 6pt font excerpt in cell AZ154 I am going to blow a major artery.

So what is the alternative you ask? Simple:

Anytime you think you might need to track something with inputs from multiple people, say one word out loud: WEB-BASED. Start there and you will probably be miles ahead of where you are today.  I am a big fan of Confluence and JIRA for things like this but there are literally thousands of applications out there that will remove you from the hellish existence of spreadsheet trackers.

So sports fans….tell me. Did you too spill Flavia-powered coffee on your moderately pressed J. Crew button down shirt, curse the beard of Zeus, and fall directly out of your rarely comfortable office chair when the World Bank announced they had built what data.gov should be today? No? Huh. Weird. And here I was thinking I was normal.

Whether you are a data geek, care about transparency, or work in international development, this app is exceptionally relevant and seriously hot. And it’s hot for a whole rack of reasons I would guess the traditional development types will probably miss. In fact, I asked a few today and confirmed this hypothesis. I mean, don’t get me wrong. I heart the multiple advanced degrees out of each and every one of you, but seriously, lemme see some jazz hands at least when the World Bank makes Biggest Loser bellyflop size waves in the choppy wading pool of open government.  Here are my favorite statements so far and a bit of editorializing as to why they are missing the proverbial enchilada.

• “So what? The World Bank Data has been public for years.” – Well ok. That is partially true. But not really and you’re missing the point. Granted, some of it was behind a paywall, but even that isn’t the point. The point is the nuanced meaning of the word available.  Much like the World Bank data, the capabilities of the iPhone were available for years prior to its launch. You could call people. You could sort of use apps. You could sort of watch videos or listen to music. But when the iPhone arrived, the interface, seamless integration, and overwhelmingly usable presentation of functionality fundamentally changed our expectations around a mobile device. And by extension, it changed the way we work. So yeah, the data has been around for a while. But this interface, seamless integration, and overwhelmingly usable presentation of functionality are fresh like strawberries in July. And that positions the underlying data to fundamentally change the way we work.
• “Cool. It’s all in one place now” – Um…kinda. It’s definitely all in one “place” from a presentation perspective, and undoubtedly, that is bangin’. But the underlying data work to make it all in one service is what really changes my oil. More technically, the API made publicly available is the same one powering the app itself. Yeah this is a touch wonky, but stay with me. The World Bank had an API for a while. But it was built for the wrong reasons. It wasn’t built to power an app like data.worldbank.org. I am not sure why it was built, but it wasn’t really used and missed cashing in on why APIs for data are hip. By first building (or extending) the API, then presenting an app on top of it, the World Bank has shown the developer community the art of the possible. They are inviting leagues of people to use their data to drive applications that can benefit the overall mission of the Bank without spending a dime. By creating an API that is shown to be usable (i.e. cool app with stuff in one place), they demonstrate the real power of open data – crowdsourcing the development of innovative (and free) applications to support their mission.
• “It isn’t detailed enough for what I need.” – Ugh. This one really gets me. Come on, have some vision people. Again, yes. The level of detail presented may not be what you need. But frankly that only matters right now. And it really only matters to you. The architecture is what is important. Moreover, the potential impact to the business of international development embodied by the architecture is vastly important. Even if you don’t care about APIs, XML, GTL, or the Biggest Loser, mark my words, this move will present “detail” in the future that you never thought possible. As partners and implementers around the world begin mashing up their own data with the data provided by the World Bank in a usable, open, and transparent manner, the results will be detailed and ramifications will be significant.

So go check it out. Even if you aren’t a data geek, it’s worth a look. Also, I can’t wrap up without a hat tip to my boys at Developmentseed for creating a website that is just plain fun to use. An even bigger hat tip for doing it all with open source tools and proving that open gov data exposition can (and should) be more than just spreadsheets and FOIA streamlining.

Nonetheless, I promised some time ago that I would keep you posted on the score with respect to Wiki Part Deux (Electric Boogaloo) . In short – so far, so good. Adoption, usage, and pervasiveness continue to steadily grow regardless of some rather daunting challenges like no SSO, no communication efforts, mandated account requests, and no integration with enterprise search. It’s all viral, all day and frankly it has been working surprisingly well. Like a virus. Errr…a friendly virus. A friendly virus that promotes transparency and recently added some hot new drag and drop capabilities. Yeah. That kind of virus.

As awareness increases, I have been fielding more and more questions on the difference between the wiki and (insert any big name document management platform here). The questions pertain to other internal systems or client systems. I (as well as a bunch of other much smarter people) have said some of this before, but thought it helpful to put it out there again.

Simply put, the wiki is not a new place to put content. It is a new way to create content. Think of the wiki as a replacement for Word or Email. Big name document management systems (in almost every organization I have seen) work like this: Open Word. Write something. Save it on your desktop. Upload it somewhere a few people can see it. Hopefully they find it. Hopefully they are the “right” people. Hopefully they download it. They make comments or changes. Hopefully they reupload. Hopefully you can reconcile the changes with everybody else’s. Rinse and repeat.

The wiki (in my organization) works like this -> Open the wiki. Write something. Save it. Everyone sees it. Some people comment or make changes. Actual (and rapid) collaboration ensues.

In my book the big difference between the two is a process improvement, not a location improvement. I don’t download. I don’t save attachments. I don’t worry about versions. I don’t send emails . I produce actual content.  My team and I are able to produce better content because we can work faster and with more brains at the table. Sure, there are great benefits in the knowledge management game, but at the end of the day it is about $ to me. Efficiency and leverage are the lifeblood of successful projects. Shifting how you think about producing the content, not where you think about putting the content will get you larger gains. It just so happens that the wiki is indeed a “place” of sorts at the end of the day, but the true value is in the process itself. This is why I see so many disappointed wiki users who do nothing but create pages and attach documents to them. There isn’t really a compelling improvement there. But when you change the process…now we’re cooking with gas.

The strip mall loomed large in the chilled morning dew as I glanced back at 18 lanes worth of growing traffic idling through lights spaced a stone’s throw apart. Mega marts, chain restaurants, and expansive parking lots slumbered in preparation for the daily assault of inconsiderate consumers seeking considerable bargains and waistlines. The smell of yesterday’s funnel-cakes and tomorrow’s liquidation sale floated in the air, hell-bent on spoiling my otherwise unadulterated view of the Rockies.  I walk past a few rows of parked cars into a brightly lit storefront labeled “Fitness Rocks!” The substantial woman behind the desk smiles pleasantly at me while tending to a stack of fresh towels. I must have looked confused (hungover?) because she (much too cheerily) stepped toward me and (much too loudly) proclaimed,

“Welcome to Fitness Rocks! Where Fitness rocks! Are you interested in a membership? Or maybe a tour? Our MamboJitsu class is starting right this very minute! It’s like a cross between Dancing with the Stars and MMA. Hahahaha!! It rocks! Just like Fitness Rocks! YAAAAY!!”

Oh dear. Something was amiss. Many things were amiss. Most of which centered on this yapping Miss at my 12 o’clock. I pondered backing away slowly and distracting her by lobbing the nearby UltraZone PowerPack MilkBlast ProteinNuggets toward an idle StairMaster but after a few moments of frightened grunts, I mumbled something intelligible.

“I am staying at the Holiday Inn. They told me I could work out here.”

She unsuccessfully hid her disappointment and reached beneath the counter to retrieve some sort of form I was required to fill out. According to my newly befriended, awkwardly crestfallen attendant, this was mandated for adequate insurance coverage during my (hopefully?) brief stint at Fitness Rocks!  Huh. Weird. Never knew an insurance company to be concerned with my “Fav Workout Tunes” preference. But who am I to judge? Fine. I’ll bite. Mark one up in the Josh Grobin’s Greatest Hits column, Jessica. You and I both know the angels in his voice are the only thing sure to raise up our self esteem after failingly huffing and puffing through an advanced Ricky Martin Kwan Do class. (Also known as “Tae Chi Bangs.)

After satisfactorily registering my identity, I was allowed to enter the complex. I walked past rows and rows of awful dispositions forced by awful impositions. The machines appeared odd. The people on them appeared more so. It seemed to me that while there was sweat being produced, the actions producing it were foreign, contrived, and far, far removed from anything resembling a movement I might execute in the course of my daily life. I mean, how many times during a week do you find yourself on your back, pushing weight up in the air with your arms? (Other than your “workout” at the gym, that is…) It all just seemed so…I don’t know…slow. And antiquated. And easy. And more importantly…fruitless.

I pondered my reaction and sought to understand why. Why is it that this all seems so slow? While avoiding a leering turret of a man who had worked his biceps into a state that would deny him the freshness of feeling afforded by toilet paper, it dawned on me. It has been months since I patronized a “normal” gym. In line with furthering my CrossFit obsession and seeking a place where the WOD was not only condoned, but instructed, I had joined Primal Fitness this summer. As such, all of the traditionally normal things about normal gyms, seemed…well…abnormal.

For the 3 of you who have been reading this post (Hi Mom, Dad, Jay), patiently waiting for what this has to do with the transparent enterprise, gimmie a couple more paragraphs, and I promise we will get there.

When I walk into Primal in the morning, it is a completely different experience. There is no neon. There is no strip mall. There is no chipper receptionist. There are no remixes, no bodybars, no machines, and no dancers trying to be martial artists. Most importantly, there is no easy and there are no illusions. What greets me at Primal in the morning is an opportunity to work harder than I ever had before, exercising in a real, meaningful, and productive manner that has inevitably left me in better shape. There are no attempts to make things easy, fun, or even all that enjoyable. There is no complaining. It is competitive. It is hard. It is designed to be both. Frankly, it (exercise) should be. If you don’t like it, fair enough.  Head back to solo hours on the elliptical and keep complaining about the 3 flights of stairs you had to walk in a recent fire drill. Keep complaining about those tenacious 15, 30, 50 pounds you have been working on for years. Keep complaining about the back pain, the blood pressure, the weakness, and the expanding midsection. Keep complaining. And keep assuaging those complaints with fruitless trips to Fitness Rocks!

As I pondered, my mind drifted back to perhaps my second favorite topic – the transparent enterprise. Specifically, the now stark (to me) differences between those that have adopted the tools and processes of E2, and those who have not. It strikes me that there are huge similarities between my recent experience with a gym and my recent experience working outside of the wiki. For a brief period of time, there was no E2-enabled environment within which I or my colleagues could work. It has since been resolved but due to some mechanical issues there were a few dark days where I was reduced to working with (gasp!)…files. There was uploading. There was downloading. There was emailing and there was lack-of-version-controlling. All in all, it was like a step back in time.

I won’t mention the specific tool (read: way) I was working with/in, but seriously, it was the technological and cultural equivalent of Fitness Rocks!  There were hundreds of chipper people surrounding it, espousing how collaborative and transparent and effective it all was, begging me to sign up. There were people begrudgingly using it, albeit appearing in slow motion, fooling themselves into thinking they too were collaborative and transparent and effective. There were the muscle-bound super users who seemed to have pushed its operational capabilities to freakish levels of taxonomy and access control, all the while eliminating usability. There was a form I had to fill out in order to represent my identity. There was neon. There were sweat-free foreheads. There were complaints. There were expensive, long term contracts.  There was the illusion of utility. There was the illusion of return. There was the illusion of easy. There was…just an illusion.

Luckily, an E2-enabled environment resurfaced and I was able to return to my preferred method of working. I walk into that environment and am presented with an austere, yet overtly functional palette that responds accordingly to the amount of work I put in. There are no forms to fill out. There are no shiny advertisements. There are no huge costs. There is only work. There is true return. There is the opportunity to compete in a transparent, collaborative, and effective environment.

I look back on my brief interlude with both a 1.0 approach and Fitness Rocks! and shudder. Much like I am not satisfied with an hour on a treadmill, I too cannot sit idly by, waiting for the knowledge workday whistle to blow, all the while knowing there is a better way. I will not argue that change isn’t hard. However, after my time in the doldrums of traditional collaboration and fitness, I am ready to argue that hard is invariably better.

I am one thing, however. I am a use case.

In the post linked above, Dennis Howlett gives the so called crock of E2 a lashing of epic proportion. I saw it go up and sort of delighted as the powers that be reacted to his assertion. I really chuckled out loud when one commenter referenced Karate Kid in her reply. Read it for yourself to form your own opinion, but best I can tell, the very debate itself, regardless of what side you are on, is the real crock.

While the critics and advocates go back and forth, wrangling for (what appears to me to be) pole position in the Blogpost Hit Count 500, there are those of us who have work to do. And, despite Mr. Howlett’s claims, we accomplish it using not only the tools of Enterprise 2.0, but via the ethos of a transparent enterprise.

I would consider the majority of the posts Jay and I have written to be evidence of our collective use case. We now work in a different way. Our organization, or at least the parts that need things from us, have changed the way they work as well. Sure, we may have speculated a bit on the evils E2 could cure, but all of them are based on real problems we faced on a day to day basis. The only criticism or advocacy we can provide for E2 is the sum of our experiences. Furthermore, if those experiences didn’t in some way improve our value to the organization, increase efficiency, drive additional revenue, whatever, we sure as hell wouldn’t continue to have them. After all, employment is my primary concern. Not the soapbox I am often accused of standing on.

Similar to the work I have to accomplish, the punditry will undoubtedly continue. While the debate rages on, there is in fact, actual change.  There are people like Jay and me everywhere, faced with “pressing business issues”, working via the tools and tenets of E2. Evangelism or criticism of the outcomes by the uninvolved is moot. Mr. Howlett asked, what problem is E2 trying to solve? For me….all of them.

Man. Aint that the truth.

This quote is from a recent blog post by one of my favorite Enterprise 2.0 authors, Paula Thorton.  It literally jumped off of the screen, landed in my mint julep, and was ported directly into the underwhelming organ I refer to as my brain. I can count on one hand (finger?) the number of business applications I consider great experiences. As such, it has been stewing there for the past little bit and I have been trying to figure out why. Not necessarily why it has been stewing (that part is easy – I am simple), but why the statement is true.

I have also been stewing on a rallying cry I continue to hear while waging the undying E2 adoption battle. People seem to be transfixed on the idea that things (technologies) “must be easy to use” in order to opt for a change. I hear this in bunches and have sort of reduced it to ‘a technology must be relatively easier to use in order to induce change”.  For argument’s sake I mean change in the most binary of senses.  As in stop using SharePoint and start using Confluence. Forget all the other stuff like organizational transformation or culture shift or <insert change buzzword here>.

So when these two stews came together, I asked myself the following question:

• Does a great experience with a business application imply that it is easy to use? Moreover, should it be?

In attempting to answer this question I thought about experiences I consider “great”. What are the attributes of an experience, professional or otherwise, that inevitably make it great? After sifting through my collective experience of persistent mediocrity, it boiled down to a couple things. They usually entail some sort of hard work, possibly even pain, and a sense of accomplishment. For example, I hiked up Mount Washington with Brother Nash this past winter. In one day with temperatures well below freezing, we covered 8 miles, gained and lost a mile of altitude, and carried a sweet ice axe. Hard work? Yup. Sense of accomplishment? For sheezy. Great experience? Check. Another example is my obsession with CrossFit. Most weekdays, the fine folks at Primal Fitness DC are kind enough to hand back my ass after a seriously proper kicking up and down New York Avenue.  From Fights Gone Bad to dancing with the clown, there is definitely both pain and a sense of accomplishment. Mark another in the “great” column. Finally, the time I spent working in the Middle East was definitely a great experience. We accomplished many things and well…the reason why life might be a bit hard in Baghdad is pretty self-evident.

So how does this translate to business applications? The only app I really consider a great experience is our wiki. I have never really thought about it until now, but why is that? Why do I think it’s great? For the longest time, I thought it was because it was easy to use. But the more I think about it, while the tool itself may be easy, the experience is anything but. It is hard. It is sometimes painful. And frankly, it should be.

When we write professional content (like deliverables) in wiki form, we are forced to expand our minds beyond typical expectations. We must increase our understanding of context, look for the bigger picture, and understand where the content we are producing fits into it. What does this link to?  Where else are people writing about this? What are they saying? Am I wrong? Are they wrong? What should this link to?

I would posit that none of these questions existed so blatantly until I had a tool that exposed them to me. I worked away in my little silo of knowledge (more of a shed really) and never had to consider the bigger picture. Maybe there was some other eRoom with similar content, but I sure didn’t have access to it. Even if I could link my document to the other, what did that do? It didn’t help the search engine. It didn’t provide trackback for the other author. It would also usually break if either doc was moved or renamed. Now those were the easy days. So why bother?

Well…I didnt. And most people still don’t. Even though there is a clear option to  produce a great experience, people are still slogging through version control nightmares fueled by email attachments and track changes. Why? Because it is easier??? No. Ease of use is often a foil for thought laziness. Email attachments are easy. But they don’t precipitate a great experience. Why bother to expand your perspective when the siren of a paperclip icon (or a folder upload) calls so sweetly? Silo shmilo…I have Facebooking to get to!

My great experiences with business applications (or anything for that matter) always require some level of hard work. Authoring in the wiki provides for a great experience, but when the content is at its most powerful, it is in no way easier to produce. It forces me to think beyond what I usually think about. Isn’t that what organizations want out of their employees? Isn’t that what employees want from their jobs? Challenging assignments? Big thinking? I know it’s what I want.  And yes, it can be hard. But, just like the feeling you get from a correct choice in the Big Mac vs. spaghetti squash conundrum…it is great.

While my interactions with Jeffrey were relatively limited from there on out, he was unwavering in his support and advocacy.  No matter how long it had been since a sale or a marketing event, he was gracious, appreciative, and genuinely interested in our continuing slog through the E2 adoption quagmire. In light of his tragic passing yesterday, we wanted to express our condolences and gratitude to his personal and professional family at home and Atlassian HQ.

Jeffrey, you will be sorely missed. We would not be where we are today without you and the dedicated people at Atlassian.

Thank you.