Engaging the enterprise in emerging trends
In large and small scale businesses there is a divide — one that separates the business from the more technical folk. In today’s marketplace, it is critical that these two forces meet somewhere in the middle, sharing an understanding of commonplace technical terms, techniques and trends. It’s scary when a business lead is driving an initative, but yet doesn’t truly grasp the high-level technical concepts of the work; or when the business side sees something “cool” and says, “why can’t we have that on our site?” Sound familiar?
To help alleviate this, I have been pondering methods to help engage the everyday business employee in all the things that we find wonderful, amazing or problematic in our “world”. As designers, developers, IAs and PMs, we all see things we think are beneficial to our industry, and to our business. But how do we go about sharing those concepts with the masses, all with varying degrees of knowledge?
I have been running a tool ala del.icio.us, where a user can “tag” stories of interest or relevance from a handy Firefox toolbar icon. These “tagged” entries are compiled into RSS for internal consumption by anyone who wants to subscribe. It started out with some fanfare, but has slowed, with just a couple of people now adding entries here and there. I’m considering an all-out internal marketing blitz to promote this simple tool, but am looking for additional engagement ideas.
Anyone out here have interesting engagement “strategery”? 
2 Comments
“It started out with some fanfare, but has slowed, with just a couple of people now adding entries here and there.”
Sounds like Mnteractive. ;o)
This is a good idea, actually. We’ve encountered the same thing here at work. We have a marketing group, and we have the web group (IT). Over time, we’ve become more separated business-wise than joined, which is frustrating. In the end, it just takes due dilgence on both our parts to find each other in the hallway to chat and stay up to date on things.
Jay, your notion of a common reading list for a work group is an excellent idea, one that I also see the need for.
To some degree, that was a good blog should be – a group blog, like MNteractive.com – most definitely. Del.icio.us-type bookmarking doesn’t click for me, it doesn’t feel like there’s enough context.
Perhaps an internal mailing list – instead of RSS – would work better for the people you’re trying to reach.