Fusion tables are also interesting for their approach to creating online public collaborative databases.  With Fusion tables you can merge data with other tables, open and secure parts of your tables and collaborate on data down to the cell level. An interesting potential approach for a lot organisations especially charities or government bodies. Almost a wikki for structured data.  

Google have also recently added an API to allowing one to update and query your dataset in Fusion Tables programmatically.

Below is an example of a animated visualisation of historical production data for a few countries (from the BP statistical review) which I created in about 5 minutes.  Play around with it and I would be interested to hear anyone's thoughts on how visualisations such as this would be applicable to their industry.

Warning! do not select a country and trails when running the animation - this seems to be too much for my browser  

Well that innovation is already happening. SAP have devloped a prototype Wave extension called Gravity that extends the document collaboration paradigm to collaborative Business Process Modelling (BPM). The video below shows it in action.

You could imagine working in a similar way as a cross domain/company virtual team to develop, improve and agree on work processes related to a Lean Six Sigma initiative or as part of the change management for the introduction of new technology for instance. 

Apart from providing an interesting view of BPM capability using the Wave paradigm of being able to have multiple users contibuting at the same time,  the video also does a good job of showing how people come and go during the course of a project. This highlights the importance and value of the playback feature for helping people get up to speed on ongoing work and discussions but also in helping document decisions. 

From a BPM perspective there is potential for Google Wave to be used to handle any activity that involves collaboration amongst people as part of a formal business process, for which it could maintains the complete record of discussion and decisions.

Already there are some interesting applications of Google Wave appearing. Do you know of any?

When I first started this blog 4 years ago I could see that there was an increasing convergence of computing hardware and software fueled by the growing use of the Internet as a platform as well as WiFi and other wireless technologies.  The effects where being seen in the interactions driven by smart phones, online gaming and online productivity and collaboration tools. This was all happening around digital content in the cloud. Hence the name for the blog.

These days the term "Cloud Computing" is probably the most common term applied to providing the ability "to do stuff" on the Internet or in the digital cloud.  The "cloud" term essentially comes from a lack of knowledge of exactly where or how stuff is actually happening, so it is referred to as happening in the cloud. I don't know exactly where my blog is hosted for instance and I certainly don't know where my gmail account sits.  But that doesn't matter as its the service that counts, the fact that it works as advertised.   The computing infrastructure required is someone else's problem and can be accessed when required just like electricity is today.

The following video probably explains it better than I could:

There is also something similar from Common Craft called Cloud Computing in Plain English which is also worth a look.

What does a digital cloud mean to you?

The amazing proposal is to create a construction, building is not really the right word for it, that would include 120m- (400ft-) tall mesh towers and a series of interconnected plastic bubbles that can be used to display images and data.

The Cloud, as it is known, would also be used an observation deck and park.  The final size of proposed structure will be related to the amount of funding that is raised.  The project plans to raise the funds to build it by asking for micro-donations from millions of people, which is an interesting approach and given the interesting ideas and plans for how the structure will interact with visitors, technology, geography and the environment may be something that will generate enough interest to work.

Ideas include a zero enegy structure, using wind, solar and other sources of energy for its power needs. Provision and display of dynamic data and information related to various potential sources in the local area and further afield.  Intrigued? Check out the Cloud.

Altogether an interesting proposal and one I wish every success. Welcome to all those who have found their way to this blog from search for the digital cloud! 

Country Profiles Special Reports Related BBC sites Sport Weather On This Day Editors' Blog BBC World Service

Page last updated at 08:14 GMT, Wednesday, 11 November 2009 E-mail this to a friend Printable version Digital cloud plan for city skies By Jonathan Fildes Technology reporter, BBC News The inflatable elements of the building would sit on top of thin, lightweight towers A giant "digital cloud" that would "float" above London's skyline

So does this mean that private clouds equals enterrprise cloud computing?  Well I am not sure about that but they are certainly part of the current picture.  The website goes on to explain;

"The private cloud is rapidly becoming the preferred enterprise cloud model, as IT organizations learn how data center virtualization gives them the power to achieve new levels of efficiency, control, and choice. Visit privatecloud.com to understand and learn to how to use this dynamic model of enterprise computing to help organizations of all sizes draw unprecedented value from IT investments and information assets"

Setting up the website is an interestiing move by the three companies to gain some thought leadership.

What do you think? Are private clouds going to be leading the move to enterprise cloud computing?

My first impression is that the interface is a little overwhelming, but sort of familiar as well given that I am a Gmail user already. From what I can see this seems to be a very common reaction.  One website that I have found extremely helpful in finding my feet is completewaveguide.com.

Accessing public waves is one other way to get started, and doing this shows that the majority of people, in public waves at least, are using wave as a sort of manic Facebook crossed with an instant messaging tool.  Still I think that is inevitable result of everyone's prior experience and usage will evolve over time. I think that one of the biggest areas of value will be in shared document collaboration, and as the tool matures and people inovate I am sure other areas will become clear.

Are you using Google Wave?

Is there potential to influence information management users through the effective application of recharge models?

Prolific blogger Chuck Hollis has a very interesting and thought provoking post on the subject. He suggests that rather than just thinking about recharging as a way to pay for the cost of IT or IM, we should be thinking in terms of using pricing models that influence and encourage users and the business to behave "nicely".

He suggests that there are three types of recharge models that he comes across when talking to organisations.

• Let the business choose what they want and send them the bill
• Service catalogue model with established price lists for various classes of services based on the cost of service provision
• Service catalogues and associated pricing that is more oriented to changing business behaviour.

The second model is good but extending this further to the third model is a very nice idea and can be potentially applied to the world of information management just as well as traditional IT. The business are encouraged perhaps to use standard applications and data stores through lower recharges than for non-standard systems, or charged high rates when data set versions go over a certain threshold.

For me it is a interesting concept and having just recently helped put together a presentation on how to get information users to behave nicely it is very timely! It also highlights to me the importance of a business (recharge) model and the service catalogue when building an effective information management organisation!  They are the elements that will give you the second model above and allow an effective discussion with the business on services and associated costs, but also open up the potential to use this understanding to influence behaviour.

We do need to be careful that we don’t turn the relationship with the business even more confrontational than it often already is. To manage this, as Chuck points out, will mean having people capable of holding such business oriented discussions with the relevant business managers.

So can we influence information management users through the effective application of recharge models? Let me know what you think.

"will provide a forum where Information Quality issues that make it into the media world wide can be logged, collated and discussed by members of the IAIDQ and the general public."

There are some very nice/horrible (depending on the way you look at it) examples of the business, and all too often the human, impact of Information Quality IQ issues. Always there is a significant cost for fixing the issue, which increases significantly the longer the issue is not addressed and an associated impact on the resources that need to reassigned. The second issue is the reason why data quality is such a killer for productivity.

The Oil and Gas upstream industry suffers from all the same effects in exactly the same way as all other industries, and it is clear that the majority of the industry is suffering from a significant IQ tax on productivity. How I plan to discuss in my next post.

• Forty percent of oil and gas professionals view new social media tools as useful to boost collaboration and productivity at work, but only one in four report using these newer tools to capture and share information internally.
• The majority view collaboration and knowledge-sharing as important for critical initiatives, such as capital projects, well management and the health and safety of workers. Conversely, most respondents stated that their organizations are still using older means of collaboration, such as face-to-face meetings, e-mails and phone calls.
• More than 60 percent of respondents reported spending over one hour a day searching for information and knowledge sources relevant to the jobs.
• Industry professionals are concerned about the need to capture knowledge from experienced workers before they retire or leave the company.
• Only one-third of the respondents believe that their companies are fully prepared to exploit the enhanced sharing and capturing of the company’s intellectual capital.

From a general information management point of view point three that states over 60% of respondents spend over an hour a day looking for information sources relevant to their job, is interesting. The survey equates this to a loss to the industry of $485 Million a not insignificant sum. If you then think about stated statistics from Chevron that a "significant amount of time (30-70%) is spent looking for and assessing the quality of the data found " then between them there is a serious business case for IM, collaboration technologies and data quality!

What do you think?

There is a description of the portal that gives role based access to varied information such as current production and various key performance indicators etc. and is similar to what is provided by many portal products. The ConocoPhillips portal supports the need to work in virtual teams with team members based in different locations and this where the social aspect begins to become important, with the use of discussion boards cited as an example of where company wide collaboration helped solved a major operational issue.

The article then moves on to look at the next generation of information portals which are defined as being more dynamic and fluid with social media tools like blogs, micro-blogs, wikis, and social networking integrating in with the traditional functionality to enhance business productivity.

"The portal of tomorrow also acts as a hub for a user’s daily work activities. A petroleum engineer, for example, may start his or her day by opening a personal site on the portal. This page is similar in look and feel to a Facebook profile, allowing the engineer to post relevant information such as personal details, documents, contacts and knowledge areas. The user can also subscribe to news feeds containing events and alerts associated with entities they manage such as wells, fields or equipment."

The article finishes by going through a scenario of an engineer reacting to an alert in her newsfeed and the implication is that this is the reality of the ConocoPhillips portal today, though this is not clear.

I like the idea of the personal information portal and I do think that it is one place in the work environment where we need to tie all the information feeds together, and acts as an aid to collaboration. Not so sure about the knowledge capture aspect that is cited as a major business driver.

Any thoughts?