Jan 14 2009

Building online communities

My friend (and fellow Be2camp member) Jim McHale of Memoori has just blogged some Oreillynet.com guidance from 2002 about building online communities:

  • Exist for a reason – a community has to promote a collective goal.
  • Users draw other users – Your most active users will draw more users than you ever will. Referrals might bring new members to the site but the community will make them return.
  • Users will surprise you – Issues and themes you find important may never really resonate with your users.
  • A sense of ownership – Regular users will develop a sense of community ownership which could manifest itself it positive and negative ways.
  • You will never please all users – Remember they are in the minority.
  • The first contribution – The easier it is to join a conversation, the more visitors will become contributors. Don’t put unnecessary barriers in the way.
  • The interface – Create an easy to use, intuitive user interface. Given the advances in Web technologies there are now no excuses (see my previous blog post).
  • Mischief – There will be arguments and trouble makers like any community. Plan for trouble. Set simple rules. Make them explicit. Apply them consistently. [Perhaps something for Building magazine to consider in relation to its discussion forums? See my Beware of the trolls post and follow-up.]
  • Discuss the community openly – Be honest and open about your plans as early as possible. You might be able to get feedback from the community to develop better ideas.

Martin Brown (Isite) and I are trying to facilitate the establishment of a new online community for AEC people focused on integrated collaborative working – basically combining and extending two existing offline networks established by Constructing Excellence – so I will bear this advice in mind when we all meet next week. It is also worth considering in relation to our Web 2.0 efforts with Be2camp and with the recently-formed AEC network (both on Ning) and to related efforts on LinkedIn and Facebook. Thanks, Jim, for that timely post.

Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2009/01/building-online-communities/

Jan 13 2009

Give us the figures, Cadweb!

UK construction collaboration technology vendor Cadweb has published a website news release about its financial performance in 2008 that tries to give a positive outlook without any figures to flesh out the claims.

Cadweb says it had “very strong growth in turnover and profits” last year. Turnover was apparently up 21% from 2007, while profitability “leaped in 2008 by nearly 50% over the 2007 figure”. The company says its forecasts for 2009 and 2010 may see it exceed this percentage growth for both turnover and profit.

Cadweb portrays itself as sitting pretty despite the Credit Crunch: “The company has no external funding, thus cannot be adversely effected by any changes in the fortunes of external financial investors unlike others in the sector” (my emphasis).

Analysis

I would take such claims more seriously if the company gave more details about its financial performance so that they can be substantiated. For years it has hidden behind small company exemptions (section 249, and Part VII of the of the Companies Act 1985) that allow it to submit unaudited and abbreviated accounts to Companies House. For all we know, Cadweb’s turnover might have grown from £100,000 to £121,000 in 2008, while profitability could have leapt from £100 to nearly £150! Come on, Cadweb, show us the money!

Nonetheless, the growth figures are broadly in line with competitors’ performance. My employer, BIW Technologies, grew 27% to September 2008 and more than doubled its profit; Aconex reported strong growth; and 4Projects‘ turnover was up a third.

Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2009/01/give-us-the-figures-cadweb/

Jan 12 2009

First footings

Like London buses, new construction blogs seem to come in pairs. Hours after welcoming Su Butcher’s new blog, I saw a tweet (thank, Mel) about Liz Male‘s new blog, Footings, begun last month. As a fellow construction PR person, I have known Liz, on and off, for about 15 years. She was also good enough to help publicise Be2camp 2008 in October to fellow members of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations construction and property special interest group (CAPSIG).

Reading her first few posts, there’s even a mention of construction collaboration technologies, where (in Not such tasty language) she talks about words she hates:

The IT sector seems particularly prone to this sort of twaddle, but I have to admit that I’ve worked with a few companies in the built environment who might be accused of similar sins.

One was a construction collaboration software company (ok, I guess that’s IT again really) that kept banging on about ‘acting in concert’ with the construction industry. Even writing that phrase again years later, I still get pictures in my mind of subbies in the strings section trying to keep beat with Egan…

This, of course, sent me scrabbling to check that it wasn’t BIW (I don’t think it was, though the phrase does appear to have been used by OpenText, providers of the technology underlying Causeway Collaboration/ECM).

Welcome to the blogosphere, Liz (and thanks for the Christmas card)! (Both blogs now feature on the EE blog roll).

Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2009/01/first-footings/

Jan 12 2009

Just Practising

Initially through Be2camp, but then Twitter, LinkedIn and the recently-launched AEC Network on Ning, I have become friends with Su Butcher, practice manager of East Anglia architect Barefoot and Gilles, who has just started a new blog, Just Practising (my very modest claim to fame is that the blog title is one of several I suggested when she asked for ideas on Twitter last week). Good to have another construction and Web 2.0-oriented blog to follow.

Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2009/01/just-practising/

Jan 12 2009

Five 2009 resolutions

PRweekReading PR Week magazine last week, I enjoyed a page of the “top five New Year’s resolutions made by the UK’s comms professionals”. Briefly, these were:

  1. Survive the credit crunch
  2. Embrace the digital age
  3. Win an industry award
  4. Find a work/life balance
  5. Invest more in CSR

All pretty laudible, but I think the same five could also be applied to the UK construction market, and perhaps to the construction collaboration technology market in particular. So instead of some 2009 predictions, here are the same five resolutions or hopes for the year but rehashed for the construction technology world (as you might expect, it’s a mixture of industry, corporate and personal aspirations).

1. Survive the credit crunch

This is pretty much a no-brainer in the current financial climate, of course. I have been talking about the potential impact on the AEC technology sector for a year now (it was one of my 2008 predictions), and only last month noted the liquidation of KnowledgeOnline following the sad demise of Pettifer Construction. Like many other UK construction businesses, I expect the leading vendors will be battening down the hatches, trimming unnecessary expenditure and looking more closely at potential customers, projects and their fee proposals (but hopefully not falling into the short-termist trap of bidding suicidally low to win work – all too common in other parts of the construction market apparently); vendors should also bear in mind that their customers may also be more diligent in their selection criteria, bearing in mind the disruption that might be caused if a vendor got into financial difficulties.

NCCTP new logoOne of the PR people interviewed by PR Week said: “Turbulent and challenging times can present great opportunities for fresh thinking“. Let’s hope that survival strategies also extend to some creative thinking by the vendors. I would like to see the vendors and the vendors’ association, the NCCTP (or perhaps better still its parent body Constructing Excellence), promoting the virtues of collaborative working and technology. As I’ve discussed before, there are some strong potential messages, eg:

  • the resilience of the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model over conventional ICT (on Saturday, Jeff Kaplan wrote “AMR believes the SaaS market could grow as much as 40% if the economy continues to struggle, while on-premise apps continue to stagnate.”)
  • promoting time, cost and efficiency savings when budgets are tight
  • building transparency to control spurious claims
  • wide take-up of collaboration technologies (if only the vendors could agree a common approach to sharing their user statistics!)
  • how collaboration technology is part of the Construction Commitments
  • how collaboration technology can support sustainability initiatives, etc

2. Embrace the digital age

Here the PR people talked about turning websites from online brochures into “fully interactive, transparent windows on their organisations”, embracing social media (Web 2.0) and shattering “the myth that digital stuff is something done by boffins in the back room”.

For me, 2008 was a year dominated by a growing awareness of the power of new media, and a corresponding frustration that many construction people remain ignorant or even hostile to new forms of online creativity and collaboration. There was some progress – not least the organisation of the UK’s first AEC-focused ‘unconference’ (Be2camp) in October (see RIBA Journal article; also my Building Web 2.0 awareness post) – but the majority of construction sector organisations (and most of their technology vendors) are lagging behind other sectors in embracing the potential of Web 2.0 tools and technologies.

Even many of those companies that are using construction collaboration technologies (hardly cutting-edge Web 2.0) have simply opted to use them as online filing cabinets or distribution networks – meaning that they have yet to fully realise the benefits of online collaborative working. I’m currently reading Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams’ Wikinomics and my mind is buzzing with ideas about how Web 2.0 approaches could be applied alongside the existing technologies.

In 2009, I hope construction people will look to use these tools more effectively, to build online collaborative networks and helping develop, share and disseminate industry best practice (I am already trying to facilitate this through a continuation of Be2camp-type activities, with a training course in preparation, along with further Be2camp events – potentially in Birmingham and Liverpool? – and a talk on Web 2.0 at the CIMCIG conference next month).

In the meantime, here’s a great introductory guide to social media written by my friend and US construction professional Pam Broviak.

3. Win an industry award

Regardless of the industry sector, awards boost team morale, aid recruitment, motivate staff and promote professional practice in the workplace. As a long-time construction PR and marketing person, I am very conscious of the value of awards, and many construction organisations and publications have their own awards programmes. I am skeptical about the value of some awards – mainly those that appear to be a thin justification for an expensive dinner – but where firms or, better still, cross-company teams have to collaborate to create a powerful and persuasive entry to get short-listed and then do further presentations or interviews to win the judges’ support, all that hard work can seem very worthwhile.

QICawards09Last week I noticed that Construction News editor Nick Edwards was blogging about his
publication’s slightly revamped awards programme, the Construction News Quality Awards. Last year, client Bovis Lend Lease, working with BIW Technologies [my employer], was a shortlisted finalist in the ‘Excellence in the Use of ICT’ category, and if we can do something similar again in 2009, I would be delighted. The CN awards will be launched later this week.

4. Find a work/life balance

On the BIW blog, SaaStainability.com, I wrote last year about how web-based tools such as construction collaboration platforms that can be used from just about anywhere can benefit those interested in home-working. During a recession in the AEC market, surely such benefits will become doubly important to businesses interested in cutting overheads, retaining key staff and doing their bit for the environment. I’ve met numerous BIW users who find that being able to access all their project-related information via a standard browser cuts needless trips into the office, allows them to work outside normal office hours, etc. Perhaps this is also something that the NCCTP/Constructing Excellence could highlight in its promotional activities?

I certainly find BIW’s flexible working policies and ICT support help me. I don’t have to commute unnecessarily from my London home to the Woking office (a round trip that usually involves 4-6 separate train journeys); I save on rail fares, I’m less tired, I’m more often at home when my kids come back from school, and I often find I get a lot more done without the distractions of background office noise. If I can just get back into the swing of occasionally cycling to or from Woking (when I do go there), my work/life balance would be improved even further.

5. Invest more in CSR

Just before Christmas, I was asked by one of my sales colleagues to help complete a client questionnaire that asked for detail on BIW’s corporate social responsibility policies and practices. While we have all the usual health and safety and environmental/sustainability policies, this was, I think, the first time we had been asked to give more information about CSR as it applied to ethical practice on safe working conditions, minimum wages, etc, both within our company and among our main subcontractors and suppliers. It is an omission I will address.

In 2009, particularly as the credit crunch reveals how our economy is increasingly tied-in to other international markets, organisations need to continually re-assess their CSR approaches (are we investing money, time and effort in the right areas or with the right organisations, should we change emphasis, could we be doing more?). Personally, I hope that the AEC industry doesn’t opt for a short-term fix but remembers that it needs to be around for the long-haul. Even modest investment in CSR now (whether that means environmental projects, charity or academic partnerships, industry or community initiatives) may pay rich dividends once the current recession ends.

Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2009/01/five-2009-resolutions/

Jan 12 2009

India SaaS growth forecast

A new survey of IT decision-makers in India suggests that ease of use and convenience are the top reasons for adopting Software-as-aService (SaaS). The study, by Springboard Research, also revealed the biggest barriers to SaaS adoption in India are a high level of comfort with on-premise applications and lack of adequate awareness about the availability of suitable SaaS applications. (This first finding shows a different result to that found in December in Australia and New Zealand – where Springboard found it was lower cost of ownership that drove SaaS adoption.)

The Indian SaaS market may also grow faster than ANZ. Springboard a compounded annual growth rate of 76% between 2007-2011, reaching US$260 million in revenues by 2011.

Resellers contributed to just 1% of SaaS purchases, while the largest number of SaaS purchases was made during face to face interaction with a representative from the vendor.

Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2009/01/india-saas-growth-forecast/

Jan 08 2009

Geographic information in a web-based world

I am spending the afternoon at a CASA conference (sponsored by the AGI) at University College London talking about use of geographic information, which promises lots of talk about mash-ups, re-use of data.

1.45pm: First up, Richard Milton demonstrating GMapCreator and MapTube – applications for publishing data to Google Maps, showing, for example, maps relating to London, including ones relating to building volumes across the capital, knife crimes, obesity, air quality, etc. You can build maps combining data from different maps. But not just Google Maps, Openlayers offers mapping with lots of map tools, eg: OpenStreetMap.

2.15pm: Alex Singleton talked about public engagement in collecting and disseminating public data. Using GMapCreator CASA took ONS classification data to produce London Profiler, Spatial-Literacy.org and publicprofiler.org. The latter includes the ability to mash-up images from Flickr with neighbourhood maps. Forthcoming projects include education mapping and looking at friend-names’ “poshness” using data from social networking sites.

2.35pm: Following on from Alex, Pablo Mateos talked about geography and ethnicity of people’s names in onomap, and WorldNames, showing how telephone directory and electoral list data can be used to show the distribution of people’s surnames across, so far, about 26 countries covering roughly 1 billion people.

3.30pm: After a quick (and crowded) coffee-break, the conference resumed with Andrew Crookes talking about Mapping people’s mood and crowdsourcing, overcoming the “aspatiality” of most surveys and instead relating data to respondents’ geographical location. Subjects included mapping the credit crunch, anti-social behaviour and the Manchester Congestion Charge.

4pm: Muki Haklay also talked about crowdsourcing – getting people to provide data – in the context of tools such as OpenStreetMap (now being commercialised via CloudMade and others), Flickr and the photographic project Geograph.org.uk. Muki’s focus was on OpenStreetMap, where he addressed issues of quality, the number of data gatherers, completeness, etc.

4.25pm: Jon Reades talked about his cellular census: drawing on data from telecommunications networks (huge datasets!), mapping telephone use against human activities across cities or regions, for example.

4.50pm: Duncan Smith talked about using mapping data in relation to urban forms with particular reference to creating communities – economically, residentially, urban sustainability, transport planning, etc. Need new methods and data (eg building profiles, real estate data, OS address data) to correspond to finer scale architectural or planning needs (London’s Isle of Dogs used as one example).

5.10pm: Andrew Hudson-Smith focused on ‘Web 2.0 and Neogeography’, including geo-caching and Second Life in his presentation, starting with a GIS fly-over map of the population density of the UK. No definition of Web 2.0, but a long list of buzzwords and hundreds of new companies reliant upon users, foremost among them: Google, which has been responsible for an explosion of activity in relation to mapping through Google Maps and Google Earth and various free software. All Andrew’s CASA work is on YouTube, but he is now switching some work to Vimeo. Web 2.0 in the real world, he says, extends to combining the Applie iPhone and Tupperware to undertake high-tech treasure hunts (geo-caching), using gaming environments to fly-though a virtual representation of the real world populated by free Google 3D models, and Second Life (3D representations of Chicago, importing geographical and real-time weather data, editing building models). (See digitalurban.blogspot.com.)

Update (14 January 2009): CASA event presentations here.

Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2009/01/geographic-information-in-a-web-based-world/

Jan 06 2009

Asite chairman steps down

Less than a month after Peter Rogers resigned as a director of UK-based SaaS construction collaboration technology vendor Asite (see post), the company has announced (via the London Stock Exchange RNS) that Colin Goodall is stepping down as chairman. He is also “resigning from the Board of Asite with immediate effect and … Mr Walter Goldsmith, a current Non-Executive Director of the Group, has been appointed Chairman in his place”.

Goodall took over as Asite chairman on 1 January 2005 following the resignation of Sir John Egan.

According to Asite’s board profiles, Goldsmith is chairman and non-executive director of several public companies, including Fitness First plc, and is an adviser to the Rotch Property Group. Rotch and R20 Ltd are the main vehicles for Robert Tchenguiz, Asite’s biggest shareholder and another Asite non-executive director (recently in the news due to the impact of the financial market turmoil on his investment portfolio – eg: see Guardian articles here and here).

Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2009/01/asite-chairman-steps-down/

Jan 02 2009

AtomicBIM and UUID

Last February I wrote (here, here and here) about the possibility of CAD applications being delivered as Software-as-a-Service – a concept I called CADaaS. Then, realising that CAD is likely to be superseded eventually by building information modelling (BIM), I updated the concept in June to BIMaaS. Noting along the way posts on the topic from Solidworks and Autodesk bloggers, among others, in October I found more support for this notion from US architect and writer John Tobin who talked about atomicBIM.

Now (and this is a side-benefit of opening one’s eyes to other software areas), I was reading a post on PLM (product lifecycle management) software on Jos Voskuil’s weblog where he took a look ahead to where we might be in 2050:

  • Data is not replicated any more – every piece of information that exists will have a Universal Unique ID, some people might call it the UUID. In 2020 this initiative became mature, thanks to the merger of some big PLM and ERP vendors, who brought this initiative to reality. This initiative reduced the exchange costs in supply chains dramatically and lead to bankcrupcy for many companies providing translators and exchange software.
  • Companies store their data in ‘the cloud’ based on the previous concept. Only some old-fashioned companies still have their own data storage and exchange issues, as they are afraid someone will touch their data. Analysts compare this behavior with the situation in the year 1950, when people kept their money under a mattress, not trusting banks (and they were not always wrong).

Sad to think that Jos may well be right in that it could take 40 years for this notion to become reality.

Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2009/01/atomicbim-and-uuid/

Jan 01 2009

Stuart Lander’s new start-up

Last August, I noted that former BuildOnline/CTSpace executive Stuart Lander was involved with a new US-based start-up, PublicSpend, due to launch in late 2008. The date has slipped slightly, but Stuart has been busy blogging about it. PublicSpend will use government contracting data to help small local service businesses win new contracts and grow their local customer base, launching two services in early 2009.

Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2009/01/stuart-landers-new-start-up/

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