Jan 29 2009

Few architects Tweet, even fewer QSs

Yesterday, in my short overview of the Web 2.0 practices of the main UK architecture, engineering and construction trade weeklies, I said that Architects’ Journal only appeared to have one Twitter user. Today, it seems almost the whole architecture profession has been somewhat slow to try out Twitter too.

Over the past couple of weeks, Su Butcher, a practice manager at East Anglian firm Barefoot & Gilles, has laboriously been compiling a list of architects (or architects’ practices) that Twitter – there are only about a dozen each in the UK and US and three in the rest of the world (though I expect Su will get some additional notifications over the days and weeks ahead). Based on this list, Su has also created the first Architects’ Twitter League, showing the most followed users. Some are clearly recent converts and have become frequent Tweeters; others appear to have dabbled a bit then drifted away, hardly making an impression at all….

Elsewhere, Staci Ford, who runs the Construction Twitter group has a list that is currently only 92-strong (by the way, this figure doesn’t include all the architects in Su’s list either).

Other AEC Tweeps

Using Tweepsearch, I did some searches for other architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) professions and some tradesmen (admittedly, the searches probably only applied to profiles written in English, but Tweepsearch has indexed over half a million profiles) and with a bit of filtering of non-relevant Tweeps, found (in no particular order):

  • Quantity Surveyor (QS) = 2
  • Building services engineer = 2
  • Construction lawyer = 7
  • Estimator = 9
  • Structural engineer = 13
  • Construction manager = 26
  • Civil engineer = 70
  • Mechanical engineer = 100 (only a few working in construction, though)
  • Electrical engineer = 110 (as above)
  • General contractor = 19
  • Subcontractor = 1
  • Bricklayer = 1
  • Plasterer = 4
  • Electrician = 30 (again, not all construction people)
  • Plumber = 26 (excluding ‘digital plumber’, etc)

Ok, just a snapshot (and there may be AEC people using Twitter whose professions aren’t part of their profiles), but it does suggest that take-up of this Web 2.0 tool has only just about scratched the surface in the AEC sector.

AEC to go bonkers?

At a London conference (The Future of Social Media) today, a speaker from Orange apparently told delegates (including Phil Clark) that “Twitter will go bonkers this year” (see #fosm search). The Hudson River plane crash and recent celebrity exposure for Twitter (Jonathan Ross, Stephen Fry, even Richard & Judy) has apparently stimulated a surge in UK Twitter traffic, so it may yet become more mainstream.

However, I don’t expect Twitter to go bonkers this year in the construction sector.

  • First, too many AEC businesses are battening down the hatches, shedding staff and struggling to stay afloat; the last thing on their minds will be learning to use a new form of social media (ditto, SaaS – see post).
  • Second, to many construction people, despite its daily role in their everyday working lives (from mobile phone to email, etc) information and communication technology (ICT) is a necessary evil, to be endured rather than enjoyed.
  • Third, to lots of people, social media will be something that is used – as that term suggests – for social purposes. Yesterday I outlined how the AEC media, influential in opinion-forming, are turning to Web 2.0 approaches, but it will take time for AEC people to notice, learn about and begin to use these tools for work-related purposes, and other industry organisations need to be seen to adopting them too.
  • Finally, social media smacks of collaboration: too many people in the construction industry suffer from what I’ve termed ‘Collabora-phobia’.

(PS: Not sure if the events are connected, but since yesterday’s post about the UK AEC media, I’ve picked up a Twitter follower, @mhconstruction, from McGraw-Hill construction publications in the USA. Welcome, Lisa!)

Permanent link to this article: https://extranetevolution.com/2009/01/few-architects-tweet-even-fewer-qss/

Jan 28 2009

Media and Web 2.0, Tweet and print

In the media world, the overlap between conventional print publications and internet-based communications continues to grow. This doesn’t just mean that broadcasters or publications have a website; an increasing number are now adopting Web 2.0 tools and techniques – blogs, discussion forums, RSS feeds, Twitter, bookmarks, networks, etc – to find new levels of engagement with their readerships/audiences.

UK AEC media embracing Web 2.0

As I have noted from time to time in this blog, in the UK construction context, United Business Media’s Building magazine has been among the Web 2.0 front-runners, with several staffers writing their own blogs (as long ago as 2006) and Tweets, RSS, and a discussion forum launched in April 2008 (though I lost my patience with this last October after being ‘trolled’).

Among the Emap group of titles, including Construction News, Architects’ Journal and New Civil Engineer, there is a wealth of RSS feeds: CN, AJ and NCE all have multiple RSS feeds (some regional, some topic focused). A CN news blog appeared just before Christmas (though it mainly repeats news from the publication) alongside the CN Editor’s blog; I haven’t yet found an AJ blogger, but there are some NCE ‘blogs’ (even if they don’t look much like blogs). CN also jumped on the Twitter bandwagon last August, just ahead of NCE (though the initial @NCEmagazine experience was painful!); now, the CN feed tweets only occasionally, the new, improved NCE feed still repeats things from time to time, and the AJ editor uses Twitter (@kieranlong). No discussion forums on the Emap construction titles, so far as I know.

[Update (31 January 2009): AJ digital editor Simon Hogg has alerted me to Hattie Hartman’s sustainability blog, Footprint. Thanks, Simon.]

Reed’s Contract Journal sprouted its first blog almost two years ago and added more, including Brian Green’s Brickonomics, last year. Some CJ staff Twitter and now the magazine has created Construction Space, its own discussion and image-sharing forum. The design is bright and clean and the discussions to date seem to have been very much on-topic. It will be interesting to see how enthusiastically this facility is used (as of today, it had registered 92 users, compared to the 548 registered on Building‘s forums).

As I noted last month, both Construction News and Contract Journal have Facebook pages, and Construction News also has a CN LinkedIn group.

Overall, it appears the main UK architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) titles are becoming increasingly switched-on to social media. It remains to be seen whether their readership follows suit, and, if so, how quickly they do so.

Integration (or lack of)

Inside the back page of Building, the magazine devotes a page to a quick digest of various web-related matters, including a recently introduced feature called Short and Tweet giving sample messages sent by various construction Twitter users. After fellow bloggers Phil Clark (@zerochamp) and Mel Starrs (@melstarrs), last week it was my turn to feature (p.78). But, strangely, this page – of all pages! – isn’t available on the Building website!

I tried out the Contract Journal discussion forums this morning, posting a handful of comments. An hour later, I noticed that two extracts from my comments were used in tweets from @contractjournal – a nice way to link two separate Web 2.0 tools and to reuse material from one to stimulate traffic back via another (though to clarify the situation for other users, I did then use the CJ forum to ask will my comments be re-used elsewhere?).

Permanent link to this article: https://extranetevolution.com/2009/01/media-and-web-20-tweet-and-print/

Jan 26 2009

Recession: SaaS and AEC

Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) expert Phil Wainewright has been looking at a couple of reports from Forrester Research analysts reinforcing the view that “SaaS thrives in a cost-conscious, capex-constrained economic environment“.

In Recession Pushes Enterprises to Adopt SaaS, Phil firstly talks about Ted Schadler’s comparative cost analysis (Should Your Email Live In The Cloud?) suggesting that hosted email systems are more cost-effective for enterprises with up to 15,000 users (this, of course, would cover the vast majority of architecture, engineering and construction, AEC, firms; UK-based contractor Taylor Woodrow took the plunge with Google Apps last year – see post).

Phil then outlines the key points of a report from Ray Wang that recommends software buyers to Shape Your Apps Strategy To Reflect New SaaS Licensing And Pricing Trends:

  • “Rich user experiences and intuitive Web 2.0 approaches reduce the overall cost of user training compared with fat-client user interfaces that reflect older user-experience practices.”
  • “True multitenant SaaS users experience frequent upgrades with minimal downtime and minimal reduced testing resources — leaving business users time to get value from the software. “
  • “Forrester’s Total Economic Impact (TEI) studies show that in most cases, SaaS delivers better TEI and lower cost.”
  • “Constant innovation with quarterly and even monthly product updates deliver product road map predictability.”

Update (30 January 2009): Phil has written a follow-up piece (SaaS is surging in the downturn, says IDC) in which one of his contacts says recession SaaS adopters will be unlikely to return to on-premise solutions when the economy eventually rights itself. He agrees the tipping-point from conventional software to SaaS “is now a lot closer than anticipated. And once tipped, no matter what brought you to that point, it will be counter-intuitive to go back.”

But SaaS little help to recession-savaged AEC firms

Working for a SaaS collaboration vendor, I – and Phil – have been making similar arguments about the attractiveness of SaaS in a recession for at least a year (see related posts listed below). However, such overhead savings will probably only scratch the surface for most AEC businesses. They face major problems of basic survival. Saving small sums will not be enough. Entire projects are disappearing, staff have no work and many reputable businesses have gone into liquidation (eg: Pettifer Construction, and, just last week, listed housebuilder Oakdene).

Within BIW, it has been noticeable that the number of enquiries about vacancies has grown, often from individuals looking for new jobs after previous posts as document controllers, etc, have come to sometimes quite abrupt ends. Sadly, we cannot take such people on as we too have to be wary of the knock-on effects of the recession. The “SaaS is attractive in a recession” argument is not going to cut much ice in the heavily-impacted AEC sector.

The private house-building and commercial office sectors have been decimated, with numerous projects mothballed or even cancelled altogether, forcing contractors, consultants and suppliers to lay-off staff – sometimes 100s at a time (eg: Atkins, Corus) – even in previously buoyant markets such as Dubai. With fewer projects coming on stream, this will, I believe, also mean a slow-down in the previously healthy growth of many construction computing businesses (Autodesk has already started making 750 lay-offs across its divisions), and the main construction collaboration technology vendors cannot be completely immune.

Related posts:

Permanent link to this article: https://extranetevolution.com/2009/01/recession-saas-and-aec/

Jan 26 2009

Cape Verde trip: snippets

I have just returned from a press trip to Sal island in Cape Verde – a group of islands in the Atlantic about 500km west of Senegal. The focus was a ground-breaking ceremony for The Resort Group‘s Tortuga development (see BIW news release), and it was a tiring trip.

As BIW’s PR guy, I flew out from London Heathrow on Friday, changed flights and met a journalist contact in Lisbon, landing on Sal in the early hours of Saturday morning. After grabbing about seven hours’ sleep, we met up again, had breakfast and then killed time until meeting our Resort Group contacts for lunch in a nearby hotel. This gave time for questions before the ceremony itself. This was followed by some formal speeches, champagne, a barbecue/buffet at a nearby restaurant, then back to the hotel, get changed, midnight taxi to Sal airport and jump on a plane back to Lisbon. I finally got back to London Heathrow at about 11am Sunday, having slept for about two of the previous 27 hours!

Flip video

Having read lots about Flip video cameras,* I bought one at London Heathrow on Friday (at about £80, I figured I wouldn’t be making a big dent in my bank balance if I didn’t get along with it – my daughter got one for Christmas too). I gave it a try on Saturday, videoing the Hotel Riu Garopa during the morning and then recording images of the ground-breaking ceremony, in between taking some photos of the event with a digital SLR. This morning, I have been experimenting with editing my efforts and – as a social media fan – posting the results to YouTube (hotel here – a bit rough and shaky, mind, though I like the music I found on Soundclick.com).

I used to carry a small tape recorder when I needed to tape interviews, but I reckon the Flip would be a valid alternative for anything up to 60 minutes, particularly as you could also show extracts of the person speaking, gesturing, and what he/she was pointing at, etc.

@tubejubilee

My journey to London Heathrow was disrupted due to “a person under a train at Finchley Road” (Jubilee Line) and “earlier signalling problems at King’s Cross” (Piccadilly Line). Coming back yesterday, the Jubilee Line had been suspended between Waterloo and Stanmore for engineering works, so I had to re-route slightly. If only I’d known about the Twitter feeds that now exist for most of the lines!

Speaking of Twitter, New Civil Engineer magazine says it has got its RSS fixed and that its Twitterfeed is worth looking at again (see previous post).

* Update (19 August 2022): – See What Happened to Flip Video Camera. (Thanks, Sven)

Permanent link to this article: https://extranetevolution.com/2009/01/cape-verde-trip-snippets/

Jan 23 2009

Collaborative Working Champions going online

Yesterday, BIW’s Woking office hosted the second joint meeting of two groups of ‘Collaborative Working Champions’ from Constructing Excellence (briefly, these comprise construction and property professionals who meet regularly to discuss and learn about integration and collaborative working, a la the Latham and Egan reports). One purpose of the day was to discuss how the combined groups might extend their discussions so that they embrace more people interested in such issues, and – as previously mentioned – Martin Brown and I facilitated an all-too-brief learning session about how Web 2.0 tools and techniques might support such efforts.

It was almost immediately clear that we were/are starting with an audience with generally relatively low levels of Web 2.0 knowledge and, in some cases, quite high levels of skepticism. However, we persevered, and in the space of just over two hours we got most of the group signed up to Google Mail, creating iGoogle home pages and using Google Reader, RSS, Bit.ly, Twitter and other tools. I repeated a lightning tour of Web 2.0 that I have given to similar construction groups before, and as further background, Martin suggested they look at Pam Broviak’s excellent construction-oriented introduction to social media (PDF).

The final part of the meeting included a brief look at the Be2camp network website, which was created using Ning and incorporates numerous Web 2.0 tools. And in the space of just 20 minutes, we started the process of creating our own network site for the Collaborative Working Champions. Initial work on this site will continue over the next week or so, and – subject to the approval of the founder members – it will become a publicly-accessible network in the near future (it will then become open to people who expressed an interest in the core group via CWC pages on LinkedIn or Facebook). Details will follow on this blog in due course.

Others learning too

Coincidentally, at home last night, I saw via Twitter that my friend and fellow PR professional Liz Male (see post) had just introduced her husband to the wonders of Web 2.0:

Showing amazed husband (35+ years in construction) about RSS feeds, Twitter, other easy ways to follow and engage with industry news/issues

“Why aren’t our marketing people telling us about this stuff?” he cries!

Liz also joined the Be2camp network (and a sub-group I set up to focus on construction marketing and Web 2.0), and has enthused about The Wonder of Web 2.0 on her blog Footings.

Her first impressions are broadly positive: it’s friendly, time-consuming, poses some ethical questions (I will be interested to read what she has to say about the PR ethics of Web 2.0 – we have both just got news of the CIPR‘s updated guidelines on social media), and there’s no going back, but it’s still a small pond.

And just as we had done earlier in the day with our learning group, Liz recommends that people start modestly, by finding a way to use RSS feeds to keep yourself alerted to other people’s online publishing.

Technorati Tags:

Permanent link to this article: https://extranetevolution.com/2009/01/collaborative-working-champions-going-online/

Jan 20 2009

“Sell Buzzsaw”

OK, it’s only an individual’s opinion in the Autodesk User Group International Forums. Reflecting on a forum post about Autodesk’s recent stock market performance (linked to a CGenie blog article), one stockholder (alias: aaronrumple) suggests a six-point strategy, the final item being:

6. Adsk has a good portfolio of stuff to sell. They should work on their core get rid of things like Buzzsaw. They’d be smart to team with Google on this one and work a deal – Our software, your hosting. (And btw – we’ll develop SketchUP which is something we wanted all along.)

It probably won’t happen, of course, but the departure of table-thumping Executive Chairman Carol Bartz to head up Yahoo! does give the opportunity for the remaining senior Autodesk executives to review their product portfolio and decide if, amid a construction downturn, delivering construction-related Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) document collaboration applications (Autodesk Buzzsaw and Constructware) sits comfortably with its powerful battery of on-premise design software.

Permanent link to this article: https://extranetevolution.com/2009/01/sell-buzzsaw/

Jan 20 2009

Building communities ‘aliveness’

I said last week (Building online communities) that Martin Brown (Isite) and I will be facilitating the foundation of a new online community for AEC people focused on integrated collaborative working. Adding to the OReillynet.com guidance, Martin has emailed me an interesting 2002 article from Harvard Business School about cultivating communities of practice, written by Etienne Wenger, Richard McDermott and William Snyder. It describes seven principles to evoke a community’s ‘aliveness’, to bring out its own internal direction, character, and energy:

  1. Design for evolution – Remember communities are dynamic; changes can create new demands or reshape the community; “‘Alive’ communities reflect on and redesign elements of themselves throughout their existence.”
  2. Open a dialogue between inside and outside perspectives – effective community design is “built on the collective experience of community members” and “brings information from outside the community into the dialogue about what the community could achieve.”
  3. Invite different levels of participation – Three main levels of community participation: a core group engaged in regular, intensive activities (usually 10-15% of the group); the active group (another 15-20%); and peripheral members, who rarely participate.
  4. Develop both public and private community spaces – “orchestrate activities in both public and private spaces that use the strength of individual relationships to enrich events and use events to strengthen individual relationships.”
  5. Focus on value – “Rather than attempting to determine their expected value in advance, communities need to create events, activities, and relationships that help their potential value emerge and enable them to discover new ways to harvest it.”
  6. Combine familiarity and excitement – “combine both familiar and exciting events so community members can develop the relationships they need to be well connected as well as generate the excitement they need to be fully engaged.”
  7. Create a rhythm for the community – Vibrant communities have a rhythm, a tempo, ideally somewhere between breathless and sluggish. “There is no right beat for all communities, and the beat is likely to change as the community evolves.”

Update (03 March 2009): Point 3 talks about a 75-15-10 split between passive, semi-active and activist involvement in a community of practice. On my pwcom blog, I talk about Jakob Nielsen’s 90-9-1 model.

Permanent link to this article: https://extranetevolution.com/2009/01/building-communities-aliveness/

Jan 20 2009

Yammer, Present.ly

Last week I wondered whether the construction industry suffered from ‘collaboraphobia’, affecting its ability to adopt tools and techniques that improve communication and information-sharing. There are a small (but hopefully growing) number of construction people writing blogs, using Twitter, and building online communities, but given the size of the industry, it is clear that we make up a tiny minority.

This morning, I was asked (by Luke O’Rafferty via Twitter) if Yammer could be of use in construction. For those unfamiliar with Yammer it is a Twitter-type tool that can be used privately within a single organisation, being accessible only by employees with a valid company email address. It is free for individual users to subscribe to their network, and organisations can pay ($1 per month per member) for optional administration tools to moderate and control their network. (Present.ly is another product similar to Yammer)

Responding back to Luke, I said I wasn’t sure. “If construction peeps don’t ‘get’ Twitter, will they see the point of Yammer? Privacy might appeal, though.”

Yammer is certainly a step up from one-to-one instant messaging (IM), effectively creating a company-wide discussion board, social network, file-sharing and even a quick knowledge-base (see features – I like the tag cloud functionality). But if your colleagues don’t see the point of Twitter, will they be swayed by Yammer? Yes, it is private – which may overcome some people’s reservations – making it attractive for internal communication. In this respect, it might be a good way for construction people to make some tentative first steps into Web 2.0.

But as for Yammer’s use more generally in the construction sector, I’m not sure. Project teams are typically composed of people from several different organisations, and individuals can be members of several different project teams simultaneously; Yammer could not support such complexity (though Present.ly accounts can be extended beyond a single e-mail domain to include clients, consultants and other collaborators).

To be fair, Twitter doesn’t really cater for such groups either (see this Webware.com article by Don Reisinger), but individual users can get round this and create their own groups by using tools such as Tweetdeck. Personally, I would also be looking for tools like Tweetdeck’s that allow me to re-tweet interesting contributions across platforms – eg: from Twitter to Present.ly or Yammer (and vice-versa, assuming, of course, that corporate policies allow such outbound communications).

Permanent link to this article: https://extranetevolution.com/2009/01/yammer-presently/

Jan 19 2009

No ICT category in CN awards

UK trade magazine Construction News has just launched its 2009 Construction News Quality Awards, which editor Nick Edwards says have “continued to evolve with the consolidation of some of the older categories and the introduction of some new awards relevant to today’s industry.” One award to disappear is the ‘Excellence in the use of ICT’ category (my employer, BIW Technologies supported one of the 2008 shortlisted entrants, Bovis Lend Lease).

Sorry, Nick, but I don’t see where ICT has been consolidated into an existing category (is it implicit in business improvement, perhaps?), nor do I see how dropping ICT somehow makes these awards more relevant to today’s industry.

  • The industry struggles to shake off an image of being techno-phobic, and the CN award helped show industry that ICT was a core business issue that mattered.
  • There have also been some excellent entries in recent years showing real innovation, setting ever higher standards for the next year’s entrants to match, so CN was helping promote best practice.
  • In my view, ICT is likely to grow, not shrink, in importance in the years ahead – not least with the looming arrival of building information modelling (BIM) in the UK mainstream (but think also of Web 2.0, Software-as-a-Service, mobile solutions, etc).

Having a construction-specific, professionally organised and judged ICT award helped ensure businesses didn’t forget the importance of ICT in establishing and maintaining competitiveness. Losing this high-profile competition is a blow for ICT in the UK architecture, engineering and construction sector. Bring it back for 2010.

Permanent link to this article: https://extranetevolution.com/2009/01/no-ict-category-in-cn-awards/

Jan 16 2009

Adults getting social

An item on internetnews.com, More Adults Jump Into Social Networking, caught my eye this morning (also discussed on the e-consultancy blog). It says: “Slowly but surely, adults are catching social networking fever” quoting US research showing that “four times as many adults were using online social network sites in 2008 than in 2005. That number has more than doubled in the past two years.” Such statistics confirm skyrocketing use of social networking sites.

Take-up is still skewed towards younger adults: “75 percent of adults aged 18 to 24 were social networking users, compared to just 7 percent of adults 65 years and older. … 30 percent of adults aged 35 to 44 report having a social network profile. That number steadily drops as age increases.” And adults tend to use sites for social rather than professional reasons (6 percent have a profile on the professional site LinkedIn).

I expect similar figures would be delivered by UK research, but I would be interested to see some comparisons between different industries.

At some of the Web 2.0 events I’ve attended, I’ve found myself talking to a people from media and other creative organisations, from IT backgrounds (hardly a surprise!) and from the education world, but rarely (outside of Be2camp, of course) found myself talking to individuals from the construction or property space. I suspect the adoption curve for social media in the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) market will be similar for its adoption of other information and communication technologies: lagging behind other sectors (not always a bad thing, of course – wait until it’s tried and tested and all that).

It may also be an industry mindset issue, too: lots of construction projects are still conducted in a fairly adversarial manner with professional relationships based upon mutual suspicion rather than trust. ‘Partnering’ aka ‘collaborative working’ initiatives have made a difference on some projects, of course, but many professionals will still be wary of building more collaborative relationships, and warier still of doing so through social media – let’s call it Collaboraphobia. (But, particularly in a recession, it is a sobering thought that they may suddenly find they need some good networks; many employment posts are filled because of who you know rather than what you know.)

With adoption of social networking at its highest among young people in schools, colleges and universities, it will be interesting to see if their use of social media continues when they enter the professions. Will those entering architecture, engineering and construction be discouraged or even prevented from using such networks by traditionalists, or will they be the catalyst for Web 2.0 change in the AEC sector? I hope the latter. There is also the risk that if incumbents try to prevent new industry entrants from maintaining their social networks that the AEC sector ends up losing much needed new talent to other industries that have actively embraced Web 2.0.

Permanent link to this article: https://extranetevolution.com/2009/01/adults-getting-social/

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