GHC09: Privacy and Social Software session 1

Kicking off Grace Hopper 2009! After a warm welcome from the program chair, I rushed over to the "Privacy and Social Software" session upstairs. It was completely jam packed, I arrived early so I had a seat, but there were many people sitting on the floor and a lot of people standing in the back. I guess the organizers didn't think this topic would attract such a big audience? I don't know why because obviously it sounds very interesting to me! :)

There were 3 research topics presented in this session. The first was "Enterprise Social Networking: History, Current Practices, and Research Challenges" by Julia Grace from IBM research. Julia was a bundle of energy! I really enjoyed listening to her. Out of the 3 topics I thought hers was the most interesting one.

Julia first went through a quick history of communication and collaboration, from phone to email to blogs. We are going in a direction where information previously shared in email can now be shared publically where others can benefit. At work I am seeing more of this, we have a blogging site, a facebook-like site, and a twitter-like site. Seems to be similar at IBM as well. Another observation Julia made was: within the enterprise, employees choose to reach out and meet new people rather than only connecting to those they knew. That's a very good point! I should do more social networking at work and connect to some new people! :)

Julia's concluding recommendations were to 1) avoid social information overload by constraining what you see. Filter by groups of people, or use any other method to make it manageable. And 2) have your manager join facebook! It's hard to quantify the benefits of social software, and you really can't know it until you experience it. She also used twitter as an example, that people who don't use it really can't understand how useful it is. I have to admit I fall into that bucket, having never tweeted (although I do have an account and follow a few people). Note to self: try harder to understand this twitter phenomenon and not get left behind!

Overall I think I already vaguely know some of the concepts, but it was great to have it solidified and expressed elegantly. This is a great start to a fun conference!