refinder — a social platform for team collaboration and information management
TRANSCRIPT
Things come together.
A social platform for team collaboration and information management
About me
Bernhard SchandlCTO & co-founder Gnowsis.comResearcher, Lecturer
twitter.com/besbes
The need for collaboration tools
What does a team use to share and
communicate?
Why you love email
• Perfect for asynchronous one-to-one communication
• Widely supported standard
• Communication within and across organizations
• Ubiquitous access from any device
• Easy to use
Why you hate email
• File sharing —!the “version hell”
• Team collaboration —!the “reply all” un-culture
• Expected to happen in real-time
• Intermingle content and noti"cation
• “Store everything, "nd nothing” medium
http://www.getre!nder.com
Things come together.
Re!nder Main Functions
1. Collect —!capture relevant information, share it with colleagues, keep it for later reference
2. Curate —!arrange information based on topics, projects, tasks; tag and relate
3. Communicate —!share information, exchange ideas and thoughts, push it to other applications and services
http://www.gnowsis.com/about/content/free-whitepaper-semantic-technologies-tap-unrealized-potentials-social-business-platforms
Social Layer
Machine “Intelligence”
Collect
Collections
Collections are collaboration spaces for exchange in teams.
1. Create a collection
2. Invite users
3. Connect cloud apps
4. Collect relevant information
5. Be productive! :-)
Collect information
• Collections can be connected to cloud apps
• Information from apps stay synchronized
• Search, communication, collaboration, noti"cations —!across all connected apps
• Direct access to original source
Collect information
• Re"nder is able to deal with any type of information
• Bookmarks, "les, email messages, contacts, calendar events, articles, questions, etc.
• All information is stored in structured formats, which allows for automated processing
Collect information
• Information can be collected in an ad-hoc manner
• Bookmarklet — capture Web pages as you browse
• E-Mail —!send emails to capture them in Re"nder
• Application integration —!plugins for Of"ce suite, widgets for Web applications
Curate
Information Curation
Re"nder’s built-in intelligence provides fast access to relevant content:
• Search — "nd information across all connected apps
• Filtering — drill down results, "nd relevant signals in the noise
• Recommendations — let the system suggest helpful information
• Connect —!establish links between information items that belong together
Communicate
Communicate
• Re"nder provides simple but powerful communication mechanisms:
• Comments —!add notes, thoughts, feedback to any kind of information
• Like — show appreciation
• Contrary to “just sending emails”, communication is preserved and socialized in Re"nder
Stay on track
• Email noti"cations provide activity alerts
• Dashboard gives overview on recent activity
Information Flow
• Send information to other systems
• Avoid the need for copy+paste
Use Cases
Things come together.
How do people use Social Software?
IDC’s Social Business Survey, May 2011, n=339
How do people use Social Software?
IDC’s Social Business Survey, Q4/2010, n=700
Use Case:Team Info Base
Team Info Base
• When working in a team over a longer period of time, information accumulates
• May be related to various sub-topics, but addresses the team as a whole
• Diverse types of information: Web bookmarks, "les (pdf), blog posts
• Initiated by one person (for their own purposes), shared with others on demand
Team Info Base
• Create collections based on topic
• Invite interested people
• Share information ad-hoc, using bookmarklet, "le upload, or email
• Public collections (where appropriate)
Use Case:Project Collaboration
Project Collaboration
• When a project is set up, people from different organizations with different background come together
• In many cases, collections are created when the number of circulated emails exceeds a certain level
• Created by one person, most people are invited immediately
Project Collaboration
• Project-based collections are often connected to external apps (e.g., folder in dropbox, RSS feed, twitter stream)
• Often, already existing information is re-shared into a project collection
• When a project is done, the collection “fades away” — no explicit “closing” or “archiving”
Use Case:Shared clipboard
Shared Clipboard
• Use case similar to “infobase”, but less structured, more informal
• This use case comes closest to the “What are you working on?” attitude of typical Enterprise Social Software
• Mostly bookmarks, less "les, sometimes tweets
Observations and Bene!ts
• Less emails being sent
• Information is found
• Stay in touch with the team, even when not in the of"ce
• Con"dence: save it to Re"nder, and you will "nd it again
Summary
Summary
• There is an obvious need for a new generation of collaboration software.
• Boundaries between work/private, of"ce/mobile, personal/team, local/cloud, internal/external ... disappear.
• Business requirements need to be combined with simple usage.
Summary
• Re"nder is an example of a tool that combines a social layer with semantic information processing.
• It is being effectively used as information management and communication platform.
