Enterprise RSS - a day of action

By Alex Manchester, Editor, The Internal Comms Hub (Australia), Melcrum

Way back in 2007, I wrote for the Melcrum social media report that RSS could perhaps be truly worth of being called a revolutionary social computing tool. Here was a method that completely changed how you view the web, while simultaneously wiping out a large chunk of concern over "information overload".

Here was also an easy way to draw in news, audio and video files, discussion threads and a whole lot more into one place. It's brilliantly simple, easily constructed, and should be in use by anyone who uses the web for more than a cursory and casual surf.

Take-up has been disappointingly slow, however, especially in the enterprise environment where its potential is huge, and it's difficult to pin down why. Any thoughts?

Last week James Dellow (Computer Sciences Corporation) reported on comments that the business understanding of RSS is "stunningly poor".

Perhaps it's the name - "Really Simple Syndication" doesn't say much about anything. Conceptually, it's definitely not as easily grasped as Weblog/blog, or as easily linked and recognisable as wikis and Wikipedia (even though the latter comparison and explanation is somewhat flawed), or even as rapidly dismissed as the notion of having a Second Life.

Either way, James and some colleagues have set about raising awareness of RSS, with the Enterprise RSS Day of Action 24th April 2008.

Plans are still at the early stages, but essentially it's about spreading the word and demonstrating what can be done. If you have ideas or a good example then head to the Enterprise RSS Day of Action Wiki to get involved and trumpet your RSS achievements.

Comments

[Anne Marie McEwan]

Alex

I was just cruising my RSS feeds and catching up on the Hobson and Holtz report 331, and saw a comment and recognised your name (Marie Puybaraud and I wrote an article you published in December last year about Johnson Controls' Global Mobility Network).

I 'got' RSS immediately ( I certainly do not always see things so clearly) and agree with you that RSS is a potentially revolutionary social computing tool. In fact, I wrote a one page piece to give away as a freebie on my old website. I must dig it out. I shall be joining in the RSS Enterprise Day of Action on 24th April. Thanks!

[Indy]

The big problem with RSS that I've encountered is still largely the quality of the readers (software, not people.) There don't seem to be many designed for the average user, as opposed to the more technical.

I've been told I should give the Outlook 2007 reader a try (esp. wrt the enterprise context) so I'll probably be experimenting with that soon. Anyone have other suggestions?

[Alex Manchester]

@Indy That's true about the software, especially enterprise-side.

In workshops we've always recommended people get to know how to use RSS simply by signing up with iGoogle. At a lot of businesses, access to this service is still permitted (because it's Google) and it requires no software as it's web based. Bloglines is another web-based service.

If you are lucky enough to be able to have software installed (if not, as an IC manager/leader person maybe you can push for special "trial" access on a terminal somewhere), then NewsGator is brilliant and now free. You can run it on multiple (home, laptop and office) computers, and it synchronizes your feeds. NetNewsWire is the Mac equivalent.

Outlook 2007 also does the trick, although it's fairly basic compared to dedicated software (as is Apple Mail 3's RSS reader). Ditto for Internet Explorer 7, Firefox 2 and Safari 3, which all have built in readers. Most businesses are not using the latest browsers, though, which is another issue altogether.

@Anne-Marie Great to hear you've had success. Interest in the day is building according to James.

Would also be great to see your article if you have a moment to send it through.

[JeremyS]

We have the same problem. We have various feeds available throughout the company, but there's no standard software ("IT approved" is FeedDemon but it's not included in the standard build). A couple organizations have jumped ahead and built their own tools :(.

This year will be make or break for our RSS. We're revamping our main intranet site with a new document management system that will offer everything as a feed. I hope IT launches Office 2007 by then, or we at least finish our perpetually-in-progress "Social Media 101" training...