Tuhat sanaa

Finnish bloggers are concerned of proposed legislation that would grant employers and many other entities the right to investigate their employees and users' email log data and other network use statistics. Not the contents of messages themselves, but log info: who's corresponding with whom, when, and how big and what type of files are being sent.

The law has been dubbed Lex Nokia, or the "snooping law".

It would allow network admins to investigate the user log data (ie. employees’ e-mails) in case the company or entity has reason to suspect that corporate secrets are leaking out of the company or that the communication networks are being misused.

Electronic Frontier Finland has pointed out that not only companies would be using these snooping rights. The law would cover any entity that offers network connections to its members - universities, or housing co-operatives if they operate a broadband network for shareholders/tenants.

Helsingin Sanomat reports that legal experts say that the proposed law would give network owners such as employers greater authority than the police have. To gain access to similar information, the police need to get a warrant from a court if it has reason to suspect that a crime has been committed (Government proposal on employers´ rights to employee e-mail information sparks controversy).

The companies cannot be trusted to do such investigation in their own matters, says member of Finnish Parliament, Jyrki Kasvi. He would address the business rationale for the proposed law by granting the police the needed powers to investigate possible information leakages within companies. When it comes to spying neighbors at community networks he has this analogy: If there is a burglary in the apartment building and the door has not been forced open, can the tenant search other apartments to find his property?

According to Helsingin Sanomat, preparation of the amendment started when Nokia launched an investigation into private e-mail correspondence of its personnel in 2005 in order to find out if business secrets were leaking out of Nokia to the company’s main competitors. Nokia then gave the log data to the police (”Lex Nokia” gets blessing from Constitutional Law Committee).

It has been suggested that suspected illegal file sharing activity could be an obvious reason for monitoring students' houses' network use once the legislation is in place.

Blogger Sampsak has a list of links at the bottom of this post. All in Finnish, I'm fraid.

Morten Dahlgren, VP Sales & Marketing, Nordic, 24/7 Entertainment, thinks Genius, the new music recommendation system at iTunes is a cool music recommendation engine because it combines your own library with store recommendations.

He says 24-7's own engine, based on 36 track parameters, is a superior recommendation engine for tracks that you didn't know or thought of before.

What is the future of music recommendation?

I talked to Morten at Musiikki & Media event in Tampere this week.

Finns always knew hot to get a big project done. Be it building a new sauna or an operating system: invite the whole community to do the job.

Wreck a movie was one of the first big crowdsourcing projects, say Peter Vesterbacka, CEO Some Bazaar. He says crowdsourcing has finally entered the mainstream.

Talkoot, a word close to the term crowdsourcing, just might be the next Finnish word to enter the global vocabulary, says Vesterbacka.

I talked to Peter at Musiikki & Media event in Tampere this week.

Should companies let their staff loose in the social networks? Some ban such activity alltogether. Startup company staff, on the other hand, can often be accessible to anyone online.

"Getting to an open dialogue with someone they don't know is tough on most companies," says Taneli Tikka, CEO, RunToShop and serial entrepreneur. Trying half-heartedly is no good either as you can tell by the list of "brands that suck on Twitter".

Using the web to foster innovation is not only crowdsourcing or getting ideas from outside. "Utilize the services or the way to communicate inside your organization", suggests Sonja Kangas, online gaming R&D professional and Head of Concept & Design team at PAF. "In every company there are those that are a bit more shy. People don't know how to come forward with new ideas. Maybe they think the idea is not good enough or they don't know whom to talk with."

Using the web to detect new trends is one of twelve strategies a group of UK researchers listed last year as possible tools for searching disruptive innovation (AIM Executive Briefing: Twelve search strategies that could save your organisation, PDF). Others include working with active users and using "brokers and bridges", plundering other industries.

• Discussing these three strategies in this 40-minute podcast episode are Sonja Kangas, Head of Concept & Design team at PAF and formerly researcher at VTT, Technical Research Centre of Finland (blog: souplala.blogspot.com) and Taneli Tikka, CEO RunToShop, serial entrepreneur and a startup activist (blog: tane.li/blog). Tikka is also engaged in Verso - Vertical Software Solutions 2006-2010 with Tekes, the Finnish Funding Agency for Technology and Innovation launched a new programme for the software business in the beginning of 2006.

Show notes

• 6' Using the web is not only about crowdsourcing. Utilize the web inside your organization.
  
• 9' Organizations online - about dialogue. There are many larger companies that ban their employees from social networks. Brands That Suck on Twitter.
  
• 10'30 LinkedIn campaign: Southwest Airlines
  
• 16' Employees online as individuals
  
• 20' Working with active users: There is strong desire in consumers to be co-creators of value: Example Jamba Juice
  
• Consumer internet companies usually do this with test groups, lead user groups, alpha user groups. IRC-Galleria example: three very large test groups (each 500+ members) test groups testing prototypes of new things extensively. Measuring and observing the way how people use the new stuff. "People don't necessary have the competence to evaluate their own experiences with the prototype".
  
• 23'30 Eric von Hippel. The more possibilities the better. Little Big Planet
  
• 27' Rewarding active users: Social status, products, items, credits. IRC-Gallery test users get to see stuff before everyone, they have a community group they belong to, and other can see that association
  
• 28' IP rights: Terms of use establish the rights for the company to use test users' ideas
  
• 29'30" Use brokers and bridges: Teams and small groups of people who come from completely different backgrounds. This typically gets done in conferences. Quite rarely done with purpose and with concrete goals. Aula (founded in 2000) was to be a cross-disciplinary network of people
  
• Role play: When organising ideation events, I invite people from different departments, and put people in different roles (marketer to comment as designer and so on)
  
• Slush
  
• MindTrek

Suggested reading:

The future of competition by C K Prahalad and Venkat Ramaswamy
The Third Lens - Multi-ontology Sense- making and Strategic Decision-making, by Mika Aaltonen

Email from Evernote just in. They wanted to share some product development news, which is fine as I've opted in for their email alerts.

What is telling, though, that in order to be an active and really deeply informed user, I should do much more than just receive (and read) emails: "If you want to really have your finger on the pulse of Evernote, you should read our blog (http://blog.evernote.com ), follow us on Twitter ( http://evernote.com/about/redirect/0z5zte ), subscribe to our FriendFeed ( http://evernote.com/about/redirect/ihr41b ), and join our Facebook fan page (http://evernote.com/about/redirect/pxwv6b )".

Of course the whole offer would be interesting for just few most devoted fans. But it is a reminder of the need to tune the communication to suit the customer's media use preferences.

Who at the office then is the right person to twitter, facebook or blog for the company? Surely not just the communications department, if such exists atall. To me it seems that everyone must learn to not just do their job but to communicate it as well.

Do you think companies can afford to have dedicated staff to do the communicating with customers while the experts go on producing the products?

Do different media usage cultures create tension between generatios at work? It is often said that that the "old-timers" at the workplace just don't "get" social media. I recently asked members of my network at LinkedIn what kind of tensions they have witnessed at work between generations or between people who have very different media usage habits.

The answer was clear: social media usage in the office is not tied to age but certain personal traits. You are more likely to be drawn to using social media if you are easygoing and eager to experiment, fast learner, have good language skills (mainly english as a foreing language for us Finns), self-confident and have positive attitude towards change.

Those not drawn to social media feel reluctant to change their communication routines unless so agreed by the entire team. The benefits should be clear in advance. When convinced of the usefulness of social media, it is time to learn how to use it. The non-sponteneous want training in the use of social media and time to practise these skills.

Expectations towards management:

• Define which social media tools are to be used
  
• Offer training and time to learn
  
• Set goals: Be clear about what is expected of the workforce and what is the desired outcome of social media use at work

What is your experience - are benefits of using social media to work-related problem-solving generally recognized at the workplace?