About the Author

David F. Carr is an Editor-at-Large at InformationWeek, where his primary coverage areas include social business, collaboration technologies, educational technology, online education, and technologies for the healthcare industry. He was the original editor for The BrainYard (since rebranded InformationWeek Social Business) and continues to contribute as a columnist. In early 2013, he became editor of InformationWeek Education. David previously served as Technology Editor at Baseline Magazine and Internet World Magazine. He has also worked as a freelance writer, contributing to CIO Magazine, Defense Systems, and Forbes.com. In a side business as a web consultant, he has created several WordPress plug-ins, including Facebook Tab Manager and RSVPMaker.

He lives with his wife and three children in Coral Springs, Florida.

Dedication

To Beth Anne, of course. It had to be you.

Author’s Acknowledgments

Thanks to Wiley’s Amy Fandrei for giving me this opportunity and to project editor Heidi Unger for helping me get it done. My wife, Beth Anne, who is also a talented editor, helped me prepare the book proposal and sample chapter before we had a contract. She also put up with my spending nights and weekends in my office, trying to make progress on the book outside of regular work hours. InformationWeek Editor-in-Chief Rob Preston supported my decision to take on this project, trusting me to put in a fair day’s work even while juggling this extra job. InformationWeek parent company UBM is an active user of Jive Software’s social collaboration platform, and CEO David Levin was nice enough to let me share a screen shot of his social profile as part of the chapter on the role top executives play in the success of these tools. UBM Collaboration Systems Manager Tracy Maurer also gave me valuable input, as well as feedback on several chapters.

UBM’s conference group also put me to work as the social business track chair for the E2 Conference, and the Social Business Leaders program we ran in conjunction with that event gave me the opportunity to talk with business and technology leaders who are working to maximize the potential of social collaboration for their organizations.

I found the Jive Community website (http://community.jivesoftware.com) and particularly its Internal Community Managers focus group very helpful as a resource for understanding the concerns of large, enterprise social community managers. Although it exists partly as a customer and technical support community for Jive products, membership is open, and many of the discussions are broader than the use of Jive's products alone.

Jive also provided me with access to a cloud-hosted test instance of its software to explore, which came stocked with a cast of fictional co-workers and mock collaboration activities. Salesforce.com did the same with a demo instance of Chatter. IBM Connections product manager Luis Benitez gave me an extensive walk-through and set me up with an account on Greenhouse, which includes a demonstration instance of Connections. NewsGator let me explore the online community for its customers, which is normally restricted to paying customers, subject to some ground rules about not quoting from conversations there without permission.

This access was important because social software products are difficult to test in isolation because by nature they involve interaction with lots of other people. Also, at the time I started writing, my employer’s instance of Jive was a version behind the latest release (a common pattern for large enterprises that like to test software thoroughly before deploying it). Jive offers a 30-day free trial of the cloud version of its product, but I was happy not to have to worry about time running out. There were other cloud-hosted products offering free accounts, such as Yammer and Podio, that I could experiment with more easily by asking friends and family to join my collaboration network or creating my own dummy accounts.

Citrix Podio public relations manager Lilly Hanscom gave me a tour of Podio task management capabilities and pointed me to several other useful resources.

Many of the ideas in this book are not original with me. I have tried to acknowledge the thought leaders I spoke with and whose work I read wherever their ideas are cited. Rachael Happe, co-founder of The Community Roundtable, provided insight from her work with large company community managers as well as introductions and access to reports. Many other people gave me encouragement and guidance along the way.

If this book is any good, it’s because of my collaborators. If it’s flawed, that would be my fault.

Publisher’s Acknowledgments

Acquisitions Editor: Amy Fandrei

Project Editor: Heidi Unger

Sr. Copy Editor: Teresa Artman

Technical Editor: Alison Zarrella

Editorial Assistant: Anne Sullivan

Sr. Editorial Assistant: Cherie Case

Special Help: Mark Enochs

Project Coordinator: Kristie Rees

Cover Image: ©iStockphoto.com/Photomorphic