Kimind Consulting - About

A chinese lion statue

Enterprise 2.0: how to bring productivity, innovation and competitivity for companies growth thanks to the adoption of the new participative technologies and their induced organizations.

Kimind, founded by Miguel Membrado in 2007, is a consulting and coaching company which help on a daily basis large companies, SMBs, executives and entrepreneurs to evolve with the great social, organizational and technological revolutions we know today.

With more than 20 years of experience as entrepreneurs in IT and as consultants within large companies, Kimind provides to its customers unique solutions, pragmatics and efficients, to never be behind the market dans to reach the maximum capability of innovation and competitivity.

The blog

Some limitations of Google Sites

Miguel Membrado March 15th, 2008

After a few days of use for some of my clients, we can already identify gaps in Google Sites:

  1. It is not possible to create a page when you are in edition mode, as in a regular wiki. Google Sites therefore withdrew an essential function that is characteristic of a wiki, forcing users to first create pages before you can link to this pages. This is obviously stupid, even though at first glance it seems easier for novices.
  2. There is no RSS feeds in Google Sites! One can only subscribe to the changes by e-mail! And there is not compatible gadget available in iGoogle for Sites, therefore impossible to track changes made to its site within iGoogle!
  3. SOLVED You can not compare two versions of a page, we can only view them. So easily impossible to know what differentiates one version from the other.
  4. Nothing is exportable, and therefore all the work done in a Site is not transferable to another Site. A real headache, especially if we began to set lists. Google should at least create the concept of template Site, as well as put in place a genuine function of export / import data from one Site to another. Otherwise it is not possible to capitalize on his work, and for professional use and large-scale companies it could be a real problem.

Point 2 is essential (RSS) to be able to create real dashboards for monitoring, without being obliged to receive tons of emails for each modification. This goes against the 2.0 paradigm and new methods of work that relies on non isage of e-mails to be effective.

Relating point 1 once we have learn to create new pages on the fly in a regular wiki (ie 5mn when done for the first time), we never want to do it in another way, so easy and natural it is, and it is the very heart of the success of wikis all these years, it is extremely surprising that this option is not implemented in this first version, it was mostly available at JotSpot of course.

It is a gross misjudgement from the product manager of Google Sites :-(

Goto Google Apps Feedback Zone if you want to share dynamically your feedback with other users.

Identificateurs Technorati : , , ,

From Collaboration to Participation

Miguel Membrado March 15th, 2008

For more than 25 years, asynchronous collaboration tools have been used by thousands of companies all over the world. Technologies have evolved from Lotus Notes to web-based self-service collaborative environments like eRoom, QuickPlace or SharePoint Portal Server, just to name the most popular ones. And today there are dozens of such products. What is the feedback of such dissemination? Are employees working better in their daily life? Are all employees using collaborative tools at their desktop?

The answer is NO! The most used collaborative tool is still the electronic messaging system. Why? Because e-mail is an unstructured way to send and share information; an immediate and effortless system. When you enable people and teams to work with powerful collaborative tools, you notice that it takes time for them to consider these tools as part of their daily work.

Continue Reading »

Benioff (Salesforce.com) and Plattner (SAP) at Churchill Club

Miguel Membrado March 14th, 2008

Don’t miss this event if you are in San Francisco April 3rd: a debate with Marc Benioff, founder, chairman & CEO of salesforce.com, the world’s leading independent SaaS provider, and Hasso Plattner, co-founder, ex-CEO and chairman of SAP, the world’s largest business software company.

All the information here, entrance reserved to the members (it’s easy to become a member). I will not be able to attend, so if somebody reports the debate on his blog, please let us know :-).

Identificateurs Technorati : , , , ,

The Participative Web

Miguel Membrado March 6th, 2008

Web 2.0 and the Participative Era, or how the New Applications of Web 2.0 are Going to Revolutionize Everything up to our Enterprises and our Democracies by Liberating the Participative Spirit the Human Beings Seem to Possess.

Continue Reading »

Google Sites launched !

Miguel Membrado February 28th, 2008

Here it is, the first beta version of former JotSpot, a company acquired by Google there is a little more than a year, was released officially today and is available in all packs Google Apps, under the name of Google Sites.

This is a major step for Google in its strategy of winning companies, as online office was not sufficient to justify a migration of the existing major accounts.

But Google Sites completely change the situation, as it is a wiki, which also includes a kind of blog (annoucements feature) and a set of other features, and Google will thus be able to implement a true architecture of Enterprise 2.0.

Because in the information system of an Enterprise 2.0, the three foundations are the wiki, the blog and RSS portal. The wiki is used to collaboration, the blog to communicate and the portal for consumption data thanks to RSS feeds.

With these three bricks, no more need to use messaging and to store its files in file servers. EVERYTHING IS STORED IN THE BLOG AND THE WIKI, for all projects of the company, and it is immediately notified about additions and changes that both sides have made, consulting its portal feeds.

The blog and wiki from Google Apps is called “Sites” and the RSS portal is called “Start page.”

Google Apps today becomes the first thrue suite for Enterprise 2.0 market and there is no reluctance to have to put Google Apps in direct competition with any traditional solution from Microsoft or IBM. And both for small companies than for large accounts with tens of thousands of users.

At a time when Microsoft makes the feet and hands to try to catch up on Google in the field of research on the Internet and online advertising, Google has finalized deadly weapon to kill the cash cow for Microsoft, Office / Exchange / SharePoint.

It is a day that could almost be described as historic because it is for 20 years that Microsoft has no competitor in the workstation area… This monopoly has now been broken.

It will be remembered for a long time, therefore this date in the future, it was Feb. 28, 2008, at 9:39 hour of San Francisco time :-)

This is the first message from Google received this morning:

Greetings!

We’re contacting everyone who’s expressed interest in learning of JotSpot registration re-openings on the JotSpot website. And today, we’re excited to announce that JotSpot is working on Google infrastructure and has been re-launched as Google Sites.

Google Sites is the latest offering from Google Apps, a suite of products designed to improve communication and collaboration amongst employees, students, and groups. Google Sites makes creating a team web site as easy as editing a document. You can quickly gather a variety of information in one place  — including videos, calendars, presentations, attachments, and gadgets — and easily share it for viewing or editing with a small group, their entire organization, or the world.

To get started with Google Sites, you’ll first need to sign up forthe Google Apps edition that’s right for you (if you’re not already a Google Apps user). Start the sign-up process at:

http://sites.google.com

Sincerely,

The Google Apps Team
Google Inc.
1600 Amphitheatre Parkway
Mountain View, CA 94043

Identificateurs Technorati : , , , , , , ,

Zoho wiki: Don’t use it, it is a nightmare

Miguel Membrado January 3rd, 2008

I liked Zoho products, but their wiki is a real nightmare. I’m using it with a group of students because their university decided to use Zoho online office suite, and it is totally unusable. Zoho doesn’t have understood the wiki philisophy. And there is a lot of bugs! So, don’t use it.

Use netcipia, wikidot or pbwiki instead, they are true wikis, with a real usability.

(disclosure: I’m cofounder of netcipia. This is also why I know what a wiki must be…)

“What is Web2.0″ slideshow by Tim O’Reilly

Miguel Membrado November 12th, 2007

From: adunne, 5 days ago

Speaker: Tim O’Reilly

Towards Enterprise 2.0

Miguel Membrado October 8th, 2007

Continue Reading »

eSangathan - Ageing Workforce and Collaborative Working Environment

Miguel Membrado April 12th, 2007

Kimind Consulting, under the Netcipia UK umbrella, is an active member of the eSangathan Consortium about ageing workforce and how to improve their employability thanks to collaborative working environments promotion.

Welcome to our new web site

Miguel Membrado January 27th, 2007

Kimind launched its new web site, built from scratch with the WordPress open source framework. It is the best platform today to build a dynamic website. The Kimind web site is divided in two partsLe site Kimind est divisé en deux parties :

  • institutional pages presenting the company and our different offers
  • posts about daily news available from the home page allowing our customers and our prospects to be in permanent contact with us.

Kimind is choosing, obviously, to be transparent. Participation and collective intelligence are our key factors of development, so you are totally free to comment and interact with us through all the pages of our web site.

Kimind has also created a social bookmarking web site, Kimind News Community, to allow french people disseminated all around the world to share pertinent information about web 2.0, enterprise 2.0, sustainability and green tech information. 2.0 and green concepts are the heart of the new Silicon Valley business. We think that it is fundamental to share this valuers between us. So, don’t hesitate to participate :-)

« Prev