The other day I was teaching a group of school librarians, and in one of the breaks I spent time talking to one librarian in particular, who was really keen on using Web 2.0 stuff. She'd done everything right - set up a wiki, using a weblog, making bookmarks sharable and so on. And yet the staff, who she was really trying to get on board were just not interested. She was very frustrated and disappointed, and above all puzzled. This article from Library Clips entitled Is knowledge hoarding all about your pay cheque? may well go some way to explaining what's going on. My summary, with my take is below, but I'd encourage you to read the entire article because it's really good.
There are two types of organisation, or two approaches when it comes to information. You either hoard it, or you share it. What you do is determined in large part by the type of corporation you're in. If staff are encouraged to 'eat what they kill' (as John puts it), there is no incentive to share, and so a company fails or succeeds due to the strongest, and the weakest fail and are disposed of. Hopefully just sacked, since I don't want to carry the hunting metaphor too far. This doesn't in the long run help the company, given the amount that they will have spent on individuals. In this sort of organisation Web 2.0 resources are not going to work well, because they encourage the second type of organisation.
This is one in which sharing is encouraged, and the entire organisation acts as a family, with everyone benefiting from everyone else. Clearly Web 2.0 stuff is going to be encouraged in this type of organisation because that's the way it works anyway. I'm somewhat surprised that a school is going to be in the former category, with staff setting up their own walled gardens, but I suppose it's in the vein of 'the more you publish the better you are', which again isn't a Web 2.0 approach.
So, if you're having trouble getting colleagues to embrace Web 2.0 stuff, it may well be because of the culture of the organisation, and that is what needs to be addressed first, rather than introducing start pages or whatever. The organisation really needs to change to a sharing, rather than a competing model. And this is one of the reasons why Web 2.0 is anarchic technology, and in many ways so refreshing!
Anyway, read the article, it's really eye opening.
Comments