Fostering collaboration and putting people at the center

Jeb Bishop, Senior Product OwnerMotley FoolSandra Ponce de Leon, Director of Marketing Socialtext

Anessa Fike, Culture ClubistaMotley Fool

Jingle: Initial Goals• Increase communication and

collaboration• Reinforce our culture and community• Consolidate conversations

– Retire legacy intranet and wiki – Wean ourselves from Yammer, email, Sharepoint,

Idea Factory, ad hoc internal blogs• Make it easier to find and share• Require very small tech investment for

setup and maintenance

Jingle: Daily Practice• Check throughout the day, or leave the

desktop app open– Read & post signals

• General interest (“Around the office”)• Group-specific (functional groups, project teams,

hobbies)– Editorial traffic management

– Consume info• Important news, videos• Progress toward goals• HR info (forms, org charts, benefit info, etc)

– Write or review documentation• Mostly techies

Jingle: Typical Dashboard

Jingle: Affinity Groups• Nearly 100 groups built around shared

affiliations or interests– Types

• Scrum teams, functional groups, initiatives, hobbies, shared interests, classified, etc etc etc

– Largest Membership• QuarterlyChallenge, Around the Office, Wellness, Love

Our Members, Classifieds, Just had to share, Competitors, Techies, NFSHHI

– Most active (PVs)• Wellness• Techies

Jingle: Idea Generation• Use Jingle to involve all Fools in

important conversations– Examples

• What can we do within 30 days to delight members even more?

• How can we improve [metric n]?

– Approach• Ask via news post, signal, video• Answer on dedicated pages or signal streams• Anyone can ask, anyone can answer

Jingle: Custom Widgets• Make your own Widgets

– Open Social• http://docs.opensocial.org/display/OS/Home• iGoogle

– Some we’ve made• Ooyala video player• Quick Start (essentially sidebar nav)• Metric trackers (members, NCR) • RSS feeds with custom links

– Important Fool News– Job Board

Jingle: Custom Widgets

Jingle: Widget Editor

Jingle: 360 Feedback• Make giving feedback to anyone in the

company as easy as possible– Four ways…

• Dedicated link on dashboard, plus• Five Fools picked at random weekly, plus• Periodic team blasts, plus• Embedded feedback form on dashboard

Jingle: Results• Positive addition to Motley Fool

– People know where to look for things, instead of wasting time wondering which system to use

• News, info, documents, conversations: it’s all here – Better team and all-Fool collaboration &

communication– Reduced email clutter

• Easily opt-in to see the types of messages (signals) they want• At least 75% reduction in all-hands email

– Enhanced collaboration and code / process quality through centralized, shared documentation

• Early adopters: techies• Easier to share between project-based scrum teams

– Editors use signals to track workflow and do handoffs. Beats the mix of email & IM we used to use

Jingle: Data• Easily track usage data using built-in reports

and Google Analytics

Thank you• Q & A• For more information on Socialtext,

please visit www.Socialtext.com• Slides will be available on Socialtext • Follow us:

@themotleyfool@socialtext@sandramp