Next-Gen Directory Services

A few weeks back we started to discuss the idea of a "UC Folksonomy" and I said we'd peel back the layers on that concept a bit the following week. Well I got distracted and went off on a couple of side-bar blogs. Fear not, we're back on track - assuming anyone even noticed in the first place...not a single comment to call me out ;O)

Let' press on. How can we tie next-generation directory services into our UC story and leverage as part of the UC Folksonomy?

Next-generation directory services play a very important role in facilitating work-based social networking. These advanced services can be used to create these dynamic, ad hoc teams. Here we can introduce concepts similar to "social book marking" and "tagging". For reference, sites like del.icio.us provide these kinds of Web 2.0 services on the Internet. Instead of book marking a site to store in your browser's Favorites folder, del.icio.us allows you to store them on a centralized website so that you can access them from any browser on any device. Users "tag" sites as a way to categorize or index them. One of the really cool concepts is that any del.icio.us user can view any other user's tag library. That way, if I want to know what sites others are tagging as "Web 2.0" it allows me to LEVERAGE THE COLLECTIVE INTELLIGENCE OF THE WEB to find more than I could on my own. Try it out for yourself. My tag library is at: http://del.icio.us/boscorob. You can search to see what things I have tagged both socially and for work.

In a corporate context we can leverage the concepts of social book marking and enterprise tagging as next-generation directory services. For example, If we had the ability to "tag" ourselves or even another employee as an expert in a certain field (i.e. competitive, UC, Web 2.0, class action law suits, Six Sigma, etc.) and publish/share that tag via the corporate directory it would make it easy for others to find key resources. In turn, I could easily go to the directory and search on the field of expertise I needed. From there each employee could create customized “expert” lists of their favorite resources in an enterprise IM/presence client. The value could be further exemplified by creating a "locate experts" mashup via Google Maps and the next-gen directory where it would show you the location, availability and communication preference of resources (i.e. how they prefer to be interrupted – via phone, IM, email, video. Sometimes referred to as their “interruptibility”). The idea here is to make it easy for employees to get creative in how they service customers with speed, flexibility and precision…ultimately driving deeper, more profitable customer relationships.