Headshift designed a collaboration platform for the international law firm Dewey & LeBoeuf LLP. We integrated social media tools such as blogs, wikis, social bookmarking and RSS feeds, with the aim of improving the general flow and sharing of information.  The platform is presently in its pilot phase within a department in the firm.  

What constitutes a social media platform?
Based on a period of rigorous user requirement research, Headshift set about making an internal communication platform that included the following tools:

Group blogs facilitate discussion
Blogs were designed to sit at heart of the group spaces of the wider communication platform. Users would be able to post new blog posts in groups, thereby sharing their thoughts, ideas and knowledge with the other members of that group.

Wikis organise information
A sophisticated wiki implementation played a key role within the system as 'spaces' for group work. This advanced infrastructure was designed to support virtually any number of groups and could therefore be used more widely to sustain collaboration and group-based discussion.

RSS feeds constitutes the backbone
RSS was used as the primary mechanism for transporting content between different parts of the platform, and also as the preferred mechanism for delivering content to end users.
There was also the need for a multi-channel delivery platform, giving a choice as to how information can be consumed:

• RSS
• Email
• Web
• PDF / Print
• Mobile devices
  

In all cases, it only takes one click to translate from one format to another, and where required there is integration with defined templates to ensure a consistent branding and look-and-feel.

Consumption of information: personalising according to need
The consumption of content is an area of crucial interest - the effectiveness of RSS feeds is multiplied when tools such as feed readers are used. Tools such as these allow an end user to quickly scan information to identify items that are of further interest.

Instead of using just one tool Headshift recommended that a selection of tools be used to cater for a particular user's needs and preferences - some users may feel comfortable using a dedicated RSS consumption tool, others may prefer to have this information come into their mobile device such as a BlackBerry, while others will want to access this information via their browser.

Personal dashboards can give people an individualised view of information through:

• Displays selected feeds
• Allows the selection from a list of feeds
• Shows other content of interest (most popular bookmarks, personal tag cloud etc)
• Allows user profile maintenance
• Allows users the ability to rate interesting content
• Allows the creation of personal feeds that might include specific search terms and keywords, or all content for a particular tag, or content from a particular person or a group.

Aggregated bookmarks works as a recommendations engine
Sharing bookmarks allows insight into areas of interest and specialisation. The aggregation of bookmarks, when filtered by date (e.g. show all bookmarks in the last week) can offer an almost real-time view into topics people think are important or need more attention.
It is also important to realise that this information is something that emerges as a result of aggregating individual behaviour, and is not something that needs to be explicitly mandated.

Personal and aggregated tagging make connections visible
Tags are a powerful way of collaboratively filtering content, as well as a mechanism for matching content items and people. Discovering people using a similar set of tags is a powerful way to identify who has similar interests to you.  Tagging is a key element of the solution Headshift has built. It is woven through all the other pieces of infrastructure as an absolute requirement - letting individuals add their own personal tags to any piece of content, or to choose from a list of predefined tags and commonly used tags.

Social network profiles adds a human touch and transparency
In addition to the personal dashboard, users will have a public profile that allows them the ability to maintain information about themselves for the benefit of the community.  This will open up social networking and greater transparency with regards to people's interests and skills.

Better communication = A more profitable organisation
Our overall aim when building a social media platform for a large international law firm was to improve internal communication, and thereby increase the value of collaboration, which in turn should lead to a more profitable organisation.

Social media the way Headshift sees it is essentially about making people communicate in simpler and smarter ways - creating a working environment that is more efficient in terms of the use of physical resources, in terms of information retrieval and creation, and finally in terms of time spent.