The permeable firewall

Richard Dennison talks in a recent post about how to create the right balance between recreating content and social media services on an intranet which already exists on the internet, and just integrating tools from the internet into the toolkit for employees.

I commented that the permeable firewall will not be a technology application in future, it’ll be the way organise these things in our heads. Commentators keep going on about work life balance. Business people keep saying a good work life balance is healthier both for the individual and for the business. And as I’ve posted before, these things are driving an increasingly blended existence. Different tools to do the same things in a blended world makes no sense. I predict most people will use a single tool to interact with those networks. Twitter is a good early example in the micro blogging space. I only use Twitter, but I am selective as to which of my networks I tweet to. Sometimes it’s everyone, mostly it’s a sub network. I know it’s a question of what we’re comfortable with, but our comfort zone is heavily influenced by the rules and behavioural norms set by the culture of the organisation we affiliate to and so on. Those things are changing. They are being changed by technology. They are being changed by the new generations arriving in the workplace. We are changing them.

It’s going to be a challenge. And there’s going to be conflict. Security and firewall people won’t like it. Power brokers won’t like it. But it’s going to happen.