Projects Babble Loops World Jam Research Design explorations Knowledge Communities

World Jam

WORLD JAM began as a simple idea - providing a platform where employees could help each other. Not by replicating previous forms of computer mediated communication (CMC), but by trying to shape the intranet into a different kind of CMC. A safe place where every employee could ask for, and offer, practical solutions to everyday challenges they face as an IBMer -- whether task related or personally based. WORLD JAM was implemented as a 72 hour global event followed by an archive site.

What is WORLD JAM?

WORLD JAM was an experiment based on a desire to effect a cultural change inside IBM by helping employees to talk with and help each other, despite the enormous size of the company. IBM has a variety of methods whereby employees can communicate with each other; WORLD JAM aimed to be different from these by providing synchronous and asynchronous access to all employees on one web-based platform during a 72-hour world-wide event, while striving to provide a certain amount of mutual awareness. In addition to serving as a global forum, WORLD JAM acted as a testbed for a variety of experiments such as an animated site guide and a variety of brainstorming games.

A social proxy called the Activity Map was intended to as a navigation and awareness mechanism, showing presence both visually and numerically (image right). The upper part of the Map shows concurrent and cumulative posting based on geographical location; the lower part shows which fora people are currently in. Unfortunately, the implementation did not work correctly until the very end of event, though it did accurately show page hits in the various fora throughout.

Forum pages followed a typical internet model. The discussion was centered on a page showing a title and the first line of each post. The interaction mechanism for posting was similar to a threaded discussion model. At the end of the event posting was turned off, though the site continues to be available as an archive to which employees can refer.

Site visits showed a steady increase over the life of the event, with Forum 1 showing an order effect (being first on the list), followed by those with the most postings (6, 10, and 5). Most fora had an average of just one reply per posting. However two fora had deeper conversational patterns, with averages of 3 replies per posting and up to 21 replies. These fora also showed a continued deepening of replies to early posts over the whole event. The graphs below show overall activity. Forum 10 had the most postings, followed by Fora 5 and 6 throughout the event. We can also see a sharp increase in postings in the middle of the second day, after the CEO sent email to all employees, encouraging them to participate.

Publications regarding World Jam are on the Social Computing Group publications page.