IdeaJam (English version)

Bruce asked me about translation of this article, which I originally published in Czech. So, here it is, more or less the same :-).

For the last few month everyone is talking about the IdeaJam server, even some presentators at Lotusphere made their audience chant it’s name loudly. Also I heard that IBM knows about the ideas which are there and plan to implement, at least some of them, into next versions of their products. It’s all interesting, but there is something more.

As I understood the whole idea, you’re able to put this application inside your own company and this is the usage I like more. The application is, from user point of view, really easy to use and is incredible straightforward. You can see how each idea goes on, you can vote for it immediately (even without page reload), each idea has its own tags and when you take a look on those different tags you can see which area is the most popular one. Also there are a views by different criteria and so on.

Why I like it so much? I think that something like this is missing in a lot of companies. Doesn’t matter how you want to use it, if you plan to vote about new functionality in your own applications (use discussion database for this isn’t so easy for this purpose) or voting about news in company in common – when you want to have the Christmas party, do you want to buy a new copy-machine, what about coffee machine?

So, what do you think, is it really possible to use inside company? How do you want to use it?