garykoelling

Friday, February 13, 2008, the 'original' BlueShirt Nation was archived and rolled into the next BlueShirt Nation - BSN Mix. BSN Mix is a built on the Headmix platform and allows users to access the network via multiple channels - web, Outlook plug-in and SMS.  Why? Two words - Signal Strength.

Signal strength is a measure of clarity in a network. As such it may also be looked at a basic measurement of efficacy for a given network. Do the people who are talking understand each other? Do all the people who have answers or questions have direct access to the network. And what kind of average latency does the network experience? These are a few of the criteria we looked at in trying to assess the signal strength of BSN.

There are 160,000 Best Buy employees. Many feel comfortable accessing networked conversations with a browser. But even if a browser is a preferred channel, it may not integrate very well with someone's daily workflow. In fact most of the 160,000 employees don't have a browser open and accessible - many carry their network connection in their pocket in the form of a smart phone. And a goodly percentage of employees at the corporate HQ use Outlook as their main form of network access. The 'orignal' BSN had lower participation levels due to this, greater latency and suffered from lower signal strength.

Headmix offers a platform for BSN that addresses our signal strength problem primarily by easily integrating multiple channels. BSN Mix is currently accessible (read and write) from a browser, an Outlook plugin (which I must admist is pretty slick) and via SMS.

Here's a couple screen shots: