In early 2008, JetBlue introduced an internal social software platform to a test group of 200 employees who serve as faculty in Jetblue University, the airline’s training division. The platform gave this group access to wikis and blogs to share and collectively improve processes and techniques they use in training other JetBlue employees.

JetBlue’s decision to find a good test group will help its efforts to incorporate wikis and blogs enterprise wide because the training faculty can become advocates for the technology, says Rob Koplowitz, a Forrester analyst who studies Web 2.0 in the workplace and collaborative technologies. “You want to get a sense of how well it work, but you also want to do it to a relatively receptive audience,” he says.

In October 2008, Jeanne Meister wrote about the successful use of this platform by JetBlue University faculty:

The software selected provided a vehicle for JetBlue faculty to talk to one another, not just about process improvements in learning & development, but also to share photos from family vacations, weddings and birthdays. The thinking behind this choice was that as the faculty got to know one another better as individuals, they would more easily share lessons and best practices as professionals.

Letting the personal connections take place elevates the platform’s importance to the average employee, and keeps the coming back, which ultimately benefits the directly business-related uses:

As the JetBlue example illustrates, the process of getting to know one another better through the use of these technologies can smoothly segue into suggesting ways to use these tools to increase innovation and collaboration across enterprises.

In this video, JetBlue University’s Murry Christensen, Director of Learning Technologies and Dan Dyer, Manager of Social Media, discuss why they chose to use these tools, and how some people naturally pick up collaboration on the wiki and blogging:

JetBlue Terminal 5 rendering © Gensler.