What I-know-I-don’t-know about E2.0 and SAP from Sapphire ’08

My bad. Sapphire ’08 was an enormous field of opportunity to mine SAP intelligence on what the company is doing regarding Enterprise 2.0 initiatives. Somehow, I missed that opportunity and find myself with a lot of follow-up todos. A group of us had back-to-back meetings with SAP execs both Monday and Tuesday. To be perfectly frank, I learned more about what SAP is doing in Enterprise 2.0 from a product manager on the show floor in a half-hour (thank you Peter!) than I did from any of the executives. This was partly my fault and no-one’s fault, as well. My fault because I could have done a better job of trolling the show floor and no-one’s fault because in the meetings we had, we had a limited amount of time to speak to the executives individually. My EI colleagues had pressing issues on understanding why SAP’s mid-market SaaS solution Business-by-Design is going to be delayed, as well as other issues involving Business Objects, NetWeaver, TCO, cloud-computing, etc. To interject questions on blogs, wikis, RSS and mash-ups just seemed silly and inconsequential to me, so I mostly kept quiet.

Enterprise 2.0 is just not a burning issue on the minds of top SAP execs (with the notable exception of the CMO, Marty Homlish). SAP execs mirror the same sentiment as our executive clients: they have serious businesses to run– not a lot of time for the giddy consumery stuff. SAP software fuels the nitty gritty of hard-core business processes for most of the largest enterprises in the world. Where blogging (for example) fits into getting a raw material through the factory floor to a finished product, booked in inventory and ready to move through a supply chain is just not obvious to me right now. So the likelihood of an Enterprise 2.0 bolt-on to SAP is just as slim as it is naive.

I’m trying to choose my words carefully here because I don’t want to “open my mouth and remove all doubt” regarding my ignorance of SAP’s legacy business or its product roadmap. If you want thorough, interesting, and thoughtful commentary on SAP, please consult with my Enterprise Irregular colleagues who shine in this arena.

What I did uncover about SAP & Enterprise 2.0, however, was pretty interesting and demonstrates that 2.0 technology is working its way into mainstream SAP software, as well as delivering benefits for SAP customers. I, unfortunately, missed a terrific presentation by Andrew Cabanski-Dunning, Director of Product Marketing for SAP NetWeaver. In Cabanski-Dunning’s presentation, “Empowering the User: Enterprise 2.0 Solutions from SAP”, he talks about engaging the user, community virtual workspaces for collaboration, networks connecting peers and experts, searching all business objects, integrating 3rd-party tools and data with open APIs, wikis and web content publishing, mash-ups, flex and ajax, mobile interfaces, and user adoption. All the buzzwords and key concepts are there. I’m going to follow up with Cabanski-Dunning and see if I can get a personal briefing of this presentation and publish what I learn.

On the collaboration front, a number of gems surfaced. The community efforts are truly paying off for SAP. Through communities such as its one-million member strong SDN (software developer network) and BPX (business process expert exchange), SAP is reaping the benefits of an active and engaged co-collaborative community where collective intelligence delivers benefits for all parties. Where ten years ago, customers had to accept SAP’s view of the world, today customers, ISVs, solutions integrators, and partners jointly weigh in on enhancements and features. I heard one statistic that claimed over 50% of SAP’s enterprise services are now developed in tandem with the community. Other communities include its Industry Value Network, the Enterprise Services Community, as well as the many Industry Standards communities where SAP participates.

The most interesting discussion on the use of next-gen technology for me was a show-and-tell with CMO Marty Homlish. Homlish experimented with a virtual marketing community meeting that included 1800 people over 3 days spanning 15 time zones. Using Unisfair (which is like a Second Life for business) and a collaborative workspace called Plexus, SAP marketing employees contributed over 3,000 user-generated content items over the 3-day period. At one point during the trial, 75% of SAP’s global marketing operation were participating in the live event. Incidentally, the Plexus collaboration workspace is itself an example of a co-innovation built for the community by the community as one of the projects in SAP’s Co-innovation Lab. It is a co-development project between Jive Software, Intelligroup, Wipro, Enthiosys and Adobe.

Finally, I did get the chance to ask co-CEO Henning Kagermann about SAP’s internal social networking product, Harmony. He indicated it wasn’t clear yet what they were going to do with it. Harmony is in use by about 2,500 SAP employees including the company’s “high potentials” and select members of its U.S. community. He viewed it largely as an HR offering and indicated it was “not built on SAP technology.” He mentioned it could be a side-by-side offering in the future, but did not commit to a date for commercializing the product. He hinted that collaborative supplier management could be part of the suite, but didn’t go further.

It was clear to me that SAP was not going to be launching a killer app in Enterprise 2.0, but would rather incorporate social networking and collaborative features into its product suites where it made sense and delivered value to customers. So where IBM has Lotus Connections, Microsoft has SharePoint, SAP will be content to patch 2.0 functionality into its core business offerings, but may not uniquely focus in the discrete social software arena.

Oracle, on the other hand, is making a noisy “me-too” in this space. In the past two days, I’ve seen a lot of interesting developments highlighting Oracle’s interest in positioning itself as a player in Enterprise 2.0. To Oracle’s credit, they’ve done an excellent job in communicating the benefits and logical integration opportunities for 2.0 technologies in its core business applications. See Dennis Howlett’s interview with Charles Phillips and this post from JavaOne at the CNET blog which includes a video. I’m working on a briefing demo with Oracle and will keep you updated with what we discover.

I was complaining last week on Twitter about SAP being late to the party in Enterprise 2.0. Having been around the technology business for a thousand years, a(nother) little bird reminded me of something similar years ago in the outsourcing market. It was 1994 and IBM was seeking relief from the Justice Department about lifting its 1956 Consent Decree so it could compete more effectively for large IT outsourcing contracts. At the time, giants EDS and CSC were leading the market. My prediction was that IBM would dominate over time and the reason could be summed up in two words: installed base. IBM proceeded to trounce its competitors and is today the largest services player in the world. Over a decade later, the fundamentals still prove true. SAP may surprise us all.

Rails Rules for the Enterprise

I spent Friday afternoon with an impressive technology crowd that gathered here in Austin from Avenue A | Razorfish. I’ve blogged many times over the past few years about how these Interactive Agencies hold the keys to the kingdom on bringing “sexyback” to the Enterprise. It’s been nearly a few months since the blog/firestorm kicked up starting with Mr. Bill (Gates) fueled by Scobleizer.

What I saw with mine own eyes at the AARF gig was red hot enterprise-worthy sexy stuff– borderline enterprise porn. 🙂 The integration was downright obscene!

One of the highlights of the event for me was meeting Tim Bray, pictured to the right here with me. Tim keynoted the event and was described to me by Shiv Singh as one of the original authors of the XML standard. Readers of this blog know what a geek fangirl I am, so I rushed poor Tim at the evening before’s cocktail party and talked his ear off for about a half-hour with mostly nonsense. He kindly took this photo, so I could post it on the blog.

The next day, Tim showed a slide on PHP referencing integration challenges with WordPress and Drupal. My video interviewing skills are (UM) lacking, but I managed to ask him about it, just in case any Enterprise 2.0 hopefuls were considering PHP as their platform choice… You’ll see Tim is very much the Ruby on Rails fan here.

Incidentally, it’s worth mentioning that BSG’s web site and our e.laborate platform is all Rails, baby. It’s times like these that I wish I were more technical, but to hear a guy like Bray gush over the simplicity and ease of agile development with Rails, makes me feel proud of our apps team. I’ve been on many calls with Scott Brittain, our with customers and with industry insiders.  I always learn something from Scott and enjoy talking to the “apps guys” whenever I can. We talk a lot about how this so-called revolution is not about technology, but hey, the technology is one heck of an enabler, ain’t it?  It’s like trying to imagine the 60s social revolution without electric guitars.

Rawk on for freedom you awesome geek gods.

Enterprise Suits Up for the Ride, but Seeks a Safe Landing

This is what would happen if Santa were an Enterprise App and he tried to automagically incorporate 2.0 grooviness overnight.

The irony just got the better of me… I’ve been wrestling with wretched old-school health forms all afternoon that will undoubtedly be, um, input or maybe scanned into some old-school enterprise system that will carefully set up my health insurance for 2008. If it weren’t Sunday, I probably could do some digging and figure out exactly what the “business process” is that will determine my paper-input-to-digital-imprint record through the labyrinth of enterprise systems. Will an outsourced provider be involved? Probably. A mainframe? Probably. A large-scale database? Oh yeah.

Have I enjoyed this process today? No. Was I able to customize my health insurance policy and my coverage according to my particular family’s health situation? Not in a 2.0 way. Was I able to choose a health insurance company by my review of doctors online and get recommendations from other insureds about which health insurance companies actually paid claims on time and answered questions with friendly, caring concern? Well, definitely not.

While I’ve been grousing about doing this all day, clicking on web sites, downloading forms, etc., I’ve had Snitter (a Twitter stream) up and have been keeping my eye on the chatter of the day. It appears Robert Scoble dared to ask why Enterprise Apps weren’t sexy, and well, you can imagine how my Enterprise Irregular “guild” reacted to that. Nick Carr even got involved. It’s only Sunday too, so we’ll see where it goes. (See Dennis Howlett, Michael Krisgsman, Anshu Sharma, Vinnie Mirchandani.) Me? I agree with all of them, oddly enough. On the one hand, I’m having a miserable experience, and I agree with Nick Carr, and I really wish the health insurance company had more consumer-y features. New York Times Design Director Khoi Vinh expressed nearly the exact same sentiment with this post earlier this fall. I agreed with him then too.

On the other hand, for those of us who are working hard to try and transform, enlighten/educate enterprises on how they need to introduce some of this radical change to leverage innovation and wealth creation, we know what we’re up against. Enterprise applications are carefully managed fleets comprised of many battleships that simply cannot turn on a dime. Nor, would you want them to.

Should my son be rushed to the hospital in 2008 because he didn’t quite land that skating trick he’s been practicing in the street, I want to make sure all systems are go and the woman at the reception desk doesn’t get a message from my insurance company like this:

Relationships are the Killer App and Marketing Rules.

For a while, I had this notion that I should self-limit my friends to 150 on Facebook drawing on Dunbar’s Number that states basically you can not respectfully hold any real connection to more than 150 individuals. I’ve given up on this now for a few reasons. As social networking is now taking center stage on the 2.0 roadmap, I realize the more friends/connections I have, the better my harvest for weak tie benefits. Relation capital or relationship equity as I’ve called it before, is the new gold standard that will drive the economy of the next generation Internet. We’re seeing it first, of course, in the consumer economy where relationships matter most between brand marketers and their webs of prey.* And as more enterprise vendors, including Google, get more innovative about how to apply social networking utility to the complex ecosystem of partnerships and interdisciplinary teamworks that comprise the global world of commerce, we’ll see how crucial these relationships play out. What’s critical is your nodal strength and your influence. Whether you are influencing the purchase of toilet tissue or the purchase of hedge fund strategies, you and your relationship to your community will be indexed, matrixed, monitored, and analyzed to abstraction.

As Marshall Clark commented on the Organic blog:

Regarding Google’s benefit from all this – I think Open Social is a brilliant, cost-effective way for Google to acquire social graph information which they can now incorporate into future Google search ranking algorithms.

There’s a massive amount of information buried in the personal interconnections and communications on social media platforms, but until now Google has been largely blocked from indexing this content (we all know Orkut doesn’t count).

If PageRank was big, wait until ‘SocialRank’ rolls out in 2008. Google just pulled off a major coup me’thinks.

Because social networks are easily studied mathematically, I’ve been talking to our in-house math wizards about mapping and manipulating the data in social networks for our clients. It turns out there are volumes– years– of data on this, including dedicated academic journals. I was interested to see that Google is a member of the Sante Fe Institute that George Danner tells me is one of the most prestigious scientific research think tanks.

Speaking of relationships, it seems everyone is going to Defrag… I’m not going, but I will be lurking like a demon on Twitter.

I was particularly interested in this comment from Eric Norlin on the Defrag blog Friday:

John Chambers (of Cisco) has been sounding the trumpet about “enterprise 2.0″ technologies for months now. In fact, you might remember that Cisco also acquired Webex. The purchase of an authorization management company by essentially a collaboration company tells us that collaborative tools are about to get *serious* inside of the enterprise. All of which goes back to the thesis that Brad and I have been kicking back and forth — that 2008 is the year of the beginning of the enterprise IT spending surge.

*For a long while now I’ve been harping on the role the interactive agencies will be playing in leading the charge in bringing web 2.0 technologies into the forefront of big business adoption. There are many examples throughout my blog where I’ve highlighted their critical role as ambassadors to this new promised land. A lot of these firms are companies you may have never heard of, but they are on the cutting edge of these technologies. Of course, they’re relegated to the marketing silo of enterprises, but it is a start. As I said recently in our Enterprise Irregular group, some of the best advice I can have for our IT clients is to take their CMO to lunch to learn more about web 2.0.

Here is a video from interactive media firm IconNicholson who has been leveraging 2.0 technologies to enhance the customer experience for its clients.

Vodpod videos no longer available.

Update: Hat tip from a Tweet from Jeremiah Owyang: AdAge’s ranking of the best 150 Media and Marketing blogs.

Show me the money… not the smiley faces.

When I was interviewing Nathan Gilliatt a few months ago for a webinar we were doing for our clients on the basics of blogging, he introduced me to the importance of online communities. I felt so strongly that he was correct about online communities’ importance in the social media landscape that I recommended incorporating a session on online communities at Office 2.0 and had Dion Hinchcliffe host the panel. A few weeks ago, I serendipitously stumbled upon a Social Media Club of Austin meeting on Facebook where Dell managers were going to be presenting their blogging and online community experiences. Caroline Dietz, the online community manager for Dell’s IdeaStorm gave a good synopsis of how the community is harvested for new product ideas and improvements for Dell. I had the opportunity to spend a few moments afterwards talking to Dell’s chief blogger, Lionel Menchaca, which I really enjoyed.

The one question I managed to get in during the open forum that I felt was obligatory was related to how measurable an impact has Dell’s social media strategy been on Dell’s business–in material (read:financial) terms. There was a lot of discussion regarding how the social media strategy is changing the culture at Dell, how customer satisfaction is improving, etc. And, I’ve seen some reports on the before and after social media at Dell. But, I couldn’t resist the opportunity to ask a public company if this social media razzmatazz has really made, well, a serious difference in the company’s affairs. It’s so easy to be seduced by this technology and to see it working for startups and small pilots, but large public companies have weighty issues.

I’ve attended enough investor analyst conferences, and I’m wondering can Dell’s social media strategy help Michael Dell the next time he’s in front of Citigroup’s Richard Gardner and he has to explain why Dell has fallen from the #1 PC maker to the #2 PC maker worldwide? Better– can Dell’s social media strategy play a role in regaining Dell’s market leadership position?

I’m also wondering why in this recent interview (9/7) with Steve Lohr of the New York Times, why didn’t Michael Dell take the opportunity to highlight how the company is effectively using social media to help Dell “get back to its roots” by directly speaking to the customer base (and listening in return)? Dietz’s answer to my direct question about whether there have been any material results from the efforts was more or less, “no.” But, maybe it’s just too early to tell. Menchaca said Dell started the blog in July of 2006, so perhaps the results are not yet measurable in these terms.

I guess I’m just in the mood for some results. There is a wide and growing wider community of experts in the social media space. Perhaps there is solid data on this that I have not seen. Something we’ve been discussing in the Enterprise Irregulars group is how social media and enterprise 2.0 differ which would account for it having slipped my view, but that topic is a post for another day and probably involves taking a crack once again at the arbiter of all 2.0 legitimacy: wikipedia. Not sure I’m in the mood for fighting with the wikipedians.

The session with the Dell folks was interesting, despite my growing impatience for iron-clad case studies of 2.0 in business success. I learned a lot, actually. John Moore, a leading marketing consultant, blogger, and author of Tribal Knowledge, was in attendance at the SMC meeting. He videotaped parts of the event and posted these copious notes on his blog:

re: Dell’s Social Media Goals
1 | Enter into conversations with customers everyday in every major language
2 | Address any form of customer dissatisfaction head-on knowing that not everything will be solved and some of Dell’s weaknesses will be exposed
4 | Encourage “crowd sourcing” as the next step in listening to customers
5 | Use video to personalize the Dell story
[John Pope, digital media senior manager]

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re: Dell’s Beginning Blogging Efforts
Contrary to perception, Dell didn’t start blogging because of Jeff Jarvis. However, Jeff’s rants did help Dell realize there were customer service issues the company needed to address.In April of 2006, Michael Dell charged Dell to proactively find dissatisfied customers in the blogosphere and connect them with someone at Dell who could help them. By July, Dell had launched its blogging efforts.Dell stumbled with the initial launch of their Direct2Dell blog. They listened to feedback on how to improve it, namely adding links in posts linking to other bloggers. Dell adjusted and in some cases apologized for making a mistake.
[Lionel Menchaca, digital media manager]

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re: Changing the Tone of the Conversation about Dell
At the low point in 2006, Dell calculated at least 50% of the online conversation about Dell was negative. Today, Dell calculates the negative online conversation percentage number has been reduced to 23%. Dell doesn’t attribute all its blogging efforts to stemming the negative online conversation, but they are confident that blogging has helped.
[Lionel Menchaca]

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re: “Wins” in the Blogosphere
90% of the time Dell enters into a conversation, it “wins.” A “win” happens when (a) you enter the conversation and just thank someone for giving their opinion and (b) when you weigh-in on a negative thread with clarification of facts and the negativity subsides.
[John Pope]

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re: Dell’s Process for Posting on the Direct2Dell blog
Lionel serves as “editor-in-chief” for the Direct2Dell blog. As the editor-in-chief, Lionel balances three areas when it comes to topics the company chooses to blog about:
(1) content/ideas from Dell’s cadre of bloggers
(2) comments from Direct2Dell readers … if a topic emerges from readers, then Dell knows it needs to blog about that topic
(3) the need to add Dell’s voice to an online conversation that directly or indirectly impacts Dell.
[Lionel Menchaca]

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re: Moderating Comments
Dell moderates comments on the Direct2Dell blog. On busy weeks, Dell receives up to 400 comments. Well over 90% of those comments get posted following a quick look-see. Dell uses common sense guidelines when deciding which comments to moderate. Dell’s three common sense rules are:
(1) No profanity
(2) No direct attacks on Direct2Dell readers
(3) Anything addressing legal issues are not posted,
[Lionel Menchaca]

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re: IdeaStorm
The Direct2Dell blog changed how the company viewed online customer conversations. In the past, Dell wasn’t comfortable with participating or reacting to the conversations happening online about the company. However, the company now understands the importance of participating and reacting to the online conversation … so much so that … directly soliciting ideas from the online community was the next step in Dell’s social media strategy.In Febuary 2007, Dell launched IdeaStorm — which is, simplistically speaking, an “online suggestion box” inviting people to offer ideas on how Dell can improve its products and services.One unique aspect to IdeaStorm is Dell is now able to close the loop with feedback from customers. When customers post ideas on IdeaStorm, Dell is able to follow-up with posts/comments explaining that the company heard them and explain what Dell is doing in response.Dell views IdeaStorm as a way its product development team can co-create products with customers. Pre-installed Linux on Dell computers was one of the first ideas generated from IdeaStorm that Dell product developers worked with customers to co-create and introduce to the marketplace.There are about 35 other ideas Dell has put into action as a response to listening to feedback from customers on IdeaStorm.
[Caroline Dietz, online community manager for IdeaStorm]

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re: Lessons Dell is Learning from IdeaStorm
While there have been many successes with IdeaStorm, Dell is still adapting to how this initiative is changing the culture at the company. Being more transparent and sharing company information isn’t a cornerstone of the Dell corporate culture. However, IdeaStorm requires a certain comfort level with being open and forthcoming that Dell employees are adjusting to. Clearly, Dell’s participation in the online social media world is having an impact on its company culture.
[Caroline Dietz]

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re: Dell EmployeeStorm
As a result of the success IdeaStorm has had in generating ideas from customers, Dell has launched EmployeeStorm to generate ideas and comments from its 88,000 employees. A by-product has been employees are learning to become more comfortable sharing ideas and adding comments that they are now more willing to participate in IdeaStorm.
[Caroline Dietz]

Enterprise vendors start beating the drum

Last week was a banner 2.0 week for enterprise vendors. Gee. Do you think they were reading my blog? The week got off to a good start for me with a snappy little web 2.0 seminar hosted right here in Austin by IBM, “Web 2.0 Goes to Work.” Of course, SAP announced SAP By Design, but my fellow Irregulars did an awesome job conveying the import of that announcement. Like I said to Charlie Wood at lunch the other day, “I can’t even spell SAP…” So, I won’t attempt to comment on the SAP announcement. I’m scheduled to attend SAP’s TechEd Conference next week. We’ll see if I can be learnt.

On the IBM gig, I was surprised, frankly, to find that both Rod Smith and David Barnes were both in attendance at this seminar and both presented. Smith wasn’t there for the whole shindig, but he was there to lend executive support to the the day. Smith related some anecdotal accounts of IBM’s experiences discussing 2.0 with key accounts. In general he said it’s easier to sit with lines of business now (as opposed to IT) to brainstorm ideas. With these new approaches, customers are willing to experiment more, even fail if need be, rather than wait for long, protracted 6-month development efforts that incorporate all the bells and whistles required to support the enterprise environment such as security, privacy, and compliance. Smith said, “That takes time, and [LOBs are] willing to take certain risks.” What I loved about Smith’s early discussions with IBM customers was the interest level about what was possible in the enterprise. He expressed the sentiment that customers want information to be “mashable, remixable…” that they started looking at their data as modular assets– using it in ways they hadn’t planned for. One example yielded an unexpected result when a mashup uncovered shipping information that helped a global distribution company combat piracy on the high seas.

After Smith and Barnes were done keynoting and introducing, for some reason, they made us all wear white lab coats (question mark?) and we self-sectioned off into three breakout sessions focused on each of the three main areas: collaboration, mashups, and IT integration with web 2.0 (my interpretation). I attended the first and the last, as I was having a private demo of QEDWiki in a few days. The collaboration session drew a mix of IBMers, customers, and partners. Questions ranged from, “How do I get people in my company to collaborate with these new tools?” to “How can we get access to data buried deep inside those web2.0-soulless mainframes?” Okay, well that was me asking that question. I had the good fortune to be sitting next to a veteran IBMer who said it IS possible to layer on interfaces to get access to all data in the enterprise so folks can collaborate on just about anything. The question then became– how willing would IT be to let the whole company have open and free access to that data? And round and round we went…

On the IT software integration session, my BSG colleagues were particularly engaged. IBM has packaged its offerings under the bundle, “Info 2.0.” It’s basically an integrated suite of technologies that enable the creation of mashable content. At present, I believe it includes what they’re currently calling DAMIA which transforms content into syndication feeds, the Mashup Hub where you discover, catalog, tag feeds for remixing and then syndicate content and then finally, QEDWiki which I’ve blogged about before and will later. They also have something called Ms. Rita (lovely Rita, “meter maid” in a too short uniform skirt that will never fly with corporate branding IMHO; sheesh, boys!) which is a configurable “utilization management service” to meter, monitor, and monetize web 2.0 an SOA components, applications or environments. Miss Rita (or, whatever) will probably not be available in the first release of the Info 2.0 announcement, not sure why. One fairly cool IBM application in beta right now is Many Eyes. Check it out for a free trial. If you want to see some of these tools in action check out some of these demos, podcasts, and videos.

Blogger transparency dictates that I confess I’m not qualified to comment on the technical intricacies of IBM’s foray into web 2.0, but I give Big Blue huge points for promoting web 2.0 in the enterprise. Like SAP, Oracle, and Microsoft, IBM has something the startups do not: a massive installed base. Even if only IBM puts some massive marketing muscle behind evangelizing, I kind of don’t care if their solutions and approach are a yawner. My sense is, they are serious about this sector for interesting economic motives that may possibly not be obvious to us right now. For instance, did it ever occur to anyone that “the cloud” is not really a cloud at all? Is IBM viewing the 2.0 transformation as an opportunity to reap big benefits from big iron? Just food for thought. Here are two pieces to ponder– one from the WSJ, one from CIO insight.

A few days after the seminar, I had the chance to revisit with Dan Gisolfi to see what he’s been up to lately with QEDWiki. Dan has teamed up with John Musser of Programmable Web. I will have more on that later this week, maybe tomorrow, as well as a report from an interesting meeting I attended with the local Social Media Club here in Austin.

Googlicious

Well, although the Enterprise Irregular bloggers have been giving Google a hard time lately, particularly Josh who thinks Google is the next evil empire, I am just not feelin’ the, um, hate? Maybe it’s because I’m gearing up for the upcoming Office 2.0 conference, which is slated to sell out this weekend at 550 attendees– all interested in Google-esque business models and practices.

In the spirit of joie de online vivre, I leave you with this:

See you at Office 2.0! 🙂

Office 2.0 Enterprise 2.0 Track Zeros in on Adoption Issues

In true 2.0 form, the conference organizers for the Enterprise 2.0 track team have been collaborating around the world, assembling an A-list of early adopters on Enterprise 2.0, evangelists, and visionary entrepreneurs. Using Skype, IM, wikis, and the occasional email, we have been able to bring together a terrific team of speakers from three continents.

Ismael will be posting the agenda sometime in the next 24 hours, and some of the invited speakers are not yet confirmed, but I wanted to start getting the word out about what we have going on on our side of the house (there is a mobility track running concurrently with the Enterprise 2.0 track).

I already blogged about the dynamic duo Gavin/Revell Show which will open the conference track on Day One. This presentation will set the agenda for much of what will be discussed at the remainder of the two days of the conference, as these guys were early into the Enterprise 2.0 game. As Ismael is interested in focusing this year specifically on customer issues, the Pfizer case study will cover the gamut of early adoption issues. I don’t know exactly what these guys will present, but if my hunch is correct, you may want to bring ear plugs to soften the sound effects of their presentation. 🙂

We also looked hard at what is happening in the social media space in the enterprise. We are still trying to put this together, but our intention is to have Facebook, Ning, Plaxo, and LinkedIn together on a panel moderated by Shel Israel. Shel has agreed, and we’re slowly signing up the vendors… I’m particularly excited about this one. Please start formulating your questions for this panel. Remember, you’ll be able to send your questions directly to the panel via your iPhone…

Like Andy McAfee says, “It’s not (just) the technology.” Culture, culture, culture is the new barometer for success with Enterprise 2.0. But cultural changes can be painful especially within a large enterprise. Some argue they are too disruptive to be effective and that hierarchical systems work for a reason. We put together an expert panel on Culture in the Enterprise to discuss these larger issues. Similarly, we will have a Customer Panel who will share real war stories from the trenches. From investment banks to pharmaceuticals to manufacturers, hear first hand from evangelists and practitioners what’s working and what’s not.

Day Two begins with a presentation by Adam Carson who has been on a mission to bring Enterprise 2.0 to Morgan Stanley. Adam’s story took some interesting twists and turns this year. Everyone will find something they can relate to in Adam’s presentation. Then, coming from half-way around the world will be Stephen Collins who has done some of the best slideshare presentations I’ve seen on Enterprise 2.0 this year. Steve will present “Knowledge Worker 2.0.” Who is the KW2.0? It’s you.

This year’s new collaboration tool is mindmapping. We included a session on the power of visual collaboration. This panel will explain this powerful new collaborative tool and how to employ it within the enterprise. Finally, still pending confirmation, we hope to have Dion Hinchcliffe give us a wrap-up of the state-of-the-market in Enterprise 2.0 and then lead a panel on company-sponsored user communities such as SAP’s Software Developer Network (SDN). Other user communities we are recruiting include Sony, Webex, and Atlassian. If you have a large user community and would like to be on this panel, please let us know.

These sessions may change as we near the conference date, but this is what we have planned thus far. Keep checking the Office 2.0 site for Ismael’s posting of the conference track agenda.

The Original Unconference: Mashup Camp

What is not to love about Mashup Camp? This is my first unconference event, and I am an easy convert. It defines the free-form, emergent foundation of enterprise 2.0 in that it is completely user (developer) driven. No formal speakers, no imposed structure. What’s interesting is that developers mix easily with vendors and sponsors because from what I’ve seen they’re all intellectually curious and are asking a lot of the same questions. I don’t see a lot of marketing and selling going on here.

The day starts by mapping out a series of sessions the camp wants to discuss with peers. Developers get to pick time slots first, then sponsors, then other vendors.

Next, each session is posted on a large, paper schedule that is transfered by David Berlind onto a wiki that everyone can access and annotate with session notes all day long.

Then, everyone self-assembles and visits sessions that interests them. There was a lunch a break (day one), and the favorite part of the day for me was “speed-geeking” which consisted of 5-minute demos of about maybe 2 dozen mashups located at tables in the grand hall at the computer museum. Each participant had five minutes to explain his or her mashup, show its main features, and answer questions.

All the mashups were impressive, but I know I and Jeff Nolan were particularly impressed with the Plaxo mashup demo. Straight from the press release, the 3.0 version:

“has a content sharing feeds system, which several networks are leveraging, especially after the combined success of Facebook apps with its newsfeeds feature. Individual feeds for Plaxo users will initially include those for Flickr photos, blogposts, Amazon wish lists and Plaxo contact info modifications.”

I videotaped the demo here for you to see for yourself. I apologize, but the “night vision” option was accidentally selected on the camera I shot it with. Grrr… Still viewable, though. This is Joseph Smarr, Architect for Plaxo, demoing Plaxo’s new 3.0 version.

 

Office 2.0 The Sequel: Adds Enterprise 2.0 Track

Well, planning has begun for the 2nd annual Office 2.0 Conference. Yay! I’m pleased to announce that Ismael Ghalimi has nominated me (for BSG Alliance), Jevon McDonald, and Catherine Shinners to be the lucky volunteer team who will put together the Enterprise 2.0 track for the conference.

If you can only make one conference for enterprise 2.0 next fall, make this one. The conference will again be held at the St. Regis in San Francisco. Ismael has booked a lot more space in the hotel this time, so there will plenty of room for networking and visiting panels and demos. The conference web site should go up tomorrow at this link as early as tomorrow. Keep checking for it. Oh, you might want to sign up early too. The conference was a huge success last year, and Ismael is intent on keeping it small, so it may sell out. There is also a Facebook event and group for Office 2.0.

The format for the conference will change somewhat this year. There will still be killer demos, jaw-dropping celebs, and investors from the 2.0 insider crowd, but the focus this year will be on customers and real adoption of Office 2.0 tools and technologies.

Regarding enterprise 2.0 specifically, we are interested in showcasing user case studies. If you have a particular user case study you’d like to share with us, please let us know as soon as possible. Frame your pitches in terms of business benefits, or possibly, social benefits that led or will lead to increased business benefits. We’re also interested in security, privacy, governance issues– typical IT issues and how they’re impacting enterprise 2.0 adoption. The stories don’t all have to be positive; if something didn’t work, and we can learn from it, we want to hear that too.

Send any questions or interest in participating on the enterprise 2.0 track to me, Jevon, or Catherine directly. My email address is susan at bsgalliance dot com.

Photo courtesy of Brian Solis.