I had a big insight today: the word “social” in the term “social media” represents the ultimate in misleading advertising, and is responsible for many failures and a lot of disenchantment, especially within the enterprise. The adjective attracts exactly the sort of people most likely to fail at doing anything valuable with the technology. The sort of extroverted, harmony-seeking, consensus-driven collectivists who think it is all about the group, cutting big-ego prima donnas down to size, and building Brave New Egalitarian Communities that enshrine social justice values. It also explains why thoroughly introverted, unsociable, egoistic and ornery individualists (I am one; among my nicknames in college was “hermit”) take to the medium like ducks to water. This conflation of social with sociable, collectivist and communitarian is extraordinarily tempting. Yes, the medium fosters communication and collaboration, but remember, wolf packs communicate and collaborate rather better than sheep. And they compete viciously for the carcass right after. The true nature of social media, the “message” of this medium, is one of radical, uncompromising individualism, within a brutally competitive, bubblegum-flavored Darwinian virtual environment. The “social” adjective is about something else entirely, not collectivist utopia. Allow me to elaborate. The implications are extraordinarily counter-intuitive, and if you don’t learn to appreciate them, you will be eaten by the wolves.
I had the chance to talk to Euan Semple, and old and dear friend, and get his perspective on what’s happening in the enterprise. Since his years working at the BBC, and now as an independent consultant, Euan has developed a deep understanding of the barriers and benefits of adopting new web technologies.
I was particularly struck with his belief that IT people are not necessarily the wellspring of innovation in this uptake. “It would take an almost complete reinvention of themselves.” And that things might be more difficult now that it has become “Enterprise 2.0″ and not just some experiment. But at the same time he thinks it needs to “grow up” if it is going to do something big for the enterprise.
We recently asked the Enterprise 2.0 community to weigh in on the agenda we’re building for the Enterprise 2.0 Conference. Our call for papers yielded over 450 submissions - a nearly 100% increase over 2008. We could not expect everyone to read through all 450 abstracts so our Advisory Board painstakingly made the first round of cuts, pruning the submissions down to a more manageable number. This group of submissions went out for public vote a couple weeks back and the top sessions from that process are as follows:
Ingres and Alfresco have teamed to create an open-source alternative to Microsoft’s SharePoint platform for document collaboration and management. The Linux-based appliance joins Alfresco’s ECM with Ingres’ database services. Alfresco has long positioned itself as a lower-cost offering that also offers the extensibility of open-source.
Recently, a colleague attended a cloud-computing workshop and mentioned a bit of trivia. One of the experts at the event didn’t like the word ‘cloud’ and insisted on using the term “Infrastructure as a Service.” What’s in a name? Everything or nothing, depending on your point-of-view. You could argue that a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, but you could also argue that the right name, with the right connotations, is what takes trends past a tipping point. So let me offer you impartial thumbnail ‘name analysis’ of the common candidates, and you decide which you like.
As we begin 2009, not only is it difficult for companies to attract new business, it’s tough to keep your existing customers. Budgets are sliced and orders from the top down are ‘do more with less’ – which is actually the theme of Web 2.0 Expo this year. Even if your customers are happy, budget restrictions may prevent them from repeat business.
Regardless of your vertical, getting to know your customers – especially in a down economy – is vital for success. If done correctly, there is opportunity to grow market share and strengthen your brand and its positioning.
Utilizing enterprise 2.0 tools to capture customers’ data and feedback enables an organization to take a transactional relationship and give it more dimension. Overtone Inc has take this concept of listening and developed a brand-monitoring solution called the Open Mic Integrated Listening System which delivers contextualized insights based upon what your customers are saying. Open Mic works in 4 steps: collection, categorizing, analyzing and acting. Continue Reading »
Dave Hersh is the CEO of Jive Software, a leading vendor of ‘business social software’ — a term I can embrace easily.
I apologize for Dave’s chin getting cut off, but what he says still resonates. Companies have gotten all they can out of the Web 1.0 business process oriented apps (like SAP), and now they are looking for new advantage in the social dimension of their companies’ workings, Dave thinks.
The Enterprise 2.0 Blog is affiliated with the Enterprise 2.0 Conference, an event focusing on social tools and technologies that help make companies more creative, agile and productive.
Feb 26th, 2009 |
