I had one of those midnight “wake up and go Doh!” moments last week. A common feature across nearly every conversation I’ve had about Enterprise 2.0 subjects hit me. Everybody says “Enterprise search is broken.” In fact it is one of the first things to come up. But then people move on. As Churchill once said, people often stumble across the truth, but most pick themselves up and move on. I am guilty too. I first “stumbled” 3 years ago, and it’s taken me this long to say, “wait a minute, I never thought that through.”
People move on because they seem to assume that this is incompetence at work. Search is sooo 1.0, right? It’s been solved, and we’re just fumbling the execution, right? You usually get some sort of ironic joke along the lines of “wow, it is so easy to find stuff out there on the public Web, and here with all our resources, we can’t even do search right.”
And then the conversation tends to move on to more obviously “2.0″ things like blogs, wikis, how to increase participation, and my personal pet peeve: annoying moaning about “culture change.”
Hold on. Rewind. Let’s go back to search and think for a moment. I have a theory here, and I’d like to see if all you smart E 2.0 guys agree. I have reached a radical conclusion: broken search is the problem, but fixing search is not the solution. Search breaks behind the firewall for social, not technical reasons.
Oliver Marks was kind of enough to come by the TechWeb office and do a brief interview with me about the Launch Pad program for Collaboration 2.0 on ZDNet. I’ve re-posted his post below, and you can find the full story on ZDNet here.
If you’re an Enterprise 2.0 entrepreneur, you’ve got until August 30 to Twitter pitch #e2conf-lp Paige Finkelman of the US Enterprise 2.0 Conference your ‘Launch Pad’ contest entry for consideration by the jury (which includes me), and broader audience votes.
The contest, to be held at the West Coast US edition of the show in November, is open to all Enterprise 2.0 vendors of any size that have launched or announced something new in 2010.
Paige spells things out above and you can find more details on the E2.0 blog, with rules and key dates listed on the official Launch Pad site.
Innovation is the lifeblood of any space, and you may find yourself on stage with Paige in November if your Enterprise 2.0 offering makes it to the finals, providing you with valuable exposure.
The concept of a Twitter pitch is a powerful one: simply send a tweet containing the hash tag #e2conf-lp and your contest entry from your Twitter account to get into the running.
Here’s a video archive of past finalists…I’m looking forward to seeing the new crop of entries and ideas…
All that stands between you and presenting on the Enterprise 2.0 Santa Clara keynote stage is one Tweet. A mere 140 characters.
One week remains for enterprise 2.0 / collaboration vendors to Twitter pitch #e2conf-lp and tell the E2.0 team and Launch PadJury what you’re up to in 2010. The Launch Pad contest is open to all enterprise 2.0 companies - big or small - that have released or announced something new in 2010. A new product, a new version, a new partnership or integration point - so long as the announcement was made this year, it counts.
You can find more info on the E2.0 blog, and rules and key dates are listed on the official Launch Pad site.
Craft those 140 characters carefully and let her rip! Twitter Round 1 closes on Monday, August 30th. Looking forward to your submission, and best of luck with the contest!
Google announced last week it would end development of Wave as a stand-alone collaboration tool. While Wave was ground-breaking in terms of delivering an ability for groups of individuals to collaborate in real time around a mix of text and rich media, governance concerns limited adoption by those who could most benefit: business users.
Google did say it would continue development of Wave, but instead seek to integrate it into its other applications. As a model for future collaboration, Wave did make a wave. But its greatest impact will be to drive co-authoring capabilities into other collaboration applications.
Are you an enterprise 2.0 company up to something cool in 2010? Launch Pad wants to know about it. The Launch Pad contest has been a part of the Enterprise 2.0 Conference for many years, providing a platform for innovation to shine on the keynote stage.
Who qualifies?
The contest is open to all enterprise 2.0 companies - big or small - that have released or announced something new in 2010. A new product, a new version, a new partnership or integration point - so long as the announcement was made this year, it counts.
How do I enter?
Well, things start off rather simply. Beginning August 9th, 2010, you have until August 30th, 2010 to make your Twitter pitch to the Launch Pad hashtag: #e2conf-lp. We want to hear, in 140 characters or less, what makes you Launch Pad worthy.
Then what?
After Twitter submissions close on August 30th, myself and the esteemed Enterprise 2.0 Launch Pad Jury will vet the entries and choose our 8 favorite. Those 8 will then be asked to create a 3 minute video demoing their product. We’ll open up a community vote on September 20th, 2010. The four videos with the most votes will be asked to demo on the keynote stage at Enterprise 2.0 Santa Clara on November 10th, 2010. The contest culminates with a live audience vote to select the Launch Pad winner. More info on rules and key dates here.
Any cool prizes?
Of course. In addition to the exposure our Launch Pad qualifiers receive with their involvement in the program, our Final Four receive a special publicity package to help get as much buzz as possible out of the contest.
To get a taste of what our previous winners have submitted, take a peek at our video archive.
Looking forward to your Tweets starting August 9th!
Microsoft last week announced a connector between Microsoft Outlook, and profile information in Facebook. The service works by matching a user’s e-mail address to their Facebook profile. So if one of your contacts in Outlook is on Facebook, you will see whatever information is publicly available from their profile within Outlook (or whatever information you can access if you are “friends”).Microsoft previously announced a similar integration between Outlook at LinkedIn.
Microsoft’s move creates new challenges for organizations trying to balance the need to embrace the world of social software with concerns over security, compliance, privacy and productivity. Our 2010 benchmark of over 200 companies shows that 40% block access to public social sites such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, but often are forced to back off blanket bans due to employee demand or business justifications to participate in public social communities. Meanwhile, only 23% have a formal social strategy.
Allowing employees to engage with public social networks can provide real benefits in terms of building personal relationships with customers, partners, and suppliers, but of course carries risk and must be implemented with respect to information protection requirements (See Socialware’s recently released Guide to Facebook Social Networking Compliance).
We continue to spend a lot of time working with our clients to try and help them balance the need for openness with the reality of governance. Enterprise managers should take efforts by Microsoft and others to poke holes in the social firewall as further justification for a proactive enterprise social strategy.
Thank you to all who submitted proposals and have participated in the Call for Papers process. And now the Community Vote! Tell us which submissions are your favorites. Tell us which submissions address the E2 topics, issues and questions your enterprise is facing. Tell us which submissions you want us to consider for inclusion in the E2 Santa Clara Conference agenda.
We encourage all who submitted, all who plan on attending Enterprise 2.0 Conference Santa Clara, and anyone interested in Enterprise 2.0, to review the submissions, and vote for their favorites. Submissions are searchable by category, speaker or keyword, and votes received by each session will be viewable by all participants. Sessions advance to the “Crowd Favorites” stage based on community votes, after which they will be reviewed by the E2 Advisory Board. Submissions selected by the Advisory Board will then proceed to the final “Selected Sessions” stage. Selected speakers will be contacted in August.
We look forward to discovering the topics and sessions you want to see incorporated in the E2 Santa Clara 2010 Conference Agenda. If you have any questions, feel free to contact me at mfarrell@techweb.com or (415) 947-6250.
After just coming back from E2.0 in Boston it’s safe to say that most vendors in the space (or so it seems) are moving in the same direction, towards enterprise collaboration, and when I say “enterprise collaboration” I literally mean collaboration for the enterprises, as in large companies. Which leaves me asking, “what about small and medium size businesses?” The small and medium size businesses in the E2.0 space are being under served in my opinion. It also makes one wonder if a small or medium size business has the same needs as an enterprise business to begin with. I say no.
From speaking with various companies of different shapes and sizes (and from owning a small business, Chess Media Group) I can say that while Enterprise size organizations are interested in collaboration many small businesses (and some mid size as well) are not. Again, this is an observation but it seems as though smaller businesses are more interested in business management tools as opposed to collaboration tools. The business I run works with a handful of people and the issue that we run into is that we are using multiple tools to do things such as share documents, invoice clients, email market, project manage, time track, and keep track of contacts. We don’t have trouble collaborating on things that needs to get done but we do run into challenges when it comes time to using multiple tools to run our business.
It wouldn’t make sense for many smaller organizations to use Sharepoint, Jive, Cisco’s Quad, or a host of other “collaboration” tools on the market today, but what about an overall business management tool (there are several possible candidates that I am aware of)? Something that allows me to access Gdocs, Mailchimp, Freshbooks, integrate my contacts, and do anything else I need to manage my small business from one platform/interface?
Larger organizations with hundreds or thousands of employees have specific departments that handle these tasks and their challenges are based around finding the right people and information to get their jobs done in the best way possible.
So let me ask you, are business management tools more suited for small and medium size businesses whilst collaboration tools are more relevant for larger companies? What have you seen?
The deadline for the Call for Papers for E2 Santa Clara 2010 has been extended to Friday, July 2nd. We’ve partnered with Spigit to vet our submissions, and you can begin the process here.
A few important things to remember:
Sign in and create an account to make or review submissions.
If you have an account from the E2 Boston 2010 Call for Papers, it will work here.
Submissions can be tagged with one of our pre-populated technology areas or a unique topic of the submitter’s choice.
All submissions made will be immediately viewable on a discussion forum.
Submitters will be allowed to edit their submissions based on any feedback received, and can also attach files with supporting materials to submissions.
Submissions will be searchable by technology area, keyword or speaker
After the Call for Papers submissions period closes on July 2nd, an official voting period will begin July 6th through July 16th. The submissions with the most votes will be reviewed by the Advisory Board and considered for inclusion in the Enterprise 2.0 Conference. Please note, top number of votes does not mean automatic inclusion in the conference. We want the E2 community to collaborate, give us their most exciting ideas and experiences, and tell us what they want to see in Santa Clara in November.
Have any questions about submitting? Manuela Farrell put together a great post with more info on the the process. She is also a great resource to help answer your questions.
Another Enterprise 2.0 is in the books! This year’s show featured a lot more diversity in terms of content and focus, moving beyond a social networking and into areas such as video, organizational strategies, and policy/governance. But perhaps the most noteworthy aspect of the show was the evolution of collaboration beyond stand-alone platforms and into the very fabric of the organization.
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.
Sep 1st, 2010 |
