Enterprise 2.0 San Francisco 2009 is a wrap! This week has been phenomenal, with tons of press coverage, photos and buzz. Amongst all the great keynotes & general sessions at the conference, I wanted to take a moment to reflect and recognize the Launch Pad program and our Four Finalists.

After making it through two rigorous rounds of voting, CubeTree, The Garland Group, Twiki and XWiki made it to the Final Four and presented live on the keynote stage on Wednesday, November 4, 2009. Each of the presenters had 5 minutes to demo their product, and after each company had their turn, the audience participated in a live text-to-vote, courtesy of our friends at Mozes.

The results tabulated in real-time percentages, and with 42% of the vote, CubeTree was crowned the Enterprise 2.0 San Francisco Launch Pad winner. When CubeTree’s CEO & Co-Founder was asked to explain how he felt about winning Launch Pad in 140 characters or less, Carlin Wiegner succinctly replied that he was happy. Nice one Carlin.

I wanted to personally thank Steve Wylie, the Enterprise 2.0 Conference GM, for letting me serve as chairperson for the compeition. Big thanks to Carlin, Brad, Jitendra, Milind and Ludovic for doing such a great job and helping to make this program a huge success! Cheers guys.

First published on CloudAve

I’ve been a follower of Helpstream CEO Bob Warfield since before I begun blogging. He’s a super smart, super analytical SaaS commentator who left the world of full time blogging to enjoy the rewards of corporate leadership. I’d have made this session no matter what, the fact it included a bunch of other really smart people provided further justification. Clara Shih is the CEO of Hearsay Labs, Natalie Petouhoff,- is a Senior Analyst for Forrester Research and Wendy Lea is CEO of GetSatisfaction and Phil Fernandez is from Marketo.

Petouhoff gave the analogy of cave drawings from eons ago – when all else is gone the messages remain – hence her perspective that the discussion about support has to occur at a management level. Customer service is broken and we’re in the midst of a perfect storm. years and years of terrible customer service and the emergence of social media are lead to a business transformation. Social media is a catalyst for change within an organization.

Fernandez explained that Marketo had active support from its inception – it’s an essential part of their customer support portal for both inbound and self service support contact. He gave an example of case diversion during the recent release of their updated offering. The inbound support ticket mix is changing between phone, email and web. Approx two thirds are human assisted while the remainder are self-service.

Lea talked about the Get Satisfaction freemium model and that they encourage their users to build community wherever is most appropriate for them – whether it’s on their own site, in Facebook or wherever.

Warfield explained that Helpstream is trying to combine social and process – creating a repeatable process around social interactions.

The panel discussed ComcastCares and how just showing customers that an organization cares is so important. Petouhoff talked about the fact that customer service departments are continually told to do more with less – they’re not supported in their role. Lea explained that the majority of people signing up for GetSatisfaction are doing so to use it for feedback – marketing and customer support need to be integrated. Warfield explained that the customers really want an integrated experience with a company.

Warfield discussed the concept of “deflection” where customer services aim is to have their customers NOT engage with customer services. The trick is to integrate the inbound communications and therefore have customer support become an asset rather than a cost to the organization.

Petouhoff discussed the need for openness, honesty and authenticity. The conversations are occurring anyway, it’s important for companies to embrace and engage with them. She gave some statistics about customer retention in the case of good support – it’s apparently 65% higher than otherwise.

Lea gave the example of Nike running who for $8000 per annum got a GetSatisfaction widget that has drawn huge content that is invaluable to the organization for product development. Warfield used an example of InfusionSoft who have leveraged Helpstream to capture the voice and sentiment of the community.

Lea contends that social media is shifting communications to a much more “natural language” approach – less guard and beating around the bush and more openness and honesty. Again the themes of authenticity, naturalness and honesty. Warfield concurred, saying that social media is just about people – people doing what they do in real life.

A great session with much agreement around the table…

First published on CloudAve.

In two weeks time I’ll be winging my way across the world for the inaugural San Francisco holding of the Enterprise 2.0 conference. As is the norm before large events like this, the emails have started pouring in already asking for times for briefings on products and services to be released during the conference.

In a bid to save frustration on all sides, and as a suggestion to my fellow media attendees, I thought I’d publish here my simple guide to securing time with me (bear in mind there’s hundreds of companies going to be at the event, I’m in SF for just one week and I like to sleep from time to time);

1. Please make it relevant. I’m a Cloud computing and SaaS guy with an interest in business process software and the culture shift needed to ease adoption of “Enterprise 2.0”. Sorry but there’s a bunch of things that simply aren’t in my sphere of interest. Please do some research and read my stuff to get a feel for what will interest and be relevant to me
2. I live in New Zealand, that’s a long way from SF and is in an entirely different timezone – if you want to engage me in a pre event briefing (something I’m not at all against), please take the time to work out when might be a suitable time for me. While I’m a very early riser who partly works in Pacific time, 3am is not a good time to be showing me the latest micro-blogging service for enterprise
3. Find out ways to engage me when you’ll get good attention. I’m a fitness fan and jog most mornings, especially when attending high-stress events like Enterprise 2.0. If someone comes to me and suggests a chat over a leisurely 5 mile run they’re likely to capture my undivided attention – it’s a good opportunity!
4. Work out what pushes my buttons – we all get jaded from lots and lots of calls and a million and one “me too” offerings. Find some way to reach out to me (and Cocktails are definitely NOT my thing) and your chances go up exponentially. I’ve written fairly extensively about a couple of companies lately precisely because their PR people connected with me in all the right ways – this is in no way a “pay for play” situation, merely a way to ensure you’re heard above the hubbub

So there you have it – a simple four step guide to ensuring your investment in media relations pays off. I’d be interested to hear what my fellow media attendees thoughts are….

If you haven’t done so already, be sure to take a moment and peruse our 8 Launch Pad quarter-finalist videos and cast your vote before tomorrow evening.

Our 8 quarter-finalist were chosen to by the E2 team as the best, brightest and most innovative tools from the general pool of submissions. We’re now looking to the E2 community to check out their 3 minute videos and select your favorite. Please note that you can only vote one time for the vid you would like to see move to the next round.

The 4 finalists with the most votes will be announced on October 16 and provided the chance to a give a 5 minute demonstration of their application live on the keynote stage at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference in San Francisco on November 4.

Are you one of the 8 quarter-finalists? Help get the word out to your network to start voting using #e2conf-lp and #e2conf.

Rock the vote!

I’ve been spending some time lately with social business and collaboration consultants, Oliver Marks and Sameer Patel, discussing where we’re headed with the Enterprise 2.0 industry and the role the Enterprise 2.0 Conference plays as a catalyst for this market. Oliver and Sameer spend their days helping companies - large companies - understand how best to leverage social and collaborative tools.  But what I find refreshing in our conversations is that they move very quickly to focus on what we’re trying to achieve with these technologies and strategies.  How are we utilizing Enterprise 2.0 to achieve demonstrable and measurable results?

As an industry we’ve spent a lot of time discussing the merits of social and web 2.0 tools in business.  That’s been an important part of the Enterprise 2.0 conversation as I firmly believe that the disparity between consumer technology and business technology has largely fueled the Enterprise 2.0 market.

At our Boston conference I heard time and time again, “it’s not about the tools, it’s about adoption.”  The burning question was how to change the business culture to better utilize these tools. There’s no question that culture and adoption play a massive role in being successful with Enterprise 2.0 but there’s more to this.

What many Enterprise 2.0 experts and practitioners fail to recognize are the end results they are trying to achieve.   Yes, replacing the corporate intranet with a wiki is generally a major step forward for businesses. But the promise of Enterprise 2.0 goes far beyond that, into functional areas within the organization that can also benefit from the underlying framework, strategies and tools that comprise Enterprise 2.0.  That’s where the real value lies and that’s also the trickiest part to fully understand, dissect and integrate with an enterprise-wide strategy.

With Oliver and Sameer’s help and guidance, our San Francisco conference is going to tackle this challenge through a series of sessions and half-day intensive workshop that Oliver and Sameer will co-chair. The workshop will address how to build a business case for enterprise-scale performance acceleration - a must attend program for anyone tasked with driving a company-wide Enterprise 2.0 strategy.  The breakout sessions will look at how an Enterprise 2.0 strategy can unlock value in specific functions within business including; business partner networks; customer support and collaboration networks.

Oliver and Sameer are putting tremendous effort into this program to provide attendees with actionable information and best practices. We hope to build on this program at future events so please let us know how this resonates with your interests or suggest topics you’d like them to address:

@olivermarks

@sameerpatel

@swylie650

Further discussion on this topic from Oliver and Sameer:

Enterprise 2.0 and the Paradigm of Social Partnerships - Pretzel Logic

How To Sell Collaborative Business Performance Internally - ZDNet

After reviewing the impressive submissions and internal deliberation, Enterprise 2.0 is pleased to announce the Launch Pad 9 quarter-finalists from Round One’s Twitter submissions. They are, in alphabetical order…

Ally Software

allysoftware: @e2conf #e2conflp Managing complex projects is stuck in Web1, too many emails & meetings. Harmony simplifies complex project & schedule mgmt

Covisint

MikejMorley: Connect employees to the purpose of the org, allow emp’s to see what eachother are working on&realize the Harvest of human capitol #e2conflp

thegarlandgroup: @e2conf - RiskKey, our real-time compliance mgmt tool for banks, promotes transparency, collaboration, and trust. They need us. #e2conflp

HashWork

@e2conf #e2conflp @Hashwork provides a social presence on web for any company and its community of custo - http://bit.ly/YlnGk by @wlansford

IncentiveLive

incentivelive: #e2conflp An enterprise wiki, blog, social network and widget platform? Great GUI & .NET? Well you’ve guessed right, it’s not Sharepoint :)

By way of @ITSinsider, @tweetmeme and @elsua… I just caught this interesting slideshow on Enterprise 2.0 initiatives at Adidas Group by Christian Kuhna.  Funny that just a couple weeks ago I announced that Nike would present at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference on their internal collaboration strategy.

So it would seem that the leading Enterprise 2.0 markets are  government and, uh… shoes.

If you’ve been working hard on that 140 character pitch, a friendly reminder that we need your Launch Pad submission tomorrow to be considered for the chance to present on the main stage at Enterprise 2.0 in San Francisco on November 4, 2009.

We’ll announce the 9 quarter-finalists on September 28 . Those lucky 9 will then move on to Round 2 video submissions.

Interested in entering? First let us know who you are, and then Twitter pitch to #e2conflp. For more information check out the official Launch Pad site.

Best of luck!

Today was an interesting day in the Enterprise 2.0 echo chamber that reminded me of my favorite short poem by Robert Frost,

“We all dance around the circle and suppose. The secret sits in the middle and knows.”

A spirited debate erupted this morning in the blogosphere and on Twitter whether the Enterprise 2.0 meme should be retired in favor of the newly popular Social Business meme. The best quote I heard all day was from Megan Murray at Booz Allen Hamilton, the firm that won this year’s Open Enterprise 2009 case study . Ms. Murray wrote,

“In the end I’m not concerned with what we call it. I’ve got work to do.”

The secret, in this case, is that there are millions of enterprise professionals around the world that simply are not tuned into this hair-splitting debate. Whether we’d like to admit it to ourselves or not, large organizations are predominantly still hierarchical fiefdoms. Worse? Senior management and executives still make the big, expensive decisions on strategy and execution. We can continue to debate all the nuances of what Enterprise 2.0 is or isn’t or if it should be at all, but in the end, the good news about enterprise-wide collaboration and “social” innovation will be told and sold in small, leather-chaired conference rooms around the world. And, my prediction is that it will be told and sold by top drawer management consultants like Tammy Erickson.

Tammy is both a McKinsey Award-winning author and executive speaker. As President of nGenera Insight, she has conducted ground-breaking, extensive research on changing demographics and employee values and, most recently, on how successful organizations work. Tammy has co-authored four Harvard Business Review articles and the books Retire Retirement: Career Strategies for the Boomer Generation and Workforce Crisis: How to Beat the Coming Shortage of Skills and Talent. Her blog, Across the Ages, was one of the first Harvard Business Publishing Discussion Forum blogs. You can also find her blogging at Huffington Post.

I was the board member who nominated Tammy to open the conference this year in San Francisco. My position for supporting Tammy was rooted in the need to elevate the conversation of enterprise transformation to a senior management/executive level. Although we had many other good candidates, I felt Tammy was unique in her ability to raise the conversation to a more strategic level and connect the dots to business value. I hope you welcome her to our community.

And, I hope it’s not lost on anyone that Tammy is, well, female. Our old friend Tom Davenport, who originally pooh-poohed the Enterprise 2.0 meme, gives Tammy a ringing endorsement. I have had the pleasure of seeing Tammy speak to executive audiences; she rocks the house. I hope our tight-knit e20 community will be as delighted. I’ve already cautioned her not to call “it” by name.

In case you missed it, last week we announced an impressive keynote line-up for the Enterprise 2.o Conference in San Francisco.  I’d like to briefly touch on the keynotes from Microsoft SharePoint and Google Wave because there’s been so much talk about their potential to disrupt the market.

Christian Finn, Director of SharePoint Product Management, Microsoft

Why is this a big deal? Well because the SharePoint team at Microsoft will be digging into SharePoint 2010.  2010 has been referred to as a  “day of reckoning for the enterprise 2.0 vendors” because many third-party products have come into existence due to shortcomings in past SharePoint offerings.  Of course the big questions to be asked are:

1. Is 2010 finally “good enough”?

2. How will it affect smaller vendors and Microsoft partners in the market?

3. What impact will 2010 have on the nascent Enterprise 2.0 market overall?

Gregory D’alesandre, Product Manager, Google Wave

How much do you know about Google Wave? There has been a lot of speculation about what Wave is, why it’s important and how it’s going to disrupt communications and collaboration as we know it. After all, Wave has been developed by the same team of brothers who developed Google Maps years ago. So far the Wave Team have only made the software available to a small group of developers but later this month the they roll out a “Preview” version available for early pilots.

Does Google Wave have a strong play in the Enterprise?  You’ll need to come to the Conference to see firsthand what all the hype has been about and judge for yourself.