First posted on CloudAve

Oliver Marks and Sameer Patel – two of the leading lights in Enterprise 2.0 (that is experience in actually doing it rather than merely talking about it) presented this session. Their aim with the session was to move from “pontification to real world discussions” – a noble objective.

In discussing “the Big Idea” around Enterprise 2.0,the presenters pointed out that the ultimate sell comes from articulating the realistic business value propositions – Enterprise 2.0 technologies are just that, technologies. They’re not a holy grail of themselves and their needs to be a valid business case to sell the change. They cautioned attendees from comparing the business case for Enterprise 2.0 with the general Web 2.0 trends – web 2.0 is fundamentally a desire driven activity, whereas in a work setting people generally want to do their 9-5 and do what they have to do – no more.

People’s fundamental driver is “What’s in it for me?” – those trying to ease adoption of Enterprise 2.0 need to realize this and provide some sort of value to those making the decisions and end users. Understand the incentive structure in place, the politics and culture of the organization and the people within it.

In terms of the governance, risk management and compliance discussion, Oliver and Sameer recommended that this discussion happens early and happens openly. Discuss the issues and the plans at an early stage in order to (hopefully) get them onside. Explore the real reasons for negativity – is it really because of risk or is there a hidden agenda at work?

Oliver gave some examples of the ad-hoc shadow IT department that exists within many enterprises – where people faced with rigid and difficult enterprise grade software use cloud services like Zoho and Google docs in order to simply get their job done. It’s important to frame the context of the solution for management – help them understand the landscape within which the solution exists.

Joining the presenters before the break were a panel made up of Chris Mcgrath from ThoughtFarmer, Scott Schnaars from Socialtext and Tom Kuegler from PBWorks. Some points from their panel;

• Scott advised looking at the other priorities the CFO may have to balance against the enterprise 2.0 proposal.
• Chris brought up the reality that most collaborative solutions will come up against SharePoint and corporate IT will often take the perspective that collaboration happens only through SharePoint.
• Tom suggested that the only approach that was really viable was to kneecap IT in order to get solutions moving within an organization – using a bottom up approach to prove the initial concept to the business.
• Chris raised the point that you can build a fantastic collaborative platform within Sharepoint – but that you have to physically build it. Third party products enable those collaborative gains to be made more quickly then a complete design and build process.He also suggested that gains through social software tend to be serendipitous – as such it’s very hard to show a ROI pre deployment – how do you put metrics on serendipitous gains?
• Tom said that the approach really needs to be one of replacement – it’s no use going into an enterprise trying to pitch a tool which is completely different to what they currently do. Enterprises prefer like-for-like comparisons and replacements.
• Chris suggested that internal salespeople trying to pitch an idea to internal management utilize the assets of the vendors who are pitching everyday – tell them the requirements and let them help create collateral.

With getting executives on board it is critical that the requirements gathering is robust. Sameer discussed the “switching costs” involved in adopting new technology. It’s not simply the CAPEX involved in deploying a solution; there’s the business risk, the training, the deployment time etc. Ensure your proposal utilizes case studies from organizations in a similar space – make the pitch attuned to the company itself.

In terms of execution planning always be looking to mitigate the risk of the project and ensure you develop the right metrics to track expectations and actuality.

Oliver and Sameer invited Bevin Hernandez from Penn State University Outreach to tell their tale of developing sand deploying a social software offering. Their project planning document is interesting (image below and, yes, it’s the back of a napkin). For a more in-depth view – check out this post on the ThoughtFarmer site.

All in all it was an interesting session. I’ve posted before about Enterprise 2.0 and specifically the problems needing to be overcome to ensure its adoption and success – it’s nice to spend a few hours discussing more than just the shiny gadgets but an in-depth look at what can make this stuff actually happen.

A recent report suggests that businesses are trying hard to block access to social networking:

[via press release

The survey was developed by Robert Half Technology, a leading provider of information technology (IT) professionals on a project and full-time basis, and conducted by an independent research firm. It was based on telephone interviews with more than 1,400 CIOs from companies across the United States with 100 or more employees.

CIOs were asked, “Which of the following most closely describes your company’s policy on visiting social networking sites, such as Facebook, MySpace and Twitter, while at work?” Their responses:

Prohibited completely 54%
Permitted for business purposes only 19%
Permitted for limited personal use 16%
Permitted for any type of personal use 10%
Don’t know/no answer 1%

I am not surprised by the attempt at blocking access. Businesses view us as parts of the corporate machinery, and our reason for existence is to work on behalf of the company. That’s why we get so little vacation time, sick leave, and maternity/paternity leave in comparison to other nations.

Here, only 19% will even allow use for business uses, only!

Of course, there is nothing to stop people from using their phones to remain connected on these services if the companies block them at the firewall. This is an escape hatch, but still a pain.

In a world where social networks are increasingly playing the role of early warming system and primary information resource, organizations that impose these sorts of draconian solutions will suffer, not benefit.

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!

I’m thrilled to announce that Bert Sandie (@bsandie) from Electronic Arts is going to present a case study at E2 San Francisco. Bert is Director - Technical Excellence (cool title) and is tasked with driving EA’s internal social networking, knowledge management solutions, collaboration and innovation. Bert spoke on a Microsoft customer panel at our Boston event and got great reviews.

Our agenda of case studies and customer speakers is growing and now includes:

• Electronic Arts
• Nike
• Booz Allen Hamilton
• Kaiser Permanente
• Medtronic
• Metlife
• Eli Lilly
• CSC
• EMC
• Alcatel-Lucent

Here is the session Bert will present in November:

Collaboration 2.0 inside Electronic Arts
The presentation will provide insight into EA’s internal social collaboration strategy, successes and failures, solution, insights, best practices. Specifically, we will look at our integrated social networking, knowledge management, community and search solution.

Bert Sandie, Director - Technical Excellence, Electronic Arts, Inc.

Congratulations Bert!

A couple of interesting data points:

• A new Pew study notes that the Interent isn’t really changing who participates in politics, but Pew notes that blogs and social networking sites are seeing growing political activity.
• Brendan Nyhan on his blog points to efforts underway to leverage social computing to improve political polling

There’s all sorts of implications here from the Enterprise 2.0 perspective, not only the potential to use social computing for data gathering, but also the potential risks of employees using their public social networks to promote political views that may be contrary to their employer.
I’m curious to hear if any companies are implementing any guidelines on how employees use their personal social networks?

Enterprise 2.0 San Francisco’s Call for Papers closed on Tuesday after receiving a mind blowing number of submissions - 446 to be exact. It’s great to see the community is as enthusiastic about the San Francisco show as we are, and really reinforces the need for Enterprise 2.0 on the West Coast.

Some highlights and prevalent topics include:

• Tons of case studies and tales of adoption
• Mobility
• Cloud computing
• Micro-blogging & emerging platforms in the enterprise
• Driving the social media bus
• Building an Enterprise 2.0 culture
• Internal & external communities

A big thank you to all that took the time and effort to submit an abstract. Steve and the Advisory Board have got some reading to do.

Sometime last year, via automated searches for “Enterprise 2.0,” I found myself repeatedly landing on this prolific blogger’s posts: Bertrand DUPERRIN’s Note Pad (caps intentional; that’s how they do it in France). Although sometimes a struggle to glean the intended meaning from his posts as the translations were a little rough from French to English, I stuck with Duperrin and have found his commentary refreshing and insightful. So, blame it on social media, but that’s how I first discovered blueKiwi– the company that employs Duperrin. I’ve since started following @bduperrin on Twitter and have drafted him into my ITSinsider guild of Enterprise 2.0 warriors.

Last week, the 2.0 Adoption Council kicked off our weekly “Demo Thursdays” with a blueKiwi demo. During the demo there were a number of features that distinguished blueKiwi in crowded field of competitors. As I mentioned the clean, nicely designed user interface makes it easy to figure out what to do fairly quickly. The platform is arranged in a people-centric design that channels content into logical groups. In short, the product has all the bells and whistles, but it has even more than I’ve seen from most social platforms. For instance, it includes a fairly sophisticated ideation feature, as well as support for mobile platforms. While searching around, I found a comprehensive blueKiwi review by Jon Husband when the company launched at Web 2.0 SF. Highly recommend that for further investigation.

Certainly in Europe, blueKiwi is an exceptional contender for your social software business. On our demo conference call, we heard blueKiwi described as “the Jive of Europe.” As I’ve been working with Jive SBS at the Council, and have continued to experiment independently with the blueKiwi platform, I’d have to say blueKiwi has a lot to offer comparatively. Once blueKiwi lands a few large U.S. clients, it will be soon thereafter we will hear blueKiwi’s name mentioned alongside Jive, Socialtext, and Telligent as a top-of-mind category contender.

blueKiwi’s ideation module.

I also enjoyed this introductory video from blueKiwi explaining the basic business benefits for social software in general.

Starting in August, I’ll be taking a look at a variety of Enterprise 2.0 tools and platforms.  If you’d like to see your product reviewed here on the Enterprise 2.0 blog, please send a note to itsinsider at gmail dot com.  Admittedly, I’m not a tech blogger, but I will be looking for the value add products bring to the broader concerns related to introducing these products to the enterprise (ease of use, cost, integration with legacy/large enterprise applications, security, governance, and so on).

Please be prepared to address the following:

1. Company background (who are the founders/# of employees/how did it the company get started/financing?)

2. Early successes (what is unique about the product/what value is it delivering to customers?)

3. At least one customer case study.

4. Who is the ideal customer for the product?

We’ve also opened up Demo Thursdays at the 2.0 Adoption Council.  We will reserve Thursday mornings at 9am ET for any vendor with a suitable enterprise-ready 2.0 offering.  You can sign up to be considered here.

The Enterprise 2.0 team is gearing up to build the the program for the first annual San Francisco conference coming this November and we’d like to hear your success stories, case studies and the valuable lessons you’ve learned working with E2 tools and technologies in your organization. Submit your proposal through the Call for Papers, open until July 31. We’re looking for sessions and workshop proposals in the following topics:

Continue Reading »