Cross-posted from ITSinsider:

Yes, the baby was born in ‘06, started crawling in ‘07, and now is running around like a maniac with boundless energy in ‘09. The Enterprise 2.0 movement is now a healthy child, growing stronger and more willful every day (just a cabinet door away from getting into trouble…) I returned from the Enterprise 2.0 conference this week rejuvenated, as I’d hoped to.

The number UNO issue on the minds of this year’s customer conference attendees was: HOW THE >>>> DO WE DO THIS??? Customers wanted to hear from other customers, not us (the so-called experts in Enterprise 2.0). The best sessions for me were definitely the unconference sessions where real practitioners could talk frankly about their challenges and share their successes.

Listening to customers during the conference, as well as culling the data that has been coming in from various surveys, I’ve decided the time is right to launch a community for “Internal 2.0 Evangelists.” As I’ve been a 2.0 Evangelist for the broader sector (and I thought my job was difficult), I realized the job of the internal evangelist is far, far more difficult. These folks toggle between fighting the good fight every day and then slipping uneasily into a sort of DMZ where they can peek out into the broader community for support and the rejuvenation they need to go on fighting another day. It’s often a thankless job with no clear roadmap for advancement, yet the majority of them do it because they believe in the principles of the 2.0 movement. I celebrate them!

So, that said, I’ve begun the 2.0 Adoption Council on LinkedIn. Once we reach a critical mass, we will be moving the Council to a more fluid socio-collaborative platform. If you are a customer of a large enterprise rolling out an enterprise 2.0 initiiative, you are invited to join the Council. Here is a LinkedIn invite I sent to some key customer contacts that explains the Council’s mission and goals:

You can reach me on LinkedIn on my profile if we’re not already connected. Send me a note you want to join, and I’ll send you an invite. The Council is free; there are no strings attached.

However since Enterprise 2.0 sits at the nexus of technology and organizational culture, there can be no one-size-fits-all approach.

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Enterprise2Blog partner Ross Dawson has written a comprehensive report on Implementing Enterprise 2.0 and published free chapters for your education.

Use this report to:

1. Gain a clear understanding of Enterprise 2.0 and Web 2.0 in organizations
2. Identify opportunities for value creation
3. Provide a structured view of benefits and risks
4. Establish governance initiatives
5. Create and communicate a clear Enterprise 2.0 strategy for your organization
6. Convince executives to take action
7. Design and implement successful projects

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Ross Dawson is globally recognized as a leading futurist, entrepreneur,keynote speaker, strategy advisor, andbestselling author. He is Founding Chairman of four companies: professional services and venture firm Advanced Human Technologies, future and strategy consulting group Future Exploration Network, leading events firm The Insight Exchange, and influence ratings start-upRepyoot.

Last week’s Enterprise 2.0 conference in Boston is in the books, and while I’d like to give the usual kudos to Steve Wylie and team for a well organized, and well executed event, I thought it also appropriate the share some thoughts as I look back.

1. Enterprise 2.0 is real, and perhaps more importantly, the business benefits are real (and so are the challenges). Attendees heard success stories from end-user organizations including Lockheed Martin and Booz Allen Hamilton. Perhaps more importantly, speakers and attendees both heard plenty from other attendees on challenges related to governance, security, user acceptance, and building a business case in tough economic times. A panel I moderated on security and identity in an Enterprise 2.0 world generated enough discussion to last a second hour if we had the time.

2. We’re all Facebook and Twitter now. There are over a dozen press releases now on the E 2.0 site , almost all with a common theme of taking the capabilities of Facebook and Twitter and bringing them into the enterprise in a manner that meets requirements for security, compliance, and governance, but that also enables support for both internal and external collaboration.

3. Moving from hype to reality. Tying into theme #1 above, I saw a great deal of focus by companies such as Telligent and several others on actually “measuring” Enterprise 2.0 success via analytics and metrics. This is extremely important to enable moving from Enterprise 2.0 evangelizing to being able to share tangible business benefits.

4. Lines are blurring between social computing and unified communications. During our wednesday morning keynote on social networking there was much agreement that organizations need to think about collaboration holistically and look for ways to integrate planning around both synchronous and asynchronous communications and collaboration applications. Seeing the founder of Socialcast sitting among representatives of Cisco, Alcatel-Lucent and IBM Lotus Sametime sends a clear message that worlds are colliding, but perhaps the announcement of a fall Enterprise 2.0 co-located with VoiceCon in San Francisco in November sends an even more startling message. I’ve heard some suggestions that social messaging services such as Twitter could render investments in unified communications moot as people rapidly change the way they communicate - moving from voice/video/instant messaging to SMS/micro-blogging, profile tagging/wall-posting. I think this will be a fascinating discussion to continue in November.

With these thoughts in mind I look forward to continuing the discussions here on the Enterprise 2.0 blog as well as on Twitter @imlazar, #e2conf.

It was another solid and successful industry-shifting event… a gathering of great business people - collaborating on ideas, technology and innovation.

Here are some fantastic quotes we’d like to share with you:

“… the Enterprise 2.0 conference in Boston… is dedicated to a broad discussion of the issues surrounding collaborative systems and their impact especially on and within larger organizations… the organizers, led by my friend and colleague Steve Wylie … did an amazing job of truly building a community around this event, which attracted practitioners from many firms and industries.”

- Craig Matthias, Network World

“I’m encouraged that the dirty little secret of Web 2.0 and social media technologies is finally being openly addressed by early adopters and vendors alike. At the Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Boston, there’s been frank discussion this week of the question average users have been whispering (so that their bosses don’t hear them): Namely, what can this stuff do for me that’s actually useful?”

- Alex Wolfe, InformationWeek

“… the Enterprise 2.0 conference is a reason to withstand the wrath of the gods. Before I get into some of the highlights and my take on at least the first day of the conference, I want to emphasize something that makes me sound like a fanboy. If there’s one conference you need to attend that ends with a 2.0 - this is the one, if you care about your business…”

- Paul Greenberg, ZDNet

A FEW CONGRATULATIONS…

to Booz Allen Hamilton (a strategy and technology consulting firm) for winning the Open Enterprise 2009 Innovation Award!

to YouCalc for surviving through 4 rounds of Launch Pad and winning the People’s Choice, and a Demo Pod for 2010!

USEFUL LINKS

See the coverage of #E2conf on our news page ::  Visit our press room for new product announcements  ::  Watch videos on E2TV ::  View official event photos on E2’s Flickr photo stream, or view attendee photos

Visit our livestream pages -

Enterprise 2.0 Conference #e2conf :: Open Enterprise 2009 #OE09

Twazzup e2conf Community Site

Download our whitepaper “Enterprise 2.0: What, Why and How“

Read sample chapters of Implementing Enterprise 2.0: A practical guide to creating business value inside organizations with web technologies by blog partner Ross Dawson

MARK YOUR CALENDARS!

Enterprise 2.0 Conference … SAN FRANCISCO … November 3-5, 2009

And stay tuned for information on the virtual event that will bring the Enterprise 2.0 Conference to your desktop.

* hat tips:

- for helping in writing this recap: @NataliaW and @jtannerama - thanks ladies!

- Thanks Twazzup for the great community site!

- BIG PROPS to blog partner Ben Kepes / CloudAve for jumping in to live-blog the sessions!!

Is 140 characters enough? IBM prefers 250-500 (via their two different internal microblogging apps: BlueTwit and Lotus Connections) but the 140 character limit is important for mobile adoption and usage on phones. Their is a concept of microblogging as a driver of efficiency in communication.  Granular messaging promises the reduction of noise to the signal.

Internal versus external - internal microblogging allows people to talk about things that they can’t talk about externally. It’s potentially a form of catharsis. An interesting metric - on Twitter, 80% of traffic is social. On internal microblogging platforms, 80% is professional. That changes the way we need to think about these tools. There’s a need to separate the wheat from the chaff - how to balance the big talkers from the important talkers? One of the panellists reported that he stopped using twitter because the loudest and most verbose people used it; while more innovative/quiet people didn’t use it – quality vs quantity.

Much discussion about getting micro blogging applications installed in enterprise - some users don’t have admin rights to put in client applications.  Enterprise is cautious of vendors that encourage or facilitate end users using back door ways of getting the application on their machines.

Interesting – the audience was asked who would pay for microblogging – near unanimous was the feeling that these tools are not worth paying for. It was also pointed out that microblogging without being integrated into bigger solution is not so compelling – much of the value of Twitter comes from the third party integrations, not from the tool itself – the vendors selling micro blogging solutions into enterprise don’t have that ecosystem built up – so there is possibly less value in their offering.

Most corporations are not looking for a completely separate tool but are looking to integrate it into their current platforms – for this reason more integrated plays may find it easier to gain traction. Ross Mayfield raised a good suggestion – in order to test the utility of a micro blogging tool, ask a new user to ask a question of the communtiy and witness the rapid and relevant results that eventuate – surely this is another reason to utilise an external tool rather than a specific and siloed tool within the firewall?

There was a little discussion, fuelled by Mark Dowds around productivity – sadly he was something of a lone voice, the rest of the crowd was sufficiently high on the kool-aide to ignore the practicalities and realities around workplaces – where people are busy and the number one driver is productivity.

Never being one to shy of a fight I asked the question just how much room there is for another platform – every single vendor seems to be claiming that they’re a platform player – of course the question went down like a lead balloon – sometimes the real world is less than palatable….

It’s always nice to see something that’s not completely US-centric in technology, this panel included a great cross-section of European enterprise 2.0 visionaries. In the audience were participants from all around the world – South Africa, Canada, Europe (and Australasia believe it or not).

Parochialism – collaboration and community works very differently in different cultures, the example was given of private enterprise social networks working well in Europe, but not in Japan were workplace culture is completely different. There is a cultural chasm within organisations, both departmental and geographical – the best way to bridge that is to bring people together and enable them to communicate. Obviously though language barriers make that problematic - most of the time cultural differences online are rooted in language differences. I suggested that part of the problem is that English speakers tend to have an arrogance that others should default to their language – the panellists pointed out that “English is the Latin of the modern world” – a really interesting discussion ensued looking at cultural context around language, the example was given of the word “rubber” which has a remarkably different meaning in the UK and Australasia from what it does in the US, so that is a socio-lingual issue rather than a language one only.

The example was given of Danone whose HR department started a “network attitude” program, which was a grouping of people focussed around sharing their knowledge. The advice was given to just listen to people and make weak ties.

It was also pointed out that many tools are built with a US perspective – European privacy laws are completely different to those of the US. The example was given that for Danes overseas, their Danish laws applies to them (and IT systems) anywhere in the world the valid question that comes from this is at what point do strong privacy laws disadvantage citizens by making the finding of expertise by topic, when that information is separated from individual’s name? How can you implement social networks into an organisation when the law forbids the simple sharing of photos? Clearly the rate of adoption will reduce until these privacy, security and cross-border issues are resolved.

Thursday is your last chance to join us for Enterprise 2.0 Conference learning. Thursday’s half-day schedule includes sponsored sessions and an Enterprise 2.0 Town Hall where the future of the Enterprise will be discussed.

Thursday’s Sponsored Sessions
8:30 – 9:15am
Social Software – Creating Value Today, Establishing Opportunity Tomorrow
Sponsored by

10:45 – 11:45am
Technology Innovation – Exploring Beyond Social Computing Tools in the Market Today
Sponsored by

Enterprise 2.0 Town Hall
12:00 – 12:30pm
Join members of the Enterprise 2.0 Advisory Board to recap the week’s events, provide feedback, and begin the discussion for Enterprise 2.0 2010! Moderated by Steve Wylie.

nGenera.  On the nGenera booth, I met Brian Magierski, the EVP of Corporate Development, who talked about the company’s suite of collaboration applications. Some of nGenera’s apps focus on soliciting and capturing ideas, such as nJAM. Here’s Magierski’s elevator pitch:

Box.net. I’ve checked out Box.net’s app before, and was pretty impressed with the ease of use (I’m a huge 37Signals fan, and Box.net exhibits the same focus on UI and workflow as Basecamp and Backpack). Originally focused on helping people share large files without having to FTP them, Box.net is building more and more collaborative features into the service a la Basecamp. And at E2 this week, Box.net’s VP of Business Development, Karen Appleton, described the current state of the app and talked about some new partnerships — including one with with Fedex — that make the app more friendly to small businesses:

Newsgator. Over on the Newsgator booth, JB Holston, the CEO of Newsgator, gave me the lowdown on Social Sites. Social Sites 2.7, released last month, is the latest version of the company’s SharePoint-based enterprise social computing app which helps bring together colleagues who share similar interests and lets you know what’s going on with them. It’s like having a company-centric Facebook within Sharepoint. Here’s JB’s pitch:

Yakabod. On the Yakabod booth I met Scott Ryser, the CEO of the company. He told me about the Yakabox, which, unlike the most of the products I saw at E2, is a collaboration appliance. The Yakabox is a hardware-based “knowledge engine” that enables collaboration, social networking, content management and yes, search, within an organization. As an appliance, it has some tough security built in: encryption that passes Federal Information System data security standards, two-factor authentication, and a user permissioning system. Here’s Scott describing it:

Tomoye. Eric Sauve, the CEO of Tomoye, told me about Tomoye Communities for Sharepoint, which extends Sharepoint with user communities and new cross-enterprise collaboration features. Sauve says that the company has 500,000 users at the moment under contract - not bad! Here he is, describing Tomoye:

Joyent. On the Joyent booth, I met James Duncan and Jason Hoffman, who told me a bit about their company’s on-demand cloud-based hosting which specializes in Rails apps. Joyent is apparently the largest OpenSolaris installation in the world. Here are James and Jason talking about Joyent:

If you want to check out more of the companies that were at E2 2009 in Boston, you can find it on the E2 conference site.

In the past a large number of companies, when asked about instant messaging, claimed that they block it. Today, with a new generation coming into the workforce completely used to using many social sites, most companies have given up trying to block and have instead moved into moderating behaviour rather than outright blocking.

IT managers positioning towards Web 2.0 is much more open than many people think contends Ambwani – he reports that across a couple of hundred thousand enterprise end users the average worksite had 95 different social networking sites used. They track over 900 social network platforms. On Facebook alone the average enterprise site will have 98 different Facebook applications within its site. People are looking for a free unimpeded flow of information and are going to the place where they feel they can get that – increasingly that’s not email or IM, it’s instead Twitter and Facebook.

Two things are going on here – regulations are getting more strict while at the same time generational and technological change are making the separation of work and home somewhat artificial. Gen Y blurs the distinction between at work and at leisure – trying to force them into one way of working is impossible. Don’t look for a panacea to this problem, understand how things ebb and flow – work on mitigating risk.

There is no longer one single repository – data is stored in myriad different places and people realise that – data storing and logging is increasingly difficult or even impossible.

Separate accidental loss from intentional loss from external access loss. Accidental loss is more readily mitigated against. Intentional loss is more difficult. The mission should be to raise the cost of access for malicious parties to such a point that the risk is mitigated to a reasonable level – it’s a cost vs return discussion. Security/compliance done right should be transparent to end-users

Everyone wants to know: How can you help me safeguard the data regardless of the platform? A comment at the height of “oh really?”, a large financial services firm announced this morning that Facebook, Twitter, MySpace etc are all electronic communications and must therefore be monitored.

A survey asked if the social generation “is networking or not working” – content leakage was the biggest issue followed by brand image. Surprisingly enough productivity was a very low concern within enterprise. Every action and inaction has a risk and a reward – organisations need to balance that when looking at security. Choosing not to adopt a social tool may have a negative impact on the business.

Like all things this is a risk versus return decision and knee jerk reactions are unhelpful and potentially detrimental.

The three keys to adopting of community sites? Simplicity – Ease of use – Engagement.

How to meet privacy requirements across different geographies and jurisdictions? Obviously much easier for inwards facing communities but even then there are different privacy requirements in different countries. Have a base level of information and make further information optional – Genentech allows users to change their own profile pictures and this has created additional buy in. Keep official directory of records and social networks separate – allow employees on social networks to represent to each other how they see their role, this is different from a formal employee record where job titles and descriptions are more formalised – the comparison gives users some useful context.

Burton group disallows anonymous posting or pseudonyms and relies on the community itself to moderate the content that appears - “it’s amazing how much having CEO level access to a social network moderates the content posted on it (although I’m not sure if this is a good thing – isn’t the idea of social networks to allow for free ranging thinking, unencumbered by organisational imperatives? – ed.)

Reach out to existing communities of interest to drive adoption – Harvard has a large number of craftspeople so reached out to them to seed the community. Who would have thought a Harvard University knitting group would replace physical meetups with virtual ones?

Pre determine community champions to answer the initial questions until critical mass is reached and the community self-perpetuates. Find the “cool people” and get their buy-in – that then creates the evangelists going forwards. Give away the ownership so that the community doesn’t hinge on only one person – avoid the “Steve Jobs Factor”.

Who “owns” the platform? A difficult problem – the community needs to know that there is someone to go to when there are problems (e need for an owner) but at the same time need to feel a sense of ownership and autonomy (ie community owned).

Try and find suites that tightly integrate discrete offerings for corporate social networking sites – blogs, wikis, forums, micro blogging etc.

Thoughts around posting of inappropriate material – suggestion that fear of that is similar to fear of being attacked by a shark – highly unlikely. Genentech approaches it from a “base values” perspective – their social network is called GenePool and they tell their users “don’t pee in the pool”.

Discussion about sensitive topics (religion, sex etc etc)? Primarily it’s about trusting your users, setting a community culture and allowing for self-regulation. Thereafter a soft touch is sometimes needed to keep things “seemly”.

Sabretown has three community roles – content manager, “shady” administrator (for marginal/reported content) and lastly user administrator for updating community member records.