1.) What is your name?

Jenny Ambrozek

2.) Who are you and what are you doing?

I am @SageNet, the name of my consulting company since 1996. I help enterprises strategically use collaboration tools, to engage internal and external stakeholders in solving business challenges and co-creating products. In our connected world, it’s my experience that each individual’s time and attention is the most limited resource. I focus on architecting participation to ensure key people are actively involved, and contributing, for project success.I’m an independent consultant and writer and I help organizations make sense of the Web for community building, collaboration, professional development and communication.

3.) How did you get to the E2.0 topic?

I learned the online business, pre-Web, at pioneering online service PRODIGY, and helped early Web businesses use forums to engage customers. By early 2004, when Joe Cothrel and I conducted an Online Communities in Business study, it was clear low cost, emergent tools (wikis, blogs, social networking) were starting to change the way people worked and did business. In 2006 I co-founded the 21st Century Organizations to explain Web 2.0’s impact on enterprises.Online Communities in Business study, it was clear low cost, emergent tools (wikis, blogs, social networking) were starting to change the way people worked and did business. In 2006 I co-founded the 21st Century Organizations to explain Web 2.0’s impact on enterprises.

4.) What is your understanding of the core concept of the Enterprise 2.0 idea?

While a 2.0 enterprise is driven by emergent technology, for me Enterprise 2.0 is achieved when an organization succeeds in operating open; enables and values employee and partner knowledge sharing, creativity and contributions; and manages with respect and “controls”, rather than “control”.

5.) What are the main potentials of the Enterprise 2.0 idea?

The potential, in adopting emergent social software platforms, is connecting people and expertise at enterprise edges, increasing productivity and employee satisfaction, while reducing costs and enabling innovation. Ideas and knowledge can be unleashed from organizational silos, to have greater value by reaching those who can put them to use. Externally Enterprise 2.0 tools enable bringing in fresh perspectives, expert and customer insights to fuel problem solving and new product development.

6.) What are the main challenges, threats and issues of the Enterprise 2.0 idea?

Successful enterprise use of Web 2.0 tools demands being open and participatory. As these platforms empower individuals, they impact the locus of control in an organization. For companies used to high levels of centralized control, becoming a 2.0 enterprise is a cultural challenge, especially in regulated industries.
Individuals also must adapt to think “sharing” rather than “hoarding” knowledge.The network benefits of social platforms emerge with significant use. Engaging project sponsors and influencers to model and encourage participation is essential, as is ensuring initiatives are not peripheral, but embedded in the way work gets done.
Social technologies enable people connecting and building valuable relationships. Applying social network science to strategically facilitate the human networks using the platforms, maximizes the potential.

7.) Please give us three tags that describe your person and work best?

Open, net∞WORKing, Collaboration

8.) Please give us a three links to articles/contributions that describe your views best?

• Lessons in Enterprise Social Networking from a Facebook Groups in Business Investigation
• Open net∞WORKing Organizations
• The Sustainable Enterprise FieldbookSee Ch.8 “Transorganizational Collaboration & Sustainability Networks” pp 235-262

9.) Please give us three names of colleagues that you would refer to as brothers-in-spirit?

1. Victoria G. Axelrod
2. Patti Anklam
3. Martin Koser

Having already introduced our female Advisory Board members , it is now the guys’ turn. Some of them have told us their expectations and focus topics for this year’s conference.

Bertrand Duperrin is a Consultant at Nextmodernity in France, carrying out consultancy missions in the field of new management, information, and communication technologies. His career began in an HR and management consultancy where he mainly focused on collaboration issues. His goals: to make social networks serve organizational performance and value creation in such domains as innovation, sales performance, or collective efficiency.
"Enterprise 2.0 has reached a tipping point and I think attendants are now expecting two kinds of things, and I hope they’ll find it there.

1. Cases with concrete business results. I mean not only evidences that people are actively using enterprise social platforms but also that it improves the way business is done. We’ve been talking about usages for years, now it’s high time we talk about actual business value.
2. Speeches that replace the Enterprise 2.0 paradigm in the global enterprise context. It’s clear that social activities need to articulate with business ones, that they’re not two separate bubbles : doing one’s job means mixing, articulating both and finding the right balance. Many businesses have the impression they’ve been asked to serve the Enterprise 2.0 cause for years for the Enterprise 2.0 sake, they now want to understand how Enterprise 2.0 can serve business, with concrete, logical and undisputable arguments.

In one sentence I expect a focus on business, execution and delivery, Enterprise 2.0 being not the final goal but only a means to serve business needs."

Franck La Pinta is Employer Brand Marketing Manager at the Société Gérérale HR department in Paris. He defines and builds the employer brand and the strategy of actions to implement, including the use of web and social media for internal and external objectives. Naturally, he is especially interested in the HR aspects of Enterprise 2.0:
"I want to meet companies which are changing in 2.0 and which are leaders in the use of social network to help this conversion. I am especially interested in hearing about the part of HR in Enterprise 2.0 and how HR can help the conversion of companies."

Dr. Frank Schönefeld is working for the German T-Systems Multimedia Solutions GmbH as Chief Technology Officer and one of the drivers of the Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 topics at the company. He is responsible for innovation and technology development and deployment.
"I think the E20 Summit is "the" conference for applied Web 2.0 in companies, organizations and institutions. Hence I expect a lot of best practices from people working in this field. On the other hand I know that a lot of forerunners (and -thinkers) and individual experts are there - so the definition of what is leading edge in Enterprise 2.0 in Europe is given there. And this tension of expert knowledge and applied practices makes the conference that useful.
At the conference, I first hope for some clarification of the relationship of Intranet 2.0 concepts and Enterprise 2.0. Second I would like to get some input with respect to activity streaming inside an enterprise - seen as a generalization of the microblogging (Twitter-)concept. That is that my SAP application tweets to me, that some of my account numbers have been changed."

Jamil Ouaj is Communications Manager at the Deutsche Bank, Germany. He is responsible for the worldwide and cross-divisional online communication in the division Group Technology and Operation at Deutsche Bank. He is actively involved in the strategy around Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 and leads on internal projects such as dbWiki, an online encyclopaedia and dbClub a social networking platform.
"The E 2.0 Summit is a great opportunity to get a refresh on the latest happenings and developments of Web 2.0 in corporations. I am very much looking forward to hearing the different enriching views and information from Enterprise 2.0 experts and to having in-depth discussions and exchange with the participants of the E 2.0 Summit. It will be important to focus the debate on the ground of reality so it is fruitful for all.
Hot topics will certainly be the question of the adoption of the E 2.0 tools and E 2.0 world in general: How are they established nowadays? What strategy is being implemented in the different corporates to increase the adoption? What are the next concepts and developments within the various corporates with re to E 2.0? And finally is there, in spite of exceptions, a global shift from bottom-up to top-down in all this, and if yes how does it look like?"

Analyzing the results of the N:Sight Research GmbH Social Messaging vendor study is in progress. We are able to provide some insights with this article. Most solutions are available as SaaS (Software as a Service). They follow the trend to use applications on the web to avoid hosting it on a server. It’s a good solution as well to test Social Messaging with a small team. Some companies won’t allow running a system outside the firewall. 70% of the solutions allow an installation on a server and 50% offer both solutions.

Read more on N:Sight blog:

Social Messaging vendor study - first insights

Two weeks ago we published the concept of our new Ambassador Program for this year’s Enterprise 2.0 SUMMIT and the application period started.

Now, the twelve ambassadors for the SUMMIT are finally chosen - here they are:

Gabriela Avram (Ireland)

Isabelle Ayel (Spain)

Xavier Bartholomé (Belgium)

Michael Dekner (Austria)

Cecil Dijoux (France)

Andreas Genth (Germany)

Dr. Marco Kalz (Germany)

Martin Koser (Germany)

Hanns Köhler-Krüner (Germany)

Gudrun Porath (Germany)

Emanuele Quintarelli (Italy)

Ton Zijlstra (Netherlands)

All twelve are highly motivated E2.0 bloggers and enthusiasts. As ambassadors, they get free entrance to the conference and communicate, promote & represent the E2.0 SUMMIT to the whole E2.0 community and the public at large. We are looking forward to their coverage of the E2.0 SUMMIT before, during and after the conference!

1.) What is your name?

Harold Jarche

2.) Who are you and what are you doing?

I’m an independent consultant and writer and I help organizations make sense of the Web for community building, collaboration, professional development and communication.

3.) How did you get to the E2.0 topic?

I have seen over the past two decades how work and learning are merging as we become more networked and our roles get more complex. I believe that democracy is our best structure for political governance and that it should be the basis of our workplaces as well. As work and learning become integrated in our networked society, I see great opportunities to create better employment models. I know that we can do better than structured hierarchies of power and control, cookie-cutter job descriptions, generic work competencies and boring, dead-end jobs.

4.) What is your understanding of the core concept of the Enterprise 2.0 idea?

E2.0 is about a shift in how we do work, moving from hierarchies to networks. Complex work in networks means that information, knowledge and power no longer flow up and down. E2.0 means giving up control and harnessing the power of networks. It is as radical as was Taylor’s Principles of Scientific Management in 1911.

5.) What are the main potentials of the Enterprise 2.0 idea?

The potential of E2.0 is organizational survival. Enterprises that don’t share knowledge and power will meet the fate of Enron, BP and others. They will be overcome by complex events that cumbersome industrial age decision-making processes cannot manage.

6.) What are the main challenges, threats and issues of the Enterprise 2.0 idea?

The main threat is cultural. People in charge of most organizations today got there by doing things the traditional way of the MBA mindset. They feel they do not need to change and few are willing to give up power and authority, even if it is for the good of the organization.

7.) Please give us three tags that describe your person and work best?

Networks, Wirearchy, PKM

8.) Please give us a three links to articles/contributions that describe your views best?

• A framework for social learning in the enterprise
• A personal learning journey
• Agility and autonomy

9.) Please give us three names of colleagues that you would refer to as brothers-in-spirit?

1. Jay Cross
2. Thierry de Baillon
3. Jane Hart

Social messaging enables users to interact and share information. It includes micro blogging and micro sharing, but the most important aspect is to provide and receive information. Users can collect it as in passing.

Read the full article on n:sight // networked insights blog:

Social Messaging – A Definition

As the Enterprise 2.0 SUMMIT is a European conference, we certainly need to discuss the multi-cultural challenges of introducing E 2.0 in international companies. Last year, Craig Hepburn from the UK hosted the panel consisting of E 2.0 experts from all over Europe: Bertrand Duperrin/France, Mark Masterson/Germany, Emanuele Quintarelli/Italy and Dr. Frank Schoenefeld/Germany.
Here is last year’s video of the session:

Sevenload Direkt

In the following I have listed the aspects that I found most remarkable and interesting in this discussion:

• Cultural differences do not only occur on a geographical level, i. e. between people from different countries, but also between a sales guy and someone from the IT department.
• A big challenge for Enterprise 2.0 is measuring its value: How do we account for people who benefit from E 2.0 without actively participating themselves? Some people from other cultures benefit from a collaborative environment, e. g. because they can easily find the information they need/solve a problem etc. But you cannot see or measure that value, because these people do not actively bring themselves in and do not want to speak out.
• Mark experienced an interesting pattern at CSC: For whatever reason, blogs (that address a huge, not-specified number of recipients) are more used by collegues with an Anglosaxon background while tools for discussions (where you address a limited, specified number of recipients) were used by people from all kinds of nations. So different people from different nations seem to prefer using different kinds of tools.
• We should spend more time understanding the different cultures and include that knowledge into the process of the developing a (flexible) software. The ultimate, perfect solution would of course be a system in which the end users themselves can make it fit them better via feedback loops.

This year, Bertrand Duperrin will be the host for the discussion on how to overcome cultural boundaries for Enterprise 2.0. An interview with him on his views and expectations for this year’s Enterprise 2.0 SUMMIT is about to follow soon.

Just like last year, we have set up an Advisory Board for the Enterprise 2.0 SUMMIT 2010. The members of this board reassure the quality of talks and discussions at the conference and support us with their knowledge and experience in setting up the event. Now that the SUMMIT is getting closer and the program is set, we asked them about their expectations and the “hot topics” they are looking forward to the most. In this post, our female members have their say.

Jenny Ambrozek is the founder and lead consultant of SageNET LLC, USA. She is committed to promoting dialogue and best practices for building organizations to succeed in a global, networked, and mobile 21st century world. Her views on the upcoming event are as follows:
"The Enterprise 2.0 SUMMIT is an outstanding conference, in giving practitioners the microphone to share their learning with peers. The event perfectly meshes fresh voices and perspectives with access to industry thought leaders.
Andrew McAfee set the stage four years ago with “The Dawn of Emergent Collaboration” . The growing trend, I see, is the increasing importance of addressing organizational structures for successful Enterprise 2.0 initiatives. See for example, recent talks by Clare Flanagan and Mark Masterson. I’ll be paying close attention to the consensus on next practices for architecting participation throughout organizational ecosytems.
In 2004, 72% of respondents to the Online Communities in Business study reported they could not measure ROI. In Frankfurt I’ll be watching for new approaches to assessing value created through use of social technologies. What methods are Enterprise 2.0 project leaders using, beyond simple activity and participation metrics, to establish return to their businesses?"

Anu Elmer is the Vice President Communications at the Swiss Reinsurance Company. She has been consulting large-scale projects in change management, communications and training for more than ten years. Currently, she is the core team member of the Collaboration Initiative which rolled out a social business platform to all 11,000 employees in 2009 and is now looking into further integrating it and extending it to external communities. Regarding the Enterprise 2.0 SUMMIT, she is especially looking forward to networking with the E2.0 experts from different industries and to an inspiring exchange of ideas.

Ellen Trude has been with Bayer Business Services GmbH/Germany for more than 25 years now. She is a staunch supporter of the 2.0 concept and currently working as training consultant for social media and special projects concerning collaborative platforms at Bayer. She says about the conference:
"The confernce theme ‘Setting the path towards an open and agile enterprise’ reflects my expectation: By sharing experiences, case studies and knowledge, we will get the power, motivation and arguments to discuss with sceptics within our own enterprises. We get support for our firm conviction to continue the E2.0 way or to finally get started with it.
I am actually looking forward to all the conference topics. If I had to rate I, would choose ‘New Leadership Concepts’ and ‘Managing the Change’ as my hot topics concerning Enterprise 2.0 challenges. In the best practice track, I am especially interested in ‘Fostering Knowledge Sharing’ and ‘Strengthening Collaboration’. These sessions reflect the two cornerstones on our path: the management-driven change and the employees’ experience and recognition of E 2.0 behaviour and working."

It seems that the explosion on the Deepwater Horizon oil platform was foreseeable. The workmen on the platform saw a lot of problems with the technique, but were afraid to inform the management of Transocean (owner of the platform). I won’t judge about the company and reasons of the accident (but I am very sad about it), but it shows that you can avoid problems with the right communication culture.

To discuss the advantages of Enterprise 2.0 we are talking about motivation and better processes, but rarely about prevention of problems which can harm a company strongly.

At first glance it seems to be profitable to keep some topics secret or setting pressure on employees to be quiet, but most of the times it isn’t. Cultivation an open communication culture will help to avoid such bad management decisions. Such problems guiding to a disaster will pop up earlier and needs to be fixed before a catastrophe will happen. Sometimes one person with the right knowledge or idea can help a company to survive, if a disaster can be avoided. This person can avoid it, but need a voice which can be heard by enough people.

It’s not possible to install an open culture without the right tools. In bigger companies it can be done by brown bag meetings. Enterprise 2.0 offers the right tools, but the more important part is to adopt it the right way. Things like training are needed, but it’s an important factor to involve the top management. They must support it. It’s in their own interest. Nobody is perfect. Using the wisdom of the crowd will be the attribute of successful companies in future. Enterprise 2.0 does support it perfectly.

The social messaging study driven by n:sight arrived at the next stage. During the last days we got the input from ESME , bluekiwi, Flowr and Communote. All of these vendors offer their solution as SaaS (software as a service) and server installation.

SaaS is a good option for small companies or testing with small groups. You just need an account and you can start. Bigger companies will switch to the server installation, when they will start running social messaging with the all employees.

I made the experience on my workshops that’s much better to show something than explain the features. SaaS can also be used to start with your group and present the result to your management afterwards. Especially, if you use an open source solution like ESME or if it’s a free offer for small groups available like bluekiwi, Communote and Flowr provides.

All solution provides several options to do status updates. I like especially the option to create polls offered by bluekiwi and Flowr. It’s a nice way to ask colleagues about their opinion.

Tagging is a very important function to organize the content. It’s needed for any Enterprise 2.0 application. All four solutions provide tagging for status updates. A useful function is auto suggestion related to tags like offered by bluekiwi, Flowr and Communote.

API and other interfaces as input for status updates are available by all solutions. So it will be easy to connect other systems. Communote provides a XMPP interface to connect messaging solutions like ICQ or Windows Live Messenger. So it’s easy to integrate chat which is used nowadays in a lot of companies.

I am looking forward to read the next input from other vendors. You will be able to read more details when the study will be ready in September.