Coming Friday the Enterprise 2.0 community (includes you, the reader of this community blog) is invited to meetup and mingle at the E2.0 Meetup on the CeBIT Webciety Area. I can tell you that I am definitely looking forward to this, especially after having been extremely busy the two days before.

So come over into the T-Systems lounge, listen to the panel discussion with Dion Hinchcliffe, Dr. Frank Schönefeld (T-Systems), Aidan Troy (IBM), Peter Fischer (Microsoft), Craig Hepburn (OpenText) and Sören Stamer (Coremedia) and get into the conversation with fellow Enterprise 2.0 people.

Please register at the Facebook event page if you want to participate (if you can’t be in Hanover for the CeBIT don’t worry - the CeBIT Webciety programme will probably be streamed online, follow Webciety news on Twitter to stay up to date). If you’re interested in coming to the event but need a ticket read on:

Participants of the E2.0 Meetup can receive a complimentary (free) ticket for CeBIT by following this procedure:

1. Contact me (either via Twitter or Web) or comment/trackback this post if you need a ticket for the CeBIT. Please state your mail.
2. You will receive a ticket code via mail.
3. After a registration on the CeBIT website you will be sent an email
4. There will be an PDF-file attached to the email
5. Print this PDF-file.
6. You have a one-day free ticket!

1.) What is your name?

Dirk Röhrborn

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

I am Co-founder and managing director of Communardo Software GmbH. At Communardo I am responsible for the software development of enterprise 2.0 solutions (based on platforms like Atlassian Confluence and Microsoft Sharepoint) as well as our enterprise microblogging online services Communote.com.

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

Enterprise 2.0 has been my main area of interest right from university - without the ‘2.0′ name of course. As a student I developed collaborative document management and customer relationship management solutions based on the groupware Lotus Notes at firms like Price Waterhouse and IBM Germany. In my first job I helped to build a team of consultants for knowledge management at a subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom. In 2001 we started off Communardo. Since then, our main topics have always been communication, collaboration and knowledge sharing solutions for business customers.

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

For me, enterprise 2.0 stands for the combination of two fundamentally important concepts: an open-minded collaborative company culture and the widespread use of social media in business. In both terms we are rather talking about paradigm shifts in the business world than looking at specific methodologies or tools.

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

An open-minded corporate culture unleashes the creative potential and physical strength of employees and stakeholders within a company. Web 2.0 or social media tools like wikis, blogs, social networks or microblogs help them to communicate and collaborate better and more efficient to achieve their targets. While the industrial revolution was all about making the labour workers more productive, enterprise 2.0 is all about making knowledge workers more efficient and foster engagement and self-fulfillment at the same time.

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

The main challenge IMHO is to find a way to change an existing corporate culture towards the right direction, i.e. from a command-and-control to a participatory style. From a technical perspective, the main challenge is to build tools that are as simple and ergonomic as possible. Especially the last two issues have been our main concern in software development recently

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

enterprise, communication, collaboration

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

• Wissensmanagement im Enterprise 1.0 vs. Enterprise 2.0
• Der spannende Weg zum Intranet 2.0: Firmen-Wiki als Teamweb mit Atlassian Confluence
• Enterprise Microblogging: ein neuer Hype? Ja und Nein.

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

1. Joachim Niemeier
2. Frank Schönefeld
3. Martin Koser

1) What is your name?

Euan Semple

2) Who are you and what are you doing?

I am an independent consultant helping large organisations understand the web and what they can do with it.

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

I managed the introduction of weblogs, wiki’s, and online forums at the BBC 10 years ago - long before Enterprise 2.0 or even Web 2.0 were even thought of.

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

It was basically Andrew McAfee’s attempt to map what was happening in the Web 2.0 environment into the organisational world. It was more than just a technology but also the behaviours and practices that would need to change as a result of it.

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

There is the potential to revolutionise the world of work. The relationship between employees and employers has been changing anyway but the advent of new communication technologies that make it very easy for employees to communicate with each other allows for a completely new ways of organising work. Much of the administrative and bureaucratic work that takes place in businesses becomes unnecessary as information flows more readily around the business. This will mean managers learning a whole set of new skills and ways of influencing people.

6) What are the main challenges and threads of the Enterprise 2.0 idea?

One of the main challenges is just how different this is from what people are used to. People are used to hierarchically controlled communication channels and clear, relatively slow changing, working practices. The pace of change and unpredictability undermine many of our normal ways of doing things. This is very unsettling for people and it should never be underestimated the degree of readjustment that change on this scale calls for.

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

social, inspirational, practical

Please give us three links to articles/contributions that describe your views best?

• The 100% guaranteed easiest way to do Enterprise 2.0?
• Why it is the “social” in “social computing” that matters
• My favourite Drucker quote …

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

1. Doc Searls
2. David Weinberger
3. Stowe Boyd

Though targeted on the adoption of social software, the discussions at last week’s Enterprise 2.0 FORUM have always emerged to the question about the ROI of the Enterprise 2.0 strategy very quickly. Especially the talk of Dr. Frank Schönefeld turned the discussion towards the economic measures and dimensions of Enterprise 2.0 (he promised to me that an English version of his talk will soon be available on Slideshare!).

In times of budget limitations and reductions this is quite sensible - but no clear and satisfying answer can yet be given for this question. Therefore the already defined punchline “Improving Collaborative Performance” of the planned Enterprise 2.0 SUMMIT in October is more than relevant for these times of economic tension and I want to share my thoughts about the concept of this planned event with you on this weblog as well as to encourage you to give me some feedback.

So what’s the Enterprise 2.0 SUMMIT with the claim “Improving Collaborative Performance” about? The core discussion of this year’s E2.0 SUMMIT addresses the conceptional and organizational dimensions of gaining collaborative advantages and efficiency by adding social and collaborative action as well as intelligence to the company. Cutting it down - the questions to be discussed are the following:

1. How to conceptionalize, realize and gain collaborative performance?
   => discussing the value chain of an collaborative enterprise, the economics of sharing, processes of open innovation
2. What are the main drivers for collaborative advantage and efficiency?
   => discussing communications, processes, infrastructure as well as (self-)management
3. What are the key values of a collaborative culture?
   => discussing the key characteristics as open, transparent and decentralized as well as others - and how to realize the cultural change in a multinational environment as we have in a lot of European companies
4. How to introduce and adopt social and collaborative approaches within the company?
   => discussing the steps of adoption especially in the context of multinational companies

As you might realize - I am very much focussing on the extracting the economic benefits of Enterprise 2.0. I have therefore invited Kjetil Kristensen from Norway who did very interesting academic work on this topic. Furthermore Dr. Frank Schönefeld of T-Systems MMS is also working on a conceptionalization of the business values of Enterprise 2.0. Who else is focussing on this topic - please contact us!

Besides the visionary talks I am also looking for straight-forward cases as the high-procentage of practice talks is one of Kongress Media’s own key value propositions - in comparison to other conferences. So I appreciate any proposal of anyone or any matter for this visionary event. We hope we will support and trigger innovative ideas before and after the event - it’s our goal to help bond the European Enterprise 2.0 community more closely together.

Besides my german language summary at frogpond I suppose it’s important to compile some impressions for the non-german speaking Enterprise 2.0 community. And when one of your keynote speakers travelled all the way from London to Cologne it’s even more timely. I already did my best in twitter-translating the german-language talks for him (neat if you have companies like Vodafone among the best practices that present in German but sport english slides). Yes, David Terrar triggered off the conference day with a well-received talk on community building in the Enterprise. See the embedded slideshow below on “How to build vibrant communities”.

While I knew David before (we first met at the International Forum on Enterprise 2.0 in Varese, but didn’t find any time then), I enjoyed it a lot to have time for discussions this time - and we’ve had great conversations both at the pre-conference dinner and on conference day itself. He and Thomas Koch of Kongressmedia made me miss a good part of the afternoon starting session.

And here’s the Harvard video of John Chambers David mentions (seen also at Oliver Marks):

YouTube Direkt

1) What is your name?

James Governor

2) Who are you and what are you doing?

I am an industry analyst, who founded my own company, RedMonk, which we like to think of as “open source analysis”

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

We live it. RedMonk began as a pretty traditional boutique analyst firm looking at enterprise IT, but our extensive use of blogs and social media, and deep exposure to open source business models, led us into the Enterprise 2.0 space. We see ourselves as bridge builders between the traditional enterprise and the “cool kids”.

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

E 2.0 is about focusing on people and community, within your organisation, and investing accordingly. IT shouldn’t be there to replace people through automation, but to augment their capabilities.

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

To become more creative. Is it likely a traditional enterprise would create a Google for example? With E2.0 thinking it’s a lot more likely. Traditional organisations often require employees to leave in order to innovate. Enterprise 2.0 encourages and nurtures employee innovation.

6) What are the main challenges and threads of the Enterprise 2.0 idea?

The cultural changes required to support less hierarchical working patterns are the biggest obstacles to *anything* 2.0…

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

Extrovert, wide-ranging, fun

Please give us three links to articles/contributions that describe your views best?

• http://www.redmonk.com/jgovernor/2005/01/13/things-to-do-in-the-analyst-busi ness-when-you-are-dead/
• http://www.redmonk.com/jgovernor/2007/07/27/why-open-source-software-is-soci al-media/
• http://www.redmonk.com/jgovernor/2008/03/13/15-ways-to-tell-its-not-cloud-co mputing/

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

I will give you 4 -

1. Stephen O’Grady, co-founder RedMonk
2. Michael Coté, RedMonk analyst
3. Tom Raftery, RedMonk analyst to cover our new sustainability business
4. Tim O’Reilly

Hello again, sleeping beauty that you are - Enterprise 2.0 community. I am glad to be back and to have some good news for you: I am your freshly appointed community manager, giving you company right until the upcoming E20SUMMIT in Frankfurt, Germany, 6.-8. Oct. 2009 and probably consecutive SUMMITs too.

When Thomas Koch and Björn Negelmann of Kongressmedia asked me about this task I didn’t need much time to ponder - I knew both of them from various Enterprise 2.0 and Web 2.0 events before, enjoyed their conferences several times and know that they’re both enablers and drivers of Enterprise 2.0 both in Germany and internationally. And we’re sharing enthusiasm for the opportunities that Enterprise 2.0 can bring and will cooperate now even closer to advance the field.

So, in parallel to me working as a freelance, independent enterprise collaboration consultant with frogpond I will also be your community manager, listening to your questions, ideas and contributions. And I will contribute some of those as well, and ask for your feedback. There’s lots of things on the slate, we’re planning to bring international “thought leaders” like Dion Hinchcliffe or Lee Bryant in touch with Enterprise 2.0-companies, -consultants, -scientists and -users - all this under the subline “E20SUMMIT - Improving Collaborative Performance”.

So join the conversation, of course here but also in the Facebook Groups Enterprise 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 SUMMIT Community. Moreover, there’s Xing and LinkedIn ready to “bond the Enterprise 2.0 Community”. And there’s Twitter too, follow me there for #e20summit updates and “just-in-time” information (sorry, some german tweets may be in the mix).