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