Crossposted from my frogpond blog

These are the slides I used yesterday at a workshop talk at T-Systems SI in Stuttgart. I got invited to talk about the potentials of Web 2.0 for corporate uses, Enterprise 2.0 and implementation. Turned out to be a great event with +30 people listening and discussing vividly – thanks.

Well, when I initially met with T-System SI’s Franz Binder and Marcus Dreher for arranging the get-together I promised (or threatened them …) a helter-skelter ride through the field. Now, after some fiddling it turned out to be both an invitation to join the bandwagon (and T-Systems they are, I wish the team all the best with QBase) and a half-joking warning about ill-fated past knowledge management efforts and some related implementation tasks (and pitfalls) to understand if one wants to enjoy the ride:

21st century media literacies from JD Lasica on Vimeo:

via Stefan Krüger / IBM: Google bietet Tool für Migration von Lotus Notes zu Google Apps an

[....] muss Google noch einen weiten Weg gehen, bis es ein ernsthafter Mitbewerber für Notes/Domino wird. Auf Google Apps zu wechseln, sei für Notes-Anwender nicht gerade naheliegend, wenn sie eine Software-as-a-Service-Lösung (SaaS) suchten. Mit dem Dienst LotusLive gebe es bereits ein solches Angebot von IBM. "Die Leute von Google müssen der Zielgruppe, den Unternehmenskunden von IBM, klar machen, dass sie die Besten sind, wenn es darum geht, die Probleme von SaaS-Mail zu lösen - zum Beispiel Sicherheit, Compliance, gesetzliche Vorschriften, Transparenz, Datenhaltung, Bandbreite, Administration und Provisioning"

OK, das sind in der Tat gute Argumente - mir fällt darin in erster Linie Transparenz auf, ich bin gespannt ob Google for the Enterprise darauf Antworten entwickelt.

This is a nice set of interviews, well rather short one question one answer dialogues with my friend Euan Semple.

Euan is a very thoughtful person and - obvious with his experience on the use of social media within organisations - the fifteen questions get good answers. And I like his little remarks (like social media being so un-business like from the outside, how it helps to keep the I small in RoI).

Right, to get involved with the social web both inside and outside of an enterprise does not present an immediately obvious ROI like process automation of old did. But it can empower organisations to become more adaptive and able at learning, ie. improving knowledge retention, creating collaborative environments, and encouraging a knowledge sharing culture.

Unluckily the player can’t be embedded (well, embedding 15 videos is a drag anyway) so you have to got to guruonline to watch them.

Euan explains how most companies are starting to feel pressured to jump head first into social media because everyone is talking about it, although it would be imperative for most businesses to at least investigate social media, throwing too much at it isn’t necessarily going to help.

Euan also acknowledges that social media can be perceived as being a tool for the younger generation, but that generation is now starting to work within your organisation and with them they will bring the tools which they’re used to using on a day to day basis. This doesn’t mean you need to ban social networking sites like Face Book and MySpace in your office, it means you need to encourage these staff to use these tools in a manor that can benefit your business and you need to trust them to do this. Euan justifies this by pointing out that they may be more likely to ask their existing peers within that network if they encounter a problem rather than going through the usual time consuming channels. This example is not just limited to the more junior employees; encouraging staff to participate in social media can speed up trouble shooting and enable any solutions found to be shared.

Bill Ives writes about the announced offering by Telligent - stressing their market insights (integrators and integration needed) and subsequent focussing with their suite:

I have written a bit on the potential for new information silos within enterprise 2.0. Telligent recognizes this. Rob Howard said, “Telligent’s strategy is to provide a platform where social computing, enterprise technology and traditional communication come together to break down information silos and enhance measurability both inside and outside the organization.” We discussed how tools should be independent of information and that Telligent does not attempt to replace tools such as email but allows you to work with them better in an integrated manner. You can drag and drop content from sources like YouTube into Telligent and add widgets from tools like Twitter in the same manner.

As Tom Davenport recently wrote you need both old school and new school capabilities (see Mixing Old and New School Communication). Tom referred to this as 1.5 with a sense of humor and said it is greater than 2.0. Tom wrote that asking which is better Web 1.0 or Web 2.0 is actually a false dichotomy. They complement each other. I would agree. Enterprise 2.0 brings a new dimension but it does not replace many traditional enterprise apps anymore than TV replaced the radio or the telephone replaced in person conversation. Telligent has correctly recognized this and designed for integration.

From the perspective of “collaborative performance” the extensive measurement tools and approaches they push are very interesting - we all know there’s a need for metrics (Telligent promises “buzz metrics” too, and while I doubt that they can really measure the informal buzz, it’s 1. a nice approach and probably 2. sort of a “unique selling proposition” for this suite?

• On why human resource management has been a major disappointment « Brad Hinton – plain speaking

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  • utilising knowledge management that encouraged innovation and collaboration, the building of social capital and emergent relationship networks, were actually at odds with the HRM goal of personnel control

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

• Thinking about “Design Thinking” | Manage by Designing | Fast Company

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  • I grow more bothered by the week with the phrase “design thinking.” I know full well that I am fighting a losing battle, but I think it is an unfortunate term for describing what designers have to offer to other disciplines, which seems the most common reason for using the term. As is a way of talking about what designers can contribute to areas beyond the domains in which they have traditionally worked, about how they can improve the tasks of structuring interactions, organizations, strategies and societies, it is a weak term.
  • For it is not in the modes of thought that designers most distinguish themselves, but in their actions. Designers act differently than analysts or decision-makers. Design is an extreme activity. It tends to call on all of the faculties of those engaged in it. It is contextual. It is embodied. It uses the whole person’s mind and body, left brain and right, hand and heart, analysis and taste. And it never gets enough of any of them.
  • I think it is so much more powerful, demanding, and relevant to invite lawyers, doctors, politicians and business people to design rather than to engage in design thinking.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

• Mobs Rule! : Andrew McAfee’s Blog

  Andy McAfee asks himself why prediction markets haven’t taken off so far …

  I agree with him about the bewilderment and can only say that 1. there are quite some (technology) vendors postioned in this space and 2. you can achieve quite a lot with plain (open source) social software already.

  Snip: “The evidence is mounting that corporate prediction markets work as advertised, delivering quick, accurate, and decisive predictions in areas of great interest. Furthermore, the evidence so far also suggests that they work better than current corporate forecasting techniques, at least in some circumstances. So are there any good reasons left for not using them, or at least experimenting with them? I ask seriously: why would any enlightened company not avail itself of this technology? Can you come up with any legitimate reasons not to jump in with prediction markets?”

  tags: collective_intelligence, prediction_markets, enterprise2.0, adoption, business_intelligence

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

• Community SUMMIT: Community Summit

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Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Being at reboot made me miss out not only the Enterprise 2.0 conference in Boston but also Kongressmedia’s Intranet Summit 2009. Sad thing, normally I would have been there for meeting other consultants like Saim or Stephan and above all meeting practitioners and getting to know more about their intranet projects and approaches.

Good then to have fellow bloggers Frank Hamm and Saim Alkan compile extensive documentation on the talks (to be found in the documentation wiki open to the attendees), write up their learnings and impressions (Saim: Der Wert eines Inranets - live vom Intranet-Summit 09 #its09 and 2. Tag: “Der Wert eines Inranets” - live vom Intranet-Summit 09 #its09, Frank: Review zum Intranet Summit with links to nine (!) further blog posts, all german posts alas).

In my mind this blogger-generated extra content is a definite added value to being at a conference, it’s a mark of excellence that separates good from very good conferences. That said, “excellent conference” may mean different things to different people, but I am sure that “blogger relations” (some hold that installing a “blogger hub” is the way to go, like Braden Kelly expands upon in Conferences 3.0) make a difference. And for the things to avoid see Gerald’s list - things that make conferences less attractive.

What’s on your mind - are there other things of importance for the upcoming E20SUMMIT and the ECM World?