• The Difference Between Hard and Hard Work

  Measurement isn’t hard, but it requires work - I guess this holds true for getting to know more about the RoI of Enterprise 2.0.

  Snip: “If you’re still saying to me that it’s too hard, that means that you don’t have the mechanisms in place to measure well, or you don’t have a handle on what you should be measuring because your goals aren’t clear, or you don’t know where that information lives inside your company. All of those are NOT an indication that measurement is hard. They’re an indication that you have some work to do to build the foundation for measurement.”

  tags: measurement, metrics, RoI, socialmedia

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

• The Way I Work: Matt Mullenweg

  Matt Mullenweg of Wordpress on his style of working - and especially how to manage a successful business where everyone us working from home (yes, we’re talking about how to organize collaboration.

  Well, microblogging is playing a vital part in it, snippet:

  “We all communicate using P2, something we launched that allows users to publish group blogs in WordPress. It’s a bit like Twitter, but the updates come in real time. With P2, we can share code and ideas instantly. There is a dedicated channel for each part of the company, and when there’s a new message, it shows up in red. It may be someone talking about development or what he or she had for breakfast. I also use Skype for one-on-one and mini group chats.”

  tags: microblogging, productivity, collaboration

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

• Twitter’s Ten Rules For Radical Innovators - Umair Haque - HarvardBusiness.org

  Umair Haque distills learnings and “messy heuristics” for innovators from looking at Twitter, watch out for the very interesting comments too.

  Snippet taken from the comments:
  “twitter is an interesting bug. people claim that they “get it”, but don’t participate. they often cite that they don’t have time.”

  tags: twitter, communication, innovation, collaboration

• Going with the flow: whither enterprise RSS? :: Blog :: Headshift

  This is Lee Bryant’s post on the future role of RSS in the Enterprise - (here I wrote that it’s a reply to “Steve Gilmor’s dim-witted claim that RSS is dead”, http://blog.enterprise2open.com/2009/06/09/enterprise2open-06092009/).

  Yes, fully agree, RSS is about as dead as http or XMPP. And I really enjoyed this post, best blogpost-intro ever:

  Snip: “One of the most annoying habits of self-appointed technology gurus, sheikhs, czars or experts is that they take their own behaviour as the basis for extrapolation to predict how the rest of the world will/could/should use tools. A side effect of this is an inability to empathise or understand the needs and culture of non-geek workers in non-technology companies.”

  tags: rss, enterprise2.0, trends, future, analysis

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

• Reconciling social computing with the enterprise

  Dion writes about how to bridge the gap between the social collaboration world outside and classical organizations.

  Strategies and battle plans “how to proceed”, I am with this but have doubts at the same time.

  To me it’s probably about the benefits of aiming high (you might achieve at least a bit) vs. procedding with cautious little steps? We all know it’s about the social dimensions in the first place with Enterprise 2.0, where both approaches have their up- and downsides …

  tags: adoption, enterprise2.0, implementation

  • what’s turning into an increasingly larger gap between what happens in the business world and what happens everywhere else
  • the act of work itself is becoming more of a collective journey instead of a final destination as our individual work experiences become more open, collaborative, participatory, and social
  • This situation creates a delta that, sooner or later, will simply become untenable for many organizations
  • exerts a subversive force on organizations as their workers help themselves to the tools of their own volition, bring their (and arguably better) new behaviors and processes to work, and try to get things done with them, whether that’s crowdsourcing, Enterprise 2.0, online customer communities, etc.
  • constituencies that have a stake in doing things the old way are disrupted by new social models for achieving those same business objectives, whether the replacements are highly collaborative work processes or the network co-creation of product designs and other outputs
  • So what’s an organization to do? Are there strategies that can help mitigate the seemingly growing tension, take advantage of new skills and behaviors of our workers, and avoid potential for sudden and/or unexpected changes in our businesses? In fact, is it even possible to intentionally encourage and adopt bottom-up processes? Fortunately, based on the experiences of those that have adopted them, there do seem to be some general strategies that can help.

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

• Participation Inequality: Lurkers vs. Contributors in Internet Communities (Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox)

  via @DT and as a very welcome reminder, the classic Jakob Nielsen text on participation inequality, aka 90-9-1 rule, complete with visualizations …

  Myself, I have always argued that
  1. this is more about the internet, and less about intranets et. al, so Enterprise 2.0 people don’t need to worry THAT much
  2. 90-9-1 is a deeply pessimistic view on things (alas, you decide whether it’s pessimistic or realistic), in the enterprise we should go for 100-100-100 always (and yes, we can)

  tags: participation, community, web2.0, collaboration, research, adoption

• CloudNotes: Why Google Reader is still hugely important (to me)

  A great piece on why RSS readers are still of importance to us, the knowledge workers. True for knowledge workers in Enterprise 2.0 ebvironments too, not all can be done via Friendfeed or Twitter.

  Take this together with Lee Bryants fine reply (I will bookmark this in Diigo as well) on Steve Gilmor’s dim-witted claim that RSS is dead. And yes, Lee, I loved this thing about consultants with short-attention spans

  tags: knowledgework, enterprise2.0, rss

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

• Google Wave Asks, Do You Like Your Project Collaboration Hard or Soft? - Managing Technology - Dennis McDonald’s Web Site

  Another worthwhile analysis of Google Wave, this time by Dennis McDonald who focuses on Wave’s potential to support a more ad-hoc informal (soft and fuzzy) mode of collaboration by helping communication, especially in project management (read this together with Dirk Röhrborns learning of using microblogging oin project communcation)

  tags: collaboration, googlewave, communication, knowledgework

• Google Wave: Surfing The Future Of Collaboration

  Ted Schadler of Forrester analyzing Google Wave, refining four WIMs (What does it mean):

  * WIM #1: Don’t get too stuck on installed email clients — they can’t evolve fast enough. [....]
  * WIM #2: Google Apps Premier Edition is worth keeping a close eye on. [...]
  * WIM #3: Microsoft will have yet another innovation hill to climb (and it will).
  * WIM #4: IBM’s approach to collaboration is looking pretty visionary.

  Entertaining times ahead …

  tags: forrester, googlewave, enterprise2.0, future

• Google Wave und das Enterprise 2.0 | Von Dirk Röhrborn | Google Wave, Trends | Human Network Competence

  Dirk Röhrborn does a german-language analysis of Google Wave out of an Enterprise2.0 perspective, to sum it up: “Promising, but questions remain”

  Snip: “Fazit: Es gibt noch viele offene Fragen.

  Mit welchem Geschäftsmodell wird Google das Produkt anbieten? Kostenfreie Nutzung, Premium SaaS, Lizenz oder Appliance - oder alles zusammen?
  Wie können organisatorische Strukturen und Berechtigungen abgebildet werden? Wie kann eine Integration in bestehende IT-Infrastrukturen erfolgen? Für welche Anwendungen ist Wave gut oder weniger gut geeignet? Wird die große Flexibilität von Google Wave befreiend wirken oder noch mehr zur Verwirrung und zum Information Overload der Nutzer beitragen?”

  tags: googlewave, collaboration, enterprise2.0

• Google Wave - It’s Time for the ‘Real Time’ | Andrea Vascellari

  Andrea writes a nice compilation of why Google Wave is cute (and collects some E 2.0 points “en passant”):

  Snip: “rich set of extensions APIs that can let you build pretty much anything from games to collaborative applications inside wave, to integration with other communication systems (like twitter, etc.), to integration of waves into work flows”

  Yes, that’s it.

  tags: googlewave, collaboration, communication

• How does Microblogging affect Project Communication?

  Dirk Röhrborn of Communardo is sharing their experiences with using the microblogging tool Communote in project communication (he’s citing previous posts that deal with the mechanisms too).

  Several implications, like e.g.
  # Digitalisation of Micro Information
  # Tool Shift (I like this, showing both the complementary nature of microblogging in the Enterprise **and** that its low barrier of entry is easing communication overall)
  # Information Awareness
  # Efficient Meetings and Fast Reactions
  # Support for Project Managers
  # Knowledge Sharing

  tags: communote, microblogging, projectmanagement, knowledgework, communication

  • Digitalisation of Micro Information
  • Tool Shift
  • Information Awareness
  • Efficient Meetings and Fast Reactions
  • Support for Project Managers
  • Knowledge Sharing

• DMMK Interview with Clay Shirky (podcast)

  Nicole Simon has done an interview with Clay Shirky, talking about social media as a whole but there are some Enterprise 2.0 related learnings in there as well (when Clay was at this years CeBIT webciety it was like that as well, talking about social media is **very** beneficial to Enterprise 2.0 people too).

  Some snippets:
  * 5 word synopsis for Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations: Group action just got easier
  * relevant participation patterns
  * why the product department should adopt these new tools, not marketing
  * we are in the infancy of use of social tools in companies
  * if old organisations will not catch up, startups will do the job for them

  tags: interview, future, trends, collaboration, enterprise2.0, socialmedia

• Twittern von Kongressen und Veranstaltungen aus Sicht der Organisatoren

  German language post covering the use of twitter during a conference - seen from the eyes of the conferemce organizers.

  I am seeing Twitter (and Poken-enabled social networking) as one of the supporting tools for the E20SUMMIT - but what do regular conference attendees are thinking of this? Does it distract you or do you welcome this as an additional layer of conversation and networking?

  Comments welcome.

  tags: no_tag

• Collaboration and Content Strategies Blog: Google Wave and its Audacity of Scope

  Another post on Google Wave,this time from Burton Group. What triggered me this time - it’s the cumulative insight we get from these Wave posts on 1. the future of collaboration and 2. the strategic reasoning Google employs (yes, supporting ideas like Wave seemed to be worthwhile for them, because it’s about the potentials of better collaboration for performance). Case prooved

  Snip:
  # “Wave is what email would look like if it were invented today” and we are told Google is open sourcing the protocol and software, then this starts looking like a grand plan indeed.

  # The key here will be what and how much of Google’s code will be open sourced. Rasumussen said “We intend to open source the lion share of the code we use to build our system.” This is a good start but what does this really mean in terms of code? To some, “lion share” sounds like Google is hedging its bet.

  tags: googlewave, opensource

  • “Wave is what email would look like if it were invented today” and we are told Google is open sourcing the protocol and software, then this starts looking like a grand plan indeed.
  • The key here will be what and how much of Google’s code will be open sourced. Rasumussen said “We intend to open source the lion share of the code we use to build our system.” This is a good start but what does this really mean in terms of code? To some, “lion share” sounds like Google is hedging its bet.

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

1.) What is your name?

James Dellow

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

I’m a consultant working in the field of social computing. I work for Headshift, a specialist social media and enterprise social computing consulting company. Headshift was founded in the UK, but has been operating in Australasia since 2008.

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

Many people mistake me for a ‘techie’, but I have never worked in an IT department. During the early part of my career I found myself in the position where I was the person who was the go-between for business and IT. I became interested in Enterprise 2.0 through my experiences in knowledge management (formed at Ernst & Young), and then later as a consultant working with a range large organisations (particularly with CSC) - as a result I have an appreciation for both the organisational and technology challenges that Enterprise 2.0 aims to change.

I also completed a Master of Business & Technology at the University of New South Wales (Sydney, Australia) in 2005 - so my feet are firmly planted in the grey area between social and computing.

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

I approach Enterprise 2.0 with a management perspective - heavily influenced by systems thinking - that takes into account the relationship between the social and technology aspects of applying Web 2.0 inside an organisation. This means results will vary between organisations because of the complexity of those relationships and the environment where they exist.

In practice this means I don’t believe simply installing a blog or a wiki makes you ‘Enterprise 2.0’. But equally, without the technology its doesn’t work (at least at the scale we need - Andrew McAfee captured this well in his SLATES model). In my own thinking I’ve tried to distinguish between Enterprise 2.0 and other applications of Web 2.0 inspired information management technologies under the theme of Intranet 2.0.

Also, despite my background in knowledge management, I don’t treat Enterprise 2.0 as the next iteration of knowledge management although its is very complementary.

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

I’ll answer this in a round about way. When we look at the evolution of our modern industrial society (embodied in the classic organisational structure), information and communication technologies (ICT) have been at work in the background supporting and shaping this evolution. Critically they have allowed organisations to scale, while also extending their organisational span of control so they can achieve their objectives in at least a semi-cohesive way.

However, with this growth and globalisation the actual environment for organisations has become more complex. As a result the command and control approach that ICT supported in the past is failing to keep up.

To operate effectively, we need systems that allow people to work in a way where social controls direct action and allow problem solving, not fixed hierarchical processes that are inflexible and often out of date. The experience of Web 2.0 on the Internet is already demonstrating that there is a better way for organisations to learn from.

This doesn’t mean the future won’t be transactional either - Amazon and eBay are all examples at one end of the Web 2.0 spectrum that mix efficient high volume transactions with social controls.

But as we move towards Enterprise 2.0 we need to remember that its not just about changing technology, at the same time society and the shape of organisations will also be changing. As a result, the workplace might also become a little more fun and interesting because of Enterprise 2.0.

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

To quote Clay Shirky,

“Every story in [Here Comes Everybody] relies on a successful fusion of a plausible promise, an effective tool, and an acceptable bargain with the users”

This gets back to the point that there are set of complex interactions at work that determine how successful any organisation can be with adopting Enterprise 2.0 as a way of organising. However, many people choose to only focus one aspect. This is a recipe for failure.

On the organisational side, Enterprise 2.0 is a clear challenge to existing organisational power structures. Information is power only if information access and flow can be controlled - but Enterprise 2.0 changes that rule and some people will be threatened by it.

On the technology side many of the strengths of the Web 2.0 model are hidden from the average Internet user - however, when we move Web 2.0 into organisations much of that hidden Web 2.0 infrastructure (both technology and people) is missing. Unfortunately, traditional enterprise IT management often works at a tangent to the Web 2.0 approach, so there is some ‘pain’ associated with this change.

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

business-and-technology, systems thinking, collaborative

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

You’ll also find more articles here, but three selected are

• Intranet 2.0
• Sharepoint and Enterprise 2.0
• Error! This Enterprise upgrade requires Change Management 2.0 is installed

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

• Jon Mell
• Kim Sbarcea
• Cai Kjaer

• CIOs: It’s Strategy Time

  Ex-McKinsey man and now Socialtext’s director for customer benefit (I am not sure about this is the right job title, Ross Mayfield said something like this at this weeks Interbational Forum in Enterprise 2.0 in Milan) on how CIOs can benefit from Enterprise 2.0:

  Snip: “Strategic relevance can be a sore spot for CIOs. Although most line managers agree in principle that IT is strategically important, CIOs still struggle for a seat at the strategy table. Senior leaders in manufacturing and other operationally intensive industries understand the importance of IT. But in other sectors, line management has a hard time seeing IT as more than a back-office support function. That’s particularly true in professional services, pharma, media, and other knowledge-intensive industries which traditionally create value through individual talent rather than operations.

  Enterprise 2.0 is changing all that.”

  I think he’s right and there’s much to decide and get right now in the outsets of Enterprise 2.0 - we get most of it when we conceive it as strategic issue for the company (and by strategic I sure don’t mean something like “important” or the like alone) - the task is now for CIOs to find a place at the boardroom table …

  tags: strategy, enterprise2.0

• Why intranets will destroy the “corporate website”

  via Injelea: Paul Miller about why firewalls are to be lowered

  Snip: “In fact, the emerging trend is for increasing access to be given to intranets for people outside the firewall; suppliers, contractors, customers, former staff etc. Major companies globally are looking to open up to their marketplaces, customers and consumers. They are also looking to increase their presence and engagement with social media and emerging 2.0 technologies.”

  I think so, for example we see that Open Innovation efforts imply an open platform (and why not open up an existing intranet to become more of an extranet in this case). And when we want to have more cross-border collaboration I think that (access-controled) wikis can be a very feasible and cost-effective thing to have, so it’s wiki as extranet, is it?

  tags: intranet, collaboration, openinnovation, wiki

• Intranet Strategietage der ECM WORLD

  German conference about Intranet strategy - July 1. and 2. in Zurich, Switzerland.

  Snip
  “Am 1. und 2. Juli finden in Zürich zum ersten mal die Intranet Strategietage statt. In 4 Seminaren wird das ganze Spektrum des Intranet Managements von 3 Intranet-Experten beleuchtet:

  * Intranet-Strategie und –Management
  * Redaktionsprozesse und Content-Qualität
  * Intranet-Governance und Zielcontrolling
  * Suche und Informationsarchitektur”

  tags: intranet, enterprise2.0

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

• Ideas for the measurement of Enterprise 2.0 effects

  I have commented on Björns post on how to measure the RoI (overall the effects of Enterprise 2.0).

  Numbers and “ways to proove it” are of varying importance in organizational decision processes - we all know that many things get chosen and done without clear-cut rentability calculations etc. - yet getting executives to buy into Enterprise 2.0 pilot projects can profit a lot from well-defined numbers.

  Please, read my comment and tell me what you think.

  tags: metrics, measurement, enterprise2.0

• Twitter on your intranet: 17 microblogging tools for business

  Dion writes about enterprise microblogging tools, showing that there are some issues to solve if we want to use this for “real business” ™

  One of the things is Filtering, i.e. how to dig out the tweets that are relevant to your work and current context. This will in my mind make out hte difference - enabling microblogging to become the tool for knowledge workers, not only in communication with peers, but also for exploring and searching information.

  tags: microblogging, twitter, enterprise2.0

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

• The enterprise implications of Google Wave | Enterprise Web 2.0 | ZDNet.com

  Dion analyzes why Google Wave might be of importance to Enetrprise 2.0 people - and argues that it’s very fitting to our concept of FLATNESSES.

  I fully agree and am definitely looking forward to kicking the tires of Google Wave.

  Snip “Google has launched many communication services since its inception yet none of these have had such obvious business utility or attempted to reinvent the collaborative process from the ground-up.”

  tags: googlewave, hinchcliffe, collaboration, communication, enterprise2.0

• Why is Google Wave a tsunami?

  blogged about Google Wave, with a humble effort to explain what makes Google Wave important from my perspective.

  It’s like they say that the toys of today are the tools of tomorrow, but there are of course more elaborate arguments included

  tags: google, wave, collaboration, infrastructure

• Upcoming: International Forum on Enterprise 2.0

  I am on my way to Milano for the International Forum on Enterprise 2.0 - hoping that there will be decent translations for the italian language parts.

  Blogged a short upcoming notice so you all know where I am

  tags: frogpond, enterprise2.0, conference

• Working in Groups

  @rosspw writes up on some of the “Tips for Working Successfully in a Group” - remember Randy Pausch.

  A bit of wisdom for those of us involved in helping teams collaborate more efficiently … I liked it for its focus on getting “collaboration infrastructure” right as a start

  tags: teamwork, collaboration

• Google Wave: What Might Email Look Like If It Were Invented Today? - O’Reilly Radar

  Tim gives a good rundown of Google Wave - as always more action is happening in the comments. There’s a discusiion touching bases on many accounts (Think Ray Ozzie’s Grrove, Jon Udell’s Practical Internet Groupware and more), what it all means to Facebook, Friendfeed and whatever (personally I think that it’s more of a threat to Facebook and not so much to the lifestreaming idea of Friendfeed)

  So, given that that the toys of today are the (enterprise) tools of tomorrow, what do we make of this as Enterprise 2.0 people?

  tags: google, communication, wave, collaboration, enterprise2.0

• The year of the shift to Enterprise 2.0 | Enterprise Web 2.0 | ZDNet.com

  Dion writes a concise analysis of the developments we will see in 2009 for Enterprise 2.0 - a good list, tons of studies referenced and some additional highlighting in the text.

  tags: enterprise2.0, forrester, hinchcliffe, analytics

  • Intriguing new just-released reports now show that between a third and one half of businesses either already are or will be employing so-called Enterprise 2.0 tools in the workplace (blogs, wikis, and social networking/messaging) in 2009.
  • The data also show that security concerns remain high, access is actually fairly low, compliance with mainstream enterprise data practices is poor, and some workers aren’t planning to get anywhere near them.
  • Nearly one in two businesses will make use of Enterprise 2.0 software in 2009.
  • Forrester
  • actual employee access to the said tools is fairly low
  • Business use of social networking has rough parity with personal use, while a quarter of people are not planning to use the tools at all.
  • TMCnet and IntelliCom Analytics
  • consistent business use of the social networking tools tools across organizations of all sizes and around the globe, ranging from 35% to almost half,
  • Also, some workers are determined to be disengaged, with about 25% reporting no plans to use social networks, period.
  • Concerns about the security issues with social computing is high, around 80%.
  • Pretexting and phishing are now widely regarded as a serious threat
  • At least 50 percent of organizations will use wikis as important work collaboration toos in 2009.
  • Society for Information Management’s Advanced Practices Council (APC)
  • Management of content types like SMS/text messages, blogs and wikis are largely off the corporate radar in 75% of organizations
  • AIIM State of ECM Report for 2009
  • A major change has taken place in many organizations over the last year and so there is imbalance and uncertain about how to best use the resources at hand.
  • Using the right tool for the job while at the same time understanding that the Enterprise 2.0 tools change the very nature of the job is going to be essential for achieving good outcomes in virtually every organization.
  • Blogs, wikis, and activity streams (those event lists in apps like Facebook and Twitter that tell you what’s happening in near real-time)
  • The intrinsic design of these tools creates much more of a usable, accessible information ecosystem than traditional tools. These traditional tools can create powerful, local information flows but little build-up of value over time or collective intelligence. In other words, the new social tools change enterprise knowledge flow by making it more social, more open and public, discoverable, and ultimately, the most leverageable.
  • When should social tools be used for getting work done and when should the older, traditional tools be used that keep information submerged and unusable by the rest of the organization.
  • Hint: The create the most value for the organization (and themselves), workers should generally default to social tools unless the information is highly sensitive.

• Google Wave

  Snip “Google Wave is a new communication service previewed today at Google I/O. “A wave is equal parts conversation and document, where people can communicate and work together with richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more.”

  One example of the many blogposts concerning Googlees new play, Wave. I noted some more general links in my blogpost herehttp://www.frogpond.de/index.php/archive/why-is-google-wave-a-tsunami/

  tags: Google, opensource, communication, collaboration, wave

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