Underneath the curtain of a static web announcement lots of content-related discussions regarding the program of the Enterprise 2.0 SUMMIT 09 are happening. From a small circle we have now extended our advisory and feedback board to a number of well-known Enterprise 2.0 experts including (in alphabetical order of their lastname) Lee Bryant, Willms Buhse, Bertrand Dupperin, James Governor, Dion Hinchcliffe, Martin Koser, Mark Masterson, Joachim Niemeier, JP Rangaswami, Frank Schönefeld, Luis Suarez, David Terrar, Thomas Vander Wal and Simon Wardley. After this preparation we will enter a more public discussion about the to-be-discussed topics as well as speakers and panelists to get involved at the Enterprise 2.0 SUMMIT - as the idea of the E2.0 SUMMIT on Oct 6-8th is to represent a community and expertise hub for the European Enterprise 2.0 community. This means we want to reflect the common E2.0 discussions esp. from a European viewpoint and to attract big parts of the E2.0 industry members.

A already finalized thought about the E2.0 SUMMIT is the main emphasis on structuring the discussion around the “ROI” (and its synonyms like ROC, RONI, metrics, value/benefits) question of Enterprise 2.0. And we found our own notion for it - we want to discuss the “collaborative performance”. Therefore I already invited Kjetil Kristensen, a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). He holds a PhD from the Department of Engineering Design and Materials at NTNU, and is focusing on collaborative performance in dispersed teams. He will give us an insight talk to his research results.

But the idea is not to stop the discussion on the conceptional and theoretical level. As Joachim Niemeier has put it in our internal discussion:

“bridging ’strategy’ and ‘implementation’ by modern (management) thinking is critical. [Discussion the performance and metrics of E2.0 .. ] we should at least start with the classical candidates: Balances Scorecard, Maturity models, (European) Excellent Models, Staged Approaches. Even more: we could organize a ‘metrics workshop’, we could have a look at ‘Wiki visualisation’ and so on.”

Does anybody has some further practical insights on these approaches?

Some other question that is still driving the advisory and feedback circle is the discussion about to what extend we have to discuss the infrastructual convergence and commoditization of Cloud Computing, Unified Communications and Collaborative Systems at the event. If you know Simon Wardley, you know his comments about this in advance - as he argues:

“There is a strong connection between E2.0 and Cloud Computing but it is in the underlying themes.”

My question is not the relevance of the underlying developments in general but the relevance to the corporate world in continental Europe. As I see most of the E2.0 interested corporate people at the very beginning of the E2.0 (r)evolution, I don’t (yet) see this aspect as a more than 1 or 2 sessions covering topic. Or can anybody give me some counter-arguments?

And while we are discussing about E2.0 services - I also have the question about the importance of a “launch pad” for E2.0 services at the event. The boundaries of the enterprise in terms of integrating external application in business processes are very tight IMHO - in continental Europe. But as an industry event we need to leverage the chances for the service provider … so yes or no?

I would be very happy if I could stir up the discussions about the program with this post - so I am eager to read your feedback.

It’s been a long time for this “sleeping beauty” to awaken again, but now it’s just the time to get things going again - because there are some exciting community events ahead. For example the second Enterprise 2.0 FORUM on Feb. 12th in Cologne with Dave Terrar and a lot of different German cases - starting from A as ABB to V as Vodafone. We have just begun with our pre-conference interviews - and in the notion of the community blog I’d like to publish an English transcript of the interview with Dr. Frank Schönefeld, COO of T-Systems Multimedia Solutions:

1) Dr Schönefeld, you are a speaker at the upcoming E2.0 FORUM in Cologne and will be having a talk about the de-mystification of Enterprise 2.0. What can we expect? Can you give us three keywords prospecting your talk?

The notion and idea of Enterprise 2.0 has been recently surrounded by some myths - for example we are speaking of “the dawn of the emergent collaboration”, of “wikinomics” or the power of “everybody”. What I am aiming for is to clean up the myths to reveal the core idea - in the hope something will rest.

2) Your talk is focussing on the structuring the value proposition of enterprise 2.0. What is your motivation behind this approach?

Enterprises are not buying any myths in times of crisis. They only get convinced if they understand what costs savings, productivity increases or new opportunities can be realized [by this apporach] within the organization or with partners, customers or any other stakeholder.

3) The last E2.0 FORUM has shown, that successful E2.0 projects are characterized by the following: “Think Big, Start Small and Move Fast” What do you think about this statement?

I believe that the initial phase of social software as the new thing has already passed the enterprises. Enterprises have made their first experiences and for the most of them it was just another YANT - Yet Another Nice Tool. In my opinion we have to settle the ground for the conviction that todays known Intranets will change within the next five years and that Enterprise 2.0 will give a lot of input to these. Therefore - “think different and act” - would be a better statement in my beliefs.

4) In regards to your systematisation what is your initial point to start from? Is it the target dimension to start from to gain the needed momentum for the project?

I believe you have to analyse the target dimension closely to understand and target the benefits. But in the adoption process the benefits can be realized and summed up on different dimensions.

5) How do you think about Enterprise 2.0 regarding the ongoing economic situation? Is enterprise 2.0 a way out or a deadlock for the situation?

Forrester has reduced its optimistic market forecast during the last weeks but is still predicting 15 to 25% growth for the Web 2.0 Collaboration Software Market. Not bad for a crisis, isn’t it? But all jesting aside we are just testing the acceptance for the topic in the market ourselves. And we have to constat, that the interest is stll existent but the path towards a decision is a long one.

What do you think about the myths and the value proposition of Enterprise 2.0?

Following a link on Martin’s Delicious recommendations I stumbled upon Richard Dennison’s note about the new BT case study - which is already quite interesting to read (see also this video!). While being on Richard’s site I came along another interesting post about the Intranet evolution which again hijacked me to some thoughts about the decentralization of information systems as underlying idea of the Intranet 2.0 evolution. Have a look at my other post and let me know about what you are thinking.

Note: See this as a practical example of the creative power of social media - talked about here.