Preceeding the Enterprise 2.0 SUMMIT (you know, Oct 7. & 8. in Frankfurt) Björn and I are planning to host a BarCamp-style meetup of Wiki-consultants, -developers, -users and all people generally interested in enterprise wikis. Given that Oct 6 is pre-conference workshop day anyway we’ve thought that WikiCamp ‘09 is a nice and fitting name. That said, we’re organising a nice venue and will look for all the necessary gadgets like beamers, working wifi etc. (and I guess we’ll also find some sponsored catering). Ideally a diverse mix of people from the german (and international) wiki community will then get together, and take the opportunity of an idea and/or concept development day, where:

• the people behind various wiki engines can meet up, interact and network
• lessons learned can be exchanged and told, bridging the experiences of both wiki practitioners and consultants
• we’ll discuss the future role of wikis in the context of Enterprise 2.0
• we’re open for more ideas, hints, wishes and proposals, … (go ahead now, voice your ideas in the comments, what do you think?)

Update: Here’s the WikiCamp’09 wiki, to collect and systematize ideas.

During the last week I was pushing the finalization of the first draft of the programm for the Enterprise 2.0 SUMMIT (still waiting for some feedback from my advisory board!). We are still far away of having a complete speaker’s list but we have thoroughly discussed the topics for the conference (you might want to have a sneak preview at looking at this Google Doc!) - as this is the foundation to select the right cases and speakers. While researching a little for this matter I came along an older post of Susan Scrupski from the ITINSIDER blog: “Reality Check 2.0” - that she wrote in Nov last year as the on-going economic downturn had not yet reached the sentiments of the E2.0 evangelists in the US. It’s a very good analysis of the situation esp. the comparison towards former IT development like the emergence of BPM, Outsourcing or ERP during the economic crisis of the late 80s and early 90s:

Now, no disrespect to my late GenX and GenY readers and friends, but Boomers have some experience here that may prove helpful. Those of us who were engaged in the technology workforce in the late 80s and early 90s had to move fast to help our customers cut costs and work smarter. For me, that meant the birth of Business Process Reengineering and Outsourcing. For others, it meant the birth of Enterprise Resource Planning or ERP. Now, you could argue whether any or all of these initiatives actually delivered the results intended, but the fact remains: lots of software developers and consultants made a huge market in downtime adversity.

From there she argues by citation of some other E2.0 thought leaders as Mike Gotta and Stowe Boyd that E2.0 could be a chance to lead towards “business transformation” (as mentioned by Mike Gotta) or to “reinvent the Enterprise IT” (phrased by Stowe Boyd) if focused on the bottom line. Mike Gotta answered to this in a later post that it’ll be “time for ‘pragmatic due diligence’ when it comes to social software”.

As from my observations for Europe and esp. Germany I can firmly support the line that some E2.0 enthusiast need to get more realistic on what can be achieved with Enterprise 2.0. A lately discussion (unfortunately only in German) in our XING Enterprise 2.0 group shows how theoretical and therefore “soft” the discussion is about the outcome of Enterprise 2.0. But then I also have to adjust that as Europe and esp. Germany is always lagging behind the adoption of new web-based business ideas and esp. Germans are more critical about innovation the hype about new approaches never reaches that far as in the US - therefore we are probably already closer to the bottom line. But still the discussions about the potentials regarding Enterprise 2.0 are not anymore concrete than in the US. And a lot of people are looking for the savior when it comes towards Enterprise 2.0.

The last two Enterprise 2.0 FORUMs have shown that there are some reoccuring characteristics of sucessful perceived E2.0 projects that - from a qualitative perspective - might turn out to be the critical success factors. In regards to our on-going discussions about the topics of the Enterprise 2.0 programm I would therefore like to make some summing-up on these aspects:

• Competitive ways towards Adoption: Mike Gotta brings it towards a nice point: “IT organizations usually follow a Plan-Build-Run framework that often means Plan-Build-Runaway after the system is deployed. But since many social applications are not transactional or process-specific in a traditional sense [..] it means we need to establish methods around adoption practices to gauge how people really get work done and how work models change as a result of social applications.”  IMHO social applications always rely on the momentum of the interaction of a critical mass therefore the good old P-B-R will tend to be less successful than more hands-on approaches like “think big and start small”. For this I always like to refer towards a conversation with JP Rangaswami at reboot last year (that I have unfortunately not have registered!). He explained to me that he is quite fine with people installing and trying out new applications. Choosing the right technology is a competitive approach - the winner is the solution that has the biggest impact and critical mass.
• Leveraging the power of feedback: At the last Enterprise 2.0 FORUM Frank Schönefeld brought up a nice systematization for the feedback mechanisms of social applications. It structures the benefits of feedback on five levels (from the more concrete to less concrete) :  “social creation” (benefits from the collective intelligence and actions in creating information, cross-links etc), direct feedback (benefits from cross-linking people and information by trackbacks, comments, bookmarks and feed subscriptions), systemic feedback (benefits from new relations/interconnections between people and information) and social feedback (benefits from gaining positive feedback, authority and acknowledgement). So IMHO the success of projects tends to relate to the realized level of these feedback mechanisms.
• Changing organizational patterns: At CeBIT there has been a nice panel discussion on the “Future Workplace” including the above mentioned Frank Schönefeld as well as Dion Hinchcliffe, Willms Buhse and Philip Vanhoutte. Moderated by Sascha Alexander (Computerwoche.de) they talked about the changes that are deriving to companies as Enterprise 2.0 and GenX/GenY are entering the workspace. The focal point of the discussion led to new organizational patterns (more remote, open and collaborative, project-based, interdisciplinary working) that have to be created within the enterprises to lever the potentials of Enterprise 2.0.
• Being Complementary and Integrative: This is probably common sense for all IT-based activities but from the critics regarding the E2.0 hype paroles this need to be said: No one can run a business only with social applications - social applications are a supplement and enhancement for existing information technology. Therefore it needs to be integrate at some point with business applications to be business-critical in the long run.

Well - these are my 2 cents on “Enterprise 2.0″ and the economic crisis. BTW - I guess I will choose the title of this post as the title of the introduction panel for the Enterprise 2.0 SUMMIT. As this discussion might be a good start for the conference.

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.

1.) What is your name?

Gil Yehuda

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

I’m an independent consultant – which is a fancy way of saying that I’m in between jobs right now. Most recently I was the Forrester Analyst who covered Enterprise 2.0 for Information and Knowledge Management clients.

Prior to that I was an Enterprise Architect at Fidelity Investments, where I implemented E2.0 tools and behaviors in some of their larger business units.

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

When I was an Enterprise Architect, I realized that I had tons of responsibility but no authority. I also discovered that no matter how much I knew about my field, there was always someone who knew more than me. So rather than trying to be the smartest and the most powerful architect – something I knew I’d never be – I chose to be the most helpful and socially-connected architect. I put together a virtual organization using social networking tools and this transformed the relationships between the development, architecture, and engineering groups. We proved to be more agile and less expensive. Then other groups sought my help to copy the model for their initiatives. Later I learned that I was following the E2.0 themes, so I dove in to learn more about the field that I was instinctually drawn to.

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

At its core, E2.0 is a shift in mindset and behavior. In many cases, the new behaviors need to be supported by new tools.

I see three phases to the E2.0 idea. In the first, organizations realize that facilitating knowledge exchange between employees who are connected by weak-tie relationships is an essential part of running a modern scalable business. In the second phase, Enterprises reach outside of the corporate walls for cooperation with customers and partners. In the third, we lose the name “E2.0” and just say “this is who we work with and how we work.”

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

The success of many modern corporations is based primarily on the effective use of their knowledge economy. Their knowledge economy is composed of knowledge, people, and the effective exchange of knowledge and people. The E2.0 idea seeks to provide companies with the tools and behaviors that facilitate a knowledge economy using the proven successes of the Web 2.0 Internet. In the most basic sense, E2.0 is not an optional set of tools that companies can choose to budget for, or defer. Businesses will eventually adopt the behaviors that E2.0 supports at its core, or will fail
to compete with those who do.

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

I see three main challenges to the idea:
1. Timing is essential to the success of an E2.0 initiative. Most organizations start too late.
2. E2.0 must acknowledge that companies have to follow rules, regulations, and risk management processes. Unfortunately, these rule are often used to stifle innovation rather protect interests.
3. Lack of technology integration is a barrier. Companies want E2.0 tools to fit within their infrastructure and leverage their existing investments in enterprise software.

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

Insightful, Collaborative, Passionate

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

In addition to the papers that I wrote for Forrester clients on the Forrester site, I’d include these three articles, one of which I wrote:

• Predicting the battle over collaboration infrastructure in 2009
• Forrester on the Future of Enterprise 2.0 Technologies
• The Rules of Engagement in Community

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

What a difficult question — only three names?! There are so many. OK, I’ll try.

1. Jessica Lipnack
2. Bill Ives
3. Rachel Happe

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

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?

Or France, or Japan, or Brazil? Or, indeed, anywhere that is not an “Anglo/Saxon” culture? Now, wait, wait — before you flame on! (or worse), hear me out. It’s hard to talk about the issue I want to raise here without raising some emotional reactions as well — often rather heated ones. That’s understandable, but it may also hinder us from having a conversation about a very interesting topic.

Important caveat number one, therefore, is the one I raised in my very first sentence — despite my (deliberately) provocative headline, I think that what I’m about to speculate about applies to some degree in any society that that is not a progeny of England (and even that formulation will be fighting words for some in the USA, Canada, Oz, New Zealand and particularly Ireland or Scotland — but I am thinking in almost biological terms, here. You may well dislike your parents, but you can’t change who they are). I will use Germany as the basis for my speculation, because it’s the non-Anglo/Saxon culture I know best, and not because I want to pick on Germany or Germans in particular. I love Germany — it is my home; my wife, daughter, large parts of my family, and many close friends are all German. But I do believe that certain aspects of German culture, and their implications with respect to social software, can be used to illustrate points about a broader theme, and so I will use them to try to do so. OK?

This is slippery, and dangerous terrain, and it is essentially impossible to venture out onto it without falling, and making a fool of oneself. I will surely be no exception here. But I am convinced that there is something important lurking out on those dangerous plains, and I think we would all be well served by finding some way to call attention to it. What is Anglo/Saxon culture? What is German culture? How do they differ? Frankly, I’m no expert in such matters, and not really qualified to voice an opinion on them, in many people’s eyes. But I will now proceed to forthrightly go ahead and do so anyway.

And therein lies a fascinating difference between the two cultures: Anglo/Saxon culture encourages — even lionises — such acts. German culture does not.

Now, having said that, here comes important caveat number two: there is no such thing as absolute truth, and there are certainly no absolute truths with regard to sociology or politics or cultural differences. These are not binary states, of which I speak, but points near the median of a very analogue — Gaussian — distribution. For every rule, there is an exception, and indeed, the exceptions sometimes make the rule. Etc. I understand and acknowledge that. However, there is nevertheless value to be found in examining the median in such distributions, and when I say “German culture does not”, that’s what I am aspiring to do. OK?

It may be impossible to ever come up with “the” definition of something as amorphous as a human society or culture, but any fool can see immediately, upon leaving the one she was born into, and visiting another, that they exist. And that they have differences. These differences are typically expressed as stereotypes and prejudices, many of which are the product of nothing more than ignorance (and often, its correlate, fear). But some of these stereotypes will have a kernel of something approximating truth at their core.

Thus, for example, in 1758, the Württembergischer publisher Karl Friedrich Moser wrote: “Every nation has its principal motive. In Germany, it is obedience; in England, freedom; in Holland, trade; in France, the honour of the King”. This is an absurd exaggeration, verging on hyperbole, and particularly in the modern world, one which many Germans would vigourously object to — and rightly so. To the latter point, and despite that, I might respond by doing the following: let us fast forward the lens of our attention to the early 1970s. And turn that lens on the anarchist and terrorist elements that surrounded people like Baader and Meinhof. Even before violence became a tragic element of the student protests in the late 1960’s, there was an element of distrust and frustration with the established order that took the form of an outright contempt of reason — a disdain for Wissenschaft, and a belief in the instincts of the Basis (the collective) as a useful guide to behaviour, as opposed to reason. These sorts of ideas are the clear and unmistakable descendants of German Romanticism of the late 18th and early 19th century. And the contrast between these stereotypes — the idea of an extreme affinity for obedience versus the inchoate Sehnsucht and open contempt for reason embodied by Romanticism — is profoundly illustrative of the complexity of German culture. This is a culture that produced both the Prussian hierarchies of Bismarck’s Ämte, and the theories of Karl Marx. It has a long, complex and unique history, of which one quite prominent thread is an ongoing, recurring struggle between the needs and desires of the individual, and those of the group in which that individual resides.

The history of Anglo/Saxon culture contains such a thread as well. It is not necessary — or even useful — to engage in a conversation about the merits of these two contrasting threads. All that I wish to do is make the following point: in each of the two cultures, the thread exists, and they are different from one another. The history of the the struggle between the individual and his society is a different story in Anglo/Saxon culture than it is in German culture. And the product of these respective threads — the day to day realities in which we now find ourselves — are also different.

To what extent, then, can we expect that practices regarding social software, as developed and espoused by an English-speaking, Anglo/Saxon culture, to be a seamless fit in a German-speaking culture? I think it must be obvious by now that I think the answer is: to no extent at all. Indeed, to the extent that software of any kind embodies social and cultural norms, to what extent is it reasonable to expect that the design of a software artefact produced in an Anglo/Saxon culture will be optimal in a German one? Again, I think the answer is clear: it is not at all reasonable to expect such a thing.

On the other hand, we live in a “globalised” age, one where every culture is exposed to many of the same influences, to an extent never before known in the history of our species. Communication technologies — particularly television and the Internet — are the enablers of this. No culture now exists, on the planet, that has not been exposed, to some degree, to Baywatch. Many cultures — and certainly all of the more affluent cultures — have their own version of Big Brother — in Germany, this past month, the local version of the British reality show “I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here!” was watched by an extraordinary number of people.

And lurking within that observation, I think, is the essence of a problem currently confronted — and as far as I can tell, largely unacknowledged — by social software systems in general, and certainly Enterprise 2.0 punditry in particular. Most of the social software currently “in play” in the market, and certainly virtually all of the commentary on the themes it provokes (like Enterprise 2.0) are products of Anglo/Saxon cultures — representative of Anglo/Saxon thinking. This is an understandable consequence of their provenance, perhaps, but it is nonetheless insufficient. Just as “I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here!” can only be successful in Germany in a version that is German in nature (and then it can be very successful indeed), we are in need of an articulation of Enterprise 2.0 that is German in nature. And one that is Spanish, one that is Japanese, Russian, Chinese and so forth. Lacking such an articulation, we are likely to find ourselves lost in the quagmire of discussions that purport to be about “das Ding an sich”, but which are (also) about differences between two cultures. We need to tease those two thing apart from one another — such that, hopefully, we can concentrate solely on talking about “das Ding an sich”.

And to those Germans reading this who are now shaking their heads, perhaps annoyed, perhaps merely perplexed (and perhaps both), and thinking, “Why? Why do we need such a thing? What value is there in the Anglo/Saxon definition of ‘Enterprise 2.0′ that could possibly prompt me to want a German version of it?”, I would say the following. As someone who is in the rare position of being able to read something like Andrew McAfee’s definition of Enterprise 2.0, and “see” it with both the eyes of a native Anglo/Saxon, and (to some debatable but undeniable extent) the eyes of a German, I say to you: if there is a concept that is more uniquely, perfectly German than the one of “emergent structure”, implied by McAfee’s theory, then I would like to hear about it. ;D

So what would a German version of Enterprise 2.0 look like? What would it entail? Well, I’m not sure. But this forum is as good a place as any to debate and define it. Certainly, there are some obvious characteristics — German social software will need to have a slightly different relationship to hierarchies, authority and expertise than Anglo/Saxon software will. And German social software will have to take into explicit account both such “soft” factors, as well as the “hard” realities of everyday existence — such as German laws, customs and norms regarding things like privacy. But I am sure of one thing — without it, social software will not “work” in Germany. Or anywhere else.

What do you think?

Lots of information have been already distributed through out the net about the Enterprise 2.0 FORUM / Cologne, that took place already nearly two weeks ago. Now we finished cutting and setting up all the recorded video materials - so here we go with the presentation of Suw Charman-Anderson talking about the “adoption strategy for social software”.

Well - actually she was talking about “training a cat” - and how the cat will not do anything without a reward for doing it. So as the first key point of successfully adopting social software she advised to think about a rewarding system. Further aspects she is talking about were

• the importance of identifying the problem on the day-to-day work of the individual that can be solved by social software
• the user-centric adoption as bottom-up approach that has more potential to be successful than the top-down approach
• the need of a leadership by engagement - I would do the reference towards Rod Beckstrom’s catalyst personnas
• for the implementation of social software projects she proposes a “trojan mice” aproach in the means of small projects introduced into the ongoing organisation (to grow securely)

Many more interesting advices may be taken from the video:

Video

Actually the importance of the rewarding system was also a big issues being discussed in the open space session. (I am just working on a transcript of the discussions - will translate this also to English soon!)

There are two aspects regarding the rewarding system I’d like to share with you:

1. the grade of participation in social software projects must be part of the evaluation by the objective agreement
2. participation in social software projects must be transparent to be socially acknowledged (means the need for activity streams!).

What advices do you have on this?

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.

In a recent post Bernard Lunn of RWW lists some objections CIOs have towards social media. He comes up with the following issues:

Unpredictable scaling issues.

Security against IP loss.

Integration.

Loss of productivity.

Accidental brand damage.

I would say most of them derive from the software-as-a-service concept Bernard implies towards social media - but with all those open-source offerings like Wordpress, DokuWiki et al, elgg, Laconi.ca and others the corporate implementation of social media is not limited towards SaaS concepts. And regarding the best-practices like for example BT they are mainly installing and implementing software tools rather than using services (- I think I will interview JP on this at our E2.0 FORUM this week!).

The security discussion regarding “the loss of intellectual property”, the productivity issues as well as the fear of “accidental brand damage” are in fact some critical aspects that need a mind change - but for these cases the co-workers are faced mostly (at least for Germany) with the situation that they are limited to access only certain business sites. Maybe you are laughing but I know of a bunch of companies that are not even able to access Facebook, Twitter or even XING. So here you have the situation you don’t even think about social media but about the danger of the Internet.

So bringing back the question towards this post and asking you, my dear respective Enterprise 2.0 experts, what are your answers to the CIO’s objections?