Coming Friday the Enterprise 2.0 community (includes you, the reader of this community blog) is invited to meetup and mingle at the E2.0 Meetup on the CeBIT Webciety Area. I can tell you that I am definitely looking forward to this, especially after having been extremely busy the two days before.

So come over into the T-Systems lounge, listen to the panel discussion with Dion Hinchcliffe, Dr. Frank Schönefeld (T-Systems), Aidan Troy (IBM), Peter Fischer (Microsoft), Craig Hepburn (OpenText) and Sören Stamer (Coremedia) and get into the conversation with fellow Enterprise 2.0 people.

Please register at the Facebook event page if you want to participate (if you can’t be in Hanover for the CeBIT don’t worry - the CeBIT Webciety programme will probably be streamed online, follow Webciety news on Twitter to stay up to date). If you’re interested in coming to the event but need a ticket read on:

Participants of the E2.0 Meetup can receive a complimentary (free) ticket for CeBIT by following this procedure:

1. Contact me (either via Twitter or Web) or comment/trackback this post if you need a ticket for the CeBIT. Please state your mail.
2. You will receive a ticket code via mail.
3. After a registration on the CeBIT website you will be sent an email
4. There will be an PDF-file attached to the email
5. Print this PDF-file.
6. You have a one-day free ticket!

Though targeted on the adoption of social software, the discussions at last week’s Enterprise 2.0 FORUM have always emerged to the question about the ROI of the Enterprise 2.0 strategy very quickly. Especially the talk of Dr. Frank Schönefeld turned the discussion towards the economic measures and dimensions of Enterprise 2.0 (he promised to me that an English version of his talk will soon be available on Slideshare!).

In times of budget limitations and reductions this is quite sensible - but no clear and satisfying answer can yet be given for this question. Therefore the already defined punchline “Improving Collaborative Performance” of the planned Enterprise 2.0 SUMMIT in October is more than relevant for these times of economic tension and I want to share my thoughts about the concept of this planned event with you on this weblog as well as to encourage you to give me some feedback.

So what’s the Enterprise 2.0 SUMMIT with the claim “Improving Collaborative Performance” about? The core discussion of this year’s E2.0 SUMMIT addresses the conceptional and organizational dimensions of gaining collaborative advantages and efficiency by adding social and collaborative action as well as intelligence to the company. Cutting it down - the questions to be discussed are the following:

1. How to conceptionalize, realize and gain collaborative performance?
   => discussing the value chain of an collaborative enterprise, the economics of sharing, processes of open innovation
2. What are the main drivers for collaborative advantage and efficiency?
   => discussing communications, processes, infrastructure as well as (self-)management
3. What are the key values of a collaborative culture?
   => discussing the key characteristics as open, transparent and decentralized as well as others - and how to realize the cultural change in a multinational environment as we have in a lot of European companies
4. How to introduce and adopt social and collaborative approaches within the company?
   => discussing the steps of adoption especially in the context of multinational companies

As you might realize - I am very much focussing on the extracting the economic benefits of Enterprise 2.0. I have therefore invited Kjetil Kristensen from Norway who did very interesting academic work on this topic. Furthermore Dr. Frank Schönefeld of T-Systems MMS is also working on a conceptionalization of the business values of Enterprise 2.0. Who else is focussing on this topic - please contact us!

Besides the visionary talks I am also looking for straight-forward cases as the high-procentage of practice talks is one of Kongress Media’s own key value propositions - in comparison to other conferences. So I appreciate any proposal of anyone or any matter for this visionary event. We hope we will support and trigger innovative ideas before and after the event - it’s our goal to help bond the European Enterprise 2.0 community more closely together.

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

Hello again, sleeping beauty that you are - Enterprise 2.0 community. I am glad to be back and to have some good news for you: I am your freshly appointed community manager, giving you company right until the upcoming E20SUMMIT in Frankfurt, Germany, 6.-8. Oct. 2009 and probably consecutive SUMMITs too.

When Thomas Koch and Björn Negelmann of Kongressmedia asked me about this task I didn’t need much time to ponder - I knew both of them from various Enterprise 2.0 and Web 2.0 events before, enjoyed their conferences several times and know that they’re both enablers and drivers of Enterprise 2.0 both in Germany and internationally. And we’re sharing enthusiasm for the opportunities that Enterprise 2.0 can bring and will cooperate now even closer to advance the field.

So, in parallel to me working as a freelance, independent enterprise collaboration consultant with frogpond I will also be your community manager, listening to your questions, ideas and contributions. And I will contribute some of those as well, and ask for your feedback. There’s lots of things on the slate, we’re planning to bring international “thought leaders” like Dion Hinchcliffe or Lee Bryant in touch with Enterprise 2.0-companies, -consultants, -scientists and -users - all this under the subline “E20SUMMIT - Improving Collaborative Performance”.

So join the conversation, of course here but also in the Facebook Groups Enterprise 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 SUMMIT Community. Moreover, there’s Xing and LinkedIn ready to “bond the Enterprise 2.0 Community”. And there’s Twitter too, follow me there for #e20summit updates and “just-in-time” information (sorry, some german tweets may be in the mix).

I attended a mashup* Event on Enterprise 2.0 in July at BT’s spectacularly plush little auditorium in London (you can watch the whole event on video at that link). It was a pleasant evening, characterised by hearing JP Rangaswami speak (the man is a walking recruitment advertisement for BT: “This could be your boss. Why work elsewhere?”) — and finally getting to meet him, briefly, in the flesh — as well as by my friend Simon Wardley’s purported swan song of an Enterprise 2.0 talk (and if you know Simon’s love of ducks, you’ll understand why that was a crack most worthy of a wince).

But the most interesting thing for me about the evening was the audience. This was not a tech heavy audience: most of the folks attending were business, with a smattering of vendors hoping to sell to them. And of the business types, the majority tribe was marketing and communications people. They seemed to be there to try and understand how they could use these new tools to enhance their role and control the impact of them (which, if done properly, ought to be a win for everybody: consider the meme of the “Authentic Enterprise”). That was an interesting coincidence for me, as I had, just that week, been engaged in a bruising battle within my own organisation over the idea of opening up the floodgates and allowing the outside world to see (via blogs) some of our talented people actually thinking and working. My primary antagonist in that debate (still ongoing) is marketing (supported by their stormtroopers, the lawyers). So I couldn’t resist the temptation to generate some heat, and, as the panel opened up for questions, the one I posed was this:

“There’s a common refrain heard in the echo chamber of Enterprise 2.0 bloviation that ‘IT is the enemy’: that these tools empower business people to work around a lumbering and prohibitive IT, yada, yada. But are IT people really E2.0’s greatest foe? Or is it marketing / communications? Is it the people in charge of ‘the message’, who are now confronted with (some) loss of control over it?”

That generated some mild uproar, as expected, and a number of “That’s nonsense” responses from the crowd. But to be honest, none of the answers we heard that night from the panel really took a strong stance on the issue. So, to my mind, the question is still an open one.

What do you think?

This is just a short notice that I blogged a summary of the interview our event moderator Joachim Niemeier did with Christian Kuhna, Head of Internal Communications of the adidas Group, who is presenting at the upcoming Executive Forum at my site:

• usage areas of Enterprise 2.0 at Adidas
• Adidas’ current intranet situation, and the aims and goals they are pursuing
• who is engaged as an inner-company proponent of Enterprise 2.0
• Mr.Kuhna’s expectations for the upcoming Enterprise 2.0 Forum

As the interview is only available in german language (you can find the full text of the interview at the conference site) I thought it a good idea to try giving you an english writeup - and I couldn’t resist adding some remarks and thoughts to it. So while I am looking forward to meeting Mr.Kuhna at the event to discuss things, until then I would also appreciate your take.

After the introduction note by Martin I want to briefly say hello to the readers of this blog. I am the conference chair of Kongress Media and therefore in charge of several E2.0 events - for example the Enterprise 2.0 Executive FORUM on Sept. 18th in Cologne with Suw Charman-Anderson and JP Rangaswami as international speakers as well as several well-known German E2.0 practioneers and experts. Do not miss the Early Bird price of 690 EUR - valid until Aug 15th.

Next in line after the E2.0 FORUM is the Web 2.0 EXPO EUROPE in Berlin - for which Kongress Media is a partner and I am supporting TechWeb as a member of the advisory board. The W2E EUROPE is not a specific E2.0 event, but will also cover this discussion in parts - also with a talk by JP Rangaswami and some more interesting speakers.

After the W2E EUROPE the ECM WORLD SUMMIT on Nov. 10th - 12th is the next, major event in our event schedule - covering the E2.0 aspect from a more “old school” angle. The ECM WORLD SUMMIT - formerly known as Contentmanager.days - is the industry event for the information management industry in Germany. It discusses trends and success factors from “old school” information management (including content, document and knowledge management) towards new approaches on a more participative level. E2.0 will be a keynote topic - and I am still looking for the right speaker on this. Feel free to propose me some appropiate experts!

Following the ECM WORLD SUMMIT we will have a rather smaller but nonetheless interesting event on Intranet Management in Switzerland on Dec 2nd - the Swiss Intranet FORUM. This event will also not be exclusively focussed on the E2.0 discussion, but as Intranet projects are on the change towards the E2.0 paradigm this topic will take a substantial part of the discussion.

Well - and then some kind of an Enterprise 2.0 Area at the CeBIT 2009 will be our following event - as a new follow-up of our successfully organised CeBIT Content Management Arena @ CeBIT. As Martin already mentioned it in his post we are still collecting material and suggestions for this. So far the following facts are set: there will be an E2.0 area at CeBIT 2009 in Hall 6 as an open conference with national and international speakers, best-practices and some kind of open and participative format each day. Join in, give us your thoughts and suggestions and be part of a great E2.0 community gathering!