1. What is your name?

Suw Charman-Anderson

2. Who are you and what are you doing?

I’m a Web 2.0 expert, and I provide advice and consulting for companies interested in improving collaboration and communication within their business.

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

I’ve been working as a Web 2.0 consultant for over four years, and I have focused much of my attention on understanding how and why some people adopt social tools, and others don’t. Social software is ‘elective’, so people can choose whether or not they want to use a blog or a wiki, so how do we introduce these tools in such a way that people are drawn to them? It’s an important question to address if social software is to be a success in business.

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

For me, Enterprise 2.0 is really about mending some fundamentally flawed business management ideas and practices. For decades, there’s been this idea that competition between teams and departments increases production, but instead it can cause unhealthy competitive behaviour that damages the not just the company’s profits, but also creates an unpleasant working environment. Co-operation and collaboration, on the other hand, can both help businesses become more efficient and productive, and can create a more collegial atmosphere which is more enjoyable to work in.

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

The careful application of Web 2.0 tools to the enterprise is a challenge, but companies that do so successfully can reap many rewards, including:

• reduce the duplication of effort by ensuring teams working on similar projects are talking to each other
• capture knowledge and wisdom through people’s natural desire to communicate, thus helping new starters get up to speed more quickly and ameliorating loss of knowledge when people leave
• easily share that knowledge across teams, departments and countries
• form tighter, more loyal teams by improving interpersonal relationships
• decrease the amount of email being sent by moving communications on to more appropriate tools
• improve collaboration by providing better environments for working together
• make data more findable, and re-findable, thus decreasing the amount of time wasted looking for information

There are many benefits to Enterprise 2.0, some of which can be realised very quickly and easily, but all of which can help create long-lasting positive change.

The main potential of the Enterprise 2.0 idea is something that I have touched on above briefly as well, which is capability to disrupt the traditional corporate space, bringing into the game concepts like corporate responsibility, ownership, accountability, trust, openness, flexibility in such a way that every single knowledge worker has got the opportunity to build further up on their passion for whatever the subject matter by reaching out, connecting and collaborating with other peers, in an environment where openness & transparency are key to help nurture a trustworthy environment where innovation is the main beneficiary. That’s the potential that Enterprise 2.0 has been having all along. Nothing to do with the tools, nor the processes. Just the people

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

Adoption can be a real challenge. The technology is cheap and easy to install, but unless some thought is given to what the tools are going to be used for, and by whom, they can end up languishing on the intranet, unused. Companies are happy to spend money on servers, software and licences, but are often reluctant to spend on the one thing that all Enterprise 2.0 projects rely on - people. I always recommend that companies start thinking about implementation, roll-out and adoption even before they have decided on what tools they are going to install. They have to have a comprehensive strategy that is focused on the users and how the tools are going to help them do their job on a daily basis.

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

collaborative, creative, curious

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

Google Tech Talk
Adoption Strategy for Social Media
The Importance of Pigheadedness

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

1. Euan Semple
2. Stephanie Booth
3. Kevin Anderson (my husband, so I’m a bit biased, but he’s done some truly ground-breaking work in the field of Journalism 2.0)

1. What is your name?

Luis Suarez

2. Who are you and what are you doing?

I am a knowledge manager, community builder and social computing evangelist at IBM. I work in a program within IBM Software Group to help accelerate the adoption of social software within the enterprise for all of the Sales workforce and, as an extension, for the entire of IBM. I am co-leading a community of over 400 Social Computing evangelists across IBM help bring forward some more awareness on the impact of Enterprise in the corporate world.

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

Initially, I got involved with Enterprise 2.0 back in 2002 when I was first getting exposed to blogging, both personal & corporate blogging, as a tremendous opportunity to offer knowledge workers with the possibility of having a voice on whatever the subject matter and share their passion with it. From there onwards, in 2003 I got started with my own corporate blog, behind the firewall, and from there onwards I became a social computing evangelist at IBM helping accelerate the rate of adoption of everything related to 2.0, not just with the social software tools, but also with the implications of the social aspects of the 2.0 movement.

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

My understanding is that Enterprise 2.0, just like Web 2.0 in the consumer space, has never been, and will never be, about the tools nor the processes, but about the people, and how they are now finally empowered to connect with other fellow knowledge workers to share their knowledge, collaborate and become much more innovative as a result of that. It is a changing game where productivity takes a new height and where interactions happen in a much more open, public and transparent space than anywhere else in the past, which surely shakes the ground within the corporate world, because everyone now is able to share that voice and their passion on whatever drives their day to day activities. To me Enterprise 2.0’s core concept is changing the workplace to make it a better place where knowledge workers will have learned how they are no longer in control, they are part of a conversation that they need to nurture on a daily basis and that they now have got a much more important job in helping foster their trust skills with other knowledge workers to continue collaborating and sharing what they know in a much more open & responsible manner.

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

The main potential of the Enterprise 2.0 idea is something that I have touched on above briefly as well, which is capability to disrupt the traditional corporate space, bringing into the game concepts like corporate responsibility, ownership, accountability, trust, openness, flexibility in such a way that every single knowledge worker has got the opportunity to build further up on their passion for whatever the subject matter by reaching out, connecting and collaborating with other peers, in an environment where openness & transparency are key to help nurture a trustworthy environment where innovation is the main beneficiary. That’s the potential that Enterprise 2.0 has been having all along. Nothing to do with the tools, nor the processes. Just the people

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

I think that the main challenges that the idea of Enterprise 2.0 face are actually the people themselves. The cultural aspects of changing people’s behaviours and how they need to understand that the way they have been working all along may not have been the most productive because of that risk control, secrecy attitude. It will require a substantial amount of effort and energy to over this challenge, because to me it is the only one that is prohibiting for a wider adoption of Enterprise 2.0 within the corporate world. The tools are now incredibly easy to use, the IT infrastructure is as robust as it ever was (And if not, people would move outside of the firewall, something most companies would not be able to afford), the processes get a complete re-work where openness and trust play a key role. And, in the end, like I have said just before, the main challenge is the cultural shift and how willing knowledge workers would be to make it happen. People need to understand that they need to begin feeling comfortable of having a public voice inside of the enterprise where their voices are heard and where they are part of a conversation, a mutual conversation where everyone benefits from. That’s our challenge to overcome.

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

Social Computing, Evangelist, Gran Canaria

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

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/29/jobs/29pre.html
http://www.elsua.net/2008/07/28/giving-up-on-work-e-mail-status-report-on-week-24-six-months-on/
http://www.elsua.net/2008/07/16/i-freed-myself-from-e-mail’s-grip-additional-commentary-part-i/
http://www.elsua.net/2008/07/16/i-freed-myself-from-e-mail’s-grip-additional-commentary-part-ii/

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

1. Martin Koser, Germany
2. Thomas Vander Wal, US
3. Ed Yourdon, US
4. Dennis Howlett, Spain (Bonus name! :D)

One mission of this site is the community bonding around E2.0 experts and practioneers. This said I want to start a series of expert profiles. For the beginning I will work through my network of people I know - but I am very open for any suggestions of people you know who are worth to be featured here.