1.) What is your name?

Dirk Röhrborn

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

I am Co-founder and managing director of Communardo Software GmbH. At Communardo I am responsible for the software development of enterprise 2.0 solutions (based on platforms like Atlassian Confluence and Microsoft Sharepoint) as well as our enterprise microblogging online services Communote.com.

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

Enterprise 2.0 has been my main area of interest right from university - without the ‘2.0′ name of course. As a student I developed collaborative document management and customer relationship management solutions based on the groupware Lotus Notes at firms like Price Waterhouse and IBM Germany. In my first job I helped to build a team of consultants for knowledge management at a subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom. In 2001 we started off Communardo. Since then, our main topics have always been communication, collaboration and knowledge sharing solutions for business customers.

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

For me, enterprise 2.0 stands for the combination of two fundamentally important concepts: an open-minded collaborative company culture and the widespread use of social media in business. In both terms we are rather talking about paradigm shifts in the business world than looking at specific methodologies or tools.

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

An open-minded corporate culture unleashes the creative potential and physical strength of employees and stakeholders within a company. Web 2.0 or social media tools like wikis, blogs, social networks or microblogs help them to communicate and collaborate better and more efficient to achieve their targets. While the industrial revolution was all about making the labour workers more productive, enterprise 2.0 is all about making knowledge workers more efficient and foster engagement and self-fulfillment at the same time.

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

The main challenge IMHO is to find a way to change an existing corporate culture towards the right direction, i.e. from a command-and-control to a participatory style. From a technical perspective, the main challenge is to build tools that are as simple and ergonomic as possible. Especially the last two issues have been our main concern in software development recently

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

enterprise, communication, collaboration

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

• Wissensmanagement im Enterprise 1.0 vs. Enterprise 2.0
• Der spannende Weg zum Intranet 2.0: Firmen-Wiki als Teamweb mit Atlassian Confluence
• Enterprise Microblogging: ein neuer Hype? Ja und Nein.

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

1. Joachim Niemeier
2. Frank Schönefeld
3. Martin Koser

1) What is your name?

Euan Semple

2) Who are you and what are you doing?

I am an independent consultant helping large organisations understand the web and what they can do with it.

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

I managed the introduction of weblogs, wiki’s, and online forums at the BBC 10 years ago - long before Enterprise 2.0 or even Web 2.0 were even thought of.

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

It was basically Andrew McAfee’s attempt to map what was happening in the Web 2.0 environment into the organisational world. It was more than just a technology but also the behaviours and practices that would need to change as a result of it.

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

There is the potential to revolutionise the world of work. The relationship between employees and employers has been changing anyway but the advent of new communication technologies that make it very easy for employees to communicate with each other allows for a completely new ways of organising work. Much of the administrative and bureaucratic work that takes place in businesses becomes unnecessary as information flows more readily around the business. This will mean managers learning a whole set of new skills and ways of influencing people.

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

One of the main challenges is just how different this is from what people are used to. People are used to hierarchically controlled communication channels and clear, relatively slow changing, working practices. The pace of change and unpredictability undermine many of our normal ways of doing things. This is very unsettling for people and it should never be underestimated the degree of readjustment that change on this scale calls for.

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

social, inspirational, practical

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

• The 100% guaranteed easiest way to do Enterprise 2.0?
• Why it is the “social” in “social computing” that matters
• My favourite Drucker quote …

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

1. Doc Searls
2. David Weinberger
3. Stowe Boyd

1) What is your name?

James Governor

2) Who are you and what are you doing?

I am an industry analyst, who founded my own company, RedMonk, which we like to think of as “open source analysis”

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

We live it. RedMonk began as a pretty traditional boutique analyst firm looking at enterprise IT, but our extensive use of blogs and social media, and deep exposure to open source business models, led us into the Enterprise 2.0 space. We see ourselves as bridge builders between the traditional enterprise and the “cool kids”.

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

E 2.0 is about focusing on people and community, within your organisation, and investing accordingly. IT shouldn’t be there to replace people through automation, but to augment their capabilities.

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

To become more creative. Is it likely a traditional enterprise would create a Google for example? With E2.0 thinking it’s a lot more likely. Traditional organisations often require employees to leave in order to innovate. Enterprise 2.0 encourages and nurtures employee innovation.

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

The cultural changes required to support less hierarchical working patterns are the biggest obstacles to *anything* 2.0…

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

Extrovert, wide-ranging, fun

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

• http://www.redmonk.com/jgovernor/2005/01/13/things-to-do-in-the-analyst-busi ness-when-you-are-dead/
• http://www.redmonk.com/jgovernor/2007/07/27/why-open-source-software-is-soci al-media/
• http://www.redmonk.com/jgovernor/2008/03/13/15-ways-to-tell-its-not-cloud-co mputing/

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

I will give you 4 -

1. Stephen O’Grady, co-founder RedMonk
2. Michael Coté, RedMonk analyst
3. Tom Raftery, RedMonk analyst to cover our new sustainability business
4. Tim O’Reilly

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?

1) What is your name?

Lee Bryant

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

Co-founder and director of Headshift

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

I founded and ran a web agency in 1996 that specialised in knowledge communities, as we called it then. I left to set up Headshift in 2003 when we saw the beginnings of social tools and their impact. Prior to that my background was in politics and media, where I learned the value of building your own networks and how to write by synthesising and linking. This all led me to conclude that introducing lightweight, human-scale social networking techniques to enterprise IT could have the potential to transform the inner workings of modern organisations.

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

E2.0 is about the consumerisation of enterprise, in the sense of transferring what has been shown to work well in the Web 2.0 world behind the firewall. It is about smarter, simpler, social tools that support individual needs and empower people to get their job doen easier and faster and with less time cost, but in a connected way that enables the organisation as a whole to benefit from the network effects of aggregate behaviour.

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

• Cost saving
• Time saving
• Greater ambient awareness leading to collective intelligence
• Simpler, low friction collaboration
• Bringing greater flow to information sharing
• Generating signals of relevance and importance to create more focus
• Building a web of links between people and content that can enhance organisational DNA

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

The biggest threat is from entrenched, backward IT departments who are not focused on business needs Related to that is the threat posed by misunderstandings of the nature of risk In terms of operationalising E2.0, the culture of shrink-wrapped software sales is potentially a problem, as this has conditioned IT people to believe that tools solve problems, which means they are always looking for a one-size fits all software solution to human problems.
Finally, business cultures that place process above people and do not trust them to fulfil their work can also pose barriers to adoption of social tools.

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

participation, human, engagement

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

• http://www.headshift.com/blog/2008/07/free-the-battery-humans.php
• http://www.headshift.com/blog/2003/04/readmedoc.php
• http://www.headshift.com/blog/2008/06/is-enterprise-20-about-selling.php

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

• Ross Mayfield
• Jevon MacDonald
• Livio Hughes

There’s an english summary of the latest pre-conference-interview up at my site (”Pre-Conference interview: dbWiki - building a Web 2.0 corporate knowledge base“). Joachim Niemeier talked to Dr. Matthias Büger, Vice President, Group Technology and Operations and Jamil Ouaj, GTO Communications of Deutsche Bank AG.

One thing I analyzed is the understanding and rationale that’s standing behind the support and introduction of corporate social networks. Well, as always there are different takes on this subject, and you may find flaws in my analysis, from the blog post:

[...] I guess that for employees it’s important that their professional networks aren’t confined by the narrow limits of one organization (they’re no life-timers, are they?). And I am seeing more and more “natural optimizers of personal professional value” - these people value and master relationships no matter what company the other nodes are in, companies need to loosen up their borders anyway and they’re doing it in other places too [...]

The other thing relates to project management for Enterprise 2.0 initiatives, here I would argue for a more light-weight approach, but I can surely see their point too. Here’s a clip of what I wrote:

[...] Banks they put so much attention on risk management, governance and diligence that it seems hard to approach things differently. See, while I hold project management dear, I also like the light-weight aspects of Enterprise 2.0 and the swiftness it brings. Hence I would rather argue for the creativity and agility of “planned and controlled experimentation” than the security of coordination meetings, processes and all (”Abstimmungsrunden und Teilprozessen”).

Well, this promises to be an interesting conference, let’s explore this space in real-time and if you’ve got remarks and/or ideas feel free to leave them here or over at my personal site.

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.