Tags: Enterprise 2.0, Enterprise 2.0 Conference, e2.0, Collaboration Technologies, Social Computing, Social Networking, Social Software, Social Media, Web 2.0, Knowledge Management, KM, Knowledge Sharing, Personal Knowledge Management, PKM, Collaboration, Remote Collaboration, Social Networks, Communities, Learning, Tom Davenport, Andrew McAfee, Innovation, Org. Change, Business Transformation, Blogs, Blogging, Metablogging, Business Value, Blogging ROI, Corporate Culture
One other thing that I have found really interesting is the fact that most of the examples in the debate provided against the case for Enterprise 2.0 were coming from the Government and Banking industries, which, we all know, are two of the most rigid industries in trying to change processes and tools and methods of working. In most cases both industries would be the last ones in adopting such tools while all of the other ones would be making use of them for quite some time already. I was hoping that they would be including examples within the education, transport or telecommunications industries, amongst others, where the social computing adoption and its impact has been rampant for a while now.
Later on in the debate Tom mentioned his opinion about blogs in general and apart from mentioning that they are "well suited for expressing opinions" he questioned that if they are just so good why businesses were not "mandating blogs for everybody". Oh my, who would have thought about that, right? How can you mandate something that is supposed to be adopted and embraced freely. Remember how you have been told time and time again how weblogging is all about sharing your passion, your commitment and involvement? How are you going to do just that when you have been mandated to create a weblog?
It just doesn’t work like that. Weblogging is not meant for everyone. There are people who are quite natural at it and those who aren’t. They try it, don’t feel it is their medium and they move on. Mandating the usage of social computing tools is the worst thing that you would want to do within an organisation. It is like embracing social computing under a command-and-control attitude. What an oxymoron! It just doesn’t make sense, does it?
I was also surprised at the commentary that both Tom and Andrew do not have time to read blogs, they may follow a couple of searches and feeds from syndicated resources, but not from different weblogs which talk about different subjects of their interest, i.e. Enterprise 2.0. Well, what can I say in this respect? To me, it is not a matter of not having time to read weblogs, it is more a matter of making time to read blogs and create your own weblog posts on whatever the subjects you are passionate about.
If you really want to, there are always those idle moments, or interstitial times, that you can harness, to allow you to read other people’s weblogs and / or write on your own. It is a situation where you learn to filter stuff, find what is good and relevant to you and subscribe to it. It takes time and a bit of effort, that is true, I am not going to deny it, but it will be worth it, I am sure. So instead of saying that you do not have time, start thinking how you can make time for it, if you are serious about weblogging, that is.
(To be continued …)
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