E L S U A ~ A KM Blog Thinking Outside The Inbox by Luis Suarez

Archive for August, 2009

Enterprise 2.0 Conference Highlights – Quick Wrap-Up of Links

Posted on Aug 10, 2009 | Categories: Collaboration, Communities, Conference Events, Enterprise2.0, IBM, Innovation, Knowledge Management, Learning, Social Enterprise, Travelling | Leave a comment

A number of folks have been asking me during the course of the day whether it would be possible to have a quick blog post where I could share a links summary from all of the different articles I have put together from the series of articles covering the Enterprise 2.0 conference highlights. And since it is the first time I have put together quite a few of those entries I thought it would be worth while listing them all over here to keep them all as a good reference with just a single URL link: this post.

So what I will be doing over here is just list those different links with the title of the original posts, and that way you can decide whether you would want to go ahead and read it or move on. Certainly, this particular entry will become my single reference from now onwards on future articles I may be putting together on posts related to the Enterprise 2.0 conference. Thus let’s go and do it!

Like I said, this list of links related to previous blog posts I have put together on the Enterprise 2.0 conference held in Boston a few weeks ago won’t be the final version, as there are still a couple of other articles I would want to put together as well, but more as a follow up conversation of what I was exposed to and which I think would be worth while sharing across, but that would be the subject for another blog post(s) coming up shortly …

Hope you have enjoying reading through them all, as well as the live tweeting I did over at @elsuacon . And till next time around! Time now to move forward with some more blogging on other interesting and relevant topics…

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Enterprise 2.0 Conference Highlights – Day Three

Posted on Aug 10, 2009 | Categories: Collaboration, Communities, Conference Events, Enterprise2.0, IBM, Innovation, Knowledge Management, Knowledge Tools, Learning, Social Enterprise, Travelling | 2 Comments

As I am coming close to the end of the series of highlights blog posts from the Enterprise 2.0 conference event in Boston, held a few weeks ago, here is the entry that contains the major key learnings for myself for Day Three; last day of the conference and a much shorter day, since it only went through till just about lunchtime. There are still a couple of other articles I would want to put together on the subject, but this is probably the last one that will detail what happened during that week as such.

I am sure that over the next few weeks I will have the opportunity to touch base on some of the various topics that were discussed during some of the sessions as well as some of the conversations held during the networking events that took place. So without much further ado, here are my highlights for Day Three of Enterprise 2.0 in Boston:

The Outlook for Enterprise 2.0 Abroad

With Oliver Marks moderating the panel and with Richard Collin, Soren Stamer, Thomas Vander Wal and Luis Suarez as the speakers; quite an interesting experience participating in this panel myself right after the party, the previous night, at Andy McAfee’s house, and first panel session in the morning after an intense week of sleep deprived events! But overall I think it went all right! Phew!

It was rather interesting to see how for a conference event that relied on Twitter so much for sharing across live throughout the event, it was only the panels that Oliver moderated that had a screen showing all of the tweets going by and that small detail added tremendously further up into the conversation; helped us all stay focused and very much involved in the conversations. Excellent moderating done by Oliver overall!

So what did we discuss during the panel? Well, to start with, it was nice to see a panel where Europeans were outnumbering North Americans (hehe). It was really interesting to bring forward the European side of things with Enterprise 2.0 and social software adoption; items like language and cultural barriers, privacy issues and the broadband penetration in several countries topped most of the discussion and it surely brought some rather intense debate.

I really enjoyed Richard Collin‘s quote when talking about the language and cultural barriers as perhaps very descriptive of where we are and where we have been all of these years: "English is the Latin of the modern world". And that’s probably a fact we should not deny, nor neglect, specially in the business world of today.

With regards to the privacy issues it was very enlightening to see how most European businesses are very aware of the implications of privacy, and the lack of, not only with external social networking sites, but, mainly, internally, where we have got the biggest issues at the moment. Businesses need to realise, just like I mentioned in a previous post, that no matter how hard their efforts will be in promoting the adoption of social software behind the firewall, if they don’t take into account the various privacy laws / constraints all of their hard work can vanish in a matter of seconds. It’s a touchy issue, I know, but one that we would need to "comply with", if we would want Enterprise 2.0 to succeed. Specially in Europe…

And about the broadband penetration in most countries, what can I say other than DIA?

Twitter-like Tools for the Enterprise

With Gil Yehuda as the moderator of the panel and David Schwartz, Mark Dowds, Ross Mayfield, Tim Young and Yoshi Maisami as the speakers; excellent and superb moderating done by Gil and slightly disappointed by the speakers, must admit. Gil himself put together a very compelling and thought-provoking blog post a little while ago on the subject that clearly permeates what was missing from the panel and which still remains my main key learning not just from this session, but from the overall conference.

If Enterprise 2.0 social software is to succeed within the corporate world, it’s got to stop putting together plenty of copycats all over the place from social interactions that do very very similar things and which hardly any of them are eventually integrated into business processes. The challenge from Enterprise 2.0 is not entering the enterprise space per se, but more how to adapt, evolve and improve the already existing business processes in place. It’s that integration that will help businesses adopt social software successfully, because it will not mean another set of tools and processes to do the very same thing on top of what we already have!

That’s what knowledge workers want to do; they don’t want to adopt a new set of social tools that replace everything they have been doing; they eventually want to keep improving their own productivity on what they are already doing in their day to day work flow. What they are asking for is a set of social tools that help them become more social with the already existing processes they have been involved with; they want to humanise the enterprise once again with that nurturing of personal business relationships, but without having to start from scratch with a new set of unrelated social tools that they don’t have the physical time to dive into to figure them all out in the first place!

And that’s what I gained from this specific panel; we are not there yet; we are not thinking about integrating with business processes; we are not thinking about working smater, not necessarily harder; we are not sure yet whether Enterprise micro-sharing can merge with already existing business process. Well, it surely can! We just need to make it happen!

Strategies for Building Sustainable Online Communities

With Oliver Marks as moderator and Andy Fox, David Wormald and Ted Hopton as the speakers; perhaps one of my favourite panels from the entire conference event, although I wish we wouldn’t have stopped so much around the world of technology for communities, specially email!, because we lost a great opportunity to focus more on community building techniques, hints and tips, than just tools. Once again! (sigh)

I know most companies out there are waking up to the whole concept of communities for business (Yes, communities are hot!), but we need to realise they are nothing new; we have been working in communities since the very beginning of the human race; and, as such, we are not discovering anything new, to be honest; tools for communities, whether social or not, should always take into consideration they need to be enablers, not the final goal of the community; they should help spark interactions through conversations and dialogue, so that community members have got an opportunity to share their knowledge and learn from one another. But always within a specific context, i.e. their own affinity.

Yet, throughout the panel it looked like as if a community will stagnate if the tools in place don’t thrive. Well, this is where we need to realise that communities and community building is all about but technology; there are all sorts of group dynamics, social interactions, healthy controversy, debate, common affinity, etc. etc. that needs to be taking into account, because, more than anything else, it’s those interactions that keep communities thriving, not technology.

It was also interesting to see how the speakers were sharing their insights on how they themselves have been involved with communities; starting small (i.e. Kicking things off and, slowly, but steadily, build up from there! Community building takes plenty of time, effort and lots of energy, by the way, in case you may not have noticed!), involve both grassroots and top-down efforts so that knowledge workers feel comfortable of working in a group collaborative environment where they feel they can contribute and their efforts can be appreciated.

Oliver summarised the entire conversation with a single quote I thought was worth while noting over here, as it kind of adds up further on what I have been saying all along our focus should well be: "People, Process & Technology. In that order!". Does it ring a bell?

On the front of community building techniques, it was interesting to note how the speakers identified two different issues that keep haunting the corporate world for many years now!: reduce unnecessary tooling (When was the last time your company sunset a tool knowledge workers have been using while trying to adopt a new one? I bet a long time ago!); and, secondly, training and plenty of hand-holding: interesting to see how education and training was considered key, yet very very few businesses eventually spend time and resources in investing in knowledge workers’ education.

In most cases it’s all down to the knowledge workers themselves spending time to get self-educated at their own costs, effort and energy, which surely is a deterrent in helping people adopt social software tools while they interact with communities. Businesses need to understand that if they are serious about Enterprise 2.0 social software, as well as communities and community building programmes, there needs to be a specific education / facilitation plan for each and every single employee! Why? Because you can’t expect they would know how to use these social tools, and, most importantly, how to interact in a large group, if they haven’t done it before. Collaboration doesn’t happen out of nowhere! We need to start at some point.

That good old saying, build it and they will come, won’t work in here! Your knowledge workforce needs to be trained on not only how to make use of these social software tools that try to integrate with already existing business purposes, but also how they should interact in larger groups, how they can contribute to the overall well being of the community, and how they can, in short, collaborate with people who may not be identified as strong ties, but rather quite the opposite: show them how they need to interact with the weak ties, because that’s where your competitive advantage would be; that’s where your business revenue will thrive!

That’s, in short, the very same reason as to why communities are hot nowadays and why the job description of a community manager – facilitator will become an essential key success factor for those communities to last forever. Now, how many companies have got a full time job description for our next generation of community leaders? … Exactly! There is still plenty of work to do in this area. You bet!

And that would be it! From there onwards, we got through the wrap-up of another superb Enterprise 2.0 conference event with its quirks, its lack of network coverage throughout the event itself that only allowed us to capture here and there fractions of what we witnessed; but tremendous value in the networking events, the conversations with people I already have been following for a while (And new ones, too!!) and some pretty impressive panel and speaker sessions I had the great pleasure of attending and learning plenty from!

Like I said, this will be the last blog post from the series of Enterprise 2.0 conference event highlights. There will be the odd article here and there on some of the subjects I thought were most interesting, but you can now go and have a rest, enjoying that cup of coffee, because I surely plan to come back to the my usual shorter blog posts detailing some of the really cool stuff that has been happening ever since the conference. And, believe me, there are lots to share!

Hope you enjoyed reading through this series of blog posts, just as much as I did putting them together. I surely look forward to the next one! Whenever that would be …

Tags: e2conf, Enterprise 2.0 Conference, Boston, Agenda, Conference Events, Events, Conferences, Reality Check, Twitter, Enterprise 2.0, Social Software, Social Networking, Social Computing, Social Media, Collaboration, Communities, Learning, Knowledge Sharing, KM, Knowledge Management, Remote Collaboration, Innovation, Networking, Social Networks, Conversations, Dialogue, Communication, Connections, Relationships, Productivity, IBM, Enteprise Social Software, Oliver Marks, Richard Collin, Soren Stamer, Thomas Vander Wal, Luis Suarez, Europe, Asia, South America, Privacy, Security, Data Ownership, Gil Yehuda, David Schwartz, Mark Dowds, Ross Mayfield, Tim Young, Yoshi Maisami, Microsharing, MicroBlogging, Enterprise Messaging, Online Communities, Sustaining Communities, Andy Fox, David Wormald, Ted Hopton, Andy McAfee, Cultural Barriers, Language Barriers, Privacy Issues, Latin, Integration, Social Enterprise, Communities for Business, Strong Ties, Weak Ties, Training, Education, Learning

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Enterprise 2.0 Conference Highlights – Day Two (Continued …)

Posted on Aug 6, 2009 | Categories: Collaboration, Communities, Conference Events, Enterprise2.0, Innovation, Knowledge Management, Knowledge Tools, Learning, Social Enterprise, Travelling | Leave a comment

(Continued … ) This is Part II from a previous blog post I have put together detailing some of the major highlights from Day Two from the Enterprise 2.0 conference event in Boston. And I will resume those very same highlights with the Launch Pad 2009 session detailed below:

Launch Pad 2009

Arrived late on to this session hosted by Stowe Boyd, so I missed a bit of it, and on top of things the wi-fi was not working for me for a little while, but I had the opportunity to catch up with the final 4 finalists for the Launch Pad and the overall winner was eventually Brainpark (Their Twitter id is here). Thus CONGRATULATIONS, guys!!!

It’s funny, before the Launch Pad session I was not really very much aware of what Brainpark were up to, but, once again, serendipity did the magic and took care of me. On that same dinner I shared with Ben, Greg and a few others I got to know and talk to a couple of folks from Brainpark who gave me a lovely 1:1 private tour of what it does and how it is trying to get some traction in the Enterprise 2.0 space.

My take? Well, not going to say much more, since I am thinking I will be blogging about them soon again, but I can honestly say that for everyone out there who has been doing traditional KM Brainpark is probably the closest representation to what they envision over a decade ago! KM on steroids or the per-used KM 2.0. Capturing knowledge whenever it happens, processing it accordingly, and making it available right away afterwards for further re-use! I tell you, the panacea for everyone doing KM out there and with plenty of social flavours all over the place! (Yes, I know, I will be talking about them again, I am sure!)

Networked: How the 2.0 Enterprise Makes Itself Transparent, Participatory, and Collaborative

With Jeffrey Stamps and Jessica Lipnack; Perhaps one of the sessions I enjoyed the most from Day Two, along with Andy McAfee’s keynote session. Both Jessica and Jeffrey did a great job in helping set the stage on where we are with the 21st organisations and where we should be; and all of that by going through a trip down the memory lane explaining how little things have changed in the last few decades in the corporate environment… How accurate!

Great quotes like "We can’t solve 21st century problems with 19th century organisations" surely had the desired effect of wake-up call for those of us attending the session. Talking about the four ages of organisations was also quite revealing, specially when match acrossed with similar concepts we have been using all along: "nomadic, agricultural, industrial, information (Tribes, Empires, Corporations, Networks) – small group, hierarchy, bureaucracy, network = Complexity!". And even more when Jessica mentioned how neither of them have substituted any of the former ones, but, instead, kept adding further on top! Goodness! Never thought about that one before and so spot on, don’t you think?

I also enjoyed a couple of additional interesting thoughts wrapped up with a superb quote I just thought I would add over here as well; both Jeffrey and Jessica mentioned how various different factors like the econolypse, layoffs, pay cuts, travel bans, global warming awareness, etc. etc. are helping shape organisations into three different types of geographies: Orgsphere, Sociosphere & Geosphere. And here is the priceless quote:

"We’re born to work and play together in teams, but we have to give enough of ourselves to the filaments connect" Rather an interesting one, don’t you think? It looks like, whether we like it or not, we are born to network. It’s just a matter of when, how and with whom we engage in those social networking activities. We will eventually be getting involved! Regardless! So why refuse to engage? Why not embrace altogether? … Plenty of food for thought on that one I can imagine …

Community & Social Network Sites: Think Adoption, Not Deployment

With Mike Gotta, moderating the panel, and with Dan McCall, Erik Johnson and Kishan Mallur as the speakers; this surely was another interesting session since all speakers detailed quite a bit how their own companies have been making progress with the adoption of social software and how in most cases the biggest advantages have been coming through with the participation in communities. Something I am sure most of us could relate to, specially if you have been involved with community building programs for a while now.

The interesting thing from this panel session though was how none of the speakers focused the conversation on the technologies they were using, but on the inherent issues of making use of these social tools; concerns about compliance, security, privacy laws (Specially in European countries), mandating the usage of social software were just a few to mention.

Then it came the realisation of how people share knowledge because they want to share their know-how, their experiences, their lessons learned, not because something or someone asks them to, which resulted in helping break down the silos and hierarchical structures allowing employees and top management to be on the same scale, i.e. on the same level, everyone collaborating and sharing knowledge openly and much more transparently.

Thought it was interesting as well how the panel ended with a final thought of having Social Computing Policy and Guidelines in place to help make good progress over time, as opposed to have to deal with plenty of additional headaches. And there it came another validation point on what I have been exposed to since way back in 2005! Way cool!!

Privacy, Data Ownership and Identity in an Increasingly Social World

With Irwin Lazar, moderating the panel, and with Kailash Ambwami, Many Gill and Sam Curry as the speakers; this was, perhaps, the session where I had set up the highest expectations, since it is a topic that has grabbed my interest quite a bit as of late, yet those expectations were not met. Yes, there was plenty of commentary around identity, and data ownership, but I was rather concerned about how little privacy was part of the conversation.

Yes, it was mentioned as part of the privacy issues with external social networking sites, but apparently there doesn’t seem to be that same keen interest when those social networking sites are behind the firewall, because most folks think that it’s not a problem since it is behind the firewall. Well, not very accurate.

The biggest hurdle that social networking is going to have in the corporate world, believe it or not it’s already happening!, is with privacy, specially with privacy issues and the corresponding privacy laws, mainly in European countries like Germany, France, Austria, Italy, even Spain!, where, if not looked at properly, and thinking about them thoroughly finding the best of solutions, they can shut down your entire efforts in providing that social software strategy employees could benefit from.

Yet, it wasn’t identified as an issue and somehow I feel that businesses need to wake up to this reality with privacy while at work, because it is a completely different game than out there in the consumer Web 2.0 space, and surely becomes much more of a touch issue inside the corporate firewall. And if not, do a quick search through Google on security and social software and you will be up to some really interesting reading!

I do hope folks realise about the kind of impact privacy is having with social software deployment efforts, because if we don’t look after those privacy issues carefully we are bound to have plenty of stories that would be everything but success stories. Quite the opposite. So if your business hasn’t started working through the privacy issues while at work using social software, don’t waste any more time, start today! Better late than never!

Phew! That was it! Those are some of the major key highlights from myself from the Enterprise 2.0 conference event in Boston a few weeks back for Day Two. Yes, I realise they are a couple of long blog posts, but, as you would be able to see, plenty of food for thought with some golden nuggets on key things I learned throughout the day that I hope will inspire you just as much as they did to me. Hope you had a chance to enjoy that cup of coffee (Or two!) as well and let’s get ready for the highlights article of Day Three!

Coming up shortly …

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