Over the last couple of months I have been participating on a number of different podcasting episodes, (Internet) TV interviews, news articles and a whole bunch of other kinds of rich media publications talking, most of the time, around the topics of Enterprise 2.0, internal social software adoption and 2.0 evangelism, and, lately, the new social term that seems to be en vogue nowadays: social business. I originally had planned to share a few insights about the most interesting ones and point folks to the original resource to watch or read through them, but then I realised that there are out there far too many to mention in a single blog post, more than anything else, because some of the conversations have been substantially different from one another. So I thought that perhaps I would drop by over here, every now and then, and point folks to the odd one or two, so you could have a look into some of them, if you would be interested, but always being conscious of trying to strike a balance on not sharing them all one right after the other. That’s why I have decided as well that I will be splitting them up half in half and share some other pointers over at my Posterous site, which would also give me an opportunity to keep things going over there as well, as I keep making a much heavier use of it from here onwards…
Thus, what a better way of kicking things off than sharing with you folks a recent podcasting episode that I participated in with the wonderful folks from The Taking Notes podcast, Bruce Elgort and Julian Robichaux. That’s right, back in November, Bruce invited me to participate in their #126 episode and talk with them about the topic of “Social Business”. Now, you may have noticed already, how for the last few weeks, probably since right after the Enterprise 2.0 conference event in Santa Clara, there seems to be a growing trend of switching away from the Enterprise 2.0 concept into that one of Social Business. Even in Twitter itself it is starting to happen… I wouldn’t be surprised if in 2011, as we get to wrap up things with this year, we would see an increase in the number of conversations around social business vs. purely Enterprise 2.0. Starting by confirming whether it does provide value or not… In fact, that dialogue has already started with a good bunch of folks chiming in already in this space. Even IBM has been coming along and jumped into the bandwagon as well…
Now, I do realise how I have shared above a whole bunch of rather interesting and insightful blog links on this very same topic, which some folks have been calling even a debate, but I would surely like to recommend you go through each of them and read them through to get some additional context of what I feel is going to be one of the main themes in the next few months, if not already. Then at a later time and, as we move forward, I will be coming back to some of those blog entries hoping to add some further insights on to the overall conversations…
To get things started with those reflections on what social business is all about from my own perspective, I think The Taking Notes podcast with both Bruce and Julian would probably be a good start, since we had a rather interesting and enlightening discussion on what social business could mean for any business out there. If you go into the original blog post you will be able to see the various show notes of all of the subjects we touched base on. I thought I would also include them over here to give you a quick glimpse of what you can expect from that podcasting episode:
- “Social software evangelism inside of IBM, and the group of 1,600+ BlueIQ Ambassadors within the company
- How you can possibly live without e-mail for over 2 years (a question Luis has probably answered hundreds of times before, and he graciously answered again)
- The difference between social networks on the Internet and social networks behind the corporate firewall
- The future of social software, and what technologies will be used to make it work across networks and vendors
- Luis’ recent Enterprise 2.0 Evangelist of the Year Award“
The podcast lasts for about 48 minutes and in it you would be able to find out plenty more what my ¢2 are about social business in general, what it is like, and how a company might be capable of reaching out that status over the course of time through a direct influence from Enterprise 2.0, etc. etc.. Interestingly enough, and as a teaser, my opinion comes pretty close to that one shared by Jevon McDonald not long ago in another blog post under the title “E20 vs Social Business?“: Social Business = People + Process + Technology (Enterprise 2.0), which, if you have been reading this blog for a little while now, you would see how it resembles, pretty close, something else, much larger, that’s been there with us for over 15 years… But I won’t spoil anymore the surprise field that we discussed for much of the duration of the podcast…
Over the course of that long conversation we also touched based on a good number of different topics, including some of my favourite ones, like the BlueIQ program (And its BlueIQ Ambassadors community) I have been part of over the last three years as part of IBM’s internal social software adoption strategy, as well as my long time running experiment of living “A World Without Email” (Whose update, I realise now, is very much long overdue!), and the future of social software in general…
And, finally, something that I will be talking about more in a separate blog post, but which has been one of the major highlights for yours truly for 2010; the nomination and award from the 2.0 Adoption Council group as Internal Evangelist of the Year 2010, taking the baton from the always inspiring Claire Flanagan who won it last year. What a true honour, indeed!! But, like I said, I will be talking about that one at a later time as I get to wrap up a post on some highlights for 2010. For now, I just hope you enjoy the podcasting episode with the Taking Notes folks, just as much as I did recording it with them! I surely had a blast!
From here onwards I just want to take this opportunity to share across a big special Thanks!! with both Bruce and Julian for having me on their show and for always making it so much fun and dynamic to participate in it! Thanks ever so much, guys! Looking forward to the next one!
