frogpond

Barcamp Berlin Tag 1 … Yahoo! Pipes session

OK then, I’m in for two more sessions, starting with Yahoo Pipes – Mashup Your Life and then at 6pm Drupal – Introduction & Concepts.

Yahoo! Pipes is a neat way for fast prototyping, and to pull together little applications, filters and stuff. One example is my little pipe “Un-del.icio.us frogpond RSS feed“, that cleans up the original RSS feed of this site, i.e. that excludes the del.icio.us links from the feed, and provides only my generic posts. I needed this for my BMID-sidebar, where I wanted to include the last ten frogpond-posts but had no need for these “standard del.icio.us-Links for the day” posts. With pipes I managed to build this little helper in practically no time …

Some good information on pipes is here “Learn How to Build a Pipe in Just a Few Minutes“, and have a look at my pipes posts on the BMID-blog.

Barcamp Berlin Tag 1

Not much time to write anything, the WLan started off really shaky and I spent hours getting online in the first place.

I started off with Oliver Gassners session on Getting things done (links and writeup may follow), then a lifehacks session (dubbed procrastination, where I will provide links etc. as soon as I get to it – oh the irony …).

Now in the lunch session I am refining my slides for the session me and Frank will have tomorrow afternoon … and then it’s off for a session on OpenSocial (I think that we can understand this quite good from a Google business model innovation perspective). I better be on time – this will be a room packed with people.

What is OpenSocial? Yes, it’s a business model innovation

There’s a myriad of posts on OpenSocial already and I know that I’m a latecomer to the party. Yet I will try to put down some observations and notes, if only because this has rattled the plans for my planned BarCamp session this weekend. I have to update my slide deck now, thanks Google. OK, most of the stuff I’ve written before remains valid and/or got valified through this move (see e.g. Portable soziale Netzwerke, and my post on NoseRub, german posts also touching on big hairy questions like privacy of data).

Some observations from a strategic / business point of view:

Google is proposing an open approach with the goal of integrating a variety of networks – they are not building up yet another social network. This is a platform approach, not a product or services innovation.
And this is also a cool business model innovation move – Google is opening up the social networking space to the many developers outside with a standard platform, i.e. they have learned the Facebook lesson and expanded on it – turning the table for Facebook in effect. Now who’s leading the charge in the web OS game …
Google understands that there’s more value to be gained from a shared ecosystem and from the long tail of distributed communities, than from a walled garden even if it’s big. There’s no need for an one and for all über-network, but for an easy way to integrate the many existing social networking sites (and communities of people in fact).

Nice before/after picture:

Some snippets (via Richard MacManus, …):

OpenSocial is not a social network itself, rather it is a set of three common APIs that allow developers to access the following core functions and information at social networks:

* Profile Information (user data)
* Friends Information (social graph)
* Activities (things that happen, News Feed type stuff)

For developers there are lots of benefits. They can build an app that easily works across all the OpenSocial partners. And they can use normal HTML, Javascript and Flash – instead of the proprietary languages Facebook forces developers to use.

You may also check out the Google guys view on all this, here at the all new OpenSocial API blog (“The web is better when it’s social“)

Then, for those with more time on their hands there’s also this one-hour explanatory video:

And here’s a little video by Marc Andreesen of Ning explaining the concept of container and apps:

Find more screencasts like this on Ning Network Creators

Interested in more analyses? Go visit Techmeme and bring lots of time. Or take my short list of cool posts, starting with Jeremiah Owyang of Forrester (“Explaining OpenSocial to your Executives”), this is a good short status report, short excerpt:

What is Open Social?

Google says: “OpenSocial provides a common set of APIs for social applications across multiple websites. With standard JavaScript and HTML, developers can create apps that access a social network’s friends and update feeds.”

Translation: Social Networks, and other websites (we can call them platforms or containers) can let mini-websites (applications or widgets) to be shared and interact with existing online communities (social networks, social graphs, communities).

Jeremiah also expands on the opportunities this offers, namely in the community building space (Efficient development, harness existing communities, open standards help long term, your existing applications become social, future brings social to your website). Recommended analysis, gets you up to speed quick.

Then there’s Anil Dash of Six Apart (“OpenSocial, Killer Apps and Regular People”), on why the opened social graph can help people in their networked lifes:

This gives regular people on the web more control over the social networks and applications they use.

Interesting times ahead.

More upcoming events at Web 2.0 Expo …

Planning the next five days, here’s some more: There’s an evening session on “The Starfish and the Spider” at the newthinking store (10117 Berlin Mitte, Tucholskystraße 48) on Tuesday evening 7pm-9pm.

Warum sind Wikipedia, Craigslist und Skype so erfolgreich? Wieso versetzten Kazaa und Napster der Musikindustrie einen solchen Schlag?

Weil sie das freche Seestern-Prinzip nutzen, das auf Dezentralisierung, Vertrauen und Kommunikation unter Gleichen aufbaut. Mit ihrer Wandlungsfähigkeit setzen die flinken Seesterne die hierarchischen Spinnenorganisationen immer wieder Schachmatt – und verändern damit die Welt.

Rod is an interesting guy:

[…] Stanford-Absolvent und Unternehmer, der sein erstes Unternehmen CATS Software Inc. an die NASDAQ brachte und u.a. auch ein früher Investor bei eBay war. Er engagiert sich für Umweltthemen und soziale Belange und half etwa bei der Gründung des Silicon Valley Social Venture Funds und des Environmental Markets Network. Zur Zeit verfolgt Rod mit der Firma twiki.net die Entwicklung von Wikis als open-source enterprise software.

Some reviews of his book, via newthinking store and my del.icio.us bookmarks:

Handelsblatt (german)
Welt (german)
Firstmedia (german)

Some english reviews: David Robertson and Harold Jarche, and here are some distilled book notes at the Socialtext Open Wiki – i.e. “main content of the book, but without the stories and examples”.

More KM blogs …

Luis included me in a list of worthwhile KM blogs, and asks for more.

This is hard as my list resembles Luis’ quite a bit. But here are some more, in no particular order, and playing almost by his rules:

I want to make it very clear though that this is not my complete essential list of KM reads. To me, that would be the entire 200 KM blogs I am subscribed to right now and that I follow on a regular basis. What this list is, actually, is a whole bunch of folks who have grabbed my interest the most just recently and I will be adding a single line per blog detailing what may be of interest to you, so that you would have the opportunity to check them out further, if you wish to.

What does almost mean? I may point out some of the recent entries of the particular blog, that I’ve boomarked recently – using my shared del.icio.us bookmarks which give a neat summmary if and why a peculiar blog is worthwhile:

So here I go:

GridLock – Just another KM Blog, by Arjun Thomas

I bookmarked some 15 entries by Arjun over the course of time, stuff like

What prompts the need to capture Best Practices?
Knowledge Culture (“The bottom line is, do not hoard information. Get as much of it out to your people as possible. They just might surprise you.”)
Capturing and Transferring Knowledge (“unless an organization’s culture is geared towards sharing knowledge, creating systems and processes to enable the sharing of knowledge is a moot point”)
Why KM? (“With attrition levels high, initiatives, ideas and direction are lost. The other driving force for building KM – where is the time to train new joinees?”)

Arjun is clear, knowledgeable and outspoken, like e.g. here (Why E-mails make bad Idea Management Solutions) or here (MS Wiki Vs Wiki):

What Microsoft seem to have done is create a web based front end for microsoft word, and slipped in a interlinking system and called it a wiki. Even with the versioning system this is probably the simplest and least effective wiki i have come across

Then there is Incredibly Dull by Andrew Gent, a quite new blog with only a few posts for the start. But they are fine and thought-provoking, like e.g. Three Types of Knowledge Workers or The Threat of Social Software (for corporate intranets) (part2, part 1).

Third, and last for today is Knowledge Forward by Craig Roth of the Burton Group. This is a pretty new blog but looks promising, at least for people who are into technologies for KM. From Craig’s mission statement aka about:

[…] My goal is to provide information and ideas that help organizations get their knowledge-based Information Technology initiatives moving forward. […]

I have found it fascinating to see how industry consensus emerges around new technologies and concepts and to follow their acceptance from geeks (“Isn’t this a great new technology?”) to VCs (“Wow! Look how much money we can make!”) to end users (“What can this really do for me today?”). I continue researching new areas with a healthy dose of skepticism, applying the lessons I’ve learned so far to each.

So many good blogs, so little time. And now on to Luis’ next challenge, see next post (in BMID).

The state of Enterprise 2.0

Dion Hinchcliffe analyzes the state of Enterprise 2.0, collects some of his learnings and introduces a new visualization:

Enterprise 2.0 is going to happen in your organization with you or without you.

Effective Enterprise 2.0 seems to involve more than just blogs and wikis.

Enterprise 2.0 is more a state of mind than a product you can purchase.

Most businesses still need to educate their workers on the techniques and best practices of Enterprise 2.0 and social media.

The benefits of Enterprise 2.0 can be dramatic, but only builds steadily over time.

Enterprise 2.0 doesn’t seem to put older IT systems out of business.

Your organization will begin to change in new ways because of Enterprise 2.0. Be ready.

and

Nothing extraordinary in here, yet these are nice heuristics to play and design implementation efforts by. While these heuristics don’t make our lifes easier – changing “state of minds” is harder than experimenting with nifty tools – they can surely help in planning our adoption strategy and organizational change management efforts:

[…] to get the full benefits of the Web 2.0 era, we must begin adapting our organizations and their information and IT resources (with suitable enterprise context) to this network-oriented model […]

Coming up: BarCamp Berlin and Web 2.0 Expo

So I planned the coming next two weeks, tomorrow I’m at an IBM Lotus Connections event, thursday is a day off when I will meet some friends of old (I am going to practice my Enterprise 2.0 evangelizing skills ;), and then beginning with Saturday 3rd of November five high-voltage days of Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 conferences in Berlin are scheduled:

I have prepared a session for the BarCamp and will provide some details soon.

If you want to meet me in person – whether at the BarCamp Berlin or at Web 2.0 Expo, get in touch (directly or via crowdvine) – I would be happy to shake hands with you.

On Sunday evening I will be at the Berlin Geek Dinner, organized by Stowe Boyd, on Mondy evening at the Ignite event and nearby the coffee outlets during the conferences anyway.

Now to the tracks I am planning to attend, obviously the BarCamp and Web 2.0 Open tracks aren’t fixed yet, so let’s delve into Web 2.0 Expo, here’s the overview of the five tracks:

Web 2.0 Expo in Berlin will cover a wide variety of topics, organized into five tracks:

* Design and User Experience
* Development and Web Operations
* Fundamentals
* Marketing and Community
* Strategy and Business Models

These are my planned sessions (for an overview of all sessions see here):

Killing the Org Chart: Organizational, Cultural and Leadership Models on the Bleeding Edge
Tuesday, 6 November – 9:00 am–9:50 am

Self-organizing teams, transparency, and leaderless organizations have captured the imagination of the business community, but the paradigm of traditional hierarchy still dominates. What seems to hold us back are the huge unknowns of change: what happens when you restructure around these new principles? This session describes CoreMedia’s adventures in tossing out their organizational chart, redefining roles and teams, and decentralizing decision-making. They have defined personnel and technical management as discrete areas, and all staff members are assigned to one of the three Competence Centers. The directors of these centers give staff regular feedback, foster personal development, manage the career models and also oversee the assignment of staff to projects based on their specialist skills. Projects themselves are offered as “invitations to tender” and in regular “Waterhole meetings” any member of the staff can present an idea to work on. These are just a few examples of the structures of this self-organized company. They’ve made some bold moves and have real-world results to share with you. But one result upfront – creativity has boosted throughout the company. The second part of the session is an open discussion with attendees about what has worked in other organizations and the challenges and benefits of evolving and/or revolutionizing your organization. Attendees will receive the results of research on Enterprise 2.0 acceptance, challenges and tools in German companies.

This is my ideal start into the conference, I look forward to hearing the experiences of Sören Stamer and the CoreMedia team. Sören is a guy I would really love to meet.

Business Models for Web 2.0 Companies
Tuesday, 6 November – 10:10 am–11:00 am

Make traffic, not money – that seems to be the mantra of many Web 2.0 sites. Yet, as many VC-backed companies start to explore exit opportunities, successful execution of the business model is key. So how do you translate consumer adoption into hard dollars? Network effects are probably the single most important driver for the remarkable success of Web 2.0 properties…can these be used to fuel the revenue generation engine, and how? Are the low CPM troubles of social networks a sign that advertising is not the solution? And what kind of content do consumers actually pay for? Where are the trade-offs between the different models? These and other questions will be answered, along with a look at the current market situation and the future of monetization on the web.

Algorithmic Business Strategies – If everything’s being uploaded and shared, what might be next?
Tuesday, 6 November – 5:00 pm–5:50 pm

Google’s commercial success is based on the idea of identifying a variety of factors, from text analysis to human interest, and use them as variables in a giant mathematical equation that generates billions of revenue, widely known as AdSense. But how would a traditional corporation look like when it’d work like AdSense? Will we offshore intelligence to machines? What are the opportunities and threats? What happens when the whole world, from culture to politics become financial markets driven by algorithms? A joint state-of-the-art review of a new breed of businesses relying on mathematical models, potential scenarios how this approach will become mainstream and what this might mean to you and your business.

Looking forward to Dirk Baecker, but I am not sure whether I will dig this really. Hopfully not too fuzzy.

Web 2.0 Design Patterns, Models and Analysis
Wednesday, 7 November – 9:00 am–9:50 am

Many enterprises seek knowledge of the design patterns used by successful Web 2.0 companies. This session starts with Tim O’Reilly’s list of Web 2.0 examples and distills the abstract architectural patterns from behind the examples. By using the patterns notation, the core knowledge of the design principles is preserved in a template which can be reused in multiple contexts.

Duane will also show the evolution of the client server model into a 5-tier model based on the consistent concepts of most successful Web 2.0 patterns. The model serves as a useful starting point for anyone either designing business models or technology for Web 2.0. The Web 2.0 model is also used to illustrate a reference architecture. This abstract set of technology components allows developers to start thinking about the types of technology decisions required for building Web 2.0 projects.

Now this is interesting for its business model innovation implications, so I am deeply invested in this track.

Federated Social Networks
Wednesday, 7 November – 11:20 am–12:10 pm

Up till now, so-called Social Networking services have been built as walled gardens, where people can interact only within the confines of that service. As people’s preferences differ, they tend to be attracted to different services, roughly around the same kind of social objects, than some of there friends, family. To keep up with everyone, people tend to just sign up on several competing services. Then, for example for microblogging services like Jaiku, Twitter, etc., they need to post to all of them to keep everyone up-to-date. Let’s make Social Networks be social, too. This talk will go into federating different social networks using the protocol behind Jabber: XMPP. It will focus on sharing activity streams between services in near-real time using a number of XMPP extension protocols. For example, subscribing to someones Tweets from Jaiku and seeing updates appear in your overview or sent as a notification via IM as they happen. It will show you how to use these protocols to interact with other services.

OpenID: Emerging from Web 2.0
Wednesday, 7 November – 3:50 pm–4:40 pm

While OpenID is certainly gaining traction around the Web, many questions around security and privacy have been raised. Additionally with companies like Sun Microsystems shipping OpenID code, the question of how OpenID helps the enterprise becomes increasingly important. In under two years, OpenID has grown from a thriving grass-roots community to being supported by major companies, service providers, and open source projects.

This session will provide an introduction to OpenID, thoughts on how enterprises can benefit from integrating the technology, as well as a showcase of innovation around security technologies combined with OpenID such as smart cards, browser add-ons, and the like.

I’ve been examining OpenID lately, hence this session may provide some more evidence. Hopefully also good information on LDAP, SSO and the like for wiki integration into the corporate IT.

Copy vs. Create: Learning and Innovating in a Flat Web 2.0 World (The TechCrunch Follow-up)
Wednesday, 7 November – 5:00 pm–5:50 pm

As Web 2.0 is now a global phenomenon, its powerful concepts find their applications everywhere around the world. What primarily started as a trend among U.S. startups quickly spread to other continents where entrepreneurs recognized the potentials and were quicker than their role models to localize and launch similar companies. Whether you agree or disagree with this trend, it certainly can’t be ignored. So what are the lessons and what does localization mean in Web 2.0 terms? How do Web 2.0 applications differ internationally and where is there innovation? Using an extensive series of examples, this talk will cover what European, Asian and American companies have learned, invented and adjusted when making Web 2.0 a global/local phenomenon.

I would also love to go to these other sessions but I can’t – so if any of you my dear readers gets notice of any writeups, please let me know.

Moving from 1.0 to 2.0: Philosophies and Structures for Change
Tuesday, 6 November – 9:00 am–9:50 am

The 2.0 web world is more than just embedded technology – it is a philosophy. Companies who embrace this thinking are more flexible, agile, and innovative in their strategy and approach, but moving in this direction means rethinking structure, management style, workflow, and culture. How teams are structured, educated, and implemented in your organization is key. Are you a design firm, individual freelancer, or corporation trying to migrate past ‘old-school’ thinking and move yourself, management, or team into a more progressive era? Come hear how others have made innovation a priority – through carefully guided leadership and an environment that fosters creative thinking and collaboration.

Blogs, Social Networks and Podcasts: Corporate Communications 2.0
Tuesday, 6 November – 5:00 pm–5:50 pm

Today’s successful corporate communications and PR efforts are moving faster and faster towards the Web 2.0 channels of the day. Even some of the largest companies are using blogs, podcasts, videos – even Twitter and Jaiku – to reach customers, employees, and shareholders. Many of these efforts have had excellent results, others not so much. How does PR and corporate communications operate today, in a world full of direct communication with customers via web sites, email, blogs, and video?In order to use update your corporate communications plan, you need to consider corporate blogging practices that fit your company and situation, understand the variety of channel and tools available, and learn to blend the old with the new.Through a variety of corporate case studies, find out how businesses can use blogs and other forms of online communication to reach out and inform their customers, connect with their employees and their community, and create conversations and relationships that last.

This last session that I’ll have to miss is something I really miss:

Enterprise 2.0: Tools for Changing Organizations
Thursday, 8 November – 11:20 am–12:10 pm

The user experience is more critical today with the emergence of Web 2.0 during the past few years. Today wikis, blogs, and widgets are a part of the daily nomenclature in the work environment, but there are many questions around how this Web 2.0 world moves into the Enterprise world. How do software vendors bring the best features and functionalities to the masses? Are these companies spending their R&D on bringing to market small applications that focus on one task or are they focused on improving their core applications, or is both possible? Do Web 2.0 apps have enough speed, security, and stability for the Fortune 500 CIOs and thousands of employees around the world? This panel will explore the intersection of the Web and Enterprise 2.0 worlds and discuss what is ready for prime time.

I can’t be there, but hopefully Frank Hamm will cover this session … so I can catch up afterwards.