Entered the Web 2.0 Expo Europe blogging program

I’ve entered myself into te Web 2.0 Expo Europe blogging program and as I detailed the language of this blog to be english and german, sollte ich vielleicht besser auf deutsch weiterschreiben …

Worum geht es? Vom 21 bis 23. Oktober findet in Berlin die zweite Auflage der Web 2.0 Expo Europe (das zentrale Treffen der Web 2.0 und Enterprise 2.0 Experten, nicht nur aus Europa) statt. Richtig, das ist (wie letztes Jahr) in der Woche nach dem Barcamp Berlin 3. Die BarCamp-Anmeldung ist für internationale Gäste weiterhin offen, deutsche Interessenten müssen aber mittlerweile auf die Warteliste.

Nicole, Suw und Stephanie laden nun für O’Reilly und Techweb europäische Blogger dazu ein, wobei aber ein paar Spielregeln gelten:

The way the blogging programme will work is that we’ll ask participants to do these few things between now and 6th October:

  • publish at least 4 Web 2.0 Expo-related blog posts, podcast episodes or videocasts, e.g. announcement of the event, speaker information, speaker interviews, or any other event-related stuff
  • encourage readers, friends, and/or community to register for the event
  • display the Web 2.0 Expo logo on their blog, with a link to the registration page, until the day of the conference

Nun ja, die Punkte 2 und 3 hatte ich bereits frühzeitig und ohne besondere Anreize erledigt, und auch dieses Jahr werde ich sicher wieder von der Expo bloggen (hier sind meine Posts von der Expo 2007 bzw. vom BarCamp Berlin 2).

Andererseits ist es sehr verlockend, dass Expo Blogger auch einen 35% Discount an Leser, Kollegen, Freunde (ja, Kunden auch) weitergeben können und u.U. leichter Zugang zu interessanten Interview- und Gesprächspartner bekommen:

  • access to information about the event suitable for re-blogging, such as announcements and speaker information/interviews (when possible)

Dass man evtl. auch in die “offizielle Blogroll” aufgenommen wird, ist da nur noch ein kleiner Extra-Anreiz. Also, die Frage hier und in folgenden Posts ist: “how can we use the power of Web 2.0 (in the Enterprise)”

Web 2.0 Expo Europe 2008

Open-Source Collaboration Tools – und der Gewinner ist …

In der Computerwoche werden u.a. Elgg, Mediawiki und WordPress kurz vorgestellt (“Wiki, Blog, Social Software: Die besten Open-Source-Tools für Collaboration“).

Jedes Jahr vergibt die CW-Schwesterpublikation InfoWorld die “Best of Open Source Software Awards.” Wir stellen die Gewinner im Bereich Collaboration vor.

Soweit so gut, mögen sich die Gewinner des Awards im Lichte des Ruhms sonnen.

Den Claim “Mediawiki sieht nicht nur gut aus, sondern ist auch einfach zu handhaben” finde ich allerdings äußerst fragwürdig. Bspw. ist das Argument dass “Millionen” von Anwendern bereits mit dem Look-and-Feel vertraut sind, angesichts der Möglichkeit auch andere Wikis entsprechend anzupassen schwach. Kein Wort zudem von den Schwächen von Mediawiki (bspw. im Bereich der Rechteverwaltung, entscheidend wenn es um den Unternehmenseinsatz geht). Diese Einschätzung von Jörg Kantel leitet da doch potenzielle (Unternehmens-)Wiki-Interessenten viel weiter und findet meine volle Unterstützung:

Wenn man so etwas wie einen Klon der Wikipedia aufziehen will und die nötigen Ressourcen hat, dann ist das MediaWiki sicher das Wiki der Wahl. Für alle anderen Projekte sollte man sich aber auch nach (schlanken) Alternativen umschauen.

Apropos, in T3N ist aktuell ein Überblick über verschiedene Open-Source Wikis zu finden, der auch die Stärken der „Konkurrenz“ ins Licht rückt.

Zuletzt – ich finde die Diskussionen rund um die “ideale Wiki-Engine” zunehmend ermüdend. Nichts gegen Diskussionen über spannende Technologien, aber mir kommen die wirklich wichtigen Fragen hier zu kurz, bspw. welche Elemente eine sinnvolle Anforderungsanalyse beinhalten sollte, welche Schritte im Rahmen einer Wiki-Implementierung Erfolg versprechen, usw.

Das sind die wirklichen Faktoren für den Erfolg eines Wikis (im Unternehmen) – nicht die Auswahl einer bestimmten Engine.

Gartner fuels Enterprise 2.0 too

One of the interesting things I missed out is Gartners new version of their Hype Cycles for Emerging Technologies – nice because there are some Enterprise 2.0 insights to glean from it, even when Enterprise 2.0 clearly doesn’t equal Web 2.0. As always, thoughts and/or comments are greatly appreciated.

The Social Software Hype Cycle highlights the most important technologies that support rich social interactions. Use our assessment of their business relevance and maturity to guide your investment decisions.

It’s especially nice to see that wikis are finally entering the plateau of productivity (after having traversed the phases of technology trigger, peak of inflated expectations, trough of disillusionment and the slope of enlightenment), followed closely by Idea Management:

Two related technologies and trends that will reach the plateau in two to five years are Social Networking platforms and Microblogging. Good, we need more companies evaluating what role these communication sites and models can play in collaboration environments. Besides I really like Gartners analysis that firms should consider Web 2.0 (read Enterprise 2.0) if they want to drive forward business transformation. Noted are possible advances in the generation of intellectual capital and more effective decision-making, but I would also add more effective innovation management. But still a thorough analysis of needs is a good thing to have:

“The main message of the hype cycle is that organisations need to make sure that when they adopt technologies early, they do so for the right reasons – because it is aligned with an area where it is important for them to innovate, not because everyone is doing it”

More in the 2008 Gartner Hype Cycle Special Report podcast (mp3)

Grow your wiki goes free

Seems like I missed out on quite a couple of things lately (in the world of Enterprise 2.0 you better not go on holidays or spend endless days refining lengthy papers and other scientific work, or spend time with clients and writing proposals … so I need to blog more over the next days and play catch-up).

One of the missed things being the announcement by Stewart Mader (author of Wikipatterns book, find my favorable review and related posts on my very own wikipatterns takes and talks here) that he’s now offering (freelance) specialist wiki consulting. Thomas, Luis, Stephen and others were so much faster than me. Whatever, I think this is a good move and I heartily welcome Stewart to the small circle of (networked and vendor independent) wiki and Enterprise 2.0 consultants.

Congratulations Stewart, and I look forward to see you again, last time in Varese time was much too short – maybe we’ll venture in a project sometime. Don’t forget I am still owing you a nice german beer :*)

Seeing the light of the future of work …

Luis now provides a nice, little video recorded at his German “See the Light – Thinking Outside the Inbox” tour, speaking of the benefits of innovative collaboration technologies and dropping corporate email, all in all a motivational show. I attended the Stuttgart event and blogged some observations about it then (“Enterprise 2.0 on z/OS“)

[…] covering the background of why I got started with this, what it has been like, the kind of implications I have been exposed to on a daily basis, what social software tools I use on a regular basis to escape e-mail, and, most importantly, how you yourself can get things going as well to re-purpose the way you process work related e-mails. In short, I cover all of the stuff I have written about over here, but perhaps a bit more from the perspective on how it is all down to changing one’s habits as far as sharing knowledge and collaboration is concerned


See the Light – Thinking Outside the Inbox from Luis Suarez on Vimeo.

And here’s the other video Luis did, called “The Future of Work“. I promised to blog about this earlier, but various things have slowed me down (sorry, Luis). Whatever, here it is


The Future of Work by Luis Suarez from Luis Suarez on Vimeo.

[…] the Future of Work and the kind of impact that Social Computing is having within the corporate world today to help drive further into the next level the way we collaborate, share our knowledge and innovate!

Upcoming: Registration for BarCamp Berlin 3

Yes, the venue for the BarCamp Berlin 3 is secured and hence the opening of the registration is near, i.e. August 31th or September 1st …

This small Morse riddle contains where it’s going to be – but as it’s already solved I can easily say that the venue is the main Berlin office of Deutsche Telekom (Hauptstadtrepräsentanz”, i.e. Representative Office). More information and the starting signal for the rush to fill 300-500 places will be announced at the Barcamp Berlin 3 blog and via Twitter probably too. As usual, register with Mixxt for an account on the Barcamp Berlin 3 network and then enter yourself for the actual event days.

As last year, the BarCamp Berlin 3 is scheduled right before the Web 2.0 Expo Europe – I am thus looking forward to meet an international crowd that week.

So let’s talk about BarCamp and tag it right. Official tages are bcberlin3 and hashtag #bcberlin3.

Changing organisations via Enterprise 2.0 – pre-conference interview – Festo

There’s a third pre-conference interview (“Fallbeispiel: Enterprise2.0@Festo – Biographie eines Projektes“) at the Enterprise 2.0 Forum site. Like its predecessors (see more here and there) it’s german language only. So – again – it’s probably a good idea to do a short english language summary and analysis of the key points discussed.

This time Joachim Niemeier spoke with Arne Schümann of Festo didactic (Festo as a whole is best described as a family-owned global player – and, full disclosure – I know this company a little bit. One reason is that it’s main branch is located only about some 15 km from my home, another one being that some friends of mine are current and past Festo employees).

To me the main “learning” from the interview is that changing organisations via Enterprise 2.0 is both hard and (potentially) extremely rewarding (yes, also in terms of ROI). Now onto the topics of the conversation:

  • Festo had a headstart with their Enterprise 2.0 project as they already had experiences with (personal) knowledge management, life-long (e-)learning, collaboration …
  • Enterprise 2.0 is not about technologies, it’s about perceptions, attitudes and “modes of work” – well, yes, some paradigms (and principles and methods too)  stay – but there’s a need to adapt some of those, i.e. give them the place and importance they deserve …
  • Hierarchy is an ever-present issue in implementation, seen vs. the evolving trends that supplant formal and stiff hierarchy with heterarchies (and/or meritocracies, sociocracies, …). Now I am really looking forward to the actual talk by Mr. Schümann, I want to know more about how Festo dealt with this. BTW, I really I liked the mentioned term “guided autonomy”, sounds a lot like a “roman law” of Enterprise 2.0-aware design of organizational structure. We’ll see, I sure don’t hope it ends along the lines of “Regulierte Selbstorganisation”, i.e. overregulated and face-value self-organization that’s OK only when dealing with “blue sky” situations …
  • Organizational proponents and supporters of Enterprise 2.0 – seems to be an integrated effort of various stakeholders. Interestingly, at Festo the distributed local branches had more interest than the headquarter. Yes, good point – these scattered outfits will profit the most from improved communication and collaboration.
  • Factors that are speeding up change, Mr. Schümann is rightfully calling for an optimal balance of bottom-up-grass-roots and top-down-supported implementation.
  • „Don’t talk about it, prove it“ – start with actual (pilot) implementations to demonstrate the benefits. Well, yes, that’s what I am saying … so small wonder that his rant “most Enterprise 2.0 consultants are way too theoretical” doesn’t really bother me – I’m a proven Geek Enterprise 2.0 consultant (TM), but I’ve blogged about the E2.0 consulting value proposition here and here before
  • And finally, the need for effective change management in the context of Enterprise 2.0 – well yes, said that before too – here (“One word as a focal point for change – Collaboration“) and here (“Cultural change and developing collaboration capabilities“)