Enterprise 2.0 SUMMIT – Day 1

Enterprise 2.0 SUMMITToday’s day one of the E20SUMMIT conference – after yesterday’s small circle masterclass with Dion Hinchcliffe. This means that most people will show up for the first time today, meaning that I must hurry up to get down to the reception area to meet ‘n greet some friends.

Anyway I wanted to give you a brief rundown of my plans for today, listing up the talks and panels on the slate. First up and plain mandatory, it’s the keynote by Oliver Marks with two well known Enterprise 2.0 protagonists on panel – Bertrand Duperrin and Joachim Niemeier will discuss the internal value propositions for the uptaking of Enterprise 2.0:

The keynote panel discusses what needs to be included in an internal roadmap, as the core project specification and execution plan. It will address different case histories of successful strategic roll-outs, as well as giving insights from an international project at Sony PlayStation from a variety of specific European viewpoints.

With the following parallel panels it’s a hard choice for me – but while I am definitely interested in best practices I decided to hit track 1 today, ie. the one focussing on Enterprise 2.0 strategies. Sadly this means I’ll have to skip some panels and sessions moderated or held by friends – on the other hand they can give me an account on what they’ve said anyway and I can do them a favour by reporting my collected observations from track 1.

So what’s up for me in track 1:

11:00 – 11:55 Measuring Collaborative Performance: Due Diligence for Enterprise 2.0

Many Enterprise 2.0 projects are faced with the question of how to measure the success of the initiative. The panel discusses the concept of collaborative performance and its operationalization as a way to determine and quantify the achievements of E2.0 projects.

Speaker: Kjetil Kristensen, Principal Consultant, Kristensen Consulting

11:55 – 12:40 How-to Leverage the Power of Feedback and the Law of Participation

Participation as a means of gathering feedback from all parts of the organisation is a key element of Enterprise 2.0 projects. This panel focuses on how to best achieve this. Experts and practitioners discuss project structuring and feedback mechanisms, plus the pitfalls to avoid.

Speaker: Julien Le Nestour, IT Innovation Manager, Schlumberger, Moderator: Lee Bryant, Founder and Director, Headshift Ltd.

14:00 – 14:55 New Forms of Leadership in Decentralized Organisation

Enterprise 2.0 initiatives share knowledge more widely around the enterprise, so leadership through superior knowledge is less relevant. This panel discusses new forms of leadership for knowledge-based organizations.

Speaker: Lee Bryant, Founder and Director, Headshift Ltd., Moderator: Bertrand Duperrin, Senior Consultant, blueKiwi Software

14:55 – 15:40 Discussion: E2.0 Implementation Strategies

From purely bottom-up, towards a top-down deployment, and gradually an integration of both – different E2.0 practices show a wide variety of implementation strategies. Each strategy needs a variety of evaluation methods. This panel compares differents approaches to measuring results.

Discussion: Dr. Frank Schönefeld, Chief Operations Officer, T-Systems Multimedia Solutions GmbH, Bertrand Duperrin, Senior Consultant, blueKiwi Software, Moderator: Simon Wardley, Software Services Manager / Cloud Computing Strategist, Canonical Ltd.

16:00 – 16:55 Collaboration Challenge: Preparing Your Workforce

For the majority of people in the enterprise, the words “Enterprise 2.0” means nothing. Telling the staff about tools and technologies will just get them thinking that it’s some IT initiative they can ignore. This panel discusses ways to explain the value of contributing content, commenting on other people’s work, leveraging the ‘friend of a friend’ network, developing internal weak-tie-communities of colleagues.

Speaker: Gil Yehuda, Independent Analyst, GilYehuda.com, Moderator: Simon Wardley, Software Services Manager / Cloud Computing Strategist, Canonical Ltd.

16:55 – 17:40 Discussion: Enterprise 2.0 in European Corporations: A Multi-Cultural Challenge

In contradiction to the U.S., pan-European companies are facing specific issues in regards to the different cultural backgrounds of their workforce. This panel discusses best practices and strategies to overcome these multi-cultural challenges for enterprise-wide adoption.

Discussion: Mark Masterson, Enterprise architect, troublemaker, CSC Computer Sciences Limited, Dr. Frank Schönefeld, Chief Operations Officer, T-Systems Multimedia Solutions GmbH, Bertrand Duperrin, Senior Consultant, blueKiwi Software, Emanuele Quintarelli, Partner and Enterprise 2.0 Strategist, Open Knowledge, Moderator: Craig Hepburn, Director of Social Media Strategy, EMEA, Open Text

I will continuously update this post with links to my blog posts covering these talks (update: can’t do it, blasted away with tweeting and waving, plus the occasional talking), that said I am not sure if I can manage to cover all of them extensively – given that quite some channels are competing for my attention and typing budget, Twitter is just a start. Whatever, it won’t do any harm if some more elaborate posts will be added during the next days …

Live-Waving the Enterprise 2.0 masterclass

Just a proof of concept – but it’s promising, if only because it allows Non-Wavers to get a peek into the backchannel to whet the non-Wavers appetite 😉

No I am joking but I am totally impressed by Google Wave’s fast-increasing abilities, well rather of the business ecosystem of gadgets, robots and plugins.

E20SUMMIT – Masterclass today

Enterprise 2.0 SUMMITIn a few minutes I will be participating in Dion Hinchcliffe’s E2.0 Master Class at E20SUMMIT. This isn’t going to be the normal talk, but rather an extensive workshop, ie. we will be working together as a small group for multiple hours and thus be able to discuss pragmatic and individual questions. Here’s the idea of it all:

[…] Enterprise 2.0 Masterclass will provide attendees with the knowledge and skills needed to begin an Enterprise 2.0 initiative within your organization. You will be shown how successful Enterprise 2.0 projects can be structured and executed using case studies, emerging best practices, collaborative group exercises, and involved attendee interaction. Real-world experiences, lessons learned, and solutions are presented throughout. Enterprise 2.0 Masterclass is taught by industry experts extensively experienced with corporate IT and closely involved with Enterprise 2.0 efforts.

The actual agenda is much more elaborated (and as I know Dion will cover it all, indeed my first time listening to Dion was quite packed with information, experienced european live-bloggers got blasted away and there were various cases of RSI-syndrome. Yes I am talking about his session at the first Web 2.0 Expo Europe in Berlin, 2007 😉

10:45 Principles about Web 2.0 in the Enterprise and Corporate Social Computing

  • Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0: A Working Definition
  • How and why Web 2.0 provides guidance
  • Key driving forces
  • Network effects
  • Peer Production
  • New Social Power Structures
  • Control Over Data
  • New Social Tools & Platforms
  • Self-Service
  • Increased Transparency & Openness
  • “Consumerization of The Enterprise”
  • Conclusion

11:45 Models and strategic pillars for the conceptionalization of Enterprise 2.0

  • Trends and Changes in the 21st Century Workplace
  • Benefits and Challenges of Enterprise Social Computing
  • Tacit Interactions
  • Enterprise 2.0 Defined: SLATES & FLATNESSES
  • Examining A Healthy Enterprise 2.0 Ecosystem

14:00 Succeeding in Enterprise 2.0 challenges: Adoption, IT issues and Governance

  • The Tools and Techniques of Enterprise 2.0: A Detailed Survey
  • Change Management Approaches for Social Enterprises
  • The IT issues: Security, Integrated Search, Syndication, Etc.
  • Governance: Policy, Legal Requirements, Moderation, Community Management

14:45 Implementation Model for Enterprise 2.0: The Three-Legged Stool

  • The Technology Stack
  • The Processes: Enabling Emergent Outcomes
  • The Culture: Moving Beyond Hierarchy – Influencers & Change Champions

15:45 Enterprise 2.0 Case Studies – Europe & North America
16:45 Current Enterprise 2.0 Best Practices and Lessons Learned
17:30 Questions/Closing Comments on Business Implications

You see, the agenda is packed and dense, please don’t expect too much live-blogging or -tweeting

Social capital RoI – preserving collaborative networks and work-life balance

I am in the midst of collecting interesting thoughts and remarks from the Enterprise 2.0 Conference this week in San Francisco (while preparing for the Enterprise 2.0 SUMMIT this week in Frankfurt) and this one caught my eye. Noticed this too during the life video stream from the conference, but it was only a side-remark then, and it’s more interesting in terms of RoI and “collaborative performance” than one sees at first sight. During a panel Booz Allen Hamilton VP Art Fritzson and senior associate Walton Smith shared their experiences integrating social and collaborative software into the BAH consulting business and argued like this (via Thomas Claburn at Information Week):

Enterprise 2.0, properly implemented, can create a barrier to exit.

[…] it can help companies retain valuable knowledge workers by weaving social bonds into the fabric of the workplace.

“People think twice about leaving and giving up all that”

Sounds a bit like “silk bondage” replacing the iron cask of lifetime-employment – but I wouldn’t be so negative, would I? It’s probably more about designing a workplace people enjoy and allowing the growth of employee’s social capital is good business practice with (hard to calculate but substantial) side benefits. Preserving functioning teams (and collaborative networks) by keeping people from leaving for good is one good benefit, OK.

Yet I wonder how this ties in with a caring for work-life balance – nurturing human-relations to colleagues, partners and bosses is vital, but this isn’t the social life of people alone. Entertaining a campus cafeteria, pet barber shop and sports facilities might be good for people with work-related friends mostly, but this is worrying me a bit. What’s your take, am I too negative and “german” again?

Upcoming 2: LeWeb ’09 in Paris

logoAs you probably know already I am going again to LeWeb as an official blogger. So it’s a good idea to remember all of you that time is running out – early bird registration closes on November 10th, so hurry up and get your 10% discount using the code BLOG09. If you’re going to come too, let me know. It’s about meeting and talking to people face-to-face after all, even when I am pretty sure that we’ll have some heavy wave-riding then too. After all we’re experimenting like wild lately.

Check out the Google Wave backchannel at E20SUMMIT

Enterprise 2.0 SUMMIT After some good experiences at both the BarCamp Munich and the Enterprise 2.0 Conference in San Francisco it’s probably a good thing to expand the Google Wave experiment onto the upcoming E20SUMMIT. And while we don’t know how many of the attendees have got a Wave ID already, the more geeky ones sure have. And when Joachim Niemeier and I asked on Twitter if we should curate a Wave backchannel to the conference enough people raised their hand. After all there’s more than Twitter for getting more out of conferences – even when it can’t beat the face-to-face experience.

So here’s the idea, we’ve set up a public Google wave which will act as a central repository and catalogue of the various sub-Waves people are free to open (find it by searching for tag:e20swith:public on Wave). And we’ll provide some public “pre-filled” waves too, linked from there. These pre-filled public waves are there to give some framework and structure so that the actual working in the waves during the conference is easier. Much like pre-filling a wiki for sake of better adoption I think …

You are free to add more waves to the catalogue – after all it’s about crowd-sourcing various voices before and after the event. And those individual waves may be both closed to some collaborators or open to everyone, so it’s important to note that once you’ve opened up the wave to everyone (by adding easypublic@appspot.com to the wave) you can’t go back to closed (if there’s a way to accomplish this please let me know).

Moreover I think it’s a good idea to ask presenters if it’s OK to document their presentations in Wave – especially when you’ve opened it up to the world. Much like live-tweeting or -blogging it’s professional decency to respect the speaker’s wishes. Then again, and much alike the “wiki situation” – it’s probably cooler to have open waves for everyone from the beginning.

Upcoming: E20SUMMIT next week

Enterprise 2.0 SUMMITThis coming week it’s showtime finally.

It’s the week of E20SUMMIT, ie. a week packed with discussions, information and “peer talk” on Enterprise 2.0. I know that some of my readers will be there, but I don’t think I can manage to have a beer with each of you, sorry about that, but I want to remember the event 😉

As you probably know I was involved in the “configuration” and set-up of the event, and while I haven’t been too bothered with the organizing aspects of it, I’ve seen that there’s an immense amount of work and engagement that was invested. Thomas Koch and his team at Kongressmedia, namely Steffi, Björn and Kai have worked countless hours to realize this event. And I think now’s the time to thank them for envisioning a great event, way in advance they’ve seen and believed in the potentials of the social web in the enterprise and they’ve built and supported the community in many ways – not alone in Germany but on a European scale as well.