Information overload in Enterprise 2.0 and waving a hello to LeWeb

between a rock and a hard placeI’m stuck in the midst of conferences and end-of-year-accelerating projects, both adding to the workload (low-quality rock and the hard place picture of Homer ‘course copyrighted by Fox, obviously).

And next week will be filled to the brim with LeWeb. Still I wanted to conclude with me looking back at the e2conf in San Francisco and the E20SUMMIT in Frankfurt (yes, will post my other promised posts now …). One needs to use a blogging opportunity if it’s there, that is before all the interruptions that result from being better connected in this social web world will result in another dropdown of productivity on Monday morning …

This might well be one of the symptoms Kathleen Culver diagnosed at e20conf – that the attention erosion that comes with mutliple, real-time and intertwined activity streams may result in “an inability to perform deep analysis on whatever it is you’re working on”:

Research is suggesting the Enterprise 2.0 technologies might introduce negative impacts productivity, decision quality and job satisfaction, in addition to the positive ones. What do we need to be aware of as we unleash these solutions on employees?

[…]

Join me in challenging companies to address these soft challenges of Enterprise 2.0. Challenges that can potentially dilute the benefit of E2.0 and maybe even make employees less productive and happy. Either take a moment to consider these issues when plunging forward with deployments or add your comments to the blog so we can raise the visibility of these challenges.

On the other hand I am a great fan of Clay Shirky’s meme of “filter failure, not information overload” – thus I am constantly on the search for better tools to filter and sort. That said, this constant search may be adding to the overload again …

logoYet I am expecting that the directory wave I prepared for LeWeb can help in collecting, systematizing and refining the various real-time content streams. Wave can be a very capable interactive venue, that’s allowing and enabling freeform collaboration, that is accesible and searchable by all, and that can help us master the “Information Candy Superstore” that LeWeb sure is going to be.

I told you already that I’m one of the official bloggers this year, hence you may find my writings, tweets and posts aggregated on many more places, Steph compiled some of the meta places to follow in here:

[…] You can also follow them all on Twitter with the official bloggers list. During the conference, you will be able to find all their posts about LeWeb’09 on a single page, with a single feed (thanks to Superfeedr). Another way to access their publications is through the LeWeb’09 Pearltree — just click on the Official Bloggers branch.

Upcoming: LeWeb ’09

logoOK, not so much longer and LeWeb ’09 is up, Paris on December 9th and 10th, and this year’s theme – the real-time web – is a hot topic.

The agenda is finished and ready now, check it out and get ready for Europe’s largest web conference. My personal highlights include panels with Twitter’s Jack Dorsey, Google’s Marissa Mayer, Jolicloud’s Tariq Krim, Microsoft’s Danah Boyd and of course the various roundtables like e.g. on platforms, on apps and on the “best of Europe”. Hey, it might be a good idea to invite Michael Arrington to that last roundtable, I mean before he’s venturing into another round of live Gillmor gang mischief on day two.

If you’re coming to LeWeb please let me know, I will be in Paris from Dec 8th (that said, I need to set some time aside for le Musée D’Orsay on Tuesday).

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.