Author: Susan Scrupski

Longtime fan of technology to improve humanity.

First Day Surprise at Enterprise 2.0 Boston

There were workshops yesterday at the Enterprise 2.0 conference.  The first one, Social Computing Platforms: IBM and Microsoft revealed an unlikely sturdy competitor in the sea of terrific startups that are competing in this new arena.  IBM, yes, IBM demonstrated a competitive product.  I had never seen such a thorough demo of Lotus Connections.  It had a terrific UI, more 2.0 features than I could even keep up with, and the woman who was taking us through the demo, clearly “got it.”  Who wouldda thunk?  

By comparison, the SharePoint presentation was, well, uninspired.  There was a healthy back channel chat conversation on the comparison between the two products.  We were particularly damning of the SharePoint product demonstration in the back channel (which is found on the conference’s Clearspace community viaMeebo.)  If you’re coming to the conference, be sure to check out the back channel chat, as I found that the back channel conversation from real customers was much more interesting than the material being presented.

Many of our clients are turning to SharePoint to deliver 2.0 functionality.  From this day forward, I will be urging them to consider Lotus Connections, if they must choose an enterprise vendor for their global operation.  The dark horse here is Oracle.  Over the next few days, including a private dinner with Oracle with the Enterprise Irregulars, we’ll be seeing a lot of what Oracle is bringing to the table.  It would be terrific if there were two good legacy enterprise choices for large enterprises.

Of course, the wide range of excellent startups offer a clear alternative to the enterprise players.  I also attended Dion Hinchcliffe’s Implementing Enterprise 2.0 workshop.  It was a solid roundup of data and commentary on where we are today with Enterprise 2.0.  Dion had a new vendor on the scene, Aegeon, give a short demo of its offering, Spaceo.us.  This product holds particular promise because of its emphasis on bringing existing enterprise IT assets, including SAP, Oracle, JD Edwards, into the social collaboration platform.  Spaceo.us also placed first in Stowe Boyd’s Launch Pad finals.  You can see demos of the producthere.

Finally, thanks to @stevemann, we had a great dinner with friends at the Enterprise 2.0 Mayhem dinner. Here is a short video clip from blogger-extraordinaire, Luis Suarez, whom I finally met in carbon for the first time.

<a href="http://youtube.com/watch?v=CFYH0rkFS98">http://youtube.com/watch?v=CFYH0rkFS98</a>

Update:  Luis is saying, “”Knowledge is Commoditised. Connections not!”

Groundswell co-Author Josh Bernoff talks Social Technographics in Austin

I attended a luncheon today sponsored by the Internet Strategy Forum. The invited guest was Forrester‘s Josh Bernoff. Josh’s topic was “Winning in a world transformed by social media.” He cautioned the audience to not focus on technologies, but rather relationships and the prevailing deeper social trends creating the “groundswell.” Bernoff describes the groundswell as a “social trend in which people use technologies to get the things they need from each other rather than from traditional institutions.”

His presentation was chock full of popular social media/community examples, many of which I’d seen before, but always interesting to see in aggregate. He also outlined how to approach the exercise in leveraging the groundswell with tips on setting objectives, understanding roles, measuring success with metrics, building a business case, etc. The high point of the presentation for me was his discussion related to what Forrester calls, “Social Technographics.” It’s basically a graphic representation of where customers are on the social media activity ladder. Additionally, Forrester claims to have analytical data that will profile your target customers’ social computing patterns by age, country, and gender (that map to the activity ladder). Check out the profile tool. Would be interested to know how they built this tool, but have to admit, it’s kinda fun.

Slides explaining the Social Technographics ladder:


All of this and more is explained in the Groundswell book. You can get more resources at the Groundswell site.

FREE ITSinsider Pass to Enterprise 2.0 Conference

e2.0 confTechWeb is offering a free conference pass (at a $2200 value) for a lucky ITSinsider reader. All you need to do is post in the comments why you subscribe to/read the ITSinsider blog and why you want to go to the conference. Special preference will be given to an ITSinsider reader who adds me to your blogroll. 🙂

Of course, most readers are already going, so I’m not sure if I’ll get any takers here. If you’ve not signed up yet, and you didn’t win the ITSinsider free pass, you can still register and get $100 off by registering with this code: CMBMEB14 CMBMEB33. The pass is unlimited, so everyone can use it.  The demo pass gets you into see the keynotes and general sessions, launch pad, Enterprise20pen and various networking events.

Very happy to meet you in “carbon” as they say.

photo credit: Alex Dunne on flickr.

Splommenters– please “no comment”

Correction: Spammenters*

Shame, shame, shame. I realize Social Media is the new black in the art of PR, but how irritating is this? Tammy Erickson, our in-house workforce guru, published a post today on women’s progress in the workplace on her Harvard Business School discussion leader blog. Her first comment was from Ms. Kimberly Rosenberg who lavishes her with praise then notso deftly segues into how she is using Microsoft Office Live for Small Business (no hyperlinks intended) to increase her productivity.

I sleuthed around online on Ms. Rosenberg, and it appears she has left virtually the same comment on at least 4 other blogs in the past few weeks. Ewwww.

http://www.blissfullydomestic.com/2008/04/an-organized-ho.html

http://experts.internetbasedmoms.com/aurelia/finding-balance-as-a-wahm

http://www.entrepremusings.com/index.php/2008/04/24/why-arent-there-more-rich-women-entrepreneurs/

http://empowerwomennow.com/news-women-entrepreneurs/index.php/how-to-get-your-partner-from-zero-to-hero-in-your-business/

Microsoft Office Live for Small Business product management– what are you thinking? So blatant an attempt to hawk your wares? Buy an ad. There are right ways and wrong ways to engage the blogosphere. Please start feeding any number of the excellent social media blogs that will instruct you on how to do this right. If Ms. Rosenberg works for a PR agency, send her to social media school. Or send her to start doing some homework here (Chris Brogan) and here (Brian Solis).

The smoking gun:

splomment

*Update: Thanks to Lara Kretler, the best term to describe this practice is “spammenting.”

Boston in June… Enterprise 2.0 on the Waterfront

e2.0 signIt’s that time again, the hallowed Enterprise 2.0 conference is revving up for early June. I was pleased to work on the agenda this year with Steve Wylie, the conference organizer, along with other members of the advisory board. The conference is in its second year and promises to reflect the maturation that occurred in the space over the past 12 months. Although many first-time attendees to the conference will be new to Enterprise 2.0, the concepts and themes have evolved and been refined over the past 12 months. Three out of the four largest enterprise vendors are big sponsors this year (IBM, Microsoft, and Oracle.) I’m personally hoping we see relevant, interesting developments from these large vendors this year.

We are introducing two new ideas to the conference this year which I’m particularly excited about. The first is Stowe Boyd’s Launch Pad where four (whittled down from a larger number by votes) audience-chosen startups will have an opportunity to demo their products and compete for a winning spot for the best launch pad product/service. As there is such a torrent of new products coming onto the scene, this is a great attempt to filter out the most useful based on collective crowd selection. We are considering doing something very similar regarding sessions for September’s Office 2.0 conference based on the SXSW’s panel-picker software.

The second event, or maybe unevent I should say, is called Enterprise2Open. Modeled after “barcamps and unconferences,” this will be a half-day’s worth of unstructured Q&A and sharing hosted by Ross Mayfield. The unstructured, open-type of event has been popular for some time in the development community, but we thought we’d attempt to try it out this year with a non-technical audience. The format provides a no-hassle, informative forum to ask any and all of your burning questions related to Enterprise 2.0 and get answers from peers and folks in the community who may have experienced the same issues. You may want to consider getting your questions and topics suggested in advance by posting them to the Enterprise2Open wiki. You can actually be a presenter yourself, if you bring your own soap box. Just get yourself on the self-organized agenda. The entire session will run in the afternoon on Tuesday, June 11 from 1-4pm. nGenera is sponsoring the event, so I’ll be there with a few of my colleagues and customers.

Speaking of customers, Rob Carter, CIO of Federal Express is giving the opening keynote. A group of us were in Memphis at Fedex’s central distribution facility in March where we heard Rob talk on 2.0 adoption. Rob sees himself as an evangelist himself for 2.0 in the enterprise. I’m really pleased he accepted the offer to keynote on Tuesday morning. One of the conference themes this year is accelerating user adoption. Having notable icons from the F500 executive board room will go far to lower the barriers of trial and experimentation with 2.0 alternatives.

e2.0 demo pavillionI’ll be at the conference from Sunday to Wednesday. I hope to see many of you there. Please drop me a note or a comment here to let me know if you’re attending. Many thanks to all the folks on the panels I helped arrange.

Photo credits: Jeckman on flickr and Alex Dunne on flickr.