What's Next in Tech
Hutch Carpenter, a product manager at Connectbeam, mashed up this Wordle on what 10 leading enterprise 2.0 vendors are talking about on their sites. Vendors include:
See Hutch’s post here.
I’ve mentioned a few times that I’m contributing to a large research project here at nGenera. The research is titled, “Redefining Employee Computing.” The genesis for the project began when one of our customers casually asked, “What would happen if we (IT) stopped supporting the end-user… and we simply only supported from the Corporate network in?” Of course I’m paraphrasing, but that was the basic idea. The notion generated a spirited discussion around the topic, resulting in the research project we’re now undertaking.
Here is the project description:
“End-user computing” remains a burdensome challenge in large corporations, and the assumptions underlying its management have become obsolete. So has the term itself. Today we’re no longer dealing with just computing, but with devices and capabilities for performing work, communicating and collaborating with others, and even orchestrating the “life” side of the work-life equation. And corporations are no longer dealing with a faceless “end user” served by a standard package of capabilities, but with a wide variety of diverse and demanding employees who bring their own technological abilities and preferences to the job, and ho have been trained as consumers to expect technology to be highly capable and easy to use.”
The research has taken us in some predictable and some surprising directions. Included in the study are two dozen well-recognized corporate giants, many of them global. Half are in the Fortune 100 (of those, 6 are in the top 50 and 3 in the top 10). Bob Morison, featured here in the video is a regular commentator for PBS’s Nightly Business Report. He discusses the generational challenges we’re surfacing in the research. If you are interested in seeing some early findings on this research, we’ll be presenting at Office 2.0.
I took a quick survey this afternoon to see how members of my Twitter community are web-working. These stats are not scientifically significant, but I found the results interesting. Thanks to everyone who participated.
More than 10 browser tabs open:
Web-based services in use right now:
Nearly half (60%) described themself as an employee vs. self-employed, and the majority (85%) worked for small companies (1-500) employees.
Wouldn’t it be great if you could display your Twitter ID on your badge, so your Twitter friends & followers recognize you? I created a handy way to add my Twitter photo and ID to any conference badge. I simply took a screen shot of my ID and inserted it into a label form I found on the web. I then printed them on label paper.
I will take these Twitter labels with me to every conference, meetup, workshop, etc. that I attend and simply attach them to the conference-issued badge. Easy! And what a great conversation-starter for Twitter friends and fans, the Twitter-curious, or the Twitter-unenlightened.
Jive Clearspace has begun an open community where e2.0 fans, friends, and enemies (that means you Tom Davenport :-)) can have an opportunity to share war stories, successes, and get questions answered. The community site is called ClearStep. Of course, you can always share your opinions on our nGenera site, as well. Oliver Marks tipped me off to this site too by Imaginatik which appears to be powered by Ning, but there are some great wikinomics-style case studies and discussion threads there you might want to participate in.
Second, I’ve been meaning to blog about this for awhile. Nick Barker has created a one-stop shop 
for aggregating all current goings-on and content related to Enterprise 2.0 at his Enterprise 2.0 Portal site. The site is free and should be on everyone’s feed reader. Make sure you check it out.
And, in case you missed it, the venerable consulting institution, McKinsey & Co. published its global survey results for “Building the Web 2.0 Enterprise.” It’s also free, but you have to give them your contact info.
Finally, Niall Cook who founded one of my favorite products, Cogenz, (in his spare time) released his new book, “Enterprise 2.0: How Social Software will change the future of work.” I have not read it yet, but I’m certain it’s another must-have for your e2.0 bookshelf– IF you have a liberal expense account. It’s a little pricey at $89.95. I asked Niall about the price, he said it’s because the publisher sells mainly to an institutional and academic market. I’m hoping for a review copy, or will have to wait for the eBook or paperback version. Or maybe I can get a discount because Don Tapscott wrote the forward? (Humm… just realized we need to update Don’s profile on Wikipedia to reflect nGenera. Damn these Internets, always need to be current!). Actually, Niall may have taken a page out of the Wikinomics playbook, because it appears you can co-create with the community to add more content on each of the book’s chapters with this wiki hosted by Socialtext. He’s also blogging on the major themes of the book here.
Yep. It’s that time again. The mad dash to put together a fabulous conference is underway. Ismael, Oliver Marks, and I are working hard to deliver a first-rate conference.
The web site should be up tomorrow here. Thanks again to Jive Clearspace for hosting the conference site. Today is the last day you can get the early bird discount ($1195 vs. $1495), so be sure to register before midnight Pacific time zone.
This year’s groovy gizmo giveaway will be the The HP 2133 Mini-Note PC or a Gigabyte M528 running Linux.
Much more will be coming on Office 2.0, as we lock in the details. Looking forward to seeing everyone in San Francisco!