From the mood here at the Enterprise 2.0 conference, you’d never know we were in an economic recession and still lingering financial crisis. Most folks I’ve met are upbeat and optimistic about the prospects for business in the sluggish economy. Of course, the conference has not yet officially kicked off yet, but judging from the tenor of the well-attended workshops yesterday and the wall-to-wall social events that have dominated the experience here, I’d say this mood will probably continue all week.
There are some news items breaking this morning that I want to get out, although I don’t have time to go into a deep dive on them. Some interesting news out of SAP and Jive includes and OEM agreement where Jive will integrate its business intelligence software into Jive’s “social business” platform offering community analytics to Jive’s customer base. The new software will offer a means of capturing and understanding the behavoirs and content that flows through social communities in order to make intelligent decisions. The rumor, of course, all week was that SAP was buying Jive, but that appears to be unfounded. This new venture, however, marks a clear initiative by SAP to (finally) take social software seriously, and likewise, it provides a grownup capability for a social software platform like Jive to deliver some clear business benefit. I’ll be taking a look at the new happy couple later in the day in the demo area.
Secondly, Socialtext has finally announced its long-promised SocialCalc which was developed by VisiCalc’s co-creator, Dan Bricklin. Additionally, the company is offering free use of its social software platform for the first 50 users aptly called, “Socialtext Free 50.” The move to a freemium model for Socialtext follows on the heels of Socialcast‘s similar free offering for its social software. In my experience, once folks are exposed to working socially and encouraged to do so by their peers, social software grows virally. The freemium model is probably a smart move to take the edge off early adopter user resistance. I will be curious to see how this move impacts adoption for Socialtext and others experimenting with the model.
Finally, my alma mater, nGenera has made some announcements this week at the conference. The company launched four “Collaborative Enterprise Management” solutions for Enterprise Collaboration, Collaborative Selling, Customer Experience, and Talent Management. nGenera is hosting a small event tonight in the hotel (Hancock Room) at 5:30 and will feature well-known author and speaker Tammy Erickson. If you’re curious about who nGenera is and how they fit into the Enterprise 2.0 landscape, I encourage you to attend the session or talk to the nGenera folks at the show. The company is uniquely positioned in a high-end slice of the market.
Also, if you’re here at the conference, please consider attending the unconference/barcamp sessions I’ll be participating in on Wednesday afternoon with Ross Mayfield and Brian Magierski. There has been a lot of talk recently about framing the market and establishing a universal view of the semantics that surround the space. I have a slide I’d like to invite the community to perhaps validate and improve on that I will be presenting Wednesday afternoon. Barcamps are fun and interactive. The best part is if you’re bored or a session’s not interesting, you can get up and walk out at any time.