Speaker: Thomas Vander Wal of InfoCloud Solutions, Inc. (www.infocloudsolutions.com)From the Web 2.0 Expo:

This workshop provides an overview of the Web 2.0 tools and the changes
these social tools and user focused ease of use tools play for enterprise
(organizations that are large to small with business, non-profit, or public
service focus). There have great changes made to tools and services provided
on the web in the last 5 years or so as the layers and use of the tools on
top of the web browser have changed for the better. This change has value to
the organizations using the web and not just the people using sites.

The workshop focuses on conceptual models to help people things about the
important components for success using the social web tools and services to
augment the organization’s reach and engage better with customers and
employees.

The workshops covers advantages, lessons learned, and current along with
potential gaps around deciding how to make first steps, how to select tools,
and how to increase the chances for success with the Web 2.0 tools for
Enterprise use.

My Notes:

History – how did we get to Enterprise 2.0?

One factor contributing to Enterprise 2.0 Adoption: is that new employees are expecting web 2.0 tools (they grew up on the web and don’t understand why they can’t do it at work).  They understand the ideas — and ability to connect — related to social networking.

There is a bit of deja vu going on with the concerns about E2.0: similar to the 1990s with email (and before that with the telephone) – companies have a false concern that E2.0 tools will lead to information leaks outside the company.  [I remember someone once saying that if the telephone were introduced today, most companies would reject it because it would be too risky - people might use it to improperly disclose information to people outside the company]

So, what’s this web 2.0 / enterprise 2.0 stuff about?

• people meeting and discussing: their wants, desires, needs, interests.
• sharing.
• but really: all about “me” – and those who I follow.  A very ego-centric world.  So, it’s social.
• tools that help people advance as a society [whether that society is the world - on the web, or the enterprise]

When so many people have such far-reaching access, it can lead to a flood of information, many layers of

information, so we need tools to be able to get to the specific information that we need.

The digital nature of these w2.0 / E2.0 tools help ease the technology pain.  The ease of use of new tools increase the likelihood that people will use them to capture the information that is important to the company.

Information is great, but Actionable Information is more important.  It’s fine to capture all of this information, but you need to be able to do something with.

What does your organization know?  This is a key question in KM.  Most organizations don’t know everything they know.  A lot of information is trapped in people’s heads and it doesn’t do any good to the organization of those people leave.

Also important is what your company calls things.  If there are different terms, then it may be difficult to

communicate.  Knowing what your customers / clients call things is also important.

The balance of all four rings: “social software perfection.”

Enterprise 2.0 – Inside the firewall

Benefits:

• fills in gaps in communication
• individual voices: more people can contribute their own perspectives (in a 1.0 environment, you might not even know that certain people have ideas about what the company is doing).  You never know who might be able to contribute valuable perspectives.
• flexible structures:
• tools are starting to get out of the way: again, ease of use…
• ease of connecting:
• tools embrace horizontal interaction: this is the idea of how ideas can be applied in various parts of the organization.
• easy to iterate & create more efficient workflows: this helps the organization work much more quickly
• low, if any, abuse of the tools: since the tools used the organizations LDAP/AD feeds to identify users, the users are reluctant to abuse the system – there is accountability (even the intelligence community uses wikis and blogs they’ve never had a case of abuse of the tools)

Cautions:

• know offerings of tools (i.e. the tools mentioned in the first ring, above): what does each tool offer
• adoption may be slow – you must work to improve engagement/use (incentives are often counter productive – it can lead to people putting junk into the system) – get people focused on the “me” aspect – figure out how the tools can be beneficial to them so that they will want to contribute
• formal training is not needed: use overview sessions (in intelligence agencies, trainers go around and spend small amounts of time with users)
• the web is different from in-house: e.g., there is no anonimity in-house
• understand employee fears: and address them

Enterprise 2.0 – Outside the firewall
Benefits:

• a more human approach: e.g., rather than press releases, blogs allow companies to interact with their customers and clients.
• embrace conversations with customers: web 2.o allows you to connect with customers [cited book: Cluetrain Manifesto: marketing is a conversation - it's happening whether the company is involved in it or not.]
• supports interaction through ease of use
• eases customer support: lets customers show their love and support: e.g., endorsing products and services in blog posts, twitter posts, etc.
• allow direct connection to the customer: web 2.0 is yet another channel to connect with customers
• let’s customers help innovate

Cautions:

• listen first: listening to customer / client feedback
• marketing will need to adapt: this is a new way of doing things.
• moderate the comments and discussion (with a light hand) [but you don't want to make the comments seem artificially positive - you may be criticized if you delete all negative, but relevant, comments]
• avoid lock-in: allow people to get the information out of your site and on to other sites.
• must be easy to join and engage: if it is too difficult to contribute, people won’t bother.
• consider scaling & long-term use: make sure you can handle it if your company blog grows and generates more and more comments, etc.

Enterprise 2.0 – Through the firewall (communication from within the company to those outside the company)
Benefits:

• authenticated interactions: know who is allowed to interact.
• common space for franchisees
• preferred customer usage (e.g. invitation only beta testing and previsews)
• transparent communications
• directly engaging with customers / clients

Cautions:

• transparent communications: must be aware of legal ramifications, leaks, etc.
• set nimble processes for setting official organization responses.
• set firm policies for handling caustic situations
• scaling: problems if your site or services are down
• information reuse by customers
• how to engage

Enterprise 2.0: Value of Multiple Perspectives

• Personal
• Collective: when aggregating information about “social objects,” you can follow the links to the various individuals and get multiple perspectives.
• Collaborative – a group perspective around a “social object” (you may not be able to see the individual contributions (things are seen as a whole).
• New User: this is someone who doesn’t know yet how to use the system.
• Service Owner: this person is concerned about more technical and structural aspects of the E 2.0 systems.
• External Developers: example is Twitter: most of the people who use Twitter use it via third-party interface [Ijust started using Twittelator on the iPhone]

Examples of Users (using Digg.com or Mixx.com as an example):

• Non-user (newbies)
• Non-Contributing Collective User (this person simply consumes content )
• Non-Contributing Selective User (maybe uses a selective view of a site)
• Light Contributing User (this person might tag, favorite, or comment on content)
• Heavy Contributing User (this person also adds new content)

The above was combined into a matrix of perception with depth of perception and faces of perception.

Elements of Social Software

• Identity
• Objects
• Presence
• Actions
• Sharing

Once an OBJECT is shared, a person (through IDENTITY) builds RELATIONSHIPS, and then RELATIONSHIPS form CONVERSATIONS about OBJECTS, this turns into GROUPS that COLLABORATE.  Of course, there was a venn-type diagram to explain this.