For the past few weeks I’ve been reflecting on the Enterprise 2.0 conference that I attended last month and have been sharing some thoughts as a result. This is the final installment directly related to my post-conference thoughts.
My purpose in sharing these posts was threefold:
- To help those who did not attend get one person’s perspective on the event. I thought you might find it interesting.
- For those who did attend, to see what my take-aways were. Perhaps they we were similar to yours, or maybe not.
- It is personally satisfying to recollect and crystallize my thoughts about the conference. It helps me understand what I experienced by sharing it here.
So far I have seen a significant increase in this blog’s readership and commenting activity as a result, so I gather that you have found this valuable too. Excellent.
I told you about many of the people I met. I did not share everything — for a variety of reasons. I did not want to bore you with too many details. Moreover, some of the post-conference stories are still developing and not ready to share yet. So I’ll use this post to shine a light on one of the post-conference results that is ready to share — and it’s an important one. Here’s the set-up:
A common concern during and after the conference was the need to address the adoption of Enterprise 2.0 by the real customers. Although the vendors in this space have developed many innovative and useful technologies, and the intermediaries in this space are simply wonderful people to know and work with, the market succeeds or fails based on the success of the clients. So there is a thirst for client case studies. Why?
- To prove (to the investors, media, ourselves) that there is success to be found at the end of the journey.
- To learn from the existing successes (and failures) and improve the practice for others.
- To inspire others to engage by virtue of proven success (maybe even non-controversial ROI results).
The fact of the matter is that the conference did feature many clients who spoke about their real situations and successes. And yet, I think the E2.0 community wishes to see and hear more. Are customers reluctant to share their stories? (I know of a few who are.) Are there fewer stories than we expect? (What is our expectation based on?) Are we looking for a wider distribution of case studies? (Stereotypical cases are either large tech companies or some small non-technical agencies. Of course there are many others too.) But it would sure help to see more (ahem, real) case studies. There is much to gain from them for everyone involved.
And now, the news you can use: The focus on client success and adoption motivated Susan Scrupski (a.k.a. ITSinsider) to create a client-focused “Adoption 2.0 Council“. Susan describes this fantastic idea in her blog – so read it (and then come back here). One of the lessons of the Web 2.0 era is that in many cases, a network of coordinated people outperform any single expert (See Infotopia for parameters and exceptions to this idea). And so it makes perfect sense that people who have similar needs — e.g. to understand how to adopt Enterprise 2.0 tools and behaviors within their companies — should coordinate and support each other in a community/council. Susan is running this with clear parameters about participation — this is purely of, for, and about the clients. No vendors. Some vendors and intermediaries already have similar groups (e.g. Jive has the free Clearstep space for E2.0 practitioners to learn and share; many analyst firms have boards or councils that provide peer- networking support too — at a significant cost). These are great. (I’ve participated on some them on both sides of the table.) Susan’s effort is different. Why? There are no strings attached. It’s not about selling products, consulting, or up-selling subscriptions (not that there’s anything wrong with that). It’s just a trustworthy place to share and learn the good stuff and the challenges from your peers.
If you are working for a company that is looking at Enterprise 2.0 — and:
- You are in Corporate Communications and have to revisit the Intranet content strategy.
- You are the IT Intranet manager and are revisiting your Intranet Portal strategy.
- You are in HR Management Effectiveness and are looking at virtual teams and employee communities.
- You run the KM program or are the research librarian and have been asked to investigate “2.0″ as a potential improvement.
- You are in a department that needs collaboration help, but IT is not helping you — and you have a mandate to end-run them.
- You run the Idea Management program and want to leverage employee idea crowd-sourcing.
- You run the Document Management program and are looking for more collaboration and team space capabilities than you get from your existing tools.
- You are in Marketing and want to take social media campaigns beyond external engagement — perhaps looking at Social CRM and need to get employees engaged.
- You are a corporate strategist working on a special project, or have been assigned the task to make “Enterprise 2.0″ happen in your company.
- You see an opportunity to make a name for yourself by leveraging your passion for the ideas related to Enterprise 2.0.
…etc.; namely, if you need to understand how to reach success in your job function, and Enterprise 2.0 adoption is related to that success, then get a hold of Susan, join the council, and participate. It will help you succeed at work. (Of course, you can also hire me to help you too — sorry I just had to throw that in.)
Disclosure: I am not a member of the council. Had it existed two years ago I would have qualified and joined it, being someone responsible to implement E2.0 in my company. I mention this here because I’m impressed with it. I suggest that my enterprise clients (and prospects) learn more about this council. I think it’s one of the highlights of the Enterprise 2.0 conference aftermath. It will help grow this marketplace by helping clients succeed.
