There is an amazing collection of photos on the boston globe site - they are in 3 parts and here are the links to each of them:

• Part 1
  
• Part 2
• Part 3

There are many amazing shots, some disturbing, most are stirring.

Here’s a sample from part 3 - quite a memorable event from 2008….

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On Friday we had a round table discussion related to enterprise social networking (some may refer to enterprise 2.0). Some best practices from real world projects emerged, and there were some excellent questions that raised the discussion level.

Thanks to Bertrand for contributing to this list. Check out his advice on this blog post

For those unfamiliar with enterprise social networking, I would describe it in a nutshell as web-based solutions that connect employees, business partners and customers by forming engaged virtual teams and communities around specific business objectives. No doubt some of the academics and purists will disagree with this, but hey it’s my blog and I’ll say what I want to

Real world lessons learned

Have an achievable business goal

A business social network with no goal eventually fails. Projects where people “just want to try it out” usually fail because there is no common goal or shared values. A group of people without shared values/goals is not a true community.

The justification is not always the same as the goal

For example the goal might be to improve communication and performance of a distributed team, but the financial justification could be around reducing costs. In this case, reducing costs is not the reason for doing it, but it keeps the FD happy.

Start small

If you start small, you don’t have to find a lot of money to get started. Whether you build something yourself or buy an off-the-shelf product, you should be able to get going for less than £25K (remember if you build it yourself it’s people’s time, hardware, software etc. so it’s never “free”). Even tools like Ning and Yammer, although not really “enterprise-class”, are good options if you have no particular goal and just want to mess around with some of the concepts.

Find champions

Champions will be the ones that make it happen. In an enterprise there will be many different initiatives, and each one should have a person that drives and engages their community or group. This is very much along some of the ideas behind tribal leadership.

Get executive buy-in

If you’re an executive, don’t buy a social networking tool “for the generation Y employees” without participating yourself. Exec involvement massively increases participation because people are driven by the visibility. If your peers know that you did something great that’s partially motivating. If our CEO knows, now that’s a motivation.

A social network without people has no value

Therefore participation is key. Focus the energy of the group around the goal, so as to drive participation. Combining the launch of your social network with a physical event is a great way to do this.

Define and explain what people are expected to do (for example are people required to come up with new ideas, ask questions, share their best practices?

Measure Frequently

measure activity, emerging content themes, participation type & rate, and achievement against the business goal. any decent enterprise social networking platform will have this capability. Social Networking is a means to improve business so the ultimate measurement should be about business

Prepare to adjust & tweak

people are not 100% predictable, live with it don’t fight it. if you’re measuring what’s going on, you can adjust to it.

Expect the unexpected

things don’t always go as planned. sometimes people do things in a different (and better) way to what you expected. embrace that and people will know that they are empowered

Some interesting questions?

1. should you have a “gardner” - someone who grows the community but also removes “weeds”?
2. along these lines - does moderation in an internal context inhibit contribution? i.e. why would I contribute if someone can override me?
3. should there be a strategy to change “lurkers” (people who read) into active contributors?

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On Nov 13th we had a launch event for blueKiwi 2009 in Paris. I was amazed that we got 400 registrations in the first 2 weeks, with place for 200 people. Anyway, a bit of deft eventmanship from the marketing folks meant we had a packed venue and loads of buzz…

We had 2 great opening presentations from Stowe Boyd and Jon Husband

and here’s the keynote presentation that was delivered by our CEO, Carlos Diaz… have a look at the demo - I’m really proud of our R&D team for producing such goodness!

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Yesterday I went to visit some of my ex colleagues at Microsoft, and I found out that one of my employment practices had been replicated:  recruiting internal people to work for free. I had forgotten about this, but thought I’d write a quick post in case you want to try it out…

My problem when working at MS was that I had significant overload. I had to be active in many areas of the business including marketing, sales, customer service, support, finance and HR, so it was impossible to do everything that needed to be done:  I had to prioritize the most important 60% and just focus on that.

At one point, we were receiving a huge number of support calls around a particular product area, which required significant time in order to ensure that customer satisfaction was managed effectively. I had to manage input from multiple team managers and make sure that our MD was regularly informed on the status of the UK situation. I would have had to drop almost everything else in my day job in order to manage this well, so instead I decided to outsource this new activity…

I advertised the role, basically saying that it would be a difficult, time-consuming job, with an almost impossible goal to achieve, with no additional pay. The selected candidate would need to do this in addition to their current job, with possibly a large proportion using up their own personal time, and not be paid to do it. However, the fact that they had to report to the exec team meant exposure.

To my surprise, the response was pretty much overwhelming… it appealed to people’s competitiveness, the belief that they could make a difference to customer satisfaction, and their desire for recognition from senior management.  I had always assumed that people’s primary goal was financially oriented, but this really interested me because it showed that people can be even more motivated by recognition, by contributing, and by stepping up to achieve big, bold goals.

We ended up selecting a few people to run with this initiative as a virtual team. They got exposure to the senior execs, worked hard together to achieve a goal, while I got to carry on with my primary job responsibilities.

I decided to leave a few months later in order to take on my own big challenge, but this week I was pleased to see that this practice has since been replicated in different parts of the company… if I had stayed on I would have tried to outsource my WHOLE job… now that would have been something to write home about

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2.0hhhh

These days we are flooded by a plethora of 2.0 stuff aren’t we?…. Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, BI 2.0 Outsourcing 2.0,eCommerce 2.0, Resourcing 2.0, Project Management 2.0, Recruitment 2.0, Jake 2.0, KM 2.0, Library 2.0, Health 2.0, President 2.0, Government 2.0, Retail 2.0, Search 2.0, Mobile 2.0, Lift Trucks 2.0, or why not buy a Ford Fiesta 2.0? Microsoft was clearly ahead of the game because Windows 2.0 came out in the late 1980s!

What do all of these have in common? Well it’s obvious isn’t it? They are all better than 1.0

When will the madness end?
Even the experts get confused… at a recent retailing conference one of the keynote speakers talked in a very opinionated manner on his views of “web point twenty”!!!

Does it really matter what you call it?  Does anyone care?
Anyway it’s now back to the grindstone, I’m waiting for web point thirty-seven. Rumour has it that’s going to be the big one.

Do you have any ridiculous examples of people jumping on the “2.0 bandwagon”?

Filed under: Enterprise 2.0, innovation, social media | No Comments »

There is a small, select group of tech analysts (you know who you are) who represent the future of their industry. I’ve done analyst relations in different orgs for many years… and this last week I noticed how large this divide has become.

Most of these great analysts are the independents but there are also a handful working in the traditional larger analyst firms.

Forget “analyst 2.0″ - these guys and girls are more like “analyst 3.0″ (no idea what that means but I can assure you it’s better than “2.0″)

So what do they do differently? No specific pattern, but the chances are:

• they probably use Twitter extensively in their research and communication
• they don’t just use Twitter to pimp their own research
• they tap directly into the customers and employees of the orgs that they work with. What’s the role of AR again?
• they embed themselves in the world that they are analysing, meaning they have first hand experience not just theory.
• they prioritise pragmatism over theory

My prediction on their industry - the large players need to wake up and realise what’s going on, or they will get left in the dust.

Note to software vendors… if you’re looking for great influence, great ideas, and analysis that will really make a difference to your business, don’t just assume that the Tier 1’s are the priority. I’d say the opposite is probably true.

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We are running an event on 28th November at the IoD in London.

It’s a bit of an introductory session to Enterprise Social Networking / Enterprise 2.0 etc. including some learnings from some of our large corporate projects. These learnings are relevant regardless of the technology that you use.

Register here

(posted by Rob Gray)

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Raw Talent or Learned?

I read an article in the IoD magazine this morning (also available online), which was a debate about whether “entrepreneurship” is something that can be taught?

The media often takes the view that anyone can become an entrepreneur (why do I always have to spell check that word), however there is a school of thought that takes the view that entrepreneurs are born, not made.

Perhaps the right answer is a bit of both… you need the natural aptitude or make-up of an entrepreneur, but you could be taught how to make it happen and succeed?

Perhaps this last point is most relevant in a large corporation that is trying to create an environment & culture of innovation: identify the natural entrepreneurs and provide training that shapes them into successful ones.

(posted by Rob Gray)

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This is a presentation I did this week at the Butler Group Enterprise Web 2.0 Strategies Event. The point of the presentation  is how to reduce costs in a time of crisis, but also don’t forget about innovating.

I’ve adapted the presentation to be shown online, with commentary on the slides where I would have been speaking.

I talk about 3 areas

• Reducing costs (by saving on event costs, and market research costs)
• Innovating (by providing an open and transparent way for people to share their ideas)
• Productivity (which is a by-product of the others, but also increasing revenue for example with more effective sales teams)

The main point is that there are many benefits to enterprise social software, but to get a business investment you sometimes need to focus on a cost reduction, in order to justify the investment…

Filed under: Enterprise 2.0, ROI, innovation | 2 Comments »

I presented at the Butler Group “Enterprise Web 2.0 strategy briefing” event on Nov 4th… during my presentation I did an audience poll where they could vote by SMS.

Unfortunately, I hadn’t refreshed my browser just before the poll and the wifi access went pear-shaped as I was intending to show the results in real-time.

LESSON LEARNED: always refresh your browser just before your presentation!

Anyway I wanted to share the results with everyone… here is a snapshot:

I asked the audience if the economic crisis had effected their organisation in any way.

• As expected, quite a few are cutting costs,
• some see it as an opportunity,
• but for most it’s business as usual - good sign!

SNAPSHOT FROM EVENT:

SMS POLL

I’ve left the poll open if you would like to vote - you’ll need a UK mobile phone in order to do this, and you need to have flash enabled to view the results in real time… you are not charged extra for the SMS - it’s as if you were sending a txt to your friend.

To vote, send an SMS to 0778 620 9876, your message just needs to be one of the numbers below

• Yes - we are cutting costs: text 335 to the number above
• Yes - we are using it as an opportunity: text 336 to the number above
• No - it’s business as usual: text 337 to the number above

HERE IS THE LIVE POLL BELOW - SEE YOUR VOTE RESULT IN REAL TIME

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