Enterprise RSS Day of Action

During the Enterprise 2.0 SUMMIT I learned (via Twitter incidentally) that James Dellow has started a quite noble undertaking – putting the spotlight on (Enterprise) RSS with a so-called Enterprise RSS Day of Action:

The purpose of the Enterprise RSS Day of Action is to help raise awareness for the potential for Enterprise RSS. This wiki will provide Enterprise RSS champions with materials and information they can use to run their own awareness campaigns inside their own organisations.

Myself, I also strive to alert people to the potentials of Enterprise RSS whereever I go, sometimes by explaining it along this nice visualization by Fred Cavazza (from his article “What is Enterprise 2.0”):

Enterprise 2.0

What’s especially important here are those filters and aggregators, that take RSS feeds as input and refactor them so that in the end personalized information is delivered – that way easing the problems of information overload …

Wikieinführung in KMU

Im Rahmen der Content Management Arena habe ich am CeBIT Samstag ein aktuell laufendes Kundenprojekt vorgestellt (“Erfolgsfaktoren der Wiki-Einführung in KMUs”). Zusammen mit einem internenen Projektteam der Firma Chevalier Pipes Technologies CPT führe ich ein Wiki als Ergänzung eines bestehenden Intranets ein, und habe von unseren Zielen und Erfahrungen berichtet.

Die möglichen (internen und externen) Einsatzarenen habe ich eher allgemein vorgestellt, im Gegensatz zu den Vorgehensweise und Erfahrungen, die wir im Projektverlauf gemacht haben. Dies war mir wichtig, weil ich deutlich machen wollte, dass die Umsetzung eines Wikis in KMU kein längerfristiges und teures Projekt sein muss, sondern dass dies – die entsprechende Projektbegleitung und -unterstützung vorausgesetzt – schnell und kostengünstig geschehen kann. Zentral ist, dass Kunde und Berater eng zusammenarbeiten, weil nur gemeinsam der Projekterfolg gesichert werden kann.

Hier die Folien:

Dirk Röhrborn von Communardo berichtet ebenfalls von der Veranstaltung, und betont dass es sich bei CPT nicht um ein IT-Unternehmen im eigentlichen Sinne handelt. Ja, hierdurch ergeben sich sicherlich spezifische Herausforderungen – vor allem in Bezug auf Schulung, Coaching und Helpdesk. Diese anzugehen und tragfähige Konzepte zu entwickeln und umzusetzen ist eine der wichtigeren Beratungsaufgaben in diesem Kontext.

Videos of intro and outro @ Enterprise 2.0 SUMMIT

Today, I am finally coming around to put up some reflections, collected stuff and interesting links that I noticed during CeBIT, expanding my live blogged impressions of the Enterprise 2.0 Summit.

Let me start with two videos, well slideshows with audio track that is, by Simon Wardley, who did a nice job moderating the conference. This is cool stuff, listen closely to the introductory notes:

and the closing notes, too:

Wikipatterns session at enterprise2open

Here are my slides for my wikipatterns session, it’s been a good discussion too – people are eager to discuss implementation approaches, they are sensing that established ways have limitations and are looking into more customized paths and insights. Good news for specialized (wiki) implementation consultants …

wikipatterns _ enterprise2open

Wrapping up the Enterprise 2.0 SUMMIT

It’s been a splendid conference, met many of the people I was in more or less virtual contact only before.

One thing that I really want to highlight is the moderation by Simon Wardley, who also did a good roundup of the day (nice slides too, I hope I can get my hands on them). Next up there’s a question ‘n answers session, i.e. a panel with Dion, Euan and Jenny on stage.

First question: is there going to be a kind of standard (enterprise collaboration) software? Euan has doubts, stressing that BBCs systems were highly customized and evolved over a long period of time.

And then the inevitable standard question on “how do we get employees to participate”?

Yes, I know this is an important question, alas, Dion offers these ideas:
– managers are important, lead by example but also demand coherent behaviour. I side with this, nobody would use SAP etc. out of their free will, but people are still using it on a regular basis.
Euan stresses that it’s the other way round: give people tools that make their lives easier, usage will follow suit, making it feasible to reach a critical mass after that things will roll on no matter what
Jenny points out the central role of positive role models in the organization, i.e. people who can even act as opinion leaders, I think this is a good idea too, and yes, that’s one archetypical application of SNA in the enterprise …

Next up some questions on collaboration between companies, cross-industry and all. Well, yes, that’s not a particularly innovative theme, is it? I’m (also) dealing and blogging about business ecosystems, value networks and open innovation at my other blog for quite some time now, thus this fascination in parts of the audience feels a little weird.

Now up are the closing remarks by Thomas Koch from Kongressmedia, inviting everyone to the get-together. Will be there too …

Jenny Ambrozek @ E20Summit

… on architecting participation (“Structural Holes and Space between the Tools”), some notes (Jenny, you know I’ve got clumsy fingers), her blog is here:

– people is the thing that doesn’t change – it depends on your structures, on the ways work is organized, the choreography, the inner workings etc.
– we need to think simultaneously about technologies *and* organizations, these are intertwined, no thing like Ceteris Paribus here (it’s ans AND BOTH world)
– Jenny had some concerns with the Davenport/McAfee debate, like that it omits discussion about value creation principles – again people and the structures they’re working in

Some remarks on Enterprise 2.0 SLATES, then she’s looking at Organizational Network Analysis, referring to Valdis Krebs, Rob Cross, Patti Anklam and Nancy White (crazy, I follow these people too on a regular basis). Mentions the Dunbar number, Metcalfe’s law etc.

SNA reveals informal networks, which thrive in parallel to the formal, visible structure. Yes, this allows for completely different perspectives on the social world inside organizations, on influence groups, leverage points and patterns of interaction.

Jenny offers some more insights on the importance of choosing metrics right, like when measuring only the activity of wiki edits doesn’t really provide insight – you have to look behind the history of these edits, the changing alliances in the argument, etc.

To wrap it up, this is messy, complex stuff, the most interesting things are happening in the spaces in between. The notion of network thinking is a demanding discipline, perhaps one reason that able organizational development consultants are rare in this space, yet enhancing or leveraging social capital in the enterprise is a hugely important task.

This has been one of my highlights for the conference, sadly I have been bugged in between by annoying internet connection problems, so this writeup is rather sparse. Anyway, I will exchange some words with Jenny later on, there’s a get-together scheduled at the end of the Enterprise 2.0 Summit, some beers are definitely doomed …