Case Studies @ E20Summit

I missed out on Kenneth Lavrsens talk on using a wiki in Motorolas ISO 9000 Quality Management initiative, just grasped that they used TWiki as engine and that they had some adoption issues too.

Now Wieland Stützel of Fraport is talking about their internal wiki-based knowledge management: the Skywiki. Some notes from his presentation:

Basics:
– Only some basic, easy rules are imposed on wiki users

On Preparation:
– it’s important to start with some initial content
– build up a team, a committed taskforce, should represent important sectors/stakeholders
– they integrated external experience, sadly no external wiki consultant like me, but went for informal exchanges with the “Club Wikipedia e.V.” of Germany.

On Challenges when triggering off the pilot project:
– employee enthusiasm isn’t guaranteed, needs to be fostered and constantly worked for

On Success Factors:
– management acceptance
– small group of convinced “companions”
– initial contents (s.above)
– advertise, give new impulses (argh, poiting out “articles of the month”?)
– talk to potential authors personally

More (german language) information on the SkyWiki can be also found in this interview mit Wieland Stützel, in the Newsletter der Gesellschaft für Wissensmanagement (GfWM), Nr.1/ 2008 (pdf). Found via Jochen Robes.

Moreover, there’s another pdf at the Kompass website, here: Skywiki – Erfahrungen mit dem Fraport-Wissensportal

Jeff Schick @ E20Summit

Now, last slot before lunchtime (and me meeting the guys from BlueKiwi, perhaps Bertrand ttoo?) Jeff Schick of IBM (Vice President, Social Computing Software, in the IBM Software Group) is up, speaking on the practical experiences with social software in the enterprise.

Looks back into the long past, argues for cave dwellers as early archetypes of collaborators, then only a little bit back: Usenet, whois, IRC and other early communication tools). Nodding smiles in the audience, oh the joys of nostalgia.

Interesting insights into IBMs practice

– wide spectrum of corporate blogs inside IBM (purposeful / semi-purposeful as he coins it)
– communication mashups (I would call it that way)

He argues that Enterprise 2.0 can be seen well from a very pragmatic point of view, that’s what IBM is doing. Yes, there are LOADS of bloggers inside, the reasons and rationales are diverse, but individual uses are OK.

Nice insights into the virtues of meandering around, doodling around in communities of interest. I would call this fishing for serendipity …

Another cool thing, Emergence seems to be a big theme for IBM this CeBIT, I will add my snapshot later on, batteries are runnng low now.

Euan Semple @ E20Summit

Now Euan Semple on the “Quiet Revolution” at the BBC and what they did at the BBC about 6yrs back. BBC’s cool, check out Backstage for a start of what they’re doing, see also Ian Forrester.

He starts off with the cluetrain, the power of relationships that’s underlying.

Tells us how troubleshooting and “helpdesk stuff” was handled in the BBC then, it was clear that they needed a way for users to find the needed information by themselves … when sharing knowledge via Email is cumbersome, distributed replies etc. make it difficult to compile and refactor “answers”

– the collective space (“Connect”) that they devised was a lightweight and very usable platform
– fostering communities leveraged existing informal communities, users were allowed to introduce their own spaces

Euan likes the term “interest group” more – as opposed to community – I can understand this, communities can’t be engineered and “ordered for”, yet they emerge around common interests and tasks.

– they added blogs to the mix, Euan shortly points out the often overlooked little things (permalinks for a start)
– wikis too, example BBC blogging guidelines, done with a Confluence wiki.

Then he diggs into some Web 2.0 tools that are in the mix too, like
– RSS readers
– tagging too, explains the rationale behind tag clouds (“a more organic way of navigation information”), mentions Thomas Vanderwal too …
– social networks as “information mediaries”, showing his Last.fm page and stream of played music, then Plazes too.

With the closing slides he’s putting on speed again, showing Innocentive open innovation network and Zopa p2p lending before leaving the stage to Jeff Schick of IBM.

Dion Hinchcliffe @ E20Summit

Now it’s the keynote by Dion Hinchcliffe, here are some notes, hopefully giving some insights …

– Central role of social media
– Principles of web 2.0, core rules and design patterns, referring to Tim O’Reilly’s definition.

Dion ventures shortly into the mantra of “Data is the Intel inside”

Next up is this one “big hairy scary diagram” Dion loves, “Visualizing Web 2.0”

Now going into underlying principles, like e.g. network effects.

– Going from Web 1.0 Era to the Web 2.0 Era is intertwined with increasing unpredictability, variety and volume. We’re moving from central production to peer production, where control shifts from institutions to “communities of individuals”. See the slide here.

So what makes out Enterprise 2.0 according to Dion:
– blogs
– wikis
– social networks

Enterprise 2.0 depends upon emergence, freeform collaboration, refers McAfee and points out SLATES / FLATNESSES.

Dion then delves into the ways to succeed with enterprise 2.0, starting off with the need for an enterprise 2.0 strategy. He also cites Euan’s conceptualization (and Euan is smiling, seen this closely, he’s sitting just there, only a few meters away).

Also included in the implementation consultants “box of concepts” are
– understand and use perpetual beta
– watch the empty quarter / acknowledge that there’s always 2% of troublemakers

Now coming to the end of the keynote, looking into the future:
– major vendors and their suit(e)s are coming, integrated offerings are in the making
– enterprise context will be added (security, quality control, governance, …)

Next up is Euan Semple, more in the next post.

E20Summit introduction: Simon Wardley

Just some short notes, blogged quickly without too much editing.

Simon starts off with the notion of commodisation, aka “yesterday’new stuff becomes tomorrow’s boring”.

Yes, this chain: new -> leading edge -> products -> common utility

He offers the example of electricity, which in the beginnings offered lots of entrepreneurial opportunities, exciting stuff, but then – and in quite a short time – became “standard”.

Next up : Schumpeter, creative destruction, i.e. new stuff is the driver of change

And yes, with regard to IT: In the past it created competitive advantage, today’s it’s just a commodity, it has no more potential for strategic differentiation. Yes, it became just the “cost of doing business” / we need this just to stay in the race.

Enterprise 2.0 is the new thing, but well, only for some time. Still, we need to explore the entailed opportunities, threats and tasks to do. And that’s on the slate today for Enterprise 2.0 SUMMIT.

Simon then invites Dion to the stage, quick switch of Apple notebooks, I can post and go on to the next post.

Web 2.0 im Unternehmenseinsatz

Pünktlich zu CeBIT und Enterprise 2.0 SUMMIT erscheint auch im Handelsblatt ein kleiner Artikel zum Thema “Enterprise 2.0”.

Recht kurz geraten, aber mit einigen interessanten Zitaten und wie ich finde einer realitätsnahen Einschätzung, sowohl der Marktsituation in Deutschland als auch von den Aufgaben, die im Kern anstehen:

[…] „Der überwiegende Teil der Interessenten kommt aus dem europäischen Ausland, das Thema ist bei den deutschen CEOs einfach noch nicht virulent“ […] Insbesondere kleinere und mittlere Unternehmen interessierere das Thema bisher so gut wie gar nicht.

und

[…] Letztlich gehe es beim Thema Enterprise 2.0 also weniger um die eingesetzte Technik, als vielmehr um eine Veränderung der Unternehmenskultur: „Das Thema Wissensmanagement, Wiki etc. ist keines der Technik

Erfolgsfaktoren der Wiki-Einführung (in KMUs) …

… das ist der Titel des Kurzvortrags, den ich zusammen mit einem Kunden am CeBIT-Samstag im Rahmen der Content Management Arena halten werde. Zusammen werden wir einige Eindrücke aus einem akuell laufenden Pilotprojekt geben, im Mittelpunkt steht die Implementierung eines Wikis als Intranet eines weltweit verteilt arbeitenden Mittelständlers.

Daneben werde ich versuchen einige der Vorträge rund um innovative Intranet- und Collaboration-Lösungen zu besuchen, wobei mir der Schwerpunkt auf Wissens- und Innovationsmanagement sehr zusagt. Hier freue ich mich besonders auf ein Treffen mit Beraterkollegen wie Stephan oder Tim …

In meinen CeBIT-Mix kommen dann noch einige Termine mit interessanten Lösungsanbietern, groß und klein. Wir sehen uns!