Speed Geeking a WikiWednesday?

It’s Wednesday again which means that we’re up for another meeting with fellow wiki and Enterprise 2.0 enthusiasts at the MFG Innovation Agency for Baden-Württemberg.

wikiwednesdaystuttgart

This time’s activities and plans are freeform – which means that we can try out various styles and ideas. Still, I’ve got something on the slate, namely I might give a little presentation I did lately at the Intranetforum in Frankfurt and I might recap some learnings and experiences from reboot and the International Forum on Enterprise 2.0 in Varese.

But I would really appreciate it if we can get a more crowdsourced approach – i.e. if you want to present something, please feel free to share them.

And – bingo!- this morning I chatted with Joachim Niemeier and he turned me onto an alternative style and method of meeting: Speed Geeking. Funny name, indeed and probably an interesting approach to crunch more out of a wiki wednesday?

Let’s try something? We’ll speed geek on Enterprise 2.0 ideas, like e.g.:

  • Show us a tool that you’ve found lately – what are the benefits, what makes it so special that you’ve added it to your mode of work. And show us alternatives too, i.e. what may work as well …
  • Tell us some of your experiences lately, about stuff you created, about people you’ve met …
  • Tell us about recent learnings, ideas you’ve encountered, …

PS. Vor dem WikiWednesday findet ein Orgameeting zum geplanten BarCamp Stuttgart (26.09.08 – 28.09.08) statt, ab 17:00 im Vinum:

Stumbled upon: Enterprise 2.0, intranets and cognitive surplusses

There are now a lot of open tabs in my browser – small wonder when researching, conferencing and preparing a new consulting gig. Let me try a rundown, no special order:

Clay Shirky says on CIO Insight that businesses are just beginning to understand the value—and challenges—of social technologies.

Nora Young of CBC Spark show posted audio from a full interview with Clay Shirky. The interview is worth hearing, and touches on some of the topics in his new book (Here Comes Everybody, see also here and here) – such as the pros and cons of social media, new business models online, and how big change comes from human motivation, not shiny new technologies. Download the mp3.

Nora and Clay started off by talking about our “cognitive surplus,” which Clay describes as “all the free thinking time that society has access to… in the brains of its citizens that isn’t getting used for specific tasks.” Think TV watching time, except Clay has some ideas on how you should be/could be spending your surplus.

There’s a (german language) issue of UNESCO Heute on the web society and its understanding and emergent uses of knowledge, this is a rather heterogenous beast, a compilation of small articles:

[…] Begriffe, Konzepte und Themen der Wissensgesellschaft mit Bezug auf das Internet

Then here’s a study by the Economist Intelligence Unit about collaboration.

Corporations all over the world are making tremendous investments in technology, from servers, to storage, and network. Although technology is used on a day-to-day basis (think about the Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) deployments) to enhance productivity and to curb costs, it seems that collaboration is still best performed face-to-face. The study provides a glimpse into the reason: trust.

Jay Cross too has some hints for online collaboration (pdf). Dion Hinchcliffe is explaining where the conversation is going (“Endless Conversation: The Unfolding Saga of Blogs, Twitter, Friendfeed, and Social Sites“), including Twitter and Friendfeed uses for business. And Michael Krigsman analyzes power politics and pitfalls in Enterprise 2.0 adoption. Yes, we need to understand the corporate context to make this work, this is true especially when dealing with middle management. Now, getting out there and trying it is an option, it’s “show and tell” – indeed, in my experience upper management gets it rather easily. Still I somehow like this cartoon by geek and poke. Better beware this situation …

And finally check out Ross Mayfields slides of his keynote at Van Web 2.0 naar Enterprise 2.0 in the Netherlands:

I wasn’t there, nor at the Intranet Summit 2008 (Saim Alkan has a german language summary). I’ve been at the Intranet.days (meeting Saim and others) and will be here at the International Forum on Enterprise 2.0 in Varese and have some rebooting too.

Thomas Vanderwal will be there both times, in fact we will have the same flight from Milano to Copenhagen. Here, he writes on success with enterprise social tools, i.e. difficulties of applying social tools in the organisation using an illustrative model of four intersecting areas of enterprise social tools:

– tools (I would include methods as well here)
– interface and ease of use (yes, usability has some merits and plays an essential role for adoption)
– sociality
– encouraging use

Hmm, the model can serve as a good starting point, even when – as Paula Thornton observes in the comments – placing tools so prominently feels awkward.

More WikiCamp information – and what to expect …

wikicamp_logo_500

March 6, 2010 there’s the WikiCamp scheduled on CeBIT saturday. By now some session proposals have been made, some discussions got triggered (online but also offline at the BarCamp Nürnberg where I was this weekend), and some sponsors have voiced their interest and sponsorship.

And I bet you’re really glad that there will be Sonntagmorgen coffee, great fruit juices and T-Shirts as well …

Speaking of what to expect I thought it a good idea to detail the language policy of WikiCamp – you’re expected to present your session in English if there’s at least one person in the room who isn’t comfortable with German. As a german you might be lucky and find a pure german audience, but I wouldn’t bet on it.

Of course it’s perfectly fine to propose a session in German language, but you know – CeBIT is quite an international event – so let’s try to play nice and stick to English mostly. Looking forward to meeting you at WikiCamp.

Looking back at the E20SUMMIT, part 1: People

Enterprise 2.0 SUMMITOK then, it’s about time to look back on last week’s E20SUMMIT – and as community manager of the event it’s natural to start with the people that made this event special. This includes the team behind it all, ie. people that have worked to make this real (and who have already announced the date for the E20SUMMIT 2010, so save the date Oct. 26-28, 2010).

But even more importantly, this means the community that gathered in Frankfurt. I think we’ve had both lots of fun and an insightful conference. It was great to have you on board, thanks for your attention and interest and see you next year!

From my personal perspective I can say that I really enjoyed this get-together of the Enterprise 2.0 community in Europe. Add to this some global scale thought leadership (Dion, Gil, Oliver, Kjetil, Lee and Simon – that’s you) and it was poised to be a great conference. The field of Enterprise 2.0 as a whole is still evolving and this was the first time I’ve met Gil Yehuda and Oliver Marks in real time, though I’ve been following their writings since long and we’ve connected virtually before.

This is true for a lot of the people present in Frankfurt too – even for the community manager there’s a lot of first-time meetings (sometimes based upon a history of long-time blog reading and/or Twitter connectivity) and new-found blogs and friends. This includes folks like Rickard and Gustav from Sweden (see their blog), Torill from Norway, Mario (blog) and Massimo from Italy and Sean from London (who happened to be both in Varese and in Milano for Emanuele’s Enterprise 2.0 conference – yes, just like me and now we’ve met in Frankfurt for the first time, crazy, huh?).

PS. Let’s not forget the people who followed the conference from remote, eg. on Twitter or on the live-stream. It’s been quite a crowded back-channel at times, thanks to people like Susan Scrupski, Ana Silva oder Robert Lavigne from Toronto 😉

Web 2 Expo Europe – checking out the speakers

Web 2.0 Expo Europe 2008

The Expo team are busy filling in the voids and TBDs, time to see what we’ve got already and hey, it’s impressive. It aims at an European crowd, bringing in people from all over Europe and even outright local content like Markus Beckedahl from Berlin’s newthinking communications and well-known german blogger at netzpolitik.

Stowe BoydIn my program some prominent people are featured, like e.g. Stowe Boydfrom /Message, short bio at the Expo site:

[…] I am obsessed with social tools, and their impact on business, media, and society. I coined the term “social tools” in 1999, the same year I started blogging, and I haven’t looked back since. Writing and working with clients takes most of my time, but I also speak at various events, such as Reboot, Lift, Shift, Mesh, Enterprise 2.0, Office 2.0, Under The Radar, Next08, and Web 2.0 Expo, to name only a few.

Yes, it’s a pleasure to listen and talk to Stowe, last time I’ve seen him at Reboot. Same goes for this guy:

Lee BryantLee Bryant from London-based Headshift, a “30-person enterprise social computing consultancy that has pioneered the deployment of social tools inside the firewall. We do equal amounts of strategy consulting, integration and development and also engagement work.”

Sounds like a competitor, huh? Well, yes, but he’s an all too nice chap and it’s all about cooperation and collaboration in an emerging market …

Bruno  Figueiredo

Then it’s Bruno Figueiredo of Portugal’s Ideias & Imagens, Lda. who is going to talk about Designing for Flow – I don’t know him yet so here’s the bio:

Bruno Figueiredo is a Senior User Experience Designer, working within its two consultancies, one in London and one in Lisbon. He is the current president of the Portuguese Usability Professionals Association and the Local Ambassador in Lisbon for the User Experience Network. He is one of the founders of both the Lisbon and London groups and he also coordinates the Practice Guide workgroup within the Interaction Design Association. He is a frequent speaker at conferences and has published a series of articles and a book on the subject. He is also one of the organizers of the SHiFT international tech conference in Lisbon.

I haven’t included James Governor aka monkchips in my program yet, as his topic Electricity is the New Internet sounds a bit weird to me. We’ll see. For sure he’s got the best short bio of all:

[…] I live and work in London with my wife and son. I travel too much. I could live in a mud hut and only eat raw vegetables and still have the carbon footprint of a small town.

Dion Hinchcliffe

Speaking of people that aren’t on my personal program right now but that are important anyway – Dion Hinchcliffe sure fits the mold.

Yet I guess that his talk on Building Successful Next Generation Web 2.0 Applications isn’t exactly what consultant types like me can understand and value ;*)

JP Rangaswami

JP Rangaswami of British Telecom Design (“Web 2.0 vs. the Water Cooler: How Web 2.0 Has Changed the Way We Communicate at Work“). Seen him lately at the Enterprise 2.0 Forum at Cologne. See why he’s on my list:

JP Rangaswami is the Managing Director, Service Design for BT Design – BT Group’s IT design and delivery business. It has total responsibility for designing, building and implementing the IT and business processes, systems, networks (non-Openreach) and technologies. JP is responsible for group operations as well as enterprise management platforms and web technologies. He has extensive international experience and is passionate about delivering outstanding end-to-end customer experience. He has a record for innovation and collaboration that underpins his customer-focused delivery of major global programmes.

JP joined BT from Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein where he served as Global CIO demonstrating recognised market leadership in the use of innovative tools and techniques. He is a compelling advocate for community-based “opensource” development methods and practices.

His blog is here: (Confused of Calcutta) …

Suw Charman-Anderson

Next up is Suw who I’ve seen as well at the Enterprise 2.0 Forum in Cologne (blogged about her talk here, video at enterprise2open). Bio:

Suw Charman-Anderson of Strange Attractor is a leading social software expert, specialising in the use of blogs and wikis in business. She works with companies around the world, from sectors as diverse as technology, finance and public relations, to help them understand how social software can be used both behind the firewall and for customer communications. […] She recently co-founded Fruitful Seminars & Events, covering Web 2.0 subjects, with Lloyd Davis and Leisa Reichelt.

Luis Suarez Finally, closing the short list with Luis Suarez of IBM who’s going to Think Outside the Inbox – shortened bio from the Expo site:

Luis Suarez has been working in IBM for over 11 years as a Knowledge Manager and Community Builder and the last five of those years he has been working as well as a Social Computing Evangelist helping various different business units with their rampant adoption of social software within the corporate firewall and beyond.

[…] maintains three different blogs, one internal and two external (http://elsua.net), where he gets to talk about Knowledge Sharing, Collaboration, Communities and Social Computing […]

Grow your wiki goes free

Seems like I missed out on quite a couple of things lately (in the world of Enterprise 2.0 you better not go on holidays or spend endless days refining lengthy papers and other scientific work, or spend time with clients and writing proposals … so I need to blog more over the next days and play catch-up).

One of the missed things being the announcement by Stewart Mader (author of Wikipatterns book, find my favorable review and related posts on my very own wikipatterns takes and talks here) that he’s now offering (freelance) specialist wiki consulting. Thomas, Luis, Stephen and others were so much faster than me. Whatever, I think this is a good move and I heartily welcome Stewart to the small circle of (networked and vendor independent) wiki and Enterprise 2.0 consultants.

Congratulations Stewart, and I look forward to see you again, last time in Varese time was much too short – maybe we’ll venture in a project sometime. Don’t forget I am still owing you a nice german beer :*)

Coming up: BarCamp Berlin and Web 2.0 Expo

So I planned the coming next two weeks, tomorrow I’m at an IBM Lotus Connections event, thursday is a day off when I will meet some friends of old (I am going to practice my Enterprise 2.0 evangelizing skills ;), and then beginning with Saturday 3rd of November five high-voltage days of Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 conferences in Berlin are scheduled:

Barcamp Berlin

I have prepared a session for the BarCamp and will provide some details soon.

web 2.0 expo berlin

If you want to meet me in person – whether at the BarCamp Berlin or at Web 2.0 Expo, get in touch (directly or via crowdvine) – I would be happy to shake hands with you.

On Sunday evening I will be at the Berlin Geek Dinner, organized by Stowe Boyd, on Mondy evening at the Ignite event and nearby the coffee outlets during the conferences anyway.

Now to the tracks I am planning to attend, obviously the BarCamp and Web 2.0 Open tracks aren’t fixed yet, so let’s delve into Web 2.0 Expo, here’s the overview of the five tracks:

Web 2.0 Expo in Berlin will cover a wide variety of topics, organized into five tracks:

* Design and User Experience
* Development and Web Operations
* Fundamentals
* Marketing and Community
* Strategy and Business Models

These are my planned sessions (for an overview of all sessions see here):

Killing the Org Chart: Organizational, Cultural and Leadership Models on the Bleeding Edge
Tuesday, 6 November – 9:00 am–9:50 am

Self-organizing teams, transparency, and leaderless organizations have captured the imagination of the business community, but the paradigm of traditional hierarchy still dominates. What seems to hold us back are the huge unknowns of change: what happens when you restructure around these new principles? This session describes CoreMedia’s adventures in tossing out their organizational chart, redefining roles and teams, and decentralizing decision-making. They have defined personnel and technical management as discrete areas, and all staff members are assigned to one of the three Competence Centers. The directors of these centers give staff regular feedback, foster personal development, manage the career models and also oversee the assignment of staff to projects based on their specialist skills. Projects themselves are offered as “invitations to tender” and in regular “Waterhole meetings” any member of the staff can present an idea to work on. These are just a few examples of the structures of this self-organized company. They’ve made some bold moves and have real-world results to share with you. But one result upfront – creativity has boosted throughout the company. The second part of the session is an open discussion with attendees about what has worked in other organizations and the challenges and benefits of evolving and/or revolutionizing your organization. Attendees will receive the results of research on Enterprise 2.0 acceptance, challenges and tools in German companies.

This is my ideal start into the conference, I look forward to hearing the experiences of Sören Stamer and the CoreMedia team. Sören is a guy I would really love to meet.

Business Models for Web 2.0 Companies
Tuesday, 6 November – 10:10 am–11:00 am

Make traffic, not money – that seems to be the mantra of many Web 2.0 sites. Yet, as many VC-backed companies start to explore exit opportunities, successful execution of the business model is key. So how do you translate consumer adoption into hard dollars? Network effects are probably the single most important driver for the remarkable success of Web 2.0 properties…can these be used to fuel the revenue generation engine, and how? Are the low CPM troubles of social networks a sign that advertising is not the solution? And what kind of content do consumers actually pay for? Where are the trade-offs between the different models? These and other questions will be answered, along with a look at the current market situation and the future of monetization on the web.

Algorithmic Business Strategies – If everything’s being uploaded and shared, what might be next?
Tuesday, 6 November – 5:00 pm–5:50 pm

Google’s commercial success is based on the idea of identifying a variety of factors, from text analysis to human interest, and use them as variables in a giant mathematical equation that generates billions of revenue, widely known as AdSense. But how would a traditional corporation look like when it’d work like AdSense? Will we offshore intelligence to machines? What are the opportunities and threats? What happens when the whole world, from culture to politics become financial markets driven by algorithms? A joint state-of-the-art review of a new breed of businesses relying on mathematical models, potential scenarios how this approach will become mainstream and what this might mean to you and your business.

Looking forward to Dirk Baecker, but I am not sure whether I will dig this really. Hopfully not too fuzzy.

Web 2.0 Design Patterns, Models and Analysis
Wednesday, 7 November – 9:00 am–9:50 am

Many enterprises seek knowledge of the design patterns used by successful Web 2.0 companies. This session starts with Tim O’Reilly’s list of Web 2.0 examples and distills the abstract architectural patterns from behind the examples. By using the patterns notation, the core knowledge of the design principles is preserved in a template which can be reused in multiple contexts.

Duane will also show the evolution of the client server model into a 5-tier model based on the consistent concepts of most successful Web 2.0 patterns. The model serves as a useful starting point for anyone either designing business models or technology for Web 2.0. The Web 2.0 model is also used to illustrate a reference architecture. This abstract set of technology components allows developers to start thinking about the types of technology decisions required for building Web 2.0 projects.

Now this is interesting for its business model innovation implications, so I am deeply invested in this track.

Federated Social Networks
Wednesday, 7 November – 11:20 am–12:10 pm

Up till now, so-called Social Networking services have been built as walled gardens, where people can interact only within the confines of that service. As people’s preferences differ, they tend to be attracted to different services, roughly around the same kind of social objects, than some of there friends, family. To keep up with everyone, people tend to just sign up on several competing services. Then, for example for microblogging services like Jaiku, Twitter, etc., they need to post to all of them to keep everyone up-to-date. Let’s make Social Networks be social, too. This talk will go into federating different social networks using the protocol behind Jabber: XMPP. It will focus on sharing activity streams between services in near-real time using a number of XMPP extension protocols. For example, subscribing to someones Tweets from Jaiku and seeing updates appear in your overview or sent as a notification via IM as they happen. It will show you how to use these protocols to interact with other services.

OpenID: Emerging from Web 2.0
Wednesday, 7 November – 3:50 pm–4:40 pm

While OpenID is certainly gaining traction around the Web, many questions around security and privacy have been raised. Additionally with companies like Sun Microsystems shipping OpenID code, the question of how OpenID helps the enterprise becomes increasingly important. In under two years, OpenID has grown from a thriving grass-roots community to being supported by major companies, service providers, and open source projects.

This session will provide an introduction to OpenID, thoughts on how enterprises can benefit from integrating the technology, as well as a showcase of innovation around security technologies combined with OpenID such as smart cards, browser add-ons, and the like.

I’ve been examining OpenID lately, hence this session may provide some more evidence. Hopefully also good information on LDAP, SSO and the like for wiki integration into the corporate IT.

Copy vs. Create: Learning and Innovating in a Flat Web 2.0 World (The TechCrunch Follow-up)
Wednesday, 7 November – 5:00 pm–5:50 pm

As Web 2.0 is now a global phenomenon, its powerful concepts find their applications everywhere around the world. What primarily started as a trend among U.S. startups quickly spread to other continents where entrepreneurs recognized the potentials and were quicker than their role models to localize and launch similar companies. Whether you agree or disagree with this trend, it certainly can’t be ignored. So what are the lessons and what does localization mean in Web 2.0 terms? How do Web 2.0 applications differ internationally and where is there innovation? Using an extensive series of examples, this talk will cover what European, Asian and American companies have learned, invented and adjusted when making Web 2.0 a global/local phenomenon.

I would also love to go to these other sessions but I can’t – so if any of you my dear readers gets notice of any writeups, please let me know.

Moving from 1.0 to 2.0: Philosophies and Structures for Change
Tuesday, 6 November – 9:00 am–9:50 am

The 2.0 web world is more than just embedded technology – it is a philosophy. Companies who embrace this thinking are more flexible, agile, and innovative in their strategy and approach, but moving in this direction means rethinking structure, management style, workflow, and culture. How teams are structured, educated, and implemented in your organization is key. Are you a design firm, individual freelancer, or corporation trying to migrate past ‘old-school’ thinking and move yourself, management, or team into a more progressive era? Come hear how others have made innovation a priority – through carefully guided leadership and an environment that fosters creative thinking and collaboration.

Blogs, Social Networks and Podcasts: Corporate Communications 2.0
Tuesday, 6 November – 5:00 pm–5:50 pm

Today’s successful corporate communications and PR efforts are moving faster and faster towards the Web 2.0 channels of the day. Even some of the largest companies are using blogs, podcasts, videos – even Twitter and Jaiku – to reach customers, employees, and shareholders. Many of these efforts have had excellent results, others not so much. How does PR and corporate communications operate today, in a world full of direct communication with customers via web sites, email, blogs, and video?In order to use update your corporate communications plan, you need to consider corporate blogging practices that fit your company and situation, understand the variety of channel and tools available, and learn to blend the old with the new.Through a variety of corporate case studies, find out how businesses can use blogs and other forms of online communication to reach out and inform their customers, connect with their employees and their community, and create conversations and relationships that last.

This last session that I’ll have to miss is something I really miss:

Enterprise 2.0: Tools for Changing Organizations
Thursday, 8 November – 11:20 am–12:10 pm

The user experience is more critical today with the emergence of Web 2.0 during the past few years. Today wikis, blogs, and widgets are a part of the daily nomenclature in the work environment, but there are many questions around how this Web 2.0 world moves into the Enterprise world. How do software vendors bring the best features and functionalities to the masses? Are these companies spending their R&D on bringing to market small applications that focus on one task or are they focused on improving their core applications, or is both possible? Do Web 2.0 apps have enough speed, security, and stability for the Fortune 500 CIOs and thousands of employees around the world? This panel will explore the intersection of the Web and Enterprise 2.0 worlds and discuss what is ready for prime time.

I can’t be there, but hopefully Frank Hamm will cover this session … so I can catch up afterwards.