frogpond

Networking the Web 2.0 Expo Europe Berlin

Now that I’ve fully entered the Web 2.0 Expo Europe blogger programme I wrote about some cute things are starting to happen.

One of the implicit goals of the program is to deepen the connections and relationships between European Web 2.0 (and Enterprise 2.0) bloggers and other enthusiasts. So it’s neat (and somehow all too clear) that among the first guys I found on the internal mailing list there were already people I know, respect and read since long. I guess this is a good sign, and promises a really cool week.

But it’s of course not about mingling and chatting with the people you already know, this would be only half the fun of the Expo (and yes, the preceeding international BarCampBerlin 3). It’s also about exchanging ideas, point of views and experiences with people you didn’t know before. So I am definitely looking forward to meeting all the people I will discover via this program.

OK then, go ahead, registration for the Web 2.0 Expo Berlin is here, and you can use this promo discount code to get a 35% discount: webeu08gr17

Disclosure: Participants of the Blogger Program get a complimentary pass, so I don’t need to pay for my ticket. But hey, I would have gone to the Expo anyway (in fact, I booked my flight sometime early in June) and I tend to blog about stuff like that regularly (like last year’s expo posts).

Entered the Web 2.0 Expo Europe blogging program

I’ve entered myself into te Web 2.0 Expo Europe blogging program and as I detailed the language of this blog to be english and german, sollte ich vielleicht besser auf deutsch weiterschreiben …

Worum geht es? Vom 21 bis 23. Oktober findet in Berlin die zweite Auflage der Web 2.0 Expo Europe (das zentrale Treffen der Web 2.0 und Enterprise 2.0 Experten, nicht nur aus Europa) statt. Richtig, das ist (wie letztes Jahr) in der Woche nach dem Barcamp Berlin 3. Die BarCamp-Anmeldung ist für internationale Gäste weiterhin offen, deutsche Interessenten müssen aber mittlerweile auf die Warteliste.

Nicole, Suw und Stephanie laden nun für O’Reilly und Techweb europäische Blogger dazu ein, wobei aber ein paar Spielregeln gelten:

The way the blogging programme will work is that we’ll ask participants to do these few things between now and 6th October:

publish at least 4 Web 2.0 Expo-related blog posts, podcast episodes or videocasts, e.g. announcement of the event, speaker information, speaker interviews, or any other event-related stuff

encourage readers, friends, and/or community to register for the event

display the Web 2.0 Expo logo on their blog, with a link to the registration page, until the day of the conference

Nun ja, die Punkte 2 und 3 hatte ich bereits frühzeitig und ohne besondere Anreize erledigt, und auch dieses Jahr werde ich sicher wieder von der Expo bloggen (hier sind meine Posts von der Expo 2007 bzw. vom BarCamp Berlin 2).

Andererseits ist es sehr verlockend, dass Expo Blogger auch einen 35% Discount an Leser, Kollegen, Freunde (ja, Kunden auch) weitergeben können und u.U. leichter Zugang zu interessanten Interview- und Gesprächspartner bekommen:

access to information about the event suitable for re-blogging, such as announcements and speaker information/interviews (when possible)

Dass man evtl. auch in die “offizielle Blogroll” aufgenommen wird, ist da nur noch ein kleiner Extra-Anreiz. Also, die Frage hier und in folgenden Posts ist: “how can we use the power of Web 2.0 (in the Enterprise)”

Upcoming: WikiWednesday Paris, International Forum on Enterprise 2.0, WikiSym, Web 2.0 Expo

I know this is on short notice, but if you’re close to Paris – WikiWednesday is due on May 21st. Can’t be there, sadly – but it’s my birthday the other day. However if you want to meetup with french wiki enthusiasts this is probably an opportunity to meet the people behind XWiki and more.

However, you might earmark the International Forum on Enterprise 2.0 at Varese on June 25th. The Forum is characterized by:

A 360° overview on Enterprise 2.0 business and organizative impact
A comprehensive exploration of Enterprise 2.0 tools and techniques: tagging, blogging, wiki, feed rss, open innovation, widgets

Equally interesting if you are into wikis, collaboration and enterprise 2.0 is WikiSym2008

The Symposium offers a rigorously reviewed research paper track, as well as plenty of space for practitioner reports, discussion of work in progress, demonstrations, tutorials, and informal but lively OpenSpace and WikiFest sessions.

Wikisym 2008 will take place from Sep 8-10, 2008 in Porto.

Then, the web 2.0 expo call for participation is open:

The 2008 edition of Web 2.0 Expo Europe will take place 21-23 October at the Berliner Congress Centrum. Want to participate in the Web 2.0 conversation at a higher level? If so, you are invited to submit a proposal now to speak at Web Expo Europe. Share your story of successes, trials and errors, best practices, and case studies with other designers, programmers, marketers, IT savvy business executives, entrepreneurs, innovators, and other people passionate about building a better Web for the whole world.

Some recent enterprise social software notes …

Thomas Van der Wal ponders the uses of social software in mergers and acquisitions, referring a recent post by Stewart Mader on the opportunities of getting new employees up to “working speed” quickly (“Onboarding: getting your new employees cleared for takeoff“).

Ken Thompson on the relation between collaboration, teams and business process management:

It’s the human-to-human interactions of teams that count when it comes to innovation and agility. … you and everyone you work with must be able to function in and through internal and multi-company teams, and must also grasp what the latest concept of “team” really means

Matt Moore interviewed James Dellow about the Enterprise RSS Day of Action, here’s the mp3

Armin Karge tells us the story (in german language) of a tangible method of change communication:

Das “Cockpit” muss vor allem zwei Anforderungen gerecht werden: Einerseits soll es Alarmanlage und Kontrollinstrument sein. Andererseits soll es durch Offenheit und Transparenz zu mehr Akzeptanz der Beteiligten führen. Im Idealfall sind die Mitarbeiter beteiligt und identifizieren sich.

Stewart Mader and the team from Atlassian are sharing insights on wiki functionality, use cases and adoption (and they are giving away free copies of Stewarts Wikipatterns book, my review is here) at the Web 2.0 Expo this week, see what’s on the slate and drop by if you’re in San Francisco.

And finally Andrew McAfee reminds us of the importance of all this:

Enterprise 2.0 is not a hype, but it is also not easy, and it will serve to separate the winners from the losers

Andrew will keynote Heliview on May 7th, looks promising, I am thinking of going too – want to meet up?

The future is Web 2.0 is collaboration …

… says John Chambers, CEO of Intel calling for businesses to increase knowledge worker productivity by implementing Web 2.0 social software but also by fostering mashups and virtual conferencing.

Here’s a video clip of Chambers Network + Interop keynote. It’s nicely edited and a convincing speech (“preaching the gospel”), so worth a look.

Yet one has to be aware that Chambers is betting on virtual conferencing and presence and aims to attract corporate interest onto Ciscos (WebEx-powered) collaboration approach. Keep that in mind when watching the video and when pondering the future of virtual networked collaboration …

For my part I am reserved whether video is really the killer application among the collaboration tools. Requiring synchronous presence of distributed collaborators is both costly and unnecessary most of the time (think more meetings …) whereas tools for virtual distributed collaboration like wikis are a low-cost approach that can be tailored to the actual needs (think more flexibility and serendipity …).

Interested in implementation of social software for collaboration? To learn more about my hands-on consulting approach contact me …

Coopetition in “as a service”: Enterprise Content Management …

Mike Gotta thinks that Salesforce’s Koral move (Apex Content) puts them in competition with Cisco that recently acquired WebEx:

At some point, Salesforce needed to respond to the productivity, content and collaboration platform Cisco can exploit given WebEx WebOffice and WebEx Connect.

I would add that Salesforce clearly moves to take a stance against other collaboration and content management players like e.g. Microsofts Sharepoint or Google (as Nick Carr notes), while it validates the increasing importance of “as a service”-offerings. Hence, its position in the SaaS-landscape is a hybrid one: While offerings like Google Apps are competitors in some ways, they are good competitors because they strengthen the SaaS-model as a whole, heck – they might even collaborate in expanding this market, and they will stay friends quite some time.