Mike Stopforth called me from South Africa last week to chat about Web 2.0 in the enterprise. We talked about a lot of things. One topic that piqued my interest was how different technologies are adopted at different rates in different cultures.
Let's Get Real about Enterprise Web 2.0
As I talk with friends, prospects, and clients, and as I cruise the blogosphere, it’s beginning to look like some sanity is emerging into the world of “enterprise web 2.0.”
I learned yesterday that last night a Writely “planned outage” was planned so I rushed to make necessary modifications before I emailed the sponsor tha a new version was available for his inspection.
I need not have worried. The planned time, midnight Eastern time, came and went without a hiccup. One moment I was using Writely. The next moment I was using “Google Docs & Spreadsheets” and Writely was no more.
Luis Suarez recently blogged and podcasted about social bookmarking services. He highly recommends BLINKLIST, a service that I have not used.
I have been using RAWSUGAR, COGENZ, and CONNECTBEAM, so I also have been forming some personal opinions about social bookmarking.
I learned basic data analysis techniques by studying the relationship between demographics and political opinion poll responses. As an undergraduate in a graduate Political Science course at Ohio State University I used 80 column punch cards (send me an email if you don't know what that means) to instruct an IBM mainframe computer to crosstabulate age, sex, income, and race data with voting behavior and political opinions.
Now you can do the same stuff online with little more than an Internet connection and a browser.
I read today on TechCrunch about SlideShare, a web based service that enables you to share PowerPoint and other types of slide presentations.
To test it out I applied for and received a SlideShare membership, I uploaded a recent slide presentation (Expertise Management Systems), and within ten minutes I had a working version and URL to share.
Well, it's official: according to a special report in Ziff Davis' "CIO Insight" magazine, Web 2.0 is coming to an enterprise near you!
While the date on the main page of the report is October 2, 2006, though, the articles in this collection actually stretch back a couple of years.
IBM’s “Building a New IP Marketplace” Report Promotes Openness in Patent Related Business Processes
Reading IBM’s Building a New IP Marketplace report, based on a wiki developed by several dozen international patent and technology experts during the Spring of 2006, helps explain why IBM recently announced it will be going public with its patent filings.
Perhaps one of the main drivers in IBM's decision to go public with the patent filling process is the acknowledgement that competitive advantage is generated not only by technological innovation but also by all the other ancillary systems and processes that must be orchestrated in bringing a new product or service to market.
Introducing Collaboration Technologies to the Enterprise is a Challenge
One of the interesting topics that came up several times at last week’s The New New Internet conference here in Northern Virginia was the challenge of how to introduce collaborative tools into an organization. This is a topic that is well reviewed in a recent post by Shawn Callahan in the Anecdote web site titled Why People Don’t Use Collaborative Tools.
I've had some time to ponder this past Wednesday's ExecutiveBiz New New Internet conference in McLean, Virginia. It was organized by Dion Hinchcliffe and other Web 2.0 luminaries to discuss corporate applications of a wide range of collaboration, social networking, and software development technologies and processes.
Given the difficulty of doing Return on Investment (ROI) analysis for IT projects, how do you justify an Enterprise Web 2.0 project?
In a comment he left on my How Much Will Your Enterprise Web 2.0 Project Cost? post, Vinnie Mirchandani suggested that one place to start would be to look at the criteria used in the past for evaluating large IT investments.
Proposed Definition for "Expertise Management Systems"
In a recent slide presentation I proposed the following as a definition of an “expertise management system:”
Washington Post Staff Writer Rick Weiss reported on September 13 that a major Federal Government-wide electronic grant submission system operated by Department of Health and Human Services requires a Windows computer to access the web site, Grants.gov.
Prompted by conversations with government contractors in the Washington DC area I’ve created a brief (and very high-level) slide presentation that lays out some of the basics of what I’ve been calling “expertise management systems.”
After Wikipedia's editing caused premature deletion of an evolving Enterprise 2.0 article (the correct term is now "enterprise social software"), I decided to investigate the costs associated with Web 2.0 applications in the enterprise.
Tom Mohr in Winning Online - a Manifesto provides a sobering view of the challenges newspapers face in adjusting to a Web 2.0 world where online advertising revenue today still accounts for less than 6% of total annual newspaper advertising revenue -- and total advertising revenue is declining.
Earlier this month in my post What is the Minimum Information You Need to Describe Your IT Projects? I mentioned that a “RACI” statement is a useful way to communicate project responsibilities:
* Who has ultimate Responsibility, who has Authority to make decisions, who must be Consulted about major actions or decisions, and who must be Informed about major actions or decisions.
One blog I read is the Microsoft Knowledge Network Team Blog (registration required). It describes development and features of the "Knowledge Network" product that will accompany Microsoft's upcoming Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 which is also in Beta status.