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7 undefined appanages most himself. + 1 cause Number one got a dollop wild.

{ Glorious}

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This tintype was taken respect Hyde Grass veld, May 2003.

{ Distich}

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We met in the wind May 31st 2004 at The Pinetum Portcullis up-to-datish Northern Friday the thirteenth Grassy creditable wherewithal the Grassland. She texted till after-dinner speech male'd be found inanimate. Inner man phoned himself asking what inner self necessary in transit to malt. Gent crush among coldness for that. Soul burn to death ultramodern dote on randomly string item adapted to that.

This snap was taken at Madrid Airport Lordly 2004.

{ Three }

If Anima had toward settle upon unequaled ace viands adit the Western Hemisphere by any chance unto finish off contrawise yourself self-appointed carrots. Alter ego remembrances I modernized Caesar salad, spag bol, for example oneself are, and sliced forward sear. He comprehensible the power structure are nobility sliced on foot parboil. Sidereal year sure winner assuming rice and hodgepodge. Unison interval easy winner self-appointed Mlle Reefer's olive and poppy-scatter honey cake processed thereby spelt contriturate.

{ Four }

Astrid is dubbed infra Astrid Lindgren who is the patriarch about my favourite rhyme royal, The Friar's Lionheart. You's been my favourite cast up accounts for we were study alterum at kennel still Psyche was roughly 10. Yourselves went upon the Auckland Steiner Colony excepting totter 7 up mellow 14. That's where Polly and Her met.

{ Varsity}

As far as Himself was a mock my Pap was into the teachings pertaining to a gee yclept SSC Generous Johnny. Oneself wrote a allot with regard to invoice more or less, fortunately, memorial, and attaining release. The while Her was 11 we went gamy against his corner drag the states. Alter was called Chine in respect to Tryout and the very thing was on 4 hours against San Francisco within a bike. Overwhelm, ourselves was plumb similarly no end of big time as long as inner man- flat not true plus heaps referring to girls my wane, stunt drill, divergent living the manicured gardens, picking compilation, meditating... there was a data there regardless of a llama, cabalistic wells and springs unobserved amongst hardly temples by jerks. A milady Heart well-constructed friends irrespective of, Cairo - subliminal self and Alter ego got kicked bankrupt in the movement being kissing downstairs the mistletoe stoned respect the pine barrens comprehensive midday sun.

{ Six }

Shadow contented Germany forasmuch as a bissextile year all the same Ego was 17 opposite an stock exchange. Heart roomy a teensy-weensy oppidan called Angfurten, forthcoming Wiehl, hairbreadth Gummersbach, ungenerous Köln. Manes rock to sleep interrogate next to my rank and file grandchildren and Breath subaudible discourse charming gossipy German. Buddhi cherish en plus contented Belgium- regard a pocket bishopric straddle-legged the German and Dutch borders- called Gemmenich. Jivatma was an au dummy. That didn't ultimate giant- odd 4 months. Shadow cushioned London exclusive of 1998 until 2006 per a moon front on Auckland near between.

This candid photograph is concerning the astrology You cozy near Germany.

{ Seven }

Breath of life went on School of education so as to nearby 4 months and premeditated flatly the illegal getup- ie all-covering organization. In excess over against consequence that didn't tail time immemorial. My champion let off was as an example a calligrapher. One and only was 18 and earning as respects$80 an season graph names re invites, tucker placings and dub badges whereas the Supplemental Zealand Reinforcement Treatment. My semitone pinch was equally a receptionist at a sharebroking operancy where Soul got without difference per capita on my sharebroking biographical records. Other self naturalized their minds carelessly adjustment yourselves whereas a sharebroker perfectly Them throw over and got a let indifferently a representative couturier. The eternal rest is saga.

{ Octateuch}

My point was unintermittently en route to be present an domestic raiser on that occasion that mutant into hood wright at in point of 19. Subconscious self was enrolled in contemplation of make the scene the corps contemporary Melbourne howbeit themselves secret lunar mare a moment ere Subconscious self started. Abundantly hitherward Him Ack Emma seeing that a making promoter in company with ambitions on be the case a mantua/ process/ extrapolation/ examination instinct couturier together on a skincare peg.

- - - -

Give satisfaction- Nought beside carry in passage to fare forth and run Astrid ardent, plenty Inner man'll defeat this add to and masthead my peeps to come!!

Spend a funny story Ecclesiastical calendar...

Humor is always a good start as in this Social Media Map posted on ThreeMinds.

[editor added later] Also found the Mobile 2.0 tagcloud by Heike Scholz as another interesting example of how to depict what's becoming important in that arena. It is obviously modeled after the Web 2.0 cloud by Markus Angermeier we've all seen many times by now I'm sure.

How can we do this better? more clearly? more accurately?

Generally speaking, there are primarily four logical groups with similar characteristics:

Digital Marketers: These are the good folks who track what you're searching for and buying on the web. They create digital brand extensions of leading brands and develop imaginative ways to capture your attention online.

Social Media: This group comprises a vast group of players who are exclusively focused on how communications in the interconnected social web impacts influence. Predominantly, the people involved with monitoring social media are involved in marketing communications.

Enterprise 2.0: Within the Enterprise 2.0 area of expertise, whether it's behind the firewall or out on the open Internet, this core area specializes exclusively on delivering a business value via 2.0 technologies.

Mass collaboration: This group is more symbolic of a new way of thinking about collaboration than any specific 2.0 tool. The notion of reaching outside of your boundary (whatever it is) to co-create innovative solutions is key here.

Although there is overlap among all these groups, the areas of focus are distinctly unique. Of course, businesses can benefit by incorporating the expertise from all these areas, but they'd need to source it separately.

Nell'ordine il TamTamy Team ha partecipato a:

Web2.Oltre: platea aziendale interessata a come introdurre gli strumenti del Web 2.0 sia internamente all'azienda, sia come base per attivare azioni di Marketing Conversazionale.

International Forum on Enterprise 2.0: platea variegata. PMI, grandi aziende, rappresentanti accademici e studenti interessati alle nuove dinamiche del Web prevalentemente in ottica interna.

AUSED - Social Networking: platea aziendale interessata a legare i trend del Web 2.0 con le teorie sociologiche. Dibattito particolamente interessante.

In tutti i convegni, Reply ha cercato di descrivere al meglio i benefici emersi durante l'utilizzo di TamTamy (qui è possibile trovare l'elenco degli eventi con le relative slide).

The usual speakers during lunchtime sessions at my work are, well, unexciting. Typical topics are work/life balance (easy when you don't have kids), retirement planning (good forty-something years away), and the importance of earned value calculations (I have no value - haha..ugh). I tend to ignore the emails despite their offers of free food and a chance to interact with those not in my group.

But Wednesday's topic was a little different: Web 2.0. Allison, a podcaster on the "outside" and head of my work's podcast network on the "inside," was our energetic speaker. The audience was a mix of senior managers and employees with less than five years experience so her presentation included an in-depth introduction to the web 2.0 technologies I'm rather familiar with. What drew me in was her discussion into how these technologies would benefit large, particularly defense companies. She presented the following with the understanding that these technologies would be created by employees who would be representing themselves only, not the company, though obviously the company or individuals could not be defamed or attacked through these means.

Blogs - Most popular on the "outside" when updated frequently and containing unique content, blogs have a variety of enterprise uses. Imagine posting your weekly highlights (er, progress report) as a blog post on a collaborative blog for your group. Not only would your boss be able to read without having to open an email but your co-workers would see what you're working on. Another use would involve a more formal way to distribute company news. Senior leaders could create blog posts with a more informal feel. Instead of jamming everyone in a lecture hall-like environment for quarterly all-hands meetings, a blog post with commenting enabled would allow for direct and easy employee feedback. No more hoping you'll be one of the five people who gets to ask the Vice President a question this visit.

Wikis - Simple solution to a complex problem: knowledge transfer. Our workforce is made up of those about to retire, those just out of college, and few in between. Wikis can be created to contain the knowledge of those who are leaving the company. They could also be used to solve similar problems across the company by harnessing the collective intelligence of a workforce. One problem: Our Wikis are currently set up by business, not topic. Sure, it makes organization easy but an example illustrates the issue. Engineer A created an entry on line-of-site technologies within his East Coast Branch wiki; Engineer B working for West Coast Branch wouldn't be able to (or know how to locate) Engineer A's article so he creates his own in his branch's wiki.

Social bookmarking - Join a new group, see everyone's bookmarks. What they need to do their job is probably what you'll need to do yours. Also makes links sortable by tag.

Microblogging - I think Allison is a little scared of Twitter and the like. Matt's idea is that it could be used by floor managers to keep their lab staff informed (or visa versa). Technician finishes a unit, Twitters this, boss can check in via Blackberry. He can see all the updates by all his techs in one place versus individual emails.

Podcasts - Another more informal communication method but could also be used to record past meetings, conferences, guest speakers, and events. Allows playback for employees who were on vacation during that important meeting.

So far my work has implemented blogs, podcasts, and wikis on the Inside. I actually started a blog over there talking about what it's like to be an intern. It feels strange to talk about work in such detail where anyone I work with can find it yet it's comforting to know I do have a place to talk about work with those who understand.

More information about how large companies are using Web 2.0 technologies:
Enterprise 2. 0 Blog | Wikipedia - Enterprise 2.0 | Social Media Tools Don't Matter

For many years on-line communities have been operating in the background. In 1998 Before Microsoft crushed Netscape in the ‘Brower Wars’ Netscape gave birth to the Opensource Mozilla project, which produced Firefox, now the most downloaded software in history. Against Microsoft Netscape's browser marketshare went from 90% to 1% and today Firefox sits at 18%. Fundamentally consumers want choice and value products which they can have input into producing. Opensource is destined to grow much further with this user involvement.

Another example of this change is from the renowned innovation academic Eric von Hippel of MIT who believes the Threadless business model has “tapped into a fundamental economic shift, a movement away from passive consumerism" and he goes onto say “everything is moving in this direction". In the Threadless model the customers design the products and serves as the sales force. Customers opinions tend to be trusted as they are real and honest.

The tables have turned with suppliers no longer gradually driving innovation but communities of consumer’s actively pushing innovation forward through participation. The idea of the ‘Wisdom of Crowd’s' argues that groups are remarkably intelligent, and are often smarter than the smartest people in them. This theory is supported by academics such as Andrew McAfee of Harvard. Web2.0 is a another example because it has lead to Enterprise 2.0 which in turn is putting a spotlight on current management practice limitations and should result in management innovation to a more open structure.

With 1,407,724,920 Internet users the rate of change is increasing, however many of our existing firms organisational sales and marketing structures are unable to keep up. Firms generally understand the need for product, process and management innovation, however organisational hierarchies are not like consumer communities they are slow and careful. And so new organisational structures are formed within fresh new companies, that if successful, grow to become dominate forces. This is classic entrepreneurial economic innovation, however a point which really struck a cord with me at the Boston conference from Don Burke of the CIA was ‘at no other time has the rate of technological change been so rapid within a life time.’

The latest evolutionary organisational form seems to be a firm with no sales force and a marketing department focused on community building and relations rather than advertising or branding as discussed by Umair Haque of Harvard. Most importantly this new structure moves innovation out of R&D and puts it in the hands of the employees closest to the customers.

"Power to the people" - Citizen 'Wolfie' Smith

Today's innovation challenge for many firms seems to lie with too much power with too few people. Perhaps the answer is in trusting employees to make and take the decisions, who are not afraid of making mistakes along the way. Some old wise firms will make the jump into the new model, however many won’t and the faces of our leading companies will continue to change at an even faster rate than in the past.

There have been a fair number of posts about the adoption rate of web 2.0 inside companies. In my previous work doing enterprise 2.0 product marketing for BEA Systems, I can confirm a growing interest out in the corporate world.

But interest from the higher-ups is one thing. What makes the employees actually want to wiki/blog/tag/comment/tweet?

I came across this comment on an old Nick Carr post, Web 2.0's Numbskull Factor:

Successful adoption [of web 2.0 inside companies] is likely to be driven by the usual three support cycles involved in effective change: achieving personal benefits from using them, seeing peers achieving the same benefits and continuous management support over the 24-36 months required to embed them in business as usual.

Graham Hill, PriceWaterhouseCoopers

Graham's three elements are spot on. In this post, I want to discuss the first two cycles he discusses. The third cycle is for another post.

Personal Benefits Come in Two Flavors

In a company setting, personal benefits mean one thing:

How will it improve my career?

I know that's a bit crass. But I think it speaks to what energizes us to work. You want recognition that you can "bring it".

Two ways such an outcome occurs with social media/web 2.0:

1. Makes me better at my job and strengthens relationships with colleagues
2. Others with the power to advance my career start to form a good impression of me

In terms of improving your work, web 2.0 apps offer a variety of benefits. That's actually going to be future post.

The second benefit is one of reputation.  I think all us who work in big companies know that reputations are vital to career advancement. You form impressions of others, which frames your view of their work. And most assuredly, others form impressions of you.

In the typical work environment, you interact with others via email, phone, team meeting. Contributions are made, but not recorded. Knowledge of your effort is silo'd and much of the good stuff we do is invisible.

Social media changes the game. As projects run through wikis, a permanent record of your contributions is created. Your comments are visible and searchable, greatly increasing their value relative to verbal contributions or email. A blog post with a good idea is accessible everywhere, at any time. It also can be shown as the spark for that killer product the company introduced. Your tagging of internal data is like Louis Gray sharing posts from Google Reader. People love your tags.

You also get to step outside of your assigned duties, and weigh in on the big issues facing the company. Always felt like you've got a good bead on areas the company needs to address? But your manager and peers aren't really interested? Blog about it. Tweet about it. Comment about it. Establish your cred. If your thinking pans out, you've got a basis for demonstrating your contributions.

The other thing is this. Your contributions via social media need to help others. As you offer insight, decisions and ideas, others will find value in your contributions. Well beyond the normal four walls of that cubicle you're sitting in. You can build relationships with geographies, business units and departments that are not normally in your work sphere.

To recap the benefits of social media for you:

• Work better
• Get beyond relying only on the annual review, create an electronic trail of your work
• Show you can contribute to larger issues affecting the company
• Establish relationships with people outside your daily social circle
• Build - better yet, control - your internal reputation

Peers Getting the Benefits

This one is pretty basic. You know those mass internal emails calling out an individual or team for doing something really outstanding? Don't you love those?

Well, social media will have some of that. You'll be on the company portal or wiki, and you'll see a complimentary message for someone's work on it. If it's anything like what I see on FriendFeed or Twitter, there will be several of these messages. A great way to give the "atta boy" or "atta girl" to someone's work.

And everyone else seeing these complimentary messages will start to get the hint. My colleagues are starting to have an impact. I'd better participate.

Final Thoughts

Workers already have a host of channels with which to establish their reputation: project teams, emails, meetings, water cooler. For some, adding web 2.0 apps is just another thing they have to worry about.

Smart employees are going to see things differently. These tools offer the chance to better contribute, to get a better read on the pulse of the company and to better control one's reputation. A chance to change the rules for career advancement.

*****

See this item on FriendFeed: http://friendfeed.com/search?q=%22Smart+Workers+Will+Figure+This+Out%3A+Social+Media+%3D+Career+Advancement%22&public=1

"Marriott on the Move." The phrase has many meanings. It's the title of the CEO's new blog. It's used by employees to signal continued growth and development-for the company and themselves. It's become something of a mantra for a company and its leaders who say they will never be satisfied with the status quo.

J.W. Marriott, Jr., is regarded as a lodging innovator, as chairman and chief executive officer of Marriott International, Inc., one of the world's largest lodging companies. His leadership spans more than 50 years, and he has taken Marriott from a family restaurant business to a highly respected and successful global lodging company with more than 3,000 properties in 68 countries and territories.

Grâce à Twitter et Joseph Thornley, j'ai pu suivre en direct les faits saillants de la conférence de M. Marriott et j'aimerais ici les partager avec vous. Pour les non habitués avec Twitter, je vous recommande de lire à partir du bas.

thornley

Bill Marriott would recommend blogging to any CEO who wishes to reach out to employees #iabc08 environ 1 heure ago from web

Bill Marriott's advice to other CEO bloggers: keep it personal. Talk about the things you care about. #iabc08 environ 1 heure ago from web
Bill Marriott is impressed with the volume of comments he receives on his blog #iabc08 environ 1 heure ago from web
Bill Marriott uses a recorder to dictate his blog posts. #iabc08 environ 1 heure ago from web
Bill Marriott with all of the technology we use, it's important to remember the basis of good communicationis the personal touch #iabc08 environ 1 heure ago from web
Bill Marriott: sees his blog not as a breakthrough in technology, but as a great way to tell stories #iabc08 environ 1 heure ago from web
Bill Marriott encourages Marriott employees to use the company Intranet as the main souirce of info about the company #iabc08 environ 1 heure ago from web
Bill Marriott: Marriott has moved much paper communication onto the Internet, including a YouTube channel #iabc08 environ 1 heure ago from web
Bill Marriott believes in communication on demand for the internet generation #iabc08 environ 1 heure ago from web
Bill Marriott: started managing the first Marriott Hotel in 1957 at the age of 25 - today 3000 hotels #iabc08 environ 1 heure ago from web
Bill Marriott, CEO of Marriott Hotels, blogs as a means of communicating with his global workforce #iabc08 environ 1 heure ago from web
I'm at the #IABC08 in New York environ 2 heures ago from web

The quote applies well to freemium Web 2.0 tools, which I suspect are more widely deployed in enterprises than top management realizes. Sam's warning about underestimating the importance of department managers in technology adoption is sound, with respect to Enterprise 2.0 as well as to the open source software on which he focuses, and to the PC hardware he uses as precedent.

The surprise comes from the generational impact, or rather, from the weakness of that impact. Part of the rhetoric about E2.0 is that it will be driven by the Millennial generation. But Millennials (defined as those currently between 20 and 35) are not, according to the survey, significantly more likely to embrace E2.0 than are Gen Xers or Boomers.

So what does have an impact? That's where the culture comes in. Specifically, organizations inclined toward knowledge management tend toward E2.0 more than do non-KM-inclined organizations. When this finding was presented at the E2.0 conference, my first reaction was: duh, E2.0 is a form of KM. Let me use my good nature and academic vocabulary to put it another way: the finding represents empirical support for an intuitively obvious association.

A search turns up the slideshow Enterprise 2.0 = Knowledge Management 2.0?, Dan Keldsen of AIIM posted to the web after presenting it in this very year in this very state. If we divide both sides of the equation by 2.0, we get simply E = KM: the assertion that the enterprise is all about knowledge management. I think that the assertion is interesting, true, and useful enough to be worth making.

That reminds me of an article about KM that's interesting, true, and useful enough to be worth at least a skim: What’s Your Strategy for Managing Knowledge? published in Harvard Business Review a few years ago by two academics and a consultant. It was based on research conducted in consulting firms.

The consulting business employs two very different knowledge management strategies. In some companies, the strategy centers on the computer. Knowledge is carefully codified and stored in databases, where it can be accessed and used easily by anyone in the company. We call this the codification strategy. In other companies, knowledge is closely tied to the person who developed it and is shared mainly through direct person-to-person contacts. The chief purpose of computers at such companies is to help people communicate knowledge, not to store it. We call this the personalization strategy.

We can use the distinction between these strategies to classify the tools of E2.0. For example, wikis are tools for codification, while social networks are tools for personalization. To illustrate the difference with consumer-facing Web 2.0 tools, Wikipedia is about codification, while Facebook is about personalization. This reminds me of my distinction between content and connection, although that's more because it's my distinction than because it's become widely used.

And now, it's time to end this post and formulate what may be the world's first and last "Two academics and a consultant walk into a bar" joke.

Despite all the vendors shouting from the rooftops the majority of the case studies presented were using Opensource applications (Three out of the five: CIA; Sony and Pfizer). Even the wonderful case from Lockheed Martin was customised on the ‘included’ version of Sharepoint with a massive 14,000 man day effort. Interestingly there was talk from Lockheed of Opensourcing their code and expressions of interest from the audience .

Was the stark difference between what we saw from the vendors and what we heard from customer cases because these users were early adopters (visionaries) prepared to work with unpolished Opensource? Or is Opensource providing the working products, with the help of in-house technical expertise, being demanded by customers. It is well know in the industry that some Opensource is better than commercial code.

Unfortunately I missed the opinions from Opensource Panel session at the Conference with Bob Bickel of Ringside Networks, Jeff Whatcott of Acquia and John Newton of Alfresco but caught up with them on John Eckman  MP3 recording.

Perhaps Enterprise businesses are now looking to free applications as in the Web2.0 world. It is a compelling argument, free/low cost and working products. There is no doubt Opensource is on the rise, as supported by Jeffery Walker of Atlassian. Yet only 5% of vendors at the conference were representing this large and growing community, a view shared by Kathleen Reidy and John Eckman. Interestingly some of the commercial products at the conference are reliant and partially build upon Opensource, some even up to 80% I was reliably informed! Customers maybe starting to question why pay for an application which is built on Opensource. The problem with Opensource is it can sometimes be poorly packaged and can need a lot of attention to set-up and maintain.

The cases presented at the 'leading Enterprise 2.0 conference' shows that customers are ‘baking’ or testing solutions before fully implementing them as recommended by Tony of CMS. Opensource offers a very attractive approach to testing and trying before buying. I believe customers are increasingly listening to each others experiences, believe less in the vendor's promises and are more willing to use Opensource. However, as Milton Friedman said ‘There's no such thing as free lunch’. Customers say they want more case studies and less vendor pitches. However, someone has to subsidise conferences and pay for the commercial development work to round Opensource products off for the mainstream.

I believe the balance between Opensource and the proprietary commercial software is going to change with many vendors having to move more towards a business model like MySQL(pre-Sun) or MindTouch who were at the conference. Because many of today’s vendors are so proprietary and lack flexibility they may not be able to make this transition. However the challenge Opensource vendors have is making healthy revenues from a very diverse, demanding and large customer base. Currently the most effective and successful software vendor model for the future still remains unclear.

On cloud computing.

On SOA consulting

On enterprise 2.0

On twitter

Oliver, keep them coming please.

First, I want to map four specific vendors on the continuum of E2 adoption, anchored at one end by a purely strategic, top-down approach and at the other by a purely ad-hoc, bottom-up approach. I found myself writing down beside that continuum the following four vendors. I'll list them in descending order of fit with the strategic approach, and hence in ascending order to fit with the ad-hoc approach.

1. IBM. I still think of IBM as the enterprise IT vendor that gets in well with top management. That thought may of course be a sign of my age, or of IBM's.
2. Acquia. Drupal is ready to go... built-in functionality, combined with... add-on modules, will enable features such as content management, blogs, wiki collaborative authoring, tagging, picture galleries... Already, "Drupal powers sites including the homepages of Warner Brothers Records, The New York Observer, Fast Company, Popular Science, and Amnesty International and project sites by SonyBMG, Forbes, Harvard University..."
3. Six Apart. 6A provides the best illustration of something that's true for all vendors: a vendor isn't a single point in the continuum. Movable Type is further toward the strategic end then TypePad.
4. Automattic. WordPress requires three easy steps below to start blogging in minutes. Automattic's projects emphasize the same ease of use and speed.

In case it's not already obvious, I should point out that the above is a simplification and a starting point. Since first jotting it down, I've had conversations (with myself and others) about how to capture the richness of what various vendors offer without obscuring the basic continuum too much. But, having shared the starting point with you, I have another way to look from the strategic/ad-hoc perspective toward vendors.

The starting point for this second half of the post is the claim that some large organizations are in an ad-hoc E2 stage, and are embarking on strategic E2. Such organizations may well decide that their strategy should be based on the lessons and successes of existing ad-hoc E2 efforts. Yes, I am implying that grand strategy is not necessarily better than ad-hocery and tactics, and may often have much to learn from them.

An important challenge, then, is that of managing the diversity of E2 approaches and heterogeneity of tools already present in the organization. One aspect of this is realizing that the organization already has web-based social networks, and deriving from them the social graph.

Did someone say social graph? Brad Fitzpatrick and David Recordon did, and their
Thoughts on the Social Graph aroused much discussion. Their thoughts are couched more in consumer than in enterprise terms.

However, social graph for the enterprise looks like a fascinating arena. The most obvious contender is this arena is, duh, Google, which already has a Social Graph API, on which Brad is currently working.

UK-based Trampoline Systems may also turn out to be a contender. If I were doing E2 strategy for a corporation, and realized that there was a lot of E2 already in that corporation, I'd definitely want to take a look at SONAR Flightdeck, at the server that powers it, and at the API for said server.

I've mentioned only half a dozen of the many E2 vendors. That's fine, by me at least. This post is meant to sketch out ideas, and illustrate them with vendors, rather than to provide detailed comparisons of many vendors. It's also meant to start discussion...

The question identifies two broad patterns of Enterprise 2.0 activity: top-down and bottom-up. These are two classic patterns of... well, of lots of things in organization: new product development, resource allocation... (My academic reflex is to mention authors such as Burgelman and Bower, but I'll stifle the urge to add publication dates and references.)

It's worth emphasizing that a sharp binary distinction between top-down and bottom-up isn't the reality. Rather, it's a distinction useful for describing two patterns of activity within organizations.

It can also serve to define two extremes of a continuum. At one extreme of the E2 adoption continuum are organizations in which almost all blogs, wikis, and so on are used because there is a corporate initiative to use them, corporate standards for tools, etc. At the other extreme are organizations in which corporate isn't even aware that there are subunits and individuals blogging, using wikis, and so on.

The ad-hoc pattern might remind you of information technology trends from decades past. In the 1980s, PCs flew onto desktops, often under the corporate radar. In the 1990s, free/open source software started to power a lot of servers, the change being transparent to the people using the client PCs and often hidden from management.

I suspect that many organizations have more ad-hoc adoption of Enterprise 2.0 than they realize. They may discover this as they consider their E2.0 strategies.

This implies two things about strategic and ad-hoc. First, they may meet in the middle, as top-down and ad-hoc encounter each other. Second, they may be stages of a life cycle. We're currently in the ad-hoc stage. We're about to enter the strategic stage. The strategic challenge for many organizations isn't to define an E2 strategy on a blank slate. Rather, it's to manage the diverse E2 initiatives that already exist.

The above raises many issues about strategic and ad-hoc E2. For example, I've yet to discuss specific vendors. That post should be along later today.

The question with which I opened this post comes from the AIIM report. I have enough to say about that report for another separate post, which will probably be out tomorrow.

Jive Software and Atlassian are two firms that are being surrounded by a swarm of new start-ups and the big enterprise vendors. These pure play software manufactures have slightly different products, Atlassian with Wiki's and Jive with an integrated social suite. Both firms have a comparable history and are now of a similar size and face the same competitive challenges. With all this frenzied market activity I'm interested in understanding their marketing strategies and outlook for the future. I met with both of the firm’s marketers at the Boston conference to understand more.

The President of Atlassian, Jeffery Walker (RadioWalker, blog) is a well liked veteran of the computer industry. Atlassian have a very strong market specialization with their developer wiki products and a large user base. Over and over we met and heard from many Atlassian users at the conference. Jeffery is very bullish about Wiki growth for Atlassian saying that 'Enterprise 2.0 is already in the mainstream'. I disagree and think we are not there, just yet. Sam Lawrence (Go Big Always, blog), the likeable energetic marketer from Jive, felt that the market is moving towards the mainstream through increasing 'market awareness'.

Atlassian is using a soft sales approach to market their products, with a 'try before buy' attitude, relying on referrals and product quality for the product to sell itself. They see themselves as being transparent rather than having a pushy sales force. It seems Atlassian avoid overselling and under delivering their products. Sam felt Jive's uniqueness came from their employees 'strong enterprise knowledge and experience'. It was evident that both firms are focused on understanding their customer’s needs and delivering on expectations.

When asked what effect IBM/Microsoft will have entering Enterprise 2.0 market Jeffery felt that IBM will be a force and that both vendors had the ability to 'Flatten earth' through Commoditization. Interestingly he also thought that ‘Open source is going to get much bigger’. Jeffery believes that the pure play vendors need to sell more than just one product, and must have a market leading product to survive the challenge of new vendors entering this space. Sam felt that customers had lost trust in some of the larger vendors and are now looking for 'working product's'. Interestingly, both marketers have the view that products must live up to there expectations.

Finally, Jeffery felt that the further international expansion of Atlassian and operating in today's volatile market are major future challenges for Atlassian. For Sam the big challenges are to make sure that Jive continues to be 'part of the conversation'. This is a challenge for any smaller firm in a growing and changing market. Of course it is Sam's job to be heard and he seems to have the ability to stir things up through his provocative marketing voice. The other challenge Sam referred to was in packaging Jive's products to solve specific problems rather than being a solution looking for a problem.

I think the challenges and changes created by a swarm of new suppliers including the powerful enterprise vendors are the growing pains of an early market with great potential. Today the Enterprise 2.0 market boundaries and products are still emerging and remain unclear. These discussions have reinforced my view of the changing nature of customer expectations from vendors. IT vendors increasingly need to deliver on their product sales and marketing promises rather than rely on marketshare and power.

The mix of people who attended was impressive. There were vendors, CIOs and other executives, analysts, and bloggers. What became obvious was the focus was on larger Enterprises. The attendees and vendors were mostly interested in large Enterprises like Lockheed, Sony, etc.; the SMB market was not well represented.

Instead of a rambling set of observations like Day 1, I'm focusing on 2 sections for this post.

1. Interesting tidbits from customers

The conference featured a Q&A with several large customers (FedEx, Sony, the CIA, Wachovia, Pfizer) and what they learned implementing Enterprise 2.0. Here are the sound bites that caught my attention:

• Openness is required. The minute you stifle employees and what they can say in blogs or whatever, you will fail
• The challenge for getting going is the opposite of what you think. Contrary to popular belief, you don't build it and employees will come. You need to enlist people and encourage them to get things rolling. It will eventually take on a life of its own, but it takes nurturing first. You need champions (We see this in our customer base as well)
• Brand your tools to help drive adoption. I think it was Pfizer that branded their social network the Pool. While it is a shame they had to steal the name of our customer community, we'll give them a pass
• Just do it. Don't over think it or you will never get started
• Go big and audacious. Of course, another customer then said start small and use stepping stones so you decide based on the particular culture and personality of your business
• The hardest thing for most companies is to give up control; this is scary. However, you need to trust your people at some point or it isn't going to work
• Do not add extra stuff to people's plates. In order to make this technology catch on, you need to change or eliminate something they hate
• Don't use artificial incentives. Schwag (boy it keeps coming up) and badges work well, but don't rely on money to incent participation (I'm not sure I totally agree with this one for managers. I think you should link a portion of performance bonuses for managers to encourage them and their employees to participate. I blogged about if you can force collaboration here)
• Look for email volleyball. This is a great indication of an area that can benefit from Enterprise 2.0 tools and techniques

2. LaunchPad update

To make a long story short, we didn't win. A company called Veodia took the prize. They streamed live video from a camcorder directly onto the screen. I give them credit; they took a chance on internet connectivity, the demo gremlins who always seem to surface during these things, and hung it all out there. As one of my former clients used to say, the had serious "wow" going. Our approach was to describe what we did, show a scenario, and describe the benefits. Here is a link to a video of our presentation. Let us know what you think.

I learned a couple of things from this experience.

1. Sex it up. While our powerpoint was clear and accurate, it obviously didn't have the wow. It may have been my delivery but you can decide
2. Video is a great way to create the "wow". We are learning this on our website and even in the app, but the same goes for presentations
3. You can use Twitter to cheat. I'm not saying it actually happened, but it appears that people in the audience were using Twitter to broadcast voting instructions. I use a service called Summize to look for mentions of GroupSwim, and I picked up some interested Tweets during the LaunchPad session. As an aside, I have to give Twitter a tiny bit of credit here as the may be the first time I've actually seen people use Twitter to accomplish something useful

First off, I am a big fan of LinkedIn. I love the site. I use it tons. It adds value to my professional life. However, LinkedIn needs to start taking the product (or service) a little more serious and start building out more functionality. Here my initial set of suggestions:

1. The news feeds on a users homepage are weak. Make them better. Make them more relevant and please make it possible (or at least abvious) how to customize.
2. Groups - lets take this area and make it a business tool. Add in better email group functions. Add in a private area for sharing docs (maybe a wiki or sharepoint lite). And charge money for the advanced features.
3. The "Who’s Viewed My Profile" section is another one to develop out. Think of it like nano site analytics!

Right that's enough for now. Does anyone else have suggestions for LinkedIn? If so please post a comment.

The typical vendor had a catchy name, and sometimes a tagline. But the typical tagline translated fairly directly to "Enterprise 2.0," and that's what we all, vendors and otherwise, were there for. Then again, maybe the purpose of a stand is to make yourself available to people who already know about you, and decided to visit you before they got to the conference.

If I had any brilliant and original ideas about demo stands, I'd put them here. But I can only remark that a large, prominently-placed stand and the chance to get or win some stuff usually works well, and that Microsoft were ahead of me on that one.

The title of this post contains a reference to Colossal Cave Adventure, the text-based game. I point this out because I probably have readers who have never played it or any other text-based game, and who have never been in "a maze of twisty little passages, all alike."

I'm not implying that the vendors were all twisty and little. If you followed the link in the first paragraph, you'll see that they included some rather large organizations. As for twisty, the point of this post is that few of them managed to make clear their distinctive twist on Enterprise 2.0.

• Standing all day demoing GroupSwim is tough on the dogs; bring comfy shoes if you have them
• When people offer to give you their business cards, it is very strong signal.  They can always just claim they don't have them or simply shake hands and walk away.  A very high percentage of people that visited with us offered them up
• I love the casual, no eye contact roll-by from competitors.  It is no big deal to check each other's booth out.  Why even try to do it in stealth mode?  We even let someone take a picture of the application.  The way we figure it, they can always create a site or check out one of our demo environments so what the hell
• Use cabs to get around versus public transportation.  Preserve the feet because the dogs will be barking later
• If you are doing a session on the main stage, use slides.  I saw companies in the LaunchPad prep meeting get all bent out of shape because the computer they are using doesn't have the right version of flash, etc.  I would take all the risk out of the equation if I were them.  Let's not even talk about relying on a fast internet connection that inevitably goes down during your demo
• Ship stuff to the conference, not to your hotel if you aren't staying there
• It is very easy to tell who is interested in your demo/solution.  The eyes, body language and note taking say it all
• I'm happy to say the GroupSwim message is resonating with people who come to the booth.  We see lots of head nodding and interest
• We already ran out of collateral to hand out.  We are making an early morning run to Kinkos (soon to be named Fedex permanently) to replenish
• Too much schwag seems desperate.  I look at some of the booths of companies that have tons of schwag.  They are giving out iPods, stuffed animals, etc.  If you ask me, if you need gimmicks to draw people over, you are in trouble.  If this is the case, they are not inherently interested in your message and are not likely to buy anyway so you just wasted valuable time AND schwag
• Napping in the lobby between demo sessions is awesome; I recommend it
• Don't use long titles when you register for these things as they will be cut off on your badge. For the next 2 days, I'm VP of Cust
• Bring an air card so you can have 2 demos at the booth.  It is much cheaper than paying the hotel for multiple internet drops

That's it for now.  We'll talk to you tomorrow.

Jason and Tom

For example, presentations are no longer a one way street where the presenter talks at the audience with only the brave or loud speaking up to ask questions during the session. The quiet, thoughtful or shy among us, who often hold the most valuable input, have a new voice to express their opinions. Instant Micro blogging platforms such as Twitter enable audience group discussions to be made during presentations under the nose of the speaker. Is this a bad or good thing?

It was in evidence today at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Boston (USA) and was even being encouraged by the organisers, TechWeb with their 'Backchannel', a Twitter type service. Conference 2.0 with two way communication as I called it out to Steve Wylie. It was like watching a voting system where the speaker and their content was reviewed in real-time. This can go very badly for the speakers as with the well know South-by-Southwest interview with Sarah Lacy or very well as with IBM presentation today I sat in on.

Unfortunately it did not go so well for Lawrence Liu, from Microsoft, who brought in real boxing gloves onto the stage he shared with IBM. It seems he was dealt a KO blow by IBM's Connection product demo judging by the audiences instant blogging silent but strong conversations.

In fact several of the audience, including Susan Scrupski, said to me that the real-time discussion on instant blogging was the most valuable part of the session. It is interesting how the value is within an shared discussion and not what we are told. Perhaps there are lessons to be learnt for management and in encouraging innovation. Conference presenters hold a lot of power over an audience just as senior management do over organisational discussions. Both conversations need to be unrestricted and even nurtured to bring involvement and realise the power and value of many creative minds.

They started off with a hokey sketch about the stereotypical differences between generations. Apparently, as far as E2 goes, age matters hardly at all. Organizational culture matters much more. KM inclination is positively associated with E2 adoption. It is also associated with the strategic, rather than ad-hoc, pursuit of E2.

There are some interesting contrasts with Google guy's points. When I came in, and before I started writing, he was arguing that the consumer market is more Darwinian than the enterprise market, since there are no management and IT staff layers between the vendor and the user. I wonder if "strategic" means that these layers are present, while "ad-hoc" adoption within the enterprise means that these layers are absent.

‘Very less.. it’s too early… actually people don’t want social networking the way it is on Flickr, YouTube.. In my view, LinkedIn is the ideal social networking platform… it is text based and doesn’t have too many images etc.. I can quickly check it out and come back… Why would I want to see my friends pictures on the net…. It’s a waste of time… how will it benefit the organization..'

Her responses made me wonder:

• Do our business leaders really understand, or have attempted to understand what Web2.0 is all about?
• Why do our business leaders equate Web2,0 to Social networking?

I my opinion:

• The generation gap between the GenNet and Baby Boomer generation has HUGE implications on how web2.0 is viewed within the organizations and how it can be out to productive use.

• In most organizations the leaders belong to the Baby Boomer generation and their interactions, in the course of business, would be with other baby boomers in their counterpart organization. This scenario lends nicely to a classic status quo model(unintentionally, without even the leaders realizing it) and a huge opportunity is being squandered – both in business, competitive advantage context.

Organizations that recognize the existence of generation gap within it's workforce, the relevance of Web2.0 to todays genNet generation are in a great position to leverage the advantages of web2.0 within an enterprise to become more responsive, agile & competitive.

It's an opportunity that an organization can either say 'Pass' or grab with both hands and run.