by Jevon MacDonald
February 11, 2008 at 10:45 pm
· Filed under Enterprise 2.0
I have my own ideas, but I want to hear from you. Who do you think the leaders of Enterprise 2.0 really are? Who are the up and coming stars and who are the blowhards? Who are the hidden gems and who do you think has it all wrong? Who is out there doing the hard work and not getting any credit?
Post your links in the comments. I will start with that list as I begin a new series of posts on the Who’s Who of Enterprise Social Computing.
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Hey, Jevon! =)
I’m looking forward to that list! I’m always looking for role models. I’ve started doing enterprise social computing at IBM, and it rocks.
In IBM, Luis Suarez and Gia Lyons are among the awesomest evangelists around.
Sacha
Mike Gotta has a fairly comprehensive round-up at http://mikeg.typepad.com/perceptions/2007/12/social-software.html. And so does Gartner in its 2007 Collab and Social Software Magic Quadrant in which Microsoft ranks highest in “Ability to Execute.” 
I suspect that this space will get very crowded over the next couple of years, but I also suspect that there will be some consolidation. Either way, it’s definitely an exciting space to be in.
Lawrence Liu
Senior Technical Product Manager for Social Computing
Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies
The real leaders of social software in the enterprise are the employees using it. The rest of us can pontificate as much as we like.
Lawrence: I am looking for people, not vendors.
Niall: Here here. Well taken. Congrats on the book as well.
Thanks. Maybe reserve judgement until you read it… 
I’m on the fun bit of choosing images for the cover at the moment. Any suggestions?
Everyone, they just don’t know it yet.
I have it on good word that a hidden gem is http://www.trampolinesystems.com and Charles Armstrong CEO/Founder.
Andrew McAfee - http://blog.hbs.edu/faculty/amcafee/
Executives and managers who offer some clear direction and then are mature enough (and wise enough) to get out of the way, and do their participative bit through listening and effective championing, coaching and cheering on ..
I have to nominate Rob Howard, the founder and CEO of Telligent, for your list.
I have provided Internet development and consulting services to large enterprises since the beginning of this whole Internet deal. And two years ago, when I needed a .NET based blog and forum solution, I found Telligent and Community Server. In October of last year I became the first Telligent Director of Marketing.
Rob Howard and the group that is now the Telligent management team deployed Community Server v.1 in 2004. It was truly an innovative product then and has since become the rock-solid, battle-tested, proven enterprise social networking platform. The blue chip list of Community Server deployments will blow you away.
As the old saying goes, Community Server was enterprise social networking before enterprise social networking was cool. Rob Howard was then and is today an innovator in the enterprise space.
4 years is a long time in the history of social networking, but the next 4 years should be even more incredible. I am thrilled to be working with Rob and to be a small part of his vision and the brilliant team he has assembled.
An element from a 2.0 presentation: “Order and leadership emerge”
Or, as was eluded to by Niall: ‘They’ are ‘us’
It’s a collective hive. If you want to go there, then you need to add the foundational thinkers of the earlier eras: Kevin Kelly, Charles Handy, Tom Petzinger, the Cluetrain boys…
Hey Jevon,
You and Niall should also consider Shahar Kaminitz, @WorkLight, for giving birth to the concept of using social networking consumer tools in the enterprise, securely. He is one of the more innovative thought leaders in the space, responsible for putting Facebook to work
I have to nominate Sam Lawrence of Jive Software as one of our industry’s thought leaders. He is one of the few people advancing the message that “enterprise 2.0″ isn’t a name for a market, rather a term that describes the transition to our yet-to-be-agreed-upon market name (think customer service 2.0 vs. Customer Relationship Management). I also see him actively engaged with all of the influencers in this space and they consistently have praised his thinking. He has been an invited speaker at nearly all conferences relevant to enterprise social computing (most of which he has videos of on his blog).
I nominate David Gilmour, founder and CEO of Tacit Software. While he is, of course, evangelizing in support of Tacit’s illumio product, the concept behind the technology is to bring together the multiple components of Enterprise 2.0 - RSS aggregation, attention management, and social networking - to help companies leverage web 2.0 technologies to collaborate and innovate.
Here’s a podcast where you can hear more about his approach and philosophy:
http://www.podtech.net/home/3587/lunchmeet-illumio-delivers-answers-intelligently
Don’t forget Lee Bryant at Headshift in the UK.
Euan was my original inspiraton. This was two years ago: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8065567900894016834
I think Sam Lawrence’s 10 thought leaders boiled down has caused some interest about some of the thought leaders in this space.
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