It was appropriate that Andrew McAfee led off the keynote at Fast o8 after his message last year. He said that the enterprise 2.0 conversation has progressed from what to how. He has yet to see a firm that could not do enterprise 2.0 but certain factors need to be in place for success. He went over the following and plans to post them on his blog to start a debate over them.

Tools are intuitive and easy to use – tools need to be easier than email – I agree but this is a bit obvious now – training should not be necessary as it will not be done – this is possible today but 15 years ago software training was a requirement and big industry – I never liked software training and found it a crutch for poor design. He also said that most good tools start out simple and stay that way – this was a problem with Lotus Quickplace – one of the pioneers of team collaboration that set the stage for many of the enterprise 2.0 workplace applications we see today – as Charlie Mingus is supposed to have said – making the complex simple – that’s real creativity.

Tools are egalitarian and free form – I also feel that like transparency below – total free form is not always what you want – often you need to start a wiki with some structure for example – however, like transparency, you want to have control over the free form nature of the tools. The irony of enterprise 2.0 is that you actually get more control because the free form nature of the tools allow the business people to decide on where structure occurs, not the people who make the software.

Borders seem appropriate to users – by borders he means who has access and do does not – transparency is not always a good thing. We do not always want to be dogmatically open. Tools that have granular security are a good thing. Again enterprise 2.0 can actually give you more control over security and the transparency, when done right, promotes better performance.

At least some of the tools are social – actually I think all of the tools should have a social side but in an enterprise there needs to be some control over it. I like some of the workspace tools that have integrated chat into workflows so conversations can occur along a process

Andrew went on to cover stuff on management issues and company culture. A good start to the event. One of the final things he said was the enterprise 2.0 will increase difference between companies. I think this will happen because the flexibility of the tools allows for more input by management style and individuals within the organization. The firms will not all be governed, in part, by the structure imposed by ERP. There is more room for differences that people come up with.