For those who attended FASTforward 2007 in San Diego and for most readers here, Andy McAfee needs no introduction. He has simply become the leading business academic generating thought leadership around the concepts and practices of Enterprise 2.0 (E20 here).

Of course coining the phrase itself earned him some credit, but his Spring, 2006 Sloan Management Review article Enterprise 2.0: The Dawn of Emergent Collaboration did more than introduce a new buzz term. In the piece, he clearly laid out a set of business considerations that continue to inform the developing thinking that we see here at the fastforward blog and elsewhere.

Andy’s SLATES model (search, links, authoring, tags, extensions, signals), for example, remains a source of core insight into the nexus of technology and interaction patterns that trigger when any thoughtful E20 practice gets under way. (For some recent extension suggestions from Hinchliffe check here.)
This past February at FASTforward in San Diego, Andy’s keynote session, in addition to articulating his take on the meaning and the progress of the E20 phenomenon, offered commentary on the special 2.0 research project that FAST and the Economist Intelligence Unit released at FASTforward: Serious Business: Web 2.0 Goes Corporate. And the breakout sessions he engaged in offered plenty of food for thought not just for the participants, but for all the readers of Andy’s widely-quoted blog, through his subsequent 3 posts on considerations from the conference.

For example, Andy blogged about the counterpoint between his definition of Enterprise 2.0 and Tim O’Reilly’s phase 2 definition of Web 2.0, and the exchange they had at the event that highlighted each other’s thinking.

O’Reilly:
Web 2.0 is the business revolution in the computer industry caused by the move to the internet as platform, and an attempt to understand the rules for success on that new platform. Chief among those rules is this: Build applications that harness network effects to get better the more people use them.

McAfee:
Enterprise 2.0 is the use of emergent social software platforms within companies, or between companies and their partners or customers.

Give Andy credit for immediately turning to the hard questions. As he asked in the blog:
“Tim is entirely correct about the importance of network effects and collective intelligence within Web 2.0, and therefore also within Enterprise 2.0. Every Web and Enterprise 2.0 application I can think of gets better as more people use it. So is my definition above at best incomplete and at worst inaccurate?”

Andy gets on with his business this way:
“…my definition instead emphasizes another ‘rule for success:’ the use of technology platforms that are initially freeform (meaning that they don’t specify up front roles, identities, workflows, or interdependencies) and eventually emergent (meaning that they come over time to contain patterns and structure that can be exploited by their members). I continue to see these as the key points of differentiation between E20 technologies and previous corporate collaboration and communication tools.”

At FASTforward 2008, Andy kicks off the conference with a keynote at 5:15 pm Monday afternoon. Much has happened in the last year to move E20 to a whole new level. Andy will be helping set the stage for what happens next. Be sure to be there. Guaranteed to be worth the trip. And bring your thinking cap.

To find out more and receive a $300 blogger discount, click here.

From the email from FAST that went out this morning:

“The report takes the Economist presentation at FASTforward ‘07 to greater detail and provides an interesting view into this fast-changing phenomenon. The report, based on original survey-based research, uncovers the current perspectives of senior managers, spanning from their understanding of the definition of ‘Web 2.0′, to the specific ways it will impact their firm’s revenues, expenses, and operations. Download the paper now.

And, in case you missed Jeanette Borzo, Contributing Editor, Economist Intelligence Unit, present at FASTforward ’07, we also invite you to Download the video presentation.

About the report:
Serious business: Web 2.0 goes corporate, a newly released Economist Intelligence Unit report, sponsored by FAST, examines how Web 2.0 is being applied – and will be applied in the near future – by large corporations, across a wide range of industries, throughout the world.

The report is based on a survey of 406 senior executives, as well as interviews with Citigroup, JWT, Global Crossing and other major corporations.

Register for access to the report and stay tuned for commentary from our contributors as well as from FAST (we’ve added a new category for all report-related posts).