Lately, my own pet subject, service oriented architecture, has been getting raked over the coals over the matter of ROI, but Enterprise 2.0 — because it’s so new and fresh and there is little cost for the tools and services — has been getting a pass.

However, caution still reigns, and Dion observes that “there is still mostly a wait-and-see attitude amongst IT managers and business leaders at the moment.” Dion says many E2.0 solutions overlap with already existing solutions, hierarchical corporate culture gets in the way, and then there’s the nagging question of ROI.

As an emergent set of technologies and methodologies, a solid, predictable ROI cannot be quickly pinned down for E2.0. However, Dion is confident that the collaboration it enables is clearly of great business value:

“I would like to make it clear that there is little doubt that Enterprise 2.0 delivers ROI today, at least on the collaborative side (the jury still seems to be out on the social networking side). Recently, researchers have even been able to put a real numerical value on social connections. My point is just that it’s difficult to determine where the returns (often the most important ones) will appear when the tools have so many downstream effects. That’s not to say either that Enterprise 2.0 ecosystems can’t be directed to some degree to achieve business objectives. In fact, I believe the the next generation of workers will be experts at achieving their goals by eliciting and then harvesting the knowledge and capabilities they need over the network.”

Not so confident about E2.0’s ability to deliver business results is my other ZDNet colleague, Dennis Howlett, guru-in-residence of all things enterprise.

Dennis published a rebuttal to Dion’s post, arguing that there aren’t enough examples out there yet of E2.0 delivering results. And, he adds, the bean-counters and the corner-office folks are in no mood these days for funky new theories and applications:

“… the most serious problem with the analysis is its reliance on
‘jam tomorrow’ as an inducement to feed the trend. It is all very well saying that something is emergent but that cuts little ice in the C-suite where the current focus is on cost reduction – usually of the order of 20%.”

Plus, enterprise collaboration is a dream that’s been chased for decades now, Dennis adds. “Getting a department on board, let alone an enterprise, can be  mind numbing, thankless task. I spend most of my life in the ‘knowledge’ industries but even there it can be like pulling hen’s teeth.”

And how do you measure the ROI? “Where’s the ROI in email? Unlike others, I believe that IS measurable,” Dennis adds. “You can’t quite say the same for blogs except in retrospect.”

As I noted in a previous post here at the FastForward blogsite, Gartner’s Mark McDonald said E2.0/Web 2.0 tools may have a lower bar for ROI because they’re so inexpensive to adopt and use. Is this bar low enough to escape the scrutiny and expectations for other technology solutions to deliver more than their initial costs in measurable results?

And — this is a matter that needs to be explored in more depth.

A couple of years ago, I talked about the difference between the E2.0 style of management versus the traditional style. That is, productivity in an E2.0 culture comes in “bursts,” versus the show-your-face-between-9-and-5 mentality. Bursty productivity calls for a different set of measurements of value to the business, versus the time clock.

So the question lingers — how do you appropriately measure E2.0 ROI? In the SOA world, it’s been established that baseline metrics need to be established at the start of a project, tied into key performance indicators (KPIs) for the business. IBM even talks about “Key Agility Indicators” as a way to track the impact of projects on business progress. Is it time to get serious about Enterprise 2.0 metrics?

According to a new report in the Financial Times, “revised guidelines on endorsements and testimonials by the Federal Trade Commission, now under review and expected to be adopted, would hold companies liable for untruthful statements made by bloggers and users of social networking sites who receive samples of their products. The guidelines would also hold bloggers liable for the statements they make about products.”

A counter-argument by Richard O’Brien, vice-president of the American Association of Advertising Agencies, said it was premature to regulate blogs or other forms of new media. According to FT, O’Brien rote to the FTC that “regulating these developing media too soon may have a chilling effect on blogs and other forms of viral marketing, as bloggers and other viral marketers will be discouraged from publishing content for fear of being held liable for any potentially misleading claim.”

Over the past decade or so, the legal system caught up to email, which must now be managed and is treated as any other corporate record or statement. That is, companies are liable for the statements made by company representatives within email communications. Even more recently, instant messaging has fallen under the same scrutiny. Both email and IM, in fact, are construed as electronic communication. In fact, the United Nations Commission on International Trade (UNICTRAL) Model Law on Electronic Commerce — which serves as the basis for many national laws — defines a “data message” as “information generated, sent, received, or stored by electronic, optical, or similar means including, but not limited to, electronic data interchange (EDI), electronic mail, telegram, telex, or telecopy.”

The UNICTRAL definition was drafted earlier in the decade, but certainly can be extended to social media.  How liable will organizations be for any and all statements made by employees or representatives in blogs or social media sites? That is a question that inevitably will be hashed out — and hopefully, we can keep the lawyers from quashing the potential of the social media sphere.

In fact, a survey out of the University of Southern California last year found almost of half of organizations may be holding back on social media inittaives due to liability and legal concerns.

Here in point form are some thoughts about what I think has also happened in the social media context:

• Twitter was huge and held together – was this not Twitter’s Performance Waterloo? – I found it a wonderful adjunct to my TV and my web watching. I limited my stream to those people that I knew and cared for and it was as if I was there side by side with them. This amplified the whole experience. Some were on the ground in Washington – their collective Tweets were like a composite eye – in aggregate they gave me a sense of being there.

So – if you wish to add more “experience” to your event and hence make it more “sticky” having a Twitter stream will do that.

If you claim to be a new organization and you do not use Twitter thoughtfully – then you are no longer in the game

• Streaming – I was joined by millions who wanted to make their computer the centre of their experience. I wanted this because I could add more layers to what was going on. I cannot do this with TV where all I can do is shift channels. I could use Twitter – I could have several streams open at the same time – I could chat – the list goes on. I think that this also was the Tipping Point for TV delivery – this is what the Tsunami was for blogging. This was the event that shifted the web as a delivery platform from being nice to being the most important. Of course it did not work as well as it was hoped. But the flaws in execution and in load management does not change the new reality. The Web is where TV will be seen. CNN’s excellent partnership with Facebook was a ramp up of this idea. I found it such fun to have the feed AND my peeps online on the same page. I started to think of BSG and a Twitter/Facebook combo. Not just news but more importantly to be able to watch whatever I wanted with my friends – a concert, a theatrical show, a documentary, a lecture content shared with friends is better than content watched alone. TV Web Stream PLUS my friends looks like a killer combination

So if you produce content for TV and you have not made up your mind that the web will be your primary arena you are no longer in the game.

Adding conversation with friends and enabling filtering of this group is the icing on the web TV cake

• Making this easy is very important. On the one hand we have the CBC who use a very tricky stream delivery and who clearly want to pull you back to the TV offering – on the other hand we have CNN and Facebook – their set up was exceptionally well done. Now the stream overloaded but that is solvable. CNN also offered multiple views – there was not only one stream but 3. I was struck by that. I can see down the road the value of offering many many views – I then become the editor of my own view of the event. Now I have control. What a shift in power! One of the views that is worth having is the C – Span view by that I mean one without any commentary – with my peeps we can do that too.

So – It is clear to me that CNN have crossed the Rubicon – they have senior folks who no longer see the web as good or interesting but as the primary way forward

• There is a new Media company out there. The White House is going to become a media powerhouse of its own. The Obama administration is going to do for social media what Teddy Roosevelt did for the Press and FDR did for radio but more so. The Roosevelts gave the new media worlds of their time a boost. But the press/media organizations were still always outside the Whitehouse. As the President showed us in the campaign, he is a master of being the media organization of the future – the White House will have massive conversations directly with the people – an not just the people of the US but with the people of the world. The 44th President is a master of the Cluetrain. Politics are all about Biological Markets.

So,  just as he will show up all other elected leaders by his agenda so I think he will show up all others in mastery of how to use social media to do the great work of our time – how to engage people so that they no longer sit passively waiting to be saved but that they are brought into the conversation that encourages them to take responsibility for their own lives and their own communities.

This for me is my biggest aha – that our own conversation will soon move away from “cool” from the “Tech” to what this is all about. It is surely all about an awakening from the deep sleep, the passivity, the numbness, the dumbness – of the traditional mass media.

This where where responsibility replaces passivity. This is the great change and revolution of our time. The social use of media will wake us up and connect us to our real work.

As the User Revolution rages on, its impact is being felt not only by newly empowered users but by businesses struggling to respond. We see Enterprise Search as a key technology in harnessing the power of the User Revolution through rich, new user experiences that drive online business and enterprise productivity.

FASTforward’09 will explore how leading-edge companies use search and related technologies to engage people in interactive experiences and connect them to information. The event provides a much-needed forum to discuss best practices for developing and implementing search solutions that allow people to create content, consume information, and collaborate with each other in innovative new ways. We’ll kick off the conference with a discussion of the latest Web 2.0 trends and then spend two days talking about what it all means for you and your business. A strong line-up of guest speakers, Microsoft executives, and customer presentations will make this a event you won’t want to miss.

Commenting on her experience at the conference last year, Krista Thomas—VP of Marketing and Communications at Thomson Reuters—had this to say: “FASTforward is the best ‘user-conference’ I have ever experienced. Given the quality of the speakers and content and the thought-leadership of your executives and clients, the event amounts to a meeting of the best minds in search and content technologies.”

Speakers for FASTforward’09 include:

• Charlene Li – Independent Analyst on Emerging Technologies, co-author of Groundswell. “Groundswell provides practical advice on how to stay nimble and flexible in an ever-morphing digital world. Enabling your company to respond to change quickly especially when talking to and supporting your consumers is essential for business success.” – Cathie Black, President, Hearst Magazines
• Clay Shirky – Author, Consultant, Professor. His new book, Here Comes Everybody, explores the effects of open networks, collaboration, and user-created and disseminated content on organizations and industries. “In story after story, Clay masterfully makes the connections as to why business, society and our lives continue to be transformed by a world of net-enabled social tools. His pattern-matching skills are second to none.” – Ray Ozzie, Microsoft Chief Software Architect
• Don Tapscott – Internationally renowned authority on the strategic value and impact of information technol­ogy and chairman of nGenera Innovation Network. “Don Tapscott provides an exciting roadmap to surviving and thriving in the Connected Era.” – Michael S. Dell, Chairman And CEO, Dell

Discover for yourself why FASTforward has become the largest global business and technology conference dedicated to search-driven innovation! Visit the FASTforward’09 event site for more details and to register – and register by January 9th and save $400.

Enterprise software spending has recently crashed. Companies such as SAP, headquartered in Waldorf Germany, have recently issued earnings warnings, which illustrate how dramatically enterprise application spending has dipped in just a few weeks. These organizations can no doubt weather this storm, but with this shift, opportunity is found.

As traditional enterprise vendors suffer, a panacea for investors and customers is emerging with the nascent enterprise social software industry. Until now, Enterprise 2.0 has sat on the sidelines of the enterprise software industry, seen perhaps as less focused and more predisposed to conversation than action.

Enterprise 2.0 consultant and speaker Thomas Vander Wal may be a typical example of the ethos that has emerged from this industry within an industry. “My clients always see my value as providing strong benefit of getting the most value out of social tools,” of his work implementing and designing Enterprise 2.0 tools, “The interconnections and interactions between people spark great value, but the more costly traditional tools have missed out on this great reservoir of of value, but the newer lower cost solutions offer these gems up wonderfully with a little coaxing.”

The concept that more traditional enterprise applications miss out on these network effects, the value added by having many people using a single tool or platform, is not new. The emergence of Saas, software which is not installed on a computer but is instead delivered via the Internet, has recently generated more interest in leveraging these effects as an advantage to businesses.

“The promise of bringing social tools into organizations has never been about complicating worker productivity.  It centers on allowing individuals to act more independently and to make smarter decisions more easily.” said Susan Scrupski, an ‘Enterprise 2.0 Evangelist’ with nGenera, an Austin-based Enterprise 2.0 developer and consulting company, “The end result really is in reducing the costs of creating and delivering products and services.”

Social Software is software which “allows users to interact and share data.” according to Wikipedia. These principals, applied to everything from mundane business processes to change management have been slowly making inroads in recent years.

In many cases, enthusiasm for this technology has outpaced reliable case studies and visible progress, but that progress has become more remarkable in 2008, with several large infusions of capital in to budding Enterprise 2.0 startups such as $15million that Sequoia Capital recently invested in Portland based Jive Software, and $20million from Intel Capital which was invested in Telligent, a Dallas, Texas, company.

So too have new stories emerged, like that of National Public Radio, a network of over 800 stations in the United States. “It’s no secret that employee anxiety within organizations will increase as markets fall, giving organizations embracing Enterprise 2.0 tools opportunities to build trust and transparency across all levels of a company.“, says Tim Eby, a board member of National Public Radio and the manager of NPR station WOSU in Columbus, Ohio. “The effective use of wikis, internal blogging that invite comments, Twitter, and social bookmarking tools like del.icio.us bring a flow of needed ideas and innovation at a time when all organizations are seeking to improve efficiencies, customer relations, and loyalty. There’s no better time than an economic downturn to consider embracing these tools within an organization.”

Enterprise 2.0 may not yet have fulfilled its biggest promise, the democratization of the enterprise, but as successes mount, those who may have ignored its rise will begin to take notice. In a time of uncertainty such as we have seen in the past several months, new and promising technologies may prove to be the safest harbour for those who must continue to deliver growth.

That was the case with me as well. Call me a wannabe “Technomadic.” From Chicago (where I was a panelist for a session at The Open Group Enterprise Architecture conference — details here), on northward to the wilderness of Upper Peninsula Michigan, Mackinac Island (pictured here), Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, and, later in the summer, to the Green Mountain Inn in Vermont, I posted blogs, collaborated with colleagues, published research, and worked on applications, quite seamlessly, without anyone knowing where I was on any given day.

The Green Mountain Inn’s claim to fame is that Lowell Thomas, the famed broadcaster, would conduct his shows from the inn during ski season. In other words, Lowell wanted to get away on ski vacations without leaving work, so he brought his work with him. Now with wireless access and broadband, every average Joe can broadcast from the inn.

Some might say it’s a little obsessive to want to always stay connected; but I am my own boss, and therefore do not receive vacation pay. So I prefer to stay in touch with the world. But by spending a couple of hours a day online at a minimum, work flowed and clients were kept happy (I hope) and I still had a refreshing amount of downtime.

Technomadic is a term coined by Steve Roberts, who many years ago, set off on a cross-country trek on a bicycle outfitted with a satellite uplink, the latest communications technology and microprocessors of the time. Now, anyone can compute and collaborate, anywhere, anytime. The Web has made sense of place irrelevant to modern-day work.

If your organization is all about control and top down – it is unlikely that having a Wordpress site will take you to the new world of networks. To make a 2.0 world work for those you serve means that you have to have such a world working inside your organization.

So what do you do to get this? It is clear to me that we have made this shift at KETC in St Louis.

The context of this story is a project that KETC is working on to find ways of activating the community in St Louis to help reduce the pain of the mortgage crisis.

In so doing we are testing the big idea that Public Media can do more than bring Jane Austen to your TV screen. The CPB is testing this idea in St Louis and if we have enough progress – will expand the test to many other cities and stations.

So an important task that we have to fulfill will be to help the system replicate what we have done.

The easy part of this task will be the “Whats”. The Content we created, what we did on air, on the web, in meetings with the community etc. But I don’t think that only talking of the “what” will be very helpful. I think that it will be the “how” that is the real secret. The “how” will be about the new culture – the new set of work and social norms that are behind becoming a convener.

We surely have to become a Convener inside the station before we can have much a of a chance of being the Trusted Convener outside. That is the really hard work. I know that KETC has pulled this off. But how can I tell you about the how. How do you tell another about a new way of being?

This weekend while watching the Olympics I had an aha about the “How” that I would like to try here with you.

Here is a picture of the Canadian men’s 8 at the Olympics yesterday.

When all the 8 in the boat and the cox are aligned – something magic happens. All the effort is applied to the work. When this happens, you feel it. It is almost a spiritual feeling. It’s a form of magic. The boat just flies. You dissolve into a field that is the boat, the 8 and the cox. You are ONE. All friction and resistance is gone.

With a big race and your reputation on the line – the pressure to get aligned is huge – you can feel if one person is not there with you.

This is what it feels like in our KETC project meetings now. It feels like the boat is flying – it feels so good to be with the other members of the boat.

The pressure is there. As the guinea pig for Public Media we feel the eyes of thousands upon us. Upping the pressure to perform seems to help with transformation. Like heat applied to water creates steam or heat applied to iron with other things creates steel.

So creating pressure about results, time and scale is a first step. You don’t go gradually into this – you have to go full tilt.

We had no time. the project is only 3 months long. So there was no time to be incompetent. In the early days we had to re-arrange the boat a bit to get the team that could do the work and do it with the others. We could not tolerate anyone in the boat who could not pull their weight. We acted immediately when it was clear that the mission was being threatened. This is not the pub media way but it is the real community way. Real communities see everything and expect a lot. Real communities are not soft.

But after this initial shift – we know we have the right team. With the right team we build energy and confidence over time. There is a trust and a confidence in each other that has been developed by publicly and transparently experiencing the abilities of the others.

To get this transparency – we have a process that is built around all involved making public commitments.

It has developed by a simple part of the Project Management process – the day starts with asking each other for help. Every day we meet for 30 minutes to talk about what is going on and all the cards are face up on the table. We have learned to be explicit. Not rude but very clear. A very different norm from the past or most organizations. Accountability is fully visible.

This does not seem like the typical meeting that many of us have. It is very operational – what has to get done today and this week. But it is also very social. As trust has built there is also a lot of laughter and banter. The walls of the silos are coming down. We are finding that people who we did not know or trust much can be very helpful and that they can work miracles. Especially when the chips are down.

We have set major milestones and we have surpassed them all. Everyone has been tested in public. By being open – by being demanding in public – we are closer. Nothing is not unsaid anymore. You don’t have to whinge in the washroom. This is more than transparency – this is “clarity”.

So how does this happen? Well we are set up as I now see like an 8. The engine room is of course the department heads – they do the rowing. But it is the project management structure and discipline that makes the 8 go so well. So let’s look at this because all can replicate this.

First of all we have “Cox”. Not the project sponsor, not the President but the Cox (The Project Manager). In an 8, it is the cox – usually a very small person (Our PM is new and is very young but is an old soul) – who not only steers but who encourages and who works with the crew to respond to threats and opportunities as they happen on the water in the race. He is always pulling us back to the task. He is always asking the awkward question – he is always asking for more clarity. He uses humor and self-deprecation to get his way. But behind him is the power of the coach and the President. He can always use disappointment as power – “Do we really have to go to Jack about this?” usually settles most issues without escalation.

So the PM/Cox not only sets the process tone but also shows us how to use power as a convener. He uses personal power and almost never has to escalate because all the conversations are in the open – bad behavior – is obvious to all – social pressure ensures good behavior.

There is no doubt in my mind that Project Management is a key skill in the operation of a high performing organization. What it does is it keeps focus – it forces accountability – it manages the white space between the silos – for this is where the cooperation is demanded. For a while it all feels forced for this is new. But after 9 weeks it is our new normal.

Of course what is really happening is that the PM is “Convening”. He is holding the kind of open and trusted space that enables groups to work well with each other. The central process at KETC has become Convening.

We are also seeing that the project never ends. There is always complex work that is measured by outcomes to do. That raises another issue. Outcomes and measurement: in the old norm, we were soft on both. Now everything that we do has to have an objective and hence has to have a measure. This again was awkward at first but now is a new normal.

Which brings us to the “Coach”. The Coach in an 8 is not the cox. The coach’s work is all about ensuring that the goals are set and the capability is ready. We have such a role being played at KETC – the project Sponsor.

There is a lot of discipline in the role. The coach is not one of the guys. The coach pushes all the time. the coach has expectations.The coach sees the needs of the whole race/project. She sees how this race/project connects to others. She sees the development needs and she has an eagle eye on personnel. If someone is not working out, she has to deal with this.

Part of her power comes from her appointment. She has been selected by the “Club President”. She can escalate and does over personnel and budget issues. But she settles organizational issues from her position. But not all her power is delegated from the President. She has her own power based on her own achievements. For the coach is also rooted in their own talent. She has deep skills in a key area – Community Engagement. She has a track record of her own in getting tough jobs done well.

Finally we have the club president. He is responsible for the financial envelope – which provides the boat etc. This is a separate role to that of the Coach or the Cox. But in most organizations this person does all of this.

This is what I mean by Top Down organizations being political. They tend to be like medieval courts, where factions compete for influence and power. All the work happens in the corridors or in secret. Little is really visible. All in the end is decided by the King.

What is happening at KETC is that all the key work is now taking place in a process that is fully transparent. The President can look at the boat in the water and see all the workings. Accountability is clear.

• Each rower has his or her part and they have to be visibly working with the rest of the 8.
• The cox’s ability to get the boat running optimally in each race is clear to all – especially in the boat itself.
• The results of the boat belong to the coach – her role is clear.
• The resources for the club are the President’s role – and he is delivering and he also sets the tone.

The President in our case, asked the team for it all. He wants Gold in an Olympic setting and he asks for nothing less. In asking for all, he is getting it.

So that’s my metaphor. If you run your organization like a rowing team, if you set up the key roles as you find in a rowing team, you can make the shift inside from 1.0 to 2.0.

The irony is that the 2.0 world is more disciplined than the 1.0 world. But as you can see much of the discipline happens because of visibility and clarity. It’s like being in a small town. What you say and what you do can never be a secret. So your word and your actions define you. In a small town you also have to help each other.

In the 1.0 world of the huge city – there is little social pressure. All is anonimity. So there have to be rules and policemen and gaming the system.

Installing the kind of Project Management Process that we are using at KETC gives you a good shot at making this shift.

The report packs a lot of food for thought into a small space. Much of the data will be head-nodding material for readers of this blog, but in several areas there are items that jump out. First, though, a quick overview.

This survey focuses on what Web 2.0 technologies are being adopted, on which areas of business they are deployed, on techniques to support adoption, and on the executives’ level of satisfaction with the results. Helpfully, the report provides consistent comparisons to McKinsey’s last report on this topic, the April, 2007 How Businesses are Using Web 2.0. The report is also helpful once again in identifying differences in E20 patterns among regions (e.g. executives in India and Asia-Pac are more than twice as likely as Europeans to cite blogs as a tool of real importance to their companies).

The McKinsey authors focus their commentary on several core messages.

1) There are more executives now reporting dissatisfaction with their E20 investments and programs (although Asia-Pac bucks the trend).

2) There is an emerging gap between some 20% of firms who are satisfied with their experiences, using the tools widely, and achieving positive results, and another 20% of firms going in the other direction – dissatisfied and reducing their use of the tools.

3) While internal uses of E20 like managing knowledge and promoting collaboration are marginally more common, externally-facing uses like improving customer service, acquiring customers, and integrating more effectively with suppliers and partners are almost equally popular.

4) Among the tools themselves, there is an increasing array of choices and some changes already in the popularity of individual tools. Wikis, for example, are much more popular than they were a year ago, while peer-to-peer networks have dropped by 50% or more.

[Click to Enlarge]

Turning to the items that jump out I’ll focus on the tools area. One major datapoint is the ascendancy of social networking to the top of the E20 tool list, roughly at the same level of importance as blogs in most regions. (While McKinsey includes “Web Services” as an E20 tool, and it is by far the most important to the surveyed executives, I’m ignoring it here as an apple among oranges.) I suspect that this sudden jump in importance for enterprise social networking is more anticipation than reality, more Facebook fallout than widespread internal deployment. But it’s a first great example of how the public web experience is driving expectations for the enterprise.

The next datapoint of note is the sudden appearance of video sharing as a Web 2.0 tool already surpassing podcasts and closing in on wikis in level of importance. This is clearly a second great example of how public web experiences, in this case YouTube, drive practice in the enterprise.

Another surprise is the low level of importance the executives assigned to rating as a tool. In this case, a technique widely used on many different kinds of public web sites (from Amazon to TripAdvisor to eBay) appears to be falling below the radar for the enterprise.

In one of the bigger “ouches” for fans of socially-generated knowledge, tagging appears to be another casualty in the McKinsey research. Tagging rates even lower than rating in the tool catalog. It would appear from this data that anything that asks the user to thoughtfully execute one more click, or type one more word in an adjacent box is not acceptable in the view of this executive audience. Or perhaps a larger issue is that both rating and tagging require some degree of strategy and an ongoing “harvesting” program in order to capitalize on their enterprise value. The executives’ lack of enthusiasm may be a reflection of their understanding that they are not invested in providing that kind of strategy and oversight at this time.

[Click to Enlarge]

We’ve known all along that relatively small numbers of people are interested in tagging, but one of the best things about this tool is that even a small percentage of a knowledge workforce can produce major added value to a content collections of all kinds. You’d think that the easy knowledge ROI offered by tagging should get any exec’s attention.

Overall, the McKinsey survey provides another proof point that use of the E20 technologies is increasing. That it also shows lumpy adoption experience and shifts in tool use is something we should expect from an emerging set of practices. The fact that the data establish that the successful firms are increasingly successful and have been building up a set of best practices for adoption represents a real transformation over the past 12 months.

I’d like any of you who may be interested to help me, and perhaps help advance the general state of awareness and understanding of the type and scope of impacts the developments of the last several years have brought to the knowledge workplace.

A couple of months ago on this blog there was an interesting discussion unfold around an exploration of KM’s past and Enterprise 2.0’s present and (possible) future titled Retrospective on KM and the Impact of Web 2.0. 

In one camp some commenters gathered around the possibility that the post neatly "outlined the nexus of Enterprise 2.0, Web 2.0, and KM 2.0."  In the other camp the position was taken that:

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1. KM is not adaptive, Web 2.0 is.
2. KM supports collaboration. Collaboration is not social networking; 2.0 supports the latter.
3. KM wants to manage things; 2.0 wants to free things in loosely connected ways

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It seems clear that web services and personal "knowledge management" tools are migrating from the consumer Web into the workplace.  That phenomenon, combined with RSS feeds, wikis, search capabilities that are pushing towards the confluence of intent, imagination and serendipity and the growing scope of interactivity all of us are learning from the constant presence of the Web, may be forcing the issue of fundamentally rethinking the established and still-accepted ways of structuring, organizing and managing knowledge work.  Then again, maybe not ?

I know my position … I have argued for quite a while that the fundamental principles of work design need to change from those underpinning the industrial age to principles that stem from network structures and dynamics and yet still respect relevant core assumptions about domains and bodies of knowledge.  But there are very many other perspectives, concepts and examples that can either rebut or amplify that position.

I’d really like to take a stab at advancing the general debate about the issues cited above, as I believe there is a real opportunity to 1) stimulate the widespread and rapid shedding of obsolete elements of Industrial Age work design, 2) create much wider understanding about the congruence between some of the fundamental concepts of traditional KM and some of the fundamental dynamics of enterprise social computing, and 3) help popularize and make simple and easy to understand why there are real opportunities now for enterprises to (insert cliché here) tap into the potential and collective wisdom of employees and customers whilst also offering (and benefiting from) enriched jobs and more flexible and responsive cultures.

So … what I’d like to do now to  is gather your input in the form of questions, assertions, opinions and links to references such as articles and essays that speak to the differences, similarities, complements and conflicts between the concepts of KM and the use of social computing in the workplace that has been labeled Enterprise 2.0.  With that input there’s a chance I may be able to synthesize the content (mine and yours) to present at KMWorld 2008 that helps to clarify what’s new and useful and what’s not.

That’s what the comments section below is for.  Let’s see if we can create a knowledgeable, practical and useful conversation.

I’d also like to bring your attention to a new book by British author Niall Cook (with foreword by Don Tapscott of Wikinomics fame) titled "Enterprise 2.0 – How Social Software Will Change The Future of Work". 

Evidently I or we are not the only ones who think there are large opportunities for both intelligent, common-sensical and incremental improvements to knowledge work and for radical innovation and fundamental change.

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Open Text strikes Web 2.0 deal with Ottawa
MATT HARTLEY

The Canadian government is getting a Web 2.0 upgrade.

Waterloo, Ont.-based business software maker Open Text Corp. [OTC-T] announced Tuesday it has landed a seven-year maintenance contract with the federal government to supply the tools that will “provide the foundation for the government’s 2.0 strategy.”

Open Text said the agreement will see its software used in all federal departments, agencies and crown corporations helping to create internal wikis, forums and blogs to help the government be more responsive to Canadians.

Open Text, which became Canada’s largest software company when International Business Machines Corp. purchased Ottawa-based Cognos Inc. last year, produces “enterprise content management software” that helps businesses to store, organize and analyze records and documents.

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Perhaps I’m mistaken, I can’t help but think that this will be the knowledge-worker equivalent of acquiring and implementing a large ERP system which will require enormous amounts of training so that everyone uses the tools in the same way, so that they push and pull content to and from each other in the same ways. Will it become a new form of email for use internally ?

From what I have been able to understand about using social software to carry out social computing inside the firewall, this approach (or my interpretation of it) flies in the face of much of what we have learned about social computing.  I strongly suspect that different government departments of varying size and scope will carry out different kinds of knowledge work, and have different requirements for when and how to use collaboration to develop policy and deliver services.  However, I am sure that there will have been consultant studies and recommendations backing this decision.

I think it might be better to consider a 2.0 strategy that takes into consideration those different requirements and look at a range of possible solutions, with the intention of acquiring and implementing that which will work best.  After all, many of the 2.0 collaboration platforms can co-exist nicely with existing information technology architecture and what differentiates with respect to effectiveness is the take-up and use of the 2.0 capabilities by the end-user.

My sketchy opinion notwithstanding, it may be the case that such issues have been considered will be addressed with the Open Text solution.  Open Text has been a leader in the collaboration space for some time now, and my thinly-informed interpretation of a short newspaper article does not have the benefit of the details of the Canadian government’s 2.0 strategy.

But my knowledge of the structure and dynamics of the work of government departments (I have consulted to a number of them in the past) suggests to me that there will be many procedural binders and lots of day-long training sessions trying to help workers become familiar with the new tools and which categories to use for which piece of content, etc.

I believe that control is still a very important consideration, if not the primary factor, in the design of work in government departments.

It will be interesting to check in 3 or 4 years down the road and see how things are going.  Nothing would be more pleasing than to discover that my country’s government is reaping the benefits of using social computing inside its firewalls.

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