Portals and KM

Lost & Found: A Smart-Practice Guide to Managing Organizational Memory

I learned from Dale Arseneault through an email group I belong to that the Canada School of the Public Service has crafted a good overview of knowledge management (in the context of organizational demographic changes) and has 
some useful s of common approaches/techniques. The research based report is called Lost & Found: A Smart-Practice Guide to Managing Organizational Memory. The focus is on public but the report provides a good introduction for fairly broad consumption.
 Knowledge management is getting close to tits twentieth anniversary, depending on when you count the start. 
That is a good run for something that people though was a fad.

I still do not like the name. Notice they do not use it in the report title. However, the concept is still current and getting a great boost from the new enterprise 2.0 tools

My Fast Forward Blogs Posts for April 2008

I am doing less cross posting of stuff from the Fast Forward blog since I am also now involved in the AppGap and doing fewer interviews on Fast. I will continue to provide a monthly listing as it helps me with an archive and hopefully is also useful to you. There is a separate category for these summaries. Here is a link to my summary of the posts prior to the Fast Forward Conference (November to February 9) and here are the posts for the rest of February for March April May and June July. August, September and October, November, December 07, January 08, February, and March.

Below are the posts for April in chronological order. The blog continues and there will be more in May.

Obama’s Answer Center - CRM from RightNow on the Campaign Trail

Ever Increasing Expansion of SaaS into Multiple Applications

Enterprise 2.0 Application Providers are Blogging

Twitter Clouds - Sign of a New Age?

SaaS enters e-learning Through SkillSoft

Social Networking is Climbing the Revenue Projection Ladder

Enterprise 2.0 is not Web 2.0 nor is it an Oxymoron

A Smart Big Idea for a Small Problem

How many times have you enjoyed a good or great wine and wanted to remember it. I kept a list on my computer for a while, after writing names on napkins. Here is a wonderful creative solution. You know all those signs with stuff for sale with tear off contact details. Well someone adapted this to wine labels. As Noisy Decent Graphics said,

“If you're out and about… and you think think, ooh that was a nice bottle of wine I'll have to remember what that was called. Except you won't remember, because you're a bit tipsy and you've got better things to be remembering.”

The wine company Oxford Landing has applied this concept to their wine bottles. I wonder if they patented it. If so they might make more money of the labels than the wine. The Noisy Decent Graphics blog has a nice picture of a label. Maybe someone can apply the concept to peanut butter jars.

Meat and Chocolate Tour of Western Massachusetts

My friend Don Lesser recently took me on a tour of great places for meat and chocolate near his home in Western Massachusetts. Don is a food critic for the Hampshire Gazette and I have often written about his writing. Here is where we went. All are highly recommended. Here is Don’s take on Hatfield Beef and some other places is his post, Grilling Steaks. See the pictures below.

Hatfield Beef, 42 North Hatfield Road, Hatfield (247-5441). W=As Don wrote, “when you walk into Hatfield Beef, you know you are in good hands. The building is old and well-used, but clean and clean smelling. The long cases are heavy with condensation and filled with thick slabs of beef, some sausages and chicken. The walls are covered in old posters illustrating the cuts of beef and pork. The prices are fantastic.” We got a lot of meat at way below supermarket prices and it is very good. Not a place for vegetarians.

Pekarski Sausage is given five stars by Yahoo local. I got some wonderful ham that was semi-cooked. Later that week I made ham steak with garlic fried potatoes. I can still taste them. It is located at 293 Conway Road, South Deerfield, MA (413) 665-4537

Richardson's Candy Kitchen is a chocolate lover’s paradise. We took a lot home. They maintain a visually exciting web site. It is located on Route 5 and 10, South Deerfield, 413 772-0443.

My App Gap Posts for April 2008

I have started writing in another Corante blog, the App Gap, sponsored by QuickBase, The posts began toward the end of January 2008. In this case, I will primarily be doing product commentaries with a few other things thrown in. Here are the blog posts for January/February, and March 2008. Below are the ones for April. There will be more in May.

SynerG - Taking Mashups Deep into the Enterprise

Customer-centric CRM from RightNow

On-Demand Web Server Load Balancing for the Rest of Us: TZO

On-Demand Behind the Scenes Computer Backups Through Carbonite

Nexaweb: Bringing Web 2.0 to Enterprise System Migration and Transformation

Twing Brings Search to On-line Communities

Many Enterprise 2.0 Application Companies are Blogging

BroadSoft Takes VoIP into Enterprise 2.0

Nuospace: An Easy-to-Use Wiki for the Small to Midsize Business Market

QuickBase’s New Developer Program: Going the Next Step to Support Its Developers and Their Mutual Clients

Central Desktop Acts on Enterprise 2.0 Security

Connectbeam Offers New Social Networking Application Integration Possibilities

More on the Role of Blogs in Business Communication

Here is another follow-on inspired by Andrew McAfee. This time I am adding more to my post, Can You Trust Your Blogger? What is the Role of Blogs in Business Communication? I briefly mentioned Andrew's post, Evidence of the Value of a Blog, at the end of the first post. It deserves more attention.

He provides major credit to his blog for his reputation in the IT field that led to his selection as number 38 on the top 100 Most Influential People in IT by Ziff Davis. He stated that an article is a one time event. Then added, “I’ve found my blog to be a fantastic tool for continuing the conversation. This blog has allowed me to air ideas on E2.0 and other topics as frequently as I want, and at the length I feel is appropriate. In other words, the person determining the editorial calendar for these ideas is me, not an editor.” Exactly.

Andrew then goes on to relate a conversation with Paul Levy, the CEO of Boston’s Beth Israel hospital and his Facebook friend. Paul and Andrew are also my Facebook friends, although I have not yet met them in person, and I trust them anyway (a reference to my last post on trusting bloggers). Andrew words again tell the story quite well.

“He (Paul) brought up the same point - that he can blog on issues he cares about as much as he wants. If the topic is of broad interest and his posts are good, they’ll continue to be read and can help shape thinking on the issue. It occurred to me that without a blog, his ability to do this is greatly reduced. Because of his position he might get to write a single opinion piece in the Boston Globe, and I guess his staff could continue to send out PR releases, but that’s about it. His blog greatly amplifies his voice.” Exactly.

I learned about Paul’s blog through my friend Jessica Lipnack who has the blog, Netage Endless Knots. Jessica has organized a panel on what blogging brings to business for the Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Boston. Our session will be June 10 at 2:15. Hope to see you there and we can continue this conversation in person.

Here is a nice postscript from the blogger, Kevin O'Keefe, who writes the blog, Real Lawyers Have Blogs. Kevin says, in response to the posts around this issue, "Thousands of people read my blog. They must trust something I say. I'm not that entertaining. People put their butts on the line at least once a month asking me to speak in front of large groups. Just received invites to speak at the Texas Bar Annual Conference and to keynote at a Wisconsin Bar Association Conference. I don't know any of the people who invite me. They're reading my blog. If they didn't trust what I was writing, would I get an invite?" Kudos to Kevin. There have been a lot of legal blogs for the start. It is a category that makes a lot of sense. I ma glad to see Kevin getting good take up.

Enterprise 2.0 Success Story from Andrew McAfee

Here is a follow on to my post, Enterprise 2.0 is not Web 2.0 nor is it an Oxymoron. Andrew McAfee who started this term, recently held an online poll to ask his “MBA students their opinions on the potential benefits of Enterprise 2.0 as well as the actual benefits most companies will be able to achieve.” See - Homework the Teacher Learns From.

One response started off this way, “"I have been an eye witness of the power of enterprise 2.0 (although I didn’t know that is what it was called at the time) technology in promoting collaboration and connectedness across disparate individuals and groups within organizations.
“
This brought back memories as I was an eye witness in the early 90s of the power of knowledge management (although I didn’t know that is what it was called at the time) “in promoting collaboration and connectedness across disparate individuals and groups within organizations.” I was very excited and it caused me to switch my focus from learning to what came to be called knowledge management but, in the end the tools and times where not really ready for it to be adopted on a massive basis, yet it still survives.

In the example that Andrew provided, a low-level marketing manager located in a satellite office used a comment on the CEO’s blog to call into question some of the company’s key practices and metrics. The manager produced a lot of data to support his position. It created a lot of buzz in the company. The CEO took the manager’s views seriously and formed a task force to study the issue. Andrew’s student talked about how that without the blog, this issue would not have reached the attention of those who needed to understand it.

Back in the early 90s at the company I referred to above, the CEO was introducing a concept of shared learning to his division heads. One of the division leaders questioned why one division would want to share its insights with another division dealing with different issues. The CEO looked at that division leader and said it is this type of thinking that has gotten them in such trouble. (They were losing a lot of money because of institutional silos.) The company adopted the shared learning concept through some of the more primitive tools of the day. It was one of several reasons that they turned around and became profitable. It was this promise that first got me excited about blogs, web 2.0 , and now enterprise 2.0. Thanks to Andrew’s student for another example.

Portals and KM: Fourth Anniversary

Last week I started my fifth year with this blog. Perhaps it was appropriate that on the fifth anniversary of this blog I did a post on Can You Trust Your Blogger? What is the Role of Blogs in Business Communication? On May 2, 2004 I did my first posts. There were three, Is KM the Killer App for Portals?, Some good articles on blogs and blogs on blogs, and Is RSS TNBT? Two people encouraged me to start a blog, Cesar Brea and Jack Vinson and they remain active boggers. I also attended Dave Winer's sessions at the Berkman Center. Dave has gone but the sessions continue. Writing an article on blogs for Portals Magazine is what got we started with this blog. Writing about web 2.0 inside and outside the firewall remains the core of what I cover during the week. Now I am also part of two group blogs, Fast Forward and the AppGap, both on enterprise 2.0. I also spend almost all my consulting time helping businesses with their blogs.

Some of my favorite posts on this blog are under Previous Posts in the right column. A few of the ones that were most fun to do include: Slow Cooked Ribs and Cajun Music that got me started on the food and music on weekends and Sunday with Ray Charles that got me started on music and non-work topics in the first place. I still get responses to some of these old posts such as the two part series on the Newport Jazz Festival in 1968 and 1969, see Early Newport Jazz Festivals Relived for some of these responses to are The Original Newport Jazz Festival: 1968 and Before and The Original Newport Jazz Festival: 1969 – 1971.

I look forward to the sixth anniversary, as well as the ability to look back over what I was thinking about the past few years.

Value of KM - Matt Moore

Here is a really good presentation by Matt Moore of Engineers Without Fears on demonstrating the ROI / Value of Knowledge Management to beancounters - based various experiences. As he said, “Of course, I can't put the really juicy stuff in the presentation - you'd have to get me in to deliver it for that...” However, it shows a lot of common sense. I use to do KM value statements for years and it was never about volume measures as Matt states. It is about business value, which he also states.

Matt has a nice blog and does a lot of podcast interviews.

Mendelssohn’s Elijah is Coming - The Back Bay Chorale

Not exactly “Eli’s Coming” by Three Dog Night, its even better. Its Mendelssohn’s Elijah sung by The Back Bay Chorale. As they said, “The Old Testament is hardly short of drama, but the story of Elijah still stands out – there’s idol-worship, windstorms, a “my God is better than your god” competition, rain after endless drought, and the assumption of Elijah himself into heaven on a fiery chariot. Now imagine that all set to music by one of the great composers of the Romantic Era – Felix Mendelssohn.” It will blow away those three dogs anytime.

The Back Bay Chorale will present one of the great 19th century choral masterworks in a superb concert hall with world-class soloists and instrumentalists on Friday May 30th, the Friday after Memorial Day at 8PM (pre-concert talk at 7 p.m.).

It will be at Sanders Theatre on the campus of Harvard University in Cambridge. You can go to the Back Bay Chorale site for details.

Omaha, Nebraska Restaurants: A Local’s Favorites

It has been a while since I did a post on restaurants. Here is a list of where to eat in Omaha Nebraska from Steve Carter by way of Stan Garfield. It looks like my kind of places. I have only been to Omaha once to do some work for a client on their call centers. I will have to figure how to get back there.

Farmhouse Café - A great breakfast with cinnamon rolls the size of small children. Excellent omelets. It is located at 3461 S. 84th St. (402) 393-0640

Bohemian Café - A place for a hearty meal, lunch or dinner. Dumplings, kraut, goulash, great rye bread. “Serving mouth watering authentic European dishes since 1924, the Bohemian Café is a cornerstone in the South Omaha community.” 1406 13th St, (402) 393-0640

Howards Charro Café - Excellent enchiladas and tamales. My Travel Guide said, “Located near a number of Omaha attractions, including Henry Doorly Zoo and Rosenblatt Stadium, this restaurant offers authentic Mexican food at affordable prices (entrees range from $7-$9). With an atmosphere both casual and festively ethnic, this restaurant promises to be an excellent choice for a variety of dining occasions. Homemade taco shells and tortilla chips turn the everyday a la carte into a specialty item. On Friday and Saturday, guests enjoy the live music of Howard's own mariachi band.” It is located at 4443 13th St. South Omaha (402) 731-3776

Joe Tess “began as a neighborhood tavern in the 1930s. The main attraction became the Famous Fish Sandwich itself. Cut carp portions were fried in a skillet, placed in a cookie jar and sold for 15 cents. Ever since, the humble carp has been the driving force behind Joe Tess Place.” 5424 S. 24th St. (402) 733-4658

Can You Trust Your Blogger? What is the Role of Blogs in Business Communication?

Joshua Porter recently wrote an interesting post, "Why people don’t trust “bloggers” in response to Jeremiah Owyang who claims that people don’t trust bloggers. As Joshua wrote that Jeremiah based his observations on three studies by respected marketing research companies: Forrester, Edelman, and Pollara. These studies found that bloggers do not elicit much trust when compared to other sources of information. Then he makes an excellent observation, “I can’t help but think that these studies weighted the questions…oh just a little bit. I mean, who would trust someone based solely on the fact that they happen to write a blog? Does merely creating a blogger account and whipping out a few blog posts make one a trusted authority on…anything? Of course not.”

I totally agree with Joshua. If the question had been, as he says, “Do you trust bloggers who you read regularly/subscribe to?” most people would answer that they do.” Why would they read them? As Joshua said, I am sure that Jeremiah hopes people trust him. There are many bloggers out there. Just because you know how to start a blog, which is not rocket science, does not mean that you know anything else. As two of the commenters on Jeremiah’s blog posts said:

“Contrary to what you may imply, you are trusted by many of your readers. You’ve earned this trust by being transparent, by being consistent, by slowly building a reputation, and by the multiple channels in which someone can learn about you.”

“I think that you are confusing two categories. Of course people don’t trust a generic category called ‘bloggers’ But they do trust people they ‘know’, and in these days of social networking ‘knowing’ someone may mean you have never met them in real life. But if a relationship of trust & authenticity has been developed between you & them, then they could trust a blogger

Blogs are conversations and they do put more responsibility on the reader to judge the material than say, the New York Times, with its army of fact checkers. But even the NYT gets it wrong some times and everyone has some type of bias. Blogs are also a medium. You could ask, do you trust people on the telephone more than in person? Do you trust a magazine article more than television? In each case, the answer would be it depends on the person. A blogger has to build the trust of his or her audience by being consistent and transparent as the first commenter wrote above.

The Edelman study compared bloggers to academics, industry analysts, CEOs, regular employees of a company, etc. to “bloggers.” Guess what, many of these people in the other categories write blogs. So does the New York Times. The study compared one channel to people who write in multiple channels, including blogs. The Forrester study compared review by a known expert to a review by a blogger. What if the known expert expressed his views through a blog? Blogs offer an expanded platform for business communication. Whether you believe the blogger is more a factor of the blogger than the communication channel.

Many bloggers I read are also friends that I have meet in person. Friends had the highest trust ratings in the Forrester study so where do blogger friends fall in the ratings? I also read other bloggers , like Joshua that I have not met. However, I already respect his thought process. That does not mean that I will trust or agree with everything he writes. But I do think he got this one correct. I have also never met Jeremiah but I know his blog and respect his expertise. I also agree with much of what he writes. I just think he got it wrong this time. But that can happen with close friends. It does not mean I will stop trusting Jeremiah. In the end it is up to the blogger to earn your trust and you to grant it, regardless of the communication channel they are using.

As a post script, I ran across this blog post from Andrew McAfee, Evidence of the Value of a Blog, where he said he was "pretty sure that this blog is the main reason I made the list." The list being the Ziff Davis Enterprise list of the ’100 Most Influential People in IT" where they put him as #38. Andrew is another blogger who earned trust through many sources, but he credits the blog as a major one. I looked at the list and noticed a few other bloggers on it.

What if the question was do you trust what a person says more in his or her own blog or in a magazine interview or a PR release? They are different channels and hopefully the answer is the same in each. But that would make an interesting study.

Integrating Social Networking and Social Bookmarking with Enterprise Applications: Connectbeam

Here is a cross post from the AppGap because I think it speaks to an increasing trend that I mentioned yesterday, the integration of social networking and other social context enterprise tools with enterprise applications. I wrote about this briefly on the Fast Forward blog, Social Networking is Climbing the Revenue Projection Ladder. Here is a good example.

Last week, I had a chance to catch up with Puneet Gupta, CEO of Connectbeam. I wrote about them a while back on the Fast Forward blog, Connectbeam: Combining Social Bookmarking and Social Networking. As the post title suggests they believe that business networking begins around the sharing of ideas and information so they tightly integrated social bookmarking into their social networking platform.

Now they have taken things a step further with their Release 2.2. It introduces the Connectbeam web services Application Programming Interface (API) that enables you to add full functionality of Connectbeam social software into your existing IT applications. The Connectbeam web services API consists of a series of programming interfaces that have been modularized into functional areas such as Social Search, Bookmarking and Tagging, Social Network, and Communities - allowing you to pick and chose the functionality you chose to integrate with your existing apps and IT infrastructure. You can find out more about what they are doing at The Connectbeam Social Computing Blog.

Puneet showed me an example of how this works. We saw a demonstration of Connectbeam integration with Sharepoint. We first saw how Connectbeam integrates with Sharepoint search. A search term, java, was entered into the Sharepoint search field. The standard Sharepoint response came back in the left column. On the right side was additional contextual information delivered through Connectbeam. You can see a list of related tags, related users, and related bookmarks. Clicking on any of these links brought you to additional information relevant information about the social context of the search. For example, the clicking on one of the related user provides a list of the documents this person has tagged with the search term.

In the second example of Sharepoint integration, we went to the profile page of the Sharepoint user. There was an about me tab that was part of Sharepoint. Next to it was a social context tab that brought information from Connectbeam. For the individual you saw their tags, their bookmarks, and their communities. Each item in each list was a live link to more information. In both cases the integration between Connectbeam and Sharepoint was complete and not apparent to the user who saw the additional social information as just part of the same interface. You can find this demo through their Connectbeam web site.

In addition to the open APIs, Connectbeam’s Release 2.2 also includes other new features. There is automatic user provisioning for LDAP to eliminate user registration process and dynamic email address lookup for ease of community invitations. Enhanced licensing infrastructure allows you to better monitor application usage and adoption. Multi-language support is also offered for global implementations.

There is a growing trend of enterprise 2.0 applications opening up their APIs for integration with enterprise applications. This is a welcome addition as it brings in the social context in robust manner through Connectbeam’s strong combination of social networking and social bookmarking.

Enterprise 2.0 is not Web 2.0 nor is it an Oxymoron - Cross Post from Fast Forward

I posted this on the Fast Forward blog yesterday but I think the questions are important and wanted to take them to this venue. I started with the comment that I noticed that the subtitle of the Fast Forward blog is a “hosted discussion on enterprise 2.0” so I could not resist the challenge that Fred Wilson (aka A VC in NYC) recently tossed in his post, Is "Social Enterprise Software" An Oxymoron? While Fred did not use the term enterprise 2.0 in his post, he referenced two other blog posts challenging enterprise 2.0 at the end with the implication they supported his concerns. The technology part of enterprise 2.0 is often referred to as social software or some variation on this theme so we stand accused. I also use that term in the tagline of this blog. Let me take this on in two parts.

First, enterprise 2.0 is certainly not web 2.0. It is easy to offer up a few consumer web 2.0 applications in an argument that social software does not belong in the enterprise. Fred offers the wikipedia definition of social software that only lists consumer web examples. Someone needs to update the definition. Forrester was careful to exclude this class of software in its Global Enterprise Web 2.0 Market Forecast: 2007 To 2013. They did not include consumer services like Blogger, Facebook, Netvibes, and Twitter when they predicted the enterprise web 2.0 market would grow to $4.6 billion globally by 2013. At the same time they said that that enterprise web 2.0 will get absorbed into the fabric of the enterprise (see Social Networking is Climbing the Revenue Projection Ladder on this blog). More on this last issue in the second half of this post when I cover the oxymoron part.

Consumer web tools are often designed to increase traffic and generate ad revenue, not exactly enterprise goals. I generally do not feel that they should form the basis of enterprise social computing with some possible rare exceptions. But should we go to the other extreme and have consumer web tools banned from the enterprise? That was the subject of a recent debate between two Garner analysts, Nikos Drakos and Ray Valdes. I think this is going too far. There is a role for social activities at work whether they be actual or virtual. Puneet Gupta put this in a clear perspective in his post, The Role of Facebook in the Enterprise: A Post Script, that was a follow up to his post on the Drakos Valdes debate.

Puneet said, “I do not think the debate was asking the right question. Facebook is a consumer oriented networking tool that is increasingly being adopted by business people as a social networking tool for business purposes. In this way it is like a “virtual social event or other recreational activity” that can be effectively used for business networking. I would not ban my sales force from attending social events in the real world with customers during business hours if this activity has the potential to lead to sales or helps with customer relations. But if my salesperson goes to social events in the real world every day or surfs Facebook all day and does not make any sales, I might “ban” that person. In the end you need to use good judgment.”

He added that he does not ban Facebook in his company (Connectbeam) and concluded with “I think the more important question is what social networking tools are right for your business. In this case I would pick a tool that is designed for business use, and not one designed for recreational use and built to generate high traffic.” This is a good transition to part two.

Enterprise 2.0 is not an oxymoron. Not that I especially like the term but it seems to be sticking as did web 2.0 that no one liked at first, either. What is more important than the term is the existence of an emerging class of business software that does not simply take consumer web tools behind the firewall. These tools are developed for businesses to solve business problems. Businesses are run and operated by people, for the most part for now, and these tools look at the social context of information. There are many communities within an enterprise: project teams, divisions, etc. Then there are the communities that enterprises want to have with their suppliers and customers. In 2006 McKinsey issues the report, The Next Revolution in Interactions, in which they said, “In today's developed economies, the significant nuances in employment concern interactions: the searching, monitoring, and coordinating required to manage the exchange of goods and services.” They say that traditionally the focus of business and IT investments has been on production rather than interactions. They added that in today’s post-knowledge economy it is interactions that count for the most.

Many of these enterprise 2.0 tools support, monitor, and make accessible these important business interactions, the social side of the enterprise. Many of them have been written about on this blog and on the AppGap blog, as well as many other places. My colleagues and I have interviewed many of them. Forrester likely interviewed even more for their market prediction and they seem to take this market seriously. But instead of only looking at numbers, here is just one example, Changing Organization Behavior at XM Radio through Enterprise 2.0 and QuickBase.

XM Radio brought in an enterprise 2.0 tool, QuickBase, to help bring more rigor, order, collaboration, and transparency to the processes. XM first used it for project management around the launch of XM Radio’s newest product called the XpressRC. QuickBase facilitated global communication amongst the many partners involved in the successful launch of the XpressRC throughout the end-to-end supply chain. QuickBase provided a robust program management database that made the key issues transparent so they could be addressed and resolved in a timely manner. The transparency promoted accountability and a clear and concise escalation process. The right data was in place for all to see and progress could be posted in QuickBase via a very effective metrics dashboard. It was the first time they produced a product on time and on budget.

A variety of uses emerged. QuickBase was utilized by XM to manage outsourced partner management throughout the Supply Chain. It was used for collaboration with manufacturing partners. Operational and logistics issues could be listed in QuickBase and resolved within the tool. Emails on issue resolution were eliminated as all progress was entered real time by the respective parties. QuickBase was applied to assist XM with end to end visibility of product throughout the supply chain and is used as the primary inventory reporting tool. The graphics for all product artwork and packaging resides in a repository within QuickBase and can be quickly accessed and used by XM and all of their supply chain partners. XM radio also uses QuickBase to many cost reduction and efficiency improvement projects to provide a common platform and toolset so the all projects are managed consistently and transparently.

There are many other enterprise 2.0 tools that have produced similar stories. Here is a partial list of Enterprise 2.0 Success Stories from 2007. I am hearing many more in 2008 but have not consolidated a list yet. Fred mentioned the security issue and this is real and one that the business oriented enterprise 2.0 venders have recognized and are tackling (e.g., Central Desktop Acts on Enterprise 2.0 Security). In fairness to Fred, he said he would keep an open mind and watch with interest what Jeff Dachis builds in this space. I will also, but I think we do not have to wait for Jeff to look at the social side of business transactions and benefit in ways that XM Radio did.

Have said all this, the last thing I would recommend is to go out pushing the enterprise 2.0 banner as a sales approach. As Jevon MacDonald rightly said, “Enterprise 2.0 budgets do not exist, except where some early adopters create them.” You sell solutions to business problems but, since people still run and operate business, there are a lot of business problems where making the social side of transactions more transparent and better supported will provide real business benefits.

I have said enough for one post and will close with one of the emerging trends, the integration of social software and traditional enterprise software. More on that later. Thanks Fred for getting me charged up a grey, rainy day.

Market IQ on Enterprise 2.0 from AIIM

I have been meaning to get to the very comprehensive report from AIIM, Enterprise 2.0, Agile, Emergent, and Integrated. Written by Carl Frappaolo and Dan Keldsen, it is an impressive piece of work and a must read for those in the field. I like the three tag words. I have been writing here and elsewhere a bit of the integrated part, Social Networking is Climbing the Revenue Projection Ladder (on a Forrester report) and Taking Mashups Deeper into the Enterprise. Agility through approaches such as mashups marks the agility. Emergent is current but according to the Forrester report, Global Enterprise Web 2.0 Market Forecast: 2007 To 2013, it will have gone through the emergent part all the way to becoming an accepted part of the fabric of the enterprise.

The AIIM Report first defines enterprise 2.0, commenting that their survey found a lot of confusion over the term. They offered 12 definitions and found that “the application of Web 2.0 technologies in the enterprise was number one but with only 20% of the respondents selecting it. AIIM offers their definition based on elements of the top four selections. “A system of web-based technologies that provide rapid and agile collaboration, information sharing, emergence, and integration capabilities in the extended enterprise.” This covers a lot of useful ground. I would just add, as Andrew McAfee wrote, it is leading to new ways of doing business. This addition is not inconsistent with the AIIM report as it covers the cultural impacts of enterprise 2.0.

The next section looks at the evolution of Enterprise 2.0 across Web 1.0, Web 1.5 (e.g. intranets, social networking, web services, etc.), and Web 2.0 with good definitions of each. Patti Anklam did a nice summary of the report on the AppGap blog, AIIM’s Enterprise 2.0 Survey. She was part of an impressive advisory board for the research. Patti wrote about enterprise 2.0 adoption issues that were covered.

“Culture still trumps everything. And a part of the culture that has to be addressed includes some of the tough questions on security, governance, process and publishing, and findability (which includes sensitivity to what people make public or private). There are some hard questions, but meanwhile, it appears that those companies who are following common law rule of “permit whatever is not explicitly prohibited”* are seeing benefits.”

Patti added that a favorite moment in a briefing on the report came when Carl showed a very clever juxtaposition of Time magazine covers:
1983: PCs are the “machine of the year.”
2007: “the person of the year is YOU”

In the cover, a person is looking at a PC. In the latter, Carl put the person in the PC. Enterprise 2.0 is certainly part of the Web 2.0 rise of user generated content and increased engagement. It provides valuable bottoms up participation within the enterprise for those leaders who have the confidence to encourage this participation. There is much more in the report.

On-line Communities Have a Search Engine: Twing

Online communities have seen a resurgence but they have been under-served by search engines. Twing.com has been launched to serve these online communities and forums. On-line forums are as old as the internet. They have evolved over time and new social media have emerged, Blogs are primarily a one-to-many channel with some exchange though comments and trackbacks but forums are still the place to engage in real asynchronous dialog. Blogs are optimized for search or should I actually say the reverse. Google and other search engines are optimized for blogs with the page rank concept. It has been harder to use traditional search engines to find stuff on forums and the use of forums is one the rise. For example, the TIVO community forum has over 130,000 registered user and 1.2 million unique visits a month.

Last week I spoke with Scott, Director of Product Management at Twing, a search engine designed for forums and communities. Scott pointed out than many forums start with a question and this can lead to extensive discussion if the topic is right. He said that there are more people participating in one scuba diving forum he is engaged with than the total circulation of all print publications on the topic. But how to find what is going on? How do you find the useful forums?

Twing is designed to address this problem. Scott did a walk through for me. One feature I found useful was the many filters to prevent the thousands of hits you get on many Google searches. They have drop down filters that are dynamically based on the top 50 mentions in a category (e.g. people) on a forum at the time of search.

You can search by posts on a topic (e.g. scuba diving) to find posts within forums that relate to the topic. You can search by topics to find whole discussions on the topic. You can also search by forums to find forums on the topic. In each case you can narrow your search by using the filters. There are filters for top forums, people, and companies related to the topic, as well as by language and media. You can also put a date range in and add terms to avoid.

There is also a community buzz button to take you to the hot topics of the day. You can see the most frequently used search terms and the most discussed topics. There is also a directory of forums arranged by categories. Within each category are sub-categories leading to the actual forums. You can install a Twing search box on your home page through a widget. Twing has its own blog and forums for discussion about the tool. The tool is simple but with enough complexity to make it useful. Scott said that there is sort of a mental “cost-benefit” analysis that people do as they conduct a search with the cost being their time. Twing is designed to make it easy so you continue. If you are into forums you should check this out. Twing is free. Many enterprises are setting up forums to get customer feedback on their products and services.

Chicago and Boston Blues Festivals Coming Up

The 25th Annual Chicago Blues Festival will be held June 5-8 in Grant Park. Friday night headliners include Koko Taylor and her Blues Machine, Eddy "The Chief" Clearwater, and a special set honoring the past, featuring Ruby Andrews, Cicero Blake and Jackie Ross. I have seen Koko and Eddy and have their CDs. They are great acts. Thanks to John Maloney for reminding me.

Closer to home the Boston Blues Festival provides two days of free Blues music each September by the banks of The Charles River. The lineups are not out yet.

Two Great Photo Submission Sites: Shots Magazine and Onexpsoure

Here are two sites that you can submit photos for publication. I heard about Shots Magazine, an “independent, edgy and fascinating publication” from Akos Szilvasi, a great portrait photographer who is leading a portrait photography discussion group I hope to get a chance to attend.

Ed Friedman introduced the group to Onexposure. As he write, “One submits photos and is either accepted for publication on the site or not. The screening is process interesting. There is a panel of screeners who look at all submissions. They can accept or reject a photo. If they are on the fence, they throw it out to their members to vote for or against publication. If you get rejected (as I mostly do!)you do get some feedback as to why. If you disagree with a decision of the screeners you can appeal. Also, if rejected one can post the image to a forum to see what other viewers think of the image. I have done that several times and gotten good feedback from other members. It is free to join.” Ed also has a great photo site himself.

KM2.0 Presentation - Boston KM Forum

Ray Sims recently presented on KM 2.0 at the Boston KM Forum. I was sorry to miss it but his presentation is available on the web through his blog, Sims Learning Connections. It makes for nice reading. Take a look. It was the KM possibilities that first got me excited about web 2.0. Here is a link to what he did at Novell.

Taking Mashups Deeper into the Enterprise

Mashups first made their name in the enterprise by allowing business teams to create workflow applications that IT did not have time to help with. Some people, this writer included, have said that mashups could be one of the big things about enterprise 2.0. Here are three firms that are taking the concept deeper into the enterprise infrastructure.

SynerG does deep mashups within the enterprise systems through a SOA approach to extract real-time information from enterprise systems (even legacy systems). They bring this information into an intelligent unified business application so the call center person sees only one application on their desktop. Through mashups they build new applications that draws data from multiple sources but have intelligence to act on this data. In some ways it is like a portal in that the application provides access to information through a single source. However, portals are thin layers that just pass through information. SynerG creates a “thick” layer that goes much deeper. Most enterprise data sources were built for specific audiences, like accounting, purchasing, or production, and often have tool constrained interfaces. Data that is then passed through to other departments is often not in the format that meets the needs of the new audience. SynerG allows for the dynamic restructuring of data to meet each specific audiences requirements.

The data remains stored in the original spots. SynerG creates a virtual data map of the enterprise. Then it adds a layer of business intelligence to know what to get from where and how to change it to fit the new need. This also allows for better security, as well as efficiency, as employees only see what they need to do to perform their job. This mashup approach also allows for one step actions. For example, if someone cancels a subscription, changes do not need to be made in multiple databases. Their solution does something else: it cleans the data during use. They have a data federation model (with some pending patents) that does not assume clean data but then allows employees to clean up data in the course of use. These data cleanups are passed back to all the original sources.

Nexaweb Enterprise Web Suite also makes use of mashups to convert legacy systems with less risk, in less time, and at less cost than the old style methods. The power of these composition applications actually goes beyond simply doing a migration to dramatically reduce costs and obtain more agility. Enterprises are now able to create new intelligent applications that draw on multiple data sources but are much more than portals. Call centers are great venues for this type of change but it is not limited to them.

For example, Nexaweb has provided a number of banks with an end-to-end foreign currency trading platform that gives access to over 120 data sources, inside and outside the enterprise. However, the platform does not simply provide traders with windows to all this data in a few seconds. The application is fully functional so that all back end trade execution processes are handled in a few seconds in a single application. It is an enterprise mashup of the entire process. The banks get a transformation of the technology supporting their work, not simply a migration to web applications.

BroadSoft is introducing a new set of services through the BroadSoft Xtended initiative that brings together the carrier-grade BroadWorks voice applications with Web 2.0 applications through mashups. They are also opening up application creation to third party developers through the BroadSoft Xtended Developers Program, another smart move. The developers can then sell the applications to the enterprise. Enterprise IT can also develop their own applications. This new Web 2.0 initiative will help to integrate communications services and business applications. It will also bring BroadSoft’s name further into the marketplace. They are now targeting the long tail of the market by making these applications available directly to consumers and not going through their traditional customers and channel, the large telecoms.

Salesforce.com and ACT! are among the companies launching product taking advantage of this BroadSoft Xtended VoIP integration with their applications. With salesforce.com the new application allows users to click–to-dial from within salesforce.com, transfer calls, and automatically record call times/dates so less manual work is required. Other partner mashup applications to be announced include: IBM with Lotus Notes; Microsoft and Outlook integration; Simulscribe (voice to email transcription); and Facebook click-to-dial. The Facebook click-to-dial widget allows you to place a Click 2 Message button on your Facebook profile. A friend can then contact you by inputting their phone number. This is open for use by anyone with a US phone number. Many of the other applications are free to the 6,000,000 people making calls on a BroadWorks switch.