In 2010 I was asked by Oracle to take part in a research report around Enterprise 2.0. I also sat on a team of Enterprise 2.0 experts for the launch of Oracle’s European Enterprise 2.0 initiatives. The research report can be found here.
In 2009 I was contracted by Kent County Council to develop the Pic and Mix web service and deliver training to local businesses. About Pic and Mix:
I’m proud to have been working with the Knowledge Plaza team since before product launch. I worked with the guys as a lead project manager and consultant from 2008 to 2011. Knowledge Plaza is the best (IMHO) enterprise platform for social knowledge sharing and collaboration.
Overall I’ve spent 10 years in and out of the Pharmaceutical industry as an IT Project Manager. I’ve implemented Phase I Management Systems, managed the largest clinical trial database in the industry and even implemented the industry’s very first global wiki, Pfizerpedia.
Over the year’s I’ve set-up and customised a number of Drupal sites. By far my favourite CMS along with WordPress (for those who consider WordPress a CMS!).
I often speak at conferences on the topic of Enterprise 2.0 or Social Business Software. This started in 2006 when one of my presentations, Meet Charlie – What is Enterprise 2.0?, went rather viral.
I set up Applied Trends in 2006 as a vehicle for my enterprise social software consulting and training but now work almost exclusively through ASA Interactive.
In the middle of what has been a mucho busy few weeks, Oracle release a whitepaper titled ‘Enterprise 2.0, Driving Creativity, Productivity and Collaboration‘. It’s a solid piece of research with stats and quotes to make any E2.0 evangelist smile. In fact after being interviewed for the research I get 5 or 6 quotes in the paper which is very nice.
Download the pdf here.
I’ve posted over at the Whatever Company blog about the social collation and annotation of learning resources. I talk about how I’ve been using web 2.0 tools to prepare for teaching and packaging course content for learners. I even did a bit of wizardry in Keynote in an attempt to visualise what on earth I’m on about. I also compare our own Knowledge Plaza (because that’s what I have been mainly using for the task this year) with Diigo and Delicious. Click here or below for the full post. I’d love your comments.
…I find myself agreeing with this excerpt from http://beyondgrowth.net/social-criticism/social-media-moving-towards-a-brave-new-world/ .
One place where thousands of people have taken this to heart is the social network known as Twitter. Twitter is a social media site where users can post short, 140 character messages known as tweets that their friends can receive notifications of. Twitter allows users to follow individuals, and corporations in what often amounts to an overwhelming flood of interesting information. No other social media site promotes the sheer amount of information enjoyment than twitter does. People often become addicted to twitter, constantly refreshing looking for new blog posts to read, or tweeting to famous (or twitter-famous) people in the hope that will receive replies. Twitter itself functions as a hotbed for random, mostly useless information which distracts and creates compulsive behavior in the human mind.
Many wannabe personal development, social media, and marketing gurus have taken to Twitter, proclaiming themselves “experts” in their chosen fields. Tens of thousands of these people utilize auto-following bots, and spam techniques in a vain attempt to break through and become a guru themselves. Because twitter is so easy to join and start posting information, it has become a hotbed for people who have deluded themselves into believing they are experts. They have literally taken the advice of bloggers like Chris Guillebeau to “do something positive with your own work.” In some strange way, it seems many people view the most effective means of doing “something positive” as becoming a guru yourself. This only adds to the pleasurable, narcissistic noise that permeates social networks like Twitter.
I was recently asked what are some of my top business benefits of implementing Enterprise 2.0 tools. Here are three.
Until recently how did individuals inside an organization manage their own information and knowledge? Well without having access to an official KM tool (which most don’t) they use email, their C:\drive and in some cases network file shares. Now, with many E2.0 offerings the first way a user gets benefit from a tool is to manage their own information. Think of social bookmarking tools, you first use it to store and retrieve your own bookmarks, then discovering other peoples contributions before finally contributing (with intent) to networks or topics of interest. The same is true for wikis, and as I saw at Pfizer the first use people get value from is creating pages for projects they are working on to organize their own house before contributing to the community. When we started selling the solution I part represent we called this ‘Personally Essential, Collectively Critical’, meaning that a tool should first satisfy the need of an individual (which in turn aids adoption) before leveraging network effects to become crucial to the organization.
One of the top benefits of leveraging E2.0 solutions I often quote is that of finding the experts inside (or external to) the company. Historically if you worked inside a large organization and wanted to find someone who was an expert in, say, the IT aspect relating to acquisitions, you would first look at the company phone directory or person listing. You’d try and find someone who indicated they worked in acquisitions or a related department and would have to rely on what their job title says. Or you might ask around to see if colleagues knew anyone with this particular expertise. The problem is that a persons job title does not necessarily reflect their real work involvements, expertise or interests. The same is true for LinkedIn in many respects. If I wanted to I could change my job title to Technology Director for E2.0 for ACME INC and start fielding inquiries from around the world. Just because my job title is XYZ it doesn’t necessarily reflect reality. Now enter E2.0 tools for the enterprise and you are quickly able to tie people to content and people to people. After time you are able to identify people related to a topic or function not by job title alone but by their real life interactions. Surely this is a BIG reason to implement E2.0 especially for large, diverse organizations.
Often misunderstood and sneered at after being a term overused by KM consultants over the years, collective intelligence is my third capability enabled by E2.0. Collective Intelligence is a product of both personal (but open) information/knowledge management and expertise identification. By opening up an organization’s content, user defined networks and interactions you get to both feel the pulse of the company knowledge but also access it on demand for specific topics and queries. All it takes is the correct implementation and integration of the various competence of E2.0 tools to create this ‘virtual brain’ of the company.
There are more, but these are near the top of my list.
Whatever Company have released a new whitepaper with participation from Sun Microsystems on Enterprise 2.0 titled ‘Using Enterprise 2.0 to prepare for recovery’. My name is even at the end as a UK contact, so for that reason alone I encourage you to download it 
Download the full pdf here.
Executive Summary
The current circumstances and challenges are unparalleled in recent times. Changes in business culture are accelerating to satisfy the individual demands of customers, employees and collaborators.
In recent years Web 2.0 technologies have facilitated individual participation in generating web content and reflect a demand from internet users and at the same time acting as a catalyst for further empowerment. Enterprise 2.0 covers the deployment of these technologies for collaboration and knowledge management within the organisation.
Organisations that have already embraced Enterprise 2.0 find it contributes to many if not all areas of their business including; improved employee, customer and supplier relations; enhanced resource management and cost containment; marketing edge and perhaps most importantly innovation.
The increasing value of knowledge amid capital devaluation highlights the need for a culture change embracing the key business drivers of an organisation; their customers, markets and resources.
Enterprise 2.0 can provide solutions to enhance the performance of these key business areas, using tools that can be easily tested and verified for their Return on Investment.
Gregory Culpin has just released this sneak preview of the Knowledge Plaza Lite interface, known internally as KP Lite. This add-on to Knowledge Plaza allows you to diffuse information to a much wider audience, while maintining full Knowledge Plaza access for your information professionals. You might want to watch the full Knowledge Plaza screencast first to put it in perspective.
KP Lite – Sneak preview from Knowledge Plaza on Vimeo.
I’m a bit late posting this, but isn’t that always the way when talking about your own stuff! Over the past few months I have working with Kent County Council to help deliver their Pic and Mix project. Description from the site:
Pic and Mix aims to increase public access to Kent-related datasets including those generated by Kent County Council (KCC). For the purposes of the pilot, we have brought together a sample of the most useful information. Where possible, it’s been provided in a format that allows it to be ‘mashed’ and customised. Please help us shape this initiative by suggesting additional data and ways in which we can improve this site. And if you do anything clever with the data, we’d like you to share that with us too! …more
Initially Applied Trends was involved on the training side, and designed and delivered a training and informational package to the pilot group of users. Later on we redesigned the public facing site and launched what you see today as Pic and Mix.
Rather than offer my own glowing views on the project, here are some excerpts from Simon Wakeman’s blog who is Head of Marketing at Medway Council in south east England.
The site (picandmix.org.uk/) has two main parts. First up the data section shows all the different data sets that the council has managed to make available – as RSS or Excel downloads.
The second part of the site allows users to post mash-ups that they’ve produced with the data – for example using Google Maps or Yahoo Pipes.
It’s early days so there aren’t all that many mash-ups posted yet, although some early ones do give an obvious nod to the potential of this kind of thing in the future – for example the “schools by postcode” map is a simple mash-up that I would have found useful this time last yer when looking at primary schools for my son – in fact there’s no reason why this shouldn’t be on the main council site before long I expect.
At the moment most mash-ups are combining a single data set and a visualising tool (mainly maps). It’ll be interesting to see when someone posts a mash-up of multiple data sources as for me this is where the value of open data really starts to be demonstrated.
Hats off to Kent County Council for doing this – hopefully it will show other public bodies the potential for open data and we’ll start to see this kind of functionality appearing more often on main council websites.
I couldn’t have said it better myself, thanks Simon.
For all you Dutch speaking folk out there, here are the slides from the Congres Kennis in Rotterdam where Evert Jagerman showcases the use of Knowledge Plaza for McKinsey’s Africa Desk.
Ed – the SlideShare presentation has been removed for some reason.
Crossing over from being inside a large company like Pfizer, to being an independent consultant to finally working with Knowledge Plaza and Applied Trends, I’ve often struggled with being seen as a ‘vendor’.
The word vendor often has negative connotations especially when you’re exhibiting at conferences and trade shows. The default people expect is lengthy and bullshitty sales talk, removed from the realities of what people actually want and smooth talking guys just pushing a square peg into a round hole.
As an example a few weeks ago I attended Knowledge and Content UK (KCUK) with Gregory Culpin and manned the Knowledge Plaza stand. We were one of only 4 or 5 ‘vendors’ in attendance who’s sponsorship money helped to make the event a reality. Things started off well, and as usual we stood out with our slightly different stand, stance and general approach. We were there not just to promote the product, but to network, meet people share our experiences (good and bad) as practitioners and to have a good time. To be honest, sales talk comes a definite second to conversations and sharing. If only the other vendors were the same.
We were due to present a case study and general informational presentation on Social Software and Information Professionals in the afternoon. However by the time we got to our designated slot the audience had already endured at least two terrible sales pitches by the other vendors. In fact they were so bad and so blatant that people were seriously avoiding all the vendors. Wild product claims, a lack of useful information and general ignorance of the subject matter pretty much alienated the audience.
Luckily we did manage to pull in half of a large room for our talk and we started as we would normally start by introducing ourselves, covering our personal professional backgrounds in relation to the conference and reassuring the audience this was NOT a sales pitch. Over the next hour we shared our views, experiences and relevant product information with the audience. We initiated dialogue, invited challenges and generally had a good time! The aim was to educate, share and of course raise product awareness but not at the expense of the former. The reaction? Excellent, we immediately had people come up and congratulate us on a ‘superb’ presentation which stood out from the crowd and the other vendors.
So as a summary here are my personal do’s and don’ts for vendor presentations at conferences:
Don’t;
Do;
For our next trade show and conference appearances we’re trying to find a way to present our stand and ourselves as individuals as well as product representatives. We want to engage, educate, discuss and have fun, not just push a message! Maybe we’ll do something like the Geek Squad and present our personalities alongside the product merchandise….I’ll let you know how it goes!
Anyway, here’s our presentation from KCUK.
I hate the fact I just wrote Sales Presentation 2.0, but hey, it got your attention.
Below I’m sharing a presentation format I’ve been using with Knowledge Plaza. It’s based on my original Meet Charlie and Daniel Siddle’s Meet Charlotte follow up.
This version is based on an imaginary Pharmaceutical company.
I’ve adopted this presentation style when visiting a client’s site after discussing their aims, ecosystem and aspirations. Each slide-deck is customized to include their own tools, terminology and vision.
The feedback has been amazing. Apparently most vendors go in with narcoleptic slide-ware without considering how their solution plays with a broader strategy. I’m not blowing my own trumpet, merely highlighting a successful presentation style and somewhat naive but well received approach.
If you use these slides please credit me/Sid, unlike a few large consultancies I could mention who embedded my slides into their own narco-deck without a mention :-0
The Enterprise 2.0 Conference is just round the corner and I think this year is going to be very interesting from a number of perspectives. In particular I’m very keen on seeing how the downturn is affecting;
* the number or E2.0 projects underway
* the way people are looking at ROI in light of the financial pressures
* how vendors are positioning themselves against very tight corporate budgets
The number of companies currently running collaboration and KM2.0 initiatives is definitely down on last year, there’s no question of that. However on the flip side people’s radars are more finely tuned for identifying potential projects when budget restrictions are finally lifted. So it will be interesting to see where the most interest is shown and who’s case studies inspire the most discussion.
The one thing I’ve heard about past Enterprise 2.0 conferences is there has been too much hype about the ‘potential’ of social software and not enough about the real business benefits. I don’t think that will be the case this year. Companies don’t have the time or patience for hype, so expect to hear frank discussions on the real power of Enterprise 2.0.
I’ll be sure to attend Lee Bryant’s session “Transition Strategies for e20 Adoption”. It’s great to have a UK ambassador like Headshift at an such a high profile conference.
The other topic I will be closely watching is how Sharepoint is discussed. Will it get the bashing it has at previous conferences? Or will there be a widespread but reluctant acceptance of it’s enterprise 2.0 abilities?
If you are attending from the UK give me a shout, it would be good to meet up.
Note: picture courtesy of ITSinsider
Lee Bryant, of Headshift fame, just put out a post lambasting the trend of independent consultants announcing certain technologies are dead just because they happen to have found something shinier.
One of the most annoying habits of self-appointed technology gurus, sheikhs, czars or experts is that they take their own behaviour as the basis for extrapolation to predict how the rest of the world will/could/should use tools. A side effect of this is an inability to empathise or understand the needs and culture of non-geek workers in non-technology companies. What they do as individual consultants sitting in their pyjamas in a home-office, eating Granola and ego-surfing is regarded as a template for people trying to get things done inside a corporation or a government department.
I’m glad someone is putting these sort of views out there. I’ve been struggling with the ‘scene’ for some time now in that every other person you meet nowadays is an independent consultant on something or another, often without a grounding in big company politics or IT that brings balance to their views. I recently met a CIO of a very large company that told me that he’s sick and tired of ‘fresh’ independent gurus telling him that he needs tools like Twitter to run his business and that things like RSS are ‘dead’.
Lee also very eloquently and insightfully highlights the current state of enterprise RSS adoption, noting that it’s still motoring up the adoption curve and we’re a long way off seeing it’s wide spread ROI being realized across the corporate world.
I am convinced that enterprise RSS is only just beginning it adoption curve, and it has tremendous value to offer both individuals and groups. Solving the information needs of an individual is pretty easy. Finding better ways to co-ordinate the activities of thousands of people is a lot more difficult, and flocking from new tool to new tool every six months is not an option. Weaning people off the Outlook or Blackberry inbox for actionable information and intelligence is widely recognised as an important need, but it will take time. RSS and similar syndication approaches will be a key part of that solution.
I encourage you to read Lee’s full post.
