NewsGator "Colorado Company to Watch" Coverage

Earlier this year NewsGator was named to the inaugural class of Colorado Companies to Watch.  Colorado Companies to Watch is presented by the Colorado Office of Economic Development and International Trade in association with private and public organizations dedicated to supporting second-stage businesses in the state.

Now, Denver's NBC affiliate has also covered this achievement, saying that NewsGator "is being honored for innovating social networking to help businesses work more efficiently" and explaining that the designation is for "companies that have not only found a way to survive, but to thrive in this tough economy." 

You can read their full coverage here.

How & Why to Apply Strategy & Governance to Social Computing Initiatives

If you missed our June 30 webinar, "How and Why to Apply Strategy and Governance to Social Computing Initiatives," hosted by NewsGator's co-founder and CTO, Greg Reinacker, and Stacy Wilson from Eloquor Consulting, you can now access a recorded version of it here.

The webinar covers:

• Why a strategic governance model makes good business sense
• How to connect your internal social technology use to business strategy
• How to determine which social technologies to focus on when
• How social technologies affect organizational culture
• What policy and code of conduct elements to consider

We believe that this webinar is beneficial for the following types of people: Corporate Communication Professionals; Human Resources Professionals; Enterprise/IT Architects; Information & Knowledge; Management Professionals; IT Professionals; CIOs; and anyone tasked with evaluating, recommending or designing Enterprise 2.0 & Social Computing strategies.

You may access the webinar here.

NewsGator Social Sites in Action

Earlier this month, Kirk Evans, Architect Evangelist at Microsoft, had a conversation with Brian Kellner, VP of Products at NewsGator, about the capabilities of Social Sites, our social computing solution built around SharePoint. Laura Farrelly, VP of Marketing at NewsGator, also provides a detailed walk through of some of the cool features of Social Sites. 

As Kirk says in his blog, "Social Sites is a fantastic product with a lot of exciting capabilities.  I have several large customers that are using Social Sites in their enterprise, and every time I talk to a customer that is using it they rave about what a transformation Social Sites provided with their intranet."

We hope you'll find the video of their conversation (below) worthwhile:

Musings on the Enterprise 2.0 Conference

I had the pleasure of attending and speaking at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Boston earlier this week.  While the trip started with an 11-hour journey from Denver to Boston (yes, on a direct flight), the remainder of the adventure was highly informative and thought-provoking.  It is a rare occurrence that I am in one place for almost two full days and immersed in the subject of enterprise social computing. 

NewsGator announced Social Sites 3.0 at the show, including capabilities that affirm social computing as the new operating system for business. You can read the press release for more details (insert hyperlink).  We were especially proud as we listened to our customers discuss their real world case studies at several conference sessions.  Much more so than last year's conference, this year's show focused on how social computing is being deployed and adopted within large corporations and government agencies.     

I won't attempt to summarize everything I heard, but the biggest takeaway seemed to be the recommendation that social computing within the enterprise should be used to solve real business problems.  You don't say?  We have known this for a while, which is why identifying appropriate business challenges is Step 1 in our Roadmap to Successful Social Computing Adoption methodology.    A few of the other tidbits I particularly enjoyed:

• People don't share unless there is a trusted connection.
• Connecting people is a fundamental value, even if the ROI associated with it is not concrete.
• Corporate performance metrics should already have line items for collaboration and knowledge sharing.  Social computing just makes those activities easier.
• Executive leaders have to set a good example, but top-down mandates almost never work
• Users might do "stupid" things, but a sound community will police these inappropriate activities.
• Instead of updating your status to reflect what you are doing, update it to reflect what you are learning.

I can't wait until next year when we will hear stories from many companies who will have 12-18 months of experience in this area.  We're looking forward to helping our customers be at the forefront of this rapid evolution to social computing nirvana.

Social Computing is the New 'Business Operating System'

NewsGator today introduced capabilities that affirm social computing as the new operating system for business – one that eclipses the bloated email inbox as the most productive home base for knowledge workers. What e-mail and the file folder system have done since the 1980s – serve as the de facto operating system for business – enterprise social computing delivers today, and does better, going forward.

Social Sites 3.0 is a significant upgrade to NewsGator’s enterprise social computing platform, and to Enterprise 2.0 capabilities in general. Companies can sign up for beta access today to see how Social Sites transforms content, activity and social graphs into “Social Knowledge.” NewsGator’s Social Sites 3.0 release includes two breakthrough capabilities to organize valuable content and leverage reputation in large organizations:

•  Socialpedia – This self-assembling Wikipedia-style internal Web site is a one-stop source of knowledge generated in topic-based online communities throughout the global organization. Socialpedia leverages an improved Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 wiki experience within Social Sites communities to create a single knowledge repository with distributed ownership. A new hire can find terminology to get productive fast. A sales representative can brush up on an arcane product feature to help close the deal. HR can explain complicated concepts just once for all to see. 
• Knowledge Explorer – Expertise maps, which take advantage of the rich media features in Microsoft Silverlight, provide an interactive graphical snapshot of the professionals in an organization that are most informed on a selected topic. When users click on a topic in a tag cloud, the map appears with experts arranged according to their automatically calculated expertise ratings. (See image above; and click for larger image.)

These new capabilities will be included as standard features in Social Sites Enterprise which is becoming the default starting point for productivity-minded knowledge workers in large businesses.

In addition, Social Sites 3.0 extends the capabilities of the Office SharePoint Server content management and collaboration platform by providing a Facebook-like social computing experience. It presents users with carefully selected content, connects them to important colleagues and involves them in productive communities.

“Social Sites 3.0 helps customers take their business-class social computing to the next level by presenting users with just the right content and connections at just the right time through Microsoft Office SharePoint Server - the industry’s most powerful enterprise social computing platform,” said Kathleen Winder, Microsoft’s Director of SharePoint and FAST Partners.  “Social Sites is a very compelling complement to Microsoft Office SharePoint Server that promises to change the way business gets done.”

To be considered for the Social Sites 3.0 beta program, please email socialsites@newsgator.com.

Also, don't forget to see NewsGator in Booth #505 at the Enterprise 2.0 2009 Conference!

You can view the entire press release here.

White Paper: A 6 Step Roadmap to Ensure Succesful Enterprise Social Computing Adoption

The seismic success of Facebook, Wikipedia, Twitter and other social computing tools often creates soaring expectations for viral adoption of social computing in business settings.  While the "just build it and they will come" strategy works in the consumer world, it's a dangerous approach for businesses: users may never come, or they may come and waste their time.

That's why today NewsGator has released a six-step roadmap for successful enterprise social computing adoption.  It's a systematic analysis to help ensure that Enterprise 2.0 initiatives make sense to users and improve business performance exactly as intended. 

The following six steps are thoroughly explored in the white paper:

1. Identify business problems and goals
2. Define use cases to help solve business problems
3. Select the correct technologies 
4. Publish best practices for use
5. Identify obstacles to participation
6. Identify desired cultural transformations

You can download "A Roadmap for Successful Adoption of Social Computing in the Enterprise" here.

Webinar: How & Why to Apply Strategy & Governance to Social Computing Initiatives

On June 30, 2009, at 2pm ET, NewsGator will host a free, live webinar, "How & Why to Apply Strategy and Governance to Social Computing Initiatives."

It is our belief that using social technologies for the sake of coolness is out, while using them in support of business strategy and to drive culture change is in. Your strategy for social technology must not only be connected to business strategies, but also, focused on the right technologies at the right time. Extending your strategy and governance into proper policy and code of conduct language helps embed adoption and expectations into the culture of the organization.

Please join Stacy Wilson, Accredited Business Communicator (ABC) and president of Eloquor Consulting, Inc., and Greg Reinacker, CTO of NewsGator, for this webinar which covers:

• Why a strategic governance model makes good business sense
• How to connect your internal social technology use to business strategy
• How to determine which social technologies to focus on when
• How social technologies affect organizational culture
• What policy and code of conduct elements to consider

We believe that this webinar will be beneficial for the following types of people: Corporate Communication Professionals; Human Resources Professionals; Enterprise/IT Architects; Information & Knowledge; Management Professionals; IT Professionals; CIOs; and anyone tasked with evaluating, recommending or designing Enterprise 2.0 & Social Computing strategies.

We look forward to your participation on June 30, 2009 at 2pm ET.  You can register here.

Survey: Cracking the Code on Web 2.0 in Talent Management

The demand for, and use of, blogs, wikis, social networking tools, online communities and other Web 2.0 tools is increasing rapidly inside organizations. But while some organizations are already starting to see value in these tools, many organizations struggle with where to even start.

Aberdeen’s Human Capital Management practice, in association with NewsGator, will survey hundreds of organizations globally to understand how they are achieving results through the adoption of Web 2.0 tools in talent management. This research will identify Best-in-Class practices for the use Web 2.0 tools throughout the talent management life cycle from sourcing and recruiting, to learning, knowledge sharing and development, to maintaining relationships with alumni.

Please take this 10-minute online survey to share your organization’s experiences with Web 2.0 tools in talent management. As a “thank you” for taking part in this study, Aberdeen will send you a complimentary copy of the final report when it is published on June 30, 2009 -- a $399 value.

Interview with NewsGator's CEO J.B. Holston

Over on the Enterprise 2.0 Blog, you can find a video interview between Stowe Boyd and NewsGator's CEO & President J.B. Holston.

 

In this video interview J.B. discusses:

• NewsGator's progress since last year's Enterprise 2.0 conference
• our increasing focus on integrated applications
• how the state of the economy has actually increased demand, in some sectors, for NewsGator products
• a multitude of other social computing and enterprise topics.

We hope you'll find it of value.

NewsGator Named ‘Colorado Company to Watch’

NewsGator was just named to the inaugural class of Colorado Companies to Watch!

Colorado Companies to Watch is presented by the Colorado Office of Economic Development and International Trade in association with private and public organizations dedicated to supporting second-stage businesses in the state.

The awards program honors 50 second-stage Colorado companies “that demonstrate high performance in the marketplace or exhibit innovative products or processes.” Second-stage refers to companies beyond the startup phase and facing growth, rather than survival, issues.  To learn more, please read the press release.

Congratulations to the NewsGator team!