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.