Webinar: Boost Social Computing Adoption on SharePoint – Battelle Customer Story

Posted by Laura Farrelly on August 18, 2009
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A little over a year ago the questions around enterprise social computing, were focused on understanding what it entails and how to prove the business value. Fast forward a year and the questions now center around: how do we make it work, how do we get people to use it and what are best practices?

NewsGator has a wealth of experience and lessons learned around enterprise social computing deployment, adoption and best practices. However we thought you would like to hear from one of our customers! Battelle, a $5.2B research and development company that uses SharePoint and NewsGator Social Sites as their social computing platform, will share their story, experience and best practices around communities . In addition to Battelle’s story, J.B Holston (NewsGator CEO & President) will discuss his thoughts and insight on the importance of adoption.

We invite you to join Tom Monroe, Manager, Knowledge Management, from Battelle and J.B. Holston, on August 27, 2009 at 2pm ET for a live webinar focused on enterprise social computing community success and best practices for adoption.

Webinar topics will include:

• The importance of social computing adoption
• Deployment and adoption best practices for internal communities
• Battelle case study
• Question & answer session

Click here to register for the webinar today.

Bersin & NewsGator Webinar:
Next Gen Learning with Web 2.0

Posted by Laura Farrelly on July 27, 2009
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We would like to invite you to a join us for a free Bersin & NewsGator webinar -- Next Gen Learning with Web 2.0 -- this Thursday, July 30th at 2pm ET.

With decreased training budgets, increased adoption of Web 2.0 tools, and the fast pace of change, HR and knowledge management professionals are under pressure to provide learning and development methods that are cost effective, agile, and in-line with employees’ preferred methods of learning.

High Impact Learning Organizations ™ are transitioning from traditional learning methodologies to social networking and informal learning – using tools such as communities of practice, blogs, and social learning tools to transform their knowledge capture and information sharing.

Join David Mallon, Senior Analyst for Enterprise Learning with Bersin & Associates, and Karyn German, VP of Enterprise Practice Management for NewsGator, as they discuss the approaches, tools, and technologies that are being used by high performing organizations to deliver the next generation of learning and development. Webinar topics will include:

• Industry trends driving the next generation of learning
• The differences between formal and informal learning methods
• A review of the approaches, tools, and technologies used by the next generation of High Impact Learning Organizations™
• End user examples and demos of the use of Web 2.0 tools for next gen learning

We believe people in the following positions will find this webinar of value:

• HR Managers
• Learning & Development Personnel
• Talent Management Executives
• Information & Knowledge Management Professionals
• IT Professionals
• Enterprise/IT Architects
• Emerging Technologists
• CIOs
• Corporate Communications Professionals
• Anyone Tasked With Evaluating, Recommending Or Designing Enterprise 2.0 & Social Computing Strategies

Sign up for this free webinar today!

NewsGator Social Sites in Action

Posted by Laura Farrelly on July 7, 2009
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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:

Social Computing is the New 'Business Operating System'

Posted by Laura Farrelly on June 22, 2009
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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

Posted by Laura Farrelly on June 17, 2009
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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

Posted by Laura Farrelly on June 15, 2009
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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.

Webinar: Increase Ad Revenue & Page Views with New Content Syndication Options

Posted by Laura Farrelly on May 26, 2009
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Please join on Thursday May 28 at 2pm ET, for our free webinar, "Increase Ad Revenue & Page Views with New Content Syndication Offerings -- from Discovery Channel & HowStuffWorks.com." 

We're excited to have Lori Cuthbert, News Director at Discovery.com, and Jason Hoch, VP of Product Development at HowStuffWorks.com join NewsGator's Walker Fenton on this webinar to provide you with valuable insight into two new content syndication offerings and the benefits they bring to online publishers and their audiences. 

In this 30 minute webinar, the following topics will be covered:

• Discovery Channel's Science & Technology widget
• HowStuffWorks.com's Related Topics Feature
• How these new syndication offerings operate
• The benefits of these offerings for online publishers, including: increased ad revenue and page views; enriched content, audience engagement, and click depth
• How these offerings can increase ad inventory for new revenue streams and help increase ROI

Anyone in interactive/digitial media managment, advertising management, web management, or business development management is likely to find this webinar beneficial.

So register today and join us on Thursday!

All Things Digital Launches iPhone App Powered By NewsGator

Posted by Laura Farrelly on May 17, 2009
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All Things Digital today announced the availability of a new iPhone™ and iPod® touch application on the Apple App store.

The app makes exclusive content from AllThingsD.com and the D conference available for iPhone and iPod touch with a range of features and tools including tech and media news, product reviews, analysis and video from Walt Mossberg, Kara Swisher, John Paczkowski, Peter Kafka and Katherine Boehret.

Co-edited by Wall Street Journal columnist Walt Mossberg and BoomTown blogger Kara Swisher, the AllThingsD.com site launched in 2007 as the online extension of the annual “D: All Things Digital” conference, started by Walt and Kara in 2003 and attended by the digital elite.

Developed using the NewsGator iPhone Media Application Framework, the All Things Digital app is designed to contain all the news and reviews from the Web site. As on AllThingsD.com, each journalist’s section is identified by specific color schemes and headshots, including stylized icons that emphasize each writer’s personality and beat. Customized navigation enables users to choose their favorite sections and personalize the content. 

The All Things Digital app is available immediately for free from Apple’s App Store. 

NewsGator & Burton Group Webinar: ‘Enterprise Social Networking, Is Your Company Falling Behind?’

Posted by Laura Farrelly on May 11, 2009
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Is social computing in the enterprise just a lot of hype or should you be concerned that your company is going to fall behind? Whether your primary work function is line-of-business or technology, it’s likely that you have heard about the benefits of enterprise social networking. The fact is that social networking provides real business value and many companies have moved past the “what is it” towards “how and where do we start.”  Join NewsGator and Burton for a free webinar on May 20, 2009 at 2pm ET.  Topics will include:

• The progression of enterprise social networking
• Key elements of successful social networking solutions
• Customer success stories and why it’s important to start now
• Five elements that need to be considered to achieve success
• How to get off to a good start

NewsGator Releases Social Sites 2.7 for SharePoint

Posted by Laura Farrelly on May 7, 2009
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This morning NewsGator announced the unveiling of Social Sites 2.7 -- the latest version of the Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007-based enterprise social computing product -- with groundbreaking new functionality for enterprise social computing: innovation management.  Called Social Sites Ideas, this new solution captures, vets and advances fresh, new employee suggestions for improving business results.  This feature is ideal for product development, cost reduction programs, business process improvements, customer service enhancements, going 'green' and more.  To learn more, visit our website.