A Few Almost Speaking Engagements

March and April turned out to be my big chance to turn down speaking engagements. They all sounded like interesting events and the topic in each case was adoption of social media and social software in a large enterprise setting – a topic of keen interest to me. But unfortunately, scheduling just didn’t work out in each case.

The first invite came from Cutter Consortium for their Summit 2008 event in Boston. They’ve got a great looking agenda, and a smaller more intimate conference. There are currently a number of their advisors speaking, so I was pleased to be invited to represent the IT / buy-side interests.

Next was an invite for a MIMA panel on Duality Reality: Who Controls Social Media in the Enterprise? I have yet to attend a MIMA event, so this would have been a fun event for me. And with all of those creatives on the panel, they need an IT guy like me to be a wet blanket on things. 😉

Last was the Burton Group Catalyst Conference in San Diego. To be fair, Mike and I really just talked by phone and email about the possibility of me participating, but I pulled my name before I was officially invited. I’m sure this will be a fabulous event for those who are able to attend. You don’t have to read Mike for long to know that he knows what he’s doing in this area.

So maybe next time gang, but thanks for the offers – keep ’em coming.

Technorati tags: burtongroup, cutter, speaking, conferences, MIMA, socialsoftware, socialmedia

MinneBar Coming – Bait Your Hook

So the next MinneBar is coming up on Saturday, May 10th, and will be at the U of M. I will continue my tradition of keen interest in this event, and non-attendance. They have chosen to schedule this on the same weekend as the Walleye fishing opener in Minnesota, and I have my loyalties. As much as I would love to be geeking out, I will probably be wetting a line somewhere with wife and kids instead, and loving it.

I would personally love to see a BarCamp during the week (I know, I know – then organize one) – weekends are precious and I like my family time.    Best of luck to both BarCamp-ers and anglers that weekend!

Technorati tags: barcamp, minnebar

Health 2.0 Conference Starts Today – How About a Community Tag?

So the Health 2.0 conference – Spring 2008 starts today. I was not a good match for the Spring agenda, but hopefully will be speaking there this Fall.

Would all of the bloggers in attendance be kind enough to agree on a community tag, so that those of us not fortunate enough to attend can still tune in? Perhaps bloggers could add a Technorati tag of health2con to all posts, and then all could subscribe to the feed at http://feeds.technorati.com/tag/health2con to get conference updates.

Matt, what do you think?

Technorati tags: health2con, web2.0, health2.0, socialtagging, tagging, conferences

Live Blogging from Office 2.0

A couple of us are trying to get a community tag going at Office 2.0.  Hopefully, everyone blogging at the conference will start tagging with o2con07 (letter “o” at the beginng and number “0” at the end).

You can subscribe to the Technorate feed at http://feeds.technorati.com/search/o2con07. 

Technorati tags: office2.0, conferences, o2con07

Office 2.0 Bashes – The Good Kind

First off to the Zoho bash at B near Moscone…

I’ll tell you what – for a freemium office suite, they sure throw a party together. I had great conversations with Ross from Nine Summer (he refreshingly gets the enterprisey, as he was CTO at Timex for 3 years), the folks from Spresent, and Tim from PlanHQ. I still think Ross and Tim need to connect to talk about PlanHQ.

I then dropped by the House of Shields for RedMonk Evening Services, courtesy of Steve. This was a cool, small get together – focus on quality not quantity. I had some interesting conversations on the analyst biz with folks from Bite Communications.

It’s refreshing to get to finally meet some people that you have been reading and blogging about for awhile, and hang out in a casual setting… and also pick up a few more subscriptions to follow. Thanks Zoho and RedMonk!

Technorati tags: zoho, redmonk, houseofshields, spresent, ninesummer, planhq,
o2con07

Enterprisey Makes An Appearance at Office 2.0

I have to say that I’m so far impressed with how much enterprisey concerns are being discussed at the Office 2.0 conference. Adam Carson had a fantastic “What is Enterprise 2.0?” presentation that jettisoned the Enterprise track into gear today. Adam discussed many of the topics that I had on my list, and did a fantastic job setting the tone of what it takes to evangelize 2.0 initiatives inside a large company – a regulated company, at that. He talked about having Regulatory people involved early as a key success factor – I’m not sure how many of the vendors out here are thinking that way, but they need to.

For my part (which you can see on the Office 2.0 video streaming page – click on the “On Demand Videos” tab, and then scroll to “The Web Practitioner”), I tried to talk more specifically about how to blend in collaborative interaction with compliance. Oftentimes the reason IT gets a bad rap is because that’s where compliance gets inserted. Like one of my fellow panelists commented – those are not the fun features (they just need to be there to be an enterprisey play).

Simon Revell and Scott Gavin of “Meet Charlie” fame walked through the story behind the far more interesting presentation – a case study of bringing Enterprise 2.0 to a large pharma. This is a fascinating story, and one I hope to copy to some extent… we’ll see how that goes. 😉

Technorati tags: office2.0, conference, enterprisey,
o2con07

Hitting the Ground at Office 2.0

Check out the paperless registration for Office 2.0:

The technology happening at the conference is amazing. A see of 24″ iMacs for demo pods and 40 wifi hotspots with 7MB download – w00t!

The iPhone has an iPhone-targeted web site to look up the agenda, browse attendees, and figure out where the free drinks are. The iPhone thing seems like a lot of hype, but it’s actually amazing to have everyone on the same platform. I have used it several times already to connect with colleagues. The USB drive has a Premium Edition of the ThinkFree suite on it.

All of the presentations are being streamed live, so if you have nothing else to do today at 3:30pm US Pacific time, then check out my panel discussion live!

Technorati tags: office2.0, conference, iphone, flashdrive, thinkfree, usb,
o2con07

Office 2.0 Unconference, pt. 2 – Getting Web 2.0 into the Enterprise, The Productivity Question

Went to a couple more sessions in the afternoon at the Office 2.0 unconference. The first was tackling issues around getting 2.0 solutions inside the enterprise – challenges and opportunities. There were interesting angles on this question and the discussion ambled in true unconference style. Some good points around having an approach for seamless transition to ease end-user adoption. The basic approach that many 2.0 companies seem to be taking is betting on the freemium model and momentum from consumer use on personal time to generate leads, and then bet on rogue uses within a company leading to larger-scale adoption.

The second session was run a little more formally for an unconference, in more of a moderated style, and discussed whether there is an actual end-user productivity gain with many 2.0 tools, and how measurable that gain is. Net net: sure there is a gain, it’s hard to measure, and you just need to jump in the pool. (?)

I still feel like there is not a good enough story around many of these solutions to woo us enterprisey folk. The IT-created barriers that everyone likes to complain about in some cases are cruft but are often driven by compliance concerns and larger architectural forces such as validation, quality systems, and traceability. Hitting it big on Facebook is a bit different that hitting it big inside the walls.

Having said that, I think I missed a good session by Ross Mayfield of Socialtext in the morning on Catalytics (check out his slides) – how to introduce change into an organization. I had a great side conversation with Ross… he has the vibe of a visionary and a good sell story behind his company, but he seems to get some of the key enterprise issues. Plus he was wearing a cool shirt!

Technorati tags: conference, unconference, office2.0,
o2con07

Office 2.0 Unconference, pt. 1 – Presentations 2.0 and Content Marketplaces

I arrived late to the Office 2.0 unconference, and attended that last part of a chat on presentations. The gang from Spresent showed off their presentation tool, which has both on and offline offerings. The offline offering lets you burn to flash, for rich animated and easily distributable prestos. They have strong tech, but don’t seem to have a solid community presence in place just yet, but stay tuned…

I also had a great side conversation with Kevin Warnock from gOffice. Keep an eye out for Kevin, as he has some fabulous ideas for building a community and content marketplace around his core offering, which is extremely high fidelity online word processing. Maybe a RedMonk briefing is in order?

Technorati tags: office2.0, conferences, content, business models, presentations,
o2con07

Enterprise 2.0 Track Shaping Up

The agenda for the Enterprise 2.0 track at Office 2.0 is shaping up, and looks to be very interesting. As I mentioned, I will be on one of the customer panels along with Miko Coffey, Doug Marshall, and Lee White (check out Lee’s Social Media presentation) discussing “The End User as Web Practioner”. The Knowledge Worker 2.0 session looks good, as well as a session on Mindmapping. I’m also interested in Shel’s discussion on SAP Global Social Media Research– a strategic imperative at SAP… wow.

In comments around the Office 2.0 site, I have seen that compliance is an issue on people’s minds with 2.0 technology. This is a topic of great interest to me, working in a regulated industry. We have to be very keen on compliance, and have dealt with this issue on collaborative technology, so I’m hoping to share my thoughts and learn from others in this area.

Technorati tags: office2.0 enterprise2.0 conference compliance socialsoftware