Socialtext

At the recent Enterprise 2.0 conference in Boston I was struck by a few things:

• There were a LOT of serious businesses (and government organizations) there, and the customer attendance numbers were up significantly from last year. I was particularly impressed by how many companies sent more than one people to the conference and how well-prepared they were.
  
• It was amusing to watch a bunch of Twitter addicts go into withdrawal because the hotel's WiFi was so dysfunctional.
  
•  Customers seem to be moving from "what is it" to "what can I do with it" to "I have a problem identified and am looking for solutions".

It's this last trend that's crucial. This is what transforms an emerging technology category into a sustainable wave that creates success for both customers and for vendors. I'm hoping we can collectively move that trend along by moving the conversation to a pragmatic plane.

• There's real enterprise initiative stuff underneath the huge numbers. Most of the buzz that swirls around this space gets buried behind the really big growth forecasts and vendor buzz - but remember that these numbers come from real research and trends. Forrester analyst G. Oliver Young wrote last month that "56% of North American and European enterprises consider Web 2.0 to be a priority in 2008. A recent survey conducted by AIIM about Enterprise 2.0 applications found that 44 percent of businesses find the technologies "imperative" or "of significant importance" to their organizations.  
  

• Buy-side trends and customer success stories show it's not just buzz -- The barriers to Enterprise 2.0 are still strong. But Holbrook said hostile attitudes toward the technologies are changing. This year, he said, Enterprise 2.0 just might break free of its buzzword status. "I've seen a big shift over the last year or so where is becoming much more enterprise focused. It's no longer kind of a phenomenon. It's a trend that has legs and is not just buzz." Better still are a number of actual customer case studies hitting the market that show real results.
  

Innovation is coming back to the Enterprise.

I've had lots of conversations recently with people who are most jazzed by the Enterprise 2.0 wave because innovation and VC investment in the enterprise market has been so overshadowed by the consumer side of Web 2.0 When was the last truly innovative trend to affect end users in enterprises?
 
The Enterprise 2.0 movement is generating so much innovative energy - both on the vendor side (startups and large companies alike) and on the customer side - that it was the first time in years that I saw this much enthusiasm about enterprise software.

I'll be writing more about this in the next days and weeks and will flesh out some more reflections on what we're seeing in the market - obstacles, opportunities, and best practices.

CIO Magazine just published an article "How a Marketing Firm Implemented an Enterprise Wiki" based on an interview with Neil Callahan, President of CoActive Digital.  It's a well-written article with some great sound bites from Neil, and I thought I would point out my favorite bits.  These are some great patterns of success that we try to model with most of our customers.

The business leader led

What excites me the most about this Socialtext customer story is that this whole initiative was driven with business problems and issues in mind, and that the business leader (Neil) has been able to keep that perspective front and center throughout the selection, decision, first deployment, and ongoing rollout process.  I can definitely assert that this makes all the difference in social software success stories; too many times I've seen intiative stall where it was a technology team-driven initiative who then shops around looking for business sponsors.

The business leader found the right business-driven use case and team to start with

"Callahan says that moving workflows and processes from e-mail to wikis would only work if there was a good internal use case.  So he turned to his business development group."

This is spot on.  Matching the team (including the personality of that team's leader, the existing internpersonal dynamics of the group, the work culture, and the business priorities of the team) with the initiative really helps in the early days.  It's exciting to see these projects take on a life of their own - the team starts with the right initiative, there's some pre-built content and structure to help them get going, and then their "in the flow" collaboration really starts to build out the value of their workspace - and then other groups quickly take notice and follow their example.

The business leader got buy-in from the group and didn't meddle

This is a hard temptation or instinct to avoid.  I often have to advise the "Executive Sponsor" at our customers to "sponsor yes, inspect no".  In other words it's great to be a passionate and visible champion for the social software initiative at a very senior level of your organization, but be thoughtful and selective about the degree to which you insert yourself into the flow of conversation and dialog that emerges - especially early on.  (Of course there is a wide spectrum of cultural starting points; there are many places where I think executive involvement "in the flow" wouldn't be disruptive.)  Too much senior executive involvement can sometimes intimidate the rank and file from getting their feet wet and "learning in public" - which is a good thing to watch out for.

I can personally relate to this.  When I first joined Socialtext I was raring to go and get involved in everything.  I was commenting on almost every new page, asking questions, adding comments, etc., all with the intent of stimulating and encouraging open dialog, discussion, and debate.  Then someone pointed out to me that until people got to know me better some employees might be a little reluctant to engage in a public dialog with the new CEO.  I wouldn't say I "backed off" as much as "clarified my intent" more, which created a better sense of trust and productive transparency.

Come to think of it, isn't that just classic leadership learning?

 

Nicole Ferraro of Internet Evolution posted her interview with Socialtext CEO Eugene Lee.  He discusses the launch of SocialCalc, fundamental technology changes, productivity, email, adoption and marketing.  Here's a sample:

IE: Our site focuses on the future of the Internet. How do you view the future of the Internet? What emerging or yet-to-emerge technologies will be prominent going forward? What will die out or lose influence?

Lee: I think the patterns of ubiquity of technology, the long tail of specificity, those will continue to accelerate. You'll see more and more contact services capabilities being built. What's going to be the next wave is, how do you make it relevant? You're starting to see this with blended feeds across different social networks. The first step is aggregating -- but then it's like, that's too much and not specific to the problem I'm trying to solve. So while it's nice to know someone just read this book or someone just gave someone a hug, in the work environment I want to know who just answered my question, who was tagged with the expertise I was looking for, who actually has worked with this client before and can help me with this client problem I have now. Aggregating, and then making it relevant, and managing all of that is the next sort of challenge.