Year in Review

Just the other day, I was in a meeting with eTouch CEO Ani Gadre and some other teammates. We were talking about what a challenging year it's been in many ways, but how much the wiki and enterprise 2.0 industries have grown - new companies, products and game-changing ideas. Even amidst the global crises, incredible things and innovation have happened.

Ani gave me some of his thoughts. You can read the rest on his eTouch blog.

"The term 'enterprise 2.0' has become more widely used and accepted as a valuable business tool. Today, enterprise 2.0 is about companies truly encouraging and foster collaborative environments, whether through integrative wikis or Twitter-like tools for the workplace or even giving remote workers better access to corporate intranets."

"I remain quite optimistic about the business outlook for 2010," he added. "There are companies in a variety of industries starting out with enterprise 2.0 projects or deployments. We will continue to offer them services that meet their needs and product features that help them stay ahead of the game."

"We're excited about the potential for SamePage in the new year."

I will certainly raise a glass and make a New Year's toast to that.

Wishing everyone a joyous holiday season and a new year full of happiness, good health and success.

Enterprise 2.0 Conference Musings

My company, eTouch SamePage, opted out of exhibiting this year at Enterprise 2.0 Conference San Francisco. I did, however, take to the Moscone Center and check out the event. After a day there attending only the keynotes and walking around the expo hall -- no, I didn't spring for a full conference pass, so I missed the smaller, more targeted discussions -- I can honestly say that I don't regret not exhibiting this year.

That's not to say the event was bad. It wasn't. Good things will always come out of getting industry thought leaders in one place at one time. There were interesting discussions scheduled as breakout sessions and some of the keynotes and panels, particularly the Andrew McAfee-led Booz Allen Hamilton case study, was in-depth for a general panel and offered good insight into corporate thinking.

But in walking the expo floor and milling about in the hall, I didn't feel any great energy or excitement. The expo floor, even combined with VoiceCon, was small without any tremendous standouts. Clearly, that's dictated primarily by the current economic climate - vendors just don't have the extra cash these days to exhibit. Or, if they do exhibit, it's pretty barebones. What I'm talking about is just excitement, a buzz in the air that you often feel at events like this. It comes from entrepreneurs with great ideas and potential clients itching to learn more with journalists and analysts trying to get as many details as possible. Walking around the conference, I didn't feel it.

I've been reading tons of post-even wrap-ups by journalists, bloggers, etc. I'm not the only one with this opinion; although some say there's a rationale for it. Tony Byrne of CMS Watch writes:

"My first observation is that the conference vibe was much more practical, and much less like a religious revival meeting than previous Enterprise 2.0 events. Some gurus complained about a lack of passion and energy, but I think Andrew McAfee set a great tone in his keynote when he exhorted the audience to replace liberation theology with more realistic goals."

Oliver Marks wrote about his post-conference thoughts and posted a video of a discussion between him and McAfee.

I know there's a lot more coverage out there, and I look forward to reading more. Perhaps that's where the excitement will come....after everyone's thoughts have had a chance to simmer, and conversation follow-up moves into high gear as new relationships flourish. There was a lot of brainpower and entrepreneurship in the Moscone Center for those few days, obviously. And I am very excited to see what happens as the discussions continue.

What did you think of Enterprise 2.0 San Francisco?



Follow our discussion on Twitter at @samepagewiki.

What's Fun Got To Do With It?

If someone told me piano stairs or flooring of any kind could be funny outside of the 1988 movie "Big" starring Tom Hanks, I'd be surprised. But Volkswagon caught people's attention with its piano stairs viral campaign.



I only relate this to enterprise 2.0 because the video was mentioned in a recent blog post, "Maximizing Business Value from Enterprise 2.0 through Fun & Motivation" by Rex Lee. He highlights:

"Fun, as a design principle shouldn't be overlooked as it impacts the application design from look and feel, through context, content and process. It also should be addressed when designing events leveraging social computing technologies."

Clearly, Volkswagon is taking a fun approach to impact people and communicate its message. I wonder how many other companies actually practice that kind of approach?

It seems that fun is more often reserved for business-to-consumer type businesses - and then, often only those with big budgets AND you're not really sure how much fun they're having. But I don't notice as many FUN approaches in B2B environments. Perhaps fun doesn't equal serious in many minds and serious is key.

Consultant and writer Bill Ives chimed in with his own post and reports that he's had success integrating this (gasp!) fun concept:

"I have often been involved in knowledge management implementations where we introduced fun as part of the awareness campaign. This approach succeeds even more if it makes the work more fun, such as meeting new interesting people to collaborate with and finding out more about your colleagues."

Wikis and some other other enterprise 2.0 solutions are easy to make fun because they involve collaboration and focus on fostering creativity. So fun can be brought in at the employee-relations level or with external audiences.

"The power of fun is often forgotten," opines Rex. Hear, hear!

Have you ever focused on making sure that fun is part of a KM or other type of campaign? Tell me about it.

Death Sounds So Final

There are regular blog posts, tweets and discussions about the purported 'death of email.' Talk of 'death' is a lot more morbid and frightening than saying 'decrease' or 'dwindle' or some other much less dramatic word. Ooooh, beware the decrease of emails. Nope, doesn't do a thing. You?

In a recent post on the Enterprise 2.0 blog, Stowe Boyd wonders what dead means, exactly, when we talk about the death of email?

According to Boyd, he first talked about the death of email in 2004-2005 and was nearly 'tarred and feathered.' Still, today he sticks with his original hypothesis that email will slowly, but surely disappear. He writes:

"In time, it will fall off the edge, like fax is now that we can scan and send attachments more easily than using dedicated fax machines. We will find that email will be left with a short list of uses, like monthly mailing from the bank, or travel intineraries from Expedia. These relative impersonal communications with companies will be the final resting ground for email, and then, even that will wink out when a better metaphor for social interaction with companies becomes dominant. And I doubt that we will miss it when it’s gone, either."

Boyd refers to a recent article by Jessica Vascellaro article in The Wall Street Journal that begins, "Email has had a good run as king of communications. But its reign is over.. "

As new tools develop for the enterprise, perhaps it will become more easy for the average, non-social-media saavy user to find ways to communicate electronically that aren't email. Then it will become more accepted -- as the fax machine did. Most of these 'replacement' tools are so new, it will be a while before we see what sticks. And there are so many new tools, it can be overwhelming for people.

When our team here at SamePage is thinking about wiki enhancements, we take into consideration the needs of all types of workers - those email-reliant included. We look for ways to better connect the dots for email users to newer technologies, like a wiki. We strive to keep it simple with features that more easily integrate email and the wiki so the central repository can be built up and real conversations can happen.

Jessica inserts a bit of editorial at the tail end of her article. She writes:

"But there's another way to think about all this. You can argue that because we have more ways to send more messages, we spend more time doing it. That may make us more productive, but it may not. We get lured into wasting time, telling our bosses we are looking into something, instead of just doing it, for example. And we will no doubt waste time communicating stuff that isn't meaningful, maybe at the expense of more meaningful communication. Such as, say, talking to somebody in person."

But in-person vs. electronic communications? Well, that's just a whole 'nother bag of worms.

Laughing at Misconceptions

Misconceptions abound in every industry, but we have to be able to laugh at ourselves, right? I saw this cartoon on Content Management Connection. In the blogger circle, the cartoon is actually courtesy of Geek and Poke and was inspired by Dion Hinchcliffe's article "14 Reasons Why Enterprise 2.0 Projects Fail."

Do some people position enterprise 2.0 as the panacea for all enterprise ills? Well, not really. But certainly that's how some evangelism is perceived. And yes, there are enterprise 2.0 failures alongside of tremendous success stories. We have to try to understand perceptions and be realistic in our evangelism to help create realistic expectations about what enterprise 2.0 applications and software can help companies to accomplish. Because they are just tools; tools that are only as strong as the people who use them. As Dion Hinchiffe writes: "....this seems to mean Enterprise 2.0 projects are more likely to fail due to seeming larger than usual lack of alignment and organizational backing."

If companies expect to launch an application or software that will magically cure all their collaboration and knowledge management challenges, well then...Abracadabra!

"A Wiki Wonderland"

"A Wiki Wonderland." That was the headline to the KMWorld article about the launch of SamePage version 4.2. You gotta love that....at least I did.

What makes it a wonderland? Several valuable features and enhancements to the product that will truly benefit enterprises of all sizes. Interested? Let me tell you more.

The features we've added will better meet the needs of a remote and social-media friendly knowledge management workforce, including business travelers and wiki administrators.

Changes to this version include:

- Dynamic portal-like dashboard with drag and drop widgets that can be personalized at company and individual levels, eliminating the need for a separate intranet portal product.
- Advanced email integration that enables remote workers to more easily 'wikify' content from any smartphone.
- A wide selection of new and enhanced plug-ins that can be customized for each enterprise, including tag cloud and project member plug-ins, among others.
- More detailed analytics, usage and content reports for administrators.
- Ratings on Blog posts and more blog analytics.
- Support for Microsoft Office 2007
- WYSIWYG enhancements to further simplify the user interface.
- Increased privileges for the system user or administrator to manage pages and projects.



Intrigued or interested about being a part of our "wiki wonderland?" You can start by signing up for a free 30-day trial from etouch.net, direct message (DM) us on Twitter @samepagewiki or email us at sales@etouch.net.

Lucky Number 8

I’m a big fan of Stewart Mader’s blog. He offers strong insights and keeps a steady flow of dialogue and new information coming to his readers. Recently, he wrote ‘8 Things You Can Do With an Enterprise Wiki,’ and I see it was picked up by other bloggers, tweeted and so on. Actually, he wrote it for Digital Landfill, and it was initially published there.

Clearly, there are a lot of things a company can use a wiki for. It varies widely, depending on what kind of work the company does and what it’s goals are for instituting a wiki. But Stewart takes a general approach that can apply to ANY company in ANY industry. I think that’s why this post has had such wide appeal.

Stewart’s 8 ways:
1- Meeting agendas
2- Meeting minutes and action items
3- Project management
4- Gather input
5- Build documentation
6- Assemble and reuse information
7- Employee handbook
8- Knowledge base (the one key external wiki benefit mentioned)

“Let’s look at eight ways a wiki can help you readjust your valuable time to get more of your essential work done, spend less time on meetings and redundant activities, and more efficiently assemble, refine and reuse valuable information,” he writes. That pretty well sums up the overarching theme here – that enterprise wikis save time, reduce redundancies and create more effective way to funnel information through team members or the company as a whole.

You know you hate it when you email a draft presentation or document to multiple people and then have to marry all the edits that come in at various times on different versions, don’t you? With wikis, that becomes a thing of the past. And no one likes it when they have to search their hard drives for all the relevant files for a new employee because there’s no central repository.

“As the wiki is used to build and maintain project proposals, documents, and other reusable pieces of information, the process of creating future versions becomes easier,” writes Stewart. “An organization’s wiki is an ideal place to provide general-use information to an internal audience.”

He doesn’t get much into the creative and collaborative benefits of enterprise wikis, but for someone who’s becoming educated about enterprise 2.0, this is a great and quick read. It helps put things into perspective.

Don't forget to follow @samepagewiki on Twitter.