Web 2.0

Web 2.0 in the workplace: Say “hello,” not “goodbye”

How much of our personalities is being lost behind Web 2.0? We Facebook, we blog, we get hooked up in LinkedIn, we SMS and email and twitter – but who are we portraying and who exactly is on the other end? And I’m not talking about customizing your Ning network with your personal preferences or updating your Facebook status as a way of portraying who you are. I’m talking about the human interaction.

Not just in a “Kumbaya” sort of way— but from a professional standpoint. Especially with the current economic situation, where layoffs and hiring freezes are very real concerns – are we slowly phasing ourselves out by not coming in?

In my daily scan of compelling tech news and points of interest, I came across a “This I Believe” NPR recording titled “The power of hello.” Ready to slow my search and kick back with my earbuds, I listened to the podcast by Howard White, a Nike executive.

In his own words, White recounts a moment from his childhood that changed his life: His mother scolded him for not acknowledging a neighbor, saying, “You let that be the last time you ever walk by somebody and not open up your mouth to speak, because even a dog can wag its tail when it passes you on the street.”

White continues on to describe his role in Nike and how after years of conversation with the founder, he finally got the courage to ask him for a meeting and … the rest is history.

I know, I thought it sounded a bit Pursuit of Happyness, myself – but I immediately began to think of it in context of my own job. And yours.

Knowing the people you work with by face and not just by AIM screen name gets things done. You know who to ask, where to go and who will go the extra mile to help you make a deadline.

With more and more people telecommuting and instant messaging (in and out of the office), are we losing our office humanity? Rather, is being just a face in the crowd (or a name on the email list) making it easier for you to be overlooked as a strong, capable, employee who should be promoted and kept around? And for CIOs, do you look for someone with personality and team camaraderie when making hiring (or firing) decisions?

I certainly get caught up in the tech world. It’s exciting, it’s opened doors to worldwide communication and “anywhere connectivity.” But I also see the importance of making oneself known as a person and not just an employee or a name. Maybe it’s just nice to know your team and feel good in your work environment.

Maybe I’m not willing to settle for a toothy-grinned emoticon.

Obama’s iPhone App

The Obama campaign has introduced an iPhone application — Obama ‘08. Self-described as the “official, comprehensive connection to the heart of Barack Obama and Joe Biden’s campaign,” the application has features and tools to keep interested voters up to date.

The application’s features include up-to-date campaign news, a “call friends” feature (allowing the user to reach out to friends to remind them to vote, etc.), videos, photos and talking points (to help users convince their friends to vote for Obama).

The free application was developed in less than three weeks by volunteers and is available in the iTunes App Store. In his blog, Senator Obama’s staff notes, “This tool is designed to help you become more directly involved in our campaign to change the country.”

The country hasn’t been changed yet, but the Obama campaign has changed the way Americans connect and become involved during election season. Before Joe Biden was announced as his running mate, Obama promised to text message the news to those who texted VP to a designated number. He also offered up free Obama buttons via Facebook to those who requested them.

The Obama campaign has taken social networking to a whole new level – using technology to its advantage. And it’s certainly not afraid to try something new – blogging, Facebooking, texting, Twittering and creating iPhone applications.

For those of you who try it – phone a friend. Or at the very least, share your phone-a-friend option with Governor Palin.

Face-to-face social networking? Nticing

Finally, we may be seeing the end of the business card.

I always forget to bring my business cards to the events and conferences I attend. On the rare occasion I do remember to grab a small handful from my desk drawer, actually handing them out seems … so out of date. If I don’t even like carrying my own cards around, why should I expect someone else to want it? They smudge, they wrinkle (who wants to hand out a finger-printed and bent, tiny white card?) and they’re a bit of a hassle.

Plus, how many do they ship you in a box? A million? Who actually goes through all those? And information changes, you need to get another million shipped out to you and before you know it, you’re sitting on 5 million crinkled-up cards that no one (including you) actually wants.

When I attended the MIT EmTech Conference this week, I remembered to bring along my necessary (professional contact) evil. To my surprise, when I registered I did not get the usual name card on a promotional lanyard – I was handed what looked like a remote control (on a lanyard). When turned up to face me, it vibrated and beeped to life – displaying a brightly lit options screen and introducing itself as an nTAG.

Slightly bulky but surprisingly light, the nTag is built around the world’s first interactive name badge and provides a communication solution for the events and meetings industry. According to the site, the nTag (created in 2004 by Rick Borovoy and George Eberstadt) “pioneered face-to-face social networking solutions via wearable technology.”

Equipped with an electronic agenda, a messaging system, event information, your personal profile and contact information, and a way to wirelessly share this information nTAG to nTAG, you can practically say goodbye to your registration packet and business cards. And those “hello my name is” stickers? Never again. When you get within conversation-distance of someone wearing the nTAG, his name flashes up on your screen with the option to add as a contact.

On top of all that, the reusable devices eliminate all the waste (paper and time) of events packets.

All in all, the nTAG was useful and fun. I didn’t have to hand out a single business card (even though I’m dying to get rid of them) and I could update my profile and check out my contacts during the … umm … slower presentations.

The Wall Street Journal embraces Web 2.0

The Wall Street Journal launched a redesigned site Tuesday featuring Web 2.0 – but you have to pay to be a member.

Web 2.0, the user-generated content explosion, has changed the Internet. Social networking sites, blogs and wikis are everywhere, allowing users to create their own spaces and connect with people across the globe. Few social networking sites, however, charge a fee. I certainly would not have joined Facebook (at least initially) if I had to sign up for a paid subscription. But then again, the only purpose Facebook serves me is a social one. Once you start examining your professional social networking options – the cost may be worth it.

For a CIO looking to make contacts and be privy to a host of subscription-only media, WSJ.com may be the way to go.

The paid subscription includes some enticing extras. The self-guided tour (albeit a bit campy — inviting you to “stop by and discover” with “more content to uncover”) provides brief descriptions of the new site additions.

Overall, the redesign boasts an updated look and feel with enhanced story pages (video, audio and interactive graphics), news highlights (which can also be managed as a direct feed to Facebook, My Space, your desktop or even your blog), subscriber-exclusive content, a member community, Mobile Reader (a service for your BlackBerry so you can access your account on the go) and Journal Women (featuring women in business, politics, science, the arts and the world).

There is certainly a lot going on in the new and improved WSJ.com – and a lot of mixed reviews surrounding it.

On one side, some reviewers found the paid subscription to be a deterrent to new readers. Being blocked behind a pay wall could discourage casual browsers and they might look for news elsewhere. On the other side, satisfied reviewers were drawn to the exclusivity factor – developing contacts within, what some have referred to as, an elite group.

Do CIOs see the benefits of paid social networking subscriptions when so many of them are offered for free? Or has The Wall Street Journal missed the Web 2.0 boat?

Google on cloud computing and Enterprise 2.0

Oh, so we went to the Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Boston about three weeks ago and interviewed Rishi Chandra, a product manager with Google’s enterprise division.

What follows below is a half-hour of raw interview footage covering Enterprise 2.0 in general and Chandra’s thoughts on cloud computing specifically. So a lot of it is out of context, but we think it’s really worth watching.

And this isn’t even the royal ‘we’: Interviewers are myself, WhatIs.com’s Alex Howard and Barney Beal from the TechTarget Enterprise Applications Media Group. If it’s a really good question, you’re hearing Alex. If it’s meandering, you’re hearing me.

More (final) thoughts from Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Boston

Where are the users!?!?! No, seriously. There have been a few guys on stage presenting their companies’ Enterprise 2.0 strategies. Some are very interesting. Some, not so much. But I thought this was the big year. So how come I’ve got one vendor complaining to me that he got one lead yesterday. He needs something like five to seal the deal. I ran into a guy from Florida this morning who is looking for a social networking platform for his company. He hasn’t found one he liked, though. Everybody else is just like me, which is to say they’re here to write and talk about Enterprise 2.0, not to use it.

Speaking of, can you imagine a conference show full of vendors with no one to sell to? I’m imagining some no-rules Lord of the Flies thing, where they all pitch to each other while trying to knock their brethren off their booths. It’s madness down there.

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Quick thoughts from the Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Boston

FedEx Corp. CIO Rob Carter opens with a zinger: “I think if we did this conference where I’m from [Memphis] people would still be stumbling in from Beale Street right about now.” Actually, Rob, if they did this conference in Memphis, I’d just stay on Beale Street and deal with the consequences later. It’s Memphis. It’s awesome. End of story.

Carter jets for early Sox game, moved up to accommodate one-two punch with Celtics. All of Boston expected to be stumbling.

The fact that the CIA is managing an intelligence community version of Wikipedia is so cool I can barely stand it. Intellipedia leaders Don Burke and Sean Dennehy demo the unclassified version, which began with a page collecting government acronyms. Can we get the top-secret version into the next Bourne movie? Thanks.

Enterprise 2.0 is all about collaboration, and Dennehy uses this to pull off the rare IT conference joke that is actually funny. Describing the in-agency resistance to Intellipedia, he remarks: “In the intelligence community, we still call spies collaborators.”

Actually, this whole thing doesn’t really feel like an IT conference. It feels more like an insular group of startups, marketers, press and general ‘in’ folk. That’s fine. But it speaks to the infancy of the idea of Enterprise 2.0. There are no naysayers here. Everybody’s on board with the idea, and they’re trying to make it work.

You know how else I know this isn’t an IT conference? There are women here. Not as many as there are men, but the scales are certainly tipped a bit more toward equality.

Oh, and I can’t let this one go: All morning we heard about connectivity, collaboration and the cloud. We heard about all the great things businesses can do on the Web. And the Westin hotel’s Wi-Fi was acting up. Hey, I’m all for Enterprise 2.0. But it’s no good to me without an Internet connection.

A spare second for Microsoft SharePoint

Last week, I wrote for SearchCIO-Midmarket.com about this week’s Enterprise 2.0 conference and the possibility that 2008 may be a watershed year for the E2.0 (lingo!) thing.

Anyway, one guy wrote to me and pointed out that I neglected to mention Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007.

He’s got a point. Although the story didn’t need to bring up SharePoint, it probably should have. He referred me to a Forrester Research Inc. report that claims Sharepoint will “steamroll the market.”

Well, yes, I suppose it pretty much has and pretty much will. I went back to the notes I took when speaking with Joshua Holbrook, director of enterprise research at Yankee Group Research Inc.

Here’s Holbrook on SharePoint: “The one that certainly gets the most hype is Microsoft SharePoint.”

And: “They’re essentially giving it away for free … to large enterprises.”

I’m not convinced I was exactly derelict when I skipped over SharePoint in that story. But in the interest of mending fences, I’ll gladly mention here that Microsoft this morning announced a bunch of new SharePoint partners.

I’m a little bit 1984ed by blueKiwi Software’s promise to provide an “aggregated view of all conversations happening across the entire enterprise.” (According to Microsoft’s press release).

The other partnerships all seem reasonable and useful.

Microsoft’s other SharePoint news today is the release of the PKS (Podcasting Kit for SharePoint). This is part of Microsoft’s “commitment to bring the latest innovating trends of social networking technologies to its customers and partners.” I especially like Microsoft’s insistence that the PKS works on “[Microsoft} Zune [MP3 player] devices” and “any other devices that play podcasts.” What, there’s no major player in the MP3 game?

Defining Enterprise 2.0

Just a quick note that we’ve climbed the mountain, seen the top and come back down exhausted but holding tight to the elusive definition of Enterprise 2.0.

Honestly, when it comes to defining anything 2.0, you’re pretty much in for a head-wrenching good time.

I took on this little task at a barbecue last month. You know, the kind near the beginning of the summer when everything seems good and you casually agree to write definitions for WhatIs.com? It was one of those.

Anyway, I dug in for the bulk of a day researching the handful of decent definition attempts already out there, and then read and talked about Enterprise 2.0 as much as I could with just about anyone who would chat.

Another afternoon of writing and I had a first draft. I can’t say it was great, but I can say it was good enough that WhatIs.com Assistant Editor Alexander B. Howard beat up on it a little bit and came out with something that really works.

Alright, long enough. Here she be: Enterprise 2.0 definition.

Sarah Lacy says Facebook doesn’t need my best friend. He doesn’t seem to care.

Sarah Lacy, author of Once You’re Lucky, Twice You’re Good: The Rebirth of Silicon Valley and the Rise of Web 2.0, has blogged about me blogging about her book.

So I feel compelled to respond. That, and I’m sitting in my kitchen, listening to Old 97’s and a bit bored on account of everyone I would be interviewing taking an early weekend. Can’t blame them. Weather’s stunning here in Boston.

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