conference

Jun 17 2008   11:08PM GMT

Podcast: Live from Enterprise 2.0, discussing how to use social media

Posted by: Alexander Howard
Web 2.0, podcast, enterprise, Technology, new media, MP3, social publishing, event, WhatIs.com, forum, feedback, community, interactive media, social networking, communications, Web applications, cloud computing, the cloud, government, conference, enterprise 2.0

Last week at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Boston, I was pulled into a podcast with Chris Brogan, Aaron Strout and Sam Lawrence. We talked about what was going on at the conference, what we’d learned so far and what strategies individuals, businesses and enterprise might find useful in using social media.

Download the MP3

These guys are deeply immersed in the enterprise social software world, aka enterprise 2.0. Aaron is a VP at Mzinga, Sam is the CMO for Jive Software and Chris Brogan, is, well, everywhere in the social media world, along with being a VP at CrossTechMedia.

P.S. Feel free to call me “Andy” from here on out.

Jun 15 2008   11:27AM GMT

What is Twitter? Is this distributed microblogging platform ready for the enterprise?

Posted by: Alexander Howard
messaging, Networking, wireless, small business, business, Mobile, applications, news, Web 2.0, enterprise, software, IT marketing, media, Technology, Web services, fun, video, new media, Internet, innovation, useful, aggregator, cool, culture, free, interesting, exploration, reviews, Silicon Valley, resource, collaboration, forum, wiki, conversation, community, social, interactive media, Web analytics, widgets, tool, tutorial, howto, trend, social networking, blogging, service, buzz, communications, Web applications, buzzword, word meanings, geek, conference, enterprise 2.0

Given that I’ve become an avid user of Twitter, I’m frequently asked what, exactly, Twitter is and what in the world it’s useful for.

Isn’t it just it a presence messaging on steroids? What about a free global SMS addressbook? Or a hyperlink-enabled persistent chatroom? To be fair, I don’t hear that last often, but summing up what Twitter is and what it does is challenging — especially in 140 characters or less. Twitter’s own “social messaging utility where people can communicate in real-time” comes close. Twitter’s creators know better than most what they’ve created and how it works.

Other takes on Twitter range far and wide:

• Caroline Middlebrook described Twitter as “an incredibly powerful marketing & community building tool.”
• In a long post that describes how he discovered Twitter and how SocialText is using it, Ross Mayfield called Twitter “mobile social software that lets you broadcast and receive short messages with your social network” aka, “Continuous partial presence.”
• Wendy Boswell writes that Twitter is a “mini-blogging platform that you can use to send messages of 140 characters or less to family, friends, or just the general Web community.”
• Dave Winer explains Twitter as a network of users on a microblogging platform with its own open-identity system and ecosystem.
• Ed Kohler posted that Twitter is “a social networking site based around text messaging.”

WhatIsTwitter.com is addressing the question by hosting a contest that asks you to explain Twitter in 140 seconds. (It runs through 6/23/08, if you’d like to enter.)

When I tweeted the question to the Twitter community, Robbert replied that Twitter was “a great way to get in touch and ‘meet’ very interesting people!” and Liz tweeted back that “Twitter is a window into other people’s worlds. Scholars can get insulated so it is nice to hear the ups & downs in other fields.”

In the end, however, I think a shade on Wikipedia’s current definition comes closest: a free distributed social networking and microblogging service that may be updated from the Web, IM, cellphone or a desktop client.

The question of what, exactly, you can DO with Twitter is something else altogether. The session at Enterprise 2.0 devoted to microblogging addressed exactly that question. The discussion was lively, both in person and on Twitter itself, as we could all see on the screen as Laura Fitton (@pistachio) Twittered about the event.

Even though at least one member in the audience questioned the etiquette of such an embedded distraction, with respect to her engagement with the rest of the panel, the bulk of the conversation between the other Twitterers in the audience and those present was inquisitive, supportive and engaged. You can see the various streams of conversation around the session and the conference in general at Twemes.com by using the hashtags #e20, #en20 and #ent20.

With the notable exception of Loren Feldman from 1938Media, the panelists supported the idea of Twitter or something like it (call it “X enterprise microblogging platform”) being both useful and present within an enterprise in the near future.

So what’s the story? Have I lost you yet? Do many of the terms above need further explanation? A colleague looked at me recently with a quirked eyebrow and asked me if I seriously expected her to ask conference-going IT professionals to “Tag their tweets on Twitter” and all I could do was grin.

Like so many emergent services and ecosystems on the Web, Twitter has evolved its own lingo. I’ve blogged about Twitter for WhatIs.com before, of course, but it’s worth reviewing the basics. Here’s a quick guide to get you started and give you some of your own”Twitter-fu.”

The Basics: For the novice Twitter user

By now, the story of how Twitter came to be has been extensively documented, so I’ll leave it to others to tell the tale. Check out this great video from Common Craft, Twitter in Plain English:



You can update Twitter from Twitter.com, which is how the majority of users access the service, from instant messenger or by texting to “40404″ with a cellphone registered with the service. If you do use a cellphone, remember that there may be associated charges for text messages of .10 or .15 per message. Early adopters of the Twitter and the iPhone discovered to their chagrin that thousands of texts got quite expensive. If you’re planning on using your cellphone to tweet, seriously consider investing in an unlimited text messaging plan.

No matter what, you’ll need to register first. Choose the username that fits you, your brand, your company, service, product or simply your whim. Try to make it as short as possible; you want to reserve as much space as possible for others to use in replies, since they’ll need to include your username in a reply.

Here’s where one of the conventions that Twitter has introduced into the Web comes into play. Instead of remembering both a username and a domain name ( johndoe at yahoo.com), all you have to do is remember a username (@johndoe). Just type in go to twitter.com, add the user name to the url and click “follow.”

If you want to publicly reply to a tweet from another user, just include @johndoe in your message and he or she will automatically see it. Just click “replies” on your Twitter page to see how has responded to you. You can also direct message another user by typing “d johndoe” — but only if they are following you. This is quite useful for conversation you don’t want the entire Web to be involved in.

There are other etiquette concerns, paralleling netiquette on the rest of the Web; read Chris Brogan’s post Considering Social Media Etiquette and Grammer Girl’s Twitter Style Guide to get a flavor of the conventions at play.

Ready to go? Start at the Twitter homepage, which includes a useful Twitter FAQ TwitterFeed. Each time you post to Twitter, it’s called a “tweet.” Each tweet has its own URL, just like a “normal” blog post has a permalink. Twitter’s 140 character limit means that brevity is crucial, so using URL shorteners like TinyURL.com is a must. You can make your first update just like a blog post on Blogger or Wordpress. “Hello World” would work, if you’re stuck for inspiration.

Twitter isn’t much fun, however, if you’re just twittering into the ether. To get the most from the service, you’ll need to find some friends or find interesting feeds to follow, like @MarsPhoenix or @BarackObama. MC Hammer is out there too, by the way. You can always just search for people you know on Twitter or go to a user’s profile page if you already know someone you want to “follow.” Once you get rolling, you can use a service like WhoShouldIFollow.com to find more friends.

Following means that you’ll get all of that person’s updates, so choose carefully. If you choose to follow top Twitterers, expect to see a lot of messages. This is a great way to discover interesting new people, however, so even if you don’t follow @Scobleizer, @LeoLaporte , @JasonCalacanis, @KevinRose or other A-list bloggers or “cewebrities,” make sure to check their profiles to see who they’ve discovered. You can always unsubscribe if someone posts content or links you don’t want to see in your feed.

The other symbol you’ll see often is the hashtag, which is the Twitter version of a social bookmark. Think of them as a way to add your tweets to niche conversations, specific events or around products or services. Learn more at hashtags.org. I mentioned them earlier when I listed the various hashtags for the Enterprise 2.0 Conference. By adding a # sign and then a series of numbers and letters afterwards (try #beatLA, for Celtics-lovers) your tweets will be aggregated into the great conversation.

Twitter has opened its application programming interface (API) to the development community , which has responded by creating many desktop clients that you can use to update the service, manage your messages and friends.

To use my favorite client, Twirl, you’ll need to download Adobe AIR and install Twirl as a desktop client. Twirl includes a URL shortener and many other features that, in my humble opinion, richly enhance your Twitter experience. Twirl can also be configured to post automatically to Pownce and Jaiku, two other popular microblogging services. If you use a Mac, Twitterific might be a good fit, too.

Rafe Needleman has posted a terrific “Newbie’s Guide to Twitter” over at Webware.com, which I highly recommend if you’re still having trouble getting started.

Getting into the conversation: For the intermediate Twitter user

Now that you’ve gotten your feet wet, here are some more services to expand your horizons.

You can monitor whatever keyword you choose, like your name or your company’s brandname, at Tweetscan. Even if you don’t choose to use Twitter actively, this is an important component of brand and reputation management.

You can see threaded conversations with Quotably. This is a useful tool if you want to see an entire back and forth between users in one place.

Similarly, Summize helps you track Twitter conversations in real-time.

Use Mobile Twitter if you have a BlackBerry, Treo or other smartphone with a browser or try out Hahlo.com if you have an iPhone.

There’s a dedicated BlackBerry client called TwitterBerry too, which is worth looking into if you’re a “CrackBerry Addict.”

Quakk, Tiny Twitter, TwitToday and Twobile all work as clients for Windows Mobile 5.

Facebook has a Twitter application that embeds your tweets in your profile and allows you to tweet from within the social networking environment.

You can display your latest tweets automatically on your blog with an embedded widget, like this Twitter widget for Wordpress or the Twitter Widget for Blogger.

Or, if you want to hook up your blog’s feed to Twitter, Twitterfeed will be helpful.

Watch Twittervision to see a mashup of a global Google Map and location-specific tweets.

Use TwitPic to share photos on Twitter.

For the Advanced Twitter User

If you’ve gotten this far and have been nodding your head all the time, waiting for something new, congratulations: Your Twitter-Fu is strong. The Twitter Fan Wiki should be your resource of choice, where new applications, services and software is aggregated and vetted by a strong user community. If you’re an alpha geek, make sure to check out the scripts page, which is chock full of geeky goodness.

I’m far from the first to try to explain what Twitter is an how it works, of course. Make sure to check out Tweeternet.com for an excellent explanation and outstanding list of Twitter tools.

If you’ve mastered the basic and intermediate tools and technologies, consider the following ways that Twitter has been put to good use:

• As a social justice tool, where people in critical situations can get the news out quickly
• As a crisis response and management tool (check out @RedCross)
• As a presence tool for emergency workers or individuals in a natural disaster zone

If you have questions, thoughts, additional resources, uses or any other response to this post, please use the comments. And, of course, Twitter about it. Do you think Twitter — or a client like it — is right for your business or enterprise? Let us know!

Jun 13 2008   1:45PM GMT

What is Unity? Lockheed-Martin’s implementation of a social computing platform wows Enterprise 2.0 conferees.

Posted by: Alexander Howard
Google, Microsoft, Networking, business, applications, Web 2.0, enterprise, software, Technology, search engine, search, innovation, feeds, portal, social bookmarking, social publishing, interesting, invention, collaboration, wiki, community, tool, howto, information, trend, social networking, CMS, blogging, communications, Web applications, buzzword, software development, conference, enterprise 2.0

One of the unexpected hits of the Enterprise 2.0 Conference this past week was a presentation by Lockheed-Martin on Unity, its social computing platform. One of the world’s largest defense contractors would seem an unlikely candidate for early adoption of enterprise 2.0 technologies, or at least that was the impression when the session kicked off. By the end of the hour, audience members were asking “Where can I buy it?”

[Image credit: TechLuver.com]

Shawn Dahlen and Christopher Keohan talked at length about what they’d learned over the course of eighteen months developing the platform, kicking off their presentation by noting that there was a compelling need in government sector to collaborate through social media. Chris noted that embracing social computing at Lockheed Martin a major component of recruiting talented Generation Y IT workers, the so-called “millenials,” as showing the company’s prowess in the adoption of cutting edge tools was a key differentiator.

Before Unity was implemented, the state of collaboration at their enterprise should be quite familiar to most corporate workers : email, meetings and office docs like Powerpoint presentations emailed around as attachments. “Project Unity” was conceived as a way of applying Web2.0 technologies for “mission success.” To that end, the team resolved to provide a user experience employees would love, address “what was in it for them” and balance the need to share vs the need to know — crucial in a defense contractor. Unity’s designers wanted to foster a social computing ecosystem around a standardized platform, integrating blogs, wikis and other documents into their current platform. Over time, they added discussion forums, a social bookmarking tool called “uBookmark” and weekly activity reporting to capture usage and adoption patterns. They included a suggestion tool to solicit community insights on the project as it rolled out and created an internal homepage to aggregate popular content. Unity’s internal team of developers also made a priority of maintaining a cohesive user experience and to ensuring that all information could be both feed-enabled and integrated.

How did they pull it off? By integrating Google enterprise search appliance (GSA) , Microsoft’s Windows Sharepoint Services (WSS) and Newsgator’s Enterprise Server. Take a look at this demonstration of Social Sites 2.0 to get a feel for what this looks like. They Unity development team took a close look at how to use social computing tools in an everyday business context and took the time to understand how they would integrate and evolve from the existing email/Powerpoint/meeting model.

The crucial question, asked over and over again this week, was addressed head-on by Unity’s designers: “What is the value of social networking in the enterprise?”

Their answer was, in the end, simple: Being able to watch what other people are doing, easily, and then being able to search it and ask questions raises productivity and leads to improved collaboration and knowledge exchange. Instead of tracking what your friends are doing on, say, Facebook with a “friend feed,” an enterprise derives value from tracking an activity stream of interconnected colleagues. At any point, a worker can see what others are working on, access shared documents and ask questions on shared virtual workspaces or directly to the relevant decision maker or technologist.

Lockheed-Martin built the basic Unity platform in 07 and then ran a beta pilot of it over the course of the year with 40 engineers building, testing and experimenting with the release. After the initial release, it took just six months for a second iteration that addressed both information security and legal issues.

A crucial question that they were asked to account for again and again will be familiar to CIOs: How did they quantify the return on investment (ROI) for the dedication of internal resources and purchase of software? Each time, the traditional productivity savings of a user finding information was a factor. What really sold them, however, was the soft case of customers interested in their social computing initiative. Unity helped in Lockheed-Martin’s bidding process, especially proposals that involved knowledge managememt.

As the project rolled out, a crucial component was the in development and distribution of a “collaboration playbook.” New standards for playbook and best practices were laid out in its pages. For instance, as a team member, you should ask questions on a group page, not wander over to ask or send a broadcast email; this helps to capture questions and answers for everyone. Adding to documentation whenever possible was crucial, along with teaching people the power of linking and understanding which communication type made sense for different business cases: blog posts, wikis, email, virtual conferences or in-person meetings. In the end, the Unity team created the playbook as much for themselves as they worked as for the company as a whole, “eating their own dogfood.” They used a project management office (PMO) blog to keep colleagues up to date about what the dev team was doing.

One of their other key discoveries was that pervasive enterprise search is key to keeping documents both relevant and accessible.

What’s next for the team? Adding filters to content that depend upon the clearance of those accessing it. In highly classified work, user-assignable taxonomies are crucial for opening up content for collaboration while maintaining information security. Also in the works are adding recommended content, similar to the Digg-model of social news, employee profiles, export control filters and network-based search.

If you’re looking for a great case study for enterprise 2.0 adoption, look up Unity.

Jun 13 2008   12:14PM GMT

What are the characteristics of enterprise 2.0 technologies?

Posted by: Alexander Howard
business, applications, Web 2.0, data, Web services, Internet, social bookmarking, social publishing, futurism, event, collaboration, wiki, community, social networking, buzz, communications, Web applications, buzzword, conference, enterprise 2.0

At the Enterprise 2.0 Conference this past week in Boston, Dion Hinchliffe offered a three-hour workshop focused on understanding both the progress of social software in enterprises and then drilling down into the details of implementation and techniques.

In Hinchcliffe’s “State of Enterprise 2.0″ address (hereafter referred to as “E2.0″, he noted that in terms of the hype cycle around the term over the past two years, there used to be “lots of talking, little doing.”

That’s changed. Throughout the demo pavilion at the conference, dozens of of software makers presented competing and collaborative products that are viable tools for bringing social computing within the enterprise. The buzz was no longer so much about “what is enterprise 2.0″ as “how do I start implementing it at my organization” and “how did you apply these tools to your business case.” Two years ago, very few people could create blog or wiki page on an intranet. When Dion polled the crowd for how many attendees could create either of those social software types, many hands went up. The devil, of course, is in the details.

The “blurring of the lines between consumer and social media” and transition from “top down term for bottom up world” presents challenges on both technical and cultural levels. Instead of single locked-down systems, workers can collaborate online — and if the tools aren’t available behind the firewall, consumer versions are being brought in, with associated issues of security, compliance and best practices.
Much of what we’ve learned about how networked applications work best is coming from the consumer Web. This represents  a shift from historic trends, where enterprise architectures were the normal innovative path. In other words, the story begins with  Web 2.0.  There have been subtle changes in the way the Web being used. Software makers have shifts more control to users, in terms of the content created, how it is structured and the processes involved in production or implementation. Simpler software models that embrace the intrinsic power of networks are popping up, including virtually free applications that almost anyone can learn easily. The Web is now a platform, with “data as the next ‘Intel Inside.’” We’re seeing the end of software release cycle and have entered the age of the perpetual beta — just look at Google applications in the cloud.

As Hinchcliffe noted repeatedly, success stories are emerging, with reports of improved communication and collaboration, heightened productivity and cross-pollination between previously “siloed” groups or disparate locations.

Hinchcliffe noted other patterns emerging from enterprise 2.0 implementations, including the need for:

• Community management, both in terms of technologies to track usage and behavior and community managers to use them
• Social media guidelines for workers, with respect to the type of content posted and best practices for blogs, wikis or group pages
• Change management methodologies
• Driving adoption of E2.0 by commitment at the executive levels of an organization, especially CXOs, CIOs and CTOs
• Governance of E2.0 communities, like “How do you remove a post or link? Or make one? Which tags should you never use?”
• Measurement of outcomes, including ROI and social media metrics for usage and

Currently, cultural, infrastructure and security concerns are holding back adoption.  E2 .0 tools are in their infancy — integrated search almost never is integrated, for instance. And organizationss with low levels of knowledge workers will benefit much less from these tools.
That being said, Hinchliffe asserted that the Cluetrain Manifesto was right all along . 10 years later, much of what was contained in those 95 theses was dead on — markets are conversations. He also offered one of the best condensed definitions for Enterprise 2.0 I’d heard:

“Networked applications that explicitly leverage network effects.” — Tim O’Reilly
In this sense, a network effect is when a good or service has more value the more that other people have it too.” (Wikipedia). Examples of this abound, like postal mail, aka “snail mail,” the telephone and telegraph, email, IM, Web pages, blogs or anything with an open network structure, including microblogging hybrids like Twitter. T

There’s an ongoing shift from institutional controls of information and video to collaborative filtering and reporting, as central production is moved to distributed networks of peer production.

So, what is E2.0? Emegent, freeform, social applications for use within the enterprise. The use of blogs and wikis to capture information, with social networks of peers using shared virtual workspaces. Globally-visible persistant collaboration with consistently verified improvements in productivity and innovation.
If this sounds a bit heady to you, it is. The bubble of Web 2.0 hype has moved into big business. The question now is how managers and administrators will implement wikis and other forms of enterprise social software. Fortunately, several case studies emerged from the conference that offer some insight, including Intellipedia, Serena Software and Lockheed-Martin. I’ll be exploring the latter in a later post.

Jun 12 2008   9:40PM GMT

What is Microsoft’s vision for social computing? Sharepoint’s Community Lead offers some perspective.

Posted by: Alexander Howard
Microsoft, business, interoperability, Web 2.0, software, Database, Web services, video, YouTube, social publishing, event, collaboration, CMS, Web applications, software development, the cloud, Windows, conference, enterprise 2.0

Lawrence Liu is a Senior Technical Product Manager and the Community Lead for SharePoint Products and Technologies at Microsoft. In the short video below, he talks with WhatIs.com’s Alex Howard on the demo floor at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Boston about the evolution of social software, the development of Sharepoint and the extension of the collaborative software’s capabilities and integration with Office products. Liu also discusses interoperability, support for ODF and PDF within Sharepoint and possibilities for Sharepoint online as part of Microsoft’s long term cloud computing strategy.

Lawrence was kind enough to take a few minutes to talk thoughtfully about what his team is doing. Many thanks!

Jun 10 2008   12:16PM GMT

What is enterprise 2.0? Cloud computing proponents mix with social software vendors in Boston.

Posted by: Alexander Howard
open source, Microsoft, Networking, business, interoperability, news, Web 2.0, enterprise, software, Technology, Web services, video, new media, Internet, innovation, useful, social bookmarking, social publishing, interesting, invention, event, entrepeneurship, startup, collaboration, participation, Development, wiki, conversation, streaming, productivity, spreadsheet, trend, social networking, buzz, communications, Web applications, interface, buzzword, software development, cloud computing, the cloud, word meanings, conference, demonstration, enterprise 2.0

The question of creating an agreed upon definition for enterprise 2.0 continues to come up here on the Boston waterfront, as hundreds of software executives, CIOs, software vendors, media and curious technologists mix and explore the latest in enterprise collaboration technologies at Enterprise 2.0. Zack Church and I collaborated last month to formulate this:

Enterprise 2.0 is the strategic integration of Web 2.0 technologies into an enterprise’s intranet, extranet and business processes. Enterprise 2.0 implementations generally use a combination of social software and collaborative technologies like blogs, RSS, social bookmarking, social networking and wikis. Most enterprise 2.0 technologies, whether homegrown, free or purchased, emphasize employee, partner and consumer collaboration. Such technologies may be in-house or Web-based. Companies using YouTube for vlogging or a private Facebook group as a modified intranet, for instance, are implementing a form of enterprise 2.0.

The conference organizers have formulated the following definition, loosely based upon Harvard Business School professor Andrew McAffee’s definition for enterprise 2.0:

Enterprise 2.0 is the term for the technologies and business practices that liberate the workforce from the constraints of legacy communication and productivity tools like email. It provides business managers with access to the right information at the right time through a web of inter-connected applications, services and devices. Enterprise 2.0 makes accessible the collective intelligence of many, translating to a huge competitive advantage in the form of increased innovation, productivity and agility.

So what’s the story? Buzzword akin to Web 2.0 or something “real?”

In a session exploring the state of Enterprise 2.0, however, Dion Hinchliffe offered up one of the best, most succinct definitions to date that moves beyond the specifics to a more overarching purpose:

Enterprise/Web 2.0 is made up of “networked applications that explicitly leverage network effects.” — Tim O’Reilly.

In this case, a network effect is “When a good or service has more value the more that other people have it too.” (Wikipedia)

Here at the conference, over 60 different vendors are demonstrated different kinds of communication and productivity software that creates such network effects by helping workers to collaborate more easily, efficiently and socially. We’ll be posting videos, articles, interviews and other content over the next two days, as long as the wifi allows. Livestreaming has been balky, due to heavy network use, but you can check in on WhatIs.com’s live conference coverage of Enterprise 2.0 at uStream.com to see if we’re online. Check back here for more coverage on cloud computing, Dan Bricklin on SocialText’s new social spreadsheet or demonstrations of new social software like Newsgator’s Social Sites 2.0, a plugin that turns MSFT Sharepoint Server into a Facebook-like environment.

If you’re at the conference floor and would like to demonstrate your software or talk about enterprise 2.0 and social software, feel free to email me at ahoward@techtarget.com or send me a tweet at @digiphile on Twitter.

Jun 10 2008   11:26AM GMT

What is a social spreadsheet? Dan Bricklin and SocialText combine wikis with workspaces at Enterprise 2.0.

Posted by: Alexander Howard
open source, interoperability, applications, enterprise, Internet, innovation, commentary, cool, education, learning, academics, social publishing, interesting, invention, event, creativity, collaboration, freeware, Development, community, information, productivity, spreadsheet, history, communications, interface, software development, conference, enterprise 2.0

Ross Mayfield, founder of SocialText, a maker of enterprise wiki software, announced the launch of a new social spreadsheet at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference. In his presentation to a packed hall of technology executives, developers, media and social media mavens, Mayfield first addressed the state of Enterprise 2.0 before asking a simple question:

How can you work with structured data in an unstructured way?

He noted that the killer app of the PC generation that came of age in the 1980s was the spreadsheet, pioneered by Dan Bricklin in the form of VisiCalc. That app was what led many early adopters to buy an Apple and tap into the productivity gains brokered by the IT revolution.

Spreadsheets are now used for communication, lists, tables and two-dimensional layout. Mayfield asserted that they’re the most common database on the planet.

Workers collaborated originally by using sneakernet and floppy disks to share spreadsheets.

Now, we play “email volleyball with attachments” — a descriptive and all too accurate summation of how files ping pong around a network, introducing version control issues, 90% error rates. As Ross sees it, reverse engineering a spreadsheet on a web page misses the potential.

For the past two years, Socialtext has been working with Dan Bricklin to combine the usability and collaborative power of a wiki with the organization and flexibility of a spreadsheet. Meet the social spreadsheet, a “multi-user wiki-based spreadsheet program that simplifies version control, reduces errors and increases productivity.”

The software is able to cross organizational, structural, geographical and temporal boundaries. In the short video below, (available on Viddler for sharing or on YouTube), Dan Bricklin explains what a social spreadsheet is, how it works, how he was involved in the project and what users can expect from the software.

The social spreadsheet is open sourced and will be used in XOs for the One Laptop Per Child project worldwide, providing access to a quintessential IT tool for farmers, village merchants, businessmen, teachers and thousands of other individuals in the developing world.

Thanks again to Dan Bricklin for taking the time to talk to WhatIs.com.

May 19 2008   10:29AM GMT

What is the future of the Internet?

Posted by: Alexander Howard
Networking, Web 2.0, data, Technology, Internet, commentary, education, college, learning, courses, academics, books, futurism, event, copyright, collaboration, forum, wiki, conversation, community, information, election, blogging, communications, law, government, conference, Berkmanat10

Do you think much about the future of the Internet? Last week, the academics and technologists who consider the matter professionally gathered at the Berkman Center at Harvard Law School in Cambridge, Massachusetts to hail ten years of achievement in cyberlaw and digital activisim . Check out this timeline to see how the Berkman Center has grown.

[Download a special report on 10 years at Berkman (PDF)]

Berkman at 10 combined conference with celebration, as Harvard professors, staff, alumni and guests convened for sessions that included presentations from distinguished professors, a discussion with the co-founder of Wikipedia, a panel featuring Viacom’s general counsel, a former FCC chairman and venture capitalist Ester Dyson — all within the course of the first day. Dinners, sessions in the style of an unconference, a talk about the future of journalism from TalkingPointMemo’s Joshua Micah Marshall and seminars that addressed net neutrality, netizenship and much more continued the second day, followed by a gala that honored the achievements of those who have made outstanding contributions to the Internet’s impact on society over the past decade. Winners included the founders of MideastYouth.com, Connexions, FreeRice.com, PublicResource.org, Worldspace.com. Highest honor went to Jeffrey Cunard and Bruce Keller for their pro bono work.

[Watch the archived webcasts of Berkman at 10]

The men and women considering the future of the Internet used the medium itself to meet, greet, intermingle and collectively think about the topic at hand. As you might expect at a conference packed with cyberluminaries, computer scientists, engineers, journalists and assorted digerati, the two days were an exercise in hyperconnectivity. Conferees listened in the audience, watched live video feeds from overflow rooms or participated remotely using uncommonly robust social media tools.

“The question is not freedom of speech, the question is freedom *after* speech.”
- Esther Dyson, quoting an unnamed Russian

The Berkman Center created a Berkman at 10 wiki where you can find much more information about the conference, its agenda, attendees, the sessions and the Center itself. Projects founded, funded or organized by Berkman and its Fellows have been far-reaching in their influence and are frequently grounded in the entrepreneurial focus and intellectual rigor of its founders. They include:

• Open Net, which investigates and analyzes the various filtering and surveillance practices around the world.
• The Publius Project, which features essays and conversations about constitutional moments on the Net.
• Global Voices Online (GVO), which focuses on highlighting global conversations in blogs that exist outside the world of TechMeme, the “A-list” and Silicon Valley.
• A new project of GVO is Voices Without Votes, which covers what is being discussed about the US elections throughout the world’s blogs.
• StopBadware.org, which identifies Websites infected with spyware or malware and, with Google’s help, interjects warnings when users try to access them.

The conference was kicked off by the Dean of Harvard Law School, Elena Kagan, who announced that the Berkman Center for Internet and Society now a university-wide research center at Harvard. She also urged the crowd to lobby Jonathan Zittrain to come back to Harvard and led an impromptu chant to urge him to consider the invitation. Professor Nesson, cofounder of the Berkman Center, then introduced Professor Jonathan Zittrain, aka “JZ,” to the conference.

Professor Zittrain’s thesis is that the “generative Internet,” the combination of a programmable computer and an open, “writable” Internet, is in danger from tethered appliances like the iPhone and TiVo or walled gardens of non-portable data like Facebook. Doc Searls posted the following graphic within his “Understanding Infrastructure” article for Linux Journal:

In the PC and the network, the narrow point in the hourglass is where the generative power rests, in the Internet Protocol and the operating system. During the session, Zittrain repeatedly referred to this power as the “dark energy” of the Internet and raised concerns that the means to contribute could gradually be abridged or blocked in the future by corporations or governments through changes in the network or locking down the OS. The iPhone and other appliances like the Chumby or XBox are examples of the latter.

Further thoughts and analysis of the session can be found from Ethan Zuckerman, David Weinberger, Patrick Philippe Meier, Andy Sellars, Daithí Mac Sithigh, Dan Farber and Jim Rapoza. Zittrain’s book, “The Future of the Internet,” is available at futureoftheinternet.org.

Professor John Palfrey, the executive director of the Berkman Center, followed with a session on the impact of the Internet on politics and democracy. The presentation reached much further than the U.S. Presidential election, though the impact of YouTube, socially networked fundraising and the netroots has been far reaching domestically. He also presented three crucial arguments, each of which may be viewed and commented upon related ideas at the wiki at Berkman and is quoted below:

1. The Internet allows more free speech from more people than ever before, but states are finding ways to filter and limit that speech.
2. There is greater autonomy of the individual because of the Internet.
3. The formation of online groups will alter the form and function of existing organizations and institutions with unknown impacts on democracy and governance.

Palfrey’s talk reflected many of Zittrain’s concerns: the very openness and disruptive change that a generative Internet presents for free speech may be dangerous enough to repressive regimes that technological steps, like the Great Firewall of China, may be taken to limit access or the ability to publish freely.

Palfrey presented a map of the Farsi blogosphere (above) and noted, however, that the Iranian blogosphere is the fourth largest in the world, including a range of conservative, religious, secular and liberal views. The map was produced by John Kelly and Bruce Etling for their paper, “Mapping Iran’s Online Public: Politics and Culture in the Persian Blogosphere.“

One of the more intriguing notions that came out of the session was the concept of “flashdrive democracy,” where Palfrey used the example of Cuban dissidents who smuggled contraband video of student protests out of Cuba using a sneakernet and published them to YouTube.

Session notes are available from Professor Palfrey. More analysis and notes from David Weinberger’s post, Micah Sifry’s post and Daithí Mac Sithigh’s post.

In the third session of the day, Yochai Benkler, professor and author of the Wealth of Networks, interviewed Jimmy Wales, co-founder of Wikipedia. The two men deconstructed the sprawling online encyclopedia and discussed different models of peer production.

Dan Farber reported on the session and posted a transcript of Wales’ remarks on his blog. Adam Oran also wrote at length about this session at Radar.OReilly.

“The threat is not the money, the threat is the authority over knowledge.”
- Yochai Benkler

The links above are far from the only reactions to the sessions, of course. See the Center’s collection of online coverage of Berkman at 10 for more information about the unconference, panels and seminars.

Throughout the conference, participants near and far chatted over IRC, Twittered about memorable moments or useful links and used a dynamic online question tool as a live discussion board during each presentation. Hallmark technologies of “Web 1.0″ like IP, IRC, HTTP, WWW and HTML were enhanced by social media from the Web 2.0 world, like blogs, wikis, RSS feeds, microblogging and live videoblogging. Conference participants chatted live there on the IRC channel or in the virtual 3D hall on the Berkman Center’s island in Second Life. Some participants, however, still passed notes.

Berkman at 10 was chronicled using what Professor David Weinberger might term a folksonomy, a user-defined taxonomy for classifying digital content. Participants assigned digital content to the Berkman folksonomy on whatever platform they were publishing to using a #Berkman hashtag or “Berkmanat10″ tag or category.

Here are the different aggregations.

• Images tagged with Berkmanat10 on Flickr.
• Blog posts tagged with Berkman on Technorati.
• Berkman-related tweets on Twitter, aggregated on Twemes.com.
• Berkman conferees and fellows on YouTube
• Boston’s own Steve Garfield was the official videographer for the event. Watch all of his Berkman videos at Qik.com. Steve uses a handheld Nokia95 to stream live over a broadband wireless connection.
• For those interested in seeing how Yahoo! Pipes can be put to good use, check out the full feed of the Berkman at 10 proceedings.