Social Glass

Aaron Newman and I have been working for several months on putting an Enterprise 2.0 implementation guide together. Aaron Fulkerson, CEO of Mindtouch, has been doing the tech editing for us. And we’ll have another all-star, Jevon MacDonald, doing the forward for us. This is my first book, and let me tell you the process is extensive. Figures and illustrations have to follow a special naming pattern, chapters have to meet pre-determined page counts, and the tone of the book has to be consistent (which is tough when you have two authors writing it). Aaron and I edited each other’s chapters as they were completed, then sent them on to Aaron F. for more editing.

Then it’s the publisher’s turn to edit which means even more revisions and re-organization. But I must say this process, though tedious, adds tremendous value.

What’s really interesting is I’ve never met my co-author in person nor have I had a phone conversation with him. We used Basecamp to manage our deadlines and share deliverables. Twitter, IM and email were used for everything else (Basecamp rocked). I am continually amazed at how efficient it is to collaborate using social technologies.

I’ve been spending a lot of time with the book over the past few months (they didn’t give us any chance to give our input into the cover design. I’m not sure what I think of it), which is largely why I’ve been neglecting this blog.

But besides the book I’ve spent time adapting to the consumer world with my job at active.com. We’ve got a lot in the works to overhaul the site and make it more social, engaging and single-purposed. But we’ve got a long way to go and I’ve got a lot of people to manage.

Through the transition away from consulting towards a proper job I’ve learned a lot of things about how E2.0 may or may not add value to an organization. I must say I’ve been somewhat unbalanced with this blog tending to lean in favor of Enterprise 2.0 without adequately considering alternative perspectives. Going forward I plan to entertain opinions from the dark side a bit more to drive debate into a growingly homogenized E2.0 “industry”.

My buddies over at e2oh.com were recently asked to blog over at wikipatterns as guest bloggers.  These guys have been instrumental in educating a very traditional management consulting firm on the values of social computing, not only for internal use but for external use with clients.  They fought many an IT battle to get the entire firm (17,000) to adopt an enterprise wiki.

Well done Nate and Jay.

Recent discussions at work have prompted me to re-iterate something very fundamental that often gets overlooked when it comes to Enterprise 2.0. An organization will never adopt a single social productivity tool. Knowledge will ALWAYS be scattered. We’ve come to accept this on the Internet where search engines make information on a myriad sites searchable, but for some reason organizations think they can get everybody to use “wiki X”, and that the search feature in “wiki X” will be good enough.

Stop.

As Dion Hinchliffe says (and as I have written before),

“Discoverability isn’t an after thought , it’s the core”

Organizations need to embrace the fact that their data will be federated. Sure, workers will put their documents in “wiki X”, but they’ll also put them on the file share, in content management systems, and on email servers. Data that cannot be found is useless. Enterprise search will unlock data and increase the propensity for information (and the knowledge workers who create it) to be discovered. Discoverability leads to recognition, and recognition leads to increased participation. Enterprise 2.0 must be approached holistically.

Clearspace doesn’t do this. Thoughtfarmer doesn’t do this. Mindtouch doesn’t do this. There is no “Enterprise 2.0 in a box” solution. Period.

It’s been an interesting transition for me back to industry. “Industry” is the term consultants use to describe normal jobs with normal companies - the kind where people bring their plants to work and setup pictures of people they know in their cubicles. The kind where people wake up on Monday morning, drive to work, work, drive home and do the same thing every day until Friday. It’s been three months, and I’m starting to acclimate to this routine way of living.

When I started I came in guns ablazing with a consultant’s mindset. “What, no data warehouse, no sweat. We’ll implement a master data management strategy and breathe life into dying data. And let me tell you about this nifty little thing called Enterprise 2.0. It’s going to revolutionize the world, man. Ever heard of SLATES?”. Sarcasm aside, people had actually heard about Enterprise 2.0 and were actually keen on the idea. But seeing things from the other side I’m starting to think Enterprise 2.0 will be overwhelming for many.

Here’s the logic: Enterprise 2.0 assumes that, within corporations, there are a lot of unsung heroes who’s voices are muffled by a thick wall of bureaucracy. These under-utilized knowledge workers are in dire need of a platform through which their ideas can transcend old-fashioned hierarchical structure so that their potential can be fully realized. Enterprise 2.0 promises meritocracy.

Sweet.

But consider alternative reasoning: Good workers are already very busy. Their managers already know they’re good and are filtering a saturating set of inquiries and non-critical disturbances into a trickle. Trickles enable concentration, and concentration is needed for people to do good work.

So why in God’s name would a very busy person want to put himself in a position to be even busier by seeking corporate-wide recognition for his bright ideas? He’s already well compensated. He’s already highly regarded. Why make life harder?

Good workers might run and hide from Enterprise 2.0 (and bad ones might embrace it).

A recent press release from businesswire.com highlights Mindtouch’s continued growth in the Enterprise 2.0 marketplace (disclosure: I’m working with Mindtouch’s CEO Aaron Fulkerson on a side project, and I know he’s not a fan of the term “Enterprise 2.0″, but it’s the biggest tag in my tag cloud and I’m duty-bound to make it even bigger). Mindtouch creates a product called Deki Wiki, an open source wiki and community platform. They make money by selling enterprise support subscriptions, a model that is increasing in popularity.

According to the press release, Mindtouch has seen a 100% increase in active installations (200,000 in total) since last year, and is being used by major organizations including FedEx, Microsoft, and EMC (made famous by Chuck Hollis who chronicled EMC’s adoption of Clearspace).

Deki Wiki ships with a nice WYSIWYG editor to make it easy for the technically-challenged user to add and modify content. Moreover, Deki Wiki is a mashup platform and has out of the box integration capabilities with Dapper, Google Charts, widgetbox and Digg, just to name a few services. It can also be customized to integrate with line of business applications, including those that might be exposed by mashup makers like Kapow.

Development Managers will find Deki Wiki’s integration with Subversion and Mantis (an open source issue management tool) to be a big plus.

Aaron Fulkerson is a pretty switched on guy, so I’m expecting Mindtouch to have more and more of an impact on the Enterprise 2.0 market as each quarter passes.