Go Big Always

Enterprise 2.0 Recap

I didn’t go to this conference last year but everyone I talked to this year seemed blown away by how much attention and activity there was. I know our booth was perpetually stuffed and the few times I stopped by there were C-level folks from pretty massive companies talking to us. It was also very cool to meet up with a lot of the Twitterverse that I follow.

We need more focus on the “Enterprise” and less on “2.0″

Next year I hope to see current vendors and new vendors focused on enterprise issues vs just sexy 2.0 farkme pumps. I know it’s less sizzle to showcase things like security, scalability, permissions, APIs, architecture, etc but for all this to graduate the industry needs to focus on IT, too. Going around them won’t work for big deployments. I’m worried that not enough vendors understand this and that they’re building for unrealistic situations which will marginalize them once the companies start to look at moving to the next level. Hopefully, Techweb adds these sorts of tracks to the conference.

Also, I’d like to see some vendors or totally new companies focused on bridging the gap between 1.0 and 2.0. Every meeting I go to at a company is filled with people who are already bought into better ways of working together, they just don’t know how to dig out of their hole to get there. They want to somehow vacuum out all of the locked up assets strewn everywhere like dirty laundry and make it a part of the newer way of working. There’s a lot of opportunity to help companies solve this problem.

Customers are way more interesting to listen to then us

It’s always way cooler to hear from customers who are using the software than boring vendors like us. I liked hearing from the Wachovia dude. Man, he really gets it and it sounds like they’re doing the right things for the right reasons. The CIA peeps were also way more open that you’d expect (although they’re very wikipedia focused). On a panel with Andrew Macfee, one CIA guy said, “I’d much rather have all our discussions part of an open system than have the he-said-she-said of closed door conversations. Lockheed Martin was also supposedly the best case study of the show, though I missed it. Hopefully, we can get some of our progressive customers to showcase what they’re doing at next year’s show.

Rupaul said what?

Most of the people I talked to ended up feeling pretty sorry for Microsoft. They were clearly a fish out of water this time around. I didn’t make the IBM vs MSFT shootout but consensus was that MSFT got their butt kicked. Mike Gotta asked both companies to to show first-person business value scenarios. IBM showed they have their own E2 product and showed lots of ways people can use it. MSFT talked about infrastructure and showed Excel.

In my shootout with MSFT, I was disappointed we didn’t get the chance to get into it more. Jevon McDonald (who was moderating and who had called MSFT/IBM drag queens) kept the discussion fairly low-key. I wanted him to force us to dig in more since I was well prepared to do just that. Oh well, such are conferences. Here’s the tweetstream during our debate (read chronologically, from bottom to top):

• dahowlett: @lliu: galvanised around whatever the next big thing is? @samlawrence just butt fskd Lawrence. I feel sorry for him.
• edbrill: now @lliu is selling futures, another expected tactic. Where’s the value today? A framework? #E20
• jbennett047: Best line of Enterprise 2.0 conf. today was the Jive CMO comparing big old software to “Wal Mart and bread sticks from the Oliver Garden.”
• dahowlett: When is @lliu going to stop pimping?
• dahowlett: I genuinely feel sorry for @lliu. He’s in a no-win situation. Everyone seems to hate MSFT
• Roebot: @lliu come on man you’re killing me here. Why aren’t you selling SP on MS appllication integration? That’s WHY SP. It’s for old ppl? Really?
• Roebot: @lliu “SP is for old people” Really?
• infovark: #E20 @jevon asks if @lliu is planning on adding a ‘geriatric version’ to sharepoint - ooh! they could call it “SilverHair”

• dahowlett: @jevon: just put @samlawrence on the spot. Jevon: “Is MSFT going to issue geriatric version of Sharepoint?”
• trib: #e20 @dahowlett calls bullshit on @lliu he replies with a nothing answer “blah blah stuff blah”
• elsuacon: #e20 Contextual awareness will be key, according to @LLiu Twitter, FriendFeed are just temporary. They’ll go away…
• elsuacon: #e20 Next big thing for Jive is to become seamless; Microsoft: Office Labs, Time Square (Facebook’s feed);
• dahowlett: @lliu: I don’t know what the next big thing is?

• digiphile: @samlawrence talking about Twitter for the enterprise and “smart inboxes” that filter and deal with different levels of communication #e20
• elsuacon: #e20 @SamLawrence hitting the nail once again… if you are serious about your product, you need to walk the talk! No small pockets!
• elsuacon: #e20 Jive has got its roots in Open Source, therefore the willingness to collaborate
• alanlepo: @samlawrence “wikis have sprung up like robin William’s chest hair”
• Pistachio: @samlawrence has such a distinctive voice. both his writing/his actual voice. appreciating his contributions 2 “Alts 4 the Enterprise” panel
• mkrigsman: @jevon Please ask @samlawrence and other panelists about the “enterprise” in Enterprise 2.0 #e20 (Sam will know what that refers to)
• trib: @edbrill #e20 agree re @lliu’s comment. “We’ll be there” is 0.5 Where’s the focus on the social? The connection? His comment=sales. FAIL
• edbrill: #E20 @lliu you lost me there. They buy sharepoint because MS is going to be around? Wouldn’t want that as my marketing strategy
• elsuacon: #e20 @LLiu commenting people buy from Microsoft because they will be around, like IBM, for quite some time
• elsuacon: #e20 @SamLawrence stating how knowledge workers are tired of having to work isolated & having enough with it. Collaboration to get work done
• sweettt: quote of the day “there needs to be more thought followers than thought leaders” - Sam Lawrence, CMO Jive at #e20
• elsuacon: #e20 There needs to be more thought leaders than thought followers - @SamLawrence (Amen, brother!)
• infovark: @samlawrence confesses that @lliu is a huge part of Jive’s pipeline right now.
• elsuacon: #e20 @LLiu Their main target is the platform, not the sexy beast we are all thinking about
• elsuacon: #e20 @LLiu (Microsoft): It is a continuum job from over the course of the years with responsibility to make things work
• infovark: Why do customers buy from you- @samlawrence - because we’re best of breed and we’re cheaper
• infovark: Why do customers buy from you - @lliu - because we’re Microsoft. - bigger, better, more reliable.
• nmurlidhar: Session on social computing platforms: first question - why should a customer use MSFT, IBM or Jive?
• thoughtfarmer: Watching @jevon moderate debate between @lliu @samlawrence & others

The Enterprise 2.0 Clearspace community worked out pretty well

I was shocked by how fast Techweb (Alex Dunne is a machine!) put this together. They purchased Clearspace from us just before the conference and they got the whole thing up and ready in about a week. I did have a hard time finding my way there from the main Enterprise 2.0 site but once I got there it was very cool to see a lot of great videos, pictures, discussions and materials that came out of the event. I think it would have been cool to figure out a way to parse the hastagged Tweetstreem into the backchannel real-time conversations so that people had a single place to aggregate the real-time panel commentary. Of course, the whole backchannel suffered due to the hotel’s wifi. I’m excited to see how Techweb will keep these communities going and roll them into their other properties.

Veodia wins the Launch Pad

We were happy to see Veodia win the E2 launchpad. The day before we had a joint announcement with them about their video product’s availability in Clearspace and their demo occured within Clearspace. Wait until you see the integration these guys did for our next release. You can have Seesmic-type posting in the Enterprise. Now people will be able to have meetings, use video for training, create easy product demos and all sorts of cool things right inside Clearspace. Ironically, the same day ZDNet reported that Microsoft will include video in Sharepoint 1.5 years from now.

Photocredits: Chris Brogan, Brian Solis.