“In other words, standards — and in particular social web standards — are the lingua franca that make it possible for uninitiated web services to interact in a consistent manner. When web services use standards to commoditize essential and basic features, it forces them to compete not with user lock-in, but by providing better service, better user experience, or with new functionality and utility. I am an advocate of the open web because I believe the open web leads to increased competition, which in turn affords people better options, and more leverage in the world.”

Says Chris – oh yes, and this must be only the beginning, right? See epeus.blogspot.com – I am crossposting this here now from posterous – now that our vision of buzz is getting clearer, and me and fellow buzzards need some more “argumentative fuel”.

One – I am really waiting for the Buzz to arrive in my Google Apps domain (mail to frogpond adresses is handled by Google Mail, yes, there are a lot reasons for putting mail and apps into the cloud) – and the official announcement wasn’t clear I think:

We also plan to make Google Buzz available to businesses and schools using Google Apps, with added features for sharing within organizations.

Hmm, does this include the standard edition of Apps or is this planned for Premium alone?

Two – let’s applaud Google for relying on open communication standards for its social web endeavours – it’s playing, integrating and – as Chris Messina writes here – leveraging the fabric of the open web. Of course this is helping Google but it’s also helping us, and it’s a wildly disruptive move too (hey, everything that uses Pubsubhubbub is a friend of mine …).

Three – Right, Buzz both validates and marginalizes Friendfeed (I so dig the tag line “FriendFeed Reborn. On Growth Hormone” at Techcrunch). Indeed, the idea of an aggregated life-workstream was just too good to go unsatisfied – and I am now waiting for rooms and/or persistent searches to find their ways into Buzz.

Knowledge workers they need to arrange their groups and channels of communication, finding information from sources that are contextually relevant (and then act upon them, sometimes this may just mean more information filtering, analysis and refining et al.). All in all the knowledge workers workplace can need some more nifty tools that improve productivity – and yes, this is a big topic in Vulcan too everywhere.

Four – Commencing on the context topic of three, what Buzz already has done for me is a boosting of the volume (and so far the usefulness) of Google Reader recommendations. I really like the pre-filtered stuff that gets channeled to me through my social network (and I hope they enjoy the stuff I am recommending and bookmarking on a daily basis).

And now there’s more of it – and it’s easy to “buzzify content” that may start a discussion on Buzz. So I guess we need some more Backtype wizardry to include the Buzz discourse on blogs. That said – we’re still missing threaded conversation, individual favoriting of comments et al. in Buzz. Until that arrives I would rather have the conversation and discourse in here, yet I am not sure how this will work out in the end. But yes, I see and I like that Buzz will allow for more finetuning, filtering and finding stuff that interests me.

Let’s assume then that the adoption rolls in the enterprise sphere too? That’s asking for much now (and let’s not forget that these are beta status thougts …). One reason is that Google is not exactly in the position to enter the large enterprises market, even taking into account the considerable amount of consumerization of corporate IT and collaboration instruments. But I am sure that collaboration systems that merge IM, mail, wiki style collaborative editing, content sharing and communication will succeed in the enterprise too.

So yes, I think they can mount the 9x challenge – Susan asked here whether Buzz can overcome Andrew McAfee’s famous test – and I commented that it’s the integration with Google Mail that helps Buzz access a huge initial user base and network, of which:

[...] some may use it at times, even when it’s not 9 times better than the other ways we communicate

From this initial user base I guess it’s a downhill battle …

So yes, and to sum it up – for now Buzz may be immature, but it has lots of promise to change the way people collaborate and communicate.

PS. I know this could as well been a BMID post – as Buzz pondering touches and meanders around the cultures of innovation, the nerve and resilience to pull through with your innovation and ideas (some have fears Google may not), all in all the excitement and the wonders of technology innovation. And it’s relevant from a business model innovation perspective too, I feel a bit so …

The venue is in Hall 6 at the FORUM Learning & Knowledge Solutions, nearby the Webciety area. There will be some smaller rooms for workshops and small group discussions – plus a large general meeting area where lightning talks, interviews and the closing session is planned. Add your session proposals now.

Here’s the planned schedule:

10:00 – 11:40 Opening, Meet ‘n Greet, Plan for sessions
11:40 – 12:25 First sessions
12:30 – 13:15 Open for sessions (or lunch if you’re hungry)
13:20 – 14:05 Timeslot 3 – plus one session in the forum
14:10 – 14:55 Timeslot 4 – plus one session in the forum
15:00 – 16:30 Closing it up – what have we discussed and what have we learned

But if communities are so much a part of humanity, why do many fail? There are more communities available to us than we are able to join. We filter those we don’t have affinity to.  We are stretched too thin and cannot be at every party — and give each one our gifts.  We run out of time, energy, and willingness to participate.  So we choose our attachments. If only we understood how.

Communities require emotional attachments that makes them communities — they (usually via their leaders) must develop a sense of Shared Fate.  Shared fate means that if something happens to the community, then each member feels affected by it.

… and then there’s shared faith which is essential in community building and “nourishing”.

Gil Yehuda cites open source development projects, which can (sometimes) lead to extraordinary results, and goes on to talk about in-house community building and the steps it takes.

This is a great post and an equally inspiring discussion – touching actual community management, the dynamics of communities (of practice), why we need to foster them (resilience, collaboration, motivation only being some of the points) and the design and patterns that underly them. These sort of communities, ie. communities that share fate and faith, are what makes work and workplaces meaningful (and sometimes enjoyable) …

PS. Yes, I am writing this on an Ubuntu-powered GNU Linux machine, in Firefox, and this post will get published on an Apache powered Linux webserver again, so much on what communities can achieve.

Extended blog post based upon a posterous entry.

For one this linear process of 1. get clear about your business case, evaluate opportunities, 2. identify barriers 3. tailor a solution, ie. “get a grip on the levers and pull” is only sounding easy – in real life these mucky Enterprise 2.0 implementations are rarely linear, clearly set out and easily manageable, ie. easy to plan for, to control and to measure.

Mostly I’ve seen iterative and “perpetual beta” initiatives – and that’s not a bad thing to have at all. Ideally it allows for rapid learning from pilots and prototypes, and the gradual emergence of patterns of collaboration that make sense to the organization (be it a team, a department, whatever). In my mind this freeform, emergent and adaptive approach is also instrumental in “instilling both the capabilities and the willingness” in people – after all Enterprise 2.0 is not a classic IT-project that can be rolled out – and it’s complementing the freeform and emergent nature of many of the tools, systems and environments we employ to meet business objectives. A linear model of implementation might be good for selling and appear rational at first sight, but it’s not realistic and – I really hate to say that – merely academic.

Anyway, most of his other thoughts and ideas are vastly agreeable (“bad collaboration is worse than none”; his advice on evading collaboration traps like over-collaboration, the underestimating of costs, hostile cultures, solving the wrong problems et al.; the meme of disclipined collaboration as a whole; his focus on nimble interpersonal networks and the advantages of T-Shaped people) and are of value and interest to Enterprise 2.0 people of all kinds. So, yes, seems I have to get me the whole book after all, for now check out the (a bit sales pushy) video with Morten from BNet below:

It’s the dream of any organization to have all of its departments working together harmoniously for the greater good of all. But is collaboration within a company always a good thing? Author Morten Hansen thinks not and provides a guide on how to avoid common collaboration traps and how to create an environment in which collaboration can thrive.

So what’s on the slate? First it’s the opening keynote with Morten T. Hansen, Author of Collaboration: How Leaders Avoid the Traps, Create Unity, and Reap Big Results.

Then at 6pm my time it’s Oliver Marks & Sameer Patel discussing “Accelerating Business Performance with Enterprise 2.0″ – see their video here

[...] the stages from inception to completion that form the gateways to successful justification, budget allocation and roll out. The session will provide guidance on how to plan, internally sell, design, develop and launch Enterprise 2.0 initiatives that will provide tangible business value to your organization.

7pm my time it’s Building an Interactive Enterprise with Louis Richardson, IBM:

[...] he reviews what IBM is doing to challenge people to think differently and do business differently. Learn how to create an interactive office environment with enterprise 2.0 capabilities that can bring people and content together quickly, integrate them into existing business processes, support high performance teaming, and drive faster decision making across the value chain of your organization.

Hey, did I notice I’ve been to Lotusphere? Nice to have a recap anyway

9 pm my time it’s Social Software Tools: A Critical Evaluation with Tony Byrne:

[...] To date, technology analysts have quite properly focused on the social and business aspects of social software. And yet, social software tools (including collaboration suites, pure-play blog / wiki / social-networking products, and revamped portal products from major vendors) differ quite substantially in maturity, approach, and support. This session will share customer research from noted evaluation firm CMS Watch on leading social software technologies, and provide a framework for customers to evaluate the marketplace based on their own needs.

10 pm it’s the Microsoft Keynote with consecutive Q&A Session

11 pm The Evolution of Hello.bah.com with Megan Murray :

In this session, learn how Booz Allen’s Hello.bah.com platform is evolving. From the tools leveraged to their approach to policy, governance, and user support, Hello, like many Enterprise 2.0 implementations, is changing as it is integrated into the fabric of the organization.

For the moment I think I will follow the tweet stream, favourite some of the better ones (they will get syndicated into my tumblr lifestream here) and make some scribbled notes on plain paper …

Natürlich ist Project Vulcan zuallererst einmal eine Vision, ein Blueprint, eine Roadmap – aber OK, ohne Visionen und Pläne ist ja alles nichts … im Ernst, die Integration verschiedener Technologien und Clients auf Basis offener Standards wird ja nachgefragt – zum einen weil die Geschäftsanforderungen eben genau das fordern (übergreifende Kopplung und Abstimmung von Anwendungssystemen und Geschäftsprozessen, Einbau von kollaborativen Funktionalitäten an geeigneten Stellen), zum anderen weil die Cloud bzw. das Aufkommen neuer Endgeräte (Smartphones, Blackberrys, iPads …) miteinander verbundene Plattformen fördern: “[...] blend collaboration, social, and business applications into a useful, productive experience, and to deliver it in Lotus Notes, a browser, and mobile devices”, wie Chris Reckling hier kommentiert).

Project Vulcan wird so sicher auch auf dem kommenden Lotus JamCamp diskutiert, das heute offiziell angekündigt wurde:

Auf dem JamCamp diskutieren Vertreter aus Unternehmen und Verwaltung, Digital Natives, Studenten und Professoren sowie Business Partner und IBM Mitarbeiter, wie Web 2.0 Technologien, Cloud Computing, Enterprise 2.0 oder Open Source den Arbeitsplatz von heute und morgen beeinflussen und verändern:

- Wie sieht der innovative Arbeitsplatz der Zukunft aus?
- Was heißt Enterprise 2.0 aus Unternehmenssicht und aus Sicht der jungen Generation?
- Wie bette ich Social Media-Tools wie Wikis, Blogs, soziale Netze, etc. organisatorisch im Unternehmen ein?
- Wie sehen Erwartungen, aber auch Anforderungen der Digital Natives aus, wenn sie in die Berufswelt einsteigen?

Ja, ich wusste davon schon etwas früher – der Grund dafür ist dass ich das Team um Stefan Pfeiffer bei der Organisation des Events unterstütze. Das hier nur als erster Disclaimer und zur Offenlegung der Beziehungen, ähnliches habe ich ja bereits zur Lotusphere geschrieben.

Ich werde daher in den kommenden Wochen noch den einen oder anderen ausführlicheren Beitrag zum Lotus JamCamp schreiben – heute will ich nur meine Freude ausdrücken dass sowohl Nicole Simon als auch Jörg Kantel mit Impulsvorträgen dabei sein werden. Mit Nicole habe ich das bereits bei der LeWeb besprochen, mit Jörg erst diese Tage – und es ist sehr schön dass die beiden an Bord des #LJC sind.

Posted via web from stirring the frogpond

Posted via web from stirring the frogpond

Posted via web from stirring the frogpond

More write-ups and notes pile up – so I will give you an roundup of my day 2 and 3 appointments:

Q&A with Uffe Sorensen, Lotus Messaging & Collaboration Director, CEEMEA

We talked about the different selling approaches it needs – whether you’re in an emerging (BRIC etc.) market or if you’re in western economies. Most interesting that even when some common traits exist, emerging economies are leapfrogging the western hemisphere. Employing new and fresh technologies is obviously a lot easier if you don’t have a legacy heritage to protect and defend (plus as the price for data transmission is dropping all over the world, SaaS offerings are becoming more attractive – even when on-premise models have their place for some time. I guess that Lotus is well positioned – given the hybrid model of on-site and cloud-based that they seem to allow).

On the topic of social software in the enterprise adoptions we’ve shortly tackled the importance and role of different local cultures – but Uffe sees that new modern generations, that are accustomed to the new tools and ask for them are a fact all over the world. Also he thinks that the common meme of “the US is more tech friendly than Europe” is just a myth.

More topics included:

- Crowdsourcing and innovating – IBM does employ and leverage the BRIC creativity, eg. there are labs in Hong Kong, Johannesburg etc.
- Uffe believes in employee surveys, retention numbers, etc. as qualitative measuring of social software ROI – like that, numbers are easy.
- we have a lot of use cases and real pain points we can improve with social software in the enterprise – if we look close enough …
- he was quite critical of the name “Enterprise 2.0″ – something I don’t buy in, for me it’s more than marketing hype, it’s a useful mental shortcut, much like the Collaboration Agenda IBM is putting forth themselves
- I liked his take on industry focus and knowledge about specific processes – the „how can I improve how a company does this and that“ is a very good starting point for discussion and helps “getting it real”.

Q&A with Doug Heintzman, Director Lotus Strategy & Collaboration

We were talking about the market positioning of Lotus in contrast to Microsoft Sharepoint – something I won’t comment on now, would I? Small wonder that he’s seeing significant deficiencies of MOSS, and a lack of understanding and commitment to the social web in the enterprise.

Small wonder too that he sees Lotus as a system of systems much better positioned, offering customers the flexibility and scalability they need (and that allow for the tailoring of best of breed functionality – think Open Source integration et al.).

Well, there were some more meetings and encounters – but this will have to do for now, I want to visit the labs one more time. And I sure don’t want to be late for tonight’s treat, meeting with old and new friends (did I say that it’s great to put some real people behind all those twitter acquaintances?) and enjoying the rollercoaster rides.

And they had answers too. And yes, the research people are demoing all sorts of cool stuff, that you’re not supposed to photograph, albeit I’ve understood that these innovations are tested out by IBM employees already inhouse. Anyway – I had to step outside of the room to take that picture …

Got a demo of Project Concord, something that Ed Brill comments on like this:

this project demonstrates some very cool collaborative document editing, contextual commenting, smart tables, and task and attention management. It is designed to work with installed editors (e.g. Symphony), browser users, and even mobile users

[...] LotusLive Labs is intended to be an incubator for new cloud-based capabilities, and Project Concord is just one of those.

I’ve also checked out some ideas of social data visualization, part of the IBM ideas and plans around Social Analytics – plus the real-time crowdsourcing of presentation building with Shared Presentation.

Now, I’ve written something like “I really need to clone myself – there are way too many good sessions at Lotusphere 2010.” Good to have some bloggers on site with their continuing live-coverage and analysis, huh?

So let’s collect some of the relevant posts of the first two days – avoiding the pretty obvious ones for now (Ed Brill, Luis Suarez and his Twitter conferencing persona, Luis Benitez, Alan Lepofsky, the Lotusphere blog itself and it’s liveblogging incarnation, PlanetLotus – an aggregator of many Lotus related blogs, ReadWriteWeb Enterprise’s Alex Williams, and more). Did I promise a cure for information overload? Nah, that catchy title only got chosen to attract you, there’s no such thing …

OK then, here we go, check out

Curious Mitch, liveblogging eg. on LotusLive and SaaS things
LotusGeek, with extensive coverage
Chris Miller does Notes
[and more, this list will probably grow over time]

Und natürlich gibt es auch einige viele deutsche deutschsprachige Lotusphere posts:

- zum einen von Stefan, der wie ich nicht untätig ist (Collaboration in the cloud, Lotusphere Bericht u.a. zu Project Concord und den Web Clipping Services),
- von Peter Schütt (Lotusphere 2010 Opening Keynote: Lotus Knows – die Collaboration Agenda der Zukunft),
- dem Tech-Team von TwentyOne
- und natürlich von Volker Weber (u.a. die gesammelten Heise et al. Artikel),

I really need to clone myself – there are way too many good sessions at Lotusphere 2010. And it doesn’t help that I’ve got an tight appointment schedule set up, ie. analyst meetings and briefings on everything from LotusLive, UCC to IBM Lotus Strategy.

But it’s fine with me, there’s a lot of takeaways, some of Day 1 Analyst Briefings follow:

Q&A with Dwight Morse, Lotus Notes Channel Marketing Lead

The announced Vulcan Project – some kind of next gen Lotus Notes in the cloud – started a long time ago in the IBM labs. It’s bringing together a lot of ideas (also from some recent acquisitions).

What do I think? I like the idea of an advanced knowledge worker’s workspace, integrating IM with social web tools, putting some effort into being more presence- and task-aware, the tagging of documents, the sharing of bookmarks in communities, the searching and connecting with people and communities. Add to this the open APIs …

The two things I am still doubtful with are this focus on documents as the main unit and object of interest. I sense an inclination to a document-centric approach. But we agree it’s content after all, and we should rethink our understanding of what we deal with?

The other thing is the Social Analytics stuff – while I find it interesting and able I know that it will raise a lot of concerns with people employees, probably slowing down acceptance. This grief may stem from my european-ness, but I can’t help it. Probably needs a staged approach, a lot of explaining and show-and-tell, and some smart tweaking options (is opt-in a valid option or does it only work when we’re allowed to sift through all data?).

OK, it’s a vision for the future, a roadmap – and they understand that information is the basic unit – be it mail, documents, or whatever.

Next thing we were speaking about was the Collaboration Agenda – it was explained to me as a solution selling naming, ie. helping the problems of explaining and selling a complex thing like Notes in an “elevator speech”. Elevators will see pitches like these:

Ya know, everyone needs to collaborate, and let me ask you directly: „What is your need? What are the pain points you see in your organization? What are the things you need to do and can’t do today?“

[...]

Let me introduce you to the solutions IBM and Lotus can offer you … (yes, I will cater for the jobs of tailoring and selecting from our portfolio …)”

Four industries are targeted, overall vertical markets where business partners shall provide solutions to discrete needs (CRM & sales, innovation management, etc.). Here Lotus Foundations will not be pushed as a product, but it’s a part of the tool box solutions get chosen from.

Q&A with Brendan Crotty, Program Director for LotusLive

LotusLive Labs is conceived as a way to expose new innovations coming from IBM Labs. Cool things included like some kind of “automatic video transcribing” so that a recorded presentation can be accessed at individual segments.

Most interesting is that IBM is expecting to learn a lot from the data and the feedback, ie. speeding up development of this “perpetual beta”. Did I say beta? Don’t be afraid, Labs is easy on the admin side, ie. it’s easy to decide who’s going to get access, a lot of business controls etc.

From a partner and customer perspective (think of Salesforce etc.) it was said that it’s going to be easy to integrate with LotusLive, because of adherence to open standards and data exchange models (RESTful et al. …). We’ll see if that’s pulling through, I must say that open standards are a hot meme among the IBM executives I’ve been talking to, next to the notion of “we will cater to what our customers need and want”. No, I am not going to write about the iPhone …

Q&A with John Del Pizzo – Sametime / UCC

Noted down: In the past they used IBM-specific standards, now it’s SIP (hmm, XMPP too I guess) – overall a bet on open standards, that allows for more connectivity (with competing providers too, yes). Thus Sametime can act as a client for Radvision, Tandberg, etc. as an endpoint.

John stressed that providing UCC at the desktop drives adoption, but needs simplicity. Well, simplicity, usability and ease of use drive adoption, then adoption drives ROI. Nothing to argue with that.

Interesting business cases again, like some customers wanting to use UCC for service (and customer collaboration) uses.

On the question of how this compares and competes with Microsoft Communication Server he argued along the lines of simplicity and usability (see up there …), scalability, openness, standards, interoperability, ability to integrate Sametime where it’s needed (hmmm, HTML5 or AJAX-ey integration?).

Q&A with Alistair Rennie, Lotus General Manager

Rennie summed up the announcements – then answered questions, covering cloud based collaboration, the Panasonic deal, mobile collaboration etc. Some notes:

- Social Analytics is getting customers excited, and they’ve got more  (research based) ideas coming, eg. on how to finetune recommendations

- Customers want and need integration, Notes acts as a collaboration hub, administered from one point. Customers want and need openness

- to deal with the diversity of (european) markets it’s best to sort out the individual best practices (cause these are always geographically-tied best-practices …) – nothing to argue with that, but I would say that we have a growing portion of EU-designed regulations (compliance!), and basic patterns are similar

- emerging markets are going strong in collaboration software – and they are as (IT-) sophisticated as the rest of the world. They grab this new disruptive opportunity, ie. setup something mission-critical collaboration software without having to keep legacy systems working (why yes, fresh installs and leapfrogging can be good …). IBM is having more and more „research pockets“ and laboratories around the world – this helps with catering for the various markets (and I say with innovating in the areas that matter).

- we’ve also heard some bad-mouthing criticism on Microsoft – but OK, this is probably normal and we all know those IT guys know how to “play”. I leave it to you to select from the batch: “too tightly integrated stack”, “missing some substantial thoughts”, “missing out in mobile (they don’t get what people are asking for)”, “missing out in social software”, “what they are doing is not going to be more relevant for customers”. Don’t flame me …

- on collaboration – yes, appears and happens on all levels (and even between organizations). People now expect social collaboration capabilities to get their jobs done. Yes, I would add we need to focus on freeform emergent collaboration, like eg. all those barely repeatable processes (hat tip to Sig Rinde) which can’t hardly be predefined …

IBM and Lotus are definitely treating press, analysts and bloggers the same way, the same work environment, the same access to key persons and interview opportunities. Indeed I am sitting next to Gartner people, eating the same dogfood they are.

And yes as I am writing this I am sitting next to real journalists™ too in the press and blogger’s room – each one of us tapping silently away on our  notebooks. No communication or socializing so far with the odd blogger and his sticker-tattooed laptop …

But joking aside – I am really happy about the opportunity to participate in this, it’s an information avalanche waiting to swallow me, err great information and industry insight at my fingertips.

Key topic of the briefing was the IBM Collaboration Agenda (official announcement), a lens & funnel to engage the partner community making them partners in innovation. Four industries are initially the object of this agenda: banking, insurance, healthcare and government where transformation is dearly needed. The task is to translate technology into the language of business …

LotusLive Labs are another hot topic – the cloud is real and it’s here to stay. IBM Research & Lotus joining forces to leverage and provide a pipeline for innovation in the cloud. Labs are designed as a platform for an ecosystem, an open integration environment where it’s possible to test and deploy quickly (they’re planning to do cool things like indexing and tagging, find ways to design scripted workflows in a cloud app etc.)

Mobile is a big word here too, for Lotus it’s not an aditional thought, it’s rather fully integrated into the thinking. I wrote about RIM being a partner already – they showed social software, yes but mobile solutions from Lotus will be done for all platforms and meaningful players (Android, no mentioning of Windows Mobile, alas, surprise).

Project Vulcan is another big topic, a roadmap, vision and blueprint for the future of collaboration – building on and leveraging existing investements, with a focus on developers. See the official announcement too for a start, as I am collecting more data points as well. Here’s what Lotusgeek notes:

It is a sneak peek at the evolution of collaboration. Extends the products we have now, focuses on continuity, convergency, innovations, new opportunities. It is a vision for the evolution of the Lotus business products. Loosely-coupled architecture. Consistent interface across all client form factors, including mobile and browser. Sets the stage for next generation of apps. Embraces open programming model, REST apis, widgets, mashups, and HTML5. Supports SSO, search, etc.

Well, they say Lotus acts upon what customers tell them, ie. be more flexible, more open. Project Vulcan focuses on (a knowledge worker’s ) context – be it content, people, business processes et al. And the sources of these can lay inside or outside an organization, and Vulcan is designed for integrating both business and personal information, for integrating on-site with cloud-based services, mobile access or not (while they hinted at cool mobile functionalities coming, like e.g. location based services). Overall it’s a step into the right direction, being more people-centric than application or business process centric, that way supporting the many individual ways people have to get their jobs done.

The briefing offered an opportunity to ask questions, I made some notes on the odd twelve inquiries but I still need to get my head around how to systematize and organize the answers into a blog post. And I have some personal observations and thoughts to share too. But I must hurry now, unless I will be late to the press, analysts and blogger’s evening event (socializing with free drinks I guess and hope …).