We started blogging here in the spring until we got our web site up and running. We are now running strong over on the BSG Alliance site with over a half dozen bloggers blogging regularly there. We’ll leave this site up for a few months in case anyone has links to the some of the debate posts, but this blog is also fed into our BSG site, so you can find the same content there in case you discover some day that the link is not working.

So, see you at the new digs. Send us a plant or something.

The debate is scheduled to go on this morning. We only have one update: we will not be uploading the videopodcast immediately as previously planned. Live streaming will still be available at http://www.veodia.com/Enterprise2. We will have more details later this morning. Enjoy the debate!

The debate is still scheduled to go on as planned:

• Date: Monday, June 18
• Time: 10am
• Location: Westin Boston Waterfront. Boston, MA
• Price: FREE (conference admission is not free, but highly recommended!)

But we have a few more details…

• Room: Hale Room on the Mezzanine Level
• Format: Q&A from Dan Farber (moderator) for about 20-25 minutes, then Q&A from the audience for remainder of the debate
• URL for live streaming and subsequent downloading of video: http://www.veodia.com/Enterprise2 (on event day)

Andrew McAfee posted his thoughts on the debate on his blog. As we have more details, we will post them here. If you’re planning on attending the debate in Boston, get there EARLY. The room only holds 45 people and it is first come, first served.Hope to see you in Boston at the conference.

I had the pleasure of being invited by Hinchcliffe & Company to attend their Web 2.0 Executive Bootcamp as a guest VIP blogger. The session was a day-long interactive session all about Web 2.0 – including education on all of the aspects of Web 2.0, as well as examples of innovators and discussions about implications and applications for personal and business use.

The day was organized around Hinchcliffe’s Seven Principles of Web 2.0. I could, and probably will, write an entire blog post on my interpretation of each of these Principles. For now, I will focus on making this a synthesis of the event and highly recommend that anyone interested in Web 2.0 attend one of these bootcamps. If you find this post interesting and useful, the bootcamp should be worth your time … of course, the constant changing nature of Web 2.0 will ensure everything is fresh and new, so this is pre-reading.

I think the course can actually appeal to both those that are Web 2.0 neophytes as well as to those that are in the early adopter camp, which is where I’d put myself. The Seven Principles are a good organizing framework for Web 2.0, and each explodes out into a web of interesting implications and opportunities for enterprises looking to leverage Web 2.0. For heavy Web 2.0 adopters, there will be some very familiar territory covered (e.g. what is a wiki, blog, etc. and how to set up), however, the content was delivered in such a way that if you were already at a high level of understanding, the content allows you to think at the next level for each of the Seven Principles.

Below is a list of the Seven Principles and some of the salient points that I thought came out of our discussion on each:

1. Web as Platform

This one seems to speak for itself. The premise is that the Web is becoming the primary location for our applications and data. The difference this time is the network effects are far stronger than on the PC or Client/Server platform. With a global audience of over 1 Billion people using the Web, and the application of Reid’s Law – each new human node in the network increases the network’s value exponentially, this new platform is immensely more valuable for all users. We had a fairly deep discussion of the impact of these network effects and the opportunities. Case example – with services such as Amazon’s S3 in the cloud, what is the impact on M&A for new startups? If a startup can get reliable storage services for $0.15 or less per Gigabyte and the service scales, then the need to sell to a larger company to support its growth diminishes. Now extrapolate that to a series of viable services that scale, are reliable, and are cost-effective … the potential to innovate up the stack appears to grow massively.

2. Services beyond a single device

The core argument here is the combination of the sheer number of mobile devices and their ability to connect to the Web at high speeds. With over 2 Billion handsets about to be sold this year, and a growing number with robust web browsers and flash in the browser, the ability to leverage the web while mobile will increase substantially. Add on to that the use of SMS and RSS integrated with web services, and the mobile device is now intricately tied to the web. Outside the US in fact, the mobile phone is becoming (or may be) the preferred (or most frequently used) way to access the web. Services that appeal to younger web users seems to be leading the charge here … Facebook and its use of SMS is a prime example … Google also has great mobile services for Gmail and Reader. The Blogging Contribution Chain [hmm ... the notion of a "Contribution Chain" is interesting in the context of Web 2.0 services - this should be studied, though I'm sure it has been ... if not, I'd like credit for the term please!] was highlighted as an example in the bootcamp. Bloggers can post from multiple places, including Mobile phones. Also, with RSS, the blog posts can be read while mobile (mobile RSS reader or Google’s mobile Reader).

3. Data is the competitive advantage

This is the topic of data as the new “Intel inside”. As people come to a web service and participate, they are contributing data – intention data (clicks), personal data, new content, ratings, etc. Web services that are the first to aggregate interesting and useful data establish a clear leadership position and a high barrier to entry for competition. Witness Google and its search index capability due to page rank data, Amazon and product reviews, Craigslist and classifieds. We discussed opportunity areas where new companies can be formed around this notion of data as the competitive advantage.

4. Lightweight programming and business model

A core part of Web 2.0 is being agile, nimble, quick, and collaborative. This is all achieved with a lightweight programming and business model. Gone are the days of long software development lifecycle. Web 2.0 work is done with speed to market and speed to adoption in mind. This requires more agile methodologies, a perpetual beta product, shorter release cycles. It also involves a shift in design patterns. Hinchcliffe and Company highlights a number of Web 2.0 mantras, and at least one came out in this section, namely “Web 2.0 is not about push, it’s about pull.” A fundamental tenet of Web 2.0 from a design perspective is putting the person at the center of your service – they’re in charge. As such, we discussed the Architecture of Participation extensively, including how to create one and some components that are required in order to create one – being open in design and using the simplest standards to get the job done. The information in this area was quite rich

5. Rich user experiences

Staying on the topic of ‘rich’, we transitioned into the principle of creating rich user experiences and how to do that. This discussion included an overview of the main Rich Internet Application tools available today – Ajax, Flash/Flex, and now SilverLight from Microsoft. Despite my initial read on SilverLight, it actually sounds more powerful than I originally believed. We reviewed the basic positives and negatives of each, and the notion of the proprietary plug-ins required to run Flash and SilverLight applications vs. the openness of Ajax. Also discussed was the current complexity of Ajax due to the myriad toolsets available and thus lack of productivity. We closed with a good discussion on Widgets – the notion of being able to create functional chunks of application capability that can be distributed across the web and embedded in remote websites – examples include Google AdSense, and YouTube. In fact, it was interesting that a lot of YouTube’s early viral success was because it was easy to embed video clips in MySpace pages to share with that powerful social network. For a good look at widgetization of the web, check out WidgetBox.

6. Harnessing collective intelligence

Hinchcliffe states that this principle is tied tightly to the third principle, “Data is the competitive advantage”. We returned to a core principle of Web 2.0, namely that “it is about the people”. A paradigm shift is required to truly understand this and create a valuable Web 2.0 service – need to recognize that the people that come to use your service are “partners”, and their use and contributions make the service more valuable. These partners increase the value of the service through their contributions and their intention data that is contributed through their usage, not to mention their referrals and word of mouth that enable exponential growth. Services need to be sure to empower the users to improve the service. Some interesting and some now familiar examples were discussed (the Chevy Tahoe design your own ad campaign). An interesting one was XM Radio’s 20 on 20 campaign, which allowed users to design the programming for Channel 20. In a Digg-like rating fashion, users were responsible for the top 20 songs for Channel 20. Ratings for Channel 20 on XM rocketed up from the basement to being consistently among the Top 3 XM channels. We also discussed collective intelligence as a core enabler and component of social networks, blogs and Wikipedia.

7. Leveraging the Long Tail

I had to leave at this stage to catch a flight and get back to work on the Next Generation Enterprise revolution. Information on this Principle can be found on the Web from Dion Hinchcliffe’s writing, as well as their corporate site, and other bloggers who have written about Hinchcliffe’s work.

Overall, this bootcamp was a rich discussion of Web 2.0 and the core principles discussion was also followed by other items such as a discussion of Enterprise 2.0. Very thought provoking information, and a good framework for thinking about the complexity and overall opportunity of Web 2.0.

I’m now going to think a bit about this notion of a “Contribution Chain” as part of Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 services. If people are at the core of Web 2.0 services, data is the core competitive advantage, and harnessing collective intelligence is key, then knowing how the Contribution Chain works is vital to Web 2.0 service design, growth and scalability. Though, Chain may be too rigid … may need to think about “Contribution Webs” or “Contribution Ecosystems” or “Contribution Networks”.

^ brian

Technorati Tags: e2.0, enterprise20, hinchcliffe, web20

Brian Magierski, a BSG Alliance founder, and social media evangelizer is blogging today from Dion Hinchcliffe’s web 2.0 Bootcamp in San Francisco. It’s encouraging to hear the passion in Brian’s posts as he relates hints on how the day progressed.

Part of our mission here at BSG is to get out of the blogosphere and into the market where real changes are transforming enterprises. It’s exciting to hear what our “missionaries” are doing in New York, London, Boston, Houston, and of course, Austin: meeting with real customers and watching the garden grow.

Brian writes:

I just spent a day with executives from two Fortune 500 companies (collectively over $50 Billion in revenue), which for now will remain nameless. Senior executives from both companies were in the room, including the CEO of one of the companies and direct reports to the CEO of both companies.

For those that doubt that enterprises are in the midst of a transformation to becoming Next Generation Enterprises, and that Web 2.0 technology and social change will be part of it, this meeting provides powerful anecdotal evidence that this shift is real and is underway today.

• Date: Monday, June 18
• Time: 10am
• Location: Westin Boston Waterfront. Boston, MA
• Price: FREE (conference admission is not free, but highly recommended!)

Thanks to the generosity of Conference Director Steve Wylie, and the planning organizers for the Enterprise 2.0 conference being held at the Westin, June 18 – 21, the Davenport/McAfee debate will be held “on campus” on one of the stages for the show event. Dan Farber has agreed to moderate the event. I’m particularly grateful to Dan for offering to do this on short notice. Dan helped us out with the inaugural Office 2.0 conference by interviewing Esther Dyson who opened the program, and he recently moderated an excellent panel of enterprise 2.0 CEO vendors at this year’s Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco.

I have seen a few more mentions of Davenport-related discussion on the web today, such as James Dellow who references a 1994 piece Davenport authored on how to “save IT’s soul.” Bill Ives picked up on that and added his comments today, as well.

From James Dellow:

I want to put a different spin on Davenport’s perspective. Firstly, he thinks that the next big thing will really be in the area of business analytics – however, I think he failing here to see what the impact Web 2.0 and other related technologies will have in this space. More on that another time maybe, but think about mashups and “Data as the Intel inside”.

From Bill Ives:

Thanks to James Dellow for pointing to Tom’s 1994 HBR article, Saving IT’s Soul: Human-Centered Information Management. Here Tom presents a manifesto for building information systems that focus on how people use information, rather than machines. He suggests that human centered information management should:

1. Focus on broad information types;
2. Emphasize information use and sharing;
3. Assume transience of solutions;
4. Assume multiple meanings of terms;
5. Continue until desired behavior is achieved enterprisewide;
6. Build point-specific structures;
7. Assume compliance is gained over time through influence; and
8. Let individuals design their own information environments.

While these are general points that many of us might agree with today, they were more innovative at the time, the early days of knowledge management. They remain relevant today since the non-technical side of enterprise 2.0 is more important than the technical side, just as it was for enterprise .05 (or any other number).

In true web 2.0 fashion, we’ve started an event on Facebook for the Enterprise 2.0 conference. Anyone with a Facebook account can join the event. We are planning to exchange information and meeting locations throughout the conference. I imagine Twitter will be buzzing at the conference as well.

Just when you thought you’d seen everything, the WSJ puts Gates and Jobs together on stage to one-up each other. Of course, now they have a common enemy, Google, so why not? But I don’t want talk about Gates and Jobs, that’s so 1.0… I’m here to announce some infotainment of our own that BSG and our new friends BSG Concours are planning for Boston this June. Fans (and foes, I suppose) of Enterprise 2.0 should all be aware of a lively gentleman’s debate that has kicked up in the blogosphere between Tom Davenport and Andrew McAfee on the relevance of Enterprise 2.0 and its likelihood of adoption in large enterprises. It really all started back in September ‘06 when Optimize magazine published a discussion with McAfee and JP Rangaswami, two known e2.0 evangelists, and then asked Davenport to respond which he did with this column. McAfee published a response to Davenport’s criticism on his Harvard blog and several bloggers who track enterprise 2.0 took notice, myself and Vinnie Mirchandani included.

This March, Davenport again chose to target McAfee with a provocative post, “Why Enterprise 2.0 Won’t Transform Organizations” in his regular Harvard Business Online blog. Davenport essentially pooh-poohs Enterprise 2.0, calling it the next “small thing:”

Such a utopian vision can hardly be achieved through new technology alone. The absence of participative technologies in the past is not the only reason that organizations and expertise are hierarchical. Enterprise 2.0 software and the Internet won’t make organizational hierarchy and politics go away. They won’t make the ideas of the front-line worker in corporations as influential as those of the CEO. Most of the barriers that prevent knowledge from flowing freely in organizations – power differentials, lack of trust, missing incentives, unsupportive cultures, and the general busyness of employees today – won’t be addressed or substantially changed by technology alone. For a set of technologies to bring about such changes, they would have to be truly magical, and Enterprise 2.0 tools fall short of magic.

McAfee was quick to respond and published this reply, excerpted here:

My optimism, and my interest in the component technologies of E2.0, comes not (solely) from my inherent geekiness, but from the fact that these technologies really are something new under the sun. They’re not extensions or enhancements to previous generations of corporate tools for collaboration and knowledge management; instead, they’re radical departures from them. Technology platforms that are initially freeform and eventually emergent, that require no nerd skills to use, and that contain the SLATES elements I proposed a while back were born on the Internet just a couple years ago, and are now starting to make their way behind the firewall.

Tom is correct to say that these platforms won’t by themselves turn our existing hierarchical, political, and busy companies into egalitarian gestalts of knowledge creation and continuous bottom-up innovation. What they will do, I believe, is give managers who want more lateralism, egalitarianism, crowdsourcing, idea percolation, self-organization, collective intelligence, etc. a new and unprecedented opportunity to obtain them.

There’s much more to his argument; I encourage you to read his entire post rebuttal. Since March, several bloggers have joined in on this discussion. There are excellent posts by Joe McKendrick, Tom Mandel, Bill Ives, Jon Husband, and Louis Suarez.

Because BSG Concours has an existing business relationship Davenport and McAfee is a fellow Enterprise Irregular, while we were having dinner in Naples last week, I asked my new Concours colleagues what they thought of getting these two gurus together “f2f” for a videopodcast one-on-one. Everyone agreed it would be a terrific idea.

I’m happy to report both gurus agreed to face off and have committed to the event. We’re going to choose a neutral moderator from the media community. Right now, it’s just a matter of scheduling. As luck would have it, the Enterprise 2.0 Conference is being held June 18-21 in Boston (both Davenport and McAfee are in Boston), so we’re shooting for that week, as most of the “community” will be in f2f range. But if we have to do it after the conference, we will. We will keep you posted. In the mean time, if you have questions you’d like to ask these two– post your comments to the blog. Or email them here to info a t bsgalliance d o t com.

One thing I’ve always known about Steve Papermaster, he doesn’t like to waste time. While we here in the blogosphere have been grousing about slow user adoption, Steve decided to do something about it and went out and acquired The Concours Group, which we announced today. The Concours Group was founded by Dr. Ron Christman who originally created CSC Index’s Research and Advisory Group which for those of us who were around at the time, was an extremely influential thought leadership powerhouse that spawned 90s icons such as Michael Hammer and Jim Champy of Re-engineering fame. The Concours Group continues to host learning forums with leading gurus and thinkers for its blue chip client list. Leaders like Paul Saffo and, yes, even Tom Davenport are among a long list of industry luminaries who are engaged with Concours to explore how the Next Generation Enterprise will fundamentally be be shifting and realigning to mesh with the new participatory web.

While the emergent, collaborative, user-departmental-driven changes start percolating upwards, we will be evangelizing, lecturing, and golfing our way downwards by enlightening CXOs with the endless possibilities afforded by enterprise 2.0 and on demand alternatives.

Keepin’ it real. Stay tuned.

If you’re passing through the Big Apple for any reason next week, try to drop in for an afternoon or evening’s dose of Enterprise 2.0. I’ll be meeting up with Adam Carson in the morning who has put together a presentation for his London office on Enterprise 2.0. We will then join the folks over at the Hudson Hotel where we will attend a free seminar sponsored by FAST on search-powered Enterprise 2.0. The 3-hour event is a roundtable format with an excellent group of participants.

After the seminar, Adam has finally gotten around to putting together the first NY meet-up for the Enterprise 2.0 community. I’m sure a good time will be had by all. Hope to see you there.

Not sure this blog will be picked up anywhere, but we may as well start blogging, eh?  BSG just signed a series of great projects in the enterprise 2.0 space that I’m busy crafting the case study language around.  They range from legal and financial services to the energy markets.  I also had an interesting chat today with Brian Kotylar, an analyst with the Yankee Group who is interested in our early work with Ning, a social media tool.  We are using Ning internally, but we are exploring Ning solutions with clients, as well, so I will have to update him on that.

Today’s news on Enterprise 2.0 includes some interesting announcements from ThinkFree.   I was surprised to learn that ThinkFree has 275,000 customers and is as smooth an alternative to Microsoft office as a next-gener can probably ask for, and oh yeah, it is free.  Check out ThinkFree’s release.  TechCrunch gave it a nice nod.

Well.  As they say.  We shall keep you posted.