Tools from #SocialNow 2014

Now that plans are being made for the next edition of SocialNow, it’s a good time to post some of my notes from the previous edition. I’m really looking forward to the next conference and hope to meet you there!

Special conference

As you my know SocialNow is special conference. The structure is very different from other conference. The whole idea is to help you (the audience) listen to and select the right internal social platform for your needs. This is done by asking vendors to present to a fictitious company with real-life needs and convince them that your platform is fit for their needs. The company is supported by ‘consultants’ with expertise in IT, design and business. And of course the audience may ask questions as well. Here we go:

Talks and tools

The vendor presentations are mixed with several keynotes by Tim Walters, Louise McGregor, Luis Suarez and Euan Semple. I’m not going to summarize those talks. I do want to share my notes about the vendor presentations and round up with some closing thoughts.

Hoozin: Does auto-translation of content, runs on top of Sharepoint, wants people to work with Hoozin in the context of their day-to-day business, employees are invited to join communities instead of forcing them to work in one.

Exo: Microblogging, integrated call feature, users can also assign tasks to content, document sharing and collaboration (extensive DMS features). It looked like they also summarizes interactions, but they don’t. It’s open source software and has a multi-lingual interface. They have a plugin for real-time translation of updates. The mood widget gives insight in the sentiment of the feed, page or platform as a whole (to HR). Exo also has an app.

Jive: Very extensive social platform. They provide rich social profiles (with skills, endorsements), inscreen document viewer, recommends people and documents to users, etc. A share widget that can be installed in your browser helps share external stuff you find in Jive. Jive also has an app.

Knowledge Plaza: They have rich profiles, apply facetted search everywhere, wiki functionality, syncs with Dropbox, Skydrive and the like, versioning on all content, light-weight workflow, also responsive design.

TeamGum: Launched at SocialNow. They want to integrate all external platforms so stuff can be shared internally. Searching in Google gives results from TeamGum. They are focused on information and knowledge sharing and discovery. They too provide a widget to share stuff to your network from the browser.

Jamespot: Focused on social action. They provide: approval of updates (workflow), structured collaboration, keeps an overview of your business goals and reports to you on them, can push information to newsletter and narrow casting platform (to connect to people without screens).

Xwiki: They’ve been to all SocialNow conferences. They had a good presentation on use cases like finding experts, peer assist for new employees and sharing news online instead of via email. I love the comment and track changes features on content, they have. Xwiki is responsive, workflow can relate to roles/rights and change based on the phase of the workflow.

BlueKiwi (owned by Atos): Atos is the no email company. They wondered how they could unclog the personal feed. They apply the GTD-methodology to social solutions by using labels. Bluekiwi events is connected to Outlook Calendar. You can also forward an email to Bluekiwi. Updates from other systems can be posted to the application using the api. They are also thinking about moving email to this platform.

HIGHQ: The core is a microblogging stream. You can add/track milestones and Todo’s. There’s support for meetings and projects. A neat feature is that they offers encryption on files so that an employee can’t share files outside of the project space. They can create newsletters automatically (summary of interactions). You can easily invite externals to rooms. HighQ has an app.

SAP Jam: In the presentation they focused on the process of social onboarding, New employees are supported to follow the right people and join the right groups. Their vision is not have social for the sake of social. Core of Jam is the microblogging stream. They also have polls, ranking, broadcasting via video functionality. Jam has an app. Profiles are filled with endorsements. Externals can be added to groups if needed. Unique is the fact they integrate with ERP, CRM and the masterdata of the organization.

Twoodo: The whole application is built around tags. Even priorities of tasks are (managed with) tags. They provide a Zen mode to focus solely on work and tasks. When you marks an update with the tag #question the application categorizes the update as a question and asks people to answer it. You can also send emails from Twoodo,. Every change/edit is logged.

IBM Connections: IBM is working on the integration of email with their internal social and collaboration platform Connections. Connections has an extensive features set. Core is the rich profile and microblogging functionality. Profiles are greyed out if someone doesn’t work for IBM anymore. In this way you still know he contributed and where that person can be found now. Connections integrates with unified communications and SharePoint. The files are managed by Sharepoint but are shown in Connections.

Striking

There are some things that really strike me when listening to and thinking about these vendor presentations. First of all, not very many vendors are good at presenting based on a concrete company case. Most of the presentations start with a short summary of what the company needs and then goes right into talking about all the features the vendor has. The one’s that do really relate to the needs of the company are loved by the audience, the one’s that don’t relate to the company are almost thrown out of the room… I think there’s a huge opportunity for vendors here.

Enterprise solutions vs startups

Secondly, there’s a big difference between presentations from enterprise solutions and start-ups. The start-ups have more visionary presentations and come up with new features, the enterprise vendors have what all the other enterprise vendors have. Most enterprises will go with the latter anyway. For that reason I’m surprised they don’t relate more to the issues (large) companies have, like security, outside-in collaboration, etc. Related to this: enterprise vendors are very vague about pricing, even though that question is asked to them every time. Why not provide a clear pricing outline? At least this leads to the fact that the audience will trust you a bit more.

Innovation on the edges
Finally, it is clear that innovation happens on the edges. All new ideas, concepts and features are presented by the new vendors. The enterprise vendors is all about completeness of the feature set and ‘me too’. With all the development power large vendors have, you would think it would be the other way around…

Asking the right questions
And final finally, SocialNow clearly helps the people who are looking for a new internal social platform or are looking for ways to solve real problems in their company to ask the right questions to vendors. It helps you drill through the marketing talk and really understand what they are about.

My Sharepoint Conference Notes #congressp

SharePoint is used by many companies. Lots of them are struggling to use it strategically. How can SharePoint become essential for our organization? How can organizations drive SharePoint adoption? These are questions I hear a lot from customers.

There are many SharePoint conferences out there. Do we really need another one? My colleagues and I at Entopic found many conferences address SharePoint from a technology and developer perspective. Which is great. There is clearly a market for this. However, we wondered if there are also conferences that address the business- and user-side of SharePoint. We found only a couple world-wide. For this reason we thought it would be good to organize a SharePoint conference with a business focus. And apparently more people were looking for something like this. There were 300+ attendees.

Symon Garfield kicked off the conference with a keynote about how to implement SharePoint successfully. Symon discussed several reasons why implementations fail. Like policitcs, not understanding SharePoint, no feeling for information and knowledge management, no senior management support, etc.

Symon proposed a four step approach to a successful implementation: governance (beware of the tech-focus!), strategy and business case (connect Sharepoint to business processes!), business architecture (know the internal workings of the platform) and transition (make sure you have an adoption plan!).

This last steps leads us directly to the second keynote of the conference by Sam Marshall. Sam's keynote went deeply into SharePoint adoption. He started out by asking the audience who's Sharepoint implementation has a larger 'human' than IT budget. Hardly anybody raised their hand... Sam shared the MARS model with us and discussed it in detail. The model has 4 steps:

1. Mandated
2. Accepted
3. Rewarding
4. Stimulating

Sam showed how these steps could work when organizations would like to have employees fill in their profile.

I enjoyed Sam's talk. I liked the way he drilled deeply into adoption, clearly showing us all that adoption is not easy and should not be an afterthought.

There were two rounds of breakouts. The breakouts were about Sharepoint for websites, intranet, internal social networking, Sharepoint 2013, etc.

I went to two interesting breakouts. One was lead by Jan van Veen and was about how he positioned their local intranet in a world-wide SharePoint intranet. The other was by Ellen van Aken and she showed how SharePoint can drive business value by supporting business processes.

All conference slides can be found here.

Only an iPad for conference tweeting and blogging

I really enjoy going to conferences. Listening to other people’s or organization’s experiences helps me think. Good talks and breakout sessions inspire me and trigger me to try the approaches as well. Bad talks help me sort out what my convictions are and what my approach would be. Conferences are also great for meeting up with people I already know and meeting new, interesting people. In short, conferences help me learn.

One of the great use cases for social media is conferences. I really enjoy social media before, during and after conferences. Before conferences social media is great to find out who’s coming and what other people are expecting of the conference. Letting people know you’ll be at the conference gives people who couldn’t attend a way to experience the conference anyways by following your tweets and blogposts. After conferences social media is great to evaluate: thank the conference organization, provide feedback about the conference and thank participants.

Social media during the event is most interesting. Tweeting and blogging about the talks helps me remember what the speaker said and reflect on his/her statements. Furthermore, the discussion about the talk usually also starts on Twitter before it has ended. It gives multiple perspectives on the subject in real-time. Of course, Twitter and the like is also used during conference to coordinate meetups and dinner.

Up until my last conference visit I always brought my laptop along to tweet and blog. My iPhone comes in handy as well.

Recently I went to the Social Now conference in Porto and only brought my iPad along. I was wondering if that would work. Would I tweet more or less? Will I be able to keep up with the tweets? And does liveblogging work on the iPad?

Well, to start with the last question: I didn’t liveblog the conference. I was master of ceremony and had to pay attention to speakers, tweets and time. What I did do though is jot down (with my stylus) and type lines I could use for a blogpost about the conference. Basically a summary of the most interesting statements that could also be found in the tweet stream.

Following the tweet stream, posting tweets and replying to tweets worked great on the iPad. For one, battery is not an issue (as it is on the laptop). Finding a plug for the laptop is still a pain at most conferences. I basically used the Twitter app to follow the hashtag. Even though I was the conference chair I posted the most tweets. I found the tweet stream to be very insightful. As the conference chair it gave me great insight into what people thought of the talk, which questions they had, etc. Interestingly even when the number of tweets were low during a talk, I could use that to give it back to the audience and ask why. At this conference it meant people couldn’t follow and didn’t understand the talk.

There’s been a lot of talk about tablets taking over the pc market. My experience with only an iPad at a conference seems to confirm this trend.

I was wondering if liveblogging would have worked. Typing on an iPad is harder than on a laptop (although it works well enough). Tweeting from a iPad works fine. Of course I could buy an external keyboard for the iPad, but then I could just bring along the laptop, right? I’ll see if liveblogging works at the next conference I’m going to.

But if tweeting from an iPad works, it would be great if I could just mark several tweets and push them to a draft version of a blogpost (I use Blogger). Or is that what Summify does?

What are your experiences with an iPad at conferences? What works for you and what doesn’t? Do you have experience with liveblogging on an iPad? I’d love to hear from you.

Reasons to go to the Social Now conference #socialnow

Many organizations have a hard time with selecting the right technology for their business. There is a huge need for expert support here. The company I work for helps select Content Management Systems for instance. Decision makers wonder what to choose. "Should I focus on a platform that is good at content management? Or should I focus on social first? What is the right approach?" Not many people are experts in this field. Not many people have to select new technology very often. Organizations do this every 3-5 years. So when they do, they get nervous and find it hard to oversee the field they’re looking at and the decision they’re making. They don’t want to invest in technology that will become irrelevant in just one or two years. They want to make a sustainable choice.

Interestingly, there is now a conference that helps decision makers (and their helpers) do just that. There are basically two kinds of conferences: one focuses on business (users, adoption, business case, etc), the other on technology (design, functionality, development, etc). The Social Now conference aims to bridge this gap. It wants to help decision makers from all parts of the organization to find the right solution for their problem. This is done in a unique way. Social Now takes its starting point in practice. Real-life cases will be presented. The case describes situations and problems that could be improved with social technology. After the case has been presented several social technology suppliers are asked to pitch their solutions. Subsequently a panel of social business experts will help the decision makers ask the important questions to the suppliers. Of course, all conference attendees may join this discussion and ask questions. 

More good reasons to come? Well, Social Now also has a great list of interesting keynote speakers, like Oscar Berg and Lee Bryant. And the conference is in Porto, need I say more.

Why am I blogging about this conference? Because I think the organize are onto something here. This conference concept is truly unique. Many companies are struggling in this area. Furthermore, I’m honored to say I will be the master of ceremony of the conference. :-)

Will you be going the Social Now conference? I hope so! It will be great to meet you there. I’d love to hear why you are going and what you think of the conference concept. Please leave comment.
And if you’re not going, I’d love to hear why as well. And if you’re not sure yet, please let me know. I can offer you a special price. Hopefully that will motivate you to come! ;-)

Reflections on the Enterprise 2.0 Summit 2012 #e20s

Another reflective post... Hey, it's Friday! :-)
This post is long overdue, but I promised I would reflect a bit on the Enterprise 2.0 Summit. I'll keep it short.

I enjoyed the Summit and hope to be there next year as well. What did I enjoy most this year and hope to see more of next year? Here's my list:

• Some of the speakers shared the failures and dark side of enterprise 2.0. I think we need to more of these kind of examples. Not to focus on the negative side of internal social media, but to learn from failure and the unexpected.
• I agree with Ana Silva we need more, deeper and detailled stories about e2.0 deployments. How did they really do it? And then we can discuss the cases, share experiences, etc. This implies we need good stories and storytellers, and excellent workshop/discussion moderators. 
• I hope we'll hear more about mobile and location-based systems. Most of the cases were about social networking and microblogging platforms inside the organizations. What happens when we extend them outside the company? Of course, some of the platform are mobile by default, like Yammer and Socialcast. How are companies using mobile to improve their internal and external business?
• Finally, I saw a huge gap between the Summit participants. There's a small experienced group and a large group of beginners. Making sure the Summit is interesting for both groups is challenging. I think the focus on stories and discussions could bridge the gap. Fresh thinking from the beginners and experienced thinking from the experts: we'll learn from each other!

What are your thoughts on the Summit? What should next year's conference be about?

Have a nice weekend! ;-)

Join me at the Intranet Conference 2012 #intra12

As you know I work for Entopic. Entopic has organized a conference about intranet for several years now. It has become the largest intranet conference in the World.

We’re working hard on the 2012 conference. It will be held on March 13, 2012 in Utrecht, The Netherlands. A large part of the program has been defined and we hope to finalize the program in the coming week.

This year we wanted to focus on the soft(er) side of intranet. What are the skills intranet-related people need to successfully implement and maintain a intranet and especially a social intranet. We found three keynote speakers that know all about this side of intranet:

• Menno Lanting will talk about leadership and intranet
• James Robertson will give an overview of the changing intranet landscape
• Michael Sampson will present about facilitating collaboration with intranet

We also have a great list of interesting breakouts this year. Ranging from Shell about knowledge management and intranet to the Local Government of Amsterdam about their paperless dossier management via iPad.

Check out our new website and the program and tell me what you think. Of course I hope to meet you there.

Social Media in Practice Event #socmedprak

A conference about social media, organized using social media and presented by experienced social media enthusiast, can that be done? Yes, it can. I was part of such a conference a couple of weeks ago. It was called 'The Social Media in Practice Event' (Dutch: Social media in de praktijk).

Ronald van den Hoff of Society 3.0 kicked off the event. He gave an interesting talk about the influence of the internet and social media on society, and its implications for businesses. I liked how he stressed businesses should be built around passion and learning from mistakes. They should be ever more open to what's happening around them or else they will be eclipsed. Interestingly he also said large companies will get smaller and smaller and independent contractors/free agents will be the 'companies' of the future.

I also went to Roos van Vugt's breakout about leading into social media. She works for Deloitte and explained how see introduced and is cultivating social media inside the company. She stressed to make sure higher management is on board and agrees with internal social media deployment.

I also was asked to give two breakouts about social media and knowledge management. My slides (in Dutch...) can be found here:

Kennismanagement en social media, een perfecte matchijk 27 10-11

View more presentations from Samuel Driessen

During both breakouts the discussion was lively. Discussion topics were about the difference between business processes and networks, the security of hosted social media like Yammer, how people can be encouraged to share their knowledge and should companies introduce a central, all-encompassing social media platform or separate tools?

Enterprise 2.0 Summit Promotion

Really looking forward to the Enterprise 2.0 Summit in Frankfurt! It's going to be great to listen to all kinds of talks, from experts and practitioners in the Enterprise 2.0 field. I'll also be giving a talk, as I mentioned some time ago. And it's great to know (old) friends will be there as well.

Just received an email the other day from the organizers. I may give you a present! You can get a 10% reduction on the conference price by going to their website and entering the promotion code 'e20ref'.

I hope this helps convince you to come!

Presenting at the Enterprise 2.0 Summit in Frankfurt

Just to let you know: I will be giving a talk at the Enterprise 2.0 Summit in Frankfurt am Main in October. Please find the full schedule here. My talk will be about our microblogging experiences and my vision on how the information and communications processes supported by microblogging relate to more formal business processes.

Hope to see you there!

Who Wants My Free Full-Pass to e2.0 Boston?

I recently wrote about the prediction market I won. I told you I got a full-pass to the Enterprise 2.0 conference in Boston (June 2010). In short, my company won't pay for travel expenses, so I can't go regrettably. So, who wants my full-pass to the conference. Leave a comment and I'll select one of you with the best motivation!