Bex Huff’s Enterprise 2.0 Discussion Is Thought Provoking

I attended Brian "Bex" Huff's session entitled "Enterprise 2.0: What it is and How You'll Fail". At first attendance was a little sparse, but by 20 minutes in we got more than 15 people in the room. One of the biggest themes of the message was about focus. Focus on Culture versus Technology. This is one of those points that is so foundational to the concept at hand that once you hear you say to yourself, "Well sure, that's obvious", but you would not normally come up with it on your own.

We also heard an echo from the old Stellent days when he reminded us of the importance of "Getting the right information at the right time to the right people in the right format and context". This reminded me of the big launch of Profiles with 7.5.x Stellent Content Server. It was true/relevant/important then and it still is today.

There were a lot of concepts presented in the presentation and of them all the concept of Social Capital was my favorite. This was somewhat new to me. The concept was not new, but being able to linguistically wrap a name around the subject was a neat discovery. The concept of Social Capital is described on Wikipedia. Basically it can be thought of as referring to the value of the connection between employees and potentially even vendors. People like to work with their friends and so projects get done quicker or more thoroughly.

In the end, I wonder how much push back corporate America will engage in when liability of all this Enterprise 2.0 culture and technology come to bear. While companies may accept it at first, I am concerned about a backlash that comes from committing so much of what would have been hallway conversations, water cooler talk, quick phone calls, etc., into a written, searchable, liable format.

All in all, great talk. It is certainly though provoking.