At the end of the meal, our waiter closes out our tab and he makes a point to show me a link on the receipt to an online survey. Now, I have seen these in the past and never paid much attention to them…until now.

Our waiter explained that if he receives good feedback it will help him not just look good, but it will actually make him more money. It seems that the Chili’s manager looks at all the feedback ratings weekly and awards the better shifts (think Friday and Saturday night people) to the top servers.

Finally collaboration with a goal and a pot of gold (albeit small), at the end of the rainbow.

The company mentioned prominently was RivalMap. They are a service purpose built for tracking competition. I took a look at the site and watched a good overview of the service (haven’t signed up). Overall I really liked their UI and found it very simple and intuitive and they do a nice job of focusing on the tracking of competitors although I would have liked to see a bit more automation to the process of gathering information (ie. google alert integration, etc).

The real question for me on RivalMap was its applicability to the typical user at a company. Of course every company has competition and they need to stay abreast of it, but does it warrant its own dedicated solution? Will people spend the time to add the content to make it valuable? Wouldn’t companies be better served by a more generic service that allowed say groups for competitor discussions, or similar?

My sense is that very large companies with dedicated competitive intelligence teams would absolutely love this service. I could see those teams signing up and running their organization on RivalMap, but again, how many of those teams are there?

In the end, I have always thought that you should spend your time on your customers instead of your competition, so not a large focus for me, but I have to commend RivalMap for building a product that looks great and goes after a specific challenge. I hope they do well.

If you don’t know, UTR is a showcase for start-ups that are not (yet) in the limelight. In fact, this is where many launch to the world.

The format is that each start-up is given 6 minutes to pitch their story and then a panel (or the audience) asks a few questions. Typically, each company is talking for about 15 minutes. It is long enough to get a real sense of if they are onto something, but not too long to bore you to death. The only downside is that you really only see about half of the companies since they have two tracks and you are forced to pick one.

Here were the most common themes:

1. Flash UI - Everyone had one. Some needed it. Some didn’t.

2. Virtualization - Storage, computing, identity, etc. Why own anything anymore?

3. Developers - The api and the people who use them. Very important.

4. Platform - You mean you don’t have a robust, open scalable platform?

5. Marketing Matters - The best feature DEFINITELY does not always win.

A couple of interesting companies:

Vello - A great service for audio conferencing. Never again remember a pin or meeting ID. Works very, very well - but expensive. It also smells like a feature instead of a full product. If they took a lesson from Chris Andersen I would use them all day.

NetBooks - They are basically quickbooks online for your entire business (not just finance). I loved their focus on true small business. I think they will do very well. It only makes sense to move from accounting to business management - plus they have a good founding team. Downside - their UI is awful. They need to work on that asap.

Blist - Online “database”. They are great for tracking lists of stuff. Beautiful UI. Downside is that when they say Beta, they mean it. I do wonder if excel is really broken…

Ribbit - They are what the phone company would be if they set up shop today. Pretty cool features worth checking out - downside, you can’t get an account.

Magento - Open source ecommerce. I am rooting for these guys since I find most of the solutions out there very bad. I can’t wait to see their SAAS version. So far looks like good traction though.

LiquidPlanner - A new take on project management ( I thought).  I was excited to see these guys talk about the death of the Gantt chart, but then they went into a demo of one!  So in the end, they just added a probabilities to estimates.  My quest for the right project mgmt tool continues (sigh).

HiveLive - Another social community tool, but I like their angle on configuration for future enhancements.  It is a big issue and if they nail it, they will do well.  Frankly, I couldn’t tell from the brief demo, but I’ll take a closer look soon.

At the end of the day, it was very obvious who started a business based on a real pain they lived with and who got funding to try to make money. I know who I am betting on.

The clincher is that many of the best rated firms were not US based. Interestingly, a large chunk of the ones that caught my eye were not India based either. Bulgaria? Argentina? Who knew?

This is really important when you consider a few years ago you’d be dropping well over a hundred dollars an hour for a solid web designer and even more for flash skill. In a whopping 5 minutes I found a handful of very well rated firms with large portfolios of good work for $20 - $30 per hour. If you are in need of these skills, it’s good news. If you do this for a living, it might be a bit scary. From my perspective, this underscores the need for a personal brand, discussed earlier.

So the question is, are you next? And are you ready for that?

Here is what I think makes it work for a person:

1. They have a passion for the subject. If you are bored by your job, don’t blog about your work.
2. They have a focus. Most blogs are personal ramblings. It’s ok, but tough to build an audience that way.

3. They have readers. I know, chicken and egg, but if you knew there were ten thousand people waiting on your next word, you’d write something.

4. They have perspective. Take a position (honestly not for show). I find that type of content more interesting.

5. Be an expert. I don’t like reading people’s thoughts who are as ignorant on me on a topic.   I want to read about the Fed from Greenspan.
6. Get something out of it. It can be ads, ego, etc. I like the concept of personal branding and building a name for yourself. It’s the most achievable goal.

If you think of the above, there are lots of people just not cut out for blogging. There are also areas that have no real audience for a certain topic. BUT, if people are smart and have something to say about something they care a lot about, it can happen.

Agree? Do you blog… why? What do you get out of it? What makes it successful?

1. I like lots of things, but nothing as much as Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. I run Norcal BJJ Academy and it consumes me. I had my first introduction by being soundly beaten by someone I outweighted by 50lbs over 9years ago. After that rather humiliating experience, I knew I had to learn it. Once I saw that it really amounted to a physical chessmatch, I was hooked. Incidentally, I also love chess. If you do to, check out Best Lessons of a Chess Coach. Fantastic book.

2. I have tinnitus. I broke my ears playing too loud in a band in college. Seriously dumb. I pay the price every day. If you see me at the bar, movies, restaurants with earplugs in, now you’ll know why. And no, there is no cure, no treatment, nada. So far my best results have been with masking via the DTM System that I was a beta tester for nearly 10 years ago.

3. Both my parents were in the medical profession. My father is a practicing dentist and my mother gave up a career as a pharmacist to raise three kids. Good for us, bad for her ;).

4. For a long time I was into fitness and nutrition. I cut back on my “research” in the last few years once I found what worked for me. It’s pretty simple. No grains, lots of veggies, some fruit, lean protein and short intense varied workouts. I recently added Kettlebells to the workout and love them. The credit to this style goes to lots of people but check out crossfit, Performance Menu, Art De Vany, and Rob to start.

5. I have always loved entrepreneurship. I have started a few companies, none of which ever went beyond the garage phase. I learned a lot in the process and had fun while I was at it. I guess I am always thinking about what’s next. That’s how I stay passionate. To this day I get a little sad when I see small businesses go under (think dry cleaners not funded start-ups, those aren’t really small businesses).

6. I am big on balance. I have a wife and two kids and I am not sure I could forgive myself if I didn’t give family it’s due. In the end, we get way too caught up in jobs, titles, and material things. They are all so transitory. I think a lot about old age and death. It is a constant reminder to not sweat noise like “who owns what” or “who gets credit”. No one owns anything. Work is a part of life, just a part - and it should be fun, if it’s not ask yourself why.

7. I have traveled a fair bit and even lived in Geneva for a while. I would love to travel more. One of the best trips I ever took was skiing in the French Alps at Val D’isere. If you get over there stay at the Barmes De L’Ours - It’s incredible. Tell em’ I sent ya. While were at it, I need to learn another language. Language changes people. It can open you up. Italian or Spanish. Check back with me next year.

8. My father grew up on a farm (a real one - milking cows in the morning, bailing hay, planting crops, you get the idea). Farm life gives a person a firm grounding in how nature really works and what a work ethic is all about. I thank my father for some of those lessons. I worked for a summer on the farm. I was paid minimum wage. I was the only one in the crew (of about 30) who spoke english. It was lonely, hard work. I’ll never go back. Oh, I also dealt 21 at Harrahs in Tahoe - much easier. Hit on 16 (if dealer shows 7+ of course).

As I dove deeper into this new concept, I saw the folks at ZDnet had a piece contemplating if this new web app could be more of a knowledge management play. As we all know, KM has been plagued over the years and never made much of an inroad - not for lack of trying. I have always loved KM, and too wondered, why the failure? Here is what Larry Dignan thinks:

“The biggest reason: Employees like to hoard knowledge and don’t want to share much because they become less valuable.”

This got me thinking. Maybe it is time to just accept the reality that we are all free agents. Apart from sales, one someone is hired, they tend to go to work without the pressure of day to day performance. The irony is that, the pressure to perform is certainly there, but outside of sales, performance is shrouded in mystery. Why are some people promoted? Who is really a team player? Who is doing the best work? The inner workings of companies are tough to make clear under the current model of operation.

The obvious challenge is measurement. I agree with Larry that a system like Google is proposing could change this dynamic. If we solved the measurement problem, a kind of market economy for free agency could be achieved (at least inside an organization and ideally across organizations).

What would it look like if we all acknowledged the inherent free agency in the employee/employer relationship? I would argue that if we made this leap, both employees and employers would be better off. How?

Let’s take employees. In a world where your personal contributions, skills, expertise, and attitude were on display, I imagine it might “light a fire”. People would work harder, care more, and generally do more to promote the common good. The fact is, transparency changes behavior (ever not wash your hands leaving an empty bathroom?). Sometimes this change is for the worse, but on balance, I like the model for how it drives people to improve themselves and that can only help them in their current job, future job, and life in general.

Employers on the other hand would now have at their disposal a wealth of performance data. How can this help the organization? Well, there are a ton of ways, but let’s just take the simple idea of differentiation. I think most would agree that higher performers should be paid more, average performers should be mentored to higher level skills, and the weakest players should be moved out to more appropriate roles or organizations. This model has been made infamous by Jack Welch. I should note that the ire Mr. Welch inspires in others is primarily due to his percentages while the concept itself is generally liked as it has a sense of fairness which people tend to immediately appreciate. Doing this well just makes companies stronger and people happier. Period.
So if we found a way to enable people to build their own personal brand through activities we want to incent (like sharing, collaboration, etc), both employees and employers could be substantially better off. Batter up! (fyi steroids still don’t increase typing wpm)

-Paul

Example 1: My family went to Cirque du Soleil last weekend in SF.  The show was Kooza.  I have been to 5 or 6 of their shows and this was perhaps the best.  Of course “O”, Mystere, and KA are amazing as well, but they cheat with the uber expensive permanent stage.  Kooza was literally set up on a concrete parking lot.  It makes the show even more amazing.  Now for anyone who knows me, I have sensitive hearing due to playing in a band during my more foolish college days (guitar in case you care).  So I tend to go everywhere with ear plugs to avoid feeling ill the next day.   So in the middle of the show,  a stagehand comes up to me and offers me (in a french accent) earplugs.  Since I had my own in already, but he couldn’t tell, I politely refuse and thank him for the offer.  he then proceeds to offer a set to my 3 year old daughter next to me.

Think how amazing that is.  Some guy working the set during the show saw me hunched over with fingers in my ears (as discreetly as possible) and thought enough to leave his job for a moment to make sure I was comfortable.  What an amazing show of true customer service.

Example 2: My wife and I have been together now for 13 or so years.  So we figured it was time to get a King bed.  You’ll find that the longer you are with someone, the more room you need.  So we bought a new bed and of course had to get a new frame as well.  The local furniture store delivered it the other day and as a first stroke of genius, they delivered it themselves.  They didn’t outsource it.  The owner was there and kind as ever.  As a final touch, they left us with a nicely decorated candle.

Neither of these things cost much, they are just examples of great customer service.  A lost art these days, and it all begins with caring about your customer.  Well done.

The really cool thing is that we built the whole thing in about 6 weeks, from start to finish. That includes the very brief design sessions we had to flush out requirements, wireframes, etc. If you ask Jake nicely he might post a few of our really fancy whiteboard wireframes that he captured on his iphone (can you say Agile development?) The other cool thing was that as a part of this project we were lucky enough to connect with a fantastic team from ThoughtWorks. It was collaborative from start to finish. We each brought a few necessary components to the table along with a mutual desire to do something not only different, but special. I can tell you that without their professionalism and expertise, we would not be where we are today.

It should also be noted that launching anything as ambitious as a community for such a large group of people is not done in a vacuum. There were unsung heroes throughout Oracle in groups like legal, hr, operations, marketing, customer programs, and more that really made this happen. There are challenges in any project, but the people we ran into always seemed to find the answer, happily. To them we simply say thank you.

So here we are, day 1. Now the real fun begins. Seeing how everyone who cares about Oracle applications uses this new tool. We are excited to see what works and what doesn’t. There will without question be issues as we figure out what this new world means to our community. So pardon our dust if you see it, and thanks for coming along for the ride!

Since the new web is a lot about enabling people to share information, it seems likely that some portal vendor would have nailed this years ago…

I used to manage the portal product line for PeopleSoft. We spent a lot of time talking with customers, consultants, and analysts, yet we didn’t go anywhere near the direction of Web 2.0. In fact, no portal vendor did. However, now that tools like blogs, wikis, and social networking are becoming mainstream, they are being incorporated into portals by nearly every vendor in the space, including Oracle.

So what happened? Why didn’t all this social, open goodness show up in these products and by these companies? We’ll, if you understand the way products are driven, it will become clear that they could never have started there. I’ll save you the suspense before I dive deeper; the new web couldn’t happen for business customers first, because they are business customers. Let me explain…

You see, when you are selling software to enterprises you actually have a buyer (this goes for small vendors and large ones). This buyer has certain things they are looking for that are non-negotiable. In the case of portals, you had to have the ability to let admins post content (and not let others post content), users needed homepage personalization, search was a must, and the list goes on. Incidentally, this list of must have features was in most cases the same list that the analysts used to evaluate if your product was “enterprise class”.

The truth is that this list of capabilities was a joint effort between the analysts and customers. Customers call analysts with questions and analysts listen to their issues. Over time, analysts convince customers that the analyst list is important enough to look out for, and analysts learn a thing or two about what real users are facing. What emerges from this process is a super set of features that no product can hope to achieve (not everyone can be a “leader” or what point is the evaluation?).

So here you are. Managing a product that has a set of requirements you can’t meet fully, but nonetheless you have a set of deep problems to solve and a mandate to solve them. If you skip anything on either the customer or the analyst list, you will have sales complaining that you are losing in head-to-head evaluations or you have analysts leaving you in the dreaded lower left of whatever report they care to print. If you need to keep your job, to earn the money, that pays the bills, and keeps the kiddies in ipods, we’ll…the path is clear. Fill in those RFP checkboxes pronto!

You see, it turns out that resources are not infinite. Imagine if you were running a product and saw a really cool new idea come up. One that no customer or analyst had even mentioned or noticed yet. They hadn’t put the pieces together, but you had. You’re a wizard at this, a veritable Nostradamus. So you go to your manager and share this stroke of genius, fully expecting to be showered with praise and end your days being fanned and fed grapes.

Alas, no luck. Mr. manager wonders if you have customers asking for this? Uh, no. Mr. Manager asks if it’s a part of the latest analyst evaluation criteria? Uh, nope. Now, Mr. Manager is no fool. He sees the value in the idea and thinks its supercool, so he asks about resources, got enough to do it? Now you’re excited, cause you knew this was coming. You proudly say, you’ve found a way to do it by just reducing the scope a bit in a few areas. Mr. Manager spins his chair around, stares out the window into skyline, pondering your idea. He wants to do it. He’s dying to innovate and show everyone what he’s got, but if those darn analysts drop us in the next magic square we’ll be in real trouble - people look at those things, ya’know?

It all really comes down to priorities. There is a lot of known value to be fulfilled and a lot of unknown value to be created. With limited resources, people do the known and the unknown loses every time. This of it as an internal product development view of the 9x problem.

Now let’s look at the world of a two guys (or gals) in a garage. Not the funded team, but the two folks just doing something cause they love it. Trying something new because it is new. Because it is different. No boss to answer to. No customers to respond to (yet). No analysts to pander to. These guys don’t think they’ll look bad in the quadrant - they don’t even plan on being in it. In fact, they don’t really care about analysts at all because end users are their customers and as we all know, they don’t buy analyst reports. So they hunker down and code the new world.

Now at some point this all changes. Investors come on board, customers ask for features, and code can’t be refactored every time a new idea comes up. Progress becomes more linear and more directionally obvious. You can’t afterall re-invent yourself every time a new idea comes up. You have to stand for something lest you become confusing. This is why all revolutionary companies become evolutionary. At some point, they just get a bit better at the same thing with each release. How much better is the new Mac OS X going to be than the current version? Not a lot.
In my experience, the most innovative products are new to the orgnization. They also tend to find a new way of doing the same old thing that everyone already understands and it already trying to solve - but they do it in a novel way.

ipod: At some distant point in the past, there was no mp3 player sold by Apple. Everyone had a walkman, so we knew we needed to carry around music, but this one changed the game. Now they just get bigger in storage, smaller in price, and prettier color choice.

iphone: Apple never offered a phone, but everyone knows what a phone is, and why you need one. They just made it dramatically better. Where do they go from here? Ringtones, new colors…evolution my friend.

TiVO: Everyone had a vcr. We all wanted to record shows, but couldn’t get that damn clock to stay set. TiVO is just a joy to use. Now what? HD, two tuners, etc. A steady climb up the feature hill.

Digg: We have read newspapers for news, listened to the radio, and even used pages like MyYahoo and the New York Times. We all need our news, but Digg gave us a better way. What now? I don’t know, but I can guarantee you it will be evolutionary, and it wont be big.

You get the idea. Once you have a product with customers your path is set. It is one of the reasons why the new Microsoft Office 12 release is so gutsy. It comes about as close to revolution as you see in software. I am not sure it will pay off - personally, I am having a hard time with it, but time will tell.

From an Oracle perpective, understanding this history is important because it speaks to why we like our lab approach.  Of course, we aren’t the first company to have a lab, but the model is sound.  Let people experiment with new, sometimes crazy, ideas.  See what works.  Take the small wins and plug them in to existing products.  Take the really revolutionary stuff and create new products.  For any lab, one of the metrics for success should be how much of what you do makes it into real product.  If we do our jobs well,  I expect to see some of our stuff in customer’s hands in the coming years.

Cheers!

I used to work with the CEO of Mindscape and he would often quote the ephemeral 10x rule when I would bring up crazy ideas. The problem today is that I have no idea how to measure this axiom. If I sit down with my team and we design a blog feature for our social network, is that 10x better than someone sending an email, or a newsletter? I doubt asking users (before they are users) will yield any reliable data. I am at a loss for how to measure this value before actually deploying a solution. Ideas welcome.

As I watched Dr. McAfee speak it also became apparent that he has his own 9x problem. His slides all look like they came from the standard power point template (not that there is anything wrong with that). To his credit, he added his name in the footer of each slide, but no other substantive changes. I assume he sat down one day and said, “I can spend a bunch of time on a new template, but the message is the same, so why bother”. Thus another “good enough” solution of today lives on in the face of prettier, if not better, solutions.

While everyone else was focused on swimming, sangria and poolside chit chat. I was wondering just how smart a group of eight year olds really was. Fresh off the heels of reading the Wisdom of Crowds, I felt I was ready to put on my research cap.

The voting was done in plain view (a distinct break in the rules of what makes crowds smart), but since I didn’t run the experiment, I had little choice in the methods used. My sister assures me that next year the voting will be via ballot to avoid the bias caused by kids seeing other kids’ votes before they make their guess. You can see a sample of the Voting. I took each of the voting sheets and spent some time in Numbers doing a quick analysis of averages. Here is what I found…

In most cases the crowd did quite well. For example, the actual count of mints was 51 and the average of 13 kids yielded a mean of 53. The winner of this candy jar was Tom with a guess of 50. The actual number of pixie sticks was 111 and the mean of our group was 77 with the best guesser being Patrick who chose 100.

In these two the crowd did OK, but they were beat by individual ankle biters. However, note that the same person did not win both the pixie sticks and the mints. That is a key factor of the crowd. A single person may win a few, but over time, they will not beat the crowd’s average. There is no reason to think that a persons rightness will continue. The search for an expert is a fallacy.

Let’s talk gum. The actual number was 87 and our average was 94. Better than the best guess of 78 by Garrett. However, Garrett had his revenge in the final category of Jelly Bellies, winning handily with a vote of 704 and an actual count of 692. Our group failed miserably here with a mean of 336.

So what did I conclude? My main observation was how important independence really is. The only real area where the theory fell apart was in Jelly Bellies and in that area, my three year old, with my “help” voted first with 325. That vote clearly set the tone and a ceiling for what was “ok” and tarnished the results.

The other conclusion is my surprise in how well the group actually did in a few areas even with our complete lack of adherence to what makes crowds smart and small sample size. In fact, crowds seem resilient if nothing else. I plan follow-up studies with more tartar causing items and children. Perhaps throwing a few pets into the mix for some diversity.

You can see the full in-depth, highly scientific analysis in this pdf. (widsom of eight year olds)

Here is my quick and dirty review of the conference:

Strengths:

Nice Hotel

Etelos built a really cool app with the schedule, speakers, etc.

Met a few really smart people.

Learned we are not alone in driving change, uphill.

Jive provided a nice platform for managing the event.

The gift for attendees. Wow.

Areas for improvement:

Times were off track from the 1st session onward.
Printed agendas would have been nice.

Too many panels. (personal preference).

Demo grounds should have closed during sessions.

The 4th floor demo grounds was lost in the shuffle.

Overall:

A really nice event, very well managed. A good time was had by all.

It’s incredible that no matter how good the idea, it will always be met with a challenge. It got me thinking…Are there any ideas that are SO good, that they are just signed off on and moved ahead?

Now, over the last few days I have been to a few kids parties in the hot sun and so swimming was on my mind, so what about pools? I imagined sitting down with my wife to talk about getting a pool and figured the conversation might go something like this:

Me: “Hey, why don’t we get a pool?”

Wife: “That sounds like fun, the kids love to swim”

Me: “Awesome…”

Wife: “But then again, people say that pools are a lot of work”

Me: “In what way?”

Wife: “Well, don’t we have to clean them all the time?”

Me: “Sure, but I think they have automatic cleaners now.”

Wife: “Y’know my sister says her utility bill is at least $100 more a month now with her pool”…”and our kids are not that old, so maybe we should wait, we want them water safe.”…”and then with their friends, I certainly would not want a danger for them.”

Me: “We could get a fence.”

Wife: “But then that is ugly and plus it costs more.  Why don’t we just use the community pool?”

Me: “But that’s not as nice as having our own, and they don’t have a cool waterfall and the underwater bar we always dreamed of…”

Wife: “I know you want to do this, but its expensive, and takes up a big part of our yard so now the kids can’t run on the grass, plus we don’t really need it and it won’t even improve resale that much.”

Me: “I guess you’re right. Let’s just leave things as they are.”

You can take this conversation and apply it to any innovation you try to drive behind the firewall. The conversation ALWAYS becomes about the risks, challenges, costs, and downsides. Very rarely do people focus on the positive benefits, no matter how numerous.

This is the pain of innovation. A pain not felt nearly as acutely in the consumer world. That world has a sense of freedom and passion not oft found behind corporate walls.

Disclaimer: My wife is not negative.  this was a fictional account of a wife who is not as loving and understanding as my own.”

As I talk to people looking to take some of this digital goodness and spread it around behind the firewall, I always hear the same cautionary tale. It usually comes across something like this “oh we can’t have a <insert technology> to <insert objective> because there are ‘legal and HR’ issues”. At this point, everyone nods their heads with an aire of somber understanding and heads off to their next meeting. More work successfully avoided!

In the vast majority of cases, those in the line of business preaching caution have no idea what they are talking about. I know this because when you press these people for reasons, the response usually goes something like this “We’ll I just know that when we tried <insert failed project> before it was shut down, and I’ll get some of the details wrong, but in essence it was because of ‘legal and HR’ issues.” To be fair, that may be true, but I think if you don’t understand the why you can’t make the necessary adjustments and therefore are forever doomed to the status quo. Projects fail for all sorts of reasons, and in my opinion, they are not usually due to compliance issues. Far more likely are political clashes, poor management, and resource constraints that bring the death nail.

I recently had the pleasure of working with our HR, Security, and Legal teams as we worked to have our badge pictures placed on our social networking site. Since everyone takes a badge picture when they join the company, we thought it would be cool if that picture was just on our site, by default. Makes sense, right?

Notice to All Change Agents: Believe it or not, these policy enforcement teams are not trying to shut you down. They are people just like you and me trying to do their jobs, which in large part encompasses keeping your company from being sued.

Throughout our conversations on badge pictures, many issues (previously unknown to me) came up. The first and most oft quoted concerns come up around privacy laws in countries like Switzerland and Argentina where you need to be explicit about precisely how you are using employee information and why you need it for business.

However, more interesting were the discrimination concerns that arise when pictures of people are freely available. Think for a moment how much your picture can tell about you: Race, Sex, Age, Religion? You can see how this type of information can cause potential issues in transfers, promotions, and more.

So after working with these teams, I have a richer appreciation of the difference between Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0? I think in large part it comes down to a few simple truths:

1. Most companies have some employees. It may sound like Yogi Berra, but it’s true. Companies only start fresh once in their life. After that you have to deal with a legacy that can hinder what you do. In our example of badge pictures, we would be a long way towards a good solution IF we had every employee read a notice about how badge pictures would end up on our website. It wouldn’t have solved all the issues, but it would have been a nice start, but who knew about social networking when Oracle was founded in 1977? What would that disclaimer look like? More importantly, how do you now get “approval” from your current employees to share information?

2. There is no one to sue. Although I guess it’s true I could post my pictures publicly on Flickr and then sue becaase they shared them with the world, but I don’t think a court would have too much sympathy. On the web, you sign up freely, you share your content freely, and you should know better. Don’t like it? Cancel your account. If you share too much of your employees information, get ready for trial, counselor.

3. It’s good to be King. In the consumer world if you want to use google maps, you just go do it. Wanna sign up for Basecamp, sure, why not. Want to build a community for your customers to share on line…hmmm. Better ask your manager. All of a sudden, the decision maker isn’t you. In organizations, decisions are chains not points. Each of these links takes time to put together and have a very real chance of breaking for any number of reasons. This makes adoption much slower and in some cases kills it on the spot.

Some people characterize this as the difference between large and small companies, but I have been at both, and it’s not the case. Small companies may be able to move faster, but in many cases the best managed ones stick to their knitting and don’t innovate much outside of their core area. In the cases where they run fast, they are often only a lawsuit away from the policies of the big boys (remember, policymakers are there because they are protecting shareholders, not trying to kill your pet project). So speed is not about big or small its about the realities of doing business and it’s just slower than you are.

My advice: Before your next 2.0 project in your company, spend some time with the legal, security, and HR teams. Yes, it will slow you down, but it will also save you from some big problems (and potential shut down) later. And guess what, they will welcome the conversation and you may even learn something about the pain they deal with every day.

Next week is the Office 2.0 Conference made immortal by their offer of free iphones to all participants. The conference looks to have a good mix of participation and as luck would have it, I’ll be speaking on a panel covering Enterprise 2.0 Collaboration. That session is Friday afternoon, but you can see the entire agenda here.

So if you’re around, drop me a line on Facebook or via our blog. I am always interested in meeting like minds trying to shake things up.

So for now, we’ll have to agree that comparatively speaking, the consumer software world is just more fun. The interesting question however, is if all these cool 2.0 concepts such as social networking, wisdom of the crowds or even the cool features like Digging apply in the business world at all?

As I reflected on this, I came to the rather startling conclusion that for me, 2.0 is actually more useful behind the firewall than in the consumer world. Let’s look at a few examples:

Example1:
Digg: This is an absolutely brilliant concept. Have people vote on the news they like and essentially turn the old school publishing model on its ear. The core of that idea is a belief in the crowd and a simple tool to enable their voice. To their credit, they have turned media on its ear. If you don’t believe me, take a look at this compete snapshot comparing them to some more traditional media. Given the usage by the public at large, I wondered why I didn’t use Digg personally? I certainly have an account, but I never go read anything. The more I talk to people, the more I hear the same story. The knee jerk response as to why people I know don’t use the site is information overload. There is just have too much to read between email and rss, so they don’t get around to it.

Example 2:
MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIN: Social networking is probably the biggest change in how people use the web. With nearly 100M visitors there is something going on here, yet it hasn’t taken off behind the firewall. Obviously, there are many people who work at companies who have profiles on social sites, but the utility for work is just not there. Even for businesspeople who are into the “new web”, most treat these sites as a curiosity more than a tool to do business. I personally have a Facebook profile, but I never do any business on Facebook.

Same goes for LinkedIn. On the occasion that I go to LinkedIn, it is to approve a friend request from a colleague who is clearly job hunting. The last time I had any real traffic on my LinkedIn account was during the acquisition of PeopleSoft by Oracle. The great diaspora of PeopleSofters was a boon for the network volume but did little for its actual value. I’d venture to say that most people working at companies feel the same (if they even know what social networks are all about). From a business perspective, these sites are glorified contact managers in the cloud. That’s about it.

So what about Digg and Social Networks make them unworkable for business? Or stated differently, what do they need to become relevant to the business world.

As usual, in the world of 2.0 it all comes down to people. Social sites cannot be all that useful for business until everyone is on them. It’s the law of network effects all over again (remember the fax machine example). The nuance today, is that the people on these sites have to be the ones I care about.

There are lots of people using Digg, MySpace, and more, but from a work perspective, that has very little use to me. I want my trusted group. In simple terms that can be thought of as ALL the employees of Oracle. Sure it would be nice to have people I trust outside Oracle in there, but all my co-workers would be a grand start.

Once you have the people you trust, all you need is content.

Take Digg for example, I don’t use it because I am not all that interested in the news the anonymous crowd read that day. However, I will read every link emailed to me by a friend or co-worker I trust. If I could see all the articles that people in Oracle Strategy thought were good, then I am game.

I don’t go to Facebook to find the phone number or a recent ppt created by a co-worker, but what if my entire company was on that system? What if I could segment those people and call out those that I trust, not just those that share an “@oracle.com” domain on their email? Or what if I could see the most recent bookmarks created by my trusted network in product development? Now that is a social tool I would use. Day in, day out.

When we inject trust into the equation. It’s altogether different. I have an implied social network I live and breath within at Oracle. They are not only important to me, but I to them. It’s an inseparable part of getting things done, and the power of social networks is that the relationships become explicit and the content is relevant.

Until we enable a richer, trusted experience behind the firewall, all these social tools will be relegated to novelty acts to business people.

Mon. Nov. 12 - 3:15-4:15pm
S292186 Oracle and Web 2.0: Applying the Principles of Social Networks, Collaboration, and the New Web to How Oracle Does Business

Mon. Nov. 12 - 4:45-5:45pm
S292530 IOUC/Oracle Roadmap Wizard: An Online Tool That Provides Guidance on Your Applications Road Map

We are also planning a meetup for all interesting in talking 2.0 later in the evening. I am sure Jake will post the details when he has them.

I was recently asked by Justin Kestlyn of OTN fame to participate in a techcast. It’s a short conversation around AppsLab, our charter and gives some insight into our projects and what we are all about.

Take a listen if interested.

-Paul