Breakout Session: Open Text - Candy and Aspirin

Building the Foundation of Enterprise 2.0

Presenters:
Tom Jenkins, Executive Chairman & Chief Strategy Officer, Open Text
Daniel Kraft, President, RedDot, The Open Text Web Solutions Group

I thought I thaw a puthy cat..

My take on what was said..

Given that new technologies have been embraced by the global populace for keeping in touch with friends and family, sharing of fun stuff, rather frivolous matters really, some may wave them away with utter dissapproval over its use in a serious entity. But you see, why kill the messenger, when its all about defining the message and its objectives? Is there more to life than Facebook?

Setting the foundations of Enterprise 2.0 is a balancing act. According to Open Text, just add enough candy to excite, but with some aspirin to rid off organizational headaches. What in the world does that mean, one might ask. Well, then.

Web 2.0 is about people+content transmitted via new technologies that haven't yet been fully understood by most IT professionals. I'm sure we're all very excited about sharing our thoughts on the oil price hike with our entire network. I'm sure we love all the most recent pictures of our friends on the other end of the world , and we get alerts too when there are new stuff for us to see. The fact is, social networks, blogs, wikis under the pure "social" realm is personal and comes with the assumed disclaimer that the opinions placed are 'my own' and 'my own' only. Its suddenly a different ball game when you cross over to the enterprise environment.

Although electronic records (emails for example) are hardly new, people react cautiously when it comes to digitizing their thoughts on blogs and wikis in an enterprise. They ask the same questions the folks in Secret Agencies did? Who will see this? Will I get sued for posting this? What are its legal implications? All valid questions, but here's where the aspirin comes in. The same compliance policies and corporate governance must be applied to moderate the "candy" so its usage, doesn't hog bandwidth for example, or go overboard and get in the way of productivity.

Of course, corporations should not restrict every single thing with the web 2.0 stamp on it. Some corporations I shall not disclose, have blocked access to Facebook altogether much to the annoyance of their employees. (Based on a recent survey by IT services, more than a third of those between 18-24 would quit their jobs if Facebook was banned in their workplace. That number though falls to 16 percent for older peeps) Others have made Facebook an alternate avenue for soft selling, lead generation and brand enhancing activities. Which company do you think does better at the end? Debatable? Essentially, its about extending policies to content derived from Enterprise 2.0. Blogs and wikis will eventually become part of the business process as emails have today.

So how do you strike that balance? As mentioned several times, its all about getting your business strategies right first, technology second. What that actually means, I don't know for sure. There isn't a single solution for all I guess. Wish there were more defined examples though but that only means we're all on the same learning curve.

But once again, my guess is your organization must decide on the processes that can be E 2.0 enabled to achieve specific business goals. You will also need to manage the expectations of your internal users by consistently communicating with them on the usage of E2.0.

Here's another example:

Mash-ups are a great tool to aggregate relevant content from various sources, internally as well as those lying beyond the firewall to a single viewpoint. How then would you control content or service levels from other sources? Ensure your SLAs are in place. Your content providers would still need to adhere to their terms and conditions, which you would have to agree to etc. Nothing new there right? The same processes apply. This could also determine the types of applications as well as the number of applications to be mashed up.

Other questions to ask yourself:
How do we monetise social networks without violating content rights?
Will web 2.0 applications nested within a permission structure delay response time?
How do we deal with the digitisation of analog content? How do we get these ready for an HTML format?

Last but not least, we would have to seriously consider investing the right resources when implementing 2.0 and committing to its success.

Examples mentioned during the talk:
National Aquarium of Baltimore- gets the information in your context.
I find the online travel planner very cool, E2.0 or not
Alberta Goverment, Canada - currently uses social networks for outreach programs