Gardening - Front yard - Before and After

Front yard - Before (Saturday, June 14, 2008)

Front yard - After - (Sunday, June 15, 2008)

Any Questions?

Well, I spent this past weekend putting up some primer on the rafter tails on the front of the house (which you can't see in this shot). After that, Better 1/2 and I started tearing up the front yard and spent a rainy Sunday morning choosing perinnials. I think we got some really nice plants including some ornamental grasses, a butterfly bush, some herbs, some portulaca (moss rosses), some horizontal junipers, sage, lavenders, yarrow (several kinds), black eyed susans, plus some other goodies.

Things I learned today at Enterprise 2.0 (Wednesday)

1. “Me First” {Blogger Stowe Boyd is credited with the “Me First” statement; however, I prefer the “eating my own dogfood” though that has a weird marketing buzz/lameness to it I find I repeat too often} If I and other leaders of this organization want to see adoption and change in the organization with respect to collaboration, transparency, and social computing behind the firewall, I need to lead by example – Instead of sending emails with decks (ok, I sent 2), I have been providing updates via my blog post and informing folks curious about the conference to check the blog for updates.
2. Ecosystems around collaboration and social computing are winning over the one-off blog here/there. (NOW, to be fair, this is something I already knew, but it was nice to have it validated...)A major theme I'm seeing this year in comparison to when I went in 2006 was that companies who are just implementing a 'blog' or 'wiki' and saying that they are a collaborative workplace are missing out - really examining your complete ecosystem is key here and extends way beyond the Millennials (which I know you know!) This means that the portal, for example, is built with collaboration in mind; unified communications is brought into the picture, etc.
3. Don’t make the end-user go somewhere else to network. Have the networking component baked into the whole mixture – the end-user should be able to connect and look up people and expertise ANYWHERE she is doing work on the portal – if she is reading a news article, ifshe is looking for RSS feeds to subscribe to, if she is finding alumns from a particular university…Don’t make networking happen away from the work – otherwise, you’ll end up with empty, outdate profiles and not much reason for folks to keep it up-to-date.
4. We are now really at E2.0 – we’re moving beyond the “what is the value of a blog? Why should I care that my employees build and sustain informal virtual networks in an organization; rather, we’re going to – yes, I see the value; how can I make it work (and measure it!) in my organization?
5. Adoption – these tools (all of them) require the power of the network to make them work – 5% participation – something your organization is willing to invest millions in?
6. A blog isn’t a panacea for an organization that neither trusts its employees nor really empowers them to provide differing or critical views.
7. Pete Fields’ talk from Wachovia – one of the things I admire and respect about Pete’s story is that he took 18 months to build the business case. Because he was able to also bring in organizational psychologists and other experts, too, he really built a solid case relevant to his company's needs. While this might not seem new to you, the messages from his talk really resonated with the people in the room, the folks on the backchannel, as well as bloggers and Twitterers.

Questions I have in my noodle

1. Are the Millennials really going to flee your company ( and 401K plans) if you don't have social networking? Seriously? Who are you creating your collaborative spaces for? Them? All the generations? The organization?

2. What is the typology of enterprise users of social tools behind the firewall? Can we apply some of the pew and forrester work around this?

3. Who was I talking to about the book "Corporations: The pathological pursuit of profit" and my knowledge piecemeal concept?

See you tomorrow!

Enterprise 2.0 - 5 Things I learned today, Monday, June 9

I wanted to provide a high-level view of the 5 key takeaways I left the Enteprise 2.0 conference with today, Monday, June 9:

1. If folks see you talking at breakfast, they will be more apt to talk, too. I was at breakfast (because, anyone who knows me knows I never turn down a meal much less one which has already been paid for!), and I sat down at a table with someone I didn’t know. I introduced myself and began discussing the agenda, the conference, etc. with this person. Up until that point, you could have heard a pin drop in the over-sized breakfast area. Not only did I meet some interesting people at breakfast, but also I got to reflect on this component of what makes physical networking difficult – it’s sometimes hard to make that first move. Once you do, you will usually be rewarded.
2. The backchannel is the most important thing happening during a conference. They have Meebo Chatrooms enabled at each of the conference sessions (if you are lucky enough to get a wi-fi connection and participate, you will be richly rewarded with asides, insights, references to articles and other information not covered in the decks. I don’t know what I am surprised by this (and I’m not really), but as it is in meetings (you know that the backchannel during team calls are where the work really happens, right?) it is in conferences that the backchannels and hallway discussions are what provide the real value of the conference – the talks, while valuable, are catalysts for these meetings and conversations.
3. Metrics and Best Practices – not there yet – What I am seeing so far aren’t Best Practices (because what works from a “under-the desk” wiki started at World Bank might not fly in other organization) but Lessons Learned – I’m interested in the failures, too. Too often, the rush to do the new and the shiny doesn’t have the flexibility to be able to step back, even mid-product depoloyment, and say, “you know, we might have missed something along the way” or “I think we can do better here.” It will be clear, too, that metrics and measurement will not only be our standard analytics around visitors, etc. but also include those harder to quantify items such as “# of people in virtual network,” “engagement with news articles,” etc.
4. Whoever figures out the basic infrastructure wins. This has NOTHING to do with E2.0, but, I tell you, the person/group/company that can figure out what I see as the SIMPLE infrastructure component of providing attendees who spend a small fortune to attend a conference consistent wireless connectivity – especially as the backchannel just won’t work without everyone having access to connectivity.
5. Build on what you know and where you are. I had the good fortune of attending this same conference in 2006. My takeaways from that conference and what I’m taking away in 2008 are quite different. The reason? Not because I know everything and have nothing left to learn but because I am in a different place in the adoption continuum. In 2006, I was still convincing folks that blogging was good for business – externally in addition to internally. Now, I am in the position of implementation and adoption. This material reality produces more questions than I had in 2006 about issues such as:

What is the role of leadership adoption of social computing technologies in
an organization?

What is the role of knowledge sharing in general in an organization and
whether or not social computing technologies will be embraced by employees?

Thinking of the Pew Internet and American Life typology of social computing
users [GET REFERENCE] and Charlene Li’s Social Technographics analysis, how do
these typologies differ once you turn that analysis inside the firewall?
Would the Technographics percentages be similar? What is the role of the
luker inside the firewall?

What is the balance between enterprise-created 2.0 tools and those available
free and easily outside the firewall and managing end-user’s expectations?
(Besides that tired example of “we’re not Google here” ?)

If we are creating tools for the Millennials, where are they in the product
lifecycle? If they aren’t using the tools inside the firewall, then who
will? What about the role of the other generations and adoption?

Integration with existing processes and tools (e.g. – Microsoft office)

I’ll have more tomorrow. Good night.

Enterprise 2.0 - Afternoon - Dion Hinchcliffe's Session

I have to admit - I was looking forward to this session most of all (at least for Monday's session), but, it goes to show, the details still matter:

• Temperature - 100 degrees outside & it's hot in the room - packed in like sardines, hard to concentrate
• Wireless - Not sure why conferences haven't figured out that tech folks will use the wireless - especially when printouts aren't available and attendees are ENCOURAGED to bring their laptops to download presentation materials
• Overflow - why the overflow can't hear the questions is too bad - lots of great questions, and speakers often forget to resay the question.

I'll have something better to say later on this session when I get back to my 90degree house because it will be cooler there :)

UPDATE - he uses one of Rod Boothby's images about E 2.0 Communication Continuum - I met Rod at Collaborative Technologies 2 years ago!

Skates.com - Where's the love?

A little disappointed that I never heard from Skates.com about my query around their email. I never got a response from the person I sent my blog post to nor a comment on my blog.

Enterprise 2.0 - Monday - AM - Threat & Vulnerability Tutorial

John Pironti, Getronics

KEY thing I'm getting - need to have a way to map the business process (where the information goes, who it goes to, etc.) - Fascinating. Do I need to receive sensitive materials to my PDA which I might leave in the cab?

• What are the assets?
• What do we want to classify them?
• All data isn't created equally...

I'll be interested in the role of education and the end-user will be here.

This tutorial is going much deeper than I expected - Head exploding b/c I thought it was going to be more focused on 2.0 technologies - so much more I need to know that he is covering.

Now - I'm interested in the WHYs - why do folks want to break the sytems - chops? cred? to pay off mortgage? revenge? boredom?

TJX - multi-year attack - no-one knew about this attack. Emphasis on low and slow and to make money.

I think he's going to get into the persona of who these adversaries are...I'm interested in how the personas have changed, too. In the enterprise, would the motivation of breaking the system be the same today as yesterday?

Good question – how do you create a fake social network?

Issues of people and trust + social networks - best part of the presentation

Enterprise 2.0 Next week

I'll be at Enterprise 2.0 next week - I have the advantage - no flying, no hotel, no "where the heck can I get a decent cup of coffee" as I'm local.

So, why does the Entperprise 2.0 blog not have comments enabled? Doesn't make me want to participate, you?

See you next week at the conference or here or Twitter or somewhere :)