Live from the Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Boston

The Enterprise 2.0 conference is a happening place: over 1000 delegates, 100 exhibitors, 100 sessions, some of them free. Most valuably, many large companies are describing their experiences with E2.0

Amongst them:
Oracle, who have developed a Social Networking Engine for its CRM products (mainly to help sales staff make recommendations, manage intelligence in one place, etc), Wachovia Bank – who have spent a lot of money on E2.0 as a self-contained project, Pfizer, who use more of an internal Wikipedia approach (they now have 10k user-generated pages), Sony Computer Entertainment (they had an interesting list of requirements as far as Sony are concerned, most importantly security – this has to interface with LDAP hierarchies) etc.

Interesting panel discussion led by Andrew McAfee, who begun by asking “Is E2.0 working?”
Consensus that E2.0 was good, but middle management was afraid of it, there has to be something in it for users who have to learn yet another tool, it needs built in incentives. Generally a paradigm shift away from a hierarchical approach to a community approach is necessary.

Audience member asked for an E2.0 elevator pitch. Rep from Wachovia summed up nicely: “Connecting people to derive business value”.

Strong demand for value across firewall and network effects (member of audience brought this up)

McAfee issued a call to arms: update the Wikipedia page on E2.0!

More soon…