Eric Mack On-Line

This afternoon, we are exploring the implications of Web 2.0 on the Enterprise specifically in the area of enhancing collaboration and innovation in support of organizational goals and objectives. My friend and colleague, Rick Ladd, Information and Learning Specialist at Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne, shares his experience with KM at PWR.



What is Web 2.0?
Web 2.0 is about:
Participation
Usability
Economy
Convergency
Remixability
Standardization
Design
And more...

Question: How do we, as KM professionals, take what is going on out on the Internet and bring them into our organizations so that we can apply them as tools to support KM?

The Web as a Platform - key concept. We build on the web.

"Software that gets better the more people use it..." That may be the case on the internet. Does it hold true inside the firewall?

Web 2.0 boils down to just three things:

Rick then goes on to present 13.  (That's Rick)

But then, he distills them to these three:

Communication - how do we communicate?
Collaboration - how do we work together?
Findability - how do we find the people and information we need to get our work done?

Web 2.0 Tools
Blogs - an important tool for sharing what you know
Feeds - an important tool for staying  informed, not just on news going on outside the organization but on news from within the organization.
Mashups
Wikis
Shared Documents (e.g. ThinkFree, GoogleDocs)

Examples:
SharePoint
Social tagging & bookmarking (e.g. delicious)

"We become what we behold. We shape our tools and then our tools shape us." Marshall McLuhan

These tools are flattening the organization, whether the organization is ready or not. You'd better figure out what it is and how to use it....

Michael Wesch: Video on "The Machine is using us" (See it on YouTube)

My take on how to use Web 2.0 in the enterprise - don't just use the new tools to do the same tasks as before. use this opportunity to reevaluate the things that we do and then do them better thanks to the new tools.

A few differences between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0:
Web 1.0 was about reading, whereas Web 2.0 is about writing.
Web 1.0 was about companies; Web 2.0 is now about communities
Web 1.0 was about home pages, while Web 2.0 was about blogs
Web 1.0 was about owning, Web 2.0 is about sharing

Web 2.0 is also about software beyond the reach of a single device.


Early view of Enterprise 2.0 Elements
(see slide)

Rick's take is that Web 2.0 boils down to Communication, Collaboration, and findability wrapped within the capabilities of Social Networking for the purposes of Innovation..

Efficiency is OK, but what we need is effectiveness.

Q&A SESSION

Discussion about these tools and why we are not seeing the rapid adoption inside the enterprise at near the rate we see on the web. It's not just about cost. It's about management, security, and operational paradigms.