Discovering the Starfish

In the following of my other posting (in German) and in regards to foster the discussions about Enterprise 2.0 for our upcoming event I am happy to share with you another video of the Intranet 2.0 FORUM in Zurich on Dec 7th.
It’s the presentation of Richard Dennison of BT talking about “Social software in a corporate context: the BT experience!”:

Sevenload Direkt

Slides at SlideShare

There were three statements from Richard that I found very remarkable in the context of my Enterprise 2.0 case evaluations:

The first is taken from his lessons learned - there he is talking about the perception of social software comparing towards classical information management solutions like the CMS-based intranet at BT. While he first thought that the use of social software is a revolution, he is now aware that it is an evolution - in regards to a more open and collaborative approach of managing information - as in “Be Open & Collaborate”.

Second is the grassrooted notion about how to emerge these kinds of projects as in “Be Viral”:

We did not publizee any of our social tools at all; all what we have done - we had made them available for people to use and then let them grow

And third - similar to second but from a technical point I think it is also remarkable that the success of BT social software initiatives is not based on an integrative approach but on a combination of different tools and services - behind this one can see an understanding of the tools and system offerings as a platform as in “Be a Platform”.

Unfortunately I could convince any of the BT guys (though trying very hard!) to join in at the discussions at the Enterprise 2.0 - hope this is not a result of Richard’s learnings “from his conference frenzy”.

Some more in-depth coverage and interpretations of Richard’s presentation can be found here:

• http://webonomy.blogspot.com/2007/12/intranet-forum-social-media-im.html (German)
• http://netjmc.typepad.com/globally_local/2007/12/intranet-20-f-1.html