E2.0 project excellence far from being defined soundly

We are just back from our German IOM SUMMIT which happened to take place in Köln the last two days. The event was once more an intense discussion of best practices about the changes that come along with the introduction of social software initiatives within the enterprise. Though primarily focussed on a more operative level the conference discussions addressed again some important issues for the overall adoption discussion – as there are:

Defining quick wins for the project to show the social benefits.
This relates to the call for pilot projects for social software initiative to provide a fast practice showcase on how social software leverages the network effects and the benefits that goes along with it.
Finding a balanced way between technological introduced and directly invoked cultural changes.
Enterprise 2.0 is not about technology, but technology is the enabler for the new open and transparent organisation. Therefore this is always the hen-and-egg-issue to be solved in somehow a balanced way.
Keeping in mind that the low barrier of entry is key for the software adoption.
The ease-of-use is what guarantees the quick adoption of the technology. Any non-intuitive implementation is hindering these effects.

In many ways the conference showed that we are in the middle of a big transformation process with the practical how-tos for guaranteeing or achieving the project excellence for Enterprise 2.0 initiatives far from being defined soundly. Exactly on this point we want to support with the Enterprise 2.0 SUMMIT. And as one single event cannot solely accomplish this task we have developed the idea of the “happening” for the Enterprise 2.0 SUMMIT with various pre-events in France and elsewhere to gather and pre-discuss ideas for the conference. In two weeks we are starting off with this idea at the first E20 Meetup in Paris in the NextLounge at Nextmodernity:

Under the headline “Ideas for the model of the social enterprise” we want to gather insights, ideas and opinions about the future models of the social enterprise. The key issues to be discussed at this evening are the following questions:

Visions and opinions about the future organizational framework
Overcoming the dissonance between targeted business activities and adhoc social actions
Notion of “management” in a social enterprise

Already some 20 people have already registered for free event. But as the NextLounge is limited to 40 people any interested participant should register fast. But this will not be the only event – we have already defined some more events for the month to come e.g. about “internal community and engagement management” on Nov 17th at the LECKO headquarters.

Each event has the task to gather basic ideas to one topic that will be discussed in depth on the E20 SUMMIT (see the session planning!). We are very much looking forward to this extension of the event and the outcomes of these gatherings.