E2.0

Decent definition of “Enterprise 2.0″, or E2.0 to be even trendier.

Always start with Wikipedia first. It says that E2.0 is another term for the term “Enterprise social software”, which itself needs to be defined:

Enterprise social software , also known as Enterprise 2.0 , is a term describing social software used in “enterprise” (business) contexts. It includes social and networked modifications to company intranets and other classic software platforms used by large companies to organize their communication. In contrast to traditional enterprise software, which imposes structure prior to use, this generation of software tends to encourage use prior to providing structure.

As of 2006, Enterprise 2.0 is a catchier term sometimes used to describe social and networked changes to enterprise, which often includes social software (but is not limited to it, nor to either social collaboration or software); and Enterprise Web 2.0 sometimes describes the introduction and implementation of Web 2.0 technologies within the enterprise including those rich internet applications, providing software as a service, and using the web as a general platform.

So E2.0 is may be considered a superset of Enterprise Web 2.0 (EW2.0?) which is a subset of Web 2.0 (Haven’t seen that shortened to W2.0 as of yet).

More of an explanatory definition comes from the Enterprise 2.0 conference site. BTW, they also define Enterprise 1.0 and contrast it point by point with E2.0:

The way we work is changing rapidly, offering an enormous competitive advantage to those who embrace the new tools that enable contextual, agile and simplified information exchange and collaboration to distributed workforces and networks of partners and customers.

Enterprise 2.0 is the term for the technologies and business practices that liberate the workforce from the constraints of legacy communication and productivity tools like email. It provides business managers with access to the right information at the right time through a web of inter-connected applications, services and devices. Enterprise 2.0 makes accessible the collective intelligence of many, translating to a huge competitive advantage in the form of increased innovation, productivity and agility.

Enterprise 1.0	Enterprise 2.O
Hierarchy Friction Bureaucracy Inflexibility IT-driven technology / Lack of user control Top down Centralized Teams are in one building / one time zone Silos and boundaries Need to know Information systems are structured and dictated Taxonomies Overly complex Closed/ proprietary standards Scheduled Long time-to-market cycles	Flat Organization Ease of Organization Flow Agility Flexibility User-driven technology Bottom up Distributed Teams are global Fuzzy boundaries, open borders Transparency Information systems are emergent Folksonomies Simple Open On Demand Short time-to-market cycles

IOW, E1.0: slow, rigid, boundaries, closed, hard, old. E2.0: flexible, hip, simple, new.

Or, E2.0 is just another name for knowledge management (KM):

E2.0 is the new KM. a few differences between classical KM and E2.0. The tools are largely different, for one. Perhaps the most important difference is the emphasis on emergence of content structures in E2.0, rather than specifying them in advance, as early knowledge managers had to. But I’ve always felt that most information environments require some mixture of structure and emergence. Andy’s comment that E2.0 requires “gardeners” suggests that he agrees.

Arguments for and against introducting E2.0 into your business.

Pro: Andrew McAfee , an associate professor at Harvard Business School , is often associated with the phrase “enterprise 2.0,” and is bullish on the impact of wikis, blogs and other Web 2.0-era software within a business context.

     Success stories from 2007

     E2.0 Evangelist    

     Enterprise 2.0 blog

Con: Tom Davenport , the president’s chair in information technology and management at Babson College in Wellesley, Massachusetts, has been skeptical of Web 2.0 software’s value on its own, and argues the functionality may not be all that new.

     Why Enterprise 2.0 Won’t Transform Organizations

     Enterprise 2.0 - why employees shy away from it (The pursuit of busyness)

     Enterprise 2.0 and Acupuncture (not actually a criticism of the E2.0 concept, but sounds painful nonetheless)

 

 

 

Global warming and lobbyists: two sides of the fence

http://www.charlotte.com/business/story/616447.html

Duke Energy

Revenue: $12.44 billion.

Lobbying costs 2007: $2.8 million.

First quarter 2008: $1.03 million.

What they want : Duke is concerned with global warming legislation that could cost the industry billions in environmental fees to burn coal. Duke opposes a proposed federal renewable energy requirement, which would force utilities to produce a certain percentage of their power from the sun, wind and other renewable sources. Duke says it should be a state-by-state decision.

Nucor

Revenue: $17.8 billion.

Lobbying costs 2007: $2.5 million.

First quarter 2008: $530,000.

What they want : The steel maker has been lobbying for global warming legislation that would give it financial credit for having switched to electric furnaces 30 years ago, instead of continuing to burn fossil fuels, such as coal, said Pat McFadden, Nucor’s director of government affairs. The company also wants imported steel to have the same global warming regulations as U.S. steel, he said.

How long should a white paper be?

Being asked to write a white paper (a corporate term paper that one is allowed to make grammatical mistakes on), the question is, like for schooldays term papers, how long should they be?

The criteria I see is:

• Need to make some sort of argument, whether you are marketing something (probably the only reason for white papers in the first place), or trying to explain a reasonably complex argument.
• Room for illustrations.
• Can’t be too long, or it won’t get read.
• If it’s too short, it will look like a press release or brochure. Wouldn’t have the gravitas required.
• God forbid people would print them out, and waste paper and ink.

White paper guru Steve Hoffman suggests that a paper probably needs to be at least in the 8 - 10  page range. Expanding the range of his range, I would conclude based on all the criteria that 6 - 12 would be good. If too long, reduce the font and margins, if too short, increase the font and tighten the margins. Also, stick in pictures and charts for the heck of it.

Steve Hoffman also has good articles on white papers, and examples of his own at http://www.hoffmanmarcom.com/whitepapers.php. If you want to verbalize your magnus opus and not have it read, here’s advice on how long a podcast should be.

 

 

 

Don’t buy gold, buy whisky

Here’s a commodity that you can put your lips around, and down the hatch;

It is spelled ‘whisky,’ not ‘whiskey.’

Like password for chocolate, or looking for Mr. Goodbar

Showing my age with the title. Was this a gender biased survey? 

Women are four times more likely than men to surrender their computer passwords for chocolate, according to a survey of 576 office workers conducted outside Liverpool Street Station in London by Infosecurity Europe.

According to the survey, 45% of women revealed their passwords to strangers posing as market researchers for a chocolate bar, compared to 10% of men.

…

Infosecurity Europe made no mention of whether inducements tailored to men, such as sports tickets, free beer, or explicit pictures, were offered to test the possibility that the noted gender disparity might be reversed under different circumstances.

Occam’s Butterknife

I saw this term referenced here , and it caught my eye so I of course googled it. Steve Sailer’s blog posts uses the term several times. Halbakery.com has the idea of an Occam’s Butterknife award for the most obfuscated, convoluted explanation for a problem:

Occam’s Razor = the simplest solution is the best solution. Occam’s Butter Knife = build, obfusticate and make it more expensive.

I suppose the more convoluted the argument, the duller the knife?

IT Deadly Project Lust

NSFW, meaning that most IT projects aren’t safe for your workplace that is.

For whatever reason, an IT honcho or a line-of-business manager continues a dud of a project with the persistence of a bulldog holding onto a piece of meat. They just won’t unclamp their jaws, even when all signs point to symptoms of potential disaster—

Projects are just pieces of meat

The “cool factor” can be a big impetus in cultivating IT’s irrational desire to put a new technology or new software in place that may or may not help the business.

I always knew that IT was irrational

Long ago he stumbled on the phrase “fact-free planning,” which he says perfectly describes when senior management insists on an unfeasible IT project plan. This happens when business leaders dream up a project’s scope, timeframe and budget, and tell IT to have at it.

Fact-free zones anyone? No reality based communities at the mgmt level?

I definitely know of Wall Street banks that have a tendency to just kind of let programmers get away with murder in terms of rewriting everything every two years in the most popular language,” he says, “and to some extent, they know perfectly well that there is no business case to that, but that that’s what it takes to recruit good people.”

Companies can only overpay the best programmers a certain amount to do things that they would rather poke their eyes out than do, Spolsky (note: Joel on Software guy) explains

Help, I can’t see anything