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In little over a month the next edition of the SocialNow conference will be held. Organizer and good friend Ana Neves has been working hard on putting another great program together. And I'm honored to be the host of the conference again! So I hope to see you there. SocialNow is a special conference. I wrote about previous editions (and I still need to blog about the last one...). SocialNow is special for different reasons: For one it's a well-organized and thought-through conference. The conference organizer works in this field, knows what businesses are looking for and what conference visitors need to get value-for-money. The conference has a unique format. There is not one conference in which you get great keynote talk and discussions combined with real demo's of tools based on actual user stories in a business context. The conference is not only for people/companies looking for a new internal social tool. I find that the demo's also help you define a...

Lee Bryant closed the Enterprise 2.0 Summit with a talk about Social Business. Where's Enterprise 2.0 headed next? It's in the direction of providing real business value. Enterprise 2.0 has been adopted at least a bit by most organizations. There's a nice spread of use cases, showed by research supported by Headshift . Lee sees Enterprise 2.0 as a Trojan mice for organizational change. Small but impressive changes to the organization. Enterprise 2.0 is still in the early phase, patchy and tool-centric (like the KM wave was in the beginning). We're looking for quantifiable business improvements, like: lower operational costs networked productivity business agility effective management (move away from information hostages: businesses run by writing and moving report up and down the ladder) customer centricity (Listen! But many companies lack a structure to socialize what you're learned by listening) Where is business practice going...

Some time ago I said: Vacation First . I wanted to share my review of professor Andrew McAfee's book Enterprise 2.0 before I went on vacation. That didn't work out. I wish I could have written this review sooner, because the sooner you read this book the better. I'll tell you why. Andrew McAfee coined the term 'enterprise 2.0' (in 2006) and has been one of the leading thinkers in the space of applying web 2.0 concepts and tools (or 'collaborative media' as McAfee likes to call them) to the workplace. This book summarizes his thinking over the years. Of course he's been blogging and speaking about this topic. So I was wondering if this book would bring me new insights. Well it did. And to me this is why I love books. You know thinking about the topic you're reading about in a book won't stop as soon as the book has been published. But a book does give you a summary of past thinking and concepts for future thinking. And all that in a limited...

Absolutely great post by Chris Dixon about experiencing social media . Just go ahead and read it. It's short, but good. This is exactly the reason I like to tell people about what I get from social media, but stopped to push them into this space. They have to do that on their own. Experience them. Give them some time. And dismiss them then if you like.

Er wordt veel gepraat en gesproken over social media. Maar wat is social media? Of is het: wat zijn social media? Waarom zou ik dit moeten weten en wat kan ik ermee in mijn dagelijkse praktijk? En als ik het zelf gebruik, is het misschien ook mogelijk om het zakelijk te gebruiken? Hoe zou het bedrijf waar ik voor werk social media kunnen inzetten? Om deze vragen te beantwoorden heeft het bedrijf Entopic Internet expert Erwin Boogert gevraagd om een boek te schrijven. Onlangs is het boek verschenen en het heeft als titel 'Scoren met social media'. Het is te bestellen via Entopic of boekhandel. Boogert is er goed in geslaagd om er een leesbaar en leerzaam boek van te maken. Leerzaam, ook qua praktische spits. Het boek wil de lezer echt aan het werk zetten, persoonlijk en zakelijk. De lezer wordt hierdoor aangespoord door alle praktijk cases die verwerkt zijn in het boek en het gedeelte van het boek wat wil helpen om te komen tot een social media strategie. Het boek is op...

The Dachis Group recently shared a really nice overview of "The 2010 Social Business Landscape" , written by Dion Hinchcliffe . One of the tools I missed in his overview is 'social tagging' or 'social bookmarking'. Based the research being done by my student , Arzu Yucekaya , on social bookmarking, I've thinking about and discussing with her why social bookmarking adoption seems to be harder than, for instance, the adoption of enterprise microblogging. At least, in the company I work for... I'd like to share a citation from a (preliminary) version of her literature research. This citation relates to the adoption of knowledge sharing tools in organizations in general. She writes: In the context of knowledge sharing systems, public good nature of knowledge introduces two major challenges that organization face (Prasarnphanich & Wagner, 2008): 1. The start-up problems (achieving critical mass) 2. Discontinuity problem (sustainability...

Luis Suarez , one of IBM's well-known social media evangelists and email killer, has a really nice post titled "Forget social strategy, think social philosophy: Hippie 2.0 ". I hope you go ahead and read it. I'd love to hear your thoughts about his post (by leaving your comments on Luis' blog). I'll insert my thoughts here (that don't only apply to social media, by the way): Nice post, Luis! I agree talking about the underlying philosophy and/or concepts of social media is insightful and helpful. I find talking in this way to employees and managers helps. As an IT manager in the company I work for said: "When deciding to do an IT investment let's not talk about money/ROI first, but first make a decision based on the story." In your terms: The philosophy should make sense and be understood first.

Recently Luis Suarez pointed to t his nice overview of the different social media policies companies have (- Thanks Luis!). It's nice also from the perspective that it shows which and how many companies are taking social media seriously. However, Océ's social media policy hasn't been shared yet... We'll here it is! As you may notice our policy has been inspired by IBM 's. So, thanks for leading us IBM! Océ Social Computing Guidelines Océ encourages all employees to communicate open and transparent, for the benefit of Océ, your colleagues worldwide and yourself. With regards to participation in social media on behalf of Océ, it is required to obtain management approval in advance and to focus your contributions on topics related to your position. Every Océ employee has signed a contract with Océ. Act according to the guidelines provided in this contract. These guidelines also apply when communicating on-line. Every employee is personally responsibl...

Nice presentation (9 min.) by Luis Suarez to whom I've been pointing regularly on my blog. This is his presentation at the Web 2.0 Expo in Berlin (added in below). It gives a good overview of how he's trying to stop using e-mail for the wrong reasons and what he experiences doing this. I've asked the question before, but I'd really like to hear more from Luis about the time he used to spend on email and the time he now spends on email and the social tools. (Something for the Sweettt podcast , Luis?!) Also relate to his posts on day 1 , day 2 and day 3 of the Expo. Tags van Technorati: email , information overload , web2.0 , enterprise2.0

Just the other day I went into our company library. One of the magazines I always take a look at (- even though I also am subscribed to their feeds -) is Business Week . For some reason I decided not only to look at the most current issue, but to look through some older ones to. And then... all of a sudden... I saw the front page of the June 2 issue: "Beyond Blogs"! What?! How could I have missed that? Was it due to my vacation...? Anyway, I'm happy I ran into it. The article is an update from an article written in 2005, "Blogs Will Change Your Business" . This article was corrected and commented on here . Finally the article that was published in the June 2 issue is titled "Beyond Blogs" . It's a very nice article giving an overview on what has happened in 2 years with blogs and social media in general. It's a great read for people that don't understand this world or are taking their first steps in this energetic space. It is loaded with i...

Just read the interesting article by Josh Bernhoff and Charlene Li , titled "Harnessing the Power of the Oh-So-Social Web" (published in MIT Sloan Management Review, Spring 2008). Lots of the article is a nice summary of the stuff that has been going on in the social media world for some time now and how it's being used. What I really like are the tables on page 38 en 41. The table on page 38 is about "Participation in Online Social Activities Around the World". I was shocked to see the low percentage of people using RSS (8% in US, 3% in UK, 0%!! in Japan, 4% in Germany and 1% in South Korea). We RSS users have a lot of explaning to do! The table on page 41 is about "Using Social Applications in Different Departments". It gives a nice overview of what social applications you can use in different departments and how. UPDATE: Just found out this article was also translated into Dutch. It was published in Management Executive , juli/augustus 2008, "...

Luis Suarez of IBM has been treating us with some very interesting post on using less (corporate) email and more social tools. I've pointed to several of those posts before and commented on several of his post. Basically he wants to stop using corporate email (except for confidential matters) and move all communication to social tools. This is a neat experiment. However I was one of the questioners that wondered how the time he spends/spent on email is compared to social tools. I understand his experiment is not about that, but I'm not asking it to be skeptic. I think it's a relevant question. Of course shifting communication from email to social tools is cool, better and more productive/efficient (in the long run). But it does have to be in balance (or doesn't it?). For instance, I can send back an email in a couple of seconds to someone with whom I share a certain context. I can leave out all the details when I reply to him/her. But when I want to answer him/her via...

Great post by ReadWriteWeb titled "Real People Don't Have Time for Social Media" . With an interesting picture taken from the Museum 2.0 blog . I'd say the timeline is about right!

Luis Suarez posted about IBM's update social computing guidelines . I like the fact that they expanded their blogging guidelines to social computing guidelines in general. I also like the fact that they have a short list of guidelines and, if you need more detail, an expanded explanation of the guidelines. What I was wondering though was: although internal and external is blurring, are IBM's guidelines for internal use of social computing different than their external ones? Or: are these guidelines mainly focused on external use or are they also applied to internal use? And does IBM differ between use of these tools by R&D and the rest of IBM?

The CommonCraft show did it again! Another great 'in plain English' video on 'social media' . Thanks for sharing this with us!

Every now and then I pointed you to Luis Suarez's very interesting experiment to stop using work e-mail. He's in his 12th week now and things are looking good! He and Jon Mell got together to discuss this experiment and its consequences. This resulted in an interesting podcast. You can find it on Luis' or Jon's blog . There's also another podcast series on Luis' experiment here . These podcasts nicely give an overview of the stop-using-email test (if you haven't kept up with it) and ponders on its potential.

Regularly I visit our wonderful company library and scan some of the new magazines we subscribe to. One of my favorites is MIT Sloan Management Review . In the Winter 2008 issue I bumped into an article with the interesting title: "The Six Key Dimensions of Understanding Media" by JoAnne Yates, Wanda J. Orlikowki and Anne Jackson . I read it and reread it. I like the idea of the article. Basically it describes a model, the Genre model, to help evaluate how new communication technology is used and fits in the organization. However, after reading it, I had this strange feeling I wasn't getting the point of the article. The article says to evaluate e.g. the use of blogs by answering the why, what, who, where, when, how, context question. Ok, that's clear. But this is logical, right? Before you start using a new tool, think first. (I know most companies don't do this.) And yes, using this model shifts in tool use over the years can become clear too. But is that 'a...

Calculating ROI of social media initiatives is being done , but can be hard. Debbie Weil has a different take. She says: Measure return on influence . This relates well to what Gartner calls "delayed ROI" w.r.t. social media implementations.

Nice post on 'the new resume' or 'do we still need a resume?' by Debra Murphey on Social Media Today Most companies still request a resume. This post states old resume's make you "ordinary". So, what isn't ordinary? Everyone, whether you are an independent professional, business owner, or entreprenuer, should have the following in your social media portfolio: Complete profiles on LinkedIn , Facebook , Twitter and other social networks relevant to your expertise. A blog written with authenticity and expertise. An about page on your blog that gives the reader a sense about who you are. Comments on other blogs within your expertise that are thoughtful, professional and add value to the blog. Put presentations you’ve given up on SlideShare and link to them from your About page. If you have a recording of the presentation, you can sync the audio with the slides. I was wondering if companies are already doing this. Does any...

Recently I was asked to give a presentation on 'social media' and recruitment. So, I was wondering if you could help me. What would your answer be to the following questions? How could you use social media (social networking, wiki's, blogs, etc.) to recruit new personnel? What should a modern job site look like? Do you have examples of companies already applying this? Is there a difference between 'old' and 'new' recruitment? If so, please explain what you find that difference to be? I’m looking forward to read your answer(s)!