After his main stage presentation, Don moderated a panel with three people: Ross Mayfield (Socialtext), Kim Polese (SpikeSource), and Joe Schueller (Procter & Gamble).

From left-to-right … Joe, Kim, Don and Ross

Ross Mayfield, CEO of Socialtext
Organizations are groups of people. We failed to look at organizations as complex social entities, and sought to put complexity into the software. Social software keeps complexity in the social network, where it belongs, by only encoding social rules.

Power Law of Participation … a curve from low threshold usage with tools through to high engagement with the community. Collective intelligence is read, favorite, tag, comments and subscribe … with then the start of a hand-over to collaborative intelligence … share, network, write, refactor, collaborate, moderate and lead.

Where should we wiki? We need a goal … the first point. Then we have four (4) “P’s”:
– People … a living intranet, small group communication, Wikipedia-inside. But you must have a goal to drive their involvement.
– Projects … classical use is project communication and lightweight documentation. Start at the start of the project.
– Practices … don’t go for “best practices” … it’s too formal. Go for things like a global glossary, FAQ, how-tos … it’s a great non-political place to start.
– Processes … processes are embedded reactions to historical stupidity. Many people don’t know why processes are there.

Kim Polese, CEO, SpikeSource
Looking at tools to encourage adoption of enterprise 2.0 technologies:
– Gartner … Web 2.0 technologies will be widely adopted within 2-5 years
– The benefits are really … save time and money, customers interact on their own terms
– Some concerns in the enterprise … cost of administering point solutions, security (SOX, general content filtering), importing data from existing information sources, and enterprise content management.
– Overcoming the obstacles … need to set up cross-vendor partnerships
– (Gartner) CIOs want an integrated solution, not a mish-mash of point solutions
– SpikeSource … offers a couple of core applications to ensure good integration of multiple products
– SuiteTwo … an open, extensible platform. Different products can be used in concert. Easy usability between the applications.

Eg, Clearswift … needed a more unified communications strategy. Like the best-of-breed applications within SuiteTwo, and it was driven by the CEO.

Eg2, International professional recruiting company … need constant information exchange about prospects. Used SuiteTwo.

SuiteTwo … about getting the best of collaboration, without putting constraints on users, and without losing control.

Joe Schueller, Innovation Manager, Proctor & Gamble Global Business Services
1. (Don) P&G … big adopter of mass collaboration outside of the enterprise. Half of your innovations will come from outside of your organization within the next year. What’s next?
Joe … the success we’ve seen outside the enterprise, needs to be translated into internal cultural transformation.

2. (Don) What’s driving this?
Joe … productivity is critical. Agility to enter and exit markets easier is critical. Finally, attractiveness as an employer of choice is also important.

Don … agreed, the next generation want a good place to join.

3. (Don) What’s the culture like?
Joe … 160 years of success breeds some fairly deep things. Can’t just throw out blogs and wikis … it’s 90% culture and people.

More General Questions
4. Where do you start with all of this?
Ross (Socialtext) … start by trying to find out what you’re doing.

Joe (P&G) … (a) throw out lots of stuff to try. (b) find out what the people want.

Kim (SpikeSource) … the wiki was foundational to the engineering side. The remainder use email. Can’t force people to change how they work overnight. Will probably work best on a project-by-project basis.

Joe (P&G) … a mistake … went straight after email … wanted to kill it. It was so ingrained … but it was a dismal failure. It was a big come-down.

Don … with an auto company … someone said “let’s start with the top 200 senior managers” … and Don replied what a dumb idea. Start with (a) young people, and (b) something that is factually correct. Also depends on the company and its culture.

Ross (Socialtext) … when using a wiki, email will be reduced by 30%. It’s a side benefit.

5. (Don) On building a highly-collaborative environment … various challenges … what are we up against? This is a big change? What are the key barriers to overcome?
Ross (Socialtext) … quite a lot of boring things … budget, dealing with the legal team, dealing with the PR team, dealing with the brand police. Need to get backing for a project that you can talk about more widely.

Joe (P&G) … it’s not a “deployment”, it’s “adoption”. Need to choose the right first project. An empty wiki is extremely boring.

6. (Don) What are the barriers to SuiteTwo?
Kim (SpikeSource) … Web 2.0 has sunk in during the last 12 months. Fortune 25 executives know about this in 2007. SMBs have less awareness about what’s going on. Are announcing a hosted edition of SuiteTwo this week for the SMB market.

Don … what does “collaboration with control” mean?

Kim (SpikeSource) … it means offering better common platforms to encourage people to move from ad hoc platforms to the company-sanctioned ones. Also compliance issues.

Ross (Socialtext) … better IT departments are looking at the move from “control to fostering” … how can we “foster” the use of these tools? It may be popping up all over the place … but there are some aspects of the business where there are high control requirements … so don’t put a wiki there.

Joe (P&G) … corporate IT is trying to shift away from “I have a budget and have deployed something that you need to use” … through to “what are your needs?”. These offerings become part of a services catalogue for business units.

Don … don’t “deploy”, “foster”. Do it in the context of thinking strategically. Think about the long term changes to the wiring of the industry. Lawyers will be a barrier.

Questions from the Floor
7. Is a collaboration culture an IT concern?
Don … it’s a leadership issue to ensure that it happens. How do you find the leadership? What’s the role of IT in this transformation?

Ross (Socialtext) … it’s IT role to get out of the way, as much as possible. Line of business managers can drive results.

Kim (SpikeSource) … let a thousand flowers bloom, but also IT has a role. It’s about leadership, and exposing benefits across the board.

Joe (P&G) … IT does need to get out of the way … in terms of integration and enforcement, the lightweight nature of the tools does eliminate some of the risks … because you can suck the information back in. The most practical thing you can do … get the CIO to say “let’s role model these things ourselves within the IT company”.

Closing Words by Don
We’ve got a fundamental change … with collaboration across the world and throughout the organization. It’s a new paradigm. The established leaders find it hard to accept newness. Collaboration is at the center … you need to find leaders to drive it.