Megan attended the Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Boston last week, and shared her reflections about the event in a long blog post:

“What it all boiled down to for me is this. It’s great to want to change the world to be a better place, for work to be less frustrating, limiting, focused on spending cycles and budget on inane processes. It’s great to want more productivity, fewer mistakes, and an innovative, self-healing environment. We’ve simply got to spend more cycles practicing the pragmatism we preach. That 101 process we’ve all discovered for selling the business case? That’s the process we use to change minds and build adoption. The idea that changing the minds of humans who have no desire to change should be a strong focus is a poor investment and yields even poorer ROI. Remember, don’t feed the trolls. Change is about creating an environment of irrefutable value where the majority join in to collect their own perceived gains. In our case, one where business value, more clearly, a positive impact to the bottom line, organizational or personal, is demonstrated. Your ability to achieve such at an enterprise level, right off the bat, is slim. Your chance of doing that by consciously supporting a growing network through an organizationally self aware plan, real-time analysis and iteration, and through creating a network of supportive advocates by offering real value to their bottom line is how it happens…. I know, I know, that’s a mouthful. It’s tough to force fit authenticity into a org chart or a quarterly numbers sheet. The process is still navigable if we can put down our baggage and get to navigating towards something specific. Mind you, that also means specifically leaving room for the unplanned and the unspecific, where the really good innovative stuff comes from.” (emphasis added)

My Comments
1. I’m heartened by Megan’s reflections. It shows a great deal of maturity about the space … and it’s a delight for me to see this from afar.

2. In terms of demonstrating value, following a plan, taking your time to make it work … all of those principles align with my writing in User Adoption Strategies. It’s not “the cool thing” to be tell Enterprise 2.0 advocates that changing hearts and minds will take time, but it is true.

3. I haven’t been to the Enterprise 2.0 Conference since … 2007. Ouch. I enjoyed attending, speaking, and moderating at earlier events, but it hasn’t worked out due to family and business commitments for quite some years now.