My alternate title to this is How Diann Daniel Completely Misses the Point.
So this morning, I am reading this article on CIO.com. It is close to being the biggest piece of trash I have ever read. I will save you some time, here are the main points:
1. Sell the benefits of Enterprise 2.0 to management.
2. Understand how IT can benefit from Enterprise 2.0.
3. Do your homework on tools and platforms.
4. Make sure you’ve covered your bases.
5. Find (or be) an Enterprise 2.0 champion.
6. Keep tools simple, and allow openness.
7. Realize the world of Enterprise 2.0 is the world of perpetual beta.
First off, I would like to point out to all of you budding CIO’s out there… for any project you ever do, I think it is safe to say that you have to make sure that management is on board, understand the benefits, know the tools and platform, cover your bases (?), market it, keep things simple, and know that the project lives. THIS IS NOT WEB 2.0! This is simple common sense. Honestly, I could not have written a more generic article if I had tried. I want my 8 minutes back.
Here are the points Diann seems to be missing. Wiki does not mean web 2.0. Collaborative documentation has existed in the enterprise since before Wordperfect. Wikis are just a great, newer way to write things down. That is it. We have all sorts of legacy collaboration utilities in the enterprise, most specifically groupware like Exchange and Groupwise. Simple collaboration is not web 2.0. I despise the term Enterprise 2.0. I am pretty sure that the same guy that came up with synergy and productized is behind that phrase.
So here is my advice on the world of Web 2.0. It is not about blogs and wikis. It is not about collaboration inside of your company. This has been happening for 15 years in some way or another. It is about taking the risk of opening up internal resources for global community gain in order to see a net result. It is about rewriting the corporate hierarchy and creating an environment that values data and gives status based on contribution.
A great example is IBM adopting Linux. They had to join the community, just as anyone else does, through contribution. They gained status by doing the things that no one else wanted to do, they gave up sensitive hierarchies, and communicated directly to the community. They gave up control, and that is the risk of the REAL web 2.0 technologies.
Adopting blogs and wikis is lame and easy. How about opening up some of your own intellectual property and talent so the rest of the world can contribute? You can take Diann’s recommendations, but they aren’t going to do anything for you. If you want to jump ahead, tear down some walls. That is the collaborative world, and it is likely that your company just does not fit into it.