Secure Enterprise 2.0 Blog

Just came back from the wonderful city of Varese, Italy, where the International Forum on Enterprise 2.0 tackled some of the major issues in the space.

It was great to see an interesting collection of people from across the world at the show - Thomas Vander Wal, Stewart Mader, Laurence Lock Lee, Luis Suarez, Norman Lewis, Ran Shribman and David Terrar. You can catch some of the tweets and off-beat discussion on Summize.

Even more interesting was the high turnout of top business professionals looking to learn how to utilize Web 2.0 tools for business benefit. The Italian business ecosystem is normally characterized by a traditional business culture. Yet, interestingly enough, at the event, the first of its kind in Italy, there were representatives of top companies across a range of industries (auto, pharma, etc). These are companies that typically have a very closed-conservative corporate culture, not your typical early-adopter types.

This may very well be a sign of good things to come.

If you are contemplating incorporating Web 2.0 into your workflow or corporate environment, you should have been yesterday at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Boston . In one of the more exciting sessions of the day, Andrew McAfee of Harvard Business School, tackled Web 2.0 issues in the enterprise together with people who have “been there, done it and doing it tomorrow”.

Besides driving home the general message behind the new technology, and how it is affecting business, each one of the panel members provided a simple tip to keep in mind, following their own successful implentation of Web 2.0 tools and solutions in the organization:

• “Follow the JFDI methodology - Just Fricking Do It. If you try Web 2.0 you’ll realize it’s not that scary after all” - Simon Revell, Manager of Enterprise 2.0 Technology Development, Pfizer Ltd.
• “Go big and audacious in Web 2.0 deployments beyond small targeted deployments of specific tools” - Pete Fields, Senior Vice President, eCommerce Division, Wachovia
• “Get the right people to develop the Web 2.0 tools you are planning on using” - Ned Lerner, Director of Tools and Technology, Sony Computer Entertainment
• “The hardest thing to do is give up control, but you should fight for your life against closed spaces” - Don Burke, Intellipedia Doyen, CIA
• “Social me first - pick up Web 2.0 tools to try on your own and then gradually people in the organization will start to see the light” - Sean Dennehy, Intellipedia Evangelist, CIA

Read more about the dialogue that ensued between these Web 2.0 mavericks in this InformationWeek article.