Since introducing the idea of Social Process Reengineering? earlier this week I've socialized it virtually and personally (at E2.0 Boston) with at least a dozen customers, bloggers, analysts and other leading thinkers.

Consensus on the concept was generally positive with a variety of feedback ranging from the matter that the "facebook" approach doesn't just work in the enterprise to the matter that the social, structural and business pain have to be taken into account for successful E2.0 efforts.

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As much as I hesitate to introduce this term into social software lingo, I think it's exactly what Enterprises are doing with social software on the road to Enterprise 2.0 - striving for a fundamentally new way to work.

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I talked to two customers yesterday, both who came to me with some questions about attaching and linking to excel files. Easy enough, but before responding with a simple answer I challenged them: Why are you using Excel?

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Rather than thinking about communication, collaboration and KM software in terms of Return on Investment, isn't the real goal to achieve Return On Information?

After reading 10 Social Media Commandment for Employers, I was reminded of Blogging Policy = Blabbing Policy, a blog entry I wrote back in 2006 when the the "conversation" in the blog-o-sphere started to center on corporate blogging policies.

Enterprise 2.0 Social Software is appealing for many reasons, but a core value is the facilitation of emergence. Many in our community may quibble with McAfee's definition of Enterprise 2.0 but I think all will agree that the need to support emergence is a key trait. However, an emergent discussion shines a light on the interacting role of structure and emergence.

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Glen Alleman at Herding Cats offers really nice distinctions in Risks and Issues Are Not The Same. In the course of working with a lot of teams as they deploy TeamPage as a project wiki, I've seen a wide range of terms for project artifacts. The more these concepts are discussed and hashed out, the better.

At our market launch in 2002, I recall all kinds of skepticism passing off the wiki and blog markets as a fad. Today, with a complete social software platform and the most robust wiki framework on the market, we are skiing on Gartner's Slope of Enlightenment. Gartner reports that Social Software suites are headed for the trough of disillusionment (a good and necessary transition before hitting the slope of enlightenment), though our customer case studies show little illusion about the tangible and necessary business value delivered by Traction TeamPage. » Read Gartner's press release and ReadWriteWeb's report. ReadWriteWeb's writeup.

I found Tom Davenport's discussion of Why 1.5 is Greater than 2.0 by way of Bill Ives in Mixing Old and New School Communication. Davenport talks about the social reasons in favor of a blend between social and traditional approaches. I think an answer to How 1.5, in this context, is Greater than 2.0 is both social and structural.

Innovation starts with words, and ways to convey them.

These case studies are a taste of how ideas and issues turn into action, how tasks evolve from conversations and how boundaries have to appear to disappear for W2.0 ideas to meet E2.0 execution. See you at E2.0.

Recent posts by Michael Sampson, John Tropea and Thomas Vander Wal converge on the need for Enterprise 2.0 tools to smash the silos segregating content types and isolating workspaces.

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A tweet from John Tropea identifies our Kuka Systems case study as the "Seminal enterprise 2.0 task based / process solution." THANKS! I can't imagine a better endorsement of a case study, or the product supporting it.

This conversation started with Stewart Mader and continues with Bill Ives. While most of our customers run the easy installer and are up and running readily, many benefit from our front end advice as well as more formal professional services engagements. This exchange offers two simple benefits that are strategic to the customers and to the software producer (and, in turn, to the customers).

Last fall, I pointed out an issue of trust as part and parcel of Web 2.0 security (See What Web 2.0 and E2.0 Security Means to Me). When we accept social services like Facebook and Twitter as Two of Three Places for People, we entrust them to manage our data securely, to keep consistent terms (i.e. they don't suck us in and then suck us dry by starting to charge for basic services), and to be there when we need them. Today, I felt muzzled as I was touched by the uptime issue. I got this "over capacity" memo when I went to Tweet an answer to Dave Lamp's Question. I've received the "over capacity" messages several times and will continue, for now, to trust they'll iron things out over at Twitter HQ.

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I took a long needed vacation last week and came back to the usual firestorm of post-vacation pile-up that makes one pause before entertaining the idea of another break. Anyhow, after meeting a few high priority deadlines, I had time this afternoon to review everything posted to our TeamPage server in the last 2 weeks.

Chris Nuzum and I had a chance to speak to the Providence Geeks about what we've done with Traction TeamPage and how "Pages are Crushing Documents." I do a history of our company and transition into a history of communication and collaboration that runs the course from stone tablets to books through email and documents and finally culminates in wikis and blogs. Now that wikis and blogs are becoming the new currency of collaboration and communication, my presentation focuses on how "packaging matters" with particular focus on the ways pages can be re-used and distributed in ways that can improve communication performance and enable innovation like we've never seen it before. Caught on "film" are my talk followed by a video podcast interview.

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Matt Hodgson's the ROI of Being Social at Work points to recent MIT research suggesting 40% of productivity for creative teams is a direct result of communication and employees with the most extensive digital networks are 7% more productive.

In tough economic times organizations are faced with hard budgeting choices as they weigh the cost and benefit of investing in durable goods, people, marketing and software. Here are some reasons why software should be at the top of the list:

We've seen our US Government and state level customers seek out and achieve great success as they make their own migrations to "2.0" style collaboration with TeamPage. While "grasss roots" action at the agency level is encouraging, top down involvement and mandates tend to accelerate the proces. With Obama's Transparency and Open Government mandate, perhaps we have it!