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Social Networking the Enterprise - Session Notes

Key Points to Start the Discussion:

1. One environment rule
2. Friction-free knowledge sharing
3. Embedded community

• Many organizations need assistance in defining a roadmap which develops a community that truly fosters and encouraged collaboration and sharing. This should also include vendor selection.

• There was significant discussion about the need for utilizing a single platform within an organization versus each division utilizing something unique. A good example that was mentioned: One company used one platform for internal communications and another for it's external communities.

• Many organizations have difficulty in finding the right people to receive a message internally vs. externally.

• A big portion of the discussion was spent on how to measure connections and then how to measure what those connections then led to. Internal vs. external meaurements

Company specific activities:

• IBM has been working on integrating internal communications into a business environment
• SAP has been working on how to embed social networking into new software
• Time, Inc is experiencing issues with cross group sharing that has led to much consfusion and a silo mentality between publication. The sharing by Time, Inc., led to a deeper discussion about the use of corporate twitters. Time sees publishing now at the same point as music was prior to the launch of iTunes
• Mckinsey Publishing is working on how to incorporate thought leader development within a social media environment.
• Symphonetic Consulting is working on how to integrate social networking with new business development ideas.

Social Intent:

• Building social media brands
• Measuring externally before bringing the community in-house

Social Psychology

• What are the psychological issues associated with knowledge sharing?
• Email vs. IM vs. Blogs
• How does an organization pull in continual participation at the C-level to ensure active listening by senior mgnt with social networking
• Understanding your audience/buyer: What do they want? What is the value proposition that drives product development?

I.T Challenges

• What does your I.T. dept need to support the development of an internal or external community?
• How do you get the buy-in from I.T.?

Changing the way people think

• Will social media change the way we think?
• How should an organization or a gov't listen and then choose the right ideas to move forward with?