 After some soul searching I've just started updating my various personal profiles around the web to say I'm a social business evangelist rather than saying enterprise 2.0. I've got close to this before. I wanted to explain why now. For me that terminology change is a big deal because I'm not 100% comfortable with " social business", but it's not me rather the market that decides. If we move the clock forwards 5 years I'm sure we'll be using different language again, and I believe the way the smart companies use social media and social tools in their businesses today will be as natural and essential to any organisation as a website, email, phones or mobiles (cell phones for my US friends, handys for the Germans - language is so crucial!). I actually prefer the term " amplified enterprise" because the terms " social business" (as used by the likes of Dachis, Altimeter Group and IBM) or " social enterprise" (as used by Salesforce) are already occupied by a very different idea. Go ask the average, non-technology oriented bushiness person in the street and see what they say. Actually my perspective on this topic has 4 dimensions:
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Careful with that spelling (for some reason I preferred it to Canute or Kanute). Here is my premise. I think, like Clay Shirky, that we are living in a period of transformation rivalling the changes in society triggered by the printing press, the telegraph, the telephone, photography, film, television, or the start of the Internet (web 1.0). The application of social media inside and outside of business is changing everything. However, since around 2009 some of us on the leading edge of this curve, who up to this point have talked about enterprise 2.0 or web 2.0 applied to business, have been drifting towards using the term Social Business to describe it. Language is important. For me that language is wrong. If I ask the average woman or man in the street what a social business is they would tell me about organisations with a social conscience, philanthropic goals and ethical conduct - micro-blogging, collaboration and social media monitoring wouldn't enter their heads.
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 Now look. I have a real problem with the term " Social Business" as it's being used by Dachis and IBM and others. However, let me put that to one side for another post later this week, but it's a thread that starts here and runs through my thoughts on the London edition of the Dachis Social Business Summit that Lee Bryant kindly invited me to this week. The venue (awesome architecture), agenda, speakers, food and organisation were all set at a very high standard, with the sole negative of conference wifi that didn't work. It's a social media conference. It's obvious that the majority of attendees are going to turn up with Macs, PCs, iPads and smart phones and want to live blog and tweet. When are venues and conference organizers going to realize that their normal bandwidth just won't cut it for us enterprise 2.0, social media types? ( Rant over, on with normal programming.) For me the conference highlights were the opening two sessions from JP Rangaswami (Salesforce.com's Chief Scientist) and John Hagel (Director of Deloitte and authour of The Power of pull). JP's " Nature Doesn't Do SLA's" used Zen style slides - small white . ...
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 Earlier this week I attended the UK launch event for just another Twitter style microblogging tool for the enterprise like Chatter or Yammer or Signals inside SocialText. This one's called tibbr. Some people would have been underwhelmed and said "so what?", but I got excited - I can see some huge potential here, and I'd argue that every enterprise should be taking a serious look at this product. Let me try and explain.
It's from TIBCO, which is hardly a particularly well known, sexy or significant name in the IT world. They are pretty big though - they are a US company (NASDAQ:TIBX) who have been around since 1997 and formed out of Teknekron who started back in 1983 (with a product called The Information Bus, which is where TIB comes from). They have grown to have offices in 40 countries and provide over 4,000 customers with tools for business process management, SOA, and application integration - crucially important middleware that connects things together in the background for big companies. They might be very well known to the IT guys, but fairly invisible to the rest of the business. That could all change now they've ...
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 London Wiki Wednesday, the evening meetup for wiki geeks, business geeks and anyone wanting to discuss the use of social media technology inside their organisation is restarting for 2011 this Wednesday February 2nd - 18:15 onwards for a 19:00 start at NYK Shipping near Moorgate. Back in 2007 and 2008 we had almost monthly sessions with 25 or more and sometimes up to 60 people attending. During 2009 we had bit of a hiatus, mainly because of the difficulty in getting venues and sponsors for some free eats and drinks. Since restarting in September 2009 we've had meetings up to July last year, more often than not at NYK, which thanks to Alek Lotoczko has become our default venue. A core group of Alek, Harry Wood, Gordon Joly, Andrew Black and I have kept the idea alive. However, I have this feeling in my gut that a regular enterprise oriented social media event is missing from the current London scene. Maybe that's why we've had 26 people sign up for this week's session? We'll see.
It's very likely that this week's main speaker is the real draw. My good friend Euan Semple will be along to talk enterprise use of wiki's and ...
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 I've been a regular at every SOMESSO event so far, and Lee Bryant kindly invited me to the latest incarnation last Thursday - a joint SOMESSO and Headshift one day Social Business Summit. Sorting out a very embarrassing attack of the ave.exe virus delayed me enough that morning to miss the two keynotes from Jeff Dachis and JP Rangaswami (my Mac friends tell me I should make the switch, but I'm stubbornly staying on Windows along with 90% of my customers). I was particularly disappointed missing JP, as everyone told me his session was excellent, breaking the way ahead with the social business topic down to transaction cost. As soon as the video of his session is available, I'll update this post to include it.  The social business theme is dear to my heart. The word social and the social media term can be counter productive when talking to some business leaders about the way businesses needs to change in the 21st century. This summit meeting was all about applying what I would call enterprise 2.0 and some would call social tools (blogs, wikis, micro-blogging, tagging and other collaboration tools) to help businesses be more ...
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 Here's news of a special offer for readers of Business Two Zero. I've always supported SOMESSO events since speaking at their first one in Zurich back in 2008. SOMESSO stands for social media espresso - it's a strong, fast hit of social media for the corporate world. Every event so far has had top notch speakers and impressive companies and practitioners in the audience, resulting in some great discussions and conversations. Their next event is in London next week on Thursday, March 18, organized in conjunction with my friends at Headshift (now part of the Dachis Group). This one is positioned as a one day Social Business Summit, and even the title will spark some discussion. Jeff Dachis will speak on how far we've come, and the impact of social tools in business to date. My friend JP Rangaswami will then talk about where we are going, and how the socially-calibrated business of the future might operate. The rest of the day will involve more discussion on where we might be headed, along with case studies on use of social media for collaboration internally, externally for marketing, support and connecting to the ecosystem. ...
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 Last Wednesday evening, 3rd March, London Wiki Wednesdays got rebooted for 2010 and beyond, with a varied selection of great 5 minute presentations and me doing MC duty as usual. We were hosted by Alek Lotoczko and our friends at NYK. Actually, it felt like the old days. As you can see from our wiki, there was a bit of a hiatus between November 2008 and October 2009 and then to this month, excluding several informal meetings down the pub. The key issue has been the time and energy it takes to get venues and sponsors (anyone interested, please see me afterwards). However, we've decided to get things moving with a full meeting every two months (on the first Wednesday of the month) with informal meetings in between. During my intro the group agreed to broaden the topic out from just wiki related projects, to wiki plus all things enterprise 2.0 - social media tools applied to business. We will, however, retain our London Wiki Wednesday branding, rather than changing to 2.0 Tuesdays or some such. Somewhere in the handovers I also mentioned the 2.0 Adoption Council and 2.0 Adoption Community. On the night ...
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 There are changes underway across the worlds of social media marketing, social media applied inside business (what some people would call enterprise 2.0) and where these tools connect (or not) to the business processes in ( Cloud based) CRM and ERP systems. Products like Salesforce are adding Chatter, and Twitter connectivity. Enterprise 2.0 tools that started as wikis or forums are adding micro-blogging along with more and more social functionality. Content Management Systems are adding or acquiring a social dimension. Marketing departments are struggling with, or looking for tools to help with, brand reputation monitoring and management. One significant segment of this change just got much clearer with Altimeter Group's R “Ray” Wang and Jeremiah Owyang producing Social CRM: The New Rules of Relationship Management. R told the Enterprise Irregulars earlier this morning that this report is the culmination of 6 months of research, collaboration, hours of white boarding, phone calls, and skype calls in the early morning and on weekends working with an ecosystem of 42 partners. The document identifies 18 use cases for Social ...
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