Come see why The 2.0 Adoption Council rocks

Check out why The 2.0 Adoption Council Rocks.

Want more information on why I’m a charter member? We are a network of passionate champions in our respective enterprises, sharing our knowledge with others on their journey for enterprise 2.0 adoption. Learn more, check out my earlier blog post about the group, or just join us – click on the logo below!

Join Us

Enterprise 2.0 Internal Evangelist of the Year

Internal Evangelist of the Year 2009

On Tuesday, November 3, 2009 I was honored to receive The 2.0 Adoption Council’s inaugural Internal Evangelist of the Year award at the Enterprise 2.0 conference in San Francisco.

This was a great moment for me personally, but more importantly a great moment for CSC. At a time when few large case studies exist of companies making progress in large-scale Enterprise 2.0 deployments, CSC was able to demonstrate its thought leadership in this new area. We now are in the forefront of this area with the likes of Lockheed Martin, EMC and Booz Allen Hamilton in taking advantage of these newer type of tools enabling greater collaboration, collapsing time zone and distance barriers.

In just 20 weeks, our C3:Connect. Communicate. Collaborate. pilot achieved 25,000 registered users and over 2000 groups of interest. The metrics and user anecdotes from this pilots were so convincing that the pilot proved to be a successful 5th stage in our business case ensuring the continuity of the platform from pilot to full enterprise program.

This award was introduced at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference by e2 Moderator – Andrew McAfee, Center for Digital Business, MIT Sloan School of Management, Principal Research Scientist.

He coined the phrase “Enterprise 2.0″ in a spring 2006 Sloan Management Review article to describe the use of Web 2.0 tools and approaches by businesses. He is also a blogger about Enterprise 2.0 and his book Enterprise 2.0 will be published in 2009 by Harvard Business School Press.

Presenting the Award itself and a token gift was speaker – Robert Brown, SVP of Client Services, Jive Software.

In my acceptance speech I recognized the tremendous executive sponsorship we had behind this program and recognized Lem Lasher, John Glowacki, Ralph Pacheco, Dave Bogan, and Judy Annett-Donnelly for their sponsorship, guidance and support for this effort.

And of course, the success of our work at CSC would not have been possible without the hard work and dedicated efforts of our core team members John Chambers, John Macioci,Don Henn, our global advocates, and C3 lifeguards who worked so hard with us over the months to make the adoption of this program a success and beneficial to our employees.

Other Media from this Enterprise 2.0 Award Event

• To see the entire Award segment – visit E2 TV
• To view the SlideShow presented during the award segment, visit Internal Evangelist of the Year presentation
• Or read Jive Software press release about this award

About The 2.0 Adoption Council

The 2.0 Adoption Council is a collection of managers in large enterprises that are charting the course for Enterprise 2.0 adoption in companies with 10,000 employees or more. As “internal evangelists” we all share a common enthusiasm for bringing a new way of working to our representative companies. The “Internal Evangelist” (IE) has to carefully balance the needs of the business with an incredible responsibility to drive change in the organization with tools and practices that are outside of the comfort zone of most large enterprise employees, not to mention the pockets of organizational resistance predisposed to preserving Enterprise 1.0.

I am honored to network with awesome professionals from major enterprises. I have already learned so much from my council members and find it an incredible opportunity to ask and answer questions on adoption practices. I encourage new evangelists to get involved with the Council.

About the Internal Evangelist Award

One member of the 2.0 Adoption Council will be selected to exemplify the tenacity, courage, and sheer energy it takes to inspire a large enterprise to embrace the principles and practices of Enterprise 2.0. The award will be announced at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference in San Francisco.

“…the job of the internal evangelist is far, far more difficult. These folks toggle between fighting the good fight every day and then slipping uneasily into a sort of DMZ where they can peek out into the broader community for support and the rejuvenation they need to go on fighting another day. It’s often a thankless job with no clear roadmap for advancement, yet the majority of them do it because they believe in the principles of the 2.0 movement. I celebrate them!”

Photos above

All photo credits above (c) Alex Dunn http://www.flickr.com/photos/adunne/tags/enterprise20conferencesanfrancisco2009/

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 Generic License.

CSC is awarded JiveWorld’s Inaugural Community Adoption Award

I, along with a colleague of mine, John Chambers, accepted Jive’s Community Adoption award at the inaugural JiveWorld conference earlier today. This award went to CSC for the launch  of its internal community “C3: Connect. Communicate. Collaborate.”

Through the  tenacity, credibility and trustworthiness of those involved, the CSC team  secured a phenomenal level of executive endorsement from the onset and  established a clear linkage between its “enterprise 2.0″ initiatives to the  company’s core business strategic objectives. Through enabling a strong global advocate network and allowing collaboration patterns to emerge, C3 enjoyed viral  success in only 20 weeks, achieving 25,000 registered users, over 2000 new  groups and generating over 1 million page views a month.

The Community Adoption Award was set up by Jive with the following in mind:

Building a useful and engaging community is one thing, getting people to join the community and participate is another.

The successful launch of a community is a complex process involving multiple company groups to build buzz, educate users and encourage involvement. Many of Jive’s customers launch large marketing campaigns to promote a new community where others leverage word of mouth and other social media tools to drive people to their community.

We are honored to accept the award on behalf of many of our CSC team members and global advocates who worked so hard with us over the months to make the adoption of this program a success and beneficial to our employees.

Six customers in total, United Business Media (UBM), NIKE Inc., National Journal Group, CSC, Kaiser Permanente, and Swiss Re were recognized for outstanding achievements in their social business strategies. Read Jive’s Press Release for more details.

Confirmed Fall 2009 Speaking Engagements

After a very successful 15 months behind me leading a grassroots effort that soon became a fully sponsored global deployment of social collaboration tools for our 90,000 employees, it’s time to share our enterprise social collaboration journey.

My goal now is to share the lessons we learned, things that worked well, things that we might have done differently, all with the aim of helping a new wave of Enterprise 2.0 Evangelists on their way with their own deployments.

With that in mind, I am pleased to announce that I will be speaking at several conferences this fall.

JiveWorld’09, San Francisco, October 27 – 29, 2009

In spite of a tough economy this year . . . Jive experienced record-breaking growth in 2009.  Behind that growth …

“is a roster of industry leaders who’ve said “yes” to Jive and “no” to business as usual. Social Business Software is at a tipping point. Companies are casting their votes to eliminate silos in exchange for more connected and productive business conversations. Employees and customers are, dare we say, happier. The time to bring us all together to maximize the potential of a more social business environment is now.”

I am honored to be invited to speak about two things I feel passionate about:

• 4 Steps to Secure Management Support for your SBS Initiative: CSC Case Study (Session)
• Creating and Managing Demand for Jive SBS Employee Communities (Panel)

Enterprise 2.0 Conference, San Francisco, November 2-5, 2009

If you care about Enterprise 2.0, this is THE conference you want to attend. Typically held annually in Boston around June, this is the first time the conference moves to the West coast.

Our theme for San Francisco is “unlocking the business value of Enterprise 2.0″ with an emphasis on how real customers are using Enterprise 2.0 to enable more efficient, agile and highly productive workforces. The tools for Enterprise 2.0 are ready, and getting better all the time. Smart businesses are seeing the potential and investing in Enterprise 2.0 solutions. Now is the time to point to specific business challenges and opportunities that Enterprise 2.0 can address.

I’m honored to be invited by Susan Scrupski, Principal and Founder, 2.0 Adoption Council and SoCo Partners, to participate in a keynote panel this year titled Is Enterprise 2.0 A Crock? along with representatives from other major companies like Medtronic, Eli Lilly, Alcatel-Lucent, EMC, MetLife, and Booz Allen Hamilton.

Gilbane Boston,December 1-3, 2009

For 2009, the Gilbane Conference is more focused than ever on the business impact of content solutions that are here right now and ready to be implemented right now. Every program component is tied to the business issues surrounding your marketing, technical and enterprise content.

Rachel Happe, Principal & Founder of The Community Roundtable, will be moderating a panel Collaboration Challenges 4: Fostering and Supporting Conversations.  This topic will focus on the challenges to conducting conversations across the enterprise.

The 2.0 Adoption Council

Conferences are a great way to network. As great as these social media tools are, sometimes there’s no better way to build or reinforce your network, or ties, than meeting people in person.

In this context, I’m speaking of the recent Enterprise 2.0 conference held this past June in Boston.

I have been aggressively pursuing an Enterprise 2.0 strategy for a Fortune 500 company the last year, and much of the year what I was doing was semi-confidential.

But by June, our deployment pilot was well underway. So it was great to come armed to my second E2.0 conference with lots of questions, a few relationships already established and a passionate enthusiasm to learn more.

I ran into folks I met last year and folks, of course, from my own company who I rarely get to see, but always enjoy hanging out with (Mark Masterson, Sherri Hartlen-Neely and Doug Neal). But I also got to meet new folks in the industry (I’m sure I’ll forget some names, so please forgive me upfront.) Megan Murray and other folks from Booz Allen Hamilton (who I met briefly at last year’s E2.0 and Confluence User Group), Patricia Romeo from Deloitte, Jamie Pappas from EMC (who I had talked to and exchanged emails with but never met), Ted Hopton from UBM (again who I had just started to get to know virtually), Greg Lowe from Alcatel-Lucent (who now ranks among my top Twitter friends, always reliable for the occasional dig or sarcasm!), Gia Lyons from Jive Software (ok, we have met and chatted a lot this year, but it was a great bonus to hang out!), Ryan Boyles and Luis Suarez from IBM, Rachel Happe and Jim Storer from The Community Roundtable, Ed Sullivan from Radian 6 and finally, and most importantly, Susan Scrupski who we all know as ITSinsider.

It turns out, I didn’t get to spend nearly enough time talking to Susan as I would have liked. But what I missed out on during that conference, I have more than made up for since.

Apparently Susan noticed what most of us noticed this year at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference – and that was “Where are the customer case studies”? Yes, there were a few. But all of us who are trying to ‘do E2.0′ behind our firewalls are so looking for those stories (successes, lessons learned, how to make a case, where are the struggles and are we any better off than last year?).

I am grateful to the few folks that did get in her ear that week, because under her leadership The 2.0 Adoption Council is now underway. And I am grateful to have been invited as an early member, along with Mark Masterson, from CSC.

“We are a collection of managers in large enterprises that are charting the course for 2.0 adoption. Although we may use different platforms and tools, we all share a common enthusiasm for bringing a new way of working to our representative companies. We call ourselves “internal evangelists” and some say we have one of the most difficult, yet exciting jobs in the global marketplace.”

Membership into the council is limited to 2 members from any enterprise (10K+ employees) actively engaged and leading E2.0 efforts.

Since this Council kicked off almost a month and a half ago I have already received great personal benefits.

First – I have already been able to benchmark best practices and case studies with a few members. This has directly benefited the next stage in our internal deployment.

Second, in just a few short weeks my network of colleagues and experts who share the same passion and focus that I do has expanded exponentially. I no longer feel isolated behind my company’s firewall. This in turn makes me more valuable to my employer as I can now draw upon experiences from other members rather than what I think might be the answer.

Third, and related to the above, I’ve already been able to ask questions and get them answered from this community. And quickly, too.

And finally, I am finding it fun to share my own experience and case studies with others.

1. I have already been able to benchmark best practices and case studies with a few members. This has directly benefited the next stage in our internal deployment.
2. In just a few short weeks my network of colleagues and experts who share the same passion and focus that I do has expanded exponentially. I no longer feel isolated behind our firewall. And I have met many more E2.0 evangelists since the conference.
3. Related to the above, I’ve already been able to ask questions and get them answered from this community. And quickly, too.
4. And finally, I am finding it fun to share my own experience and case studies with others.

Membership in The 2.o Adoption Council is still open to new members. Won’t you join us? Engage. Evangelize. Empower. To learn more visit http://www.20adoptioncouncil.com/Blog/

CSC’s C3 Reaches Milestone In User Registrations

In just under 12 weeks of release, CSC’s “C3: Connect | Communicate | Collaborate” environment reaches a significant user registration milestone 22% user registrations, or 20,000 employees. At some point, I may make more stats more public, but we are certainly hearing great things from our users.

I am shocked every day when I boot up my computer at the passion our employees have for what we have provided. And I am grateful we have good early adopters, evangelizing this new capability and taking our experiment viral. I get elated when I see a new executive or ‘group president’ start blogging. And I am honored to have the executive sponsorship for this program that we do, who really understand why this is a core competency for our company and our employees.

And I am jazzed to start my day with testimonials like the following:

Not sure if anyone has told you personally, Lately!... Thanks so much for bringing C3 to CSC! I have been a long-time proponent of embracing Web 2.0.... As a "Digital Immigrant", I am just simply 'Proud 2 B CSC!'... Honored to see all of the "Digital Natives" take the baton and guide us in to Cyberspace! Proud 2 B CSC!  ~ Victor Malloy, CSC

It’s Not About “Can’t”

I just came across this great blog Raising Gatejumpers | Digital Dads

It starts out . . .

I have always hated whenever someone told me “you can’t do that” or “that isn’t how it is done.” I never understood either of those concepts. Sure, there are rules in place to keep people safe and kids out of trouble, but beyond that if I want to do something and no one is going to get hurt by me doing it, I’ve always pushed to make it happen.

The post goes on to talk about the responsibility parents have to instill possibility in their children, to realize that one shouldn’t self limit their own boundaries.

I must have had a really good parent, because my mother instilled in me a firm belief that anything is possible. This single life skill I know has served me well personally and professionally. It instilled early on a sense of self confidence, strong decision making skills and a general ‘possibility-thinking’ attitude.

Maybe at the time this skill was a much more important skill to instill in your daughter. Though I never thought about it, maybe my mother did. Instead, I grew up knowing that I could get good grades if I wanted to (the choice was mine to apply myself), get involved in activities if I wanted and basically do anything, even if only once, that I set my mind to. I think the only area in which my mother would wince was in the area of sports. I guess my own history of breaking bones made her convinced that was not an area for me. But to her credit she never stopped me! She’d still let me try out skateboarding or basketball and let me prove to myself where I wanted to set my own boundaries, rather than deciding or instilling her own boundaries on me. As I look back, it must have taken a lot of skill and self control on her part to not pass on her own prejudices or opinions.

And now with what I think are successful professional work years behind me, I truly believe I owe my mother more credit than I gave her then.

For folks who don’t understand the concept that anything is possible, and have to work with me, I must appear to them as a big nudge. As a program manager or business sponsor I hate hearing ‘no, can’t be done’. If something needs to be accomplished I like to troubleshoot how to get there. Barriers (to me) are meant to be worked around, over come and moved aside. (Again, some folks may think I’m a pain.)

But I think this is all about innovation and creativity.

How many times in our own work life do we have customers (whether they be market customers or internal customers within our firewall) that need us to solve their problems. How often do we think about what we’ve done in the past or what our limitations are? How many more times do we need to think “what if?” or how “can” it be done instead?

I love the Digital Dads post above and I thought it was inspiration for the day. I blogged about this internally because I just wanted more people to see this, and I’m blogging about it here because for me this is a timeless piece.

It certainly frames my own personal motto for life – and I hope it gets you thinking as well.

2009 Speaking Engagements

I am pleased to announce that I will be speaking at JiveWorld’09 in San Francisco this coming October.  The JiveWorld site now has the agenda posted as well as speaker profiles online.

I am excited to be talking about two things I care a lot about:

• 4 Steps to Secure Management Support for your SBS Initiative: CSC Case Study (Session)
• Creating and Managing Demand for Jive SBS Employee Communities (Panel)

Now that I’m about a year into our own internal effort, I look back and wish that I had better case studies on both the topics above. My goal is to share the lessons we learned, things that worked well, things that we might have done different, all with the intent of helping the new wave of Enterprise 2.0 Evangelists on their way with their own deployments.

I have submitted these topics as well for Enterprise 2.0 in San Francisco (coincidentally the week following JiveWorld’09) but I have not yet been confirmed. Watch my blog for an update on other places you can hear our case study live.

Complain Less. Smile More.

I am such an eternal optimist. My approach on life is to always look at possibilities, be thankful for what you have and don’t waste time crying over spilled milk (ok sometimes you have to ask why did the milk get spilled so you learn, but you need to move on and move forward).

So recently, when a colleague posted a link to this site on our internal social collaboration space, I realized I came across a gem!

The Smile & Move ™ site has so many inspirational messages for better living, better relationships, better work. Take a look at the brief video on this site for thoughts like:

The smallest things can have the biggest impact.
Don’t settle.
Exceptional results come from exceptional effort
Make every moment count.
Give no excuses.

It appears this whole movement was initiated after witnessing his daughter and friend with their lemonade stand.

I noticed what seemed to be a less than positive and energetic approach to serving their customers. It reminded me of the adults that I’ve encountered in too many places, who seemed put out or moved with complete indifference.

The messages here remind us that sometimes true change needs to start with ourselves, our attitudes and our actions.

Rather than paraphrase anymore of the great content on this site, please check it out yourself.

“When Advocates Talk Brands Grow”

Or otherwise known as “I heart Blank”. I just love this video – it speaks volumes about why advocates are an important part to a brand campaign. Lessons can be learned for the Enterprise 2.0 evangelists here as well.

The video speaks for itself.