First Steps

Preparation of my presentation to the executives
After reading Denning's book, I tried to put together a presentation for the business unit manager in my company. I put a first draft on our MBA google sites collaboration platform and got some very valuable feedback from our course instructor of the soft skills & leadership qualities class (thanks Charles!!). These will flow into the next version. While looking for available information on enterprise 2.0 I am really amazed how much is already out there!

Do you know, what blogging, tagging, social networks and mashups are about? What amazing things can be done with them? Can you imagine how much energy is emerging in collaborative networks?


First approaches in my company
Speaking with colleagues about my idea, I was surprised how easy it was to convince them and get support. A lot of them see the necessity of collaboration and welcome my approach a lot. They even already come up with ideas about how or where to use it. My department manager supports my as well and encourages me with it.
In order to have a more solid bases for my idea and presentation, I called IT to find out, which web 2.0 technologies are supported. And I was surprised again! Guess what? There is already a "media wiki" implemented and running by our R&D departments in Austria, which is officially supported by IT! Next week, I will have a meeting with the eCommerce manager from IT and discuss what else is already supported in our company. That makes it a lot easier to convince the management board, as the efforts for implementation are minimal. With a colleague of mine, inspired from what I showed him, we already came up with the idea to set up a blog for external customers. This would give us the possibility to have a closer contact and find out about their issues and ideas about our products. Additionally this would give the company a more personal face.
Stay tuned, I keep you posted. It's already starting to take off!!