Stephen Collins
The standout presentation of the business stream was given by Stephen Collins (of Acidlabs). Titled “Enterprise 2.0 – is it the new age of Aquarius for business?”, Stephen provided a heap of useful references to tools, people, books, and practical guidance.
In a style that was accessible and just plain sensible, he laid out the kinds of problems that many organisations see, and judging by the volume of knowing chuckles as he illustrated some of the points, much of the audience also had first-hand experience:
- monolithic projects with 2 year lifecycles are dead
- 70% of ICT projects fail to deliver expected benefits
- too many departments tend towards isolation (and many seem to like it that way)
Stephen’s presentation expanded around the key concepts of Web 2.0 as defined by Tim O’Reilley:
1: The web is the platform
By using the web to exploit customer self-service, businesses can reach out to the edges of the web (be that the WWW or the internal network): accessing both the centre of their communities and the ‘long tail’, giving much greater, deeper reach:
“By using the web as the platform you expose opportunities and information to a far richer ecosystem. One where users are self organising and self empowering, where your ideas and the ideas of others and the knowledge you collectively generate are available to the whole business/community.”
2: Harness collective intelligence
There is a clear and demonstrable increase in the value of information and data in the network as more information and users are added. User contributions are THE KEY to dominance in the Web 2.0 era.
The focus of systems should remain on people over process, facilitating collaboration in new and engaging ways. By bringing people into a community you can realise benefits such as:
1. higher engagement & motivation;
2. Higher inclination to innovation;
3. increased ability to capture data;
4. increased ability to apply meaning to data as knowledge;
5. greater discoverability of expertise information.
The ‘network effect’ (or Reed’s Law) describes this increase in value within networks as more people are engaged. It works like this: as more people join a given network there is an exponential increase in the value of that network (both for the new user and the existing pool of users). Mathematical models prove this – take a look at the following snips from an Excel formula and try this yourself. If you increment the number of network users in cell A1 minimally (such as from 5 to 6), note how many increased network connections (and therefore ‘value’) this creates for the network overall – in this example 1 extra person introduces 10 new potential relationships that can benefit the network’s purpose.
As the network scales, so do these benefits. In a larger organisation of 200 users, introducing just 1 extra person generates 400 possible new relationships (and within any of those new relationships might be the killer idea that your business is looking for).
The exponential power of networks
The moral of the story is of course that every user matters – the one person you miss or exclude through lack of engagment, or by giving them poor quality tools to work with, might be the key facilitator you have been seaching for. It is through a lack of engagement and keeping the network/business divided into uncommunicative silos that ideas, companies, people, and networks wither and die.
3: Data is the DNA of the application
Without good data, no application has any worth. Flexibility with data is key, and data should be free as much as possible to be consumed by any user, or any other software, (so it can be ‘mashed up’ and repurposed).
If you have data in your organisation it is probably much more useful than for the things you are currently using it for. If you expose it publicly (external or more widely internally) through a user-friendly application, it becomes even more useful again.
Quality data should be able to be reused and leveraged by the network of users, but data management must remain a core competence in Web 2.0 companies, or else junk in = junk out.
4: Operations must be a core competency, users must be treated as co-developers
Support lightweight programming models that allow for loosely coupled systems. Think syndication, not coordination – design for reuseability.
People and organisations will need to undergo significant change to achieve success. Slow, heavyweight management practices need to be replaced with light-touch management. Think flexibility, frequent change and release & deep stakeholder engagement, where developers and business teams are allowed just to get on with the job.
A groundswell of acceptance and utility emerges through an iterative approach, and understanding the marketplace and the needs of your business is a prerequisite to building and deploying applications in a Web 2.0 environment. Be sure that a lack of usability leads to failure, so be engaging – the days of passive users are over.
5: Create good aesthetics for a rich user experience
Mobile devices are increasingly a go-to platform for data consumption. Multi-device, multi-browser & multi-platform integration is important, as it allows the network to broaden and grow at the fastest possible rate.
Seek to create good interface & workflows, and ask the users to help solve those problems: the days of passive users are over.
Applications need to be brought to core functionality quickly and evolved and matured just as quickly, all the time taking into account the needs of the user base as a key factor. If you build an application without users in mind, don’t be surprised when no one uses it.
Summary
Stephen was an inspirational speaker to listen to. He obviously deeply understands the Web 2.0 world and lives it professionally, enabling him to pepper his presentation with anecdotes and references to research sources and other bloggers working in the Web 2. 0 space. He’s a pretty fast talker though, so I am pleased I managed to record much of what he said, as my brain-hand coordination was not able to keep up on the day! That’s a nice feeling though – to be absorbed in considering one really interesting point, only to be spurred on to the next one a few words later, and then the next, then the next.
If you get the chance do try to catch up with Stephen in person – it’s well worth the effort.
