I enjoyed a trip to Philadelphia last week to attend the ITEC Conference . I spoke at two sessions on Thursday, here is a summary.

Session 1 Second Circle Web 2.0 and New Marketing

Metcalf's Law - The value of a network is proportional to the square of the number of connected users
We are in a new digital ecosystem and the search box is the new window to our intentions:

112M million blogs
Bloggers are mainstream
2,700 Social networks
1.5 million photos added to Flickr daily
4 million daily Twitter messages
Average age of evening news viewer: 60

As Chris Brogan has shared many times, there is a new information model:
Information must be: Dynamic, Localized, Atomized, Relevant, Mashable, Mobile, Shareable

Web 2.0 is a jargon term and overused, but it still is understood as representing a wide range of new technologies that share some common principles:
Participation
Social Software
Mobility
Folksonomy
The Long Tail

We talked about the following technologies that can transform new marketing and PR:
Blogs
Microblogging
RSS, Content Aggregation and Syndication
Wikis

Session 2 - Web 2.0 for KM & Collaboration

The second talk focused more within the enterprise and discussed how similar technologies are having an impact with team collaboration and innovation.

Companies are realizing the benefits in using Second Circle tools for KM and Collaboration. However, there are some key differences inside and outside the firewall.

Need for security
Firewalls restricting access to social networks
Regulations/ Sox prevents transparent communications
Mix of public and private networks for content
Rich new media impacting network performance
Documents buried across servers and desktops
Culture doesn't support blogging and sharing views
Can't establish my personal presence and profile online
Not using RSS to keep track of my information resources
Access expertise across all my networks - work / personal

KM & collaboration drives innovation, participative decision making, and information access, and colleagues access across an organization:

Driving efficiency and lower costs
Enabling distributed, networked businesses
Delivering innovation and speed to market
Supporting flexible working
Knowledge as a distinct factor in market value
Low cost open networks and services
Generations of tech-savvy digital natives.

A case study in life sciences pointed out four key strategies:
Building customer relationships
Enhancing the work environment
Achieving competitive advantage
Ensuring compliance and security

We talked about the following technologies and how they are being used "inside the firewall" to drive value.

Profiles & Expertise Location
Corporate Blogs
Wikis
Document Management
Search
RSS, Alerts & Messaging
Team Collaboration

Some advice:
Support your "Digital Natives"
Foster Grass Roots Adoption - Participation
Use Tagging Strategies and Folksonomy over overly burdensome taxonomy models
Adopt light weight but clear procedures and policies for Information Management Governance, Security

Contact me at CrossTech Partners if you want to learn more from the presentations:

[email protected]