More from Atlanta: The Leap to Coaching Online Communities

Here is another interesting session at the IAF conference in Atlanta hosted by John Caroll from Dynamic Decisions. John starts with giving room to introduction of the 20 participants of the seminar after which he says rightly that he justhas sequentally hearded 20 good ideas which are all to assess and process. He recalls the time when facilitation started to introduce butcher paper, flip charts, paper cards, post its etc. to initiate brainstorming and collecting / clustering ideas. It is interesting to see how technology has moved on like that, and then again: do you realize, how little technology is used in workshops to spead up creativity? Read more...

My Story into a Conference (7): A List of Top Social Applications

Atlanta is getting close, and I am getting prepared for my presentation at the IAF conference. Have worked my way down the East Coast (Bowling Green, Ohio to Hartford, Connetticut, to Boston, Massachusetts - today with Amtrak from Boston to Washington D.C., what a great train trip! It looks like Connetticut is one of the great places to live). Read more...

My Story into a Conference (6): World Café in Second Life

At the Nexus in Bowling Green, I met Nancy White, one of the most talented virtual facilitators. We shared a great Open Space session on Web 2.0 together. She told me that just recently, a full World Cafe has been hosted and facilitated in Second Life. The event was organized for the Rockridge Institute, a think tank whose mission is "to deepen and broaden the public's understanding of the political world." Read more...

My Story into a Conference (5): Charles Leadbeater's We Think

On my treasure hunt I came across the work of Charles Leadbeater, a leading management thinker. He is has just published a book with the title "We Think". Read more...

My Story into a Conference (4): Revisting 2007

Today, I am research trends that emerged in 2007 with regards to Web 2.0 . While the term itself was coined in 2004 by Tim O'Reilly and O'Reilly Media, the concept took off in 2006 and 2007, thanks to the publication of books like Wikinomics, The Long Tail, The Google Story, etc, and thanks to a global marketing campaign by O'Reilly Media. While the early adopters, and those on which the Web 2.0 already emerged in the late ninties, the real story began with the explosion of the new market of collaborative platforms such as MySpace, YouTube, Flickr, Xing, LinkedIn, etc.. This was further fueled by the availability of software that allowed mashups such as Google Maps and other social collaboration tools such as tags, wikis, blogs. Read more...

My Story Into A Conference (3): What Did You Think About the Internet in 1995?

Searching for material, I found a historic article on how perceptions about technological change can be invalidated in a short while. On Feb. 27, Clifford Stoll, a known astro-physicist and computer network administrator, wrote in NEWSWEEK ("The Internet? Bah! HYPE ALERT: WHY CYBERSPACE ISN'T, AND WILL NEVER BE, NIRVANA"):

After two decades online, I'm perplexed. It's not that I haven't had a gas of a good time on the Internet. I've met great people and even caught a hacker or two. But today, I'm uneasy about this most trendy and oversold community. Visionaries see a future of telecommuting workers, interactive libraries and multimedia classrooms. They speak of electronic town meetings and virtual communities. Commerce and business will shift from offices and malls to networks and modems. And the freedom of digital networks will make government more democratic.

Read more...

Web 2.0 is The Future of Organizational Change

"IT in organizations is going through the hugest change since the introduction of the Internet - we have to put the future of IT into the hands of people who use it."

I am following an interesting panel discussion at the Web 2.0 Expo in Berlin. It is about the future of organizational change and how new technologies will have a deep impact on organizations. more...

Web 2.0 Expo Berlin and the Future of Email

In April, I have reported from the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco. Now, the bandwaggon has moved to Berlin. Web 2.0 Expo Berlin is a good mixture of international panellists, although the organization of he conference sucks a bit (compared to San Francisco). More...

New Change Management Toolbook Attracts Thousand Visitors

Last week, we went live with the new version of the Change Management Toolbook. While we are quite busy to fix unavoidable bugs, we are happy to report that the website has been widely adopted. Yesterday, we crossed the 1000 users line, and we are expecting more visitors to come to our site as the content grows. We have now about 9200 members in all parts of the world.

Beside the rich background information and a large selection of Change Management Tools, we expect the Forum to be one of the most attractive parts of the website. Here you can create your own topics, ask for and provide advice, and discuss hot topics around Change Management and Change Facilitation. Today for example, we are discussing "Why do change projects fail?". Why don't you join one of the discussions right now?

Bar Camps, Foo Camps and Open Grid

I must confess that I hadn't heard the word barcamp until a few days ago, and just today I learned about about foocamps and Open Grid. Obviously, I haven't visited any of these events yet, but I cannot wait to attend one (unfortunately, I will not be able to attend the next barcamp in Berlin). So, take a deep breath, Holger.

More...

Web 2.0 Expo in Berlin

I have been reporting about the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco which I attended in April 2007. O'Reilly Media now goes global, and they have organized a similar event in Berlin, November 5-8, 2007. This is a good opportunity for techies as well as for non-techies to learn about the cutting edge of web development. More...

The Return of a Candy Bar - Consumers Can Make a Change in a Global World

Ever since I read Wikinomics and since I have been to the Web2.0 Expo in San Francisco earlier this year, I believe in two things:

1. There is an incredible hype around the concept of Web 2.0; it will get quieter and many start-ups will not make it into 2009.

2. Web 2.0 has just started. We cannot imagine now, what and impact the winners of the Web 2.0 revolution will have on our lives and our work. Web 2.0 has already changed the way many people interact, particularly in the generation that will make the next managers, and I expect that lots of its principles will be mainstreamed. In about two to four years, companies but also non-profit campaigners will utilize online communities on a routine base to promote their case. So, if you have a cute idea on how to apply Web 2.0 principles, it is about time to realize them.

More...

The Next Logical Product: A Website for Sharing Slideshows

Everyday, a couple of new Web2.0 sites emerge that offers you services you don't need and communities you don't want to belong to. This is one you will subscribe to and I believe it is the new YouTube or Flickr. It is called Slideshare. More...

Wikis and Blogs for Internal Communication

I found a great presentation on the use of new technologies for corporate communication, at Nick Finck's website. I will write more about that in the upcoming Change Management Newsletter.

Wikinomics

For the next 4 days, I will be reporting from the Web2.0 Expo in San Francisco, so I thought starting today to lead into the topic. Wikinomics is a book that describes the economic principles that drives the lates Internet revolution, which will have a deep impact on facilitation of change. So, what is Web2.0 and what is Wikinomics?

Web 2.0, a phrase coined by O'Reilly Media in 2004, refers to a perceived second-generation of Web-based services-such as social networking sites, wikis, communication tools, and folksonomies-that emphasize online collaboration and sharing among users. O'Reilly Media used the phrase as a title for a series of conferences, and it has since become widely adopted. Though the term suggests a new version of the Web, it does not refer to an update to Internet or World Wide Web technical standards, but to changes in the ways those standards are used. According to Tim O'Reilly, "Web 2.0 is the business revolution in the computer industry caused by the move to the internet as platform, and an attempt to understand the rules for success on that new platform." (from: Wikipedia)

A collection of hundreds of Web2.0 sites can be found on Go2Web20.

Wikinomics: In the last few years, traditional collaboration—in a meeting room, a conference call, even a convention center—has been superceded by collaborations on an astronomical scale. Today, encyclopedias, jetliners, operating systems, mutual funds, and many other items are being created by teams numbering in the thousands or even millions. While some leaders fear the heaving growth of these massive online communities, Wikinomics explains how to prosper in a world where new communications technologies are democratizing the creation of value. (from: Wikinomics).

A good example of what Wikinomics means in practicle terms is the website of Innocentive. This is a place where companies can post their R&D problems and ask for the help of the world-wide community of scientists. What Whole Systems Change has promised for organizations, has now been applied on a global scale. This is just the beginning of a movement that will revolutionize collaboration.