"They Speak"

Defrag Highlight (for me)

Over the past two days in Denver at Defrag, the most compelling presentation (in my mind) was delivered this morning by Andrew McAfee, in the morning keynote.  Ross Mayfield (congrats Ross on the new funding and CEO 2.0) gives a great account of the presentation.  However, it was one particular item he discussed that was a hidden gem.

In his presentation, Andrew talked about the need (maybe) to articulate an ROI for bringing Web 2.0 tools to the enterprise.  Andrew's comment was that "CIO's are getting tired of looking at the 300% ROI on the bottom of each proposal, and simply want to know how the value is going to be delivered."  I blogged about ROI's earlier this year, and couldn't agree more with Andrew and his approach.

One interesting thought about Andrew's approach is simply this:  here's a noted academic (not start up CEO) making the case to avoid the ROI trap.  He's not suggesting you ignore the value add or cultural changes these technologies can and will bring, on the contrary it's clear he believes they will offer great value, it just won't arise out of some formula driven approach.  Unique benefits to unique sets of circumstances, industry by industry, company by company.

That brings me to the example he shared for the audience.  One non-technical, traditional business (a resort builder I believe he said) had started using blogs internally.  One of the engineers responsible for pouring concrete floors had discovered a way to reduce the cost of that project by $500,000, simply by taking an alternative approach.  Rather than sitting on that info, this engineer blogged about the success, which was then viewed by others (not part of his formal network) asking for more details, etc...  While blogging did not create the initial savings, blogging did immediately open up that savings to many others, in a way/forum that was easy to share.  The downstream savings for the company and it's customers could be enormous.

Sure, one example, but I really believe there are many like this that go unannounced.  I applaud Andrew for taking the more unconventional route to establishing the value, rather than simply expecting the same ROI analysis everyone talks about.

Each one of these tacit interactions that are enhanced, or as I previously blogged, more effective interactions, help to create the sustainable corporate advantages every firm should be seeking to capitalize on.  Stuff that in an ROI spreadsheet.

Words can't describe...

...the way I felt this morning waking up and not needing to check MindAlign. After nearly 5 years (7 if you go back to March 2000) of constant connection and chatting, the spigot is off on Parlano. It was like a drug for me, in a positive way. I was truly connected to my team and them to me. It was THE secret behind our success as a firm...now the rest of the world knows.

For me, I'm looking forward to new challenges. In the past several weeks I have had many conversations; my email and phone have been very active. I'm looking forward to attending Defrag next week in Denver. It's a very interesting Web/Enterprise 2.0 conference with some really cool players and technologies. It should be a lot of fun, especially as an independent. The only expectations and goals I have to meet are my own; haven't had that approach at a conference like this in many years.

I've created a new profile on Facebook (add me as a friend) and am looking at a few of the other social networks. They are partially filling in my need for group collaboration, after so many years connected to MindAlign, but I find that they lack the real time impact and meaning that MindAlign provides. I'm still searching for that "way" to use one of these tools in a way that will be meaningful to me professionally.

I have also started to really look at using RSS feeds for personal consumption of news stories/blogs and the stuff that NewsGator is doing. I love their reader, and the ease at which I can add new feeds. What I really need to do is find a way to narrow down the amount of stories/blogs that hit the reader...I find myself pre-maturely marking the stories as "read" simply to clean up the page, rather than focusing on consuming the stories of interest.

I suspect that I will find an intersection of these tools with real time communication that will enhance the way I like to work and add to my professional development. I think that's what we're all trying to do, isn't it.

More next week from Denver and Defrag. But for now, my communities live outside any organization...oh how I look forward to the days of using group chat again!