List of Top Enterprise 2.0 Apps at CeBIT Australia

Was on a panel today, at Cebit 2009 at Darling Harbor, Sydney.  You might like part two where I showed a list of Enterprise 2.0 tools and “built a company” from them. In 15 minutes. 

• FredCavazza.net for social enterprise layout
• Prosper.com for peer to peer loan for startup
• TheFunded.com for checking out your Venture Capitalists (I’m a paid member)
• InvoicePlace for invoicing in the cloud
• Twitter.com/BigPondTeam running customer service in social networks
• Yammer.com – Twitter wannabe for Enterprise
• ThoughtFarmer – cool enterprise Directory for sociability
• API stuff eBay, Amazon, Salesforce – I’d open up my products for devs to create widgets and apps and to the customer to act as a reseller 
• Huddle.net for project management tools in the cloud (think MS Project and more on a webpage)
• Guru.com for open outsourcing – find and bid on a job, trust and reputation through testimonials and portfolio work, escrow and negotiation processes on site, project management tools for each job including landscape gardening, lawyers, plumbers, probably even hiring social network strategists 🙂 
• Keep an eye on GlassDoor.com – staff evaluating your company, bosses, salaries etc anonymously.
• Finally I would put a Chief Corporate Social Responsibility Officer on the Board to answer to the shareholder/ social network. 

If I’d had time I’d have added… well a bunch of other apps. To cover every situation and eventuality in creating and managing a company. 

I am a bit flu-ey at the moment (and not open to pig/swine jokes in any shape or guise) but managed to have fun anyway. Here’s the full slideshow. Video podcast of my presentation will be on Vimeo when CeBit get around to it 🙂 

I asked around – about ummm 80 people? in the room – and 4 blogged. 12 had started a blog and dropped it. Most people (75%) were on Facebook. The same again, perhaps more were on Twitter. Always interesting and astonishes me that across the board, the same number or more are usually on Twitter. Except that Accountants conference I did. They didn’t blog, Facebook or Twitter even email much … aaaanyway:

• About 5 people in the room at CeBIT had a laptop open. Only saw two people with mobiles – one may have been tweeting. 
• SLIDE 5 Pimped Steven Noble and Forresters, cos y’know, we love them. Except that I wish they would take that ladder and make it into a circle (people don’t stay INACTIVES in a network for ever!)
• Explained that there are huge numbers of Australians engaging in social networks. That  there isn’t “the social network” and “the company”. We are one. Staff are members of social networks too!
• Most the responsibility for customer engagement falls to Marketing. The poor saps. 
• Explained that people are using these tools so it doesn’t occur to them to not use them in the workplace. 
• blah blah then Innovation is in vertical silos currently – a separate department for innovative thought, rather than across the organisation. I.T. hates them, uniformly, because they don’t know how to articulate what they want (build me a, y’know, Facebook). Because I.T. is caught up in standards, risk management, not innovation. (yeah yeah, flame away!)
• A surprising (for me) report that mentions people learn better virtually in groups than physically in groups.  Dunno why – maybe we are looking at her shoes, his receding hairline? Virtual makes us focus and concentrate? Virtual groups can be done asynchronously so we have time to think while we are typing? Guess away…! 
• 80% of companies are using Office 2003 or earlier. HELLLLOOOO innovation – 6 years ago! Forresters again. 

You’ll like MacWoodies presentation

Michel van Woudenberg @macwoody  is from Oracle but thank goodness his wasn’t a sales job masquerading as a conference presentation.

The last guy, from Citrix Online whos first name is H.R. (!) and I forget his last name, presented on Teleworking from Home. Which sounded a lot like presentations I heard in the 90s about working from home, but I probably missed a key point or two. I always get a bit hyped up before and after a presentation and not a lot of things make sense. Some people would say that I’m the same during the presentations too. Mean, nasty, horrible, spiteful people that is.

Let me know if you enjoyed CeBit, have any questions on the presentation or just wanna have a bit of a yack. Here or @SilkCharm. Your choice. 

I’ll be on again at CeBIT on Thursday. Talking about monetizing social networks. It’s a speed dating, table unconference thingie, so just come plonk yourself down next to me.