Confessions of an eBiz Junkie

Happy Birthday EMC|ONE

Can you believe it? Our little Social Media 'experiment' from late 2007 has just turned three. It's stunning just how quickly the time flies.

In case you haven't been following along, EMC|ONE (our internal community platform) represents EMC's first real forray into the Social Media landscape. While we had a few blogs, discussions forums, and the like pre-dating EMC|ONE, this internal community was the first really big step in what would turn out to be an exciting and transformative journey for EMC.

The Evolving Enterprise

I'll be boarding a plane midweek and taking off for some much needed time on a tropical island and off the digital grid. I'll be radio silent while away, avoiding the temptations of Twitter, Facebook, blogging and the like.

While away, I wanted to leave you with a presentation given at JiveWorld 2010 a couple of weeks back. During the discussion, I shared a bit about EMC's journey to becoming a socially proficient company. We've done some great things, learned some invaluable lessons, and still have much work ahead. The slides are below, and Jive has also provided a video of the discussion. I'm hoping there are a lesson or two in there that can help you on your journey.

Talk soon... In the meantime, Aloha!

The Transforming Enterprise

View more presentations from Len Devanna.

See You at JiveWorld 2010?

There's nothing I enjoy more than sharing some of the lessons learned during our journey to become a truly socially enabled company. In fact, I've learned SO MUCH from the larger community over the years that it seems only fair to return the favor. After all, we're in this together, and are collectively building the communications model of tomorrow... Cool stuff.

I'll have a chance to share a bit about our journey next week at JiveWorld 2010 here in San Francisco. The speaking roster is packed with some of the best in the biz - it's sure to be an information-packed event.

Unfortunately, it looks like the conference itself is sold out. That's not to suggest you can't directly benefit from the great content coming from the show... Simply follow along via hashtag #JW10.

Will you be there? I'd love to connect. Drop a note in the comments or ping me via @LenDevanna on Twitter... Hopefully we'll see you there!

Talking Social @ EMC World 2010

Wow. What a show. From my vantage point, EMC World 2010 was a huge success. Overall sentiment from attendees was extremely positive, and the activity through the social channels was mind-blowing.

There's no shortage of folks to acknowledge... from EMC's Social Media team who did a tremendous job making the Bloggers Lounge a happening place and demonstrating the value of our EMC Community Network, to EMC's Events Team (One of the best in the biz, IMO), to the guys over at Wikibon and SiliconAngle who helped us take the event far beyond the confines of physical walls.

I'll have piles of content to share next week. But, before I retire for a much needed weekend, did want to get one bit out. As things began to slow yesterday afternoon, we took the opportunity to chat Social Media at EMC - Talking about our approach to blogging, the culture that supports the amazing transformation, much more. Check out myself, Jamie Pappas and Thom Lytle as we wrap things up from the show floor and chat all things Social @ EMC.

Thanks to all for the incredible event... See you in Vegas!

Watch live video from The Cube LIVE from EMC World 2010 on Justin.tv

Tips for Deploying Community in the Enterprise

I had the pleasure of attending and presenting at KMWorld 2009 before the holiday. It was an older blog post around the evolution of our corporate Intranet that first put me in touch with the KMWorld management team.

I spoke a bit about the transformation of the enterprise, highlighting our journey in both traditional and social channels. Putting together the story helped me reflect a bit on our journey and recall some of the key decisions that have helped us progress on our path. Some of these things I now take for granted, but based on discussions with other attendees, I realize many have yet to begin traveling this path. To that end, I wanted to share a few of the key takeaways...

The Open vs Closed Debate - Part XLIV

An interesting little observation from our journey into the social realm that I wanted to share... Let me start by setting some context...

We built EMC|ONE way back when with several intentions. Among them - helping our global employees get comfortable with enterprise 2.0 tools and techniques. As part of this, we've very much resisted the urge to create protected or gated spaces (Remember that EMC|ONE is inside the firewall - so the community consists of employees only). Our over-arching thinking - the more eyes on a conversation the better. Transparent and open dialog is far more valuable than discussions in silos.

I've noted it before - The vast majority of those who propose a new topical space on EMC|ONE want it closed by default. We usually have a healthy conversation, asking what's so secretive that the conversation or content cannot be exposed to fellow employees. In virtually EVERY instance, the new community manager comes around and proceeds with an open forum - One that ends up being MUCH more productive and vibrant that it would have been had it been roped off.

The Air That I Breathe - Episode II

And hopefully the last episode in this series.  For context, give a read to this post. Bottom line, our internal community offering EMC|ONE took a nose dive in early December and was down for several hours.

I received quite a bit of feedback on this one, both on and offline. Folks wanted to know what happened next - Did the world stop spinning the next day? Did the community revolt and storm my house like an angry mob? No. Fortunately nothing this exciting happened.

Here's what DID happen...

The Air That I Breathe

EMC|ONE has become a hub for internal collaboration & communications. The community has leveraged it in ways that I'd have never imagined, and it's truly helping to drive proficiency with 2.0 tools and techniques across the global workforce.

Last week, we successfully upgraded to the latest version of our community platform. Not without it's bumps, the next gen platform offers some nifty bells and whistles that will undoubtedly be embraced by the community. For much more info, Jamie provides some play-by-play of the upgrade and shares the good and the bad from her POV.

Unfortunately, as I type this entry, I sit on a concall with our IT gang and our platform vendor dealing with a site outage. We've been down since 7AM EST (going on seven hours now) and do not have a definitive answer as to when it will be available again to the community.

I'll spare you the details...  The technical cause of the outage is not relevant here... What is relevant is the impact that it's having on the community. Folks have come to rely very heavily on EMC|ONE to collaborate, to communicate - to work.

Six or so months ago, such an outage would have been irritating. Today, it's absolutely devastating. It impacts virtually *everyone*.

The biggest challenge following this event will be assuring the community that it's OK to come back... That their information is safe... Their conversations and comments still intact... That actions will be taken to avoid another outage... And that they indeed can rely on a healthy and stable community offering.

So, my advice for those who are still in the early phases of community development... Know that your community will likely become the equivalent of air to your organization. It will become so engrained in your daily lives that living without it will seem like an impossibility. Consider this early and often - and do whatever you can to mitigate the situation we're currently in.

The system outage itself will be dealt with... It's the damage to the confidence of the community that's a larger concern to me.

Need ideas to save $$$? Ask the community.

Last week, Joe sent out a memo providing perspective on the current global economic situation. In it, he talked about EMC's strong position and sighted how the company has weathered such tough times in the past - only to emerge stronger. What was most interesting was what happened after this was sent out...

It all started in our 'Virtual Water Cooler'... A place where anything goes... Any employee can start a discussion or blog about any topic they'd like.

Michelle started a discussion called 'Constructive Ideas to Save Money'. As of this morning, this thread has had over 11.5k views and almost 200 folks have provided suggestions. Ideas are all over the board - from enabling employees to spend some of their vacation time contributing to a charitable organization (while helping take some time off the books) to revamping our current PC / laptop program to replacing our current shuttle fleet with hybrid vehicles. Given the diversity of the EMC ONE community, ideas cover a wide variety of topics.

As impressive has been the tone of the conversation. Folks understand what's going on in the world... They understand the challenges ahead - and know that some of the ideas put out there may make their lives a tad tougher...

But, they're all in it together. They feel a sense of pride, a sense of ownership, a sense of community.

It's been very interesting to watch and the discussion seems to be building momentum as each hour passes.

Who Owns The Community?

It's a question I get almost every time I chat with others around our internal community offering, EMC ONE. I'm always surprised at the need to assign ownership to an individual or a group... Perhaps the desire for accountability is @ the core of the question.

So, asked this morning for the umpteenth time, I thought I'd post a brief thought on the topic.

At least in my world... The Community owns the community.

Now, that's simplifying a bit. We do have a team of folks (well, two actually - one of whom is here) who are responsible for the overall health of EMC ONE. But, that's not an ownership thing... Rather they represent the collective voices from the community itself.

When it comes to creating new spaces for conversation and collaboration, the proposal is put out for the community to comment on and ultimately decide if it's the right thing to do. No formal governance team... No supreme ruler.

While the primary team manages vendor and IT relationships, it's the collective voice of the community that ultimately decides which direction we take the overall platform.

When it comes to policing and moderating content (which, btw, we've never actually had a need for), it's the community who ultimately decides the threshold of acceptable behavior. Despite strong desires by some early on to moderate *everything*, we've yet to have an instance that made us rethink our approach.

And so on...

Internal communities are still somewhat new. Unlike traditional web properties, ownership means something very different. Command and control just doesn't work any longer. It's a healthy step in online evolution, IMO.

If you try to force fit traditional ownership and governance models as you deploy your social offering, you'll likely lose the exact thing you're trying to accomplish.. The very sense of community.