Confessions of an eBiz Junkie

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.

EMC's Innovation Conference

There's no shortage of innovation within EMC. I've previously suggested it to be one of the key elements that keeps me so engaged here.

Our annual Innovation Conference is being held in Franklin, MA. this week... While innovation is part of the very fabric of EMC culture, this two-day event helps celebrate by bringing together a group of global employees to discuss, debate and consider new areas of investment and focus.

Leading up to the event, teams of employees collaborate on new ideas for consideration, and submit for review. Last year, there were 300 such submissions. This year - 984 (see - EMC'ers really like this stuff). Ideas are voted on by the community, and ultimately 30 or so are selected as finalists. These finalists make up the very core of this event - and much of day two is spent reviewing their submissions.

Last year, there were 300 attendees. This year, over a thousand. In fact, to help scale the event and in the interest of being responsible global citizens, the team has added an interactive broadcast component. Having tuned in to the early introductions, I see over 15 broadcast points spread across the globe, enabling remote employees to get together and participate without jumping on a plane. Of course, ample opportunities to interact with a video broadcast and live Q&A mechanism.

I'll share some of the highlights where appropriate over the next two days. I also spotted Barry B and Mark T in the audience and would suspect they'll be sharing perspective during the week.

Oh right - and did I mention EMC ONE was at the very center of this event? Yeah... that makes me feel pretty good   ;)

Some pictures of the early on...

   

Jeff Nick, EMC SVP and CTO, opens the day

Last years winners, and who's that in the crowd?

Update - The team is using EMC ONE as the voting mechanism for the 30 finalists... Nice little surprise for me as I didn't know this was in plan.

Also, interesting to note that Yammer has become a rather important back channel for the event... Enabling the invaluable hallways conversations often missed by virtual attendance.

Someone's @ The Door. Could that be Opportunity AGAIN???

What a great space we work in... Always on the move, constant activity, evolution and opportunities abound.

A few weeks back, I mentioned an opportunity here @ EMC for a Sr. Web Consultant type person. We've been inundated with resumes and am frankly having a hard time keeping up with them all.

Now, another opportunity is on the table. This is a contract position @ our corporate office in Hopkinton, MA. What's the position, you ask? Think Community Manager / Social Media Evangelist / 2.0 Expert extraordinaire...

Read on for the full job description and info on how to submit credentials...

Happy Birthday EMC ONE

EMC ONE (Our internal community) is one year old this week... It sure as heck doesn't seem like it's been a whole year.

The milestone prompted me to take a look @ the current user stats. We're just shy of 8k active participants and are growing at a clip of about 150 new folks per week. During an average month, EMC ONE sees over 19k unique visitors.  I'll be conservative and say we've managed to get about 25% adoption across the global workforce. Good stuff indeed.

While I couldn't be happier with the progress to date, it somewhat feels like this journey has just begun.

Getting folks to stick a toe in the pond is the first step... And it's a big one. But we will not fully realize the power of Social Media until we embrace 2.0 behaviors and establish a high degree of proficiency across the enterprise.

Sam Lawrence over @ Jive provided his thoughts on the evolution earlier this week. I'd like to think we @ EMC are somewhere between the digitizing phase and the behavioral change phase. We've come a long way - but still have some work ahead.

When our core behaviors change - when we're able to take traditional meetings online, when we stop putting so much valuable knowledge into email repositories only to be lost forever, when we begin to co-innovate in real time using the digital tools at hand, when we finally realize the POWER of the collective social computer - that's when we'll start to see the true value of SM in the workplace.

I hope this doesn't come across as a negative. I've spoken with enough peers and at enough industry events to know we've made some amazing progress in this space. Rather, I'm humbled by - and excited by - the next phase of this journey... And look forward to being a part of the evolution.

The Changing Face of the Enterprise

I attended my first Office 2.0 event last week. Kudos to Ismael for orchestrating this three-day shindig. Safe to say there was no shortage of interesting people and conversations.

I was thrilled when asked to participate on a panel around 'The Changing Face of the Enterprise". Jive Software's Sam Lawrence moderated the discussion and I was joined by Greg Biggers (Chordiant) and Michael Pusateri (Disney).

Each of these companies are in different stages of deploying internal communities. What was most interesting to hear about was the specific challenges presented in each of the phases of community deployment... In a pre discussion, Sam suggested that we @ EMC were on the mature side of our implementation. I had to chuckle as, while we've done some neat stuff, there's still SO much to do and learn... Everything is relevant, I suppose. Chatting with some of the other attendees, I realize that we've indeed made a lot of progress - and are beginning to realize some of the benefits of 2.0 proficiency.

ZDNet picked up the clip below.

The entire panel is also available at the Office 2.0 site - but a couple of folks have reported problems with the video (likely firewall rules)...

You never know what to expect...

It's true... I come across things on our EMC employee community almost daily that surprise me. EMC'ers across the globe are connecting, collaborating and innovating around the clock on EMC ONE. What's more, the sense of community that ONE is helping drive throughout the company is astounding.

I came across an interesting bit this morning that I wanted to share... It's a slideshow of photos taken from EMC'ers - and was syndicated on EMC ONE. Sit back for a minute or two and enjoy the show... There's some fantastic stuff in here. It's nice to watch this community of like minded folks come together to discuss something their passionate about. Enjoy...