The Future of Citizens & Government

I had the privilege of attending the Gov 2.0 Expo in Washington DC during May 25th – 27th 2010.  The main theme I took away was “Design for the Future”, as stated by Tim O’Reilly.  I was thinking more about this when I was spending a blazing hot Memorial Day visiting Arlington Cemetery.  I stood there drenched in sweat reading another name on one of the endless sea of tombstones. I thought, here is another person that made the ultimate sacrifice defending my right to freedom.  I did not even know this person.  Did he die in vain?  Am I doing anything to honor this person or any of these people?  Are we doing our best today to honor the sacrifices people have made for us and our children?  I was near the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier when an image caught my eye.  This image was a shadow of a very pregnant woman holding a child on her hip.  I looked up at her and saw this angelic being with sunlight bouncing off her hair.  She looked very young and rather thin, except for her very big belly.  What a beautiful site.  I looked back down at her shadow and noticed how strong she looked.  I thought about her unborn child and started wondering what the future would be like on this child’s 18th birthday.  This citizen may never own a music CD or never know the difference between the web, TV, and a telephone.  This citizen could grow up in a world as a constant active participant in government to help shape the world and the local community in collaboration with the connected world.

Ideas on Government Web 2.0 Strategy

The Gov 2.0 Expo: Learning more about the future of Government & Citizens

It’s difficult to pick a favorite session, but I will say it was exciting to hear conversations about WHY Web 2.0 concepts work instead of how to copy Web 2.0 features.  My personal highlight was meeting Tim Berners-Lee.  He is beyond polite, very earthy, and super smart.  The information from his #LinkedData session is very important to understand.  He was also on the panel of this very interesting session: “Four Perspectives on data.gov.uk”.  Danah Boyd gave us some food for thought in her session “Transparency Is Not Enough”.  “Creating Passionate Citizens” by Kathy Sierra and “The Democratization of Content” by Gary Vaynerchuk were very insightful and refreshing.  “Government as a Platform for Greatness” by Tim O’Reilly was powerful.  I could go on and on, but fortunately O’Reilly has most of these presentations and videos available here.

Government Web 2.0 Strategy

“Design for the Future.”

Tags: Gov 2.0, Government 2.0, strategy, Web 2.0

Enterprise Business Intelligence and Web 2.0

Web 2.0 Strategy in Organizations

Applying the basic concepts of Web 2.0 strategies in your organization along with taking advantage of crowdsourcing (internally and externally) are keys to business intelligence.  Using your intranet and the internet as platforms to create relationships with people and things will allow you to harness collective intelligence to improve business performance.  The fundamental concepts of the internet operating system can be applied to intranets to improve the intelligence Enterprise 2.0 solutions.

State of the Internet Operating System

Tim O’Reilly explains the “State of the Internet Operating System” in this video from the San Francisco, CA Web 2.0 Expo in 2010.  “Inventing for the Future” is the key message behind this video.  I also captured 8 steps for applying a Web 2.0 Strategy in your Organization, as a quick video summary.

8 Steps to Go From Good to Great

Web 2.0 Strategy for Your Organization

1. Invent for the Future
2. Don’t take openness for granted
3. Enable others
4. Leverage knowledge
5. Strengthen your data with Social Graph
6. The Thing Graph matters too
7. Become useful to others
8. Create more value than you capture

“…it takes a web of cooperating species to create a truly rich environment” ~Tim O’Reilly #quote

In that video, Tim talked about the “Social Graph” and the “Thing Graph”.  You can learn how to start creating your own “Thing Graph” in my previous article “Enterprise 2.0 Adoption Patterns: Collective Intelligence“.  There are some simple steps to review in the section titled, “Improving the Intelligence of Enterprise 2.0 Platforms”.  These simple mods are a quick way to get started, but should be done in the SOA frame of mind.  You can discover some simple steps on how to get started with “Social Graph” in this previous article “Game Theory for Enterprise 2.0 Adoption“.  These are the simple steps to the discovery of “Collective Intelligence”.

The Real Business Reason for Enterprise 2.0

Collective Intelligence

The world is a web of people and things that create the collective intelligence of life.  Understanding these relationships is the fundamental experience while discovering your purpose.  Understanding why these relationships exist is the key to unlocking the door to emergent technologies and prediction markets.  Collective Intelligence is like a gigantic brain that’s created through the collaboration of many.  Systems and Apps for analyzing collective intelligence related to your business is the real reason for Enterprise 2.0.

Andy McAfee, author and management science guru, weighs in on the importance and value of collective intelligence in the enterprise.

Tags: Collective Intelligence, Enterprise 2.0, Gov 2.0, SOA, Web 2.0

Web 2.0, Social Media, Mashups, and Rich Internet Apps in the Enterprise

Web 2.0 Strategy in an Organization

Web 2.0 is about two-way communication and collaboration.  We see this Web 2.0 Strategy applied to a degree  in most Enterprise 2.0 Solutions within organizations.  We see this through employees using wikis, blogs, and other Social Networking tools on the Enterprise Platform.  Using these tools to centralize conversations is great, but what if this same group of employees could connect their relevant data together into a visual display?  This could be a “Dashboard” that displays charts, figures, maps, and other data related to a current project.  This could also be something as simple as dynamic map widget on your org chart.  These type of things are already available in the Web 2.0 World.  These type of things can also be available in Enterprise 2.0 Solutions through Mashups.  Here you will find some videos, slides, and other resources on How to use Web 2.0 Strategy in Organizations.

Introduction to Mashups

Learn what mashups are and why they matter with this short animated video.

What Are Mashups?

The Fast Track to Building an Enterprise App Store using Enterprise Mashups with Dion Hinchcliffe

Sure, you know what an ‘App Store’ is. But do you know how it can help your enterprise with strategic objectives like compliance, governance, transparency, profitability, and efficiency? And do you know the quickest way to get your Enterprise App Store going?

This was a great webinar by @JackBe and @dHinchcliffe.  They explained how a Web 2.0 strategy in your organization can lead to greater productivity and higher collective intelligence.  Mashups and Enterprise App Stores empower users and adds exponential value to Enterprise 2.0 Platforms.  I included a few slides from this webinar, but you can get all of slides plus the webinar audio here.

Open Platform vs Closed Platform

It’s no secret that Facebook experienced tremendous adoption when they decided to move towards an open Web 2.0 Strategy.

Empowering Users

Empowering Users with the Ability to Self-Service and Create will free resources and unlock the power of Crowdsourcing in the Enterprise.  This has been a key Web 2.0 Strategy for many organizations in the public web space for a long time.  It’s great to see more people thinking about how to use this strategy inside the Enterprise.

Enterprise Mashups

Seems like a lot of people are excited about using and creating APIs and Mashups in the Enterprise.  You may be thinking, “How do I get started?” Help is available!  JackBe has a friendly staff, active developer community, and PRESTO, An Enterprise-Ready Mashup Solution.  You can let them do the heavy lifting, while you focus on what is important to you now.

From Enterprise Productivity to Collective Intelligence – Web 3.0, Social Media, Mashups, and Rich Internet Apps

Event: Free Webinar May 06, 2010 by Mark White, Principal – Deloitte Consulting LLP

New themes have emerged for enterprise applications, including intuitiveness, interoperability, portability, and aggregation. How are innovative CIOs employing these themes collectively to provide useful and usable solutions to end users? We’ll discuss:

• Ways social media, information-sharing, and enterprise knowledge management combine to help deliver insight management – palettes and tools for collaborative results.
• Mashups grown up – delivering a single version of the truth enterprise-wide through correlation, rules engines, visualization, workflow, contextualization, and tagging.
• Updating the usability of legacy enterprise applications through flexing the front end.

Learn about ways collective intelligence can help organizations achieve more informed decision making and strategy execution.  Register here.

Tags: APIs, Enterprise 2.0, Mashups, SOA, strategy, Web 2.0