Rob Weisman, The Boston Globe's technology and business reporter, does a nice wrap-up of the Enterprise 2.0 conference in today's newspaper. Of particular interest to us here at NetAge are these great quotes from the session we ran, Enterprise 2.0 in Action: Reports from the Frontier. Rob writes:
In a panel titled "Enterprise 2.0 in Action," however, companies cited competitive advantages they'd gained from new collaborative technologies. Team work spaces, Internet meetings, and audio conferencing helped connect research-and-development teams from around the world at Volvo, said Carole Boudinet, the company's manager of collaborative work solutions. Boudinet said Volvo created a worldwide network of "culture ambassadors" and "collaboration consultants" to accelerate the adoption of collaborative tools.
Sujatha Bodapati, founder of ProdexNet, a San Jose, Calif., company that designs customized software and other products, said wikis, message boards, and other "virtualization" technology has allowed her company to move its research operations to India.
"There's no other way to be a global company than to be a virtual organization," said Jeffrey Stamps , co founder of NetAge Inc., a Newton consulting firm specializing in collaborative technology.
Who are these fine people? Sujatha Bodapati is indeed founder of ProdexNet and AssetPulse, both based in Silicon Valley, whom we met several years ago when we started developing OrgScope. Suji told the story of how ProdexNet engineers in Chennai, India, worked seamlessly with Jeff Stamps for 19 months using only asynchronous technologies -- in this case, BaseCamp, a wiki for product development -- to design and code the product. For the first 18 months, they didn't even have a phone call -- and when Jeff and the lead engineer, Ritesh Rajani, finally spoke, they talked about the weather, food, and their respective ages. In his remarks, Jeff said that each not knowing the other's age was an advantage -- as 40 years separated them -- and they could easily have dismissed the other on the basis of that difference alone. PS: Suji's company AssetPulse has some very cool technology for tracking assets--like hospital equipment, for example--using tiny chips, or as those in the know call it, RFID.
Carole Boudinet, based in Lyon, France, manages the Collaboration Work Solutions Center at Volvo IT. We've had the chance to work with Carole and her colleagues for the past couple of years as they've developed a unique approach to collaboration and virtual teaming. Tor Eneroth, a savvy Volvo IT executive team member (he presented at Enterprise 2.0 in '06) who spearheads Culture and Values at the company, introduced the concepts at a senior leadership team meeting. With a firm focus on the people aspects, the company proceeded to equip its staff with the tools and processes needed for better collaboration. After a year of preparation, including the development of a communication campaign and extensive internal consultant training, they offered the collaboration service to AB Volvo Group. Some 55,000 people are now equipped with the technology for better virtual teaming, with the processes for good collaboration built into their tools.
Finally, a nice quote from Jeff, who really deserves his own bio page (we'll have to work on that).
Were you in this session? If so, please post a reply here, giving your impressions.
And for the visually oriented, here's a picture of us -- from left, moi (I facilitated), Jeff Stamps, Sujatha Bodapati, and Carole Boudinet, with thanks to Michael Sampson for taking the pic. Did anyone take a picture of the audience? That would be good here too.
