Discount for early registration at Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum ends 24 December!

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Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum is shaping up to once again be the premier event in Australia on how Web 2.0, mobile, and emerging technologies are being applied to create value in organizations.

An early registration special of $110 off applies until 24 December, so don’t forget to include it in your pre-Christmas shopping! And remember, there are significant additional discounts for members of AIMIA, Innovation Bay, NSW KM Forum, and PRIA.

A quick reminder of some of the highlights of the event:

* Top Australian and global speakers, including JP Rangaswami of Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein fame, and case studies including Westpac, Corporate Express, Janssen-Cilag etc.

* Deep content in a workshop format from most of the top experts and consultants in the field in Australia, including Kate Carruthers, Stephen Collins, James Robertson and many others.

* Implementing Enterprise 2.0 Report providing a clear roadmap for implementation included in the price of registration – valued at US$195.

* Detailed coverage of highly practical issues including governance processes, implementing policies, establishing mobile workflow, implementing social networks, and far more.

Hope to see you there!

Interviews: Six important forces that will shape 2009

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I’ve done two radio interviews this morning, asking me for forecasts for the year ahead.

The broader issue I am emphasizing in my current interviews and speaking is that 2009 will bring more change than any other year this decade.

Perversely, a slowing economy will accelerate the pace of change. Many companies will take advantage of the downturn to use technology in innovative ways. Technology ranging from mobile applications to online gaming will become an everyday part of our work lives.

Social change tends to be faster in a downturn. Our attitudes to what is acceptable behavior by the government and companies will rapidly evolve. Technology is shaping society, but society is also shaping technology, particularly in how it allows us to express forcible opinions.

In these interviews for non-professional audiences I briefly covered six important forces that will shape business and society in 2009:

1. Constant partial attention. 2009 will see more people consuming 20 hours or more of media a day. And no, it’s not just the insomniacs. It is due to a phenomenon called Constant Partial Attention, or CPA, in which our attention is constantly divided between a massive array of channels now including mobile Internet, video screens on buses, and more. Over two-thirds of people watch TV while reading. To be successful, we need to thrive on constant interruption.

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Upcoming Keynote at MegaTrends in Abu Dhabi: Four trends transforming society

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[UPDATE:] The conference was rescheduled to 25 May – my keynote presentation is here.

In early February I am delivering a keynote at the MegaTrends conference in Abu Dhabi, one of three international keynote speakers together with John Naisbitt, who sold over 9 million copies of MegaTrends and created an industry, and Dr Lynda Grattan, author of Living Strategy and Professor at London Business School.

I recently did a press briefing by video for journalists in the UAE, touching on some of the themes I’ll cover in my keynote at the conference. I chose to speak briefly about four massive trends that will impact business globally and in the Gulf region in years to come. I’ll give more details on the speech content before and after the event.

1. The Rise of the Global Talent Economy

Talent – long recognized as the key driver of companies and economies – is becoming a highly dynamic global market. Top professionals are increasingly choosing to work independently, retired executives are making their skills available, and connectivity means we can access expertise from anywhere on the planet. Companies will as a matter of course engage and work with staff, professionals, and suppliers all over the planet. And those that do this better, beating their competitors to get the most from a world of available talent, will win.

For more, see writing about the global talent economy.

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9 practical steps to getting great outsourced design on 99designs

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As I wrote last week, I decided to use the design exchange 99designs for our new logo for Advanced Human Technologies. We received over 140 logo submissions, including many very high quality designs, going through a highly iterative process to get an excellent outcome.

Click here to see the submissions and winner (however quite a few designers have withdrawn their designs so they are no longer visible – the full field was a lot more impressive). The winner of the competition is below, created by designer kn. Note that this is not yet our official logo (that will be when our website is relaunched early next year) and may be tweaked further before it becomes our final logo.

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Here are nine lessons we learned on how to get great results on 99designs:

1. Know what you are looking for

The questions asked when you post your contest, in terms of what you do and don’t want, are important to think through. To a certain extent that becomes clearer when you can respond to specific ideas, however the more you know beforehand, the easier it is. In particular for logo designs, you need to be clear on what identity and connotations are associated with your company.

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Twitter friend inflation, the dynamics of influence, and why shifts in reciprocity are changing the social media landscape

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Anyone who uses Twitter will be deeply familiar with the issue of who you follow and who you follow back. As Twitter continues to gather traction, popular Twitterers are gathering followers at an increasing pace. If you’re on Twitter, by default you get an email whenever someone follows you, giving you the option of looking at their profile and deciding whether you want to follow them back. If you know them, you’re likely to reciprocate, however if they are strangers, you go through a process of assessing whether you’d like to follow back.

There are seven basic strategies that Twitter users adopt:

1. Reciprocate any follows. This can be done manually, or automatically by using a service such as socialtoo.

2. Look at new followers and decide whether you want to follow them back. This is the most common strategy, which allows people to decide based on a range of factors whether to follow back.

3. Turn off follow notifications. High profile Twitterers simply follow people they know, and choose not to be notified who follows them (sometimes simply because their email inbox gets clogged by follow notifications).

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The relevance of Enterprise 2.0 in an economic downturn

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Moving towards our Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum 2009, a key issue has to be how these themes are relevant to the most prominent concerns of senior executives. In short, how will applying Web 2.0 and mobile technologies in organizations save money, increase efficiency and productivity, increase market share, and build profitability?

A number of recent blog posts have squarely addressed this issue, and are important reading in framing why Enterprise 2.0 must be a top priority for executives.

Susan Scrupski, talks about Reality Check 2.0 in writing about what the members of the Advisory Board for the next Enterprise 2.0 conference in Boston are saying.

Mike Gotta of Burton Group says:

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(Good) blog aggregators are the best source of news

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As one of many deeply absorbed in the US Presidential elections, I spent a lot of time scouring the news to gain insights into the latest as the extraordinary story unfolded. I consistently found that blog aggregator Memeorandum provided the best view on what the most relevant and interesting news was. Often stories became prominent on Memeorandum before they hit the mainstream press.

This points to what I first wrote six years ago in Living Networks, and have often restated:

“Blogs are not necessarily important individually, but in aggregate they are massively powerful. The “blogosphere” pulls together what millions of talented people around the world are discovering and thinking. Collectively, blogs enable us to collaborate to filter and uncover the most worthwhile news.”

The Guardian is the latest to say Memeorandum runs rings around Google News.

“Memeorandum is embarrassingly better than Google News. Google reckons that the more coverage a story gets, the more important it is. Unfortunately, broad coverage takes a long time to develop, so Google News can run hours or even a day behind Memeorandum. This is fine for casual consumers, but if you’re a news junkie – or a journalist – it’s hopeless.”

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Celebrate at the 10th Annual Self-Employed and Entrepreneurs Xmas Drinks! Sydney, 16 December

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In 1996, when I left the world of corporate employment to do my own thing, I soon realized that not only do you not have anyone organizing a Christmas party for you, you may have no-one or very few people to party with.

So together with some of my self-employed and entrepreneurial friends, we decided to have our Christmas party together. This year is the 10th anniversary of the self-employed and entrepreneurs Xmas drinks.

It just seems like a really obvious thing to do, and every year it’s been a fabulous event, with a stack of great people turning up and celebrating. It’s primarily intended for the self-employed, entrepreneurs, and those working for micro-businesses, but absolutely everyone is welcome to turn up and join the festivities. Open to all.

Date: 16 December

Time: From 6pm

Where: Centennial Hotel (front bar), 88 Oxford Street, Woollahra

Drinks and food available for purchase at the bar.

You can RSVP on the Facebook site for the party (and see photos of who’s coming), or just see you there!

Every year I say that next year I’ll do something bigger, and maybe get sponsors to provide some food and drinks, but I always get busy. Hopefully next year I’ll get my act together on this…

Registrations open for Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum 2009 on 24 February 2009 – providing a clear roadmap for organizations

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I’m delighted to announce that registrations are open for Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum 2009 on 24 February – full details on the website.

To help you make up your mind early, there are significant discounts for registrations before Christmas, and the first 25 registrations get a free copy of my book Living Networks.

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Click here to download flyer for Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum 2009

The inaugural Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum was in February 2008, attracting a sell-out audience of senior executives and extensive media coverage, including Sydney Morning Herald, The Australian, Computerworld, NineMSN, MIS The Scoop, Smartcompany, The Financial Standard and many others.

This year will be bigger and better, building on an additional year of experience from Australian and global enterprise experience in successfully implementing Web 2.0 and mobile technologies to transform their organizations.

Major announcements soon on a fantastic speaker line-up.

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Design our new logo – get rich and famous!

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The existing logo for Advanced Human Technologies was designed in 1997. Not only has the world changed a lot since then, it is now becoming a very different company. It is time for a complete rebranding, starting with the logo, and including a complete redesign of the website, which is also sorely out of date. More on all the updates later – in brief Advanced Human Technologies will go far beyond being a consulting company to also being a publisher and supporting several new start-up ventures.

I have chosen to use 99designs to get the logo done. I have long written about and explored online service exchanges such as elance, Guru, and vWorker. In fact the subject of my next book is about the global talent economy. As such I’m keen to try new models, and since 99designs seems very interesting, I’m giving it a go.

The way it works is first you put up your brief for a design such as a logo and you set a budget for what you’re prepared to pay. The interesting part is that all of the designers’ submissions are visible to all, and you rate them and give feedback on them until there is a winner. See How it Works.

This iteration process with multiple designers promises to give better results than the process on the other service exchanges, where you have to go through that process with one designer. In one case I selected a bid on elance to design a flyer, and it quickly became apparent that no amount of feedback would create a worthwhile result, so I paid the bidder half the bid amount to close out the arrangement.

SO: If you are a designer, please submit your ideas. Or if you know designers who would be interested, please let them know.

Click here to see our logo brief and submit your designs.

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