Quick review of Online Social Networking & Business Collaboration World event

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Oof! Well hopefully my last 13 blog posts as I chaired ONSBCW over the last two days have been useful to people, and not annoyed any faithful readers. Between Jenny Williams on Twitter, myself blogging, and various other people twittering and blogging, we had the event pretty well covered :-). It would have been nice to take a break from the constant note-taking, but once I started I thought I might as well continue.

Quick thoughts on the event:

* There is clearly a very strong appetite for the topic of social networks not just from business, but also from government.

* While this now not a new topic, most organisations are still struggling to really get traction, not least because of senior executive reluctance.

* There is strong diversity not just in the consumer social network space, but also in the many tools and platforms available to enable social networks in and beyond organizations.

* Twitter is solidly established in a core community which is rapidly extending. Those who can’t find the time or energy to blog are dabbling in Twitter. The attendees’ experience of Twitter at the event was a convincer for many to try it out, as happened at the Future of Media Summit.

* Few people really have their heads around the different spaces in which social networks and Web 2.0 tools can be applied and how these relate to each other – creating greater clarity on this will be very useful.

* Over the next years ‘social networking’ in the broadest sense is going to become central how business, government and society function – we really are on the cusp of something massive here.

So now onto other projects. Of course top of the agenda is our Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum 2009 on 24 February, which will delve into far more detail on how these issues impact the enterprise, and provide highly practical insights on governance, policies, implementation, and creating short-term value.

We are also creating an Implementing Enterprise 2.0 report, which will provide a clear roadmap to organizations on this path. This will be included in the registration cost of the Executive Forum, and we will be actively marketing the report beyond that.

Lots more on all this over the next few months!