1. What is your name?

Luis Suarez

2. Who are you and what are you doing?

I am a knowledge manager, community builder and social computing evangelist at IBM. I work in a program within IBM Software Group to help accelerate the adoption of social software within the enterprise for all of the Sales workforce and, as an extension, for the entire of IBM. I am co-leading a community of over 400 Social Computing evangelists across IBM help bring forward some more awareness on the impact of Enterprise in the corporate world.

3. How did you get to the E2.0 topic?

Initially, I got involved with Enterprise 2.0 back in 2002 when I was first getting exposed to blogging, both personal & corporate blogging, as a tremendous opportunity to offer knowledge workers with the possibility of having a voice on whatever the subject matter and share their passion with it. From there onwards, in 2003 I got started with my own corporate blog, behind the firewall, and from there onwards I became a social computing evangelist at IBM helping accelerate the rate of adoption of everything related to 2.0, not just with the social software tools, but also with the implications of the social aspects of the 2.0 movement.

4. What is your understanding of the core concept of the Enterprise 2.0 idea?

My understanding is that Enterprise 2.0, just like Web 2.0 in the consumer space, has never been, and will never be, about the tools nor the processes, but about the people, and how they are now finally empowered to connect with other fellow knowledge workers to share their knowledge, collaborate and become much more innovative as a result of that. It is a changing game where productivity takes a new height and where interactions happen in a much more open, public and transparent space than anywhere else in the past, which surely shakes the ground within the corporate world, because everyone now is able to share that voice and their passion on whatever drives their day to day activities. To me Enterprise 2.0’s core concept is changing the workplace to make it a better place where knowledge workers will have learned how they are no longer in control, they are part of a conversation that they need to nurture on a daily basis and that they now have got a much more important job in helping foster their trust skills with other knowledge workers to continue collaborating and sharing what they know in a much more open & responsible manner.

5. What are the main potentials of the Enterprise 2.0 idea?

The main potential of the Enterprise 2.0 idea is something that I have touched on above briefly as well, which is capability to disrupt the traditional corporate space, bringing into the game concepts like corporate responsibility, ownership, accountability, trust, openness, flexibility in such a way that every single knowledge worker has got the opportunity to build further up on their passion for whatever the subject matter by reaching out, connecting and collaborating with other peers, in an environment where openness & transparency are key to help nurture a trustworthy environment where innovation is the main beneficiary. That’s the potential that Enterprise 2.0 has been having all along. Nothing to do with the tools, nor the processes. Just the people

6. What are the main challenges and threats of the Enterprise 2.0 idea?

I think that the main challenges that the idea of Enterprise 2.0 face are actually the people themselves. The cultural aspects of changing people’s behaviours and how they need to understand that the way they have been working all along may not have been the most productive because of that risk control, secrecy attitude. It will require a substantial amount of effort and energy to over this challenge, because to me it is the only one that is prohibiting for a wider adoption of Enterprise 2.0 within the corporate world. The tools are now incredibly easy to use, the IT infrastructure is as robust as it ever was (And if not, people would move outside of the firewall, something most companies would not be able to afford), the processes get a complete re-work where openness and trust play a key role. And, in the end, like I have said just before, the main challenge is the cultural shift and how willing knowledge workers would be to make it happen. People need to understand that they need to begin feeling comfortable of having a public voice inside of the enterprise where their voices are heard and where they are part of a conversation, a mutual conversation where everyone benefits from. That’s our challenge to overcome.

7. Please give us three tags that describe your person and work best?

Social Computing, Evangelist, Gran Canaria

8. Please give us three links to articles/contributions that describe your views best?

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/29/jobs/29pre.html
http://www.elsua.net/2008/07/28/giving-up-on-work-e-mail-status-report-on-week-24-six-months-on/
http://www.elsua.net/2008/07/16/i-freed-myself-from-e-mail’s-grip-additional-commentary-part-i/
http://www.elsua.net/2008/07/16/i-freed-myself-from-e-mail’s-grip-additional-commentary-part-ii/

9. Please give us three names of collegues that you would refer to as brother-in-spirit?

1. Martin Koser, Germany
2. Thomas Vander Wal, US
3. Ed Yourdon, US
4. Dennis Howlett, Spain (Bonus name! :D)

One mission of this site is the community bonding around E2.0 experts and practioneers. This said I want to start a series of expert profiles. For the beginning I will work through my network of people I know - but I am very open for any suggestions of people you know who are worth to be featured here.

There two more things I have to let to know about today - at first about this nicely growing Friendfeed room (http://friendfeed.com/rooms/e20). Come, join the room and share your insights with us - as Friendfeed is becoming more and more an effective, collaborative monitoring tool.

Next - as one cannot change group names on Facebook I have just created a new group under the title of “Enterprise 2.0 Community“. I see this group as a replacement for our “Enterprise 2.0 SUMMIT” group that we have set up in December last year for the E2.0 SUMMIT in Hanover on March 4th. Hopefully everybody on the former group will also join the new group - so we can extend our discussions and knowledge sharing from here to there.

Just using my administrative freedom on this site and introducing another E2.0 fellow on this blog - Prof. Dr. Joachim Niemeier (XING, Twitter, Blog). As involved within the Wiki Wednesday Stuttgart Martin knows him a lot longer than me, but still - first time I got to know him was at the Dresdener Zukunftsforum 2006, where he - as the former CEO of T-Systems MMS - acted as an engaging moderator of this great event. This is also the reason why I asked him to do the moderation at our upcoming Enterprise 2.0 Executive FORUM. So give him also a warm welcome!

In the absence of Martin I feel very free in doing some administrative tasks and inviting some more people of the European E2.0 community in contributing to this blog. First one to be introduced is Mark Masterson, “Senior Solution Architect and resident troublemaker” at CSC - to be found on the net at Twitter, XING and LinkedIN - or directly on his blog “Process Perfection”. Give him a warm welcome.

He just called for a email bomb DOS attack on elsua who is trying hardly to get away from email as information exchange tool.

After the introduction note by Martin I want to briefly say hello to the readers of this blog. I am the conference chair of Kongress Media and therefore in charge of several E2.0 events - for example the Enterprise 2.0 Executive FORUM on Sept. 18th in Cologne with Suw Charman-Anderson and JP Rangaswami as international speakers as well as several well-known German E2.0 practioneers and experts. Do not miss the Early Bird price of 690 EUR - valid until Aug 15th.

Next in line after the E2.0 FORUM is the Web 2.0 EXPO EUROPE in Berlin - for which Kongress Media is a partner and I am supporting TechWeb as a member of the advisory board. The W2E EUROPE is not a specific E2.0 event, but will also cover this discussion in parts - also with a talk by JP Rangaswami and some more interesting speakers.

After the W2E EUROPE the ECM WORLD SUMMIT on Nov. 10th - 12th is the next, major event in our event schedule - covering the E2.0 aspect from a more “old school” angle. The ECM WORLD SUMMIT - formerly known as Contentmanager.days - is the industry event for the information management industry in Germany. It discusses trends and success factors from “old school” information management (including content, document and knowledge management) towards new approaches on a more participative level. E2.0 will be a keynote topic - and I am still looking for the right speaker on this. Feel free to propose me some appropiate experts!

Following the ECM WORLD SUMMIT we will have a rather smaller but nonetheless interesting event on Intranet Management in Switzerland on Dec 2nd - the Swiss Intranet FORUM. This event will also not be exclusively focussed on the E2.0 discussion, but as Intranet projects are on the change towards the E2.0 paradigm this topic will take a substantial part of the discussion.

Well - and then some kind of an Enterprise 2.0 Area at the CeBIT 2009 will be our following event - as a new follow-up of our successfully organised CeBIT Content Management Arena @ CeBIT. As Martin already mentioned it in his post we are still collecting material and suggestions for this. So far the following facts are set: there will be an E2.0 area at CeBIT 2009 in Hall 6 as an open conference with national and international speakers, best-practices and some kind of open and participative format each day. Join in, give us your thoughts and suggestions and be part of a great E2.0 community gathering!

… and this blog continues it’s mission to bond and connect the Enterprise 2.0 community (now at the CeBIT 2009).

So we’re collecting material and ideas - stuff that matters and that’s interesting to discuss about - for another take. Feel free to add your thoughts and your ideas  - for this blog but also for the upcoming Enterprise2Open events at the CeBIT 2009.

Yes, there will be another open format, just as this year, but probably on a wider and expanded scale, so we’re looking forward to many of your ideas.

And while I am taking a little summer break, my co-blogger Björn Negelmann will continue on this theme.

Just a short reminder, that even when we moved the domain, the feed is still in place, offering all posts plus selected enterprise 2.0 links.