Socialization | Bertrand Duperrin's Notepad

The twilight of enterprise 2.0 and the emergence of process socialization

The last Enterprise 2.0 conference in Boston sounded the knell of many illusions. It won’t be a surprise for anyone, we’ve been talking about that for months and feeling it was coming. First, the beginning of a move of enterprise 2.0 toward the real enterprise, then a try to integrate the social phenomenon in the existing production models in order to give it the place it desserves instead of trying to justify its existence using tricks that won’t fool people for long. Recently, Andrew McAfee, Tom Davenport and Dion Hinchcliffe wrote about complementarity, articulation, reconciliation with the existing.

The vision of enterprise 2.0 as a a big fair between colleagues where everybody would embrace one another and sing in unison is gone. No, your company will never become an annex of Woodstock. Many understood that very quickly, some needed more time. Don’t worry, you don’t have to feel ashamed, it’s a little bit like Santa Claus. We all used to believe he really existed, and one day we understood he didn’t. But that doesn’t mean people stopped giving and receiving gifts. (Ok…if you are a 40+ manager and still believe in Santa Claus, there is possibly a problem).

So we have the choice between two solutions : keep on believing in Santa Claus or try to understand how companies like such as Booz Allen Hamilton , Lockheed Martin and many others to join Cisco in the club of those who successfully managed to deploy and adopt social software. .

This blog post by Jon Husband and the article from the Guardian it menstions takes me to wonder about the presumed impact of the net and its use on kids.

People worry about the time teenagers spend online. So what ? I think that all generations, theirs,mine and our parent’s had their favorite leisures. For some it was TV, for others miniature trains, Barbie dolls had their fans too who were taking care of it like if it was in real life while their brothers were trying to become the new Magic Johnson on the nearest playgroung and, later, on their game console. The list is long and we can all try to remember what was catching our attention when we were younger. Things are not that different now. Is this dangerous ? Not more than everything that catches all our attention and makes us forget about the rest. Not less either. In brief, nothing new since my grandmother’s time.

A danger kids have to be protected from is isolaton caused by too all-consuming leisures. Here again, I don’t find there’s anything new. Solitary leisures cut people from the rest of the world, collective leisures cut kids from their parents. Nothing new.

So why so much fear in front a phenomenon that’s been known for years ?

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