Notes from SAPPHIRE 09

Yesterday at work was "catch-up day" from a week at SAPPHIRE 2009, the annual user conference for SAP. As with the JDA/Manugistics conference earlier this year, there were concerns that attendance was going to be low, because so many companies are limiting travel expense. At the conference, I did hear that attendance was only was 60% lower than last year. Conferences like this are great opportunities for IT to do a ton of learning - about the specific technology, of…

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A Plea for Empathetic Communication

It's impossible to over-communicate Sounds a bit strong, but if you think through your real-world experiences, this shouldn't surprise anyone. No matter how hard you try, your message will be missed by someone ... Problem: It's all their fault! Rely on Web 2.0, and ... ... they won't subscribe to the RSS feed; they don't understand the concept, and have no other information sources that supply feeds ... they won't sign up for the email notifications; that feature is hidden,…

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Opportunistic Insights from the RSS Stream

I've written about using RSS for internal as well as external information sources. This past week, I found a couple of interesting tidbits in my feed reader (behind the firewall) ... Eyes on the Skies: It's that time of year again; oil price volatility will continue if any big storms create problems for refineries in the Gulf - something new to keep an eye on. Never fear - our friends at NOAA kindly put out an RSS feed for storm…

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RSS: Underappreciated Web 2.0 in the Enterprise

We added RSS capabilities to our internal PMO systems this past month, and traffic & content is already building up to become a valuable resource. Some have [correctly] noted that this increased visibility puts a bit more pressure on project managers and team members, to keep updating project blogs with pertinent information. This "time shifting" of communication should develop into the most effective way to let the rest of IT know what is happening in all areas. There are some…

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More Challenges for Applying Web 2.0 inside the Firewall

After my last post ... more experiences at work, and observations in the trades and other blogs, regarding Web 2.0 tools for use in business ... Improving Knowledge Capture is Half the Battle In last week's Information Week magazine, the story of Procter & Gamble's push towards collaboration - the tools can meet some resistance. A critical quote: We consistently hear that information posted to the intranet is incremental work. Similarly, in my organization, I have folks continuing to send…

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