Social Graph for the Workplace: A discussion hosted by Visible Path

I spoke at Visible Path’s (client) Corporate Social Network Design Council in San Francisco today. The panel, moderated by Anneke Seley Founder & CEO, PhoneWorks, included Anthony Lye, SVP of Oracle CRM, Ross Mayfield of Social Text, and Matt, the program manager of Motorola’s Internet and Collaboration Technology.

Highlights of the discussion:

-Initially, when the web was launched, it was estimated that business folks were separated by 7 degrees, now it can be measured at nearly 3 degrees
-Ross suggested that every brand will have a wiki associated with them. Take for example “lost” which has a handful of wikis, both from corporate and the fan base
-The big question of how do personal and professional networks become both a private asset to an individual as well as be shared by the enterprise.
-How many social graphs do we need? Is there conflict as they cross over? (I suggested there are four social graphs on average: public, work, friends, and family)
-Motorola is already experimenting with internal social networks and wikis, with success.
-”Sales 1.0 is about lots of reporting, and sell less, Sales 2.0 is about less reporting and more selling”
-The future is focusing on the people, and their relationships
-One HR manager had concerns as legal and compliance need records of how candidates are found, and sometimes this process happens in hard-to-track social networks.
-Ross has two strategic questions he applies to the enterprise: 1) How do you make programs more transparent and 2) How do you make them more participatory.
-Ross had the best line: “In school, sharing was called cheating, but in the workplace it’s called collaboration”

I shared the edgeworks concept and how the web, marketing, sales and recruiting is distributed on the networks.

It was held at San Francisco’s beautiful Olympic Club, I didn’t realize it until I was stopped by the guard by jeans weren’t allowed. Being a techie, I’m so used to wearing jeans to social media events (Ross was wearing jeans too, thank god I wasn’t alone). My visible path hosts were so nice to fetch me, I apologized of course. How is this a good lesson in understanding online communities and social networks? One should always research their community to understand their culture, behavior, and norms before joining. I’ve done other embarrassing things in public, and learned a lot from them.

I created this Utterz (short mobile audio) from my mobile phone while driving up to the event. Social Graphs, identity, relationships and how we communicate is at top of mind. Here’s the post I was referring to.

If you click on the “click for more” on the utterz player, it will go to their site where you can see more conversations, such as Christian who left me an utterz response. We’re having a mobile, audio, asynchronous conversation online and via the cell. I can even listen to his messages while driving, and respond.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 29th, 2007 at 2:54 pm and is filed under Enterprise Web, Events, Social Graph, Web Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.