For the last two years, the Dachis Group has held a curated series of events around the world on the topic of Social Business, known as the Social Business Summit. We believe that helping organizations explore the relevant issues on this increasingly vital topic will help provide the background and insight to make decisions on acting on Social Business simpler and easier. As I explored recently in our Social Business series for CIOs, while social media is very much a full spectrum, company-wide activity, it will be business leaders that will provide the support to make it happen. So everyone can benefit from the information, we are releasing the 2011 Sydney Social Business Summit videos and presentation slides in their entirety. This opens up the leading-edge knowledge and experience assembled that day in a way that is very “Social Business” in nature.
The first Summit was held on March 2nd in beautiful Sydney, Australia at The Mint on Macquarie Street located downtown. The elegant venue was a great environment for a conference aimed at helping business and technical leaders navigate their way through the latest trends in business, society, and culture. The speakers for Sydney were selected for their industry authority as well as regional experience and background. The Summit was opened by Dachis Group Chief Strategy Officer Peter Kim who provided an insightful introduction to Social Business topics both globally as well as for Australia and surrounding environs. Peter underscored the theme of the day by posing the challenge to the audience, “How do you best organize yourself to support Social Business across your organization?”
The next speaker was Martin Stewart-Weeks of Cisco, who gave both an overview and deep dive of how businesses are getting smarter and more connected using social media. One of my favorite lines from Martin’s presentation was “collaboration is an unnatural activity between non-consenting adults.”
Kevin Tate came next and gave a highly engaging presentation on the world of business-focused Facebook applications, particularly something that’s becoming known increasingly as “large-scale social experiences”. Kevin shared what we’ve learned as the world’s largest Facebook Preferred Developer Consultant, including what works and what doesn’t in achieving business objectives in Facebook, noting that it is not yet ideal for creating a traditional sales funnel or conducting push marketing. As far as Facebook’s strengths, Kevin observing that they are in creating unparalleled awareness, amplification, and participation to be where the 700 million member global social networking platform outperforms when it comes to Social Business. Kevin wrapped up with a key insight that I believe all organizations must absorb, though it will be a challenging lesson for many: “Today, you have to earn your way into your customer’s attention streams.”
After Kevin, IBM’s Josh Scribner provided a useful overview of the workforce engagement aspect of Social Business, sometimes called Enterprise 2.0. Using IBM’s internal experience in becoming a Social Business, Josh explored what IBM has learned as they’ve transformed nearly the entire organization into a Social Business including the importance of community management and making sure they were addressing long standing pain points in the organization. Josh presented some useful data on a Social Business impacts breakdown that listed increased skills, access to experts, and better knowledge sharing as benefits reported by stakeholders in the organization.
As lunch wrapped up, a musical improvisation session was provided that helped attendees get more used to extemporaneous collaboration. Then I gave a detailed overview of what we’re seeing with internal and external Social Business today and what it takes to succeed by exploring the latest success stories. After my presentation, visual business thinker Dave Gray explored his latest ideas around The Connected Company, which takes the viewpoint that businesses can’t be treated as machines, as much as some try to, but treated for what they are: organic entities. Dave’s thinking has been enumerated in detail in The Connected Company and the backstory including his research and citations. As always, Dave is thought provoking and profound in his insights. It will be common, in my opinion, for management theory to look more like Dave’s ideas with innovations like work pods and less about hierarchy, org charts, and out-dated, mechanistic business process “optimization”.
I urge you to set aside a bit of time to absorb the great ideas and lessons learned continued in the videos and slides below. I hope to see you at one of our Summit locations next year, to be announced soon.
You can view the full set of videos and presentations from 2011 Sydney Social Business Summit here:
Peter’s slides can be found here.
Martin’s slides can be found here.
Kevin’s slides can be found here.
Anne’s slides can be found here.
Dion’s slides can be found here.
Cai’s slides can be found here.
Janelle’s slides can be found here.
Didier’s slides can be found here.
