Event notes: Future of the Social Web Roundtable

Future of the Social Web Roundtable
Last Tuesday, for the first time, I hosted a no-cost private roundtable of the leaders from brands and vendors in the social space to discuss the future of the social web for my upcoming research on the topic. This wasn’t a conference, everyone worked and everyone shared, as a result, everyone got something out of it. The following is just the high level event premise and findings.

Attendees
I invited many brands which included companies that have been implementing social media have teams, and budgets in the area that included SAP, EMC, Cisco, Webex, Intel, Wells Fargo, O’Reilly, Nokia, Juniper Networks, Cadence, Oracle

I also invited vendors that have products and services for the market, and they include, Biz 360, Web Trends, IBM, SAP (CRM), Oracle (CRM), SocialText, Gigya, Widgetbox, Newsgator, Google, Six Apart, OpenID, LinkedIn, Documentum EMC, Pluck, Acquia, Jive, Awareness, Lithium, Kickapps, Leverage Software, Telligent, Mzinga, LiveWorld. Many of these vendors sent product managers and a few of the smaller vednors sent their CEOs and founders. A few flew in from NYC

There were a few companies that I invited that did not show or were too busy to attend, if you weren’t invited, I may do this event next year, perhaps with different companies.

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There were three major objectives:

Generate four predictions, challenges, and solutions.

Develop relationships ecosystem for partners, vendors, and clients.

Continue to fuel Forrester’s leadership as a research firm focused on social computing.

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Four Predictions, Challenges and Solutions
At a high level the following four predictions were generated from the crowd

Group Prediction 1: Community will participate in all aspects of marketing/strategy, product development, and support.
Challenge: Yet brands will have difficulty managing the culture shift.
Solution: Develop a business program to create incremental benefits.

My Observations: : What’s interesting is that the solution fix here had nothing to do with technology –it was about corporate change processes. The group that presented the solutions (mainly brands) developed a plan that wasn’t unique to social media, but to any change management process within the enterprise. This is clearly about people –not tools.

Group Prediction 2: Brands present and participate where organic communities exist not just corporate created communities
Challenge: Reorientating the organization to deliver value to the community first.
Solution: Brands require monitoring tools, internal training and processes, in order to deliver value to communities where they exist.

My Observations: : Again, this was less about technology (except for the ability to monitor communities where they exist) but more of a need to understand how to join communities where they are, and how to deliver value without splatting your brand on the community. This is more about marketing strategy, listening to customers, and conversational marketing than technology.

Group Prediction 3: Work style evolves as employees collaborate beyond colleagues to get work done
Challenge: Yet rules within corporate culture prevent adoption
Solution: Develop strategy for internal process change

My Observations: : Much like the other two, managing the potential roadblocks internally were the key here. HR, potentially legal, and IT could be in the way of employees working collectively in the open with others, this really wasn’t a technology issue, in fact, many of the tools needed are available today.

Group Prediction 4: One identity with controllable multiple facets empowers users to control their web experience.
Challenge: Industry does not agree what should be portable, and how it should be, resulting in no trust
Solution: Despite this being a prediction, market demand doesn’t yet exist to spur adoption and innovation

My Observations: While this frequently came up as a prediction and a need, the market clearly wasn’t ready for this. The unconference station was unattended, and when we talked about it at the group think, I asked if any brands were ready to fund this development –in most cases, just getting SSO is still a priority, let alone a common social ID. It’s too early for this technology, and I’m sure, just like how we developed a handful of IM logins and handles they weren’t integrated for nearly a decade.

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Summary Observations
Vendors were cautious what to say around competitors, in some cases, we had ‘mortal’ enemies in the room, yet they realize in order to be successful, their systems at some point will need to share data, develop standards, or serve the same customer. I often started with the demand side (brands) as they will lead with what’s important to them (aka what they’ll pay for). The social web industry was able to collaborate towards a single goal.

In general, the predictions weren’t anything more than I discuss already on this blog, we were only able to see about 5 years out, certainly not 10, in some ways this was a little disappointing, but the upside is that it’s confirmation from a pan-industry perspective we are all seeing the same direction –that it worth it’s weight in gold.

Outside of the four predictions there was another discussion around industry standard measurement, while it was discussed, I didn’t see a group that was willing to commit to what this was going to look like.

It’s interesting how the common predictions all revolved around process and change management –not so much a technology issue. This means more education, more strategy discussions, more case studies, and more proof of ROI will be needed for the next few years.

Overall, most were glad to have attended, this meeting of the minds was the first time this have ever happened, and I connected everyone via email, and they were able to find each other on Twitter.

While group based research isn’t anything new, applying it as one additional stream of inputs to everything I do has proven helpful and a valuable resource. To be clear, this is just one of the many streams of incoming I receive to watch this industry. It’s likely my final report will think beyond these four predictions.

Thanks to SAP for hosting this event, and Kenny from GPJ and the event team for helping support the event.

Voice from the community
It’s one thing to hear from me, but do listen to what others said

I was really impressed by the leadership that Joshua-Michéle Ross (not Justin) of O’Reilly brought to the event, he writes about Pirates and Poohbahs Unite!

Jeff Nolan was live chatting about the event with others, read the good –and bad– of the event.

Len from EMC attended, and is leading his own events.

Does the Social Web Have a Future? writes Justin Kestelyn from Oracle’s community group.

If you attended and blogged it, leave a comment and I’ll add it to this list.

If you attended, I hope to hear your observations (good and bad) and if you didn’t attend and have questions, leave a comment, I’ll to my best to respond.

Select photos tagged futuresocial08

I’ll be adding additional photos later.