the tour continues

I've revived the Tour to track the very personal ups and downs of job hunting and exploring what I learn. Here, all bets are off, including the sunny optimism that bloggers who want an audience wisely adopt. The Tour is a job hunter in a down economy talking to the camera in a closet on a reality show. Or with buddies over a beer.

I went to a meeting recently to learn about Web 2.0 in the enterprise environment. It seemed to me that a lot of very smart people were thrashing around and not answering the question, "How will we know when "collaboration tools" (read Web 2.0) will be worth it?" There were a lot of worriers wringing their hands about privacy and security. And a lot of others saying that the tools don't do what they need them to do: sort, extract data, offer search, integrate with other tools. The implied answer to the question is "What's the minimum set of conditions that collaboration must meet to make it worth time and money to try it out?" A list of things, some opportunities and some risks. When you get close to that spec, you evaluate again.

What's everyone so worried about?

I suppose it's a fear of getting bitten by technology choices. The case study company that presented at the meeting is building social networking tools behind their corporate moat to address security and privacy concerns. But that means as their tech. vendors grow, change, and are bought, there's no telling how well the products will serve their customer. A few dizzy dot com years ago, a web team I was on made a purchase decision only to find the company was out of business before they could install the software. We consumers, working in the public space, don't have to worry about that. We decide we don't like del.icio.us anymore, we move on. But for organization men, it's a fair worry.

I suppose the second worry, though less discussed, is that some of the most useful people in the corporate social network may be the least productive. They're busy blogging, referring, pointing to resources, and fostering a discussion. Which in fact, is productive, unless it's not measured. If no one measures the value of "connector" roles, then those folks are just farting around on the internet.