I caught up with Stephen earlier in the week to have a chat about what wisdom he’ll be sharing with the crowds at the conference, so here’s a taste of what he has to say:

1. When talking about Enterprise 2.0 it has to be a team approach.

It’s no good talking just to management or people on a project about collaboration, there has to be an overall desire from within an organisation to work this way. Often this can be a challenge, so Stephen recommends that YOU be enthusiastic, don’t be afraid to challenge the way things are being done and have evidence to back up what you are trying to do. There are a lot of case studies out there that look at different aspects of using enterprise 2.0 in companies. Arm yourself with examples and use them as evidence.

2. Start small and grow from there.

Start in a business unit of 10 people or 50 people – or one that you can manage – is Stephen’s advice on taking initial steps. Co-ordinate on one or two projects initially and see how it works – often this is a great way for convincing others to try in on their own projects. As you do that, you build momentum from the inside and you get internal entrepreneurs who say “I also want to work that way”.

3. When talking to business types about these things – show them the money!

Often when talking to “grey suit wearers” Stephen recommends a different approach. This is where you need to talk in terms of ROI. If you can show them, for example, that you can go from spending six to two hours to find a piece of information (these are real case studies) then that’s a big cost saving. Encourage them to do things like open their product development window to incorporate opinions from their valued clients. Show them how it increases productivity by reducing time it takes to get a job completed – often people are able to do a job that used to take them two or three days, in a day. “There’s obvious bottom-line business benefits in these sorts of things and you know if you are talking to business and you are trying to convince them to work this way – then they need to see ROI on it and fairly quickly so they are able to justify it in budget terms,” he says.

4. Shared knowledge is a long-term investment (and here is some of that evidence!)

There are a lot of really good case studies from big banks or big mining companies that have proved the effectiveness of shared knowledge. There are mining companies up in Queensland for example, using a Wiki so that when guys come out of a mine after a shift and have broken kit, they register that so that they know that it is going to get it fixed. But there are added long-term benefits as well because, you’ve also got guys who have interim fixes for things, guys who have been working in the mine for 20 years, who may know what you can do while that equipment is being fixed. There is knowledge there that people can go back to.

Best thing of all is that Stephen feels your pain, having worked in government for 12 years and having that feeling of “smacking your head against the wall thinking there must be a better way to do this.” It was while he was in a position of an IT manager in a bigger organisation that he started thinking there must be a better way for him to co-ordinate all that was going in a way that people could contribute to. So let his insights from this tortured experience be your gain

Hoping to catch up with Laurel this week sometime – meanwhile, if you have not read her blog I suggest you do. Same for Stephen – always gems to find there.

IE6 is an abomination and one of the worst things for web development productivity EVA according to Microsoft evangelist (and Professional Geek) Nick Hodge. (Geek kudos accrued.)
One thing you learn about Nick pretty quickly is that he’s not one to shy away from criticising his employer when he thinks they’ve got it wrong. At the same time, you can also pretty much guarantee that anything good he has to say about Microsoft he truly believes in. Nick will be presenting a talk at Edge of the Web on “Not your father’s Microsoft” and is hoping to convince even the most hardened and cynical code-monkeys that Microsoft has learned from past mistakes and wants to engage in an “internet frame of mind”.
This is something Nick is really passionate about, having been a big supporter of open-source software for years.
Nick admits Microsoft has been late to the game in embracing open-source, but there are some interesting developments that he wants to communicate to developers. He’s particularly excited by the IronRuby project that is bringing Ruby into the .Net platform, a step that has seen Microsoft accept external contributions. The other thing he wants to highlight is the Silverlight tools for Eclipse it has released, which is the more common framework for development compared to Microsoft’s commercial Visual Studio. And yes, he even wants to tell you about cool ways you can use Microsoft on a Mac (he owns one himself.)

Ofcourse, Nick is looking forward to hanging out with the Perth web community, one he feels other Australian cities could look to emulate (it is true, we do rock!) He’s here to listen as well as give a presentation, so even if you are most cynical about what he has to say – seek him out and have a chat.

If you haven’t got your tickets to the conference I suggest you do. It’s not often that you’ll get to experience something like this in your own city. Hope to see some of you there.

PS. I’m hoping to get a much more incriminating picture of Nick, so I can keep my tricks fresh!

Nick that does NOT mean I want to see you with your shirt off – a LOLcode shirt will do