For the second year in a row, the Enterprise 2.0 Summit, one of the leading events tackling the challenge and solutions in mastering social networking within the enterprise world, comes back to Paris. This year’s edition will take place on March 20 – 21st at the Cercle National Des Armées.
Unlike social media in the consumer world, the social revolution within the corporate world has been a bit slower to take hold. However, social has now arrived with a bang in small and large enteprises alike. Acorrding to Björn Negelmann, Managing Director of Kongress Media who has been organizing of Enterprise 2.0 from the start, it has taken about five years for social media to finally become entrenched in the modern enterprise:
“Back in 2008 when we started the conference, the vision of Enterprise 2.0 was really just starting to take shape. Most companies were still in the first piloting and exploring phase of this evolution, which was simply focused on how to introduce social networking technologies within the enterprise. By 2010, many lessons had been learned and various best practices had emerged on how to bring social into the enterprise and how to drive adoption. By this point, many companies’ thinking had evolved and the focus shifted to driving social’s adoption in an effort to improve business processes. Now, were in the third phase which is all about social’s transformation of enterprise. Social is brining about more transparency in what’s going on in the company. It’s fundamentally changing companies and disrupting the old command and order system of working. The real challenge is transforming the company not actually installing or managing the technology. This is why the theme of this year’s summit is ‘Enabling the Social Enterprise (R)evolution.’.
One element of this year’s edition that has changed over previous year’s is the inclusion of company functions, such as HR, that haven’t been traditionally associated with what has up until now been more of a technological revolution. In previous years, conference participants found it fairly straightforward to identify and innovate around the vision of the social enterprise. However, they found it much more difficult to determine how to drive the necessary change required in order for social to become an integral part of the organization. As Negelmann states:
“This is all really about changing the culture. Enterprise 2.0 evangelists (that would attend the conference) could tell you what the vision was and where we should ultimately go. However, in the sessions, they’d always end up saying ‘but we’re not really the ones who will drive the change’. So, we felt it important to reach out beyond project managers, technologists, and E20 evangelists to other functions within the organization (that are fundamental to driving this cultural change)”
As for the programme itself, there are three tracks this year – project management, social practice, and new management excellence as well as topics ranging from everything from digital workplace integration to social performance measurement and analysis to adoption lifecycle management. It’s also a highly interactive programme with less emphasis on broadcast and more on debates and workshops. They’ve even included a ‘Hackathon’ this year where participants will work collaboratively on principles and solutions for ‘Management in Social Business Environments’.
If you’d like to attend, the organizers have a 15% special discount for Rude Baguette readers with code: rb15 (link here).
We also have 1 free ticket to give away to our awesome followers. Today, we’re rewarding all of our awesome Google+ followers who have added Rude Baguette to their circles, so if you’d like a chance to win a free ticket, just +1 this status we posted about the Enterprise 2.0 Summit, and while you’re there, if you’re not already following us on Google+, make sure you add +RudeBaguette to your circles, as well! We’ll announce tomorrow morning on that status update the winner of the ticket!
If you can’t make it to this year’s edition but are interested in hearing about the latest trends and developments on the social enterprise, make sure to keep your eye out for their E20 MeetUps in Paris that happen throughout the year as well as their #e20s Expert Talks on Google+.