Interesting Video Podcast

The first minute or so of bad sound and video almost made me quit, but stick with it, this is good stuff. The sound and video improve after just a bit. And, don't worry that it's long. Most of the the good stuff is at the beginning in Shel's part of the talk:

Office 2.0: Social Computing Video Podcast

Some initial insights from Shel Israel's research for SAP (which is not yet complete, and my comments are in parenthesis):

1. Where there is an internet connection available, social media is active (people, we are about community, whether we're spending our time in the real world or the electronic one). This is a worldwide phenomenon.

2. The most popular portion of social media is social networking. Other aspects, such as blogging and online video, seem to dwarf in the light of social networking's impact on its users.

3. Social networking and social media in general are enterprise-applicable. (This isn't a push by vendors, but a pull by users. Those companies who learn how to leverage social media will have a competitive advantage in many different areas - teamwork, retaining talent, customer relationships, etc.).

The WSJ published a great article today on IBM's international development teams, and how social media is helping improve their productivity and collaboration.

IBM, along with certain other vendors like VMware are becoming known for their innovation and forward thinking in this space. It's not only benefiting them internally, but externally. If you are in the enterprise space, it's time to move NOW.

Note: Soon, I'm going to have to blog about all the innovative initiatives IBM has in place to retain people and increase productivity. It's pretty impressive, and they are getting regular media attention for it. Smarties!