Having been born in 1982, I made my best guess at what people wore in the 80′s and proceeded to walk around Las Vegas. Apparently I did something right, as complete strangers reminisced about my outfit and hugged me. The best encounter was a guy who ran over with a huge grin and said “My wife wore that dress to prom our senior year!”

I smiled back and replied, “It might have been hers.”

Eww.

I’m in the pink atrocity on the left. Check out more photos here.

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Taking a moment to celebrate and recognize the innovation taking place within the Enterprise 2.0 marketplace is important, but rather simple. Doing it in three minutes is indubitably more challenging .

Launch Pad is a fun, free contest that awards vendors in the collaboration space with an opportunity to present live at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference. The competition is not limited to startups – all companies are encouraged to participate. The only requirement is that you showcase something new.

What do you mean by new?

We want to hear about a new product, a new partnership, a new feature — anything your company is proud to boast about in 2011. The announcement doesn’t need to take place live at the event (although we like that too); if it’s happened within the calendar year, it counts.

Sounds easy enough. How do I enter?

Craft 140 perfect characters and Twitter pitch to #e2conflp before April 11, 2011. That’s it.

Suspiciously simple – what gives?

Granted, there are a couple more hoops to jump through. The Jury will select the 8 best submissions, and those 8 companies will create 3 minute videos. After the community votes on the vids, the 4 with the most votes go on to demo live at Enterprise 2.0 at the Hynes Convention Center in Boston, MA on June 22, 2011.

Anything else I should know?

Full rules and key dates are all explained on the site. We’re switching things up slightly this year and adding a new twist to the contest: Launch Pad is officially on a diet and shaving down main stage demo time to three minutes a piece.

Jeez.

Yeah, sorry about that. Please remember to include the hashtag: #e2conflp (so we know you want to enter), and if you have any questions, just holler at me. Look forward to seeing your submissions!

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TL;DR Tweet to #e2conflp before April 11 to enter to win demo time at Enterprise 2.0 Boston.

If business requires community, and community is inherently social, why is the term social business growing like a weed in business lexicon? I’m itching to pull out my weed wacker and set things straight.

Consider every job placement. Every business transaction. Every partnership reached. Every merger and acquisition. Every team goal achieved. Each is contingent upon the formation of one or more relationships – which are inherently social. Given this rather obvious statement, how can business not be social?

Even when stripped of contracts or money, an agreement amongst two people can drive business. As the London Stock Exchange‘s motto goes, “dictum meum pacturn” – “my word is my bond.” The LSE took kindly to this motto beginning in 1801, where bargains were made without documents or written confirmations exchanged. The relationship – of a social nature – served as the fulcrum of business.

The Social Business movement has all the right intentions: creating equal distribution of voice across the enterprise, encouraging bottom up collaboration, listening to customers and flattening complex hierarchies. But unfortunately this movement is suffering a severe identity crisis. It’s one thing to come up with a whimsical name for a product, but Social Business is a painful misnomer that should be eradicated. The entire market suffers legitimacy issues when such a poor term is used to blanket describe the sharing and collaboration between internal employees and external partners.

Jacob Morgan posted a tidy summary of all the opinions raised on this subject after Enterprise 2.0 Santa Clara 2010 wrapped. The Enterprise 2.0 vs. Social Business debate was originally triggered by Andrew McAfee, who called BS on the “S word” back in December 2009. His definition of Enterprise 2.0, by his own admission, is “narrow, corporate, and managerial” and conjures up images of agile, efficient business, not beer pong in the break room. Social Business admittedly has a younger, fresher feel to it, but once you move beyond the fluffy connotation, the term is superfluous and downright irritating.

Social Business, yay!

Didn’t we learn at school not to use a word when stating that word’s definition? Apparently a few of us skipped school that day. Here is one exceedingly poor definition of a social business:

A social business is an organization designed consciously around sociality and social tools, as a response to a changed world and the emergence of the social web, including social media, social networks, and a long list of other advances.

I count 5 socials.

I’m all for a healthy debate, but let’s at least adhere to proper grammar.

Thus far, Skype for Business hasn’t seen much financial traction, as users aren’t ponying up for the enterprise solution –- in August 2010, less than 1.5% of the 560 million registered users were paying customers. The company’s image plays a large role in that small percentage. When Fred Knight, Enterprise Connect GM, asked Gurlé about the company’s perception as a consumer tool, Gurlé readily acknowledged the challenge. “When it comes to the enterprise, we are still not known. That is why I’m here at Enterprise Connect.”

In an effort to realign the company’s perception, Skype has been steadily accumulating key partners with established business technology vendors. A recent partnership with Avaya cleverly associates Skype with a unified communications giant, lending credibility and validity to Skype Connect. Coupling Skype’s cost-saving service with Avaya security, Skype Connect offers Avaya customers integration with an existing phone system.

Enterprise companies have come to learn that customer service is the new marketing, and customer support tools must rise to the challenge posed by the open web. Enter Skype, which offers a huge opportunity to deliver a consumer bridge for business. During his keynote, Gurlé noted that customer support has squared away audio and instant message, but the next weapon customer support needs in the arsenal is video. An enterprise that leverages Skype to engage with customers won’t have to teach an old dog new tricks, as customers are more likely to use a technology platform they are familiar with. With Skype making a business play, the virtual call center is a not-too-distant reality.

This attitude and lack of consistency is all going to change – starting last week. I’m really thrilled to begin contributing to a new, soon to be launched site called TheBrainYard.com, an online information destination for business and technical professionals interested in social software. TBY.com also ties into InformationWeek.com.

I’m hopeful that this new opportunity will be the ass kicker needed to get myself writing more often. Time will tell.

In the meantime, here is my first post, Enterprise Collaboration Meets the Super Bowl.

I’ve stayed clear of all of them. Namely because I’m creeped out by them. There’s a spectrum of openess on the web, and I certainly contribute, but I am uncomfortable with publishing my whereabouts in realtime. True, I could check-in as I’m leaving, however there is something to be said for quality of presence. I pride myself on truly being with the people I am with (even if that person is just me), as opposed to hungrily scouring to see if anyone else you know is in the vicinity. If I serendipitously bump into a friend, cool. If not, that’s cool too.

Not only am I a wee bit creeped out, I’m also not convinced of how useful checking in is. Retail seems to get that games are good, but rewards are better. However I want to feel confident that the return on giving out private realtime details about my location is actually worth it. The minor discount or free coffee I could potentially receive just won’t cut it for me. Others may disagree and love that cheap latte, but I’d rather pay full price for my caffeinated beverage price and not clue in any of my “Twitter friends” – because let’s face it – I don’t know the vast majority of those lovely people.

The other thing I’m wrestling with: how can businesses get into the mix? Finding the value in this type of service in the enterprise (outside of the retail, food, beverage and entertainment industries) is really a challenge. Perhaps if your outside sales team is on calls? I suppose it could provide accountability for unsupervised, traveling employees. Even that is a stretch. Contests and giveaways could also make use of geo check-ins, but I can’t see my dentist getting onboard and giving away free root canals.

Granted, I hate and I don’t participate.

Good read on why Foursquare and all the other services face impending doom by Jay Dolan here.

I agree with this statement in part, but I don’t feel it applies entirely to me and the way in which I use Twitter. Like any tool, it can and should be used in a way that best suits your needs. Depending on who you are, your ratio of followers to following can vary immensely. Some have roughly the same figure in each bucket, others (especially experts or notable thinkers on specific topics or subjects) only follow a small population while maintaining a following in the tens of thousands range. Take Conan O’Brien for example. At the time I write this, Conan is following 1 person and has over 1.37 million followers.

For those “experts” I think Steve’s assertion rings true – DM is a filtering system giving a Twitter user the ability to opt-in to a two-way communication. There is mutual consent between recipient and sender.

I follow people that I don’t know. My filters for following someone are:

• I know them.
• I respect their opinion.
• The entertain me (once again – see Conan).

If I follow you, you fit into at least one of these categories (hopefully more than one).

If you’re following me, why? Twitter is pretty weird when you think about it. I’m going to go Tweet about this post now.

I’ve been hearing these words waaay to much lately. Let’s all try to eradicate them from our vocabulary:

1. Robust; as in “This platform is incredibly robust.”
2. Bullish; as in “We’re really bullish about this market.”
3. Leverage; everyone is leveraging everything right now.
4. Socialize; as in “I need to socialize this idea amongst my team members.”
5. Offline; as in “Let’s take this offline” when you’re just sitting in a meeting, talking to someone in person. Grrr.

Cool? Thanks.

Paige

A couple weeks back at Enterprise 2.0 Boston, I chaired the Launch Pad program. This was my third time coordinating this contest and the process is getting a little smoother and I’m feeling more confident each time I have another experience under my belt.

Regardless of any on-stage brain farts I exhibit or how many times I say “um,” the satisfaction gleamed from seeing this contest from start to finish always comes down to the people I have the opportunity to work with.

This year the Final Four came from across the globe. Alex Moore of Baydin came from Melrose, MA. Tilman Eberle flew in from Zurich. Leonardo Varella-Cid joined us from Lisbon. And lastly, Daniel Kim from MindQuilt hopped a plane  from Germany into Boston. These four gentleman were incredibly enthusiastic about their 5 minute keynote demo, and it was great to see them form bonds over the shared Launch Pad experience from the moment we did our first sound check walk through.

Weeks later there are still emails flying back and forth with invitations extended to host their fellow finalists in their native country. It feels awesome to play a role in uniting them. And a big thank you to these four for making my job way more fun.

Just a mere weekend away from Enterprise 2.0 Boston 2010, the E2 team is heads down, focused on last minute details, and very excited about the show next week. It’s the culmination of a lot of hard work and we can’t wait to see the finished product in action.

Believe it or not, we’re now in our 6th year in Boston.  The event has made significant strides and we expect Boston 2010 to seriously rock – some highlights include:

• a stellar keynote lineup
• tons of exhibitors on the show floor
• 100 members of the media ready to cover the event
• deep dive workshops on Monday
• and don’t forget, our Attendee Party, sponsored by IBM, is on aBOAT

Despite all of these awesome highlights, the thing I’m most excited about this year is our involvement with NSTAR’s Walk for Children’s Hospital Boston.

Enterprise 2.0 Boston has chosen Children’s Hospital Boston as the event’s official nonprofit beneficiary for 2010. Children’s Hospital Boston, an internationally renowned center for medical research and treatment, is one of the only pediatric hospitals nationwide that focuses on pairing world-class research with clinical resources to treat and cure children. UBM TechWeb, Enterprise 2.0 and its parent company United Business Media, are exceptionally proud to support this organization and the wonderful work it is doing in and around the Boston area.

Myself and a few colleagues will be walking and we encourage you to contribute; you can sponsor us or make an in-kind donation onsite at the event. Each donation makes a difference as every small action compounds to create a significant impact.

More info on the charity and Children’s Hospital can be found here.  See you next week!