SAP Global Survey Office 2.0 Talking Points

I'm hosting a star-studded panel on social computing at the Office 2.0 conference in San Francisco this Thursday.  In my opening comments, I will have a mere five minutes to address the SAP Global Survey, which has taken a good portion of my attention over the past two months. Here are my preliminary talking points, but I may need to do some speed-speaking to get it all in.

• In June, SAP asked me to do some traditional research on social media to help them be a thought leader on the subject. I suggested that because social media involves adhering to cult of generosity, I should conduct interviews, like I did for Naked conversations—transparently on my blog.  Less than a week later, SAP VP Mike Prosceno sent me the following email: “It’s a go.”

• In two months, I’ve interviewed over 40 people in more than 15 countries. I’ve posted more than 40,000 words on subject. Spoke with world famous bloggers, high school kids, Cambodian NGO workers, and Ukranian Citizen Journalists.

• Survey took on a life of its own illustrating the community powers of social media. In the beginning I was structured. I sent email questions that people were supposed to send back. Instead, they posted the answers on their own blogs. People I did not interview, rolled their own questions and posted or sent them back. Joe Thornley sent a video clip. Others started asking my questions on my behalf on Facebook and sending me answers. Some folk thought I asked stupid questions and changed them, then answered. It has become an open source survey in every way.

• Too early for conclusions.  But here are some early findings.

• Social media is active and growing on all continents and most major islands of the world.
• As innovators start looking past blogs, blogs are taking off in the enterprise.
• All social media tools get adopted first by non-corporate users, then seem to catch on in the enterprise two years later. Video is hot now among consumers. Watch for massive corporate adoption in 2009-10.
• Social media tends to start with kids. Think of what that means to your enterprise moving forward.

• The universal tool worldwide is the social network. It is being adopted by consumers and businesses everywhere in both localized and global forms.

That brings us to today’s panel. Introduce:

• Anil Dash, Vice President, Evangelism, Six Apart
• John McCrea, Vice President of Marketing, Plaxo
• Adam Nash, Senior Director, Product, LinkedIn
• Shiv Singh, Enterprise Solutions Director, Avenue A | Razorfish
• Athena von Oech, Director of Advocacy & Support, Ning

Comments

[Mario Sundar]

Hi Shel,

This is gonna be a fun panel. I wish I could make it.

Are you planning on streaming it live, a la Jeremiah :)

[Dennis Howlett]

Sadly I can't be there but if you're thinking of live blogging it and maybe putting an SAP angle on it then I'd be happy to know.

[Ivan Chew]

Shel -- one observation to add to your early findings: There is also the "propensity to share". What's clear to me so far is that your respondents are willing to make the time for your survey.

[Balaji Sowmyanarayanan]

The survey indeed illustrates 'Geography is History' and Serendipity is the New Geography.

The survey also highlights the acute need for Novelty and Originality: If Oracle decides to do a survey it needs to exercise its creativity rather than just do yet another survey with another ace blogger/author.

[Maggie Shen]

hi Shel

thanks for the comment you left on my blog. I have no idea how you found it - i suppose there is some really powerful way to keep track of all the webpages that mentioned your book, but since I'm oblivious to that it seems mind-blowing that I could be talking to the author of the book I'm reading right now.

I guess that's exactly the point of your book, is that people who could never connect before are now possible to connect through blog.

thanks again!

[Travel Guy]

I traveled from Turkey for the panel. Thanks!