What do FreshBooks, Shoeboxed, BatchBlue, MailChimp and Outright all have in common? Aside from being Web 2.0 businesses who serve the small business market, they are also the founding member organizations of The Small Business Web. An exciting initiative that launched earlier this year, The Small Business Web is a partnership of businesses dedicated to [ Read More ]
A Web 2.0 of Small Business Solutions – FreshBooks, Outright, BatchBlue, MailChimp & Shoeboxed
Posted on May - 03 - 2009Interactive Austin Keynote Videos
Posted on Apr - 30 - 2009The second annual Interactive Austin Conference has wrapped up, and in true social media fashion, there is no shortage of online accounts of the day’s activities (with more to be coming over the next few days, no doubt). Online already are keynote coverage posts by Ricci Neer, for each Dion Hinchcliffe, Sam Lawrence and whurley. [ Read More ]
Organizational Design 2.0 – Technology, Change & Organizational Structure
Posted on Apr - 13 - 2009Over the past few months, I’ve been more closely aligning myself with the Enterprise 2.0 community of professionals. Though I have been in technology for my entire career, and in Web 2.0 for at least part of that time, and implementing Enterprise 2.0 solutions quite extensively in recent years, I had not previously made a [ Read More ]
Social Design for a Virtual Organization
Posted on Apr - 13 - 2009At South by Southwest, Brazen Careerist author and CEO Penelope Trunk was quite emphatic that, when starting a new business, having a geographically distributed team is rarely possible. She said this on her panel, as well as again when we spoke in person. She was a strong advocate of the notion that, for the first [ Read More ]
Enterprise 2.0 Discussion at Web 2.0 Expo
Posted on Apr - 12 - 2009At Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco, we recorded a short video on the happenings in the Enterprise 2.0 space, the activity at the event, and the upcoming local event (local to me, anyway) here in Austin at the end of the month: Interactive Austin 09. The video is posted and, as always, while I [ Read More ]
Lessons from Conference Season Coverage
Posted on Apr - 09 - 2009I’ve been very fortunate recently: in my role as Managing Editor of Social Computing Journal (formerly Social Computing Magazine), I’ve been able to attend a number of conferences that I would not have previously been able to find the time or money to attend. In quick succession, I have attended PubCon South, SXSWi and Web [ Read More ]
The 1st Birthday of a Unique Corporate Blog – The Connection Cafe
Posted on Mar - 30 - 2009A year ago, Austin-based Convio launched a company blog: Connection Cafe. Unlike so many other company blogs, Convio decided to take a slightly different approach with the hope of gaining slightly different results. While many organizations opt for a CEO blog — particularly companies with in-demand CEO’s, like Convio’s Gene Austin — or a blog [ Read More ]
A Conversation with Penelope Trunk
Posted on Mar - 20 - 2009Author, blogger and serial entrepreneur Penelope Trunk sat down with me at SXSW to discuss life as an entrepreneur, building a startup outside of the tech corridor, and what an organization’s technology choices say to potential employees. Penelope is currently building her third business, the Brazen Careerist. In addition to trying to connect Employers with [ Read More ]
Three Questions to Ask (& Answer!) Before Starting a Customer Blog
Posted on Mar - 05 - 2009In a recent conversation with a friend, we were discussing corporate blogging efforts to engage existing customers. After reading Joshua-Michele Ross‘ post recently, on the Wells Fargo/Wachovia merger blog, I was excited to see yet one more company prepare to engage customers in this forum. That is, until we started talking in more detail. It [ Read More ]
Sneaking Web 2.0 in the Back Door
Posted on Feb - 06 - 2009This post was originally written for and published on Social Computing Magazine. Those of us in the Web 2.0 space who come from a technology background are often a little stunned when we discover that it is frequently our IT cohorts who pose some of the biggest obstacles to prospective enterprise implementations. After all, wouldn’t [ Read More ]