I’ve been invited to Enterprise 2.0 to participate on a panel called Lessons Learned From Internal Communities. It will be moderated by Peter Kim and here is the abstract:

Forget the theory. Proof exists that internal communities work. Today’s media continues to hype the rise and fall of public social networks, leaving many managers to question whether community has a business application. However, smart companies have already implemented internally focused collaboration platforms that offer the best of external functionality with the appeal of a network with dedicated business focus.

This session will highlight the lessons learned from three professionals who are responsible for internal community efforts: Joan DiMicco from IBM Research, Jamie Pappas from EMC, and Patricia Romeo from Deloitte.

I’m excited for it because myself, Jamie Pappas from EMC and Patricia Romeo from Deloitte are going to share the stories we’ve heard and seen first hand from our respective internal social networking communities (Beehive, EMC One, and D Street). When the three of us have chatted we’ve discovered that many of the IBM, EMC and Deloitte stories are the same:

  • High adoption rates: employees use these sites more than traditional intranet directories and information repositories
  • Viral adoption and word of mouth drives adoption, more so than top-down requirements and instructions to join.
  • Appropriate behavior: each company has thought through issues of inappropriate content in detail and provides guidelines to the users, but for the most part (we’re talking ~99.9%), employees know what is right and wrong to say on these company-internal tools
  • The list of benefits of these tools goes on and on, centered around the theme of people connecting with each other. Some of our top benefits:
    • humanizing the workplace
    • finding informal information
    • expertise location
    • assisting new hires and acquired employees integrate
    • crossing information silos
    • providing a forum for employees to share their opinions with management.

If you’ll be at Enterprise 2.0, please stop by! (The panel is Tuesday, June 23, 1-2pm.)