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Enterprise 2.0 Rave in NYC

The Enterprise 2.0 RAVE will be an intense, 24-hour discussion of next-generation enterprise software tools and applications hosted by the exploding field's best thinkers, practitioners, and prognosticators. Sessions will look at the challenges and opportunities of so-called "Enterprise 2.0" applications through the eyes of the field's leading lights including Andrew McAfee, the Harvard Business School professor who coined the term and whose Sloan Management Review article on the topic kicked off this critical discussion on how Web 2.0 practices are making its way into their enterprise.

Other facilitators include:

- JP Rangaswami, Global CIO BT
- Euan Semple, former Head of Knowledge Management and Social Media at the BBC
- Jason Wood, principal and head of research for RT Capital Management, co-founder Enterprise Irregulars
- Susan Scrupski, founder, IT Services Advisory

Among the questions that will be addressed:

- Deploying Enterprise 2.0 Tools - the adoption issues
- Targeting the right business processes for Enterprise 2.0 projects
- Getting started with Enterprise 2.0 and how to measure success

Ultimate Laughter and Perfection: Thomas Bernhard

My favorite magazine -- The New Yorker -- has finally honored my favorite author -- Thomas Bernhard -- in a grandiose article by Ruth Franklin, “The Art of Extinction.” The Austrian novelist, playwright, and poet is widely acclaimed as one of the most provocative postwar writers in Europe but is little known in the US. Long before like-minded French enfant terrible Michael Hollebeueq, Bernhard established himself as a notoriously misogynistic hermit, an “Uebertreibungskuenstler,” an “exaggeration artist” and manic perfectionist who lacked faith in human relationships and only believed in the power of language to describe the shortcomings of an otherwise unbearably imperfect existence that was doomed by mental and physical diseases and an ever-present undercurrent of callous nihilism. Franklin describes Bernhard’s style, obsessively precise in its redundancy, as “linguistic sadism”: “Not only do his novels, pushing every idea to its extreme, require a similarly extreme form; he also took pleasure in prose that is hyperbolic, over the top, even joyful in its own insanity.”

I’ve adored Bernhard since I was a teenager. I liked reading about Bernhard as much as I liked reading him because it was hard to make it through a novel from beginning to end without losing your mind; pushing you closer to the edge and sometimes even beyond was Bernhard’s program. His short stories, poems, and dramas are more accessible although not easier to digest. Throughout his writing, there is a hidden tenderness, a pompous musicality, and a bleak sense of humor that can be hilarious.

At the end, though, for Bernhard, the glass remained less than half empty. In 1988, he died by assisted suicide, after long suffering from lung ailments. He remained a provocateur beyond his death: In his last will, he forbade the publication, production, and recitation of his works in his native Austria for 70 years. One final laugh, one final correction.

Groupthink

Crowds may be smart, but are they creative? Not so, says the Wall Street Journal. With its heretical article on group brainstorming, the Journal has provoked a number of ardent rebuttals from prominent creative thinkers. In full agreement with them, I firmly believe in the power of collective creativity and its manifestation in joint brainstorming sessions – IF they are well-prepared, aptly moderated, and their results sufficiently documented. The best digital tool to enhance, document, and channel the abundance of ideas generated in brainstorming sessions, is MindManager, the leading mind-mapping software.

Push The Future

Once a year the crème de al crème of the intellectual circuit comes together at the PUSH conference for a cross-disciplinary tour de force through architecture, genetics, arts, and technology. This year's conference, taking place from June 11 to 13 at Herzog & De Meuron's pompous Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, will be a "journey into A New Life." On the agenda are topics such as Blurred Realities, New Constructions, Social Dances, and Domestic Bliss. Among the presenters are "Getting Things Done" guru David Allen, Howard Rheingold ("Smart Mobs"), and Cameron Sinclair (Architecture for Humanity).

The Entrepreneurial Wisdom of Crowds

The Web 2.0 boom has given birth to some noteworthy real-world applications of James Surowiecki’s seminal concept of The Wisdom of Crowds (2004), which explores the possibilities of collective intelligence in making decisions. The first one is BrainJams.org, which hosts open spaces among entrepreneurs where the participants engage in one-to-one pitching and feedback sessions in the morning and open discussions on how to best use emerging technologies in the afternoon. The knowledge and information shared amongst participants is gathered and redistributed online to further the discussions, learning and idea manifestation after the event and beyond. My friend Tom attended the most recent Brainjams event in Silicon Valley and posted his account on the Mindjet blog. The second venture is called The Business Experiment (TBE) and is basically an open source platform for business ideas, inviting technoratis, entrepreneurs, and VCs to conceive venture ideas and form start-up teams collaboratively and peer-to-peer.