Reflecting on the Enterprise RSS Day of Action

Just less than a week ago a few people with an eye on the big picture of Enterprise Web 2.0 joined me for a global Enterprise RSS Day of Action. I've already thanked a whole bunch of people on Twitter and tried to link to every post I could find that talked about Enterprise RSS (If I missed you, add a link to your post as a comment below). But just to be sure I wanted to say to everyone who contributed to the wiki, shared their experiences with Enterprise RSS directly with me or joined us online for the conversation about Enterprise RSS on the day... a big, big thank you!

Now, what did I learn from the day?

• People are interested in using "feeds" inside organisations, although most of the people I spoke with are only at the stage of RSS-ifying existing content and providing users with desktop RSS reader. Some are constrained by the dependency on other software deployments - either at the server (waiting for a version of their CMS or portal that supports RSS) or the desktop (waiting for an upgrade to an email client with RSS support built in). Unfortunately RSS isn't seen yet as a key part of the messaging infrastructure.
• Enterprise RSS is one of two things to most people - its either part of the Enterprise 2.0 infrastructure, what you might call "social middleware" (from Mike Gotta), or a solution to a particular business problem. I think the challenge for the business issue perspective is that it may not require Enterprise RSS infrastructure to solve it (which is typical of the first step being taken by many organisations, as described above), but without an Enterprise RSS infrastructure you don't offer the best possible user experience. In the longer term it also means that there is no platform for adding value or for meeting emerging needs as the use of RSS grows. This just means we have to be smart - to champion Enterprise RSS you need to understand the big picture, but to sell it to individuals inside an organisations (particularly the decision makers) you need to make sure you know why it might be important to them.
• If you take the time to explain what RSS and Enterprise RSS is all about, people want it. Unfortunately even people who live and breath information technology all day long aren't always across every information technology out there. During my own internal brown bag session I could see that as people understood more, they could see the opportunities for using Enterprise RSS as part of the mix with other enterprise information management solutions. In some respects, Enterprise RSS is a missing link.
• Also, in most cases you can't talk about Enterprise RSS without talking about email!

Overall, I don't think that Enterprise RSS Day of Action changed the world, but this was never the intention - I'm just pleased that we're having this conversation. However, I'm also feeling a bigger disconnect between what excites the external world of Web 2.0 and the reality inside the firewall - more on that in another post, however this post from Jeremy Thomas is one of a few out there that captures something of what I'm talking about:

"When I started I came in guns ablazing with a consultant’s mindset. “What, no data warehouse, no sweat. We’ll implement a master data management strategy and breathe life into dying data. And let me tell you about this nifty little thing called Enterprise 2.0. It’s going to revolutionize the world, man. Ever heard of SLATES?”. Sarcasm aside, people had actually heard about Enterprise 2.0 and were actually keen on the idea. But seeing things from the other side I’m starting to think Enterprise 2.0 will be overwhelming for many."

In these still early days, being an Enterprise RSS champion requires a delicate balance between being visionary and pragmatic.

BTW The Enterprise RSS Day of Action was overshadowed by other Web 2.0 related events going on around the world, but it didn't go unnoticed that Microsoft's big new Web 2.0 move, Live Mesh, is underpinned by RSS. Quite funny really to see this blog comment about Mesh:

"One of my pain point has been the lack of syncronisation of RSS feeds that I’ve read between my PC, laptop and work PC. I’m hoping Live Mesh may be the solution for this."

Hmm. And so the story of Enterprise RSS continues...

What did you do about the Enterprise RSS Day of Action or think about Enterprise RSS more generally? Add your comments and experiences below.

Technorati tags: Enterprise RSS Day of Action, Enterprise RSS, RSS, Web 2.0, Enterprise Web 2.0, email, information management, information overload, Jeremy Thomas, Mike Gotta, Microsoft, Live Mesh, Mesh, Social Middleware

Where next for Enterprise RSS in 2009

Looking back on his own predictions about the RSS space, G. Oliver Young notes:

"KnowNow went out of business completely; NewsGator shifted focus and now leads with its Social Sites for SharePoint offering, while its Enterprise Server catches much less attention; and Attensa has been very quiet this year. In other words, all is not well in the enterprise RSS space...

...I’m concerned there is something more fundamental going wrong here. At the end of the day enterprise RSS is predicated on the notion that shoving all communications through email is too inefficient and must be augmented with other communications channels. Is it possible that people simply don’t feel that pain strongly enough to invest the time and effort to learn to use RSS?* And that every wiki feed will eventually dump right into email because that is what people really want?"

I'm actually encouraged by what I've seen in the last 6 months around Enterprise RSS adoption (in terms of growing awareness and interest at least), but I won't argue that it isn't a slow up hill battle. However, while I think Young is right about the user perception of RSS (a point I've discussed with many people) I think the place where leadership is really needed is within enterprise IT departments.

This need for leadership is reflected in Young's other comments that,

"[Businesses] know they have a problem, but instead of investing in RSS many bought other products like wikis, blogs, and social networking tools.'

For me the absence of Enterprise RSS (and perhaps along with other key infrastructure, like Enterprise Search and social tagging tools) in environments where we find wikis, blogs and social networking tools is a sign of tactical or immature implementations of enterprise social computing. We are just at the beginning of this journey.

Of course this isn't a sure sign that existing Enterprise RSS solutions will continue in their current forms. But what I am sure about is that if we really want to bring Web 2.0 inside the firewall, then we need Enterprise RSS functionality in that mix. And that's because the 9X email problem isn't just a barrier for Enterprise RSS adoption, but a barrier for Enterprise 2.0 itself.

In this respect, I can actually see many opportunities for integrating Enterprise RSS features into Enterprise Search solutions or into existing portal platforms (actually, Confluence is a great example of a feed friendly wiki platform - both to create and consume). And why doesn't Microsoft Exchange play a greater role in supporting sophisticated Enterprise RSS capabilities? I suppose in a way this is exactly what Newsgator are doing for the Microsoft suite.

So, Enterprise RSS is here to stay.

BTW Don't forget to check out my Enterprise RSS article, where I introduce the concept of the Enterprise RSS Value Chain to help you understand where Enterprise RSS can add value.

Actually, as a quick vote - have you or your organisation evaluated Enterprise RSS or thought about it seriously during the last year? Or is it something you plan to look at in 2009?

Technorati Tags: RSS,Enterprise RSS,G. Oliver Young,Enterprise RSS Value Chain,Intranet 2.0,Enterprise 2.0,enterprise social computing,wikis,blogs,social networking,Newsgator,Attensa,Enterprise Search,Portals,Confluence,Microsoft Exchance

A world without Enterprise RSS

This post about "Enterprise RSS" is really more about organisations distributing information externally by RSS, however they make an excellent argument for the Enterprise RSS for internal enterprise users:

"all trends and predictions for 2007 indicate that there will be a seismic shift to mobile consumption of information. People with PDA’s, cell phones and RSS readers don’t surf the web anymore - they don’t have to. The content comes to them, when and where they want it."

Now, as I commented over on the ReadWriteWeb blog in response to Marshall Kirkpatrick's Seven Tips for Making the Most of Your RSS Reader:

"I would expand your tip about using multiple services to include using multiple devices. What I like about services like Google Reader and Bloglines is they offer both a full Web client and a reduced mobile client. I read RSS on different devices, but I don't want to read the same feed twice. I also use services like Yahoo! Pipes to mashup feeds in smart ways.

This is actually one of the reasons I'm so interested in Enterprise RSS and kicked off the idea of an Enterprise RSS Day of Action http://enterpriserssdayofaction.wikispaces.com/ on the 24th April.

From this perspective, while a lot of your tips are great, they don't work inside the firewall if you want to consume internal and external RSS feeds at the same time, mashed up as appropriate, a consumed on different devices and in a way where you only read a feed once. But its not your tips... enterprise users need to agitate for better RSS support inside their organizations to get the RSS reading experience they deserve."

Enterprise users are lacking some of the tools and features available through the Web 2.0 consumer RSS ecosystem. And Enterprise RSS users want their RSS "when and where they want it" too!

The problem is that without Enterprise RSS this is hard to achieve, as most basic enterprise approaches to RSS use a simple Web content publishing approach - i.e. RSS content is published like any other Web content but consumed through an existing application or a desktop reader. However, the RSS content has no idea if anyone has actually read it and if a user wants to consume RSS feeds on different devices or even from different reading applications on the same device, well... bad luck.

Another way of thinking about this, as I've just commented here on my own blog, is imagine what life would be like for enterprise email users if we didn't have messaging infrastructure like Microsoft Exchange? Outlook would just be another email program and what would power features like directory services, offline access, public folders, Outlook Web Access (OWA) and calendaring? Overall it would be a pretty limited user experience.

Personally I think that a pretty limiting RSS experience for enterprise users - nothing like the rich options we take for granted as described by Marshall.

Technorati tags: Enterprise RSS Day of Action, Enterprise RSS, ReadWriteWeb, Marshall Kirkpatrick, RSS Readers, Messaging, Microsoft, Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft Outlook

Why focus on Enterprise RSS?

I thought you might be wondering about the driver behind my interest in Enterprise RSS and the Enterprise RSS Day of Action?

Firstly, just in case you didn't know, I'm a consultant who is currently working for a large IT services company - Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC) - and I have a professional interest in this stuff. However, this is strictly a personal project  - as an information system user in my own right, I want Enterprise RSS too! So when the people I work with got sick of me evangelising about Enterprise RSS I decided to take the issue online. So here I am.

Secondly, frankly I'm tired of the narrow and tactical approach to Enterprise 2.0 I see being hyped - a single wiki used as a cheap Web content management system (WCMS) gets you to about Enterprise 1.1, and no more. Scott Niesen along with others like Carl Frappaolo and Dan Keldsen (in their Enterprise 2.0 report) are right to focus on Andrew McAfee's SLATES model, and Enterprise RSS is an important part of that ecosystem. Yes, its time anyone who is making a deliberate use of Enterprise Web 2.0 actually started thinking strategically... and Enterprise RSS is an important part of that strategic picture.

And BTW if you're talking to an Enterprise Web 2.0 "guru" and they aren't talking about Enterprise RSS, well I would be very worried (or be prepared to be given a short term tactical response - "hey, you just need a wiki").

Of course, that doesn't excuse us from thinking about the business value or how we package up Enterprise RSS for the people who are going to use it. I'm definitely not saying that. But we can't do that unless we have the strategic view ourselves.

BTW If you check out my slides on Intranet 2.0, you'll find slide 25 near the back with a pyramid broken into the following layers:

1. Guidelines
2. Applications and Services
3. Infrastructure

RSS readers, forums, blogs and wikis are applications, but Enterprise RSS is part of the Intranet 2.0 infrastructure... and its only with the right infrastructure that users will be provided with the building blocks to meet emergent future needs.

Ok. Enterprise RSS rant over and out (for now).

Technorati tags: Enterprise RSS, RSS, Intranet 2.0, Enterprise RSS Day of Action, Tactical, Strategic, Andrew McAfee, SLATES, Scott Niesen, Carl Frappaolo, Dan Keldsen

Wait, we've got a pulse - Enterprise RSS

Have you noticed the sudden resurgence of interest in Enterprise RSS in the blogosphere following the ReadWriteWeb's obituary post? Some notable posts include Suw Charman-Anderson, Mike Gotta (and follow up post), Anu Gupta, and Neville Hobson (and don't forget all the great comments). I would also love to hear Andrew McAfee's and Dion Hinchcliffe's thoughts on this topic, but nothing as yet.

Of course everyone has a slightly different opinion on why it has or hasn't died and a couple of key themes coming out of this discussion include:

• Its not just about the terminology, although as an industry I still see some confusion about the term Enterprise RSS itself as meaning either the use of RSS for external marketing and communication purposes or the provision of feed infrastructure inside the firewall (if you don't understand what I mean, check out my slideshare deck on this).
• The adoption of enterprise class RSS readers isn't an indicator of demand for Enterprise RSS - I agree with this observation and in fact part of the argument for Enterprise RSS is that enterprise users will need integrated access to feeds across multiple tools and channels, not just through a single desktop reader.
• There is some concern that there aren't enough Enterprise RSS vendors out there and the big suite vendors don't have have any comprehensive offerings in this space - I would add that there isn't a comprehensive open source offering in this space either.
• The type of technology that Enterprise RSS represents, the speed of change in enterprise IT, the widget approach to enterprise social computing and the politics of new software acquisition in large companies make it a hard and slow sell - for this reason, I really think Enterprise RSS needs enterprise IT champions behind it, but unfortunately I find that the IT people I meet either completely understand it or are blissfully ignorant (actually, it reminds me a lot about the attitude towards enterprise search - those that don't know any better think its easy).

On balance I think the general feeling out there is that Enterprise RSS does has a future, but how soon and in what form it will be realised isn't clear. In fact the only thing that will kill Enterprise RSS is the death of RSS and ATOM based syndication itself. You can read my own thoughts about what happens to Enterprise RSS moving forward and the dilemma of understanding how it can add value in this article from Image and Data Manager magazine.

Technorati Tags: Enterprise RSS,ReadWriteWeb,Suw Charman-Anderson,Mike Gotta,Anu Gupta,Neville Hobson,Andrew McAfee,Dion Hinchcliffe

How Enterprise RSS is like Feedburner inside the firewall

Sometimes its easier to describe something by explaining what it is like. It occurred to me that an Enterprise RSS system is a bit like having your own Feedburner running inside the firewall. Lets think about what Feedburner does for blogs:

• Publicize - Create awareness for your feed, make it sing and dance
• Optimize - Ensure your feed displays correctly, manage traffic spikes
• Analyze - Track and monitor usage patterns, trends, etc.
• Monetize - Kick your content off the couch and put it to work

Now, what does that mean inside the firewall? "Monetize" is probably less relevant, but the other features are something you want inside the firewall. End-users, who produce RSS content or own systems that automatically generate RSS, will value the ability to publicize and analyze their feeds, while IT departments will appreciate the benefits of optimization (and this will flow on to end-users too). For example, I've used Yahoo! Pipes in combination with Feedburner, where without Feedburner's caching of the feed the native output of the complex Pipe I built would time out.

Of course the one important thing Feedburner doesn't do is provide users with tools to actually consume feeds, but the marketplace for tools, software and services on the Web is a different world from enterprise computing network. An Enterprise RSS system on the other hand is likely to include a suite of clients that is designed to fit with other enterprise tools already in use - for example, Microsoft Outlook, Lotus Notes, Blackberry, etc.

In addition to the syndication services provided by Feedburner, an Enterprise RSS system is also likely to provide other enterprise-centric services such as secure feeds, protection from script-based malware and integration with enterprise authentications systems. Broadly speaking these enterprise specific features would still fit into Feedburner's benefits model, however we might get away with replacing "Monetize" with "Securetize". An Enterprise RSS system might also provide services that help end-users to create feeds from existing systems (i.e. RSS'ify them) or mashup feeds and data to create new feeds. In other words, a bit like Yahoo! Pipes... so my Feedburner inspired model for the benefits of Enterprise RSS becomes:

• Mashuperize
• Publicize
• Optimize
• Analyze
• Securetize

BTW For more on what comprises an Enterprise RSS system, see the Enterprise RSS Solutions page on the Enterprise RSS Day of Action wiki.

Technorati tags: Enterprise RSS Day of Action, Enterprise RSS, Feedburner, Yahoo! Pipes, Inside the Firewall, Enterprise Computing

Enterprise RSS in the news

As we approach the Enterprise RSS Day of Action tomorrow, just a quick round up of posts talking about Enterprise RSS:

• Lots of people are talking about Forresters' Global Enterprise Web 2.0 Market Forecast: 2007 To 2013, which I understand includes a prediction that the RSS Market is expected to grow from $78M in 2007 to $563M in 2013. Scott Niesen from Attensa disagrees with RRW's assessment that the IT department is a barrier, commenting "We are working with forward thinking IT professionals who are partnering with business teams to integrate Web 2.0 technologies to enhance existing systems and business processes. Rather than isolated projects, we are working on enterprise-wide deployments designed to deliver communication and collaboration to every member of the workforce."
• Newsgator's Enterprise RSS blog helps to promote the Enterprise RSS Day of Action, reminding us about the reason for the day - "there are still many companies just embarking on an Enterprise RSS initiative and James’ wiki will be a great resource for these companies."
• Stu Downes has also tempted you with a short webcast about RSS - I've seen his "RSS Scribble" on our CSC wiki and hopefully he'll be able to share it with the rest of you in time for the Enterprise RSS Day of Action.
• And don't forget, Charlene Li says RSS/XML is the social technology she would like to be.

Have you written a post about Enterprise RSS that I've missed? Let me know.

Technorati tags: Enterprise RSS Day of Action, Enterprise RSS, Forrester Research, RSS, Web 2.0, Scott Niesen, Attensa, ReadWriteWeb, Newsgator, Stu Downes, CSC, Charlene Li

Things you want from Enterprise RSS...

As I was putting together these slides, I asked via Twitter, about the things people wanted from Enterprise RSS... these are the suggestions I heard back:

Satisfied staff, participation, sales, best customer service, informed people, engaged executives, fun, knowledge management, communication, no email, Industry, competitor, major clients, suppliers, law changes, top industry bloggers, company events, internal broadcasts, most added RSS feeds, SSO, no repeat posts, SSE, must read flag, gateways, comments, trackbacks, multiple device read tracking, hooks for ETL and reporting tools (Business Objects) to promote dashboard information reuse... and good internal data in a consumable RSS format.

Some good ideas there - and notice its mostly a combination of:

1. Outcomes (the benefits of RSS/Enterprise RSS);
2. Content (the information delivered by RSS); and
3. Functionality (of the Enterprise RSS).

This is one of the core issues about Enterprise RSS that we've been discussing around the Enterprise RSS Day of Action - to understand how the functionality of Enterprise RSS contributes to the content and how that content is consumed, and subsequently the benefits it provides.

Thanks to everyone who shared their ideas.

Technorati tags: RSS, Enterprise RSS Day of Action, Enterprise RSS, Twitter, Enterprise 2.0, Enterprise Web 2.0

Why aren't we getting enterprise RSS yet?

I thought it was interesting that two PR people contacted me in response to my post about enterprise RSS. First, Janet Johnson, representing Attensa, said:

"why do you suppose the adoption of enterprise RSS (and associated benefits available today) is so slow?... I shake my head on the lack of institutionalized adoption all the time.  Help me understand - thank you."

Jennifer Gazin from LaunchSquad, representing Newsgator, also emailed me talking about NewsGator's participation in OpenSocial - she also pointed me in the direction of Newsgator's blog on Enterprise RSS where this post caught my attention about Gartner's magic quadrant and they commented:

"The Gartner view of team collaboration and social software, and this is just an observation and not a judgement, is still rooted in the blogs and wikis mindset, which is not what we do so according to how Gartner is segmenting the market there really wasn't much upside for us.

We believe the market is much broader than Gartner is allowing, encompassing content relevancy, discovery, and surfacing (what you need, when you need it, and in an app that can use it), user profile data, user initiated action, such as sharing and tagging, coupled with user generated content."

I think this comment points at a symptom of why the adoption of enterprise RSS is so slow - and that is RSS is still very much misunderstood by the corporate computing world, Gartner included. I've actually had comments from other IT professionals that RSS is "flaky" in comparison to other types of Web-delivered content and email, which is disappointing.

The other big issue is that for enterprise RSS to work you need both RSS content and RSS readers in place. From a technology point of view neither issue is difficult to overcome but we run into the old chicken and egg problem of supply and demand for RSS - It departments won't invest in RSS if there is nothing to consume, and if there is no way of consuming then why create RSS content?

The other issue is that if you can overcome this first problem, then it would appear you don't need a enterprise RSS system in place, however the problem I have is that I (and I think most knowledge workers) want an integrated RSS experience.

Hopefully its just a question of time and getting people to evangelise RSS? What do you think?

Technorati tags: RSS, Enteprise RSS, Enterprise Web 2.0, Attensa, Newsgator, Gartner

More conversations about Enterprise RSS

Following the Enterprise RSS Day of Action, the conversation about Enterprise RSS continued to ripple across the blogosphere:

• Yuriy Krylov provided a detailed overview of RSS and the value of Enterprise RSS to organisations - he concludes, "Centralized, enterprise-class RSS infrastructure is an enabler of more than news consumption. Social, asynchronous feedback loops are critical aspects of collaboration and are made possible by investing in RSS as infrastructure."
• James MacLennan described the impact of RSS-ifying internal project system and Dennis McDonald discussed why "it is not a “slam dunk” that all IT staff will have an immediate affinity for benefiting from the efficient information flow and improved collaboration and innovation potential that RSS supports." (also see Oscar Berg's thoughts on Jim MacLennan's post).
• Jeff Nolan reflects on the future of RSS building on the areas where Newsgator is seeing success with RSS but notes "enterprise users are the last to benefit from these advances because they are dependent upon IT. It will happen but the use cases we have to build to will be specific and in some cases tedious in an effort to get a flywheel spinning that elevates RSS in the enterprise to a strategic focus."

However, what is starting to grab my attention right now are some separate but related conversations about the future of the office productivity suite, eliminating email and activity streaming. But more on all that in another post.

Technorati tags: RSS, Enterprise RSS, Enterprise RSS Day of Action, Yuriy Krylov, James MacLennan, Dennis McDonald, Oscar Berg, Jeff Nolan, Newsgator

Following the sun... more on the Enterprise RSS Day of Action

As the Enterprise RSS Day of Action around the world draws to a close (its already Friday here in Australia - incidentally our ANZAC day public holiday), here are some links to some more coverage:

• Our Legal industry Enterprise RSS champion, Doug Cornelius, puts forward his argument for Enterprise RSS by asking you to "Take a look at your email inbox. If your inbox looks anything like my inbox, it is full of email from the administrative departments transmitting updated policies, events and information. Almost none of these emails are urgent or require me to take any action. So why are they clogging up my inbox, getting in the way of client communication and urgent communication?"
• Ed Brill comments, "I worry slightly about focusing on the protocol itself versus the content and delivery approach, but we can use this to move beyond RSS as a buzzword towards solution-oriented value", and also link to a useful new article about RSS in Lotus Notes (probably a good starting point for any Lotus Notes shops out there).
• Corey Lewis at the LaunchSquad (Newsgator is their client) marks the day and writes, "For anybody who deals with high volumes of information on a daily basis, RSS is an essential work tool. We'd be swamped without it, and waste many hours a week trolling through different blogs and news sources looking for the information we could have had delivered right to us. If you're not using RSS already (you admittedly may be even if you don't know it), hop on board - today's as good a day as any."
• Meanwhile over on the Newsgator blog, they remind us about their widget for "the Day of Action. If you would like to track the day's activities, you can add this widget to your start page, social networking site, or blog with one simple click."
• Scott Niesen at Attensa also blogs about their day presenting about Enterprise RSS at a chocolate factory - hmm, my kind of Enterprise RSS ;-)
• Thanks also to Jesse Wilkins for helping to spread the word.

BTW Check out links to some other posts from the day here and here.

If I've missed anyone, let me know - just comment here or drop me a line.

Technorati tags: Enterprise RSS Day of Action, Enterprise RSS, RSS, Doug Cornelius, Ed Brill, IBM, Lotus Notes, Corey Lewis, LaunchSquad, Newsgator, Widgets, Scott Niesen, Attensa, Jesse Wilkins

The Technologist Perspective and the Business Perspective of Enterprise RSS

Scott Niesen at Attensa writes:

"Two posts caught my attention last week. Stu Downes' Enterprise RSS Day: Why Don't you use Enterprise RSS? and Craig Roth's Cornering the Corner Office about Information Overload.

What is striking about these two posts is how they address the same issue from two completely different perspectives: the Technologist Perspective and the Business Perspective."

Its a good point - business users understand email, but would lose interest if you tried to sell them SMTP and POP3. However, it would appear that to an extent even the technologist need to get up to speed with RSS - as Stu writes in his original post:

"I do regularly talk to IT folks from both within CSC and our customers and of those folks you find a huge dipole of opinion in terms of understanding what RSS is and its uses."

Then again, that's a fairly common experience when dealing with Web 2.0 related technologies inside the firewall.

Stu continues the discussion here and it worth also reading Craig Roth's post cited by Scott, who quotes Gary Masada, the CIO of Chevron, to highlight the business problem:

"Getting our arms around all the information we have.  We’re basically creating the Library of Congress every day or so, which makes finding a piece of information like finding a needle in a haystack.  Only that haystack is growing exponentially."

Then - similar to my own thoughts on managing email overload - Roth comments that:

"I’ve said many times before I think the media tends to focus too much on what individuals in a work environment can do about information overload (set aside time each day for emails, block out focused time, etc; see my personal attention management tips here) and doesn’t challenge the couple of folks in an organization that can really do something to make everyone else’s worklife easier and more productive.  These are the CEO, CIO, and IT owners of attentional technologies."

Following this path I actually uncovered an old post of mine, that reminded me of an another perspective that needs to be common to both IT and the business - a progressive attitude to managing information. Scott connects RSS back to Andrew McAfee's SLATES and suggests "Replacing the abbreviation RSS with words like signals, alerts, delivery". So:

• The business wants tools to provide signals, alerts, delivery.
• The technologists need to understand the role of Enterprise RSS in meeting that need.
• And the organisation as a whole needs to start adopting, dare I say, a progressive Enterprise 2.0 inspired approach to managing information in a proactive, not a reactive way.

Enterprise RSS is a story about business value and benefits, but it is also a story about technology and part of a bigger adventure into the world of Enterprise 2.0.

Technorati tags: Enterprise RSS Day of Action, Enterprise RSS, Attensa, Scott Niesen, Stu Downes, Craig Roth, Andrew McAfee, SLATES, Enterprise 2.0, Enterprise Web 2.0, Web 2.0

We're getting this Enterprise RSS party started...

  I'm picking up on a few mentions here and there about the Enterprise RSS Day of Action taking place on the 24th April - thanks to Martin "frogpond" Koser, Jeff Nolan, James Robertson, Steve Richards, Alex Manchester, Stu Downes (our logo designer) and Janet Johnson.

Incidentally, Martin also points to this excellent graphic by Fred Cavazza that he uses to explain Enterprise 2.0 - as you can see, RSS is everywhere:

I also noticed this comment from Anne Marie McEwan on Alex's post:

"I 'got' RSS immediately ( I certainly do not always see things so clearly) and agree with you that RSS is a potentially revolutionary social computing tool. In fact, I wrote a one page piece to give away as a freebie on my old website. I must dig it out. I shall be joining in the RSS Enterprise Day of Action on 24th April. Thanks!"

On Stu's post, Judy comments:

"‘Enterprise RSS Day’ - what a great idea. It’s timely for me - we are just beginning (stress beginning!) to generate interest in this in our firm. We’re part-way there, just waiting on desktop software to be downloaded to the trail group - maybe this will happen on Enterprise RSS Day! And Steve, I think the logo is great."

That's a great action for the Enterprise RSS Day of Action if your organisation is ready for it, start a pilot!

BTW Don't forget that other important day of action that is taking pace tonight, Earth Hour 2008.

Technorati tags: Enterprise RSS Day of Action, Enterprise RSS, Martin Koser, Jeff Nolan, James Robertson, Steve Richards, Alex Manchester, Stu Downes, Janet Johnson, Fred Cavazza, Anne Marie McEwan, Earth Hour, Earth Hour 2008

Enterprise RSS moves information

There have been quite a few responses to my post about the state of enterprise RSS. Off blog Scott Niesen, Marketing Director for Attensa, has a go at articulating the value of what he calls a "managed RSS ecosystem":

"Let's start with a blinding flash of the obvious. Information Moves. It moves markets, innovation, time to market, price, profits and productivity. Enterprise RSS moves information"

Simon also adds his two cents worth, and also makes a similar point about how RSS moves information, and not just blogs and wikis:

"RSS is raising its head as part of the conversations going on around social software adoption within the enterprise. This is not necessarily a bad thing, syndicated content is certainly key to these tools and their success. But why are RSS and ATOM not been given more attention outside this context, as part of more strategic thinking? There is a lot more they can be used for than just blog feeds!"

And on blog there are whole bunch of more great comments.

BTW along the way I also discovered a couple of RSS-related bits and pieces:

• An old post from Anu Gupta, but a useful one that gets a hat tip for listing three RSS server options (Newsgator Enterprise, Attensa, and KnowNow Enterprise Syndication Solution) as part of a list of tools to power the internal blogosphere.
• Lisa Herrod, is presenting at a Web Standards meeting next month in Sydney on the usability of RSS.

I'm wondering, do we need to organise an Enterprise RSS Action Day or something to help kick start things?

Technorati tags: RSS, Enterprise RSS, Enterprise Web 2.0, Scott Niesen, Simon Scullion, Anu Gupta, Lisa Herrod, Newsgator, Attensa, KnowNow

Keeping the Enterprise RSS Dream Alive

Today, it is one year since we held the global Enterprise RSS Day of Action - with the help from many people, including vendors like Attensa and Newsgator, the aim was to raise awareness of this critical element of back end plumbing for Enterprise 2.0. I'm not going to make a big deal about the day of action today or suggest we hold another one (unless you really want too!). But, if you missed it the first time around, have a look around my blog or search the Web for further coverage.

Things finally came to head earlier this year when ReadWriteWeb posted what many thought was a premature obituary for Enterprise RSS. You can see my response post here. I still don't think Enterprise RSS is dead - personally I couldn't live without my RSS reader. But its more than that: when ever I feel overloaded by email, every time I subscribe to a search result or mashup something using Yahoo! Pipes, I imagine what the future enterprise could be like if only we had the same access to Enterprise RSS as we do email in the workplace.

BTW Don't forget to check out Newsgator's new whitepaper on the ROI of Enterprise Social Computing.

Tags: Enterprise 2.0, RSS, Enterprise RSS, Enterprise RSS Day of Action, ReadWriteWeb, Attensa, Newsgator, Yahoo! Pipes

Welcome to the start of the Enterprise RSS Day of Action

This morning, a couple of things to get us started:

• Attensa shares their own 10 Things About Attensa Enterprise RSS in response to the 10 things I want!
• Doug Cornelius helps to promote the day of action, and says "I consider RSS to be the glue that holds together Web 2.0 and especially Enterprise 2.0. Blogs and wikis are great tools. But they are even more powerful when they are pushing content out through RSS feeds. It is much more efficient to have relevant content pushed to you, rather than you having to seek it out."
• Janet Johnson unpacks the debate about Enterprise 2.0 technology adoption, saying "enterprise RSS adoption is coming into fruition - but why has it taken us so many years to finally get here? Why do the folks considering enterprise RSS today have to be the 'forward thinking' ones? Because of fear" and then quoting some good advice from Martin Koser, "Don’t spend hours pondering the details and splitting hairs - actually use this stuff and find out."

I do hope you enjoy the Enterprise RSS Day of Action - it is as Martin says, a day to find out about this stuff. Now, I have to go, as I have my own brown bag presentation to prepare for later today. :-)

Technorati tags: Enterprise RSS Day of Action, Enterprise RSS, Enterprise 2.0, Attensa, Doug Cornelius, Janet Johnson, Martin Koser

Simon Revell at Pfizer gets Enterprise RSS

Great to see someone else getting Enterprise RSS - in an interview in ComputerWorld, Simon Revell, Pfizer's manager of enterprise 2.0 technology, talks about the value of RSS:

"Pfizer is about to go live with an enterprise RSS suite for its R & D employees, he added.

'RSS has huge potential,' he noted. 'Even if you ignore doing any of the other things in this space in the enterprise ...RSS has a role to play. We have a whole bunch of content inside of Pfizer that we want to expose. We have a lot of internal Web sites, Internet sites and apps. And anyone in any role has to touch quite a few of them in their work. The newest version of [Microsoft's] SharePoint is completely RSS enabled so ... every single piece of SharePoint can be exposed. Users can see when folks are reading content.'

In addition, unlike email where people can get bogged down by correspondence they don't really want or need to read, RSS allows people more control over what content they consume and how they consume it, he added.

'[The enterprise RSS suite] is a social solution very similar to BlogLines where you can see what other people are subscribing to and how they react to it," he added. 'That fuels the social aspect of it.'"

Pfizer already have an established wiki ("Pfizerpedia") and are also looking social networking.

Technorati tags: Simon Revell, Pfizer, Enterprise RSS, RSS, Enterprise 2.0, SharePoint, Wiki, Social Networking

From Bill French at MyST: Three enterprise RSS use cases

I'm trying all social media channels to raise awareness and encourage support for the Enterprise RSS Day of Action. Via LinkedIn Answers I've exchanged a few messages with Bill French at MyST (who were already listed on the wiki's list of vendors) - in response to some input from Jack Vinson, he made a great point about the many directions that business RSS feeds need to be shared:

"Jack makes a good point - the term "enterprise" is used in overloaded contexts frequently. RSS (itself) is also [frequently] used casually and without specific business requirements in mind.

I like to classify RSS use cases - three that are helpful include customer-facing, employee-facing (which are ideally secure), and partner-facing (which may or may not require a security context). There are others of course, but this is a good high-level starting point."

He also adds some others comments that certainly mirror some of the other conversations I've been having about Enterprise RSS in the last few weeks:

"The issue of feed source is also important - generating feeds for improved employee productivity and awareness is a relatively new and emerging science. For this use case, security and automation are two of the bigger challenges that raise some devils in the details. Is it enough to secure a feed, or does the use case require a security context for each item in the feed? (e.g., are there subscribers that see a subset of the items?)

Most enterprise applications (which contain the bulk of the content that employees might appreciate in RSS form) are unable to produce RSS easily, and even those that can seem to create a feed have not fully entertained the security issues. After all - most enterprise applications *do* have stringent security contexts for each user."

I also found this old post on the MyST site from late 2005 that made me chuckle (in a good way!), titled, Techno-terms have a habit of sticking -- Blog and RSS are simply the latest.

Technorati tags: Enterprise RSS Day of Action, Enterprise RSS, RSS, Bill French, MyST, Jack Vinson

10 Things I Want From Enterprise RSS

These 10 things are inspired by the RSS services and functionality I've seen or experienced on the "consumer Web" that I want to have available inside the firewall too. Hopefully it also goes someway to explaining why Enterprise RSS is a different proposition from simply installing an RSS Reader on your work PC and RSS-ifying your intranet.

(View the slides on SlideShare)

This is another set of slides for people to reuse for the Enterprise RSS Day of Action. Enjoy!

BTW What 10 things do you want from Enterprise RSS? Follow up post coming...

Technorati tags: Enterprise RSS Day of Action, Enterprise RSS, RSS, Enterprise 2.0, Enterprise Web 2.0

The Enterprise RSS Value Chain (under construction)

I’m currently working on a new article for Image & Data Magazine about Enterprise RSS and I also have in mind, based on popular demand, the idea of running another short workshop at IPP Consulting on this topic.

One idea I have in my head at the moment is to describe a simple model for understanding how and where Enterprise RSS can add value… that is, the Enterprise RSS Value Chain.

At the moment, this value chain consists of four steps:

1. Publish - Data source publish feed content;
2. Process - Feed data is processed in some way;
3. Republish - Processed and/or unprocessed feeds are republished (there are a number of different potential benefits); and
4. Consume - Feed content is consumed by end-users.

Underpinning these process steps would ideally be an overarching management process. There are also some user and activity flows that are little hard to describe here in bullet point form that also affect the value chain.

Overall, I’m pretty confident I can map a range of usage scenarios and technologies to this model, and while doing this demonstrate in certain circumstances the value gap in those approaches.

For example, consider that in most organisations that are intentionally making use of feeds, their value chain probably only consists of a limited publish step (i.e. systems that natively generate feeds) and a rudimentary consume step (i.e. through one channel).

What do you think? And more importantly, would you like to attend a workshop on the Enterprise RSS Value Chain to explore how RSS can add value?

Technorati Tags: Enterprise RSS,Feeds,Syndication,RSS,Enterprise RSS Value Chain,Analysis,Model,IPP Consulting,Workshop