In years past, by day two, the ice breaker "so, do you see a theme this year?" would pop up. I wasn't asked once at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference last week. I'm hoping it's a signal to the idea that we're moving past the need for low value sound bites, though I look at Twitter and lose that hopeful thought right quick. Despite the apparent lack of need for such ice breakers, I did note a theme. I'll get to that. 

On my flight home I sat next to a thirty year tech veteran who grilled me as best he could on the value of the work I was doing. Not sure he was open to seeing a bottom line impact as much as he was interested finding a way to prove that I was foolish for not coming to his conclusions. He spent a telling amount of time grading me on my ".60 words" and attempting to diminish my contribution to the debate by verbally patting me on the head and asserting I'd "held my own" in the discussion. The debate was the 101 stuff by the way. Sharing what you're doing has no value, everyone can see, security is so much more important than work, yadda, yadda. Don't let me give the wrong impression, there were many smiles and this was an extremely personable debate. I smiled a bit at the universe's sense of humor in ending my conference this way. 

What it all boiled down to for me is this. It's great to want to change the world to be a better place, for work to be less frustrating, limiting, focused on spending cycles and budget on inane processes. It's great to want more productivity, fewer mistakes, and an innovative, self-healing environment. We've simply got to spend more cycles practicing the pragmatism we preach. That 101 process we've all discovered for selling the business case? That's the process we use to change minds and build adoption. The idea that changing the minds of humans who have no desire to change should be a strong focus is a poor investment and yields even poorer ROI. Remember, don't feed the trolls. Change is about creating an environment of irrefutable value where the majority join in to collect their own perceived gains. In our case, one where business value, more clearly, a positive impact to the bottom line, organizational or personal, is demonstrated. Your ability to achieve such at an enterprise level, right off the bat, is slim. Your chance of doing that by consciously supporting a growing network through an organizationally self aware plan, real-time analysis and iteration, and through creating a network of supportive advocates by offering real value to their bottom line is how it happens.... I know, I know, that's a mouthful. It's tough to force fit authenticity into a org chart or a quarterly numbers sheet. The process is still navigable if we can put down our baggage and get to navigating towards something specific.. mind you, that also means specifically leaving room for the unplanned and the unspecific, where the really good innovative stuff comes from.  

Heightened pragmatism, even around the more assumedly estrogen laden topics of community management, HR, learning, etc, is bobbing up with direct paths to business value and impact to the bottom line. Who knew... estrogen has brains too (yep, it's snark, you're soaking in it). That pragmatism is an element of this work I've clung to for sanity over the years. Finding solid, actionable information on the merger of systems, humans, and process is as simple as collecting water with a tennis racket. Thankfully, many of the few people who deeply get the full scope of the effort are reliably present at #e2conf. 

Some observations to underscore my point of an improved sense of pragmatism: 

• We swam in solid *use case stories. Refreshingly, both successful and unsuccessful. TEVA, Harvard, NASA, Vanguard, Merc, Eli Lily, EA, ArcSight, YUM, etc... all with business driven, culturally thoughtful strategies. All with an eye on iteration and room for innovation. 
• We heard from more sr. middle managers than I ever remember. The use case presenters were primarily not the senior sponsors or senior project managers who don't frankly use the systems for in-the-flow work. They were intimately aware of the challenges and the gains, and were open to share their tricks more than their sound bites. 
• Even the so called "soft" topics included a theme of pragmatic business process. I was absolutely wowed with the Rachel Happe's presentation Online Communities - A Strategic Imperative. Rachel brings unparalleled clarity to the value of professional community management. It was down right satisfying to see her skillfully distill the story into an hour. I often think we'd be moving much faster if the folks who were claiming ownership of these tools/initiatives had to demonstrate a) proficient use of the tools to meet a specific business need b) acted as community manager for one year. The strategy a community manager uses is the same as the strategy needed to support the whole of a healthy social initiative. I see that little tidbit as an ah-ha few have reached yet. Full disclosure, Rachel is a good friend and I am a member of the Community Roundtable, not to mention a heavily biased community manager. 

This year was also my first attending as a vendor. A big shift after many years as a practitioner. It meant that I needed to spend more time away from sessions than I'm used to. I missed the ability to attend and fully engage in the workshops, but thankfully, twitter kept me hip to what was going on in other sessions. Having too much work to do is a wonderful problem to have. I was thrilled to connect with many of my colleagues I rarely get to see in person. Moxie had a great showing and I'm proud to be part of the team there. It was exciting to see our clients sharing their need-to-hear stories. TEVA's supply chain story is unique and so strongly aligned to this sense of heightened pragmatism I'm talking about. 

All in all I wouldn't miss #e2conf for the world. Despite my snarky posts. :) The beauty of #e2conf is the opportunity for us to get past our social tool prosthetics and engage face-to-face where we can separate the wheat from the chaff. I loved the new space, the abundant power and the reliable wifi, though after becoming accustomed to the tighter quarters at the WBW, I did ask Steve Wylie for a Segway to get around. I didn't feel like I could run back to my room without missing something. I loved the variety of tracks and the clear response to feedback. The fact that there's a people and culture track comes directly from feedback, that community management is a foregone conclusion, that we're now talking about CRM in a meaningful way, that we've enjoyed the presence of psychologists and HR specialists as well as an increase in use case stories. All from feedback. I still believe that if you are engaged in the work of bringing social software to your organization there is no better opportunity to learn about the full scope of the story. If you're doing social or thinking about it, you need to be here. 

Phew.. that was a long one. Thanks to Oliver Marks for including me in the People & Culture track with Apprio's Steve Elmore and Saba's Ingrid Stabb. Steve's got some thoughts on the session on his blog.  Thanks to Steve Wylie & the crew at UBM for all the hard work. Don't forget the Santa Clara call for papers is already open.  It's a great chance to share your success, as well as your failures.. lord knows we learn more from those. Also, a final plug for the Community BackChannel. We had an amazing launch meet up at #e2conf. We're a vetted, but open community of those who want to engage others around the practice of leveraging social tools and community building methodologies for business. All are welcome to this no-sales zone where you need only declare your purpose for joining and want to bring/get value from the experience. 

That's it. See you all in Santa Clara. 

* I use the term use case stories intentionally as a case study doesn't hold much validity for me when those who deliver are assessing their own work. Studies should be performed by someone outside the process being evaluated. Nitpicking I know. But I've seen way too many "successes" touted as such with great omissions of challenging data.

** Big ups to @jimworth for his tireless curation. I wouldn't have links without him. http://jimworth.pbworks.com/w/page/41561709/Enterprise-20-Boston-Social-Web-Coverage-June-20-2011 All presentations (attendee credentials required) and related #e2conf information here. 

*** Image Credit Enterprise 2.0 - http://www.flickr.com/photos/e2conf/5857616440/sizes/m/in/photostream/