Beaconhill NW

On Wednesday, Jive Software will host a live webcast titled:

Facebook for Spies:  Enabling Social Collaboration in a Community Trained not to Collaborate

In September 2008, the federal government introduced secure social networking capabilities to the US intelligence community to share insights, debate, and communicate. Called “A-Space” (Analyst Space), the initiative’s goal — like intelligence analysis in general — is to protect the US by assessing all the information available across the Department of Defense’s spy agencies.

DIA Program Manager Ahmad Ishaq will discuss the impetus behind A-Space and social software across an organization specifically trained not to share information, how A-Space was launched, the successes to date, future plans, as well as share best practices that are applicable to any industry or private company. He’ll also share how this secure community has helped unify a community to take advantage of intelligence, ideas, and innovations across multiple, globally distributed agencies.

Learn how to:

• Create low barriers to entry and improve adoption rates of Enterprise 2.0 initiatives
• Enable a governance model that works in the new social collaboration paradigm
• Align Enterprise 2.0 tools to speak the language of business
• Study community patterns and don’t be afraid to restart pieces that fail

Get free resources:

• Gartner, Inc. Report: 2009 Magic Quadrant for Social Software in the Workforce
• Forrester Wave Report: Community Platforms, Q1 2009

Get signed up here

Here’s a video interview I did this morning with Guy Walker from ARC (Association of Related Churches)

About two years ago Forrester published a report on Social Technographics.

“At the heart of Social Technographics is consumer data that looks at how consumers approach social technologies – not just the adoption of individual technologies. We group consumers into six different categories of participation – and participation at one level may or may not overlap with participation at other levels. We use the metaphor of a ladder to show this, with the rungs at the higher end of the ladder indicating a higher level of participation.”

Forrester has now added a new rung, “Conversationalists”.

Conversationalists reflects two changes. First, it includes not just Twitter members, but also people who update social network status to converse (since this activity in Facebook is actually more prevalent than tweeting). And second, we include only people who update at least weekly, since anything less than this isn’t much of a conversation.

Conversationalists intrigue me. They’re 56% female, more than any other group in the ladder. While they’re among the youngest of the groups, 70% are still 30 and up.

The data from this survey continues the trends from the last two years — Spectators are maxing out at around 70%, Joiners are still growing rapidly, and Creators are still growing slowly.

Forrester suggests three ways you can use this info:

1. Convince your boss this stuff is for real, and that if you haven’t jumped on it, you’re late.

2. Profile your customer base, and see what they’re ready for, before planning a project to reach out to them. (After all, People is the first step in the POST process.)

3. Segment your audience; build different strategies for different segments. (Social is so prevalent now that a single approach for your company is probably too broad.)

How will you use it?