There have been a lot of great summaries of what was discussed at last week's Enterprise 2.0 show in Boston. But for me, the most interesting topic was one that was not discussed: Culture.
That's a big change.
Right up until a few months ago, Enterprise 2.0 discourse was dominated by a movement which I like to call the "Culture Crusade." A collection of practitioners, analysts, consultants, and vendors alike have been saying that changing organizational culture is the key to successful deployment of enterprise social software. "If you don't have a collaborative culture," says the crusader, "all the tools in the world won't help you." The crusaders cited culture as the reason for failed implementations that led to the familiar phrase, "The tools were great, but we just don't have the culture." Consultants exhorted companies to make sure that their social software projects included a cultural change component.