Viewing the World through Web 2.0 Glasses

From our new guest blogger Terry McKenzie, at Sun Microsystems...

When was the last time your life changed?  I mean really changed.... like you had a baby.  Got married. Got divorced. Won the lottery (OK, we can see where my mind is!). Went through a difficult illness. Dealt with a crisis. Achieved a dream. Became an empty nester.

Life-altering experiences don't happen that often, and when they do, they are often very personal in nature.  So the fact that my new job became a life altering experience was a little astonishing to me.

Last winter, my CEO, Jonathan Schwartz, approached me with an idea for a new charter.  Rather than my group focusing only on employee communication, he asked me to expand our work to drive employee community building through technology.  I lit up - how much fun would that be?

I convened an all-day session for my extended team, and we began the work of figuring out what what the success would look like for our CEO (and therefore us),  what we knew, what we didn't, who other players at Sun might be, and a roadmap to get us started.  Since then, we have become absorbed in social networking, and it has truly changed my life.

I see the world through different spectacles now.  When I'm asked for communication advice, my responses are very, very different than they would have been a year ago.  When I'm asked how Web 2.0 is meaningful to an organization, I have strong opinions on how it may or may not be useful.  I think about team work differently.  I think about leadership credibility differently.  I think about web properties differently.  An example:

We recently completed our annual VP conference here at Sun. To cascade the information, we are relying on a combination of:

• Command and control (Executives have told their VPs that they are being held accountable for sharing the conference learnings and action items with their directors).
• Traditional meeting-in-a-box kits.
• Videocasts and audiocasts on demand.
• Social forum software for use in meetings, where VPs will present problems and proposed solutions from the conference, and then ask their directors, "What do you think?  Is this the right approach? Is it enough?" Ideas will be entered on the forum with the opportunity to exchange ideas with other directors and vice presidents online.

Participation and sharing, real time. High return on an investment of time, not dollars. Lots of minds. A fair shake of chaos. Opening ourselves up to risk, to feedback we may not want to hear. Treating our employees like adults with valuable ideas.  Getting people together so they can exchange thoughts, share problems, collaborate.

I've been blogging for a year (you find me here) but what I'm involved in now takes my experience to a different level. My advice to you? Get smart. Get educated. And jump in.  The water's fine.