Enterprise 2.0

Mick Liubinskas, Pollenizer: Interview

March 16, 2009 By Des Walsh

At Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum the other week, one of the people I wanted to interview on video was Mick Liubinskas of Pollenizer. We started, but a camera glitch put a stop to that. Instead I was able to interview Mick later via Skype audio, as below.

Online or offline, Mick Liubinskas is one of those people you are always glad to see. He is both visionary and very practical.

And he is part of the team at Pollenizer.

I find Pollenizer a very interesting company. Very basically, it combines the capabilities of a management team with an offshore (India) development team. But there is more to them than that. These are very savvy folks.

You’ll get a better idea of what they do and how they do it by having a browse around their website.

For those who want the bullet points, their “service summary” is as follows:

CxO level SWAT team;
Strategy, technology and marketing;
Planning with a strong execution focus;
Web and mobile;
Consumer and enterprise;
Part-time, full-time or project-based;
Fee, equity, performance-based or combination;
Idea, prototype, growing, seed, VC, existing business.

Here’s the interview with Mick, where we talk about a few items, including:

what Pollenizer is and does
how even in the current, economically challenging times, some companies will grow and thrive
some shared reflections on what we heard at E2EF.

If you think Mick and his team at Pollenizer just might be able to help you, call him. He really is as approachable – and as on the ball – as he sounds.

Photo of Mick Liubinskas by Des Walsh: some rights reserved

Filed Under: Business, Enterprise 2.0, Podcasting, Web 2.0 Tagged With: E2EF, Enterprise 2.0, Mick Liubinskas, Pollenizer, Web 2.0

Perfect Setting for Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum

March 2, 2009 By Des Walsh

If you need to spend a day in a Web 2.0 seminar, there would be few places to compete with the setting last week for Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum – at Luna Park on Sydney Harbour, looking across to the majestic sails of the Sydney Opera House.

Sydney Opera House, Feb 26, 2009: Des Walsh, CC (some rights reserved)*

As with any event put on by Future Exploration Network, it was a full day’s program, with stimulating and informative presentations and a series of rapid-fire, mini workshops.

It was a Twitterfest, so much so that one speaker complained of the number of people with their heads down, tweeting away and seemed to be pleading with those present to look up and pay more attention to him. I don’t think people were necessarily paying less attention than if they’d been staring at the presenter, but I do see this sort of situation becoming an interesting test for speakers who have become used to gaining eyeball attention.

Apparently, according to some measures, the event – via the hashtag #e2ef – was the #1 Twitter activity globally on the day: others ranked it #2.

As for me, I was not so much tweeting as typing into my live coverage of the event on Coveritlive. That meant that I was unable in practice to do much tweeting, but I was able to program Coveritlive to pull others’ tweets into my Coveritlive stream.

Peta Hopkins from Bond University was a very active participant. As well as presenting a case study in the morning and participating in a panel discussion, she had her own Coveritlive stream going.

I was able to interview several of the presenters and will be posting the interviews, mostly video, some audio, here over the next few days.

As I say, the day was stimulating and informative.

It was also fun. How could it not be, when the conference facilities (which I found quite impressive) are in what is arguably Sydney’s most famous place historically for fun, Luna Park?

Luna Park, Sydney, Feb 26, 2009: Des Walsh, CC (some rights reserved)*

The Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum blog provides detailed background and links to the various reports and comments on the day’s events.

* Pictures in this post are covered by a Creative Commons license (some rights reserved).

Filed Under: Enterprise 2.0, Events, Social Media, Social networking Tagged With: Australia, E2EF, Enterprise 2.0, Luna Park Sydney, Sydney, Sydney Opera House, Web 2.0

WordFrame Partners with Webarts for Asia-Pacific

April 1, 2008 By Des Walsh

ITBrix/ WordFrame announced last week, via PRWeb, the appointment of my company as solution providers for WordFrame – with a special emphasis on our Asia Pacific region.

I’m excited about this. In various forums and conversations and on this and other blogs I have been promoting the use of social media in business for a while. With this new partnership I can go beyond the theory and exhortation and help companies and organizations more directly with a product I know works, is value for money and will scale.

As part of the announcement of the partnership, I posted my version of a “social media release” on the Webarts company site and am including the core information here also for good measure.

Copying of the content of this post is encouraged .

Summary:The Webarts Company Pty Ltd (Webarts) has been appointed by Colorado based ITBrix/Wordframe as their partner for China, South East Asia and Australasia. There has been a steady increase in enquiries and interest in the WordFrame platform globally, so ITBrix needed to provide a local marketing and support presence. The Webarts Company was selected because of our expertise in the enterprise social media space, coupled with our broad industry knowledge and depth of experience.

Current product, WordFrame Community 1.0, provides:

an out-of-the-box solution that allows teams to create Web communities for information sharing and document collaboration, benefits that help increase individual and team productivity
is based on Microsoft asp.net 2.0 Framework
includes IT resources such as community workspaces, blogs, user profiles, e-mail, document management, wiki, audio and video publishing, all secure and easily managed via a feature-rich administration shell
enables users to locate distributed information quickly and efficiently, as well as connect to and work with others more productively.

Contacts:

Webarts CEO Des Walsh, Gold Coast, Australia
Phone Australia: +1 7 5536 5658
Skype: deswalsh
email: wordframe@gmail.com
Twitter: deswalsh
web: www.webarts.net.au

WordFrame CEO George Athannassov, Colorado Springs, CO, USA
Phone USA: +1 719 332 5062
web: www.wordframe.com

Key Points of partnership announcement:

The Webarts Company (Webarts), Gold Coast, Australia, appointed by ITBrix LLC, with HQ in Colorado Springs, as partner for China, South East Asia and Australasia
Increase in enquiries and interest in the WordFrame platform globally
Webarts CEO is Des Walsh, social media consultant, business coach, author and international speaker
Walsh is also Asia Pacific consultant to Guangzhou, China group Culture Fish Media, specialists in cultural SEO

del.icio.us site for this release
rss feed for del.icio.us page

Quotes

Des Walsh, Webarts CEO quotes:

“I had direct experience of using the platform through being a member of the Social Media Collective blogging group, which uses WordFrame to drive its aggregation.”

“WordFrame is a really neat collaboration solution, covering blogs, wikis, social networking, group messaging, document management, and RSS feed aggregation. It is also highly scalable, so it is a very effective solution for a wide range of companies and organizations. Its range of functions, combined with it being developed using Microsoft standard technology makes it very attractive as a corporate solution.”

George Athannassov, ITBrix CEO quote:

“We are delighted to be teaming up with Webarts and Des. His company can help us increase our sales and support coverage in the Far East and Australasia, and provide our customers with the consulting support we need. His consulting background, and knowledge of the enterprise 2.0 marketplace will be an asset to the team.”

Links

PRWeb:
ITBrix / WordFrame Appoints Collaboration Solutions Providers The Webarts Company as China, South East Asia and Australasia
http://www.prweb.com/releases/2008/03/prweb777494.htm

RSS for ITBrix/WordFrame release

The Webarts Company site: http://www.webarts.net.au

ITBrix/Wordframe site: http://www.wordframe.com

More if needed on Des Walsh

Walsh has 20 years of experience in business communications, corporate training and executive coaching, including a strong focus on web-based initiatives and, more recently, social media solutions. He has provided strategic advice and consulting in the corporate, government and university enterprise sectors. Prior to establishing his own company, Des was a senior government executive with development and management responsibilities for multi-million dollar federal and state programs.

And see LinkedIn profile

For company, association, or government agency enquiries, please use the Contact form, or the email address wordframe@gmail.com (this goes directly to Des Walsh and all business enquiries will be treated in confidence), or call on one of the numbers listed above.

Filed Under: China, Enterprise 2.0, Social Media Tagged With: Asia Pacific, Australasia, Australia, China, Enterprise 2.0, New Zealand, Social Media, South East Asia, WordFrame

Enterprise 2.0 and Knowledge Management: Interview with Stephen Collins

February 12, 2008 By Des Walsh

Picture courtesy Ruth Ellison

Yesterday I had the pleasure of interviewing Stephen Collins, Founder and CEO of acidlabs, a company focused on supporting enterprises with the organization and management of knowledge.

After speaking with Stephen, I’m even more convinced than previously that private and public sector enterprises need to address seriously the implications of the social media revolution. “Wait and see” is a recipe for going backwards.

Stephen is passionate about this. As his website says and as the interview shows “Stephen is more than a little passionate about leveraging great social applications as a way to help people and organisations do their jobs better.”

We talked about:

how Stephen works with companies (if you are looking for someone savvy to help your company or to partner with, you need to listen to this)
how valuable and enjoyable he found it to meet others with related interests at Office 2.0 in San Francisco last year and how those meetings were made easier using social networking tools
how risk-taking is inherent in corporate social networking and how to manage the risk, e.g. by starting within the firewall
how younger employees are using social media tools even though they are not provided by the enterprise
how companies implementing social networking can and should engage employees in a conversation about acceptable use obligations that come with the provision of tools

The interview runs for about 30 minutes. You will notice that in the lead-in and exit comments I mention that this interview is part of the Social Media Show, the new podcast show I’m setting up. The site is actually being set up over the next 24 hours: once it is up the interview will be posted there too.

Click here to download…

Stephen and acidlabs are partnering with Ross Dawson’s Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum, billed as providing “a pragmatic overview of how Web 2.0 and social media technologies are being applied inside the enterprise to create business value”. The Forum is to be held next Tuesday, February 19, in Sydney, Australia, with a great lineup of speakers, some of whom we will be watching and listening to via live video streaming from the USA and Europe. If you are going to be there, I hope you will say hello on the day.

I’m hoping to interview, over the next week or two, some of the other partners and participants in the Forum.