Net neutrality is about digital equality. It’s not about free access to the Internet just  fair and balanced access to the Internet with no exclusive tiers and no restricted access.

The Internet has changed a lot in the last 40 years and especially the way that we use the Internet. Voice, data, video and text travel across our internet on a daily basis. We have improved our infrastructure to the point where most large cities have broadband access to the Internet. An Internet that was built to connect computers together and our use has move way beyond that to connecting people together. The Telecommunications companies and network providers helped to expand the Internet and they have become very profitable and powerful along the way.

As the Internet has changed so has the business model for the Telecommunications companies. The Telecommunication companies grew fat on a business model that included a Land Line in every home and higher fees for long distance calls. Just think about their monopoly, $30.00 to $100.00 a month from every household in America and it is going away. This was their cash cow so what are they going to do now? Many folks are doing away with their land lines or going for the Triple Play from their cable provider which uses VOIP over the Internet to establish phone calls. And what are the Telecommunication companies doing? They are looking for their next cash cow on the Internet by controlling access to our data on the Internet.

With Net Neutrality, the network's only job is to move data -- not to choose which data to privilege with higher quality service. Do you really want the Network and Telecommunication companies to be the gatekeepers of the Internet? I for one do not, however that is what they want and that is why they are spending hundreds of millions of dollars lobbying Congress and the Federal Communications Commission to put a stop to Net Neutrality.

How can you help?  You can urge Congress and the FCC to support Net Neutrality. There is an easy form on the Save the Internet website that allows you to put your contact information in and it will send a note about your support of Net Neutrality to your member of Congress. Here is the link called “Two Million Strong for Net Neutrality” and I urge you to follow it and send a note to your Member of Congress.

Please do not let the Telco’s and Network Providers win. If you do not send a note to Congress you can still help by showing your support for Net Neutrality and joining the savetheinternet.com coalition and letting others know that you support Net Neutrality.

For many non technical folks there is a subtle confusion between the Web and the Internet, so an easy way to think about the difference is to think about our roads and highways and think of them as the Internet. This is the Infrastructure that we use everyday and do not even think about, just like the Internet. The web on the other hand is like the cars and trucks that use our roads. Compare a car to a Browser or a Web Site that rides on top of the road and on top of the Internet. The power of the Web comes from the tools and protocols, programs, apis, and data that make it work however, the Web needs the Internet and without the Internet we do not have a Web.

The Mozilla Drumbeat project is a project that advocates for the Open Web and they are looking for help from you and me. The concept of Drumbeat is to let everyone know about the freedoms of the internet, and how our freedoms may be slipping away from us, and what we can do to help keep the Internet and the Web Open and moving forward.

For many folks our digital roads (Internet) and digital cars (browsers and web sites) are already open and do not appear to be at risk, so what is all the fuss about ? Concerns start when you think about where we have come from and how we have evolved, and by looking at the experiences of other markets over a long period of time.

When Tim Berners-Lee created HTTP and HTML he did not license or charge royalties for his technologies, instead he move it into the public domain for other to use. This is how the Web grew and was literally the start of the Open Web. However since that time, we have witnessed many organizations attempting to carve out their piece of the Web by charging for access to content and data. After a while, charging for and restricting access to content and networks became the norm, but that is starting to change now and we want to make sure that it continues to change.

The Web is evolving along with Technology all around us. Television and Video are moving to the Web and the Internet is moving toward the Television. Fairly soon the Web will be just another channel to access content from your couch, but we want to make sure that all web content will reach that couch and is not restricted by the large media conglomerates responsible for Television today.

Think about the Television and Radio business  in the early 60’s. Their focus was on local news and local programming, and this was very beneficial to everyone. However, over time the heavyweights in industry started buying all the stations and before you knew it most of the stations were owned by a small number of large media conglomerates. Less competition, less outside interference led to selective programming and reporting that is slanted toward the media conglomerate and not toward the people. We can’t let this happen to the Web.

There are forces in work looking to build a tiered Internet where the large players will have access to a larger faster internet tier that the rest of us will be restricted from. There is a large debate going on now for this Internet change. This if often referred to as Net Neutrality where the premise is that the Internet is a free and open resource and Internet Service providers should not carve up the Internet as it will lead to discrimination of content and traffic on the Internet. I am for Net Neutrality and the Open Web, and I encourage you to explore the Mozilla Drumbeat project and get involved.

For more information about Project Drumbeat, here is a slideshow from the Mozilla Foundation Executive Director Mark Surman on how you can get involved and help the Open Web.

1)    The Social Web

There is a lot of hype and a lot of work around introducing social tools and communities into our daily life. The majority of these tools are delivered via the web in communities like Facebook, Twitter, Identi.ca, Plaxo, and Friendfeed. Google also has a stake in this game with OpenSocial, Google Apps, and Google Groups, and Microsoft is getting in late with the Microsoft Azure Platform. Also, there is a lot going on behind the scenes in the social tools and apps space with Open efforts around Identity, Activity Streams and Discovery. These low level efforts will help to shape our products and enable innovation. Social has bloomed on the web, and will be intergraded in many products in 2010,  so now it is time for the enterprise.

One area that has helped the Social Web adoption is the integration of social applications on smart phones which enable users stay connected to their Social communities. Another area is the use of inexpensive networked video cameras which has enabled content creators to quickly capture the moment and share it with their communities.

As Joseph Smarr once said …

The Web is going social … and the Social Web is going Open

I think this statement is very true ….

 2)    The Open Web

The web started as an Open project when Tim Berners-Lee released HTTP & HTML into the public domain in the early 90’s. Since then, organizations have been carving up their little piece of the web and restricting access to many. There are apps and solutions that are completely open, some that are partly open and others that are completely closed. There will be a big push to advocate for and adopt open strategies as more people start to participate in the Social Web and look to integrate all of their social tools.

The move toward an Open Web strategy has started to become organized with multiple groups participating in the effort. The Open Web Foundation was established in 2009 as a legal and standards based group for developing Open Technologies, and the Open Web Advocacy Group which is an open Google Group was create as a forum Open Web Developers, and the Mozilla Drumbeat Project was established as an advocacy group for the Open Web.

How about a real example of the Open Web. Twitter, not a totally open company or application, however they do have an open api which has benefited them greatly. By opening their api and access to twitter data, Twitter has allowed the creation of a sub market around twitter data. Hundreds of companies have been established which enhance twitter data and provide a service to twitter users. Without the Twitter open api, that would never happen.

3)    Cloud Computing

Last year I had Cloud Computing at the top of my list and really expected adoption to be great than the adoption in 2009. That was partially due to security and legal concerns of Cloud Computing but also due to the fact that many enterprise organizations will need to change their infrastructure to take advantage of cloud computing, and most do not realize that. I think Cloud computing will continue to grow in 2010 with some of the larger more established vendors acquiring many of the smaller vendors.

I also see the adoption of private cloud increasing as many organizations get their first taste of cloud solutions in a controlled environment. There is a need for improved security and vendor accountability in the cloud space and I anticipate that there will be one or two new vendors on the scene in 2010 offering increased security and accountability at a premium.

4)    Mobile Computing

Computing functionality is moving to the phone as evidence by the many SmartPhones available today. In 2010 we will see a whole new line of smart phones and Smart Phone adoption will increase in Enterprises as many organizations as many Business Managers realize that Smart phones allow for constant connectivity and Smart Phones adoption grows beyond the techie IT crowd.

I anticipate a line of semi-smart phones which allow some but not all of the features of a smart phone on a cheaper priced phone. Many folks are looking for basic phone services with limited to no data plans, however application store features will be available on all phones in 2010 as the providers look for more way to generate revenues.

The integration of social applications on smart phones has increased and will help to fuel the Social Web as smart phone users stay connected to their Social communities all the time.

5)    Enterprise Social Computing

Adoption of Web 2.0 and Social tools in the Enterprise will increase however it will continue at a slow pace. Enterprises are adopting Enterprise Social Computing much like they adopted Intranets, in a slow and structured manner and need to get their feet wet before adopting any large scale organizational efforts. The good news is that more Business folks understand Enterprise Social Computing and can see the value of improved collaboration for their process.

Many organizations do not have a Enterprise Social Computing strategy however I see that changing in 2010 as many organization will come out with Enterprise Social Computing Policies for their users. This will be a clear indication for the user community of what is appropriate and what is not and will fuel Social Computing within the Enterprise.

6)    Enterprise Infrastructures

Enterprise Infrastructures are changing. Most organizations have already adopted virtualization, while others are experimenting with cloud computing, and everyone is looking for strategies to decrease power and cooling requirements. Most larger organizations have data centers that were designed many years ago for large transactional type processing requirements and that has not changed as the processing continues on newer hardware but with the same old infrastructures.  One reason why both Google and Amazon have become successful is because they are not tied to older transactional type architectures but instead created their own Architectural Stack which enable them to deliver massive computing power to end users. As more organizations start to work with private clouds the architecture required to support private clouds will become apparent and will start to fuel a change in applications and architectures.

The other Enterprise Infrastructure shift that I see is in the area of Identity Management and governance. Most organizations have at least three different methods of authentication in their organization including Active Directory and multiple LDAP’s all architected to be used behind the firewall. This is the year that organizations will start to look outside the Enterprise to join federated IDM’s for a subset of their users, customers and partners. Another Identity related solution will be Information Cards, which have gained adoption on the Web and eventually will make it’s way to the Enterprise.

7)    Big Players in Technology Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft, Oracle

I see the large established players like Amazon, Apple, Google and Oracle growing and doing well in 2010 however I see Microsoft slowing down in 2010. I think that Amazon, Apple, Google and Oracle are poised to take advantage of the web as all are nimble enough to shift direction if needed and all appear to have new products and services in the pipeline. Windows 7 and Microsoft Sharepoint will the the two high points for Microsoft while overall sales will decline.

I see Google as the big winner here. They are embracing the Open Web, and moving out of their comfort zone of search with new voice and social applications and of course the rumored Google Phone.

Jonathan outlines Open at Google as …..

There are two components to our definition of open: open technology and open information. Open technology includes open source, meaning we release and actively support code that helps grow the Internet, and open standards, meaning we adhere to accepted standards and, if none exist, work to create standards that improve the entire Internet (and not just benefit Google). Open information means that when we have information about users we use it to provide something that is valuable to them, we are transparent about what information we have about them, and we give them ultimate control over their information. These are the things we should be doing. In many cases we aren't there, but I hope that with this note we can start working to close the gap between reality and aspiration.

and he goes on to make points like these ….

If we can embody a consistent commitment to open — which I believe we can — then we have a big opportunity to lead by example and encourage other companies and industries to adopt the same commitment ….

whenever possible, use existing open standards. If you are venturing into an area where open standards don't exist, create them. If existing standards aren't as good as they should be, work to improve them and make those improvements as simple and well documented as you can …..

We believe in the power of technology to deliver information. We believe in the power of information to do good. We believe that open is the only way for this to have the broadest impact for the most people. We are technology optimists who trust that the chaos of open benefits everyone. We will fight to promote it every chance we get ….

The future of government is transparency. The future of commerce is information symmetry. The future of culture is freedom. The future of science and medicine is collaboration. The future of entertainment is participation. Each of these futures depends on an open Internet ….

I give Jonathan credit for jumping in and offering an opinion and a direction for the Googler’s while at the same time welcoming comments and differences of opinion. I applaud the effort and feel that Google should lead by example. I also like the fact that Jonathan identified Open Information as well as Open Technologies because I feel that Open Information/Data is often missed in discussions about the Open Web.

There were three main sections to this cloudcamp

• 5 Minute Lightening Rounds – Mostly by Vendors
• 10 Questions identified from the attendees and answered by attendees with experience in the cloud
• 2 45 minute breakout sessions informally voted on by the attendees

The Lightening Rounds were good, the 10 questions were better however the best part of the evening was the two breakout sessions that I attended.

I attended Chris Hoff’s @beaker Cloudanatomy talk on Cloud security and was very impressed with Chris’s talk. Chris stated that he does not want to scare people away from the cloud, but instead he wants us all to be able to ask better questions of the Cloud vendors and make sure that we really understand what we are responsible and liable for and know what the cloud vendors are responsible and liable for.  However, Chris really lays out cloud as a house of cards built on older legacy protocols like DNS, BGP and SSL that can come thumbing down at any time. Chris’s point is that you should understand where your possible points of failure are and know your terms of service and plan accordingly.

I also attended John M Willis’s @botchagalupe Private Cloud discussion and identified the private side of this equation as “You own the hardware” and “You have control over the customers”. We compared the Amazon Public cloud to Eucalyptus which can be built as either a public or a private cloud. There was a lot of discussion about when and why should we use each model (Public & Private) which was reminiscent of the discussions we had 4 years ago when we started looking at virtualization. Questions like is this a solution for dev and test, and when do we go to production were common. John’s point was that every organization and data center should have 3 types of platforms for their applications to consider:

Bare Metal Servers  -  Virtualized Resources  -  Cloud Resources

With three platforms you can determine the best environment for you applications and if you are unfamiliar with building and maintaining applications in the cloud then a private cloud is a great starting point to cut your teeth on before moving to the Public cloud, and when you have both virtual and cloud resources internally, you can identify the best fit for you applications.

Overall I really enjoyed myself and see a lot of value in the CloudCamp model, and would encourage anyone investigating cloud technologies to attend a cloud camp.

I am looking for a WCM that is part CMS, part Wiki, part Document Management System, and part Portal. I do not have a budget or an authorized project however we have a need to upgrade our older html and cgi web environments and the thought of a WCM framework behind our complex site would be a real benefit. With no budget I am looking at Open Source Vendors, and I sat in on a discussion about the “Rise of Open Source Content Management” with Kathleen Reidy from the 451 Group and Seth Gottleib for Content Here. Kathleen did a nice job of grouping the Large, Medium and Small Open Source Content Management players along with the proprietary and non-proprietary products, and I found a similar slide deck from Kathleen on Slideshare. Seth outlined the Open Source players into three different open source groups:

Community Open Source - Commercial Open Source  - Institutional Open Source

Seth’s advice was to understand the support and ecosystems of each vendors and that will help to make a good decision surrounding the Open Source vendors. This goes hand in hand with your needs and requirements however often folks looking for Open Source solutions are often looking for an inexpensive solution and you also need to consider support and the viability of the solution you choose.

Another consideration for Web Content Management which I have that I have not worked out is how well will WCM integrate with Enterprise 2.0 and Enterprise Social Computing. Integration with blogs and wiki’s look like a good starting point however another point to consider would be improvements to search within your organization. Content Management systems deployed correctly can provide structured data to your organization which in turn will provide the meta tags to enhance search in your organization.

I have been in favor of terms like “improved collaboration” for a while now but really see collaboration as a result of Enterprise 2.0 but not the label for it. The next question the business folks usually have for improved collaboration is “how are you going to do that?” and by the time that we get to integration of blogs, wikis, and portals they are completely lost. The term that I am most comfortable with lately is  “Enterprise Social Computing”.  The business folk are starting to see and understand the value of social networking but still need to better understand how it can integrate with their applications and business process to be effective.

I have seen this term a lot lately and first saw it on Dion Hinchcliffe’s Enterprise Web 2.0 blog. Here is Dion’s explanation of Social Computing:

What is social computing? It’s the use of social software within and between organizations and any interested parties such as employees, customers, and partners. Social computing, as explained here, can usher in significant large-scale shifts in where productive forces and innovation come from. Organizations will all adopt enterprise social computing tools in slightly different ways and will generally proceed from ad hoc usage, often by applying widely available consumer tools at first, to more evolved open business models.

Social tools on the Internet have different requirements than Social tools behind the firewall, however a lot of organizations are starting to open up tools and functions that allow folks outside to organization to access data and resources inside the organization. This shift from a totally insulated Intranet to a somewhat open type of Intranet is starting to emerge. MIT is a great example of this with the our OpenCourseWare Project, sharing data and resources with non-MIT students, faculty and staff.

To enable this shift, the tools used by the Enterprise need to change as organizations allow partners and customers access to real time data within the Intranet. Architecture, Authentication strategies and Identity Management will play a big role in security and deployment strategies. Organizations need to balance the security requirements of their most confidential data with the transparent needs of their employees, partners and customers. The “lock everything down model” is no longer acceptable in our 2.0 world and organizational culture will play a big role in adoption and in the transparency of these tools.

So for me, the concepts are the same, but my terminology is different.

Trust Agents by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith is a great book about motivation, social media and how to put them both together with some hard work and determination to improve you online presence. I was left with this thought …

Take what you have and what you are good at and share it with others. Do not wait on the sidelines. Get in the Game.

Weaving the Web by Tim Berners-Lee is a great story about how the World Wide Web and HTML was started. After reading this book I which was published in 1999 I was struck by how much work we still need to continue the evolution of the web. Has a real local flavor to it with Cambridge and MIT and I am waiting for the follow-up book on the Semantic Web.

I enjoyed The Accidental Billionaires especially the local (Cambridge MA) setting and listening to how they worked 24 x 7 to get this up and running, but was left with a distain for Marc Zuckerberg who according to the allegations in the book, screwed multiple folks on his rise to the top. 

Dennis makes some valid points, and the points that really stand out for me are:

• The term Enterprise 2.0 is a tough term for most organizations and many see the E2.0 tools as additional work and do not want to participate.
• Organizations have many large scale problems to solve and improving collaboration is usually not the most important problem to be addressed. 
• Organizations do not want to build SOCIAL into their applications because they fear that it will be a distraction.

But, here is where I part from Dennis:

Like it or not, large enterprises - the big name brands - have to work in structures and hierarchies that most E2.0 mavens ridicule but can’t come up with alternatives that make any sort of corporate sense. Therein lies the Big Lie. Enterprise 2.0 pre-supposes that you can upend hierarchies for the benefit of all.

Most large organizations do have a hierarchical structure and I agree that this is not going to change, however I dislike Dennis’s term “Big Lie” because I do not see E2.0 breaking down the hierarchy but instead improving communications across the hierarchy by sharing more relevant data.

Justifying Enterprise 2.0 benefits to those at the top of the hierarchy is a real challenge and one of the reasons why many organizations are not adopting a real Enterprise 2.0 strategy. Oliver Marks recently jumped in with a post called The Enterprise 2.0 Value Propositions Agenda where he outlines the difficulties justifying a Enterprise 2.0 strategy:

Collaboration comes from ‘co-labor’ and that is the heart of the enabling E2.0 technologies, but organizing that labor with evidence of improved results is arguably the achilles heel of E2.0 as a movement .……

Will the promise of Enterprise 2.0 technology as transcending business tools that extract more value from happier, more productive individual employees come to fruition? That will depend on the ability of the Enterprise 2.0 market to clearly provide tangible business value propositions and use case validations that are attractive to all levels of business users.

My thought is that it is not up to the Enterprise 2.0 market to provide business value but instead this responsibility lies at the feet of the Enterprise 2.0 advocates trying to justify these strategies, and I struggle with this every day. We have been taking about Enterprise 2.0 for almost 3 years now and we still struggle with the value that it delivers. If we can’t clearly articulate the value, how can we expect others to invest in the value?

At the recent E2.0 conference  Oliver Marks and Sameer Patel co-chaired a workshop on E2.0 strategy and execution. Sameer outlined their session nicely stating that they were trying to address:

delivering tangible value in the context of known functions and processes in the enterprise: purpose driven collaboration, reducing customer support costs via social concepts and improving product innovation via social concepts. No tools, no features and frankly no adoption. Just performance acceleration via strategic process and performance alignment.

Identifying and communicating this value is key to justifying a Enterprise 2.0 strategy. Without a justification, there is no succinct strategy across the hierarchy and we are left with point solutions to solve individual problems. This is the position that I am in right now, and that works for me.  For now, I am looking at Enterprise 2.0 as another set of tools that can be integrated where and when it makes sense. There is no Institute wide strategy for improved collaboration and I will not limit improved collaboration efforts to Enterprise 2.0.

I feel strongly that the road to improved collaboration includes more than just blogs, wiki’s and micro-blogging. We need to think past the communication to the data. We need real mashup tools that integrate with current business process and deal with data. We need tools that can search and find relevant data inside the organization along with improved identity tools to help facilitate access to data across disparate systems.

There is value in improving business process, if we focus on that and integrate the appropriate tools into the process then we all win.

The Enterprise 2.0 Conference focuses on bringing collaborative solutions and strategies into the Enterprise with many discussion tracks around implementation along with many real world examples. The Defrag conference focuses more on the tools and technologies and this year has a very social focus and lineup.

The topics and agendas for both conferences give us a nice roadmap of what organizations are looking for in the Social Collaboration space. Many organizations including my own are struggling with Social and Collaborative strategies and are looking for good examples to follow. Here is a sample of the discussion points from both conferences:

Enterprise 2.0

• Exploring Early Enterprise 2.0 Methodologies - Speaker - Dion Hinchcliffe
• Social Software in the Enterprise: Key Debates - Speaker - Tony Byrne
• Lowering Customer Service Costs Via Social Tools - e2 Moderators - Oliver Marks & Sameer Patel
• Is Enterprise 2.0 A Crock? - e2 Moderator - David Berlind

Defrag 2009

• Collaboration: Why Where You Live Doesn't Matter Anymore – Speaker - Gabriel Blanc-Laine
• Successfully Deploying Social Media in Your Organization: Adoption, Rollout, and Support
  - Speaker -  Scott Welch
• Fragment: The Flow-Past Web –Speaker - Kevin Marks
• Cluetrain at 10 - JP Rangaswami, Chris Locke, Doc Searls, Rick Levine

Adoption of Social Collaborative technologies on the internet is fairly easy, however bringing these same technologies into the organization is hard. These technologies require a culture of trust and transparency and that can be difficult in a very competitive organization. I really believe that this is not some FAD but a real change in how we communicate, and eventually these technologies will permeate all organizations. So for me you have a choice, you can sit on the sidelines and wait for it to happen or you can get in the game and become an early adopter which will put you in a position of influence when it comes time to adopt or innovate these technologies.