Shaping Thoughts

Discussing the unofficial Enterprise 2.0 evangelist role in organisations

Martin Kloos, a Dutch Web/Enterprise 2.0 and social media consultant, posted some nice questions about the unofficial role that some people acclaim for themself Enterprise 2.0 evangelist within orgnisations.

Funny enough, the reason for the post was Martin reading in my Linkedin profile the title “Enterprise 2.0 Evangelist at ING Group”.

Here are a few of the questions and my (translated) answers in italics:

• How can we define the role of unofficial enterprise 2.0 evangelist? Well, for me personally it means I have seen the E2.0 light, read a considerable number of articles on the topic, blogged about it regularly, commented here and there and last but not least did a lot of thinking on how to get E2.0 adopted in my work environment. I also actively try to connect E2.0 like-minded people in our organisation, to share my believes and to give a good example I write an internal weblog on E2.0, in which I blog about case studies from other organisations, about results of our own experiments (e.g. via interviews). Sometime I also pose questions to start-off a discussion. Next to the blogging, I actively participate in E2.0 related projects and act as sort of internal social software consultant (people really know where to find you when you start blogging!). Finally, after work I surf the Internet for E2.0 related experience and try to contact fellow evangelist in other orgnisations.
• How come that these roles are still unofficial? Well at my work that is simple: apart from “grass root” experiments, some of which started already in 2005, there has until now not been a budgetted project related to E2.0. By the way, I do see some change on the horizon.
• Shouldn’t these roles be officially acknowledged within organizations, given the sheer impact of Web 2.0 / Enterprise 2.0? That would be very nice, because now the majority of my effort is happening after my official hours (while commuting and at home). But how does one define an evangelist, when seen from the perspective of an employer? By the way evangelists exist on many fields, not only E2.0. Personally I believe that if internal blogging will be succesful one day, we will see the automatic “emergence” of evangelists of all sorts. That will help identify these people and with their recognition.
• What other web 2.0 / enterprise 2.0 related roles can we define in this unofficial domain? One role that has helped us a lot is a person with some Intranet server space and some technical assistance (tweaking MediaWiki and Wordpress).

By the way Martin keeps two versions of his blog (how do you have time for that?): in Dutch and in English:

• Dutch post with Dutch comments: De onofficiële rollen in Enterprise 2.0
• English post: Unofficial Enterprise 2.0 roles

Anyone willing to contribute their insights on the matter? Any other self acclaimed Enterprise 2.0 evangelist out there?

Related: my other Enterprise 2.0 articles

Technorati tags: Enterpriseweb2.0, Enterprise2.0, Web 2.0, Internal Blogging

| posted Dec 11, 11:20 pm on Dec 11, 2007 | category: Enterprise 2.0 / Work