SAP and The 2.0 Adoption Council

As part of my role helping evangelize the use of social media within SAP , I am a proud member of the 2.0 Adoption Council, a group devoted to creating and sharing best practices in Enterprise 2.0 adoption (see the “Web 2.0 in SAP” section of this site for more information about internal Web 2.0 deployments at SAP).

As explained on the council website at www.20adoptioncouncil.com, the council members are:

…a collection of managers in large enterprises that are charting the course for 2.0 adoption.  Although we may use different platforms and tools, we all share a common enthusiasm for bringing a new way of working to our representative companies.  We call ourselves “internal evangelists” and some say we have one of the most difficult, yet exciting jobs in the global marketplace.

And the member welcome explains that:

The 2.0 Adoption Council is a peer-based, information-sharing group interested in the latest thinking, best practices, case studies, and helpful tips associated with executing socio-collaborative strategies and projects in the large enterprise.

There are very few opportunities for customers to connect with each other and share their specific interests, ask questions, and help solve problems others are facing while playing the role of “internal evangelist” at their day job. It is sometimes a frustrating and thankless job!

The 2.0 Adoption Council was formed in June of 2009 by Susan Scrupski, Founder of SoCo Partners, alias ITSinsider on Twitter

The Council will be conducting research and publishing white papers culled from the collective intelligence of contributing members. It will be a major participant in the Enterprise 2.0 Conference in San Francisco (November 2-5), where the Internal Evangelist of the Year will be announced. If you’d like to nominate a member to be Internal Evangelist of the Year, please fill out this form – and if you’re attending to the show, we look forward to meeting you!

Membership of the council is invitation-only and restricted to individuals that are actively involved in a 2.0 adoption effort in large organizations (generally more than 10,000 employees). Each company can have two individuals on the council (Craig Cmehil is the other SAP representative), and each person is expected to devote each time to helping the council community. (Susan, does this count? 🙂

The council has a Facebook Page open to anybody who’s interested in 2.0 best practice, but the main work of the council happens in a collaborative workspace kindly provided by Jive Software (although the council does not recommend any particular platform to its members) and regular conference calls between members.

A presentation by Susan on slideshare.net below outlines the goals and organization of the Council

The topic threads of the council have been both useful and fascinating – it’s great to swap stories and tips with people that understand exactly the environment we’re working in, and it has already started gathering useful facts and figures, e.g. this post from Susan:

Finally, most important of all — there’s 2.0 adoption council swag!