My Enterprise 2.0 Boston visit this year was abbreviated but here are some takeaways based on attending selected sessions, the Expo floor and invaluable exchanges and learning from people I follow including (with thanks)  Mark Masterson, Jessica Lipnack, Patti Anklam,  Bill Ives, Clara Shih, Marcia Conner, Stowe Boyd,  Chris Brogan, Luis Suarez, Christoph Schmaltz and Gil Yehuda.

1. Twitter’s Influence is Everywhere

As  forecast TheAppGap bloggers  Bill Ives and Patti Anklam contributed to a session on “How Twitter Changes Everything” hosted by Jessica Lipnack and including “The Facebook Era” author Clara Shih and Central Desktop CEO Isaac Gaarcia. ( Find Bill & Patti’s essential panel reports here and here.)

Enterprise 2.0 organizers created hashtags for every session so you can read the discussion  highlights using #e2conf37. The room buzzed following Isaac Garcia’s comment that he regarded ReTweets as Spam. Alex Howard‘s Digiphile blog post captures the exchange and offers an alternate view.

Twitter’s influence pervaded the Expo floor with micro-blogging/social messaging functionality being demoed at booths  from Lotus Connections through the latest release of Atlassian‘s Confluence Wiki to Thoughtfarmer.

2. A New Enterprise 2.0 Realism

To me this year’s Enterprise 2.0 Conference had– not surprisingly given the challenging economy– a more somber, practical and business results focus.  There were  fewer vendors in the Expo hall and  I met too many people in career transition after being downsized from leading technology and consulting companies.

The measurable results orientation was reflected in youcalc‘s emergence as  Launchpad winner.

Youcalc offers “On-Demand Analytics Apps”  described by @dinag as:

“YouCalc uses crowdsourcung to provide analytics on Everything! Excellent!”

You can read more from the Launchpad session at #e2conf16

3. New Performance Benchmark- “It doesn’t suck”

Mark Masterson (@mastermark) is one of the savviest people I know and  a conversation with Mark and his colleagues about the state of Enterprise 2.0 tools was a conference highlight.  After several attempts at implementing new collaboration tools internally they’ve found a platform that is being accepted because “It doesn’t suck?”  I’m curious if this level of changed expectations resonates with other TheAppGap readers?

I’m still trying to interpret Chris Brogan’s nugget captured on the Expo floor:

“Depressing that E20Tech has finally caught up to 2007″

but suspect it relates.

4. Adapting Organizations to be More Open Remains a Challenge

Issues around being more open for effective collaborative work was a recurring theme in conference presentations,  participant comments and the Twitter stream.  It is reflected in this Tweet from Stowe Boyd who presented first findings from his Open Enterprise Research:

@stoweboyd I want to scream when moving toward openness as a ‘tough problem’. Why does it seem that the enterprise hates people? #e2conf

in a multi ReTweeted comment from Marcia Conner (@marciamarcia)

LindaAtV3: RT @elsuacon #e2conf Major take from @marciamarcia participation-make more people centric org’s.That’s what matters-People practices FTW!

and by Jessica Lipnack speaking during #e2conf40

@jlipnack We can’t solve 21st century problems with 19th century organizations

If you attended Enterprise 2.0 in Boston live or virtually please share your impression, provide  pointers to must read Tweets and blog posts and alert me to what I missed.

~ Jenny Ambrozek