Office 2.0 Conference Kicks Off This Week

The 2008 Office 2.0 conference officially starts today. The brainchild of Ismael Ghalimi; Office 2.0 is now in its 3rd year and has a great agenda and a Startup LaunchPad on tap for attendees. 

Those unable to attend in person this year have a number of social networking options available to participate in the conference online.

Register here for the Clearspace Office 2.0 conference website

You can also particpate online by using:

• Google Apps Account:  http://www.google.com/a/office20.com/
• Office 2.0 Blog Feed:  feeds.feedburner.com/office20
• Clearspace Feed: feeds.feedburner.com/o208
• Twitter Feed: twitter.com/o208

Social Media In Plain English

The team at Common Craft have created a great overview of Social Media, especially showing how Social Media applies to a Business Environment.

This is the video to show to that co-worker or boss who doesnt quite get that new fangled Social Media thing…

BTW….My favorite ice cream is Butter Pecan…whats yours:-)

IGLOO Ices Corporate Social Networking

Kitchener, Ontario based IGLOO’s foundation began with a not-for-profit research centre called the Centre for International Governance(CIGI) founded by Jim Balsillie, Co-CEO of Research In Motion (RIM)

In 2003, CIGI, created a free online research network called IGLOO (International Governance Leaders and Organizations Online) that connected researchers, practitioners and educators around the world.

By 2008 Igloo.org had further evolved into a for profit firm with a focus on creating On Demand Corporate Social Networking software with Web 2.0 tools for content management, collaboration, social networking and administration.

IGlOO offers 3 versions of it’s Corporate Social Networking (CSN) software:

• Lite Edition
• Pro Edition
• Enterprise Edition

IGLOO’s Lite Edition contains IGLOO’s content management platform and social networking tools and is optimized for corporate pilots, or group work spaces for teams. Priced at $4,999 USD annually or 449 USD per month, the Lite edition comes with a basic self service support portal.

IGLOO’s Pro Edition is designed for company-wide networking and knowledge sharing. Pro Edition adds Corporate Social Networking tools, Blogs, Wiki’s and forums. Data Storage and Data Transfer are increased to 50 GB in the Pro Edition. Pro Edition is priced at $9,999 USD annually or $999 USD per month.

Available add on support packages for both the Lite and Pro Editions include a Silver level of Support for $1,000 USD per year and a Gold Level of Support for $2,500 USD per year.

IGLOO’s Enterprise Edition is designed for use outside of the corporate firewall and adds multiple domains, up to ten online communities, multinational deployment support and free silver level support. Data storage and data transfer clock increase to 100 GB in the Enterprise Edition. Pricing for the Enterprise Edition is based on a number of factors and is not disclosed on the IGLOO website.

IGLOO offers a Wizard based Setup for each of its edition’s. The Setup Wizard allows a user to choose what WEB 2.0 features will be used in the CSN, look and feel of the CSN in addition to administrator tasks such as permission setup and reporting.

IGLOO Web 2.0 tools are similar to tools in competing CSN offerings with the IGLOO differentiator being that the tools are a bit more polished than some of the newer entrants in the CSN Space.

IGLOO is utilized by 150,000 end users at customers including Amnesty International, Arizona State University, Deloitte, Motorola and the Royal Bank of Canada. Future updates of IGLOO will include features like social graphing, Microsoft Outlook integration, additional mobile device support and connectors to Enterprise Apps and Microsoft SharePoint.

IGLOO offers a very comprehensive Corporate Social Network solution that can fit any size non-profit or corporate site.  Smaller companies and non-profits may have a hard time digesting the pricing of the Lite Edition but the pricing of IGLOO’s offerings is in line with most of its competitors.

MindTouch Deki Adds Enterprise Integration To Wiki Platform

Mindtouch announced today a new version of its Opensource collaboration and collective intelligence platform. The new version of Mindtouch Deki, “Kilen Woods” introduces new data connection and enterprise integration tools to what is already a very robust Wiki platform.

Aaron Fulkerson, co-founder and CEO, said that:

“MindTouch Deki has evolved into a powerful platform that is the connective tissue for integrating disparate enterprise systems, web services, and Web 2.0 applications, and enables real-time collaboration and collective intelligence - dynamic data collection and application integration.”

New Enterprise Adapters introduced in MindTouch Deki include adapters for:

• SugarCRM
• Salesforce
• LinkedIn
• MySQL
• Microsoft SQL Server, Access and Microsoft ADO.NET
• VisiFire
• PrinceXML
• ThinkFree Office
• WordPress

This new functionality helps MindTouch Deki jump to the front in terms of competing Wiki Platforms as now within a single platform users can create mashups, dashboards, reports etc from within the Wiki interface. This type of enterprise integration will make Wiki’s (if more Wiki platforms are able to catch up with MindTouch and add this type of integration in the future) an easier sell for companies as integration with existing applications is always at the top of the list of wanted features.

MindTouch Deki also differentiates itself from other Wiki platforms in that its existing feature set allows drag and drop in a GUI interface for most of its functionality. This makes adoption within a company a lot easier than other wiki tools in that users do not have to learn html markup etc to create content.

Will be interesting to see if MindTouch can build upon the list of current adapters with integration for high end ERP (SAP, Oracle etc) and CRM (Seible) applications.  MindTouch Deki “Kilen Woods” should be available for download by the end of July