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Don Burke, Intellipedia Doyen, CIA
Sean Dennehy, Chief of Intellipedia, CIA
Eric Garland, President, Competitive Futures, Inc. and author of "Future, Inc."

We will discuss and demonstrate these topics. We provide the following three topic areas as a starting point for the discussion:

1. How are web 2.0 tools being used to augment or replace existing business processes to deliver higher dimensions of value and increased responsiveness? E-mail blasts and newsletters may be replaced by blogs. Traditional static reports are replaced by wikis. While these tools and ways of working come natural to the "digital natives" they may represent a learning curve for "digital immigrants."

eMarv-The key to getting digital immigrants to actually immigrate is definitely in demonstrating the value of web 2.0 tools ("the tools"). Sure the tools may be cool for the techie in all of us. (i.e. The fact that you can pull multiple sources of data into one particular page as an example.) But if it just creates another thing that an immigrant has to check then it is seen more as a nuisance rather than a benefit. Ideally, these tools need to replace some obsolete way of doing business. So what is one key value the unconverted may ask? It is in discovering the unknown. Sure, you may get an email blast from your bud that studies Chinese culture in Beijing, for example. But using the tools (maybe through a blog or social network, etc), you may end up discovering someone that recently joined your 50,000-person strong organization that is Chinese and just came back from Beijing. How would you have been able to discover this person quickly before the tools existed. I know, call a friend who know a friend who knows a friend... While this is still valuable, it is not as efficient as going onto facebook, for example, doing a quick location or keyword search on Beijing and finding the person that way.

2. How do web 2.0 tools fit together? Each tool delivers its own specific value and there is no real one-size-fits-all solution. Blogs are great for news updates and discussions, wikis make a valuable platform for content aggregation and tagging tools are useful for social organization. What are the gaps in your current work processes, and what set of tools will help you close those gaps?

eMarv-As I mentioned above, discovering the unknown is very important (especially, I would imagine, in the IC). Relating it to what I'm doing right now (which is finding investors for opportunistic real estate investments), I am constantly trying to discover companies and names of individuals that would be interested in these sort of investments. The old way of doing it (which I still use) would be to cold call/email an investment management company. The new web2.0 way is to check on LinkedIn (business social network) for folks that work at investment management companies. (I now have a lukewarm to warm lead!) It is much easier to search on LinkedIn and less intrusive since people can select what level of communication they are willing to accept. For example, LinkedIners can choose to be open to business deals, job inquiries, etc. or not to.

3. To be successful, your approach to web 2.0 strategies must be authentic. How do we redefine professionalism on a platform that demands we "tell it like it is" and exposes spin and incorrect information. Your "street cred" depends on getting this right.

eMarv-To me, professionalism and authenticity/truthfulness go hand-in-hand. One cannot be truly professional if they are authentic. It is true that you can be authentic without being professional, but the solution to that is tact. Don't be an a***ole when you "tell it like it is" (or in reality, tell it like you think it is :).

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