Yesterday morning, I dragged myself out of bed at an ungodly Saturday hour to attend the TorCamp crew‘s latest offering, the second, unconference edition of EnterpriseCampToronto at the Navartis offices. I appreciated the chance to catch up with the TorCamp folks, having seen them briefly earlier in the week when I was meeting Will Pate for the first time (and taking my notoriously low tolerance for alcohol out for kicks). I ducked out a bit early at the end as I felt post-lunch energy levels declining. Highlights included:
- Networking and the fun World Cafe session, where we answered questions like, “How are you involved in enterprise solutions?” and “If you were the CIO of a large corporation, what would you do?” I also got to see Jen Nolan again, who’s looking very pretty in anticipation of maternity leave, yet just as into the Enterprise 2.0 as ever. I also met Mike Jones, a professor at Sheridan College – and, as it happens, an SFU communication alumni working in IT. Great timing, as those are ranks I’ll likely be joining soon enough.
- The first session, what I dubbed “metaCamp,” led by Mischa of CopyCamp, who is interested in using the Camp model in other contexts and applications, such as neighbourhood politics. While I initially hesitated going to this one because it meant I wasn’t starting off my day knee-deep in the Enterprise-y stuff, I got a lot out of this session (including Jay Goldman‘s event announcement, which I won’t spoil here, but which I have told others about and which I am extremely excited about). Mark talked about his OpenCities project (brand-spanking new…it’s coming up a bit blank for me right now) and I also met Himy Syed, who’s chock full of a lot of interesting ideas.
- I was so engrossed with the first session that I missed a bit of the second session, which, due to some poor planning on my part, really ended up being my only exposure to the enterprise for the day. Sandy talked about RSS feeds and got into a really interesting back-and-forth with Carsten on formats, data, and enterprise requirements. I ran to grab pizza while she was talking about zero footprint clients – hopefully she’s written about it somewhere so I can get caught up a bit!
- Chatted a bit with Goran, Michael Chen, Scott Srpring and Lev during lunch about their apps and interests, like photoblogs and open source software in educational IT.
- This is where the day gets a bit hazy for me. I went to the session led by Himy Syed, sparsely attended and a little too high-level for my post-lunch stupor – luckily, I got down the names of all the books he mentioned because they sounded really interesting! Then I joined the crowd at the other spot, and I have since entirely forgotten what was being discussed. Tom Purves was doing a lot of the talking.There was something which disturbed me a bit about this session, which was a lot of slagging of corporate organizational models. I am definitely not one to defend those models by any means, but I thought that at very least, I wouldn’t find myself mentally defending accusations of me or my co-workers as being lazy, self-serving drones. I work in an enterprise and however my feelings on the organization are, I felt that mud-slinging towards the character of my co-workers as individuals, is really counterproductive to finding an organizational model that can balance certainty for employees with creating value for customers and serving the markets with the least ill consequence.
- On my way out, I chatted a bit with Will Pate. At some point (maybe the next time Richard’s in town), I think I’ll do a “Vancouverites – past, present and transitioning” event at The Gorey. And it will be a waffle party.
So that was my Enterprise Camp! I haven’t yet decided if it has clarified my feelings toward the enterprise, but getting to know others who are in it certainly hasn’t hurt its case by any means.
2 Comments
Hey Quinn, I’m sorry if you were dissatisfied with our session. I myself have spend most of my career working with or in large enterprises. Over the years, I’ve had both frustrating or very rewarding experiences (sometimes even within the same organization).
Working for (large) corporate organizations per se is nothing that should be slagged. According to statistics more than half of employed people in an economy like Canada’s work for large enterprise (and something that’s not going to change soon, nor should it).
However new forms of interaction driven by these new media should be changing *how* we do what we do – wherever we do it – in both powerful and positive ways.
Anyway, point taken. I’m sorry if we offended. Sometimes I and my colleagues may be guilty of getting carried away in disparaging the status quo in an effort to express our passion for what we see as the potentials of the future workplace.
Of course the corporate life is different for millions of different people in millions of different contexts. No one actually works in a truly dystopic Dilbert office (for instance) – but enough of us, I think, recognize enough kernels of truth in it to appreciate some humor.
Lastly, a correction – I don’t think anyone at any point made comments to suggest that modern corporate employees are at all lazy or necessarily self-serving.
If there was a minor point I was trying to make it was simply that those employess who *are* the informal leaders or the perhaps-unknown superstars of their organizations, should be among those employees who benefit most from the flatter structures and increased transparency that these new tools can bring to organizations. [and not that everyone else at companies are not necessarily superstars too]
It was good to meet you again Quinn. I hope that you will come out to future events, with a lot to learn from people like yourself and IBM with some of the world’s leading experience on working in _very_ large organizations and in embracing enterprise 2.0.
Sorry that Open Cities url isn’t resolving yet. In the meantime you can see what’s up on the wiki here.