Monday, November 12

11:00 am - 12:00 pm | The No Slide Zone, Yerba Buena Theater
Hosts: Paul Pedrazzi, Marius Ciortea, Justin Kestelyn
Everything changes and is changing daily. Come discuss, whiteboard, and collaborate with some of the people driving innovation internally at Oracle, from Enterprise 2.0, to the Semantic Web, to this Wiki.

If you have a question you want us to address during the session, please post it on this Wiki page.

Video:

YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRhmv_XWA4k

Session notes:

Introductions

Justin Kestelyn: Senior director and editor-in-chief OTN, responsible for growing the community (size and depth).
Marius Ciortea: Project manager for Oracle (oracle.com), works closely with Justin. Topic: how can we relinquish some of the control and interact better with our community and create more value.
Paul Pedrazzi: Apps Lab team, trying to understand new trends in technology out there, mostly web/enterprise 2.0. Where it makes sense, help that these cool things make it into products.

First question: In what ways is Oracle open?

Justin:
Is that a trick question? ;-)
Big companies don't have a track record of being open. Oracle, aside from what has come out over the past 1-2 years, has track record of being transparent. Oracle forum (OTN), millions of threads. One example among many. Oracle has a history.

Marius:
Question for the audience: who uses reviews before making a purchase (more hands show up for trusting the reviewers, fewer for trusting the company more).

Guy from audience:
Trust reviewer more because they may have used product.

Marius:
Person that is more trusted is the user. At Oracle, trying to figure out how we can become more trusted. Taking it to the next level. Asking user base to participate. Mentions Lunch 2.0 (we pay lunch, make ourselves available for questions about what's happening at Oracle), Oracle Unconference (you, the attendees, are in the driver's seat, can hold session on anything you want), Oracle wiki (wiki.oracle.com, completely off-hands, no monitoring, up to the peers to auto-correct, trusting the users that they know more than we). In general, how can we build our web presence for and together with our community.

Paul:
When we talk about openness, a lot of people mention the community part (e.g. mix.oracle.com, launched today). Also important what happens inside of a company. Built an internal site for idea sharing (idea exchange, available for Oracle employees). Old model: you write your boss with your idea, boss may like it and respond back, often ideas cannot be implemented, 1-to-1 interaction. Often, ideas don't go anywhere. New model (transparency inside Oracle): Ideas get posted on idea exchange, may get traction (via voting up by other employees). New model: you don't have all the answers, new tools (wiki, Mix etc.) help get more value by involving others (internally and externally).

Early feedback (questions, comments etc.)

Q: Who owns the input gathered on idea factory? What happens with the ideas?

Paul: Idea factory runs on small box in ... (out of juice, missed most of the answer ... bottom line: up to the users to take matter into their own hands and drive ideas, not centrally managed)

Q: Semantic Web at Oracle?


Marius:
Semantic Web is about aggregation of multiple content. Our website is very "us-centric". Would be interesting to pull in what others are saying (e.g. blogs). You post something about a certain release, wouldn't it be nice to see the top 5 blog posts about this release. We're definitely looking into that.

Moving a multi-million dollar company towards openness is a work in progress. Give me some aha moments

Justin:
Oracle has a history of doing this. With new technology you actually get to do some of these things. You're not gonna create a community by just providing a blogging platform, it's about much more. It's a journey, not a destination.
Our unconference. Turns traditional conference model on its head. Instead of us telling you what to do, you can sign up for time and place, put sticky note on the grid, and present on whatever subject you're interested in. That's an example of how technology has little to do with it (whiteboard), but about community.

Marius:
Some idea we came up with, many are working on this but how to connect? What if we start an internal blog about where we host an internal Lunch 2.0 (free pizza, but we talk about web 2.0). Within a couple of days, a VP came forward and offered to sponsor the event. Very successful event. 60 attendees the first time around. The 2.0 phenomenon is not only about new products, but also about bringing people together inside (and outside) the company. Trying to overcome the silos.

Paul:
Great question. We've been lucky to be able to experiment with many different tools. One of the challenges is actually culture. Example: there's a disconnect. "If you work on wikis etc, you're not really working" (had to move my seat... again, missed parts of the answer -- sorry, Paul!) ...
...

... By launching new stuff, you actually start to move forward (just do it!), otherwise you
could be talking all year. Let the community take care of the policing etc> (e.g. there hasn't
been any spam yet).

Observations as to how Oracle might be more open?

Q: For Paul. How do you reconcile the openness of social networking/computing with some of the controls and requirements that are placed on corporations.

Paul: Big issue, probably the biggest real issue. In enterprise 2.0 someone can get sued (as opposed to web 2.0). No one has figured it out yet. Mix (just launched), spent 2 weeks with legal team to figure out what works and what doesn't. Kind of learning as we go. With the internal one (easier, employee names are associated with everything they post) there were some guidelines. Externally, taken standard terms of use and added to it. Looked at what other social network services have done (Facebook, Myspace). The reality is, we have to see how it goes, monitor closely. An open conversation. If there's spam or profanity, we will intervene.

Q: About idea factory. Good to aggregate ideas, but at some point in time someone has to make a committment (time, resources). Mostly about internal ideas, improvements etc.

Paul:
On Mix, where anyone can suggest a new feature. Product management team is actively monitoring. In about 3-6 months, there'd be a list of ideas. Product managers will review, maybe add ideas of their own. Boil it down to top 10-20 ideas (release condidate of ideas list). Have a virtual distribution list, then people can spend virtual budget on these features. This process will take ideas and put them into the actual release schedule/plan. Internally, who will take ownership? Vast majority of ideas is productivity related, some product ideas but not as many. With productivity, ownership is somewhat nebulous. Our hope is that internally, some upper management will eventually take ownership. At this point this lack of clear ownership has not hurt participation.

What remains?

Justin:
What we're facing internally is kind of a mirror of what we're seeing externally. Very difficult to have a unified experience (with many different services, Facebook probably the closest one). At Oracle, we want to create a unified experience across many communities and across many different technologies. Many different groups inside Oracle are working on this, need to make sure products.etc. are connected.

Marius:
Does it make sense to be part of Facebook instead of rebuidling Facebook, Twitter? What will be useful in 5-10 years? I'm signed up with 5-6 social networks. Dont' have time to be with a lot more. If we want to have a conversation with our customrers, we need to figures out where they are and where (and how) we can best interact with them. How will the web look in 5-10 years? It's moving quite fast. Jsut to keep up is a challenge.

Paul:
Depends on what technologies you're looking at. They ...

...

Please add if you have more notes.