Many executives are terrified of O20.   Most actually.

Many people do not understand that internal blogs and wikis will actually be used to get the boring, mundane work of business done.   Gartner is still talking about enterprise blogs as though they are some fluffy swishy let’s talk about my cats kind of thing.

PR and HR senior executives are scared senseless.

Corporate CTOs, CIOs and CKOs are convinced that O20 is the perfect storm that is going to get them fired.   One minute no one wants it, the next people expect corporate IT to provide 100% up time, guaranteed back-up and Fort Knox security on top of something that is built by a little company they have never heard of.

It is my hope that some of these issues will be addressed at the Office 2.0 Conference.

So, here is my open request for Panel Discussion Topics:

1. O20 Infrastructure: Can you provide 100% up time, 100% security and 100% back-up on technology from a company you have never heard of?
2. O20 Business Applications: How are business people going to really going to use these tools?    Examples from Sales, Marketing, Operations, Finance.  As an aside - maybe this isn’t a panel but is a series of lightening presentations.   5 minutes each.   Prize for the funniest one.   At least one picture of Darth Vader required in all presentations.   I want to do the “SOX compliant Financial Reporting Wiki”.
3. HR & PR Nightmare: How do we protect the brand?   What rules do we tell our people to follow?   If some guy has a picture of him flipping the bird beside a statement saying he works for us, do we fire him?   If we use these tools internally, is there any place for blogging and wiki culture within an enterprise?   How do you manage people to be productive and to achieve your strategic goals in an O20 world?   Do you have to retrain management?

These are some of the very real people and process issues that need to be solved before Office 2.0 technology will be adopted within the enterprise.