BSG Alliance and Veodia arrange meeting of intellectual titans to discuss the future direction of organizational collaboration and knowledge-sharing - in the Next Generation internet age.
AUSTIN, TX and PALO ALTO, CA, June 15, 2007 - BSG Alliance and Veodia are excited to announce that they are co-sponsoring a debate between two of the most prominent thinkers in the IT world. Andrew McAfee and Thomas Davenport will square off in a debate at 10 a.m. on Monday, June 18 2007 at the Boston Westin Waterfront. The debate will coincide with the Enterprise 2.0 Collaborative Technologies Conference and will focus on the question of what impact the emergence of collaborative, Web 2.0 technologies such as social networking sites, wikis and blogs will have on the business organization of the future. Interested parties unable to attend the debate in person are encouraged to watch Veodia's Live videocast of this debate by pointing their web browser here: http://www.veodia.com/Enterprise2.
Andrew McAfee is an associate professor at Harvard Business School. He coined the term "Enterprise 2.0" in a 2006 MIT Sloan Management Review article and believes that the adoption of web 2.0 tools have the potential to cause deep changes in the way organizations are structured and function. Tom Davenport is a professor at Babson College, currently holding the President's Chair in Information Technology and Management. Davenport has been a creator and early author for several key business ideas including knowledge management, business process reengineering, and most recently, competing on analytics to improve business performance.
Davenport takes a more measured view of the revolutionary potential of Enterprise 2.0 but welcomes the debate with McAfee by saying, .I'd love to see organizations become more democratic and participative. However, to assume that a technology is going to bring about such changes by itself is unrealistic. I believe these are interesting technologies, but I question if they are transformational. I'd also rate them as less valuable economically than the analytical tools that I've been researching over several years."
McAfee sums up his opposing view as, "My optimism, and my interest in the component technologies of Enterprise 2.0, comes.from the fact that these technologies really are something new under the sun. They're not extensions or enhancements to previous generations of corporate tools for collaboration and knowledge management; instead, they're radical departures from them."
BSG Alliance extended the invitation to the two gurus to this live debate because of their intimate concern with the subjects at the core of the enterprise 2.0 discussion. BSG's clients comprise nearly one-half of the U.S. Fortune 500 and BSG provides those clients with executive forums, strategy, on demand software and on demand delivery offerings. BSG pursues a unique vision focused on guiding clients through transformative adoption of emerging technologies that will create fundamentally new forms of enterprises with new processes where none existed, and create new decision-making processes within the context of collaborative organizational cultures. The views represented by both Mssrs. Davenport and McAfee resonate well with BSG Alliance clients.
Steve Papermaster, Chairman and CEO of BSG, says, " BSG Alliance has always understood the immense benefit gap between implementation and transformation. The meaning and legitimacy of the Enterprise 2.0 term needs to be understood and settled. We are bringing together these two global thought leaders on the subject to accelerate and drive the discussion for the benefit of our clients and the industry at large."
BSG is taking the initiative to bring groups together for creative dialogue and debate on the future view of technology and business, and the ways in which the two will intersect. Transformative adoption of emerging technologies will create fundamentally new forms of enterprises with new processes where none existed and new decision-making processes within the context of collaborative cultures.
BSG's co-sponsor of the debate, Veodia, is a leading 2.0 technology firm that offers the first live TV broadcasting and publishing Software as a Service (SaaS) platform.
"We are very happy to make such a unique debate available for many more viewers online beyond the physical limits of the auditorium. Thanks to Veodia, online viewers will even be able to interact in real-time with Mr. McAfee and Mr. Davenport from their browsers." says Veodia's CEO Guillaume Cohen. .And it.s great to have these two minds debating this topic as firms like ours are right in the intersection of web 2.0 and enterprise adoption."
In the debate, McAfee and Davenport will go "podium to podium" with Dan Farber moderating. Dan is a highly respected technology journalist and blogger. He is currently vice-president of editorial at CNET Networks and editor in chief of ZDNet, a news site focusing on technology and business. Dan will ask McAfee and Davenport questions for the first 20-25 minutes of the debate, after which time un-rehearsed questions will be elicited from the audience. Attendance is open to anyone who is interested, regardless of whether they are registered in the concurrent Enterprise 2.0 conference. Seating will be limited, however, and will be granted on a first-come first-served basis.
About BSG Alliance Corp.
BSG Alliance is the first Enterprise Transformation Company (ETC) dedicated to providing a full range of products and services to achieve enterprise transformations resulting in fast, agile, innovative organizations ahead of their competition.
BSG Alliance helps its customers become Next Generation Enterprises through its on-demand Strategy, Delivery, and Applications offerings. By delivering Enterprise 2.0 technologies, architectures, operating models and applications, BSG partners with forward-thinking companies and top C-level executives to help them become sustainable leaders in today's hyper-competitive global economy. For more information please visit http://www.bsgalliance.com.
About Veodia
Palo-Alto based Veodia, Inc. offers the first MPEG-4/h.264 video broadcasting service designed for business users and professional bloggers. With just a video camera, computer, and connection anyone can easily create TV-quality broadcasts. Through Veodia's simple content management system content can be published live, or on-demand, to websites, blogs, corporate intranets, mobile phones, iPods, and TVs. Veodia's publishing interface and reporting system also enables customers to privately manage content, publish it, and track viewers while retaining full ownership of their content. Veodia replaces expensive in-house enterprise video publishing solutions that previously required multimillion-dollar budgets, inter-vendor operability, and extensive IT support. Please call 650-327-2100 or visit http://www.veodia.com for more information.
Contact for BSG Alliance:
Laurey Peat
Laurey Peat + Associates
214-871-8787
lpeat@lpapr.com
Contact for Veodia:
Veodia
Andrea Heuer
917-886-5113 (m)
415-641-4063 (o)
andrea.heuer@gmail.com
Contact for Speakers:
Joan Powell
Leading Thoughts
800-682-1917
jpowell@leadingthoughts.com