Today was the first day - a full half a day with interesting people and presentations. I also made one - a bit nonconventional though - about the role of social software and weblogs in particular for gathering competitive intelligence. I was arguing that in the decision making process besides the business intelligence output (which is scientifically fundamented) one needs to take into consideration the market context and all the related facts. (which I call competitive intelligence) And how do you do that? Get informed as much as possible about what is going on in the market - and weblogs are certainly part of the market conversations permitting getting relevant data on relevant aspects of your business/industry. And to a larger extent the same stands for the social software applications. And as this process improves dramatically the quality of the decision making process (or reduces the probability of failure) sooner or later the social software apps are becoming a strategic extension of the business intelligence.
Is it a wide shot or it makes sense? Apparently the audience took it into two ways: a part that considered that this is included per se in a business intelligence app. (which I kindly disagree since competitive intelligence is not ALWAYS scientifically fundamented) and a part which agreed that it is something becoming increasingly important and it should be accounted for. Somebody even asked if by setting up a weblog one can perfectly dis-inform a target audience - I disagree, since the interactive nature will tend to clear the truth out. On a funny note the moderrator mentioned that this is a way of "economic espionage" - again not quite relevant given the public nature of the social software apps. All in all there were several people interested in the professional role weblogs play and their outcomes thereof.
Here is the presentation [pdf], and the special thanks go to Gabriela who was very helpful and resourceful with several tips, links and materials.
The rest of the conference was informative, a bit boring at parts due to some techincal details that I was not particularly interested in. Apart from the usual schmooze, I learnt relevant info about the BI products coming from Oracle, Microsoft, SAP and Cognos, information governance from Provision, some industry trends from MetaGroup Romania (in 2006 30% of a company's employees will proactively use BI products for making relevant decisions from 15% last year --- hey, keeping a weblog is a proactive thing :)) and a corporate presentation from Exact Software. Also, a very good comment from mr. Teohari of MetaGroup - having the reports from from a BI app doesn't stop your problems - they rather start them.
With respect to "Somebody even asked if by setting up a weblog one can perfectly dis-inform a target audience" perhaps Scoble's blogger manifesto would be of value to refer to as well. I'd imagine that the audience would need to spend further time studying this phenomenen.
Ed, you're right. However, I think it would have been too much to go into more details. I tried to apply the KISS principle (keep it simple stupid) and just to make the audience aware that they have a very important choice in the corporate world. Actually there was this British lady who told me that weblogs are on the buzz in the UK but that she had no idea that they could be used in the corporate world. And this is where I think my presentation kind of fit. I hope :)
And btw, let's not forget that the topic was weblogs as a competitive intelligence tool - as a strategic extension of the business intelligence apps. Scoble's manifesto has more behavioral connotations than suggesting the blogs purposes.