The Working Group

I teased this in my last post on the Blogging Council, which struck me as similar in purpose, but different in execution, to Paul’s latest brain child, The Working Group.

The Working Group isn’t an Oracle thing or an AppsLab thing. If you’ve read here for more than a few weeks, you’ll know we encounter all sorts of challenges when we sing the praises of the New Web internally. Our projects (Connect, IdeaFactory, Mix) have given us valuable experience on how to work effectively with internal teams like HR, Legal, PR, Marketing, Security, etc.

This isn’t an experience specific to Oracle or to AppsLab. In his travels to various conferences, Paul has swapped war stories with other Enterprise 2.0 practitioners who have had similar experiences at other big companies.

Many of these challenges are common to any large company, and so are the tactics used to overcome them. So, The Working Group is a support group for those who have been through the conference room wars and a resource for those encountering these challenges for the first time.

Paul’s official about:

The goal is to have a private forum for people inside companies to join virtual forces in driving Enterprise 2.0 into the mainstream. What makes this group different is that we will work to bring in experts to answer key topics and foster conversation. It is not a passive community.

We have a three simple rules:

1. Share Your Experiences. Our goal is to be a small, intense group. Every voice counts.
2. Ask Questions. If something doesn’t make sense, ask and don’t accept anything on face value.
3. No Selling. If you have a product or service, that’s ok, just don’t use this forum to promote it.

It’s that simple.

I like simple. Paul is lining up a speaker and wants to kick off the group in mid-December. If you’d like to join, drop a note in comments or join via the Ning site (yes, another social network).