Niall’sbook, Enterprise 2.0 How social software will change the future of work, finally was made available and I must admit I am a fan !!!

Finally, wehave in one single piece a detailed and careful approach to “Enterprise2.0″, aka social software for the enterprise, crafted for anyone working behind the firewall. Considering all the webcontent,good and bad, we had to digest over the last 2 years, this book reallyis very good news. Another good point that needs to be raised is thatnot all future adopters are used to read blogs. A book is a good way to evangelize non “headshifted” people.

What Iparticularly appreciate is the balance between theory, use cases andmethodology. The reader gets useful advices to make it happen in his/her ownenvironment while at the same time gets background info to gain more insights.

It’s asmart book to make people smarter, not like the usual management recipe booksmade of 20% ideas and 80% case studies which at the end of the day make you copy-pasting a 3 year old working example that eventually makes you fail (it’s all about context, stupid!).

Two pointsof progress (for the sake of it!)

-        The”Social Software in the Enterprise”bit should have gone deeper. That’s my own opinion based on my personalexperience and background. Niall’s has different ones and sees elementsfrom adifferent, more B2C, angle. The social media gang @ Headshift probablyare more in line with Niall than me. He also had to pay attention tothe overall equilibriumof the book (a real constraint when drafting a book).

-        Theunderlying “Gen Y” hypothesis. I know that’s the trend in the sector to usethis as a justification for adoption (here is an example), but I personally don’t like this spontaneism. It’stoo old-fashioned and dangerous.

Have a read,keep it by yourself when you are to build or review your social softwarestrategy.