Social Media Behind the Firewall at IBM

Social media isn't limited to external communications. It can be a powerful force for productivity improvement and morale building inside the firewall. No one knows that better with that IBM, which has 53,000 internal communities, 65,000 bloggers, 1.2 million bookmarks and more than 200,000 projects running on internal collaboration servers.

The payoff: People are talking, and when that happens sources of expertise emerge from unexpected places. Social networks enable people to discover information, get questions answered and find new partners in collaboration. These tools are achieving the goals that early knowledge management systems set out to accomplish more than 20 years ago. The difference is that employees willingly contribute their expertise and enable the organization to capture their knowledge when it's in the cause of helping other people solve problems and get work done.

This presentation looks at how internal social networks work at IBM and how they're changing the dynamics of a very large organization.

About the Speaker

Luis Benitez is a Social Software Product Manager at IBM and an Social Business/Enterprise 2.0 enthusiast. He helps companies understand and implement Enterprise 2.0/Social Business solutions, specifically IBM Connections, all over the world. Luis joined IBM in 2002 as a Software Engineer. In 2007 he created, and now leads, the internal Lotus Social Software community open to IBMers worldwide. He serves as an evangelist sharing his knowledge on Lotus Connections and promoting the use of social software to other IBMers. He was the first person worldwide to integrate Lotus Connections and Microsoft Sharepoint and in 2008 was the first blogger to report on the IBM and Microsoft Social Software Bake-Off, which IBM won, at the Enterprise 2.0 conference. Luis blogs at Socialize Me.

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