Central Desktop Blog | Smarter Collaboration

Having to change your name is a hassle, but Shakespeare was on to something. A name matters less than the substance it is referencing. And, HOW you build your brand over time matters more than the name. As such, we find ourselves moving from Common Ground to SocialBridge for our new social collaboration solution aimed [...]

Social collaboration is here to stay.  In less than five years, the dialogue around social collaboration has shifted from skepticism to “expecticism.” In the near future, software vendors won’t differentiate on whether or not they are social – virtually all business software will be inherently social. The intranets of tomorrow will ALL be like Facebook. Rapid [...]

Today we’re excited to announce the launch of SocialBridge, our new collaboration solution designed specifically to help marketing agencies solve their unique business challenges. (Click here to read the press release.) Many marketing agencies struggle with finding an efficient way to manage communication both internally and externally with their clients. The creative workflow process, in [...]

We’re excited to announce the first annual Central Desktop user conference, Collabosphere 2011: Elevate! The conference will take place on September 18-21, 2011 at the Pasadena Hilton here in Pasadena, CA.
We decided to do the conference this year because we felt it was an important next step in bringing together the Central Desktop community. It’s an opportunity to network with your peers, hear from industry luminaries, learn best practices and have some fun! Visit www.collabosphere.com for more information about this exciting event.

Last week, I attended Dreamforce 2010 for an afternoon and participated as a panelist at the Gigaom Net:Work conference. At both conferences, the topic of collaboration was at the center of discussion.  

At Dreamforce, outside the entrance to the Moscone Center was a large “Collaborate” sign that promoted Salesforce.com’s newest product, Chatter. Kinda reminded me of the pictogram we use on some of our promotional t-shirts here at Central Desktop.

We’re extremely excited to announce the appointment of Linda Souza as our Associate Vice President of Marketing. As a growing company, it’s essential that we continue to enhance our leadership team while executing our growth strategy. We sat down with Linda to ask a few questions about her background, why she joined and her favorite Star Wars character (we had to know!)

I had the opportunity to attend Enterprise 2.0 in Santa Clara yesterday where I participated in a panel hosted by InformationWeek’s Editor-in-Chief Alex Wolfe titled “What Enterprise 2.0 Can Learn from SMB.”

On the panel to represent the SMB customer’s point of view was Larry Housel, of Industrial Mold & Machine, and Jashcha Kaykas-Wolff of Involver.  In addition to myself, representing the vendor’s perspective was Chris Yeh of PBWorks. 

Thomas Claburn has a nice wrap up from our panel – so I won’t rehash what has already been said.

But I will comment on a couple of things that I noticed from our panel and from the keynotes and sessions that I attended:

• The tolerance for buzzwords seemed lower than prior conferences, perhaps signaling a shift in market maturity for both the vendors and the attendees.

• Pragmatism reigns.  Maybe it’s the economy, but businesses of all sizes were emphasizing the pragmatism of social and collaboration tools.  This stuff has to impact my business in a specific way that I can measure it – otherwise, forget it.

• Everyone sounds the same.  More than ever, Enterprise 2.0 and collaboration tools have become commodities.  While Novell’s Keynote and demo of Vibe looked cool, you know that things are mainstreamed when Novell is discussing them on stage.