Nitron Circle of Experts Co-Managing Director Speaks on Web 2.0/Enterprise 2.0 at Financial Markets World Conference

New York, NY—September 25, 2007—David Teten, Co-Managing Director, Nitron Circle of Experts, was invited to speak at the Financial Markets World conference on Web 2.0/Enterprise 2.0 in the capital market on September 17 in New York.

David spoke on “How to Source Deals with Web 2.0 Technologies,” focusing on how private equity, venture capital, and hedge funds can efficiently find companies for investment.

According to a pilot study conducted by Canright Communications and Evalueserve on the awareness and use of Web 2.0, 44% of the executives surveyed were “extremely” interested in Web 2.0 for business, but only 17% felt “extremely” or “very” knowledgeable about the technology. The survey results—which were presented at the event—mirrored the speakers’ sentiments: the business community in general imagines grand possibilities for Web 2.0 technologies in the workplace, but the barriers to adoption, such as lack of understanding at the executive level or compliance issues, are still great.

Lauren Buckalew from the Evalueserve Shanghai office noted that the opening remarks by Matt Nelson of TowerGroup and Dion Hinchcliffe’s speech on “Applying Enterprise 2.0 and Web 2.0 in Financial Services: Early Notes from the Field” were highly informative. Other speeches and roundtables focused on specific topics, such as Instant Messaging, Collaboration, and Web 3.0, while David Teten’s speech on using Web 2.0 to source deals.Lauren was most impressed by Penny Herscher of FirstRain and her simple yet sharp insights.

Stephen Leung, a Senior Manager at BEA Systems, who was a panelist on both the “Web 2.0/Enterprise 2.0 in the Financial Services Industry” and “Rich Internet Applications and the Client Portal: Using Web 2.0 to Improve the Client Experience” panels, spoke on the infrastructure and application side of Web 2.0.

In following the “Top 10” theme used by Xignite Chairman/CEO/Founder Stephane Dubois to kick-off the first roundtable, here are Lauren’s Top 10 takeaways from the event:

1) There is no clear solution for how the capital markets industry should integrate Web 2.0 into business. The interest is there, but Web 2.0 is still effectively consumer-driven, not enterprise-driven.

2) Each element of Search, Links, Authoring, Tagging, Extension, and Signals (SLATES) is required for a Web 2.0 tool to be effective.

3) Internal company wikis—which act as a unified log for all project developments and conversations—are a successful example of Enterprise 2.0 in the real world. The key to success is to motivate employees to use it and control the structure themselves.

4) Legal/compliance teams have not yet figured out how to effectively regulate Web 2.0 tools without reducing them to meaninglessness. But providing employees with unbridled Web 2.0 tools is also not recommended.

5) Web 2.0 is not a technology or a step in development, but a social concept.

6) Executive decision makers’ lack of information on and understanding of Web 2.0—“What’s the ROI?/I do not have time for this!/Kids these days and their crazy technology…”—prevent companies from realizing adoption. Any new technology would face similar barriers.

7) Individuals can use Web 2.0 tools to leverage existing social networks to generate sales or make deals. One can do this outside any business structures, based on one’s own diversity of contacts, character, competence, the relevance and strength of one’s contacts, and access to information.

8) Longtail, mashups, fine-grained entitlement, folksonomies, meta data, geo-tagging, and MetaWiki are good things… once you understand them.

9) The finance world’s secrecy and competitiveness inherently conflicts with Web 2.0’s nature of viral, self-correcting information sharing.

10) Web 2.0 technologies should fit into the existing workflow and should be invisible to users.

For more information about this event, visit http://www.fmwonline.com/Conferences/2007/conf091707.htm

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