I recently traveled to Boston for the E2 Conference. This year’s event focused on how the enterprise technology landscape is changing, and how the influx of social, mobile, cloud, big data, and new software architectures are allowing organizations to move quicker and reach new customers faster than ever. I had an opportunity to speak about these trends on-stage during a keynote with Fritz Nelson, VP and Editorial Director of UBM. Other thought leaders from across the industry also shared their perspectives on these shifts in technology.

One of things I look forward to doing most when attending events like E2.0 is sitting down with press and analysts in attendance. These meetings create an opportunity to exchange thoughts and ideas, as well as learn more from those who keep a finger on the pulse of this increasingly changing industry. Things have changed dramatically in the 4 years I’ve been talking to press and analysts in our industry. Back then, I would start talking about the pace of change and the importance of empowering employees and they would stop me to ask questions about compliance and specific features such as customer facing analytics. Now they’re all nodding in agreement as we discuss the importance of choosing vendors based on their direction and velocity rather than any checklist of features. They’re also talking about the changing nature of business and the importance of empowering employees and optimizing for velocity and agility. Some of them almost sound like they could be on our payroll. We’ve come a long way.

The most interesting conversation I had was with digital strategist and blogger Mark Bonchek. We compared notes on the future of work and found we were aligned in our beliefs that the organizational structure of companies would radically change in the future. When I asked him what large companies were good examples of this he pointed to the military, which realized in the last decade that the traditional hierarchical organizational structure, which resembles most companies, wasn’t agile or fast enough to beat an increasingly decentralized, networked enemy.  So they rewired the military to act more like a network so they could coordinate across silos and allocate resources, ultimately increasing mission effectiveness. General McCrystal, who’ve I’ve quoted in my talks as having said, “The wisest decisions are made by those closest to the problem, regardless of rank,” actually left the military to start a firm to advise companies on how to follow suit.

During my conversation with Mark, I also started to ask myself what Enterprise 2.0 was actually supposed to mean. I see “social” in many of the definitions, but I was wondering whether we couldn’t learn something from Web 2.0.  Web 1.0 described sites (products) where every user only added incremental value, usually only to the site owner, such that new users added value in a linear way. I think this describes employees in E1.0 too. Each employee has a narrow range of responsibilities which are meant to support their immediate boss and so on. As you add employees you mostly get linear (or diminishing) value. Web 2.0 described sites (products) where each new user not only added value to the site owner, but also to other users. The value of the whole system increased exponentially as new users were added a la Metcalfe’s Law. In this way, a site with far fewer users could be far more valuable very quickly. So maybe E2 can be described in this way as well. An E2 company figures out how each employee can not only add incremental value to their boss, but also to other employees in the company. Such that adding employees should increase the value of the company exponentially.

I had another conversation with Tom Austin, VP and Gartner Fellow, where we talked about the rise of smart machines which would increasingly help humans find the information they needed to handle the ever increasing amount of non-routine work. Though he agreed that having systems surface valuable information that would aid decision making would be moot if employees weren’t actually empowered to make decisions. The exponential increase in data coupled with the rise in our ability to get faster feedback may be the single greatest catalyst for companies to realize they will have to empower their employees if they are to take full advantage of these capabilities.

These are things I think about constantly: the changing nature of work, how to empower employees, and how tools like Yammer can enable a “true enterprise 2.0.” It’s always inspiring to hear about the progress being made and the great strides companies are making – but we also know we have a long way to go to accomplishing our goal of improving every company and the jobs of every employee.

I often refer to a quote from economist William Gibson: “The future is already here — it’s just not very evenly distributed.” And if there’s anything to takeaway from events like these, it’s that there are really passionate, innovative people paving the way. For example, Bill Oates, the CIO of the City of Boston, in his keynote talked about how he is a proponent of creating a place where people are encouraged to take risks, that there are burning issues in government that require them to change to survive. It’s pretty inspiring to hear that from someone in a sector that has been historically slow to change.

This summer, Yammer will be attending a few other events, including the Gartner Catalyst Conference in San Diego and Fortune Brainstorm Tech in Aspen. Let us know if you’re in the neighborhood or planning to attend. We’d love to hear from you!