Conoco

Last week I attended Forrester's Content & Collaboration Forum 2011. Forrester notes that in five years, almost half of US workers — about 63 million people — will work virtually. I am already one of them. This will change everything in workplace IT support from designing workplace information strategies for collaboration, to delivering content experiences to people across channels, to engaging the next-generation workforce to serve customers better.

The Forum explored the “current demand for more portable, social workplace experiences means for your workplace strategy.” On Friday I attended Driving Business Excellence With Formal, Global Networks led by Dan Ranta, Director of Knowledge Sharing, ConocoPhillips. Dan is a very entertaining speaker. Here is the session description:

“In 2004, ConocoPhillips launched a large initiative to create internal communities of practice that would enhance knowledge sharing within the firm. For this international, integrated energy company with thousands of job sites (often quite remote) spread across 30 countries, the challenge of sharing knowledge was very real — and the potential payoff was large. Facing fierce competition on all fronts, ConocoPhillips knew that to continue on its success trajectory, it needed to rapidly and effectively harness the knowledge of its highly skilled but geographically distributed workforce. Instead of assuming that technology either was the solution or was irrelevant when creating online communities, senior managers understood that effective global communities required new processes, roles, cultures, and technologies. Moreover, they recognized that each had to be focused on solving difficult business challenges. Seven years later, the ConocoPhillips' knowledge-sharing program is ranked as best-in-class across industries.”

Dan mentioned that Conoco Phillips is fourth largest traded company in US with 30,000 employees around the world and many contractors who also participate in their...