Janus Boye has written a post reiterating that it doesn't cost much money or effort to start experimenting with social software:
"I would recommend that tried-and-tested advice of starting small. You can actually get a few things done in the enterprise 2.0 sphere without spending any money. You can get a free wiki or a free blog and start experimenting. You know you have a success on your hands, when you start getting unsolicited praise from colleagues!"
This is sound advice. To add to it, regardless of whether you do have budget or not to spend, testing and experimenting serves two purposes.
- It allows you to get a better grasp of such tools and sets the ball rolling for identifying where and how they might work in your organisation. It's vital to have a good understanding of the technology available. If you don't how will you sell it when the time comes to step up from the experimentation stage?
- Experimentation will also open your eyes to compatibility with your organisation's existing systems. A lot of blog and wiki software is open source and free for non-commercial use, with licences available for commercial use should you decided to go further. But no organisation's technology situation is the same. Every single one has a different combination of legacy systems, database technology, CRM systems etc. You need to get a better idea of how things can plug in and work together. You won't be able to start doing that till you begin getting under the hood of this stuff.
