Annals of Enterprise 2.0: Picking up Drag Queens
My use of the term “Drag Queens” to describe some enterprise software companies was outed today by Vinnie.
What did I mean when I said “old enterprise companies dressing up like a pretty E2.0 babe”
Here is the story of Tim, an Enterprise 2.0 customer who is a little timid, but has decided go for it and party the night away.
Dress up baby, we’re going out tonight
Tim, a friend of Charlie, is out at a club, the lights are low, the music is loud and he has had a few drinks.
The place is packed, and it seems like it is all new faces. Interesting people, great dancers and they are all buying you drinks. There are even a few celebrities hanging around. He dances until 3am, and before the lights go up, Tim ducks out the door.
As he is walking home through the rain, Tim is feeling pretty good. He had a fun night of dancing, good friends and he now has a girl on his arm. She’s pretty and says all the right things.
This story ends with an IT Project Failure, to say the least.
Who is he/she anyway?
The story is much the same for customers in the Enterprise 2.0 world. Those customers who are actually making purchases right now are a little timid and not sure exactly what to expect, and usually it was a friend who took them out to the party.
When the lights go down and the drinks start flowing however, things aren’t as clear as they were before and it isn’t always obvious who you are getting in bed with.
The Drag Queens of Enterprise 2.0 are those old Enterprise software vendors who haven’t done anything to change their products, but instead they went out and have bought a nice dress and have put some eye shadow on their football player physiques.
Comments
15 Responses to “Annals of Enterprise 2.0: Picking up Drag Queens”
Leave a Reply
We used to call this putting lipstick on the pig. My apologies to any pigs, drag queens or Enterprise 1.0 applications who may be offended by this remark.
Nothing a reflection graphic can’t fix.
Remember when companies were nimble enough to move with the current trends, and not simply adopt pieces of them 5 years late.
Startups show the refreshing changes needed in an industry that is past it’s prime only one decade in.
Brilliant J!!! So True
Love it. The flipside is that when it’s not a drag queen the girl you bring home better get along with your old relatives. Too many “E2.0″ vendors like to pretend Grandpa isn’t there. He needs his prune juice and a hug.
[...] Annals of Enterprise 2.0: Picking up Drag Queens : Socialwrite.com “The Drag Queens of Enterprise 2.0 are those old Enterprise software vendors who haven’t done anything to change their products, but instead they went out and have bought a nice dress and have put some eye shadow on their football player physiques.” (tags: enterprise2.0) [...]
[...] likely to be new, fresh and shiny in the wonderful world of all things social. Not if you read what my colleague Jevon MacDonald has to say about the event: Those customers who are actually making purchases right now are a little timid and [...]
[...] really got a kick out of Jevon’s Enterprise 2.0 Drag Queens post. Watching a company trying to be something that it’s not is a bit sad, but in a comical [...]
[...] Honestly, I’m not sure who this “shoot out” is between, each other or the big drag queens that Jevon mentioned in his blog but either way it should be [...]
[...] Docusign and Newsgator. It will be fun to watch the minnows slugging it out with some of the ‘drag queens.‘ I’m expecting great things of Ross Mayfield’s session, largely because the same [...]
[...] agree with me how this is going to be one pretty impressive event overall, even if you are not into Drag Queens (;-P), so here is where you would be able to find me during the course of the conference for the [...]
[...] going to see me crazily busy. As of tomorrow I’ll be in Boston for the week, listening to Drag Queens and minnows at the Enterprise 2.0 conference. But then I’ve already talked about that. So [...]
[...] we didn’t get the chance to get into it more. Jevon McDonald (who was moderating and who had called MSFT/IBM drag queens) kept the discussion fairly low-key. I wanted him to force us to dig in more since I was well [...]
[...] turned out well. I attribute the poor start to the performance of Oracle and Microsoft: two of Jevon MacDonald’s ‘drag queens.’ Both seemed tired, dated and out of touch with the mood of the new generation of technology hungry [...]
[...] Enterprise 2.0 conference, seems to have been a worthwhile event (picture below via Ondemandbeat), drag queens and all. Regardless of all fruitless buzzword discussions I’ve seen lately it showed again [...]
[...] on after Jevon MacDonald (another E2 panel moderator that’s apparently coming against his will too) calls out some of the E2 sponsors for being drag queens (”old enterprise companies dressing up like [pretty [...]